Men of the West and General Update

Well, I've gone and done it again. It's been about a month and a half since I last posted. This time, it's been due to the family needing help work during apple season, so most of my spare time has been taken up working at the orchard or laying exhausted on the couch at the end of the day. I have been doing some serious terrain work, transforming super cheap trees I found on AliExpress into something decent by stripping off the terrible flocking, basing them, trimming them up when necessary, and applying flock or static grass as needed. I've also almost finished the main objective for my Dux Britanniarum game at Fall In, the Late Roman church from Warbases.

I share the opinion with some of you out there that mdf buildings are great, but they can be seriously bland and even bad looking without doing a little work. I believe that mdf is best when used as a shell or foundation for the finished model. They give you your base to start from, allowing you to focus on making them look good. After building the church, I applied spackle/filler to the model's walls and smoothed it out with wet fingers. The roof tiles are laser cut card from Warbases as well, which really bring it to life and cover up the faux pantile etched onto the roof. From there, I also scored a wood grain in all the boards forming the doors as well as grooves between the stones on the archway. From there, it's just a matter of painting it up, which I'm almost done with.

In this picture, you will also see what passes for my workbench storage area. I have a nice big corner desk, but I'm forced to have two computers on it for work, meaning that the only space I have on it is my actual painting and work space. Right now, for all of my deciduous trees, I'm waiting on a shipment of rubberized horse hair for the foliage, along with dark green static grass for most of my conifers. I'm pretty pleased with my results so far, but Ive got a lot of work to go before Fall In. I'd like at least double my number of trees and add about five more buildings for the village by the church, inhabited by monks and other good Catholics. I'd like to try to make a small vineyard as well, and having learned that grapes were typically grown on freestanding poles at this point in time, this is even more achievable than before. But enough talking, here are some pics of my projects, with some trees midway and some finished off.

Before

And After

Before

 And After

Nestled in the pine grove, you will see another, yes another project that I've picked up. Thankfully, there wont be as much purchasing for this one. I've decided to make a Gondorian force for Dux Gondorum and SoTK, whenever it comes out. I envision a Byzantine/Late Roman feel to Gondor and Arnor respectively and I feel that Footsore's ranges will best serve as a base for my ambitions in Middle Earth, especially once Bill Thornhill finishes the Huns, who will serve double duty as Huns and Easterlings. Right now, the plan is Late Romans/Byzantines for the twin kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor, Early Saxons and Goths for Rohan, Oathmark Goblins and some GW stuff for orcs, Vikings and the Gripping Beast Rus for men of Dorwinian, Conqueror Dwarves, and Footsore and Gripping Beast Arabs and Sassanids for Harad.

And here a picture of my cat Taps in a bow tie, the consummate gentleman.

Until next time.