Some new Panzers and a Boer War army

In a bit of a coincidence I was about to post an unpainted Boer War army I just cast when Steven sent me a picture of his next painting venture!

From Steven: 'Panzer force on its way! I have some Pz 2s painted as well. Will send pictures in due course'

From me:

One of the results of my recent casting bout is reasonably sized Garrison 25mm Boer War army. Sadly, they don't take a decent photo when unpainted!

Firstly, a unit of Lancers.

'Standard' cavalry.

Line infantry

Highlanders

Sadly, there wasn't an artillery piece with the range - but there were four ACW guns produced. Actually, one carriage but four barrels. I wanted two guns, didn't know which barrel would look best so decided to do both the Parrot and (I assume) 3" Smoothbore!

The Boers are only represented by two different firing figures. There is also a neat piece of defensive work - will probably cast a few more of these!

So, for me, a full army to paint. I've also cast a few more Boxers plus a Sung cart and a few Sung infantry - probably a better basis for an 'enemy' than the Boers! However, it still isn't certain how I'll paint them. Probably in Khaki and leave the red uniform for the 25mm Zulu War infantry! Then there's basing. Single bases or elements. Lots decisions left!

Rose not Zulu War

 And Jacklex officers!

It's pretty much experiment/play time again. Or still experiment/play time. This time I'm looking at how to fit the Rose 20mm Zulu Wars range into the alternate pulp world with an extended/totally anachronistic timeline - you know, a world where 1879 fit quite nicely with 1930?

I've already made a start looking at Rose figures for pulp actions...

Now I'm trying some painted as more-or-less Zulu War but with black painted helmets. Question was, do they stand up as Home Service helmets in that scale. Plus query do I use Prussian Blue or Dark Prussian Blue for trousers? And why did I do 10 figure sections instead of 16? OK, 16 takes longer...

I did facings in 3 different colours. Reason? Can then call them as different regiments if I treat a 10 figure unit as a battalion. Of course, I didn't think that if I made them 16 figure units then it would fit in with a 4 element DBX unit! On the other hand,use them as 8 figure sections, then 3 sections would fit for a 24 figure/6 element battalion.

So units are 1 officer (Jacklex, no need to do head swaps!), 8 riflemen and loading figure as an NCO. Can't claim credit for that basic idea - pinched it (thanks Charles - and yours are painted a lot better than mine!)

So the idea is to see if  these figures will do as alternate universe/pulp marines or infantry for a number of nations, including French and Germans. Key words are 'will do'. The pith helmet is not really a good home services help except at a distance and with poor eyesight - but 'will do'. Alternat universe, alternate design. Hopefully, I can also 'integrate' them (with support from Jacklex figures) into my 1897 universe as well!

'Colour' is another issue. Every picture I look at has a different colour blue for British and French infantry! Some are very dark, almost black like French Napoleonic tunics. Others are more of a mid blue. OK, 20mm different to real life, the French especially were trying out different uniforms at that time anyway. I've never really been happy with British trouser colours - again, feel I should do them darker rather than lighter! So eventually I'll go with what I think looks better!

Latest Adam Banner Admins pictures.

Latest batch of pictures from Adam, I'm adding these to the bottom of  the Adam Banner Admins entry on Posts.

Demogorgon. A plant monster

 More from Steven:

'Hello,

The foot knight and spaceships were actually side projects from this carnivorous plant monster. It took such a long time to paint, and I went further with the basing than ever before. I suppose this has crossed the line from figure to mini-diorama. Sarah’s niece visited recently and called it a Demogorgon – apparently it resembles a monster in the TV show Stranger Things (which I am yet to see, though it is on my to-watch list).

Front view.

The basic idea is to depict it bursting out from the jungle undergrowth to attack some unsuspecting unfortunate. Hopefully, the bright red of the head stands out from the more muted browns and greens in the background.

Side view (right).

The plants are plastic aquarium plants. There are a couple of logs on the ground done with green stuff in the same fashion as the ones on the panzergrenadier bases. I stuck some spare green stuff on a couple of pins to create the mushrooms (and to give another flash of colour). I have done the ground differently to normal to get a more jungle undergrowth effect. Instead of static grass, I used a mix of tea leaves, tarragon, rosemary and thyme to represent decaying plant matter such as leaves and small twigs/branches. I covered the whole base in thinned-down PVA glue to fix the herbs in place, gave an all-over dark brown wash and then some highlights to avoid the whole base being a single indistinct brown colour.

 

Side view (left).

The side views show the back of the head best. I went for a sharply defined, high contrast look to give an iridescent appearance. This also forms a contrast with the hopefully more subtle, naturalistic bark effect on the rest of the model. It took ages to paint, with a lot of different browns, greens, greys blended together. For wargames purposes, a brown undercoat and a couple of layers of dry-brushing would do – that was essentially my undercoat before the real work began.

These also show some areas where I dabbed brown and sand colours onto the leaves to represent dead bits of leaf. The technique was basically the same as doing weathering on tanks, and the actual idea came from looking at plants in my own back garden.

Rear view. Something which show best here is the roots at the base of the two large plants. I drilled into the base and superglued the plants in, but they were still very insecure. I moulded green stuff around the base of each plant to give it more stability, then sculpted them into the shape of roots. I think it looks better too.