Puppy!

 As I mentioned in my previous post, something has been consuming my time. And her she is, Éloise:

We got her shortly after my February post. She's an adorable dog and very affectionate. She's also incredibly stubborn and highly needy. 

As an 8 week old puppy

Once spring happened, I found I had to take her for a walk three times a day just to tire her out. Fortunately, now that she is a "teenager", I've found that one walk a day is good provided that walk is to the dog park and there's lots of activity happening. All that walking is helping my waistline but it is killing my hobby time.

We put on Surie's old flapper dress. It just barely fit Eloise and she has grown considerably since then

She loves playing with other dogs. I think she's actually a thouroughbred trapped in a shetland's body. Her favourite game is to chase after running dogs. Her second favourite game is to goad other dogs into chasing after her. Usually, the other dogs are much larger than her, but she is fearless. She'll get bowled over and get right back up again.

What A Cowboy!

 Wow, it's been a while since I last posted. I'll have a follow-up post in a bit to explain why, but let's say that I haven't touched the Zulus or even gamed since my last post.

However, that changed recently as Stephen held a gaming day at his house. 

We played What A Cowboy with 3 players a side controlling 2 characters each, a gunslinger and a shootist. My gunslinger I named William Kidd ("Don't you dare call me 'Billy'") and he had lightning reflexes. My shootist was a native who I named Johnny Whitefeather. As I rolled poorly for money, I equipped both of them with a single 6 shooter each.

The scenario was that one side were Mexicans who gained control of one side of town. I was on the other side with the objective of forcing the Mexicans to leave town.

Mid game with a view from the Mexican side. The dance hall is on the upper right and the church yard is on the lower right.

The game started out a bit slow with both sides being a bit cautious. Early on, the Mexicans took a commanding presence in the centre of town. Then Stephen's Mexicans had a brief foray into the dance hall, which ended badly for his Mexican shootist. 

I had the centre right, but I decided that a headlong charge against 2 Mexicans in the grey Cantina and 1 Mexican in the building next door was not a good idea, so eventually my two characters went to the right to try their luck against Richard's Mexicans in the church yard.

Richard's two cowboys are guarding the church yard entrances. Note where the stage coach is.

Richard's gunslinger went on the attack and charged. He rolled poorly, and was stuck in the middle of the road. It got worse, as the gunslinger was then run over by a stage coach. Johnny Whitefeather went on the attack while the gunslinger recovered. 

Richard's two characters fall back to the yard walls. Johnny Whitefeather dodges the coach and reaches the corner.

After several rounds of ineffective gunfire and brawling (and interrupted by rampaging Indians), Johnny found his aim and gunned down Richard's gunslinger and shootist.

Blam! Blam! David's gunfighter looks on, before taking out rampaging Indians emerging from the church yard.

While that was happening, on the other side of town, things were going badly for our side as Justin's two characters were eliminated. This left the two sides dead even in characters and skill, so we called it a draw.

It was an enjoyable day. We were hoping to get in some other gaming, but we ran out of time.

 

Progress on Zulus

 I've completed the first steps, which was the preparation for colour.

And I've learned a few things:

• Slapchop is likely harder to do on 15mm than 28mm.
• I overdid the zenathal spray so that there was too much of it. This meant that there wasn't actually too much left of the black. In my defense, I was trying to do it quickly because I was spraying in a garage that was only just above freezing and poorly lit.
• I went with a brown (actually a bit more of a red-brown than brown) but it is likely far to dark. I chose the brown because I thought it would work nicely as an undercoating tone for the skin of the Zulus, but I think I'm not going to get a lot of the benefits of the mid-tone zenithal spray.
• The paint I chose as the highlight colour is probably knackered. I had to thin it out to get it flowing and, as a result, I didn't get a nice consistent dry brush. My intention was originally to just highlight the top surfaces but I changed plan and just went for highlights everywhere.
  

Here's the results from the zenithal spray showing that I was too heavy handed:

But the drybrushing really pops the details. I particularly wanted the faces to pop so that they will show nicely when I paint them.

Even though I didn't end up using it for the dry brushing, I bought a cheap makeup brush from the dollar store. I hacked it down to a quarter of its length using a pair of scissors at about 2mm or so for each trim. So now I have a drybrush ready to go and, as a bonus, some brush fibers I might be able to use as static grass.  I didn't use the brush for this initial highlighting because it was a little big for picking out some of the details on the body and my paint was misbehaving.

Next Project: Zulus!

 When Stephen offered me a bunch of Zulu and British figures a while back, I quickly said "Yes!". I don't have any rules for them and no matching terrain, but Zulus!

I got them shortly after I moved to Windsor, but they've been on ice for a while. But now that my hobby space is a little more organized and I got a bunch of hobby-related items, I decided it was time to crack on with them.

I've also decided to change my style up so that I can finish these a bit quicker. I'm going to try the slap-chop method of speed painting. To that end, I got rid of flashing and mold lines and glued them to stir sticks. 

That's where we are right now. 296-ish Zulus and their shields.

The next steps are:

1. Rattle can black primer all over.
2. Rattle can red-brown primer just from the top.
3. Dry brush off-white on the high spots.