My Lead Men - Elfball Teams

I can't remember for the life of me how I stumbled across Elfball originally, but I must have somehow ... anyway, when I did and found that the rules were free to download (see link on name), I printed and read a copy.  They seemed pretty damn good to me, so I ordered a copy of the game - to get the board - and then bought a couple of 28mm teams at Salute 2011. Or maybe it was 2010 ...

So far, so good. But then, after painting one team, I just lost the enthusiasm for the other. The Black Scorpion team (BS from here) which I'd bought (in metal, they only seem to do it in resin now) was far too ... 'fancy' with too many decorative bits for my tastes, so this particular project joined the countless others in my roundtuit* pile.

But then earlier this month, having finished my Iron Stars ships - new-toys-from-salute-2012-pt-3 - I was wondering what to do next, and decided to look back at this post - what-to-do-in-2012

In the list were the Elfball teams. I hadn't completely forgotten that they existed at all ... honest guv'nor ... how could you think that?!?

So, in a burst of resolve that left me quite light-headed, I dug them out and have now finished them, even repainting those I'd already finished so that I could magic dip them.

Here are the finished miniatures. First up is the Shadowforge Miniatures Female Gridiron team. I've used Oriental Flesh paint as the skin colour and black hair, the idea being they are the 'Wu-Sheng' Dragons, an oriental ladies elfball team, who (at some point!) will have a half-dragon owner (from Hasslefree)

I am really pleased with how well they've come out (there are actually 11 figures in the team, but 1 was hiding when I took the pics). This next pic shows the 'extras' - i.e. non-players - figures I've got. They are (from left to right): a metal ball, a goblin referee, the Dragons' coach and 3 Dragons' cheerleaders. The bottom part shows the Fenris Games 5-man skirmish movement tray (now trimmed to 4) which I'm using to ease movement of the coach and cheerleaders.

Again, I'm very pleased with these. Next is the BS team. These have been extensively chopped about and are in - IIRC - their 4th or maybe 5th colour scheme. Anyway, to show what they were purchased like, here is a pic I've copied from the BS website

Comparing that to the finished team below, you can see that there was plenty of work for my metal snippers!

And, as before, I'm pleased with these as well. That said, I think the 'strong tone' dip I used was a bit too dark for the Moldy Ochre and Linen colours that I used on them

 * - i.e. I'll finish it when I get around to it : roundtuit

Army Painter Quick Shade - aka 'Magic Dip'

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I bought some Army Painter Strong Tone Quick Shade (aka 'magic dip') from Figures in Comfort at this year's Colours convention. I paid £19.95 (IIRC) for it, but saw it cheaper from other traders :(   I decided to use it on a new project so that all the figures in that project had the same finish. I didn't want one side in a game looking completely different from the other - in terms of finish anyway!

So - somewhat appropriately - my new 18mm fantasy animal figures from Splintered Light Minis, were my guinea pigs and now that they're done, here are some before, after and 1 'during' pictures, with my conclusions on Quick Shade afterwards.

Hedgehog and Badger - before



Hedgehog and Badger - during (immed. after dipping)



Hedgehog and Badger - after



Otters - before

Otters - after

Shrews - before

 

Shrews - after

Squirrels - before



Squirrels - after

Note: All the 'after' pictures were taken approx 24hrs after dipping.

When pulling the minis out of the dip and then standing them on my cutting mat, they were covered in huge blobs of the dip - the Badger and Hedgehog 'during' photo shows this perfectly. There was so much dip on them that you couldn't see the gap between their legs!

Not having used the dip before, I spread the excess around with a brush and felt obliged to do that with all the dipped minis ... but that rather defeats the object of the dip doesn't it? If I have to spread it around the figure with a brush I might as well use a wash - how I normally finish my figures! Perhaps they would have been ok without spreading the dip, but to me there seemed far too much to just leave it ...

As an example of the wash finish that I normally use, the 28mm Sci-Fi figures in my last post were all finished with the mucky brown/black wash and I think the effect is just as good as Quick Shade's and is also considerably cheaper.

The only advantage I can see of using the dip is that it is a varnish as well, but seeing how glossy it is, I fell that I'm going to have to put coat of matt or satin over it.

So, my conclusion ... I like the shading of the finish, but not the gloss; Army Painter Quick Shade is not for me due to its high gloss finish and cost. I'll probably use up the tin I've got, but I won't be buying anymore.

OFC, YMMV.

Oops ... sorry!

Sorry it's been a long while since I posted. I started this re-incarnation of my blogging career with the bet intentions of posting regularly and you know what they say about intentions ...

Anyway, I've been mega-busy at work. I work for a medical devices company and we've issued a voluntary recall of one of the devices we sell. As a result, the share price dropped by almost half in two days ... worrying, but I've got faith in our range and they can make life-changing differences to the people who get them. It seems that the stock market is too panicky to look past the headlines ...

Anyway, enough of that. On the hobby front, I've been painting something new. I'm not sure how I found them initially, but I stumbled across Splintered Light Miniatures and fell in love with their Splintered Land range of 18mm minis and bought The Faithful Boxed Set:

and The Rebels Boxed Set

I'm not entirely sure what it is, but I really like these sculpts. Anyway, I ordered direct from Splintered Light as they have no UK distributor. An email to them revealed that they have a single worldwide postage rate of $6 for orders up to $75, which I thought was good for me, but bad for them!

The minis arrived quite rapidly, but I was disappointed to find that although they were listed as boxed sets, they arrived in ziplock bags! It didn't really matter but I'd been hoping for some painting tips on the box - after all I'm not really familiar with the colour differences between pine martens, wolverines and weasels ...

I did get to the Colours show at Newbury last week and bought a pot of Army Painter's magic dip that I'm going to use these figures as my guinea pigs for. I'll try and get some photos of them up soon - the ones above are from Splintered Lands website.

I also got some more resin scenery from Ainsty and two plastic boxes of figures from Gripping Beast one each of the Vikings and Saxons. I had been toying with the idea of getting them, and was persuaded when the Caliver books stand was selling them for £15 each while Gripping Beast sell them for £20! So how could I refuse that?!