Sengoku Japanese: A Sleepy Village

With the armies coming along nicely I thought it was about time to crack on with some terrain to fight over so with a week off I've devoted my time to just that.

I started off with some houses from Oshiro Terrain which I'd backed on Kickstarter. This gave me a nice selection of houses to paint up to form a village. I also got some bits and bobs like a smith and cooking set and some pots etc which I've not painted up yet.

I've also been busy with the 3D printer and printed off some rice fields which I spruced up with some tufts and my normal water effect, heavy gloss gel.

The 3D printer also provided a Torii gate, road-side shrine, fences and various bundles of goods along with a well and a hand cart. All in all enough to setup a decent table for a skirmish game, which is handy as we plan to play Test of Honour next week for the first time.

Sengoku Japanese: Yamashiro Fortifications

I do have a weakness for a castle or other nice buildings so when I was looking around for some terrain to build up for our Samurai games I came across a nice tower from Oshiro model terrain I was immediately interested. As part of a larger range of walls and buildings the tower looked to fit in with the buildings I Kickstarted with Oshiro already and the more rustic setting I'm aiming for. You can buy STL's to print out massive stone fortifications but I was looking for something that didn't require an entire table to setup something reasonable looking.

There where however two issues, the first of which was that they didn't produce 90 degree corners and the second of which was using the other parts available you couldn't make an enclosure that joined up properly. I mentioned this on a Facebook group and James who runs Oshiro reached out to me to say he would create some 90 degree corner pieces and he could help with a castle setup by modifying the pieces he supplied to me.

So only a couple of weeks after that initial conversation I received my castle in the post today, James has trimmed down the wall parts on the tower to allow everything else to connect up properly. I also have an extra corner piece in case I want to leave the tower out.

I've also been working on my Fireforge Sohei, this time the monks with teppo. As with the gun armed Ashigaru I've already done these are five to a base to act as skirmishers. 

WW2 Airfield

Having had the last week off I've been able to crack on with the Sarissa Precision MDF kits I bought before I purchased the 3D printer. The kits go together easily enough apart from the two hangers which really require three or more hands to get properly into position. I had to make do with two hands and lots of glue and swearing. 

As I hope to get some 02 Hundred Hours games in as well I got a selection of buildings that wouldn't look out of place on an airfield and printed off a couple of Stuka's to act as targets. 

Along with some sandbag emplacements and random barrels and box's I should have enough for an interesting table setup.

I also printed up some parts to add onto the cardboard spool you get in the middle of every roll of printer filament. It was easy enough to knock together and certainly isn't a detailed or complicated build but does enough to give the impression of an oil or water tank.

Lastly I also painted up what is likely to be the last of the vehicles for the game with an armoured car being added to each sides roster. 

Being of a certain age I was of course a fan of 'Allo 'Allo! so it seems only natural to add a 'Little Tank' to the German forces, I hope Lt Gruber would be pleased with the paint job, at least he'd not been sent to the dreaded Eastern Front!

I've also added a Humber armoured car to the Commonwealth forces, apparently it was one of the most produced British armoured cars of the war so presumably would have been a reasonably common sight in many theatres. 

Both are now ready to zip about the battlefield and nip at the enemies exposed flanks.

 

Ruined Tower

Now I have my painting table setup again I've finally managed to get away from painting my house to painting model houses. First up from the new table is a lovely little ruined tower from Fogou Models, over the years I've bought plenty of their terrain and it never disappoints. 

This is a Norman style tower (at least to my eye) and to do something a little different I went with a brown stone / desert theme rather than using grey stone.

Most of the work has been done by a series of dry brushes with various shades of brown and sand which didn't take that long to lay down.

At present the ruin has been investigated by some crusaders but no doubt others will also show an interest in the future.

Mr T and myself have also played out some more games of Kings of War: Ambush over the last few weeks. We've increased the points to 995 which is the largest points you can play Ambush at, this gives a bit more scope to squeeze an extra unit or two in or go for something big.

The last game we played was one of the new scenarios called Stockpile. This involves three stacks of tokens along the centre line that need to be picked up, most tokens at the end wins. A unit can only pick up one token per turn, but multiple units can touch the stack at the same time.

In the game Mr T took the early initiative by wiping out my skiffs on turn 2 after I misjudged his charge range but I did manage to grab three tokens early on.

However the token on my right was taken back by the dwarfs who looked set for a win.

Fortunately my Summoner Crone managed to get a couple of wounds on the Golems holding the token and I rolled 11 & then 12 to break them, forcing a lucky draw.

Stranger New Worlds

Having received a new play mat as part of the latest Mantic Terrain Crate release I've been working on a new terrain set to go on it. I've also been basing up my new Twilight Kin in the same scheme so the army also has it's own matching terrain.

The rough ground toxic lakes are part of the Terrain Crate release as are the fantasy/sci-fi trees and the mouse-mat wood area markers.

The hills are blue (well black these days) foam on MDF bases which have been shaped and then covered with the Vallejo Grey Sand base texture and then hit with a variety of Army Painter Speed Paint colours. 

The walls come from Archon Studios and being hard plastic are super easy to put together. 

The ruin on the right is from a Games Workshop set I picked up at a wargames show a few years back and had to be chopped a bit to get it on the base.

The portal's I've been using are all meant to be used as D&D spells effects but they have been repurposed to act as gateways for my Twilight Kin to come through. I got them from Etsy and the seller scaled some up for me to make extra large ones.

So that means they fit right in with the normal sized ones I've been using on the unit bases, hopefully that helps tell the story of the army.