Monday, July 25, 2011

Waterloo

Small update - The waterloo game detail has been posted on the VLE blogsite - http://vlerules.blogspot.com/2011/06/waterloo-2011.html.

I missed the second day of the game and am awaiting with anticipation the pics and report.

Cheerio.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

La Haye Saint

Hi,

Twice in one day ! Its snowing at the moment and I couldnt be bothered painting so I completed what I could of the rest of the Pireme Waterloo buildings.

http://www.wargamesfever.com/index.php?cPath=24

I purchased the Waterloo set for 4.5 quid, a European Village for 4 and also a CD of Miniature Wargames for 9 quid. The cardboard isnt the toughest (Similar to the consistancy of a Muesli bar box) so some strengthening will be needed, some of the walls\roofs are bloody fidgety but with some patience they can be put together. Ive done most of the initial glueing (Simply using a glue stick) and the below pic is the current result. The buildings are all made but the walls are quickly stuck together by blue tac, as the walls are a real pain to get right from my initial attempt.

I have added two 15mm AB mounted figures to show the scale of the thing. The Barn is seperate, but the storehouse and small corner shed are connected. These then connect to the Farmohouse. This could be left off but the farmhouse has a large white segment indicating (stick shed here with the Pireme logo) but some cosmetic surgery could be done to allow this to stand alone. I plan to base the walls all seperately as I really dont need to be hefting about a fully make farm every 3 seconds.

Below is a closeup of the courtyard showing the poorly aligned walls and the horrible corner shed, as well as some loose glue tabs that have popped up. That corner shed is a pain as you can only make it after the farmhouse and storehouse as done so when piecing it together you have to muck around with lining up two buildings (made out of cardboard thatmove if you even sneeze). The roof of the barn (Left hand side of pic) shows one of the issues I need to tidy up, where the cardboard has seperated slightly while glueing. So while sticking bits of cardboard together is easy peasy (And reminded me of making this things as a kid) there is a lot of things I want to improve upon.




Generals and the gate. They have even printed in the ivy, which close up looks a bit sad.


So I plan to do the following to complete these
i)Base the buildings and walls so they can all slide in together, but not have a fully made farm.
ii) Fix and tidy up glueing errors and exposed white card.
iii) Glue flock on the printed IVY areas to give it some more depth\visual
iv) Add some other visuals to it 9not sure what else yet).

So Belle Alliance, Hougoumont and the French Village to go.

So for 8 bucks I have this and two other large building sets. While its not the most appealing set of buildings (Its cardboard) for 8 bucks it has\will be fun to make and I can use it for games given my lack of buildings.

Cheers
Paul

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Cardboard Kingdom


The first few shipments of 15mm I have ordered have arrived and I have been busily organising and undercoating the figures. I purchased 3 Infantry Bns and 6 Cavalry Regt from AB miniatures to complement my french and as always I am impressed with the AB figures. The above is my Swiss mounted officer who will be a Brigade commander of the Swiss brigade. I also have a mass of Prussians coming, I have a 28mm Prussian army and I really fancied one in 15mm and as the exchanhe rate on USD was 83 at the time my fingers got the better of me.

Below I am completing another unit of Wurttenburgers, I need to find a decent pink as that is their facing colour, I have the Vallejo pink but I'm not sold on it yet. Some of the colours are wonderful, yet some of the more pastel colours are so runny and weak its a pain. Pink and yellow are my main issues with GW and vallejo, I really need to find one that covers well.

Along with this I found some old French Line Artillery that I will complete, the batteries in VLE have 3 figures so this worls out quite well as I found 12 figures. I already have the artillery pieces from Battleline (at least the guns are good) so next on the list for these guys is some buttons and basing.

Another Spanish unit being repainted after the earthquake, these figures are 20 years old but will hopefully look a lot better once done.

Today the lads finished the Waterloo game. I don't have the pics of the first day as I haven't seen them yet but I was looking at some miniature wargames and I saw an ad for cardboard buildings from Pireme Publishing. I have seen this before, and they are like the old weetbix cardboard cutouts but Ion has some cardboard buildings he aqcuired back in the day (Village in a book I think it was called) and they are fairly decent. I dont have much space to store anything these days and I was looking for some light buildings. I have resin ones but the box is so heavy that I didnt fancy any more. One day when I have my own wargaming table\room I'll have great scenery but given that these the packs were on special and the Waterloo set (La haye Saint, Belle Alliance and Hougoumont) cost me $15 (inc postage) I couldnt resist. I have completed the Barn from La Haye Sainte and here it is below, Ill need to tidy it up somewhat but I was rather happy with it. Hopefully by the end of the week the whole things will be done.