The Beard Bunker

Today’s post will be a break from the grim dark future to take a look at the grim dark past. Last November I starting on building up a collection of 6mm Napoleonic (mini) miniatures. I had done some 28mm but wanted to capture the truly epic scope of that period in warfare and not need a cricket pitch size space to game on. The only way to do that is to go with smaller models. I ordered a starter bundle from Baccus6mm and got stuck in.  I’ve been doing the 6mm stuff in between Admech units just to break things up and keep it all fresh. Since I can turn out a battalion in about 45 minutes (personal best was 34 minutes for a cavalry unit) it was ideal for those shorter hobby sessions. Only have a couple of hours after work, hammer out a couple of units and get the satisfaction of completion.    I have finally got the point where I have managed to finish two roughly equal forces, one British and one French. I also have added a few buildings and a gaming mat into the mix. My i...

As previously promised I was going to get stuck into some 6mm fun with a Napoloenic starter set from Baccus6mm. It was a good set with rules, bases, scenery, and two opposing forces. Everything you need to get going. Seeing the figures for the first time in real life made it clear that the ‘normal’ 28mm styles of painting wasn’t going to work here. Something different would be required. So I went off a did my research. Many hours of videos, blogs, and pasting guides later, as well as actually getting stuck in and putting paint on the models, I’ve decided there are three important things to painting super tiny mens.  1 - Know your subject matter: Knowing what you are painting in detail before you start really helps a) figuring out what you are looking at and b) what is the most important details to pick out. I’ve spent many an hour reading up and generally researching the uniforms of the period. it’s part of the fun for me, turning hobby into history and history into hobby.  Fr...

 Not a massive amount to say this week, so I've taken a lot of photos instead.  I've managed to find a bit of time off work and threw myself into finishing off my Napoleonics to-do pile. In a week I chunked through two half finished light infantry units, and a full battalion of line.  This brings me up to having the bare minimum for playing some Black Powder! Yes, Black Powder, and Napoleonics in general is massive in scale and the forces used where huge. Which looks amazing on the tabletop but is a daunting task to paint.  To add a little perspective what I have here is an Infantry brigade of four battalions + command. It also has an attached artillery battery and some Hussars (for giggles). This amounts to about 250pts. To quote the Black Powder rulebook "in a typical encounter battle, we’ll have three players on each side with each player controlling a brigade. A brigade might typically be four infantry battalions, a gun, and two cavalry regiments together with a...

I did it, I totally finished these buildings before getting distracted by Dark Angels (Honest). I'm still waiting for the vehicles to arrive, once they do I'll do a proper 15mm photo shoot with the infantry and tanks etc, but for now here is the scenery.  Step One: Undercoat. This was done with some cheap brown Plasticoat. I picked brown as it provides a good base colour for most of the following steps and means I can skip a step. Step Two: Basecoat/Dry Brush Walls. Before slapping paint on to the exterior walls I did a little bit of research and found a wall paint colour chart, in French, from 1930. Basically struck research gold. I can't share it as I don't know who the image belongs to but a little dig around on should bring it up. The walls got a heavy drybrush. Neatness not required.  Step Three: Dry Brush Walls. Again, this time with a mix of the base colour and white. This was applied with downward strokes only over the top half/third of the building. This should...

 I've been getting an itch. A tiny tiny itch. We've been looking at doing some historical WW2 gaming in 15mm with more emphasis on vehicles and vehicle manovers. Due to the current logisical whoopies that is the British postal system the vehicle models have been delayed. What did arrive was a whole load of MDF buildings in 1/100 or 15mm scale.  These came from TTCombat and I managed to get 15 of them for around the same price as a slightly excitable takeaway. I decided that I was going to go for the ruined buildings because I think it'll look more interesting and will be fun to play over.  The buildings are nice, but straight out of the box they lack a certain something something. So I set about making them a little less clean and tidy. In today's post I'm going to go through the modelling steps and once I've painted them I'll go through the painting steps. What I am going to show you can be applied to any setting and any building. Just simply adjust the st...