Endgame at Redoubt

Unusually for me, I failed to take a single photograph at the Redoubt show over the weekend, but I can tell you that it was hot, hot, hot! The battlements of the doughnut-shaped fort kept out most of the sea breeze, though we did have a few dramatic moments when occasional gusts came over the walls and sent tents and product displays scattering in all directions, like the rout after Waterloo.

I ended up doing an all-nighter on Friday night in a last-ditch attempt to get everything finished in time, but I was defeated by the discovery that the hands of most of the Zulus needed drilling out to accept their assegais. Argh! What should have been a job of a few minutes was clearly going to take a great deal longer, so I concentrated on getting a third of the force finished. I was still gluing sand to the bases as I ate my breakfast at 8 a.m. Note to self: check the fit of weapons before you do anything else to a figure!

Other little discoveries along the way included the fact that the ’stitching’ on the Newline Zulu shields was indented, not raised, which meant that I needed to reverse my technique, painting the stitching first, then dry-brushing the surrounding area of the shields. Then, of course, one runs out of superglue to attach them to the figures…

But what wargames show game doesn’t have these last-minute little dramas, being played out wherever enthusiasm and determination come face to face with an impossible deadline and the laws of entropy? As it turned out, the three groups for whom I ran the game seemed to enjoy themselves immensely, and it went down to the wire in every case, resulting in a British win, a draw and a close loss. I kept the games fast and furious, accompanied by the soundtrack from Zulu; I was most gratified that the rousing rendition of “Men of Harlech” seemed to come along at just the right moments, as the doughty 24th Foot disappeared beneath a cloud of Zulu warriors, only to re-emerge victorious.

Would I do it all again? Maybe, with a great deal more time to spare! At the very least, I’ll give the game another outing at the Woolwich show in a couple of weeks. If you’re there, come along and have a go!

Anyway, here are some pics of the finished figures.

The 24th Foot in line	Close-up showing Captain Grant and Lieutenant Quarrie	24th Foot in column of threes
The Zulus appear on the British flank	Another view of the Zulus from the business end	Zulus on the move

The digression continues

With this weekend’s unmovable deadline staring me in the face, I decided to take a break from all that brown and dig out the scarlet for the noble 24th Foot. Only 30 figures plus two officers and two NCOs, I thought to myself, I’ll bash those out in no time.

Doh!

The fact is that regular, uniformed troops are never the sort to submit easily to fast painting techniques, nor will my controlling soul allow me to be too slapdash about it. The thing is, even though I’m painting these for use at just one or two shows, they will be in my collection for the rest of my life, and I don’t want to feel embarrassed to put them on the table when a visitor arrives.

And it’s now that I’ve come to realise that 20mm really isn’t that much bigger than 15mm, and more to the point, my eyes ain’t what they used to be! Whilst the average British redcoat in Zululand wasn’t as burdened with lace and frippery of his forbears from the Napoleonic era, there’s just enough going on here to make for a slow job. Those Austrian knots on the cuffs; the little bit of white piping around the base of the collar… And of course, the usual demands of trying to achieve some semblance of shadow and highlight on these small figures.

The 24th Foot: painting in progress

Anyway, the photo here shows where I am after a couple of eye-mangling days. I’m finding that I’m just having to take a break every couple of hours so that my eyes can re-focus, and there are other little diversions, such as trying to run my business and do all the normal things like respond to phone calls and emails, eat, drink and other necessary functions. Other entertaining interludes have included questions like, “Just precisely what shade of green were the facings of the 24th Foot?” and discovering that some officers wore red jackets, others wore dark blue ‘undress’ ones with lots of frilly bits on them. The figures I have are wearing the red tunics, so should the cuffs have the green facings, or just have gold lace? You’d think it would be easy – but it isn’t! The one Angus McBride Osprey book I have says surprisingly little about the British, though quite a lot about the Zulus, and I have had to conclude that his impression of the 24th’s green facings is way out. I have found lots of re-enactment reference, even a proper military costumiers, all of whom make the green much darker. And then there is, of course, the movie Zulu, which I have on DVD and is about to get an outing…

As for the cuffs, I was dreading doing all that white piping when an idea struck me: just do the whole cuff with twiddly bits in white first, then overpaint the green bit inside. Job done! (Well, okay, it wasn’t quite that quick…) It’s possible to get a much thinner white piping this way. I know this close up it doesn’t look that fine but, trust me, the real width is a fraction of a millimetre. The question is, can I be fagged to put a microscopic dot of red inside each of those white bits at the top of the cuff…?

The scarlet tunics and blue trousers are both multiple-colour jobs. Foundry scarlet, scarlet light and finally a Citadel Baal Red wash for the tunics; the trousers started GW Storm Blue, highlighted with a 50/50 mix of Storm Blue and Ultramarines Blue, to which I added some Shadow Grey for a top highlight. They were then washed with Citadel Badab Black. The stripe is just Foundry Scarlet, no messin’ abaht! I’m hoping that, in daylight, and once my vision has recovered, all this effort might prove worth it.

Enough for now, back on the treadmill. Would the first person to see me on Saturday at the show please bring me a very strong little cup of espresso?

Citadel washes

You may have heard a lot about the new Citadel washes, and indeed I’m using them on the Newline Zulu Wars figures I’m working on. One of the most common uses of a wash is as a quick method of shading flesh, so I dug out some old Citadel fantasy adventurer figures that I’d slapped some basic flesh onto, and used them to quickly compare some of the different options.

All the washes were just taken straight from the pot and sploshed on, with no regard for detail or being careful. The artists’ acrylic was diluted about 10:1, perhaps a little more, to produce a translucent wash equivalent to that coming out of the pots. So, select this link to see the results for yourself.

A little digression…

100 newline Zulu warriors on the painting tray

Okay Henry, just what are you up to now? 32mm cowboys, 6mm ancients, 30mm 18th century, and now 20mm Zulus? What happened to focus, man?!

Actually, these little fellers are a guilt-free addition to my, shall we say, portfolio. As you may know, I am a supporter of the Redoubt show, to be held in Eastbourne on 26th and 27th July. I shall be running a trade stand for Battlegames together with my dear partner Annie, and in a conversation with Mike Spence, who is organising the show this year, I found myself offering to run some kind of participation game for the benefit of visitors to the show, particularly newcomers and youngsters.

Having given myself a silent slap for having thus taken on extra work, the topic then turned to the theme for the show, which this year will be the Zulu Wars. As it happens, a couple of years ago, at this very show, I was conversing with a rather forlorn Sean Pereira of Newline Designs, who was having a somewhat tough day. In an effort to cheer him up and contribute to his petrol home, I picked up the first army bag I could find on his table, and handed over the requisite banknotes (not many, as I recall — he does to exceedingly good deals), and it just so happens that the bag I had selected was his Zulu Wars starter pack.

The bag, now rescued from the dusty obscurity of the back of a shelf, was found to contain 100 Zulus, 40 British foot, 12 irregular cavalry, 1 field gun and 2 Gatling guns, all with crews. Perfect! And, in keeping with all Sean’s sculpts, these are lovely little gems, reinforcing my feeling since my youth that 20mm is pretty much the perfect size for wargaming.

I don’t want to spoil the surprise of what the scenario will be on the day, but let’s just say that it will inevitably involve the Brits being heavily outnumbered by bold and brave Zulus. I want to keep things simple enough for youngsters to happily get involved and have a fun time, but with enough flavour of the period to make it feel authentic and for more experienced gamers to rise to the tactical challenges.

Zulus cleaned up and mounted on pennies

For me, this is a real excursion: I have never, ever collected or painted colonials before. What a time to start! Fortunately, I have a reasonable collection of military history titles covering the period and theatre, and the usual leavening of Ospreys and, of course, the vast resources of the Internet. Anyhow, I thought I’d begin with the Zulus, as these are the major part of the project to crack. The show, I will remind you, is in two week’s time!

I actually started on the figures on 8th June, filing and scraping flash (not much) and mould lines. The figures were then mounted onto 1p pieces — yes, I could have bought small washers, but I had a tinful of old pennies that I couldn’t be fagged to take to the bank! Incidentally, I used the strongest superglue I could find for this; a good alternative would have been epoxy two-part adhesive. For the cost of just £1 plus half a thimbleful of superglue, therefore, the Zulus were all based. Next came a spray with Games Workshop/Citadel Chaos Black as an undercoat.

Zulus receiving their basecoat of Dusky Flesh

This is definitely going to have to be a fast painting exercise, so I decided to use this opportunity to test the new and much-vaunted Citadel washes. On went a coat of Foundry Dusky Flesh 6B as a base coat on all the flesh areas which, when it comes to Zulus, means a lot! As with my previous experience of production-line painting all those Spencer Smiths, I found I could finish a batch of 20-30 figures in one sitting before my eyes needed a rest and the brush needed a good rinse. I always take some paint from the pot and put it on a mixing tray, adding roughly the same amount of water to create the right consistency. I just use clean tap water — it has never given me any problems, and I’m not aiming to win any prizes here, so the kerfarfle of obtaining and using distilled water is just not worth it.

So, after a couple of sessions, I had all the base flesh done, and the figures immediately had that spark of life that we have all experienced once the undercoat begins to disappear. Next for the wash, to bring out the musculature, facial features and other detail.

Close-up of Zulus after Devlan Mud wash

The colour I chose was Devlan Mud from the new Citadel range. For those of you who remember proper paint colour names before gaming companies came along and made everything sound as though their ranges were invented by dyslexic pixies, it’s somewhat akin to Burnt Umber. The consistency, however, is very unusual indeed, rather oily and slippery in a way that’s hard to describe. The pigment is evidently very fine, and suspended in a medium that, whilst somewhat glazey in appearance on first application, dries completely matt. It also seems to leave very little residue in the bristles of your brush, but is highly susceptible to capillary action which seems to draw both it and the pigment into the ferrule of the brush. Thus, when I came to rinse the brush at the end of each batch, the water was discoloured very little, but significant staining was visible at the base, rather than the tips, of the hairs. Odd.

Anyhow, the proof is in the pudding as they say, and over the course of a few hours, I sloshed this stuff pretty much all over the figures, giving the results you see. It would be interesting, of course, to have run a comparison using other washes (such as artists’ acrylic Burnt Umber, Citadel Scorched Brown and perhaps their Brown Ink), but I’m in a hurry. I’m reasonably pleased with the results: the musculature of the figures seems to be quite naturalistically defined, the facial features highlighted without any ‘pooling’ of pigment, and other details nicely picked out.

Now, I’m often a three-stage flesh man, but in this instance, I’m going to press on with the clothing, arms and accoutrements and see how it all comes together. If, after this, I feel that they still need a little extra definition, then I may come back to add a slight highlight, but with time at a premium, I’m pressing on.

Tune in again next week for updates!