Eureka Moment

Oh okay I’ve yet to add the finishing facial details but yet again old-boyish enthusiasm has overtaken completion and the resulting photos are here already. Over the past weekend I’ve tucked into a grand twenty-one Taliban figures, mainly those from the Eureka range pack of fifteen Armed Afghans bought via Ian at Fighting15s.  The five above will form the leading charactors in an upcoming campaign.

These figures are quite stunning sculpts, great variety in poses and uniform, and packed with charactor making them a joy to paint but not without hoping how you might have done them justice with your humble brush skills.

I have another couple of Eureka pieces to make, namely the rocket launcher and the mortar team, I’m looking forward to them. Until then I’m working on a plan to tow Australia a little closer so we might bask in more Eureka loveliness and not have to have their figures shipped all the way around the world.

Not content with one brand of neat figures I also got half a dozen Empress figures done, some of which I used before on a technical. My favourite being the sniper which’ll keep the opposition on their toes.

Weed it and Reap

The latest Jihadistani model is this walled garden. The walls are the usual foamboard mock-plastered with filler. The plants are plastic aquatic ones, but spaced so that figures can get between them. With the more usual gaming trees that’d damage them, but the flexibility of these allows for some movement.

The world’s worst bricklayer has paid a visit to put these supporting pillars at the gate, a welcome piece of detail for a building like this as they’re typically quite bland.

There’s also a hole in the wall in one corner with most of the rubble on the inside. A handy entrance, exit, or just somewhere to take a sneaky shot from.

In another corner a few poppy plants, seeded by the wind I imagine. A straitforward little scenic but it adds a splash of colour to an otherwise dusty scene.

Once You Poppy You Can’t Stoppy

Due to the poppylarity of my home grown opium here’s a stalk-by-stalk guide to making them yourself. I did talk about making them in the previous post but for our hobby cousins who don’t have English as their first language, like say the Americans, a photo how-to demolishes any linguistic barriers. Above is a pin and you’ll need around one hundred of these for a small field. It’s nickel plated brass which means it won’t rust. They’re made in Poland for the Hemline range and you’ll probably want them in various lengths so your field doesn’t look like a row of Guardsmen on parade. The sequins and beads you’ll need should also be available from your local haberdashers.

Then you have to bend, kink and manipulate the pin to give it a more organic look. You can do this with strong fingers but a small pair of pliers make it both quicker and easier. I did leave a lot straight on my first field, but I think these look better. Be careful though as around one percent of these pins snap, which is also why you do this bending first.

Then slip on a small glass bead, hold it near the sharp end and add a tiny dob of superglue under the pinhead. Slip the bead up to under the pinhead, hold briefly and then onto the next one.

However if you want flowering poppies you glue on a concave sequin before the bead and glue it in place. Again it’s quicker to slip the sequin on, hold it near the sharp end, apply glue and then slip it up the shaft.

Then slip the bead on to the shaft, apply superglue to just under the sequin and put the bead in place.Once dried apply a couple of rings of superglue around the shaft. Typically I do a small one near the top, and a broader one at the bottom. Then apply your flock, preferably a long fibre one. Irregularity is key in replicating nature so don’t worry if some have very little flock and some a lot – if all else fails the sparse ones can always go in the middle of the field.

Repeat the above steps a few times and then you can spray them en masse. The flowering ones will need to have the flowers painted by hand. Bear in mind how Opium poppies are not red like the domesticated variety seen in Europe, They’re typically pale pink. For making into fields I attach thin strips of cork to an MDF base, add filler to make it look more like a field, and then both glue and stab the pins into the cork. Try to vary both the angle and spacing so it look more agriculturally pleasing.

Should you like the look of them, but don’t fancy making them I could be persuaded to make some for you, but they won’t be cheap.

 

Top of the Poppies

With both modelling and gaming the views of friends and family often veer towards them believing we’re a bit special, but not in a complimentary way. Occasionally that gentle misnomer devolves into a raised state bordering between simple insanity and being found fiddling with a farmyard animal. This project was one of those for me and my family, askew looks, whispering, and pledges of not mentioning it to anyone outside of the immediate tribe. That aside I’m now the owner for a very nifty looking opium poppy field – but be aware its for personal recreational use only.

Firstly I made a trip to the haberdashers for pins of several sizes and some small glass beads which could be slid on to the pins. These were then superglued to the heads of the pins to make the stalk with it’s capsule and the pin head as the crown. For the few flowering ones I sandwiched a sequin between the bead and the pin head. Once dried I ran two or three bands of superglue around the shaft of the pin and flocked it with a long fibrous flock. These were then sprayed and stuck into the furrows which are strips of cork glued onto an MDF base. A small amount of more flock around the base et voila!

mThere’s just shy of one hundred pins on this quite small field, but it’s a handy game prop and I may even make another – and then onto maize!

A photo how-to make these is available here.

 

Bazaar Enough

This was a very quick build using foamboard, filler, PVA glue and a few pins and  set on a piece of MDF to add a little weight.

For the shutter I scored the card on one side of a piece of foamboard, then peeled away the foam and bent the shutter to shape and doped it with a little liquid superglue.

For gaming simplicity the roof comes off, it could have been fixed but as you,  gamers, know that’s just asking for trouble when someone wants to get a figure inside or even forgets there’s a figure in there and it’s found a week later battered and bruised from being moved with a scenic.

One end is delicately ruined with plenty of room for figures, and a small hole in the wall for the occasional sniper.Although probably one of the simplest buildings I’ve ever made I think it’s a little cracker. I may well add open shutters to the other shops because it’s a small detail which brings it to life.