Zulu Ibutho Complete

 I finally completed my first Zulu regiment, inDluyenge. It has been quite a long time, but I am happy with the result. 

I based them for The Men Who Would Be Kings, so there is 16 figures per unit. The bases are ones that I printed, with Leader printed on half of them. There is also a spot on the back of the base where players can put their leader values. I used magnets so that players can interchange the values.

Here are a couple of close ups:

Gone to Ground

 In The Men Who Would Be Kings, tribal infantry can, as an action, choose to go to ground as their action. So I needed a set of markers for this.

This gives warriors like Zulus some defense against bullets and artillery.

I bought a cheap makeup case to put my markers in. To make them fit, I printed a rack to hold these markers. They are a little squished to make all 8 fit.

KEGSCon 2025

 September is KEGSCon month and I made the pilgramage to Chatham. I had planned things well and was able to attend the whole day.

This year, attendance seemed slightly down, but the quality of the games being played was up. I participated in three games.

The first game was a battle between 18th century Mughals vs Durranis (Indo-Persian empire) in the battle of Manupur (I think). Historically, the Mughals got massacred. This game was much closer, but the quality of the Durrani troops and timely reinforcements made eventual defeat inevitable. I had command of the Turks on the right wing. Things went well for me at first but a couple of ambushes slowed me up. Additionally, there were a couple of times I failed my command rolls that also put sand in my gears. Eventually, I ran out of troops at the front and could not rally the troops in the rear. A similar thing happened to the rest of the Mughal troops but to a lesser extent.

Mid to late in the game. My units are pushing hard with some success but also with significant losses due to routs (the units to the bottom of the pic)

At the end of the game. Despite heroic charges by two units of cavalry that routed four units in total, I don't have any units available to follow up their success. I have five units in poor shape that I will not be able to recover. We called the game at this point. The other Mughal player was in similar shape.

My second game was General D'Armee 2 with French-allied Bavarians defending a village against a Russian attack from two directions. I had command of the division on the upper right plus a reserve force that I could have come on. I chose at the beginning of the game to have the come on to my right. 

The start of the battle.

Initially it was a mixed bag for me. I lost an infantry unit to a cavaly charge and some poor die rolling. The other Russian player lost his cavalry unit early and spent much of his time trying to protect against the Bavarian cavalry on his right while pressuring the Bavarian infantry to his left. 

Mid to late in the battle. The Bavarian cavalry is being stymied by my squares while my skirmishers, having previously sent off the Bavarian skirmishers, are now firing away at the advancing Bavarian line. My artillery was making life miserable for the line as well. The line routed shortly afterwards. 

Meanwhile, my cavalry units in my reserve hit the Bavarians in the flank, seeing off a unit of infantry and a unit of artillery. They pinned another unit into square, which the Russian artillery subsequently started to pound. The Bavarian cavalry continued to threaten the Russian right, but the square managed to hold them off long enough for my charge to take effect.

About the same time on the other flank. 

The Bavarian morale basically collapsed at this point, but they had been able to hold the village for long enough that the GM declared a draw.

The third game was a Wild West shootout with every figure for themselves. I think we started with 14 players.

The view down the main street before things heat up.

I started off in the blue building in the lower right.

I had placed my figure early. Three players joined and they placed themselves close to where I was. They started shooting at each other. One was shot dead right away and another one was wounded. I seized the opportunity to go to an open window and gun down another player in the back. Every man for himself!

Me about to shoot someone in the back. I guess my hat is more black than white.

After a while, I got tired of trying to kill someone who couldn't do much (down to one action per turn, severe movement and firing penalties). While it was easy to hit someone, killing them was tough to do.

This was near the end. Bodies everywhere. I'm near the fence and starting to draw fire from the buildings on the other side of the tracks. 

Pinned!

 I used my 3D printer to create some pinned markers. The first 4 were not successful because of various mistakes, but I fiddled with the model until it worked.

I then painted the metal of the tack silver, painted the body red, and painted the tops of the letters white. I put some watered PVA on the surface and dipped each one in fine turf.

A final step that I will do later is to spray a PVA water mix to seal everything down.

I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out.

Chain of Command 2

I got in a couple of Chain of Command 2 games in July. The first was a 2 on 2 battle of Canadians vs Germans in 15mm. I was doing well on my flank but progress was slow because of all of the open ground I would happen to cross. But my team mate on my right completely collapsed and that ended the game. He had not been in the greatest of positions but a run of 4 straight phases against him sealed the deal.

My position on the left getting ready to attack to the left.

Frank on the right just before the collapse occurred.

The second game was a 3 on 2 battle with the Germans holding two objectives. I took a tank platoon for something different. We were slow getting going so action was just heating when we had to call it. I could not make the second half so I do not know how it went.

Position at the end of the session. The Firefly had just done a reaction shot to the Pz IV that rolled into the woods at the very top of the screen. The Firefly missed. It is now our turn but the Germans have a COC die that they were going to use on our turn. It is likely that they will use it on my rapidly charging Sherman near the top of the screen.

To the Limit

 I've added AMS Lite to my 3D printer. AMS Lite is an attachment (not literally) for the A1 Mini and it allows you to print in up to four colours. I also ordered a spool of black, dark blue, light blue, and a sort of fleshy colour. Also in my order was a 0.2mm nozzle. Naturally, I wanted to see how tiny I could go. Pretty tiny, as it turned out, using the smallest layer height (0.6mm).

I decided I would also try my hand at designing some figures. I worked in Tinkercad creating 8mm American Civil War figures, which I knew I would scale down by 25% in Bambu Studio. I sort of knew beforehand that the figures would be too skinny, but I also wanted to see if I can get "realistic" and "proportional". Here's a more close up photo with a 15mm Zulu mounted on a penny.

I'm pretty impressed by how these turned out. Yes, there's some fuzz between the kepis, the flag didn't survive removal from the plate, and it is extremely wasteful of filament, but it was a worthwhile experiment.

I'm already working on 2.0. I'll make it much sturdier by having the figures slightly overlap, thicken up the flag a bit, and make the base thicker. 

Hot Lead 2025

 I have been looking forward to Hot Lead for some time. It's a chance to see some people that I used to play with. As it turned out, David was the only one but it was really good to see him.

I got into two games. The first was run by David and was a Japanese civil war game. Each player had two clans of varying strengths and composition. It was fun with both our flanks winning but our centre collapsed, resulting in a narrow loss.

The next game was an English civil war game featuring the Parlimentarians trying to hold off the Royalist attack. The objective of the Royalist was to exit three cavalry units off the far edge by turn 15. Due to plucky resistance, the Royalists didn't come close to these victory conditions.

1st Project With a 3D Printer

 So I got a 3D printer for Christmas. It's a Bambu Lab A1 Mini and it has been great. 

I've printed the obligatory Benchy (that's what it was doing above) and some accessories (printer poop basket, toolbox, and scraper). It's now time to put it to its true purpose: printing stuff for my miniatures.

I've had 300 15mm Zulus for a while and I've stagnated in painting them. I also recently (relatively) aquired The Men Who Would Be Kings rules. These rules use individual figures for casualties, so the obvious solution is to create movement trays for them, because why move 12-16 inividual figures when you can move just a couple of trays?

I've started with an artillery tray because it only have 4 figures on it. I have quite a few figure bases saved (courtesy of the Canadian government) and so I designed the stands to fit them. I should have enough to base all of my Zulus and British, but then I will have to look for alternatives for other periods.

 In TMWWBK, every unit has a leader, so I wanted to have a specific spot for him. I experimented with pausing printing and swapping from the grey filament to a white filament, and it worked reasonably well. The text a little smudgy, but it should look OK after I apply some flock and other terrain.

The leader also has a rating. But because the leader rating can vary from unit to unit, I didn't want to make it a permanent feature of the stand. Instead, I will be creating some labels and an area on the stand to put them. To keep the labels in place, I'm using mini magnets.

These pictures are showing my prototypes. I think I've got them pretty much dialed in to how I want them, so now I'll start cranking them out. I'll be  swapping out the grey filament for brown, and if I'm lucky I may not even need to prime the trays.

Any way, here's a more close up of the trays with some Zulus to show what the trays look like with figures in them. You can see the white letters aren't perfect, but they are definitely good enough.

Neglected Blog

 Wow, it's been basically a whole year since I last posted.

Basically 2024 was mostly a write-off as far as gaming. I did go to KEGSCon, which was very enjoyable, and there's a group of local gamers, who I joined for the occasional game. I did a little painting of some 15mm Zulus.

But really I've spent the year either not being able to game or haven't had the time or energy. A rambuctious puppy and two family medical incidents will really sap away gaming time.

But December and January have seen a renewed intest in miniatures. That's been helped by the acquisition of a 3D printer.

I'll post more about that next time.

Review: Project Paint Station from Army Painter

 So, for Christmas, I got this:

What do I think? Looks good on the box, but not so much in real life. The big issue is in the construction. Being MDF, I was expecting it to use slots and tabs to hold itself together while the glue dries. The only slots and tabs hold the horizontal pieces to the back piece. There are no slots and tabs on any of the vertical pieces. There are grooved areas, which are necessary because no glue will stick nicely to the white melomine surface. 

From the top

I don't recall whether the assembly instructions call for clamps, but they are absolutely necessary because of the lack of slots and tabs. In particular, you need them to hold that piece with the Army Painter label, because you need to bend the piece to fit it into the groove. Not the best experience because I had to assemble it over a couple of nights to allow the glue to dry and I didn't have enough small clamps to do it in one shot.

Tip: They mention a specific glue, but I'm not buying it just for this. I used Carpenter's Glue, but really any PVA-based glue should work fine, as long as it dries clear or white. Don't use Carpenter's Glue though, because it has a yellowish colour that you can see. 

You can see the lack of tabs and slots on the sides. Note the grooves for gluing the pieces together.

Once assembled, it seems solid enough, but I'm definitely not going to deliberately test it because I have no faith it will stick together if I drop it any distance at all.

It will hold dropper bottle style paint pots, but not those Citidel paint pots. Fortunately 90% of my paints are Vallejo or other dropper style paint pots. 

It seems OK, and I will use it, but I'm sure there are sturdier and easier to assemble options.

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.

Memorium

A little while back, our little fur baby crossed over the Rainbow Bridge. I miss Surie and I wanted to post a tribute to her.

	As a puppy maybe 3 months old.
	Surie at 6 months with her half-sister Milou.
	Surie was a child-certified St Johns Ambulance therapy dog for 9 years. Here she is taking a well deserved rest after meeting so many teenagers at a technology camp. Most therapy dog sessions are under an hour in length. Meeting people is very draining and one of our duties as a handler is recognizing when our dogs have had enough.
	Surie would visit regularly visit residents at a nursing home and special needs students at a high school. She would also attend fund raising events and other special events.
	We attended a number of Remembrance Day parades. Surie hated the cold so these weren't her favourite events. But she enjoyed the afterparty in the Legion Hall.
	Surie's favourite game was Fetch. Or rather putting the toy down, waiting for me to reach down for it, and then snatching it away. After some wrestling time, she would let go so that I could throw it again.
	Surie was an amazing traveller. She had her own booster chair so that she could look out, but most of the time, she just slept. Here we are on our drive from Ontario to BC, stopping in Winnipeg for this picture.
	When we picked up Surie as a puppy, she was accompanied by a plush pink rabbit. This was her constant companion and she used it as pacifier/comforter every day of her life. As a puppy, she quickly shredded the tennis ball body that bunny had, but otherwise left Baby intact. One squeaker in a leg was still working to the end.
	Me carrying Surie carrying Baby.
	One of our last pictures of Surie. She couldn't see me but she knew I was there.