Flocking Mad!

 After the recent success of my flocking experiments I’ve decided to go back over my AZW and ACW stuff and give them a taste of it. My old (completed) bases look so much better with a bit of free standing grass on them. After this my fantasy collection will need a blast, especially those hungry Wargs and their rough terrain.

Flock Box Magic

 Well after using the Flock box to cover the bases in 4mm and 6mm grasses I feel like now I should go back and flock all of my recent civil war bases. Most battles were fought in Rough terrain so it kind of makes sense to have long grasses on the base. This was a bit of an after thought using the Flock box, but now I have I will be going over the Zulu force and the ACW  regiments again.

 Above a Union base with some 6mm static grass added. I didn’t have the Flock box when I started to rebase this lot so now I will have to go back and add some grassy goodness.

I normally put a selection of grass colours on the box so the tufts are a nice blend of colours, this way you can tailor your tufts to match you environment and country of conflict.

Basing Anglo-zulu war

I tried out some slightly different techniques this time around to reflect the African terrain. 1st step, put wood glue all over base and flock the whole base in one go. The first sprinkle layer is rough sand to add some larger stones to the base.
2nd sprinkle on some mid brown fine gravel, 3rd sprinkle a tiny amount of light buff gravel, not too much of this because it really shines through. This lighter gravel does give it a dry feel though which is great for Africa.
4th add patches of static grass summer mix, this adds a little colour to the dry looking base.
5th, add grass tufts of 4-6mm.

The very last step I tried was to dig out my Flock box, It is quite new and I haven’t used it much. To my mind the bases were done and I thought I would just give it a quick try out. Well the results were so good that now I feel I have to go back and do all of my other ACW bases. I ran out of time with this lot as I only had a rare three hour window while family popped out.

Basing zulus

Basing the 5000

War Games Terrain

The Circle is now Complete

My little boy always wants to paint like Daddy, so after a bit of thought I popped into a local store to see if I could get a cheap paint set for beginners. Well, cheap and Games Workshop don't normally go together but I came away with a basic set with some new Chaos marines...or monsters as called them.

At this stage I thought it better to use these Acrylic paints we use for almost everything.

Always remember to wear some sort of protective eye shield when painting Chaos marines.

Some British Tommies soon take care of the infection.

It was quite interesting for me looking at these new GW figures, they have certainly changed quite a bit from my day and I have to say I like the new taller size. They new snap together figures were cleverly worked out and a great step for a beginner. My little boy is only five so these are a little too old for him to be honest but he enjoyed painting one before he got bored. He did a good job and It was funny to see him use some techniques I had taught him about brush care.

Nice simple figures that are very cleverly put together, I have long since moved on from GW but hats off to them.
 I started my figure painting with Citadel figures way back in 1985 so its a good place to start.

Clearing the Decks

 Feels great to be finally clearing some units that have sat around for years. The Zulus are a current project but those ECW guys have been in a draw for well over a year. Time to join the basing que, let’s hope that is not sidelined eh.

Zulu warriors mix with Early Saxons and Soriog dropships, English musketeers and federal infantry in some kind of nightmarish historical mashup.

Go strong into the Desert.

Well, I resisted for two weeks, but the truth is if you're getting into the war in the Sudan...you need to buy the Perry's book 'Go strong into the desert'.

 It hasn't arrived yet but I hear good things, I hope it goes some way to sort out the confusion of the myriad of uniforms worn in the campaign.