Crazy Horses

A mad, mad, mad painting session today, with the aid of mi hermano fantastico Jonesy, saw both units of cavalry on the painting table go from primed to Quickshade ready, men and horses both. In addition, yesterday I finished the last unit of German regulars and this morning put the finishing touches to the two units of Jaegers, all of which now sit alongside the cavalry waiting for Quickshade. That leaves a single unit of Ironclad Minis British Regular Infantry and about six individuals left on the painting table, which should easily get done next week.

I've also called the rivers finished after four coats of gloss varnish ( still no photos and I've put them away for the evening now.. damn. Must remember to take some pics) Which means there's only the buildings and hedges left to do for the terrain, both very minor jobs.

Jonesy's coming around again tomorrow and together we shall attack the vehicle park.

Speaking of vehicles, I received two more lots of resin in the post today from Scotia Grendel. Many, many moons ago Grendel produced a fantasy wargame called Leviathan, which included steampunk dwarves with a selection of steam tanks. I ordered two, the Thunder Hammer and the Iron Drake. They're very reasonably priced (£10 each) for which you get quite a chunk of resin. The casting is much cleaner than the Ramshackle Iron Grumbler, but will still require a little bit of sanding and filling, and there's plenty of detail including a gorgeous dragon silhouette cast onto either side of the Thunder Hammer that's just begging to be picked out with a little drybrushing. It also has a beautifully detailed crew compartment, complete with a pile of coal in the corner ready to be shovelled into the firebox.

The Iron Drake on the other hand has the top half of a driver figure as an integral part of the casting, which is a bit of a problem since Leviathan used very, very heroic 28mm figures (they quote 32mm toe-to-eye for a normal human) and the dwarven proportions make the driver look way, way too big for a 28mm human, so this is going to require a fair bit of cutting and sanding to remove cleanly. It might be easier to scratchbuild a casemate to enclose the driver with just the vehicle's weapon poking out the front.

They arrived pretty quickly but my Iron Drake seems to have arrived with some parts missing. I've popped off an email to Scotia Grendel so we'll have to see what they say.

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Thunder Hammer for 28mm VSF. The Iron Drake is a lovely vehicle too, but will require more work due to the driver figure issue. I'm probably not going to bother trying to get either of them ready for the game next Sunday, unless we get all the vehicles completed tomorrow in which case I might throw the Thunder Hammer together just for fun.