I Feel Like I've Been Here Before

I was planning to work on Necrons this weekend - and I did, a little. But ...

For my birthday this year, I received a sprue each of Wargames Atlantic's WWI French and Germans, so that I could move my Weird World War I project down in scale. 

I know I know. 

In part, this was motivated by the fact that I keep breaking the bayonets on the 1/35 figures, as well as the fact that making the terrain I want for the game will just be too large to store in our apartment. More importantly, of late I have found I really enjoy painting the smaller (for me) figures, for reasons I don't quite understand.

This looks familiar.

 

The figures go together easily enough, although I had trouble pairing arms. There aren't many arms with empty hands that aren't made for cradling a rifle stock, which made picking the unarmed hands for the center and left figure more annoying than it needed to be, and I think they look a little awkward.

It still beats assembling the Necrons! 

Painting was simple - blocked in the colors and then a wash of Agrax Earth Shade. They look pretty grim dark past? I don't know - but I think it works. 

I still have 4 more French and 6 Germans (I'm not sure why the Germans have one less figure per sprue).

The walls of the trench are made with Dollar Tree knock-off Jenga bricks. Three bricks are glued long edge to long edge, then covered in strips of cereal box. Then two sets of three are glued end-to-end to make a single 3.75" wall piece. A cut down bamboo skewer acts as a post and hides the the seam down the middle. I think the next batch, I'll make the full wall piece, then cover in the strips - less cutting overall that way.

The walls were also given a touch of extra height from a Dollar Tree craft stick.

The craft sticks have a slight warp but they work well enough.

 The skewer ends just before the craft stick, so i can slide the floor under the posts, making it look integrated-ish (if you look at the picture below you can see what I mean)

This approach is far more portable and configurable - like dungeon walls for an RPG (which is kind of how I imagine this WWWI project) - than my 1/35 attempt.

Top-down illustrating what it will look like with walls on each side

My plan is to coat the non-trench side with wall filler to make raw stone tunnels.

I was aware of the tunnels used by troops on the Southern Front (through rock and glacier - like when the Austrian stormtroops burst from tunnels in the ice to surprise Italian troops and also to blow the tops off mountains) and I was aware about mining on the Western Front, thanks to two of my favorite WWI movies, Beneath Hill 60 and The War Below.

I had been thinking my Weird World War I conceit would be squads moving through strangely abandoned trenches and, possibly into those same tunnels (where else would Eldritch horrors and demons enter from?).

Hence the desire to look stone-like on one side.

While doing some research - loosely speaking - I came across an offhand mention of the underground fighting during WWI. 

Fighting IN the tunnels? That would further justify my choice (I don't need it - it's pretty much WWI fantasy but it means they can serve double-duty).

To fill in the gaping holes in my knowledge, I picked up Beneath the Killing Fields: Exploring the Subterranean Landscapes of the Western Front.

I'm not finished reading it, but it is an absolutely fascinating and eye-opening read about the extent to which the Great War took place underground, be it shelter, moving men to the front, or mining operations. 

The author goes through great lengths to discuss the sensory reconfiguration required for those working in the tunnels, and, in a bit of poetic flourish, he more than once emphasizes the inversion of life and death, where the dead lay in the open air of the battlefield, and the living are underground. 

He also describes it as Hell moving from the depths of the earth to above ground, while men hide beneath the surface. If that isn't an entire Weird World War I setting in a single sentence, I don't know what is.

Now, I picked this book up for a song. It's a hardcover book and was only $3.84 usd,(regular price is around $30 usd) which may be coloring my enthusiasm a little, but I highly recommend it, especially if you can find a used copy.

Miscellaneous Mid-Week Meanderings

Life has taken a turn for the busy - between the day job, side hustle, and the band, and oh yeah, dad-life, just not a lot of time to hobby. Writing for the blog has taken the back seat to everything else.

I've played a couple of One Hour Wargames "Machine Age" (with my mods) games.  Last night I played the "Shambolic Command" scenario and discovered my variable movement rules need some adjustment for cavalry falling back after a charge. 

I am also inclined to give assault troops and any unit in cover, some kind of bonus when checking morale. It just feels like sometimes the morale failures really up (literally - lots of little dice on the table!) 

One of these days I'm going to label the bases and use an old school roster sheet to track damage.

On the painting front, I've made some progress on the Necrons. I'm painting them in the Novokh dynasty color-scheme (per my son's request). I have no preference and the fact that it uses the same reds that I used for the Blood Ravens is a plus.

The scarabs, foreground, are my favorite.

I was skeptical of the value of the "Necron Compound" dry-brush paint, but I like the end result: a very metal looking skeletal frame.

These are still a WiP bunch - this is just one or two coats of Army Painter Dragon Red. It's somewhat translucent and, over the Lead Belcher/Nuln Oil wash, it has created some highlighting effects already. 

I'll be doing a proper highlight after the next coat and some Caribou Crimson wash - I hope to have this batch done by the end of the week. However, I expect the weapons will be a bit of a challenge to get the look I am aiming for, so we'll see!

Blood Raven Intercessors Done!

Coming from the polar opposite end of the frustration axis of the Necrons, at least in terms of construction, the Blood Raven Assault Intercessors are finished!

Below one of the grunts shows off the Chapter Symbol:

The Blood Raven heraldry is not available from Games Workshop, but there are plenty of enterprising people no Etsy who are more than happy to fulfill your need for decals.

I really like the poses on these figures and am too tempted to pick up some sprues or even a complete box to extend the force. BUT the goal was a single squad - with additional support from some Ultramarine Infernus my son received afew months ago for his birthday (and which, apparently, I'm now going to end up painting as his interest isn't even quite enough to be called minimal) - and so I'll stick with that. 

For now!

Necron Nightmare

 How it started:

Necron pieces - removed from sprue by previous owner. Do not do this!

How it's going:

I do like the assembled figures though.

If I ever meet the individual who thought cutting the bits off the sprue all at once was a good idea, I'm going to give them a right proper thrashing. It's no wonder they gave up and sold the game (Fire Team) to Noble Knight.

It should have been maybe a 20 minute job to assemble them. Instead, it took hours of my Saturday, with breaks to maintain sanity.

These figures are push-fit and each one is designed to go together in a particular way. However, once free of the sprue, there's no way to tell which piece is which part number. Even better there were EXTRA bits to throw me off!

Trial and error - aided by a magnifier and looking for key details between the piece in hand and the assembly instructions ("Oh this arm has a little thingy that sticks out" or "Oh this blade has a thick bar compared to the others" or "The head in the picture has a line above the right eye and this tiny little bit of plastic does not") saved the day.

Unfortunately, in the process of trying different arms on different torsos, I ended up breaking a few of the arms (they are rather thin near the shoulder joint and near the wrist) - so I'm down three Necrons as a result. Also the heads are tiny and apparently designed to bounce a great distance upon contact with a remotely hard surface. I spent quite a bit of time on hands and knees combing the floor for the little buggers - I did manage to retrieve them all, although there were far more heads than torsos.

I will try to repair the broken arms with Super Glue,but the contact points are quite small - and even then, I don't know which body they go with, so there's only a 1 in 3 chance I get it right on the first try. And if I get it wrong, with repeated handling there's a good chance I'll break the arm again.

Replacements have already been purchased on eBay!