SAGA Welsh army project WIP #9 - More terrain - Stockade, log piles and fallen trees

These pieces were purchased from The Square, one of my favourite manufacturers of resin terrain. Unfortunately, their website is a bit rubbish. Look out for them at shows.

Stockade

The stockade isn't 100% out of the bag - there were gaps at the ends of each piece, so I added twigs and foliage to fill those and give the piece more character.

All the parts in the stockade set

front gate

removal of parts builds a smaller compound

figures for scale

Log piles

Three log piles of differing sizes

Fallen trees

Three fallen trees

SAGA Welsh Army project WIP#6 - Skirmish bases tutorial

SAGA may be a skirmish game, but moving multiple miniatures en masse on the battlefield can be tedious, so I decided to buy some of these excellent 2p Sabot skirmish bases from Warbases.

Here's how I did them:

1. Apply texturing.
I use GOLDEN coarse pumice gel, this allows me to make an uneven surface, but allows me to apply ink directly to it once dry. I use a knife to apply the gel, scraping away any that falls inside the sabots.

2. Whilst the gel is drying, I apply various tufts in random locations. I use tweezers to remove the tufts from the backing and to press directly onto the surface.

3. Once the gel is dry, I apply a brown ink wash 

Again, you should try to avoid inking inside the sabots, as the ink will become the glue for flock. Make sure you get the brown as close to the roots of your tufts as possible.

This is the ink I used, Rowney FW Sepia.

Fully inked and ready for dipping.

4. Whilst the ink is still wet, dip in your dipping tray. Here's mine, made of normal flock, clump flock and  scenic leaves.

I bought the leaves from Atenociti's workshop. Far more than I'll ever need for a reasonable price. My friend bought the dead leaves, so we traded a small amount (in the bag).

So, pop your still-wet base in there

Then give the whole box a few shakes to randomly cover the wet bits

Yes, the base is in there.

 Pull it out, shake it off and voila.

You'll notice there are some brown bits, which is fine. After dipping, run around the edge of the base with your finger to clear unwanted flock. You may want to take any detritus from inside the sabots out with a knife edge too.

This process works on larger bases in the same way, but you may need to dip each edge separately and sprinkle some across the middle.

before

after

So, pretty easy to do. Here's how they all look. Finished units at the back, newer, unfinished to the right, and the empty ones are for the two units I need to make for my basic 6pt army.

The army so far

Expect finished Priodaur unit 2 in WIP #7.

Hordes of the Things: Gogo's Crazy Bones and Qee Horde army

Here's a fun little project that I quite enjoyed putting together. Hordes of the Things is a simplified fantasy rules set from Wargames Research Group, wherein you can create an army from any miniatures you have, adhering to the basing standards in the book.

UK 1p coin for scale

This army is a horde army, so many of the standard units are the same - except all different.

 Each of these units are colour coded, and consist of 5 or 6 Gogo's crazy bones. These are available in newsagents, supermarkets and toy shops, and cost 99p for three standard figures - however they are produced in blind bags, so you don't know exactly what you're getting. They're still cheap enough that you can put the forces here together for about £20.

This is a unit of Magicians. It could also be used as a General if necessary.

Sneakers are stealthy units such as Ninjas, Rangers etc. The basing on these models is static grass and some yellow aquarium rocks. I used PVA glue to attach the models and the basing materials.

My first unit of Behemoths are taken from the Toy2R 2.5" Qee Keychain range. It's got a 'Cats and Dogs' theme. The cat is a prepainted model, The dog is a DIY version that I painted to match (well, sort of).

The next pair have a theme of 'Techno Baby and Techno Teddy' - again, these are from the Qee DIY range. They're all in Dayglo colours with black outlines.

The final unit of Behemoths has a 'Heaven and Hell' theme. A Rabbit Nun, and a skull-masked Devil, again from the Qee DIY range.

And here's a group shot of the Behemoths.

To finish the army, an Elephant Dragon(!) He is a 3.5" Baby Qee, and was painted with metallic pink and highlighted with a silver pen, plus the obligatory black pen. The paintjob is a bit simplistic to match the others, but I may redo the silver as I'm not overly happy with it.

The army was pretty cheap (all told about £45-50) and fun to put together. A pity my opponent couldn't pull his finger out, so it's never actually hit the battlefield as yet.

I did buy another vinyl toy as a God, but that's still in its bag.