[Katie L]

The majority of the figures can be painted in mixed civilian-style clothes. Browns/dark reds/shades of green.

The stripey jackets common in the HYW era are padded linen — I do them as a yellowey-white.

The livery tunics — closest thing to a uniform — can be done in two ways: one is half-and-half colours, the other is a solid colour — these are the “livery colour”. These would be bright colours, chosen to show allegiance to their boss. They would also often wear a badge on the chest or sometimes other markings. Crosses were popular in crusading and red crosses were used for English troops in HYW, France sometimes had white crosses on a blue background but this wasn’t mandated.

The tunic colours can be basically anything. Generally, you might find a lord arrived, he would have some form of “proper” heraldry (fancy design on a shield) and be wearing mail or later plate. He’d bring some other soldiers who would be wearing less armour down to next-to-nothing. They could be archers/billmen, horsemen, possibly even another man-at-arms. All those men would generally be wearing some sort of representation of the same livery colours.

It used to be thought the livery matched the heraldry. Now, not so much.

Livery colours are things like “blue”, “red”, “tawny”, “white”, “black”, “green”, “purple” — they’re not constrained the way heraldric colours are. There’s a couple of online lists you could find which will illustrate the combinations used but they’re not exhaustive so you can make some up. Also, they’re not especially unique — red/blue is used by a lot of people.

So — grab a couple of archers, a couple of billmen, paint them in one or two random choices of those colours. Pick another group, do the same.

The “units” consist of like-equipped figures, but different liveries. Archers in one, billmen in another (or, in some rules, intermixed with the archers). Mounted light skirmishers and mounted heavy in units.

Very major lords *might* arrive with many men, and be able to form (say) a unit of archers on their own so the figures will be more uniform. This should be rare.

Heraldry is a whole pile of stuff. If you know the basic rules, you can just invent some. Split the shield, put a wolf on it. Split the shield, put a dragon on it. Solid colour, put a fish on it. That sort of thing. It got much more elaborate through the 1400s.

Another note is that medieval is a long period of time and all of this evolved/changed/got lost in time. But — and here’s the wargamer part — these can be bright, colourful forces with a lot of character and a lot of re-use potential. We don’t get to paint bright yellows and brilliant reds and striking greens very often, and this is the chance.

 

[Katie L]

Redoubt have both monks and nuns; they’re fairly generic and would pass for many historic eras. Foundry do several packs; somewhat cartoony and overfed. Gripping beast do some dark age ones. Conquest do monks and nuns for medieval/robin hood.

I’ve got all these (plus some others I can’t remember) and painted up in the same mix of clothes work well as a group.

1st corp have a nice-looking pack of 4 but I don’t have them yet.

 

[Katie L]

“Carrier Command”

 

Strange coincidence time — “Carrier Command” was designed by the same guy who wrote the setting for “Kryomek”.

 

[Katie L]

I just use the “camouflage” colours in 28mm — even on sci-fi/fantasy figures. For example my Kryomek NTFA forces are wearing Vallejo WW2 US army green, the “Cyclo” prison troops a mix of Luftwaffe field-blue, faded denim and so on. Other power armoured infantry is French WW1 ‘horizon blue’ and I use Coat d’arms WW1 British khaki for Orc skintone. I’ve just painted some lizardmen and I used the same paint colours for their scaley-bits as I did for 15mm Soviet armour. It adds a touch of reality to them because those ‘realistic’ colours are nice tertiaries. Obviously they get more primary/secondary clothing & flag colours.

On the subject of washes, the Army Painter ones are my go-to solution these days. It’s worth getting the basic three: Dark — which is black, Strong, which is a mid-brown and Soft which is a lighter brown (I used it on fleshtones). They also do some nice washes intended for vehicles which come in “dark yellow”, “grey”, “dark green” and so on. They’re useful for modulating the base colours.

 

[Katie L]

“Fantasy Warriors”. 25mm bases for almost everyone (except halflings), rules for all sorts of species, dragons, magic, enchanted weapons, campaign system.

PDF downloads at https://www.fysh.org/~katie/wargames/downloads/fantasy_warriors/

 

[Katie L]

For old, dry wood I start with an olive drab colour, followed by a light sand, followed by a faint grey. The greenish tones distinguish it from my earth colours which are reddish browns.

For newer wood I use CDA’s wood triple, and an extra highlight of the C with some white added. This is a red-brown, but it looks quite good and is solid enough to stand out against earth tones. Also use this for rifle furniture. Where the wood is cut, I use CDA Linen with a brown wash and then a Linen highlight.

 

[Katie L]

Rhoderic wrote:

Also the Italeri Steel Warrior Ranger look like the EM4 Mechs.

 

Originally the figures were sold in a box set as “Steel Warriors”. I think there were 6 each of the sprues for 30 figures. Bought some from the Virgin Megastore in Coventry in the 1990s…

 

[Katie L]

Well that was a fun day out; lots of neat stuff to look at & people to talk to. Oh good grief did I overspend though! Mantic talked me into buying stuff, Foundry was having a sale… And I collected some nice ACW stuff.

Congratulations to Kallistra & the Forest Outlaws on a brill 2019 show!

 

[Katie L]

I’ve never found the cleaning to be that much hassle.

Talk to Barwell Bodyworks. They’re at some of the UK shows and also run courses on starting airbrushing.

I’ve found I get really good results. I started out just using it on terrain where you can get effects that would be tiresome to brush, but these days I’m also using it for things like the shading on Eldar body-armour. (With a tiny needle, really high pressure and microscopic amounts of paint!)

[Katie L]

I thought they made the AA ranges though? I mean, obviously they can still be “out of stock” in that they don’t have any made but surely that just really means “hey, order it and we’ll cast it”…

 

[Katie L]

Yeah, but it’s three hours of the lovely Dr W…

[Katie L]

I am completely safe from accusations of cheating. Because if I was… I’d win more often…

 

[Katie L]

“How do people get into war gaming?”

Ah, now you see, for me that was Brian the kid from next door (who was maybe five years older than me) who had a) an endless supply of Airfix OO/HO figures — and somehow apparently b) permission to remodel large sections of their garden for terrain[1]. Imagine a sand table thirty feet on an edge… with hosepipes to flood parts. Turns out enough of those pontoons from the bridge kit can carry quite large attacking forces across shallow lakes.

{In the garage I still have some of the figures carefully sorted into sections and stored in clear plastic microfilm boxes.}

I suspect there’s just as random an introduction for everyone.

 

“Is it because military stuff is all dudes? (As in your armies are all dudes).”

A lot of both male and female gamers don’t like the people-ness of miniatures. ‘Killing’ wooden blocks is ok, but not things with faces.

 

[1] I think his parents regarded it as him “staying out of trouble” or something along those lines.

 

[Katie L]

“I suspect it’s not that strange. ”

It’s indeed not that strange. The situation even has a name amongst economics people — it’s called the “Lipstick Effect”. In a poor economy people buy small luxuries instead of large ones. So the sales of expensive shoes falls but those of expensive lipsticks rise.

“So figure out why they aren’t buying toy soldiers and there’s a lot of untapped money waiting for you.”

One thing that a lot of people (a lot of women but also some men) have mentioned to me is that they don’t like playing games involving the “death” of figures which are human enough that they associate with them. They don’t mind games in which they lose faceless counters. They don’t mind meaningful character deaths in RPGs. But when people-shaped things are being mown down with wild abandon makes them uncomfortable.

 

[Katie L]

I get paid more now and hence can afford more toys!!!

 

[Katie L]

“Next I’m going to be asking for suggestions how to paint the rusty armor and weapons.”

Black undercoat

VGC “Tinny Tin”

A layer of W&N “Burnt Sienna” ink.

Several very thin washes of mixtures of VMC “Bright Orange” and VMC “Shadows Flesh” — varying both the relative quantities and the dilution. Use wet brushes to pull the colour around and prevent out-of-scale pooling & dried ones to suck water out of crevices to leave the colour behind.

Any silver paint you have, gently dry-brushed over raised areas, chip the edges of weapons and paint in any modelled-in scratches/dents.

Optionally — Using a very fine brush and W&N “Silver” drawing ink, add more scratches and scuffs to weapon edges and the corners of plates.

 

(Yes, it takes ages, but the effects are really quite good.)

 

 

[Katie L]

Great List — bookmarked it for later…

From the one I started doing, some possible additions:

Copplestone makes Russians as well (In the RCW Range; the Reds should be same uniforms I believe).

Renegade do Early War French, German, Brits, Austrians as well as Late British & Late Germans.

Tiger Miniatures make Colonial Germans & natives and also Serbians and Turks and Montenegroans. (From the 1912-13 wars, but I think the uniforms/equipment are the same).

 

[Katie L]

I like painting…

 

[Katie L]

Well, it wasn’t supposed to take 5 hours. The A1 was blocked, Melton Mowbray had roadworks, several huge tractors on narrow roads…

 

[Katie L]

Well, on the other hand it was WAY easier for me to get there.

It once took 5 hours to get to the show when it was at Derby Uni…

Bit packed. Lots of nice people to talk to tho.

 

[Katie L]

The shiniest metal finish I’ve managed to get with brush painting is using W&N Silver Ink.

Both of them need shaking for a good few minutes before use and you can SEE the colour particles separating out of the carrier the minute you stop waving it about. It has lousy coverage — it takes several coats and it needs to be over an already metallic base. But when you want a weapon to look like it has an edge…

They do a gold as well which is just AWESOME for buttons and the like.

 

 

[Katie L]

“It’s easier for them to see the essentials in a given set of rules, and crunch the numbers a bit better.”

 

My ex used to do that. I’d have a blonde moment and go “I’m charging those guys with these horse.” “Sure, I’m going to shoot at them for… mm… 3 plus-or-minus-2 casualties…” rolls dice, rolls dice, rolls dice, kills 4 of them…

 

[Katie L]

I work in a company where almost everyone is obsessed with Star Trek trivia[1] or are comic book nuts.

Getting packs of lead delivered makes me look flat normal.

 

(Seriously? Windows? What the…)

 

[1] I upset people by proposing that a new project be called Vorlon…

 

[Katie L]

You can get good results without having to go overboard by picking a contrasting tertiary colour and just running the brush sideways irregularly across corners, edges and prominences. So for (say) green tanks, you pick a neutral grey. Yellow models look good with a chocolate brown.

The main trick is not to overdo it — every so often, stop, put the model down and leave it a day before thinking about doing any more.

There’s an alternate approach which is to start with the rust; do a coat of dark brown, tin, orange inks, orange washes, very light silver drybrush and then do the main colour; when you get to the rust section, you “dab” the paint over the border to get a mottled transition.

It depends if your model is to be mostly-painted or mostly-rusted…

 

Buy a bunch of cheap plastic toy tanks. I found some packs on Amazon that were six quid and each included 4 tanks (and the hundreds of figures and other bits and bobs went to my nephew along with a couple of the commanders painted up in historical uniforms and put in little presentation boxes[1].)

These are great for practicing airbrushing, trying out cammo patterns and wash/rust/chipping effects and so on.

 

 

[1] Cos I am an awesome aunt. He’s 4. He doesn’t appreciate this.

 

[Katie L]

Napoleonic skirmish in 28mm. Turns out I hate painting white straps.

Flintloque gets a pass because THEIR white straps aren’t 0.000003mm wide…

 

[Katie L]

The cost of the oil in a plastic model kit is pretty minimal.

Logistics chain costs (which does use a lot of fuel), premises rentals and business rates seem to be what’s pushing up the prices of everything at the moment — or forcing the closure of business who can’t raise prices.

 

[Katie L]

If you’re getting into the little model missile business, I could do with a couple of dozen of something similar myself… (GZG’s starships aren’t going to shoot themselves down!)

I was planning on using 1/2inch lengths of plastic rod in lieu of alternatives but that’s boring.

 

[Katie L]

I did try not priming, but the paints I use really didn’t seem to like it… they adhered, but coverage was a bit sketchy. It may prove better if you’re a white-undercoat person rather than a black-undercoat person.

 

(Stone the grey-undercoaters!! They are heretics!!…)

 

[Katie L]

Not technically figures, but — Snapdragon buildings…

I’ve got half a wild west town I desperately need the other half of…

 

[Katie L]

If using spray primers, I go for Halfords satin black. It doesn’t thicken the way the filling primers do, and it seems to dry to a tougher finish than the matt black — it’s less “powdery” and seems to adhere better on those corners.

[Katie L]

Acetone/butane/propane solventised primers are fine as long as you don’t overload the surface; Halfords matt and satin blacks work well — These are what I always used to use.

Stylenrez airbrush primer is fine; I’ve done a bunch of figures with this.

Do NOT use enamel paints — Humbrol or Testors — on PVC; either as base or as detail or as a final varnish. The PVC’s plasticisers interact with the alkyd resin binder and prevent it going off leaving the figure ever-sticky.

 

[Katie L]

Oh!!!  I thought they were the same as the resin ones! (Very nice and paint up well but not bendy :-).

V.Sorry. I’ll sort out ordering some then….

Forest floor ones would also be neat!

[Katie L]

You know how you do those flexible fields? Flexible “rough ground” (stones/scree/rocks) and “wooded area”. (The latter can then have model trees put on top). They can then be draped over TSS hills to add features.

 

 

[Katie L]

For people in the UK who don’t want to faff with international shipping, I bought one of these;

http://amtechdesign.co.uk/vortex-mixer-vm-1/

They sell them through Ebay for about 80 quid. I like it and the company is small enough to care about what they’re doing; I actually had a chat with the MD about whether it would work for paint and he seems nice.

It does mix VJ paint (and others, of course) really well. I added an elastic band to the top thingy so I can leave the bottle shaking for longer without getting bored. It goes BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR and the paint is mixed!!

The single drawback of it is the green LED, which is… Mmm. Bright isn’t quite the word. Probably visible from orbit. It’s a device you won’t forget you left on. Nor will people in neighbouring countries.

 

[Katie L]

Deal it damage tokens for the hits… face down. Some of them are “close call”, some are “weapon kill”, some are “crew kill” that reduce performance. They only get looked at next time the gun wants to activate (which might be to scarper, shoot at you or whatever).

If nothing happens, it’s up to whoever’s shooting at it to keep trying if they want to make sure it’s dead not just heads-down.

Neither player knows whether it’s dead until either the SPG gets close enough or the controlling player tries to use it… even then, they could have a free look at the damage tokens. They know if it’s dead, but they don’t have to tell you… it could still be waiting…

 

[Katie L]

I had a wander through several sets of rules that I wrote and discovered there is one rule which uses a gendered pronoun, in a previous draft of a WW2 game and is referring to the combatant figure, not a player. And also, isn’t in the latest version.

The reason for this is probably that, in my head, the players of these rules are me, Chris, Rory, etc. And that’s definitely not a group to whom either single gendered pronoun applies.

So there’s the solution then. Women make better rules writers…

Being merely a bit dim about why this matters is one thing, but when it’s pointed out responding in the way Lambshead has is just… well. Dickish.

 

I’m not buying anything from Warlord until he either doesn’t work there or he apologises for being stunningly unclassy.

 

[Katie L]

There aren’t any range limits — it just gets harder and harder to hit something as it’s further away because of the adding-up-the-dice-results mechanic.

[Katie L]

We played our first go at this last night and we found infantry to be Rather Handy. Should “charge it with infantry” really be the weapon of choice for finally dealing with something you’ve been shelling for three turns without much effect or are we doing it wrong?

(The other less was that trying to track stats with tokens really doesn’t work. We’re going to move to laminated sheets & drymarker pens.)

[Katie L]

“Anyone who walks up to the door could claim to be a non-gamer and walk in for free.”

There’s a certain amount of having to trust people not to be crap. In general gamers are reasonably decent people. At most shows it’s quite easy to (say) wander on in via some of the open, unguarded doors. Particularly during setup. Like I did on Sunday at Partizan… and having been to the loo and collected a coffee, went outside to join the queue and pay to get in again… I wasn’t alone in that. People know that paying the door is part of what keeps the thing going and the few quid is kind of small compared to the costs of miniatures.

[Katie L]

Hasslefree Bohkin are the only others besides AA that I recall.

http://another-gaming-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/bohkin-squad-by-hasslefree.html

They’re not in the HF shop — don’t know what happened to them. Email Kev & ask?

[Author]

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