For the shading of figures, after years of experimenting with various washes and shades etc and using home made recipes involving floor polish without being fully convinced, I have finally come across a product that suits me.

Coat ‘d Arms, now supplied by Battlezone Miniatures, do  pots of ‘Super Shader’ in Light Brown, Dark Brown and Black. I only use the black so have no experience of the browns, but I find it gentle, flowing into the folds and not staining the high points of the figure in the way that inks often do, but it is still sufficient to provide a unifying effect on the figure.

I have used it on both 28mm and 15mm.

The technique that I have adopted is to put the wash all over the figure, using enough ink to be liberal but not to over flood and then immediately go back in with the brush to lift of the ink in those places that it is clearly pooling.

I have no idea of the ingredients, but it does behave in a similar fashion to those mixes I have made myself using small amounts of acrylic floor polish and similarly, this product does leave a glossy sheen.

Once done, I go in with a small number of highlights and then matt varnish the whole figure. I think you could get away without adding highlights, I just like the slight ‘pop’.

It is sold in a glass jar and a metal twist lid and one of the things that I found with the first pot was that over time, the jar lid became harder to get off as the residue from using hardens and interferes with the free operating of the cap. To get around this, I now decant a new bottle into a plastic bottle that has a dropper type cap - you can pick these up quite cheaply in cosmetic shops.

Anyway, bottom line, for those that like a wash, the recipe here can be applied directly with nice results. The black is a nice tone that seems to work well across the colour spectrum.

Please note, as with everything on this site, it is paid for by me and it only gets mention here if I like it.

I have just completed my small project terrain set for the Epic ACW.

All of the buildings are resin and from the excellent Battlescale company. They are primed, block painted, inked and drybrushed and matt varnished and have come out rather nicely.

The chapel is based with a tree from Woodland scenics as my representational piece for Dunker Church (Antietam).

Also from Battlescale are two resin defensive positions formed from logs on a stoney platform. They look a bit large in the camera, but that is just a lens thing Vs positioning compared to the buildings.

Finally from Battlescale, a small stone footbridge, this will be ideal for creek type crossings. All of the Battlescale stuff here is 10mm, but I like terrain to be one scale below the figures.

The Fences are MDF from Red Vectors (code 15 FNC-02). A single frame gives 10 x 5” fence lengths. These were base coated, flocked with fine flock and sand and then prettied up with some tufts. These are 15mm fences, they are too big for my 10mm stuff, but work fine with the Epic.

I have not seen a 1/72 Kettenkrad vehicle before. This one came in an Academy set that also included a jeep and a kubelwagen, plus plenty of fuel drums and petrol cans.

The Kettenkrad  is a sort of mix between a tracked chassis and a motor cycle front end, like a trike with tracks.

I thought this might make a good objective marker or just scenic piece of interest. It was glued up (not many parts) and fixed to a plastic base together with some supplies scattered around and jerry cans on the rear of the vehicle.

This was all primed with Revell’s Tank Grey (code 34178) rattle can spray. The only bits of real colour were the jerry cans, oil drums, wooden crate and the drivers seat in the Kettenkrad. I couldn’t decide whether to do a dirty wash or not, but in the end, I’m glad I did. It worked well. Once dry everything got a very light dusting of weather powders. 

For my man, I scavenged a suitable figure from one of the new rescaled German Infantry boxes by Valliant Miniatures (the Rapid Fire people). He has what is likely a map in his hands and binoculars around his neck, so of all the figures I have, he looked the part for someone involved with a small front line fuel and ammo distribution point.

Altogether a nice little piece of interest for the table and an easy mini side project.

Perry plastic French Hussars for the 1809 project have their first outing and are seen here charging Austrian dragoons.

I had been rather dreading doing hussars because of all of the lace, but it turns out that they are not particularly difficult, rather, they just take a bit of time because of the extra colours and details that these figures tend to have.

It is all rather helped by the well defined plastics with plenty of raised detail and good undercuts. One thing I am noticing is that because I mount 4 cavalry to a base, when picking them up, the outer riders flex at the horses ankles.

This is because the horses are built in two halves, with only one half having hooves firmly connected to the base. On the other half, one hoof is generally near to the base, so I have glued a small sliver of stone chip or cork between the hoof and base, just to provide an extra ‘leg’ of stability and it seems to work.

Some horses have two hooves in mid air and have been placed to positions 2 or 3 on the four horse base, so that they are protected from handling from the sides.

The painting of the napoleonics is settling into doing as much as possible with contrast paint and then using traditional paints to go in a second time as a sort of widely applied highlight.

I am quite pleased with these as I thought that grenadiers in greatcoats might look a bit boring, but the sense of formidable does come through.

The flag is a Victrix flag. These were painted up from Wraith Bone  primer with Contrast paints, a light black ink added and then traditional Vallejo paint added for highlights.

They are of course plastic. I did have some Warlord Games’ metals, but at 10 figures per base, I felt the heft was too much and so chose plastic over them.

These have had a brush of matt varnish while on the painting sticks, now that they are based and flocked, they will get a blast of rattle can matt varnish just to lock everything down.

These two bases are all Perry plastic and have just come off their painting sticks. They seem to be defending a particularly flowery / tuft plot of land! :-)

They have been painted up from black primer, mat varnished and then a satin varnish dragged over the metal for some highlights.

The flag is from Pete’s Flags on E-bay, which comes as a set of three, including a banner that would be a good fit for a Stanley Command base, which might be a nice addition to do at some point for Bosworth related games.

The background buildings are from Conflix and the road from The Last Valley. The cloth is from Geek Villain.

These two 10mm buildings are the stone workshop and a stable block buildings from the Battlescale range as sold by Pendraken Miniatures. I have no idea who does the walls, but I suspect I bought them as 20mm castings, but here they serve as ‘high walls’. The front gate is home made from balsa wood and wafer thin bass wood.

The total footprint is a compact at 6½ x 6½ inches, but it still has a decent presence and of course there is potential for the modeller to make it smaller by going using a smaller base with less rough ground around it. 

I just have a couple of errors to correct, which will take nothing more than a couple of minutes and the tip of a paint brush to fix.

Primarily, I see this as providing a Built Up Area (BUA) for the Napoleonic period, though frankly it will fit a wider range of subjects - even tanks parked outside would not look too out of place.

If doing this again, I think I would pre-paint before fixing and then do a tidy up and wash once glued, it would just be easier to reach all of the parts without swearing!

This is a battalion of my Warlord Games Light Infantry. They are late war, so sit outside my 1809 project time frame - but that does not bother me.

They are easy to put together and come with decals to attach to the cartridge cases (slung to the rear).

There are flags in the set and I have chosen 14th Light Infantry to be represented here.

I don’t know why, but my box had 2 officers and no drummer, which is a bit of a shame.

All-told, I am quite happy with these. They took longer to paint than I would have liked, but I just need to tweak the technique a little.

Foot Artillery in 28mm from the Perry’s in metal.

All of this was primed in white and then most of the basic colours block painted in Contrast paints.

The next layer used various Vallejo paints to highlight various parts and to do a general tidy up, then a wash was applied, followed by just a very few highlights here and there.

They have had a hand brushed gloss varnish because they are metal, followed by a matt varnish.

They look better to the eye than the super intrusive camera suggests.

I always use Cidadel Deathworld Forest (a green) for French artillery, but here, I am wondering whether post wash, it looks too dark.

These are now just awaiting a spray of matt varnish as a final protection to the figures and to lock the various flocks and tufts down.

I have another pair of guns in the lead mountain, but they can wait until I get some infantry and cavalry done for the ‘Pocket Army’. 

A representational scenario objective for a future Antietam game with my Epic ACW.

The building is the ‘Chapel’ model in 10mm from Battlescale’s lovely range. The tree is a ‘ready build’ from Woodland Scenics, with additional clump foliage added. The base is a pre-cut MDF shape from Charlie Foxtrot. I have used a craft knife to chamfer down the edges.

A brown basing paste, followed by a variety of flocks and tufts have help unify the elements.

After painting, the building was was given a coat of Vallejo black wash, thinned with water, at roughly 60% water and 40% wash. 

The metal Perry 28mm napoleonic Austrian 6 pdrs roll off the painting table. They just need a quick blast of matt varnish to tie in the flocks and dampen down the light gloss on the figures.

These have already had a gloss varnish, followed by matt and being metal, I don’t think you can ever have too much varnish on them! 

Overall a nice addition to the ‘Pocket Army’, which slowly - slowly moves on.

Rail model N Gauge is a good match for 10mm wargames and isn’t a million miles from 12mm, so time to put my rail kit scenics together.

Firstly the track. This is manufactured by Kato and makes for a good wargame item as track and raised bed are already built as one. I have just over 6’ of this in 8 pieces.

At first, I tried putting down an ink wash to pick out the timbers and textured embankments, but the plastic didn’t like it. So these have been acrylic primed, then coloured with a 50 / 50 thinned brown paint. Straight away I swiped the top of the rail with a cotton bud to clear off the wet paint and reveal the top of the metal rail.

Dabs of thinned PVA glue on the shoulders with Woodland Scenics ‘fine turf’ sprinkled on has just enough to get rid of the plastic look, while staying quite gentle to the eye and it will blend with the game mat.

The station building is a sort of resin / plaster from TimeCast. It has air bubble marks in it, which would normally detract and need filling, but here, I thought it gave a certain embattled look for its WWII settings,

The platform is a two part plastic kit from the Kestrel N Gauge range.

My first wagon has been added to the track. This is a self build Pico kit. I have filled it with stone chippings and painted them black, so that it looks to be carrying coal.

This figure of Meade is a resin, coming from the box of 5 resin Union ACW command figures by Warlord Games.

His standard bearer is from the cavalry sprue. I selected the figure that had a sabre in hand. This was nipped off at the wrist and a short length of brass wire added instead, from which the flag now flutters! I used just a dab of Liquid Green Stuff to give an impression of a hand gripping the standard.

The box art shows Meade with a white beard, so that’s what he has. The two figures were painted up, using Prussian Blue for the jacket / coat and the same with just a tad of light blue added for the pants. 

I always paint my ACW Union at least one shade lighter than seems historically correct, but I just think they look better and this is even more true in the smaller scale, where a little bit of ‘pop’ is always a help.

These are metal Perry Miniatures. You get six to the box and a matching set of six have been done for the Union side.

These are based on 50mm pill bases, with terrain and scrub added to reflect the kind of cover that dismounted troops might seek.

Metcalfe serve the model rail sector with a large variety of card construction kits for both N Gauge and HO/OO.

N Gauge is a useful terrain source for 10mm wargaming and so while in a model shop, I picked up the ‘PN186’ N scale Ramshackle Workshop construction kit for £12

The completed model has a foot print of 100mm x 64mm and the chimney puts it at 95mm high.

You get a good instruction booklet and I would put the build at around two and a half to three hours to make.

There are three essential elements, a thick board core, a light card full colour facia (or wrap) and some acetate to make the windows. The boards and facia are die cut. The final result is something which is very light, but strong.

Of a slight distraction is that the folds in the coloured card from the partial die cutting offer up a fine white line (i.e. the interior of the card below the printed face is exposed). For the most part this is not really too eye catching, but when you look for it, it is there.

My solution was to run a bit of thinned (with medium) grey Contrast paint along these seams with a very fine brush. The most noticeable white line is the one that runs along the top of the ridge tile, which I used a terracotta / brown mix of paint thinned down, to hide. The four corners of the brick chimney need the same colour.

Overall the effect for £12 is very good, but I can’t make my mind up about it, as I tend to go for resin buildings which give me a more rustic look, whereas the card is a little ‘sharp’ looking. I might dampen that down with some weathering powder. 

Anyway, a nice little addition to a WWII built up area for the 10mm scale. 

I have only just noticed that the Gettysburg Epic Battle Box from Warlord Games, comes with some MDF snake fencing.

I generally feel the buildings that come with Epic packages are too large for my tastes. They are scaled to 15mm, which is ‘in scale’, with the Epic, but I prefer to drop a scale for terrain, so I have been buying 10mm buildings or N Scale stuff for model railways (which is around 9mm).

However, the snake fencing to my eye looks fine, or rather 10mm snake fencing looks far too small, so it may as well get used. 

This MDF set is jointed so that a fixed zig-zag of rail fencing is replicated, but it produces a very severe zig-zag, with each section at 90˚ to the next one, which to my eye makes the fencing look too wide for the battlefield, so I have significantly relaxed the angle that underpins the fence line. 

No doubt in real life, my fence would be too unstable to support itself, however, for the wargames table and to line roads, it looks fine, especially as my own units are quite small, with frontages of around 110mm.

To build each terrain piece, I cut the rounded ends off some wooden tongue suppressors (like big lolly sticks) and used the suppressors to base the fencing. Each is roughly six inches long and there is enough MDF fencing to do eight such lengths. I will need more, but this is a good start.

I decided to heavily flock and tuft the bases, which won’t be to everyone’s taste, but it is hoped that the principle of any and all texture added to the table at this scale, visually enhances things.

So for now, my ACW terrain set is pretty much complete, certainly for the battles that will just involve 6 - 8 units per side.

The imaginations world of Piggy Longton get some new characters.

The pigs have been painted with a nod towards the Gloucester Old Spot, though this breed would not have existed at the time, with pigs having a much more boar like resemblance. I just prefer my pigs to look like …. Pigs!

The Bishop and his attendant I believe to be Gripping Beast figures, which I picked up from Colonel Bills. After doing some ‘robe’ research, this appears to be a fair approximation of the clothing that some reference images suggested.

In my imaginations, he has been previously known as Stephen the Fearless, before taking up his priestly duties, so we will see what falls out of that!

A fellow blogger kindly donated me some figures. Firstly we have a professionally painted foot knight, wearing a tabard with King Edwards livery. Having found a Perry flag from my stash for Lord Cobham, then that is who our foot knight becomes.

Also donated was a raw metal mounted herald, which I thought would look rather nice on the base. It is the first time that I have mixed horse and foot and the horse does take up quite a bit of space on the 80mm base.

to make up for that, I dropped the die holder at the rear of the base so that another infantry figure could be added.

There are some pictures and commentary over on the blog re the painting of the unit, plus details of a handy small footprint bridge from Warlord Games. LINK.

http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2021/09/wotr-recruiting-continues.html

This one by Perry Miniatures, 28mm in metal and based on a 60mm wide by 80mm deep base.

A 10mm die frame has been added to the front on the far side.

Four 28mm figures from the Perry’s plastic Mercenaries box.

These are on a 80mm x 50mm base and set up as a skirmisher force. The base has had additional cover and rough ground added (some slate stone and broom bristles), just to differentiate the and their role from ‘line’ troops.

This is one of a pair that come in the Pegasus fast build sets.

Proportions and angles look right, though track face details is generic and the model does not come with its own decals.