HAWKs Armies for Kids Painting — That’s a Wrap

Seven HAWKs gathered yesterday to finish painting the figures for the 2026 Armies for Kids (AfK) giveaway. Historicon is now just two weeks away, so I suppose one might suggest that we cut it a little close, but even a simple paint job on American War of Independence figures has taken a bit longer than last year’s Spanish-American War figures.

We save the best for last; the final batch was a mass of American militia (mostly the old Accurate figures) painted in a very non-uniform way.  The project coordinators can now finish up the basing and load the figures and other gear into the boxes.  Next year’s AfK project is expected to be 1/72 American Civil War, so that should be a little easier to paint.

Getting Re-Organized

 I have not been doing well with my resolution to blog more, but, here we go …

The HAWKs have been busy painting 54mm plastic American War of Independence figures for the annual Armies for Kids give-away event at Historicon, now just a few weeks away.  We are giving away six army sets, each consisting of 6 American units, 6 British units, plus a gun and crew and a mounted officer for each side.  Units are just four men, so every kid is due to get about 55 painted figures this year, including one Indian unit in each British set. We usually get together as a group for the painting, but I wanted to give the Indians a little extra attention so I volunteered to do the 24 of them as homework.  I also had extra spray paint and volunteered to do the six 4’x6’ground cloths.  

The Indians; project organizer will do the basing

As of Friday, I finished this task up after much procrastination. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I am procrastinating on a particular task (e.g. painting) I usually will fill time with something completely unrelated (e.g. bicycling), because I feel too guilty about almost doing what I am putting off.  

Three ground cloths starting with tan felt

Three ground cloths starting with green felt

The ground cloths, by the way, turned out to be more of a challenge than I had expected, and I can tell that I am getting old, as my forearms were sore and fatigued the next morning after a couple of hours with a succession of spray cans. Nevertheless, by Friday morning everything had been dropped off to the Armies for Kids coordinator and I was free to paint whatever I felt like without guilt.

I noted to the painting group assembled on Friday that I have been spending too much time watching hobby videos on YouTube rather than actually doing hobby activities. (There’s probably a blog post in that …) One of the channels I subscribe to is the Medieval Wargamer, and he posted a video last week debating the perennial topic of whether this hobby is getting to be too expensive.  (That’s probably a post by itself too … ) I was reminded that Uncle Atom of Tabletop Minions had posted a video back in 2023, and I had taken up the $100 challenge, deciding to build a medieval skimish project starting with an Italeri 6108 “Medieval Tournement” (sic) set. 

The figures I’d finished in 2023

I had only finished 9 of the figures, but had left another batch on tongue depressors in various stages of painting. 

The next batch, left in progress

In an uncharacteristic fit of organization, I had sequestered all of the materials for the project including the paints, brushes, and bases, in an 11-liter Really Useful Box. I remembered that I had put the “in progress” tongue depressors into the RUB later, but not all at the same time.

The sorted project box

Enjoying the lack of guilt over the Armies for Kids I pulled out the Tournament project box yesterday and decided that it would be prudent to count the miniatures and make sure that I had actually gotten everything stowed away properly back in 2023.  According to my blog post (linked above), I was looking for 55 foot figures and 20 cavalry figures, and I could only find 51 of the foot figures.  Three hours later, after moving and looking into every RUB full of half-completed miniatures in my basement, counting four times, and comparing the sprues from the box with an intact set of sprues twice, I concluded …drumroll please…that I had miscounted or mistyped back in my 2023 blog post, and the real answer really was that I had 51 foot and 20 horse.  So, the good news was that all figures were present and accounted for, but that bad news was that I had run out of energy for the day to actually do some painting.  Oh well, better luck today…

All Based and Ready to Go (NQSYW and 54mm Fantasy)

 It has taken a few days since my return from visiting my father to finish up what I had painted, and I also had three more of the NQSYW figures which needed basing.

That brings a Charge! company up to full strength, so I will need to find a way to get it on the table this Saturday.

I also finished the one witch.

Next up on the painting table will be a few more 54mm fantasy figures.  I’m trying not to look too far ahead, so I won’t predict what might be after that.

Some NQSYW (and other) Painting

Please pardon the cluttered table picture!  I have been visiting my father on a regular basis this past year, and I usually try to bring along some sort of hobby project I can work on in the down time.  This trip I brought along the travel paint set and some NQSYW figures for the red-coated army of the Archbishopric of Schlüsselbrett.  When we picked up the redcoats in the Annexation in 2011 there were a few figures with yellow facings that didn’t amount to a complete Charge! company, so I eventually cast up the rest of the needed figures and have worked on them very intermittantly for the last several years.  (More libations for the Muse Clio would be in order, I suppose … ) I was down to the last four I had in progress, so that’s what I brought, figuring that finishing them wasn’t too ambitious.

So, while my father was off to his volunteer gig at the Henry Ford Museum I buckled down and knocked these out. I should have time to get all the basing done to allow the company to appear on the table at Barrage next week.

After playing A Fistful of Lead last week I was also inspired to bring along a few 54mm fantasy figures.  (I have the magic/fantasy expansion for those rules.) I finished off one sorceress, from the old Toys R Us Mythical Warriors play set. (Less the basing, as I didn’t bring the basing or final varnish materials with me…)

During my last burst of inspiration for 54mm fantasy I picked up a bunch of Marx recasts (knights, Vikings, and Robin Hood), so I have plenty of possible figures to paint.  With a bit of help from the Muses, perhaps I can get an initial game on the table some time this winter.

 

Return to Blogging … I hope.

 It has been an eventful year.  I had resolved to get back to blogging last summer and actually got so far as to post twice in June.  Sadly, just after that last post, my mother fell on the 1st of July and struck her head.  She went into the hospital to be checked out, had a massive stroke before being released, and passed on the 11th, at the age of 85. That left my father, eight years older than my mother, living alone for the first time in over sixty years.  Wrapping up my mother’s affairs and ensuring that we had a system to support my father has been my highest priority since then, although things have gradually gotten easier as we came to a sustainable system.  As a silver lining, I have been spending a lot of quality time with my father this past year, as I have generally been staying with him about a week each month.

This level of support has been made easier by another major transition since last summer.  I retired after 42 years with my employer, on the 31st of December, so I have been free to do more or less as I pleased these past eight months. It has taken some time to develop a new routine, and my first attempt to do so required some adjustment when my wife also retired, unexpectedly, at the end of May. 

As I started the year, I resolved first to play more games in the time that was available to me.  The HAWKs, my club, ordinarily meet on the 1st and 3rd Friday evenings of each month, and I have been aware that the group’s retirees have been meeting for morning games on Thursdays after each club meeting. These “unofficial” meetings are fondly known as the Geezer Games.  I am now a regular attendee.  I have also made a more diligent effort to get out to the “official” meetings as well.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

As a result of these new opportunities, as of this week, I have 46 miniatures games in my log so far for this year, so I certainly hope that I will pass the usual 52 game annual goal with games to spare.  The curious thing is that I have not been able to make time for any solo gaming.  I may have to declare December “solo gaming month” or some such; I have a small stack of specifically solo games piling up, as well as another stack of new games I’d like to try out.

I have been running some games as well as playing other people’s games.  At the last HAWKs meeting I attended I ran a little Dragon Rampant game using my 1/72 scale fantasy collection, which I entitled “Strange Women Lying in Ponds…”, involving two rival factions attempting to seize the kingship by convincing the Lady of the Lake to give them the royal sword.

I have not been doing a lot of painting lately.  This summer I have been bicycling a lot for pleasure and my health, but I expect that there will be more painting time as the weather becomes less conducive to biking. I did most of the painting on a 6mm castle from Total Battle Miniatures, but have yet to complete its basing.

I have done some work on 6mm fantasy figures intended to expand the Fantastic Battles games we have been playing.  Shown here are a couple of stands of ogres from Microworld Miniatures.

I have also been working on some Prince August home cast fantasy figures, such as these, but that deserves a post of its own, hopefully not too far in the future.

In the interest of getting this posted, I’ll stop here. I have a Gen Con report I’d like to write, and I have been juggling with the inspiration for several different projects, if I can keep myself to working on them.  More soon, I hope …

October Wrap-Up

 

In keeping with the now-traditional hobby theme of “Orctober”, one of my projects this month was a plastic 54mm orc from the Toys R Us “Mythical Warriors” bucket.  

There is only the one pose available, and I have a dozen or more of them available to work with.  I don’t intend to do too many of these fantasy figures, but my goal is to try to make each one unique. The easiest quick change seemed to me to be re-arming them.

We had one late warm day a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I would try a very abbreviated casting session.  In my collection of molds, I have a weapons sprue for the Britains knight molds originally sold by Castings, and now back in production from Dunken.  To my surprise, the first pour into the mold came out nearly perfect, minus a shorted haft on the spear-thing.  

So it was not difficult to choose three more orcs and give them different weapons.  I intend to play around a little with shields and an arm repositioning, but haven’t gotten there yet.  While I was digging around in the molds and castings boxes, I came across a reasonably complete example of the knight on the left from this vintage metal mold. 

The upper left corner of the shield didn’t fully cast, so needed a little greenstuff repair.  However, I was glad to be able to put one of these into a (potential) game and therefore have an excuse to justify owning this mold.  (For the future, I note that the knight on the right, shaking his fist at the enemy, could be given a weapon from the replacement weaposn sprue as well…something for the spring.)

Earlier this week I was able to base the figures from the Italeri tournament set (i.e. the budget challenge project), the home cast knight, and another figure from the “Mythical Warriors” bucket.  I looked over my storage situation recently, and concluded that the 54mm fantasy will probably go beyond the approximately ten spaces currently empy in my 54mm Medieval Boxes.  The upper limit would be to add one more 11-liter Really Useful Box, which would have space for 56 40mm square bases.  So, we’ll see …

Gaming Weekend and Some Painting

I have had a couple of busy weeks since I last posted anything.  I flew out to visit my brother for a few days the week before last, and we did quite a bit of gaming.  We ended up playing six games of Dragon Rampant, trying all of the scenarios in the rulebook, and also found time for a couple of games of Burrows and Badgers.

 I was flying on Southwest.  They have been adding more Boeing 737-800s to their fleet.  If you wonder why I would pay attention to a detail like that, the 800s have a new configuration of the overhead luggage racks, one that tilts your bag at a 45 degree angle in flight.  My magnetic storage box configuration calculated to fit in the overhead rack is not guaranteed to hold the troops steady if the attendant slams the bin shut at an angle. For this trip I decided I would be safe and limit my troops to a package of 2 4-liter Really Useful Boxes, which will fit under the seat. I could do this because I knew that my brother had plenty of terrain, so I didn’t need to bring any.  One box had the Burrows and Badgers collection, and the other had the selection of vintage fantasy figures shown above.  Without using too many reduced or single model units, I was able to deploy three different warbands over the weekend, without too much overlap.  I figured later that I could have done an opposing pair as well, but my brother has plenty of his own figures he wanted to see on the table.  As it worked out, I was glad that I did this. While the trip out to Indianapolis was on a 737-700 with the older style overhead bins, the trip back was on an 800.  For the future I would like to play around with fitting scenery into a 4-liter box, so that I could safely fly with one troop box and one scenery box and have a pickup game for a convention, or even a multi-player skirmish.

We played the Dragon Rampant games on his 4x6 Alpha Gaming Table, using a lot of Monster Fight Club scenery.

Here my Broadsword Miniatures rangers (ca. 1980) defend a Monster Fight Club rocky hill…

Here a pair of old Adina giants (not very big ones!) attack my brother’s early Ral Partha sea elves…

And some anthropomorphic animals scuffle amid the ruins in Burrows and Badgers…

It was a good visit overall, and I hope that we will have the opportunity to do it again sometime relatively soon.

Since the last update, I have picked up the brush again after unintentionally taking a couple of months off. As I previously noted, I started down the path of building a 1/72 medieval skirmish on a budget as a challenge. (It’s also compatible with the existing 1/72 fantasy figures, so doesn’t need to stand completely on its own).  My sons and I got together for a painting day this weekend, and I made some additional progress on the budget project:

Painting with a limited color selection and some cheap Chinese brushes has turned out to be a bit of a challenge, so I will have more to say about that in some future post.  In the meantime, I am compromising a bit; for budget purposes, you could mount these figures on pennies and use sand and paint for basing, but I am going to base mine on composite Litko wood/flexisteel bases so that I can use my magnetic boxes for transport.  More to follow on that …

6mm Games and a New 1/72 Challenge

 In the previous post I was painting some 6mm characters and commanders with the intention of using them in a game of Fantastic Battles by Nic Wright. I had mentioned back in March that my sons and I had tried them for a Renaissance game with Leonardo machines, and that the rules were not what I was looking for to run a multi-player convention game.  I wanted to give them another try, and my friend Chris Palmer agreed to be my guinea pig, er, opponent.  As I noted, I am interested in squeezing more gaming out of small spaces at the moment, so I wanted to use the 6mm troops.  I took my box of 6s and a Cigar Box Battles general purpose mat to Chris’s house and we played on his dining room table.  We used armies of orcs (basically impetuous barbarians) and Romans (doughty and drilled).  Allowing for some first time rules look up, we got through a battle in about two hours. As anticipated, this worked better in a more standard fantasy context, and as a two player game looking for that 1-2 hour game.  I look forward to playing it again, and will hold a formal review until we get at least one more game in.  As for an informal review, Chris ordered a starter army of 6mm elves from Baccus Miniatures after the game, so I think that it is safe to say that he was favorably impressed.

View from the Roman right flank as the battle opened

Another view, from behind the Roman center

This past week business took me to Colorado.  Since I knew that the first leg was going to be over three hours in the air, I decided that I would take the tray table game with me and try it out as intended.  Apart from the fact that the Roman legionary infantry did not make it back into the travel box after the fight against the orcs and I was compelled to improvise a bit on the order of battle, I am happy to say that it worked splendidly. The children’s play organizer did a good job of keeping dice and damage tokens confined.  I played two games, with each side (Romans and Sassanid Persians) having one win.  (I should go put the infantry back in the travel box before I forget about it again … ) It was nice to have something to distract myself from the fact that I was packed in a thin-walled metal tube hurtling through the sky six miles above the ground for a little while.

Now, on to the challenge.  Most of the miniatures content on YouTube is Games Workshop related, so I’m always interested when something shows up that isn’t.  There was a video posted on the Tabletop Minions channel last week (Friday, 7 July 2023) in which Uncle Atom presented a route to get into the hobby from scratch with a budget of $100.  The HAWKs presented a similar challenge back in 2003, although our $100 budget then specifically excluded the tools and painting supplies that were necessary to build the projects.  According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the $100 November 2003 budget translates into $165 in June 2023.  Add that to the excluded paint, glue, and tools, and it looks like we were pretty generous in our conditions back in ‘03.

Uncle Atom’s budget includes paint, brushes, and tools.  After considering the matter for a while, I went shopping.  Here’s what I came up with:

I decided to follow Uncle Atom’s advice and start at the Dollar Tree.  For $5.50, I came home with a craft knife, some glue, and a package of cheap brushes that I won’t care about when they get messed up.

For rules, I decided that I would use Nordic Weasel’s Knyghte, Pyke and Sworde, which is available at Wargames Vault for $9.99. KPS is a skirmish game using only standard six sided dice, with forces of up to 20-30 figures per side, but still usable at smaller levels.  So, as troops get painted, the games can begin before all the figures are finished.  Uncle Atom allowed that d6s were probably available for scrounging, so we’ll count them as free although I could have bought a package of them a the Dollar Tree for $1.25.

For figures, I decided that this was a good excuse to paint a set of 1/72 scale figures I’d been wanting to do anyway.  For $25 (including shipping!) on eBay, I was able to find a box of the Italeri Medieval Tournament.  This set was originally pointed out to me over on Benno’s Figures Forum when someone posted pictures of the civilians from the set they had painted.

This set includes some tournament knights and specators, plus a viewing stand and the barrier for jousting.

In addition, it comes with one set of the Italeri Hundred Years War English.

It also comes with one set of their opponents, the Hundred Years War French.

The box contains a total of 55 foot figures and 20 horsemen, which should be plenty for a reasonable KPS game.

In order to paint these figures, I would need some primer.  I already have a can, but I priced Krylon Fusion matte black at $6.98.  I’ve used this successfully on 1/72 plastics before.

Uncle Atom used an Army Painter starter set with 10 colors and a brush for $30, but in looking around on Amazon I found a pack of 16 Vallejo “Medieval Colors” for $28.74.   It includes a black and a white for mixing and an assortment of metallic colors, but is a little short on browns, so I’ll have to see what I can do with mixing.  At least most of the horses are caparisoned, so the lack of horse variety will be less apparent.       

To finish the miniatures, a large (60ml) bottle of Vallejo satin varnish cost $7.96.

I ordered a set of three small brushes from some unknown supplier on Amazon for $6.59. I am dubious about their durability and ability to hold a point, but we shall see.  I intend to use the cheaper Dollar Tree brushes as much as possible to save wear and tear on the little brushes.

I priced felt for a ground cloth from Joann Fabrics.  They’ll sell you a yard of 72” width felt for $7.99.  I haven’t gotten over to the local Joann to see what they have in stock yet. That would give me a 3’ by 4’ battlefield with some left over for other possible uses in a potential Phase 2.

So, there we have the plan. The grand total for all of that is $98.75, leaving a surplus of $1.25, enough to buy one thing at the Dollar Tree if necessary.

I am going to count a few things as free which might be reasonably found around a house.  I will need some sand for base texturing.  If I wanted the easiest and cheapest circular bases I could find, I would mount the troops on pennies.  Since I intend to use these troops after I paint them, I will mount them on steel washers which will engage with my magnetic transport boxes, but the pennies would actually work as well for most people.  I will use some white glue.  I will also mount the troops on large craft sticks for painting as I usually do since I have a huge box of them, although strips of corregated cardboard could easily be salvaged and would work as well.

The scenery situation is a bit dire, with nothing but the contents of the box and a ground cloth.  I’ll also count as free some buildings from the  Dave Graffam Models free sample selection. Those are still some way off in the future.  

Given the scenery situation, if I actually get this completed, my Phase 2 challenge will be to enhance the game with a $50 scenery budget.  That will still be under the $165 current value of the 2003 challenge. 

By the way, I might note that my 2003 challenge entry was a 54mm medieval project, using figures that are now out of production.  While I’ve added a few things to the original set, it remains one of my top 6 most played projects since I started keeping records in 1999, so I count it as a solid success. 

 

Playing Around With 6mm

 In the current age of the world, my nice gaming table has a 3’x5’ playing surface.  While we have had some fun games using 40mm Not Quite Seven Years War figures on it, it has occurred to me (more than once) that it might make sense to use some smaller figures, at least some of the time.  Since I had the troops out for the FP3X3PW digression, my thoughts turned to 6mm fantasy.

My 6mm fantasy/ancients collection is based for De Bellis Antiquitatis and Hordes of the Things.  Across all the DBA/HotT armies, I’ve got about 200 bases of troops.  That turns out to be enough to field two armies each with two ranks of stands from table edge to table edge, which ought to be (more than!) enough to give this a try.  The only question is “What rules should I use?”…

One of the candidates is Fantastic Battles by Nic Wright. It does anticipate that you will have some individually based heroes, wizards and rogues to lead your armies, and some other candidate rules probably do as well. Since I recently got some fantasy reinforcements from Irregular, I thought it might be fun to paint up a few individuals.  

So, yesterday’s project was a group of four wizards, an ogre, and a large demon (tap to enlarge):

I have some knights and such to use as leaders and heroes, so I’ll give them a try next. I apparently still have the brush control to do this, but it would be nicer to be able to brace my arms at a higher level and not hunch over the painting desk.

May Painting (mostly Mythical Earth)

 I have been painting this month, for the first time in a few months.  I have also been trying to clean some of the unfinished (and unstarted) projects out of my basement, so I have been doing some thinking about what I am actually most interested in working on and playing.

I have mentioned before that my start in the fantasy miniatures end of the hobby with Minifigs Mythical Earth figures, which are (arguably) the earliest fantasy range cast.  In addition to a few handfuls I have left from the early 1970s, I have been accumulating them diligently since I ran across a small batch for sale at Cold Wars in 2015.  As of today, I have about 280 painted, and another 500 unpainted, including a batch of 40 hobbits which arrived a few weeks ago from England.  Anyway, there are enough to play some games already, something I should schedule in the not-too-distant future.  As I consider what I want to do in fantasy, it’s pretty clear that I want to indulge this nostalgia project, and finally have the armies (and games) that I visualized as a kid back in 1975.  I posted some pictures of this month’s first project to the Lead Adventure Forum, and someone sent me a link to Rick Priestly’s blog Notitia Metallicum, where, coincidentally, he is also working on a Minifigs Mythical Earth project.

ME33 Ithilien Spearmen and ME34 Ithilien Archers

View from the other side

My first selection this month was Faramir’s Ithilien Rangers.  There are only six official Gondorians in the range, and the Ithilien archer is the only one armed with a bow.  As my brother will tell you, I like my wargames armies to be able to reach out and touch you (as AT&T used to say) before they get stuck into hand-to-hand combat, so it seemed like a good time to paint these.  Like the Wood Elves I did a few years ago, I did them in a semi-random assortment of browns and greens.  Having their faces hidden behind masks, they were relatively simple to paint. I still have a unit of Citadel Guards, another unit of spearmen, and a unit of Gondorian knights on foot to go, plus some extra figures not neatly divided into twelves. 

I am going to try to alternate the Free Peoples with the forces of Sauron and Saruman, so I chose to build a unit of “man orcs” next.  While these are presumably intended to represent Saruman’s troops, I have no qualms about using them as larger orcs in the service of Mordor, or as Bolg’s bodyguards and similar in the Battle of the Five Armies.  There are three poses of these figures, varying mostly (entirely?) by the weapons with which they are armed.  I picked a packet of a dozen spear-armed orcs from my painting reserve, and then added one axe-armed orc to serve as an officer.  While I have dozens of the spears and swords, I have only a handful of the axes, so I’m mixing them in as officers.  While I am pretty sure that all three poses are currently available in the Minifigs current production revival, I don’t intend to order any more orcs unless I finish all of the ones that I have and find that I still need more.

The man-orcs are not the most detailed and attractive figures out there, and I have painted a few already in this project, so I knew that like most fantasy/ancients/medieval figures, what you see is mostly the shield when you look at them on the table.  They do have large generally flat shields, so I decided that I would concentrate my painting effort on the shields.  As every Tolkien fan knows, the main iconography associated with Saruman is the white hand, and the main iconography associated with Mordor is the red eye.  While I have seven units’ worth of these figures, and will eventually do a unit with white hands and a unit with red eyes, I thought it best to avoid both of those to start with, so that these troops will comfortably fit into any of the three possible armies I might deploy.  Since I had thirteen figures pulled out and cleaned up, I painted one as a quick test of the shield design, and based him individually.

I didn’t really think that I could reproduce that design faithfully 13 times, so I decided to embrace that, and make each one of them an individual variant on the “gaping maw” theme. The spears are quite long (and will present a bending hazard in play) so added a flag to the command stand.  Don’t think too hard about the wind conditions that would cause it to display like that…

I am thinking that it is time to add some mounted troops to the mix, and I have had a dozen Rohirrim primed and ready to paint for quite a while, so, in keeping with my plan to alternate, I think that will be what I try to do next.  I have also pulled out a batch of ME28 Southron mounted swordsmen, several of whom will become lancers as they need weapons replaced.

While it’s not quite the end of the month, it looks like I am probably not getting another game played, so I’ll be at three.  The first of those was some Saga, and I needed a couple of figures to replace proxies used for a Norman warband.  In addition to the Tolkien work, I did also get these two finished up:

My sons and I are planning to meet for another games day next weekend, so I am hoping there will be a few more games in June than there were in May …