Mods and Painting

My first die-cast car mod 

Months before May, I was at my parents' place, looking through the old die-cast cars that served my siblings and I growing up. Picking up one of the first Hot Wheels cars that my younger brother received and noted all the scratches and the bent axles. I had been watching those videos on YouTube of people modifying their Hot Wheels cars. So naturally, I slipped the car in my pocket and took it home to do at least a repaint and present it to my brother, who's birthday is in May.

I took apart the car and stripped/scraped the paint off, sanding it with a very fine grit sand paper. Removed the axles. Took the axles and wheels from a Francesco car (from Cars 2) to do a wheel swap. The axles are too wide for a Hot Wheels, so I snipped them and stuck them into place with super glue and green stuff. Then I did it all over again, but using lengths of that plastic coating you sometimes find on paper clips to hold the clipped axels together and make them less prone to be de-glued and pushed through the green stuff lump. Painted the car with treated craft acrylics through my airbrush. had to repaint 4 times to get it looking half decent. Used a chrome pen on the parts I thought would be chromed in real life. Put it all together again and...

Not the greatest pic, but the only one I took before giving it to my brother.

The ongoing saga of me painting Blacklist Fantasy 1 minis

I painted the skeletons. I modified them a bunch as well, giving one a spear and a bow to another, clipping off some shoulder pad spikes, and shaving off a couple hoods. Made a pretty nice variety. Took a long time to get around to painting them.

The guys who kept their swords.

The guys who got other weapons.

And a Mage Knight mini

This guy was painted all black with a couple of grey and gold highlights, but it hid all the detail on the sculpt. He was also missing his left foot and clicky base when I got him. Stripped the paint. Molded a green stuff foot. Repaint and rebase (on the bottom half of a clicky base no less)...

One side...

...and the other.

Battle of Sadras... sort of

 We had a family over for dinner a week and a bit ago and the husband/father was interested in taking a look at my collection of miniatures. He'd never been to our place before, but we've talked about our projects and have exchanged pictures of things we've worked on. During this show-off session, I decided that the Pirates of the Spanish Main ships had been left too long in the drawer and some of them needed to come out and play. Then, looking through the rules for Wooden Ships and Iron Men, I came across the scenarios and the campaign highlighting the British (Hughs) and French (Suffren) actions in the Indian ocean during the 1770's.

First, I gathered enough ships to outfit both sides (making little flags out of bread tags to replace the pirate flags most of them have). Then I got a map of the battle to figure out starting positions.

Found on website threedecks.org, they cite The Royal Navy: A history from the earliest times to the present Vol 3

After setting up the fleets in position A, I realized the scale of miniatures and size of my table were not going to let the described maneuvers take place, so at this point, the resemblances to the scenario cease and my game, using Full Sail, commences.

Turn 1:

On both sides there was jockeying and speed changes as ships tried to set themselves up to make lines. Three of the mid-sized French ships opened up long-range fire on an English heavy, dealing some damage. The English ship responds, dealing enough damage to one of the Frenchies to trigger a threshold check, resulting in the loss of two starboard cannon.

I went to bed and during the night, a hurricane struck, upsetting and scattering all of the French ships and capsizing two English ships. Dang cat! Now to figure out how I can cat-proof my table.

Update: March 2024

As one might guess, the past few months have had me pretty busy and blogging is pretty low on my priority list. I think I'm realizing that I can't remember having played a miniatures wargame since October. While nothing happened game-wise, there was some other hobby progress made.

New Hobby Space

Until now, I've been building/painting at the kitchen table or on the couch with a 14"x14" wooden tray. This tray was getting quite filled up as I would have two or three little things going on it at a given time. After finishing the spaceships featured in the last post, I still had some half-painted fantasy minis, a die-cast car I had started a surgery on, and the beginnings of an idea for making Aeronef ships out of bread tags. Of course, the three projects going at the same time meant the board was also cluttered with cutting tools, paints, brushes, glue, and random bits of wood, metal, and plastic.

When getting the board down (ever so carefully so as not to spill anything) to work on something, I might stare at the three projects and fiddle with each for a couple of minutes, then sit and stare at it all. On top of that, because I had no real dedicated space for my stuff (except the paint, I had a place for the paint), it started getting dispersed throughout the house and I was losing track of things so that it was more difficult to actually do whatever it was in my mind to do. In other word, the negative inertia acting on me was mounting. I was also feeling a growing itch to try using my airbrush again, which had even more negative inertia attached to it than my board.

So it all went on hold as I devoted time to looking at peoples' hobby desks. About a week of that and I decided on a general plan, found useful stuff in my modest salvaged wood pile, and cut the main pieces. Then, on a night in late November, the wife and kids gone somewhere, I built a little hobby desk.

And here it is, all cluttered like every other one I saw:

Definitely needs something on the wall to help with organization, I think. The airbrush is now so much more accessible, I've used it more in the past couple months than all the years previous that I've owned it.

Painting of Blacklist: Fantasy Series 1

I got a bunch of these minis primed in the fall so that they'd be ready for painting at any time, but it took a long time to feel like I had the time to paint again. Only a few models got done, though some were done with the help of one of my daughters.

A dwarf warrior. Will probably put a wash on him still.

My daughter helped me paint these kobalds.

Giant spiders, too!

Aeronef Shipyard

We keep plastic bread tags for some reason or another and I've always had the thought I should do something with them, so I made an airship and plan to make more. I also made some using the handles of plastic forks.

Aeronef airships.

So that's been what I've been working on when given the chance, plus one other thing that will be posted about when it's done.