HAWKS

Chris Palmer

I finally got back to painting this week, but knew I wouldn’t have a lot of spare time to do it as we’re still unpacking boxes from our recent move; so I chose the Sarcophagus figure from the Dungeon Dressing set to work on as I embark on my second hundred figures from the Kickstarter.  The completion of the figure also marks the wrapping up of the Dungeon Dressing set, and so it goes on the list of completed sets over in the right-hand column of this blog.
     I  prepped this figure in the usual way; soaking it in a dish of water with a couple drops of dish soap added, then giving it a light scrub with a soft toothbrush, and then rinsing and drying.  I then glued the figure to a 1”x 2” black-primed steel base with Aleene’s Tacky glue. I also glued the lid on the sarcophagus down, since I store my figures in boxes lined with magnetic sheeting, and I didn’t want the lid bouncing around loose in the box knocking other figures over during transport.

  I decided I would try to do something a little different than just boring gray stone; so I hit upon the idea of doing the piece as pink marble, inspired by the multiple rose carvings on the Sarcophagus.  And, since I had had some success doing white, and green marble on the Stone Golem, and black marble on the Altar of Evil, I thought trying pink would be a nice challenge.   So, I looked up some Google images of pink marble, and with that inspiration in my head started to paint.
   I began by giving the whole piece a coat of Apple Barrel “Apple Light Pink”. I then went back over the Sarcophagus and added a speckled pattern with Americana “Shading Flesh”.

Next, I added thin striations across the whole thing with first black, and then white paint.

  Lastly, I gave the piece a wash with GW “Devlan Mud Wash”, and then went back and added some highlights with the original “Apple Light Pink”. My final step was to paint the base with Folk Art “Medium Gray”.  I let the Sarcophagus dry overnight and the next day gave it a coat of Ceramcoat “Matte Varnish.”  The following day I sprayed it with Testor’s “Dullcote.”

In general I’m pleased with the piece, though I think the striations came out a little heavy handed, or perhaps too numerous.  I will say the effect looks better at a distance than the close-up photo does.

Figure 101 of 265: Complete

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Chris Palmer

Just wanted to let you all know that things are taking a little longer than expected, and I only just got a space cleared and my table for painting set up this morning. I still have to find which boxes have the paints, and the miniatures I had prepped in them.  My goal now is to be back on track this week, and have a finished Bones figure for posting next Monday, so tune in again then. 🙂

Edward supervises the set-up of the painting table.

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Norman Dean Well, I have missed the third anniversary of this blog by about a week—life has been pretty busy for the last few months. However, in the last few weeks, I’ve finally started to get some painting done again, working on the new imagi-nations project I started back in March:

The forces of Elabrün are looking a little out-numbered at the moment, so more of them next—then maybe some cavalry and artillery…

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Chris Palmer     I’m very happy to announce that today my blog was visited by its 100,000 viewer. The blog is now in its fifth year, and it has been a great outlet for me to share my various gaming activities, as well as acting as a great motivator to actually complete stuff so I have something to post.  🙂
     Most of all, I want to thank the many folks who have visited my blog, and those who have left encouraging comments along the way.
       Here’s looking forward to the next 100,000!

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Chris Palmer Last Sunday, a group of HAWKs (Harford Area Weekly Kriegspielers) got together to complete this year’s Armies-for-Kids Project.  This year the HAWKs will be giving away 6 painted and based sets of opposing 28mm Napoleonic Armies (One French and one Allied) to six lucky youngsters who take part in a specially designated “kids” game at this summer’s Historicon.  This is the fourth year that the club has done an Armies for Kids project.

The armies this year were generously donated by Jay Hadley, Ed Mohrmann, and the staff of Nashcon.   Also, Chris Johnson is constructing a set of paper terrain to give each child along with their armies.  The HAWKs will also be giving the kids a ground cloth, dice, rulers, and rules to go with their armies.

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Buck

For several years, the Harford Area Weekly Kriegspielers (HAWKs)  have been running a really neat event at Historicon.  In addition to the other games we run at the convention that are targeted toward younger gamers (we dedicate a table throughout Saturday of the con to only kids’ games) we run a special event.  This event, the Armies for Kids game, involves kids who are under 10 usually using Milk and Cookies Rules (from Big Battles for Little Hands).  After the event is over, each kid gets to take away two complete, painted armies and some other goodies.  In the past we’ve provided terrain pieces, rules, tape measures, etc.

This year’s project is 25/28mm Napoleonics.  Using a combination of figures from a number donors, including the NASHCON staff, we have pieced together six sets for this year.  Each kid who plays in the game will receive a French army and an army from one of the opposing powers.  There are a handful of painted figures that couldn’t be made into units and a box of unpainted lead as well.  During the game the game master (Eric Schlegel this year) will ask the kids some history questions.  If they answer correctly, they get to take something from these extras.

The picture at the top of this post shows some of the HAWKs working on Father’s Day to assemble the donations into armies, rebase many of the figures, and make small repairs.  The picture below shows one of the armies being assembled.

This year’s donations included some old Scruby figures and other rarities that are the “missing link” between the toy soldiers of Little Wars and modern wargaming figures.  Other donations include Calpe 28mm figures and some old “small 25′s.”  We tried to match up figures by size in each child’s army, but it’s not perfect.

Next year’s project will be 40mm ACW skirmish.  We are building around a very generous donation of painted 40mm Union troops.  If you have any 40mm Confederates you’d like to donate, or any other donations you’d like to consider, please contact me at surdu@acm.org.  The donations all go to kids.  In very rare cases we’ve sold or traded some of the donations in order to purchase missing items to build complete armies.  We think this is a really nice way to do something about the “graying of the hobby” beyond complaining about it.  When you see the look on the kids’ faces, it makes the many hours spent during the year well worth the effort.

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The HAWKs wrapped up this year’s Armies for Kids project last Sunday, preparing 6 sets of opposing 28mm Napoleonic armies to give away to lucky kids at Historicon.

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Chris Palmer

 This week I am happy to announce that I completed my 100th figure from the first Bones Kickstarter: the Nightspectre, from the Haunts set!  This milestone also marks the completion of the Haunts set, and so it gets added to my list of completed sets over on the right-hand column of this blog.  Onward to the next 165 figures!
   I  prepped this figure in the usual way; soaking it in a dish of water with a couple drops of dish soap added, then giving it a light scrub with a soft toothbrush, and then rinsing and drying.  I then glued the figure to a 2” black-primed fender washer with Aleene’s Tacky glue.

With all the other figures from the Haunts set, I had fallen back on the obvious step of applying a wash of green ink to the figure, or some a part of it, to give some shading to the translucent green plastic.   This time I thought I’d try something different, and so I  gave the whole figure a wash with some thinned Iron Wind Metals purple ink to begin with.  After the ink had dried, I very carefully painted the skeletons in the vapor cloud with black paint

When the black paint had dried, I painted the skeletons’ bones with Americana “Buttermilk”.

I then went back and applied heavy highlights to the skeletons with white paint. I then painted the base of the figure black to cover the green translucent plastic that I was going to apply flock over.  After the figure had overnight to dry, I painted the whole thing with Cermacoat “Matte Varnish”; and when this was dry, I flocked the base.  The following day, I sprayed the figure with Testor’s “Dullcote”.

  I’m very pleased with how this turned out.  I actually think the purple ink over the green translucent Bones material looks kind of cool.
  I will be taking a break from posting anything next week, as my wife and I move to a new house this week, so I will be without a painting table for several days.  I’ll see you back here on the 23rd when I will post figure 101, and we will be marking the 1 year anniversary week for this blog. 🙂

Figure 100 of 265: Complete

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Buck

Close up of Subijana de Alava

I missed this Friday’s game night, because I was chaperoning an end-of-the-school-year part for 20+ teenagers (which by the way went very well and was uneventful).  While I was listening to teeny bopper music and watching the teens devour food, Duncan and Dave were play testing their Vittoria scenario for Historicon.  These are pictures of the game taken by Duncan and posted to our closed club newsgroup.

Hill’s Division in Subijana de Alava

We’ve determined over the past couple of years that the HAWKs are not necessarily good barometers for convention games.  We tend to be more aggressive than the average convention game participants and often do things the GM did not expect.

French Counter Attack on the 4th Division

Chris told me that Friday was no exception.  The French were supposed to be defending a ridge to keep the British away from the town.  In HAWKs fashion, Eric suggested that an attack down hill against the Brits would move the fight farther from the town and guarantee the Brits couldn’t get to the town before the scenario ended.

Picton and the Light Division

According to Chris, the plan worked.  The Brits didn’t reach the town; although, the French were decimated by the end of the game.  Duncan is reportedly looking to provide the Brits additional reinforcements on one of the flanks if the French do this during the convention game.

Battle line looking South at Vittoria

Dave and Duncan have put in a lot of time painting Brits and researching the scenario.  Duncan’s output of Brits has been impressive.  The game looks great.

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The End of an Era. Today I finished packing up my old warroom in preparation to move to our new house next week. This was the second home of the HAWKs after their origin in my parents’ basement. We met here until the club outgrew it and meetings moved to our current location. A lot of great memories of hard fought and fun battles that happened in this room will be coming with me.

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