Welcome to "The Forage Bag", my "TMP blog" where I will be posting my weekly gaming endeavors for all to ignore! :-)
Issue # 1
As this was intended to be a weekly update and it's already the end of February, it would seem that a summary of the year-to-date, rather than all of the gory details, is in order.
I've largely been playing a number of board and card games this year. These include Flashpoint (3 times), Settlers of Catan (1), Midway (AH) (1), 1775 (2), Smash Up! (1), Star Trek Panic! (1), and a current Terminator Kickstarter demo (1). I have gotten in a few miniatures games, though. Played a game of Victory at Sea, a very small Age of Sigmar game, a game of Project Z , and finally an ECW game using Victory without Quarters rules which concluded a small campaign in favor of Parliament. :-)
Meanwhile, I have made glacial progress on my "focus" miniatures project, which is currently (since about Thanksgiving!) to upgrade the basing and labeling of my 1:3000 WWI ships, as well as filling in gaps in my collection. The ships, most of which I have had 20-25 years, have been quite functional but a bit lackluster in their tabletop appearance. I decided I wanted to add some sort of "water effect" and a label with the ship's name and a national symbol. I also wanted to change the look of many of them that I felt were "too dark". To begin, I removed the old balsa bases and stripped the old paint using Simple Green. Then they are rinsed, allowed to dry, and re-primed (white).
Meanwhile, I worked on the labels I wanted to use. The simplest option I could come up with was to make up Excel spreadsheets and have them printed onto a label sheet (which was essentially one big label) at the local Office Depot. For the new bases, I decided to go with matt board. It's easy to cut (I have an older, solid, paper cutter), about the thickness I wanted, and I have a ton of it already! Of course, it wasn't in the color I wanted, so I found a shade of blue that I liked (Americana DA38 Wedgewood Blue) and painted it. Unfortunately, this showed through the labels somewhat and made them darker, so now I paint the top side edge white where the label will go. Looked better, but is extra work. :-( I decided the solid blue looked too plain, so I added blotches of darker blue and a sea-green. So then, it's time to cut the labels to size and affix them to the base. Simple enough, but then it became apparent that the ends of the labels were going to pull up after very little handling. Not good. I need to use glue (PVA) at the ends to make them more secure. Why is it I'm using these labels again? Oh yeah, "easier".
Next up was painting the ships. Spent a fair amount of time researching colors for hull/superstructure and decks then testing numerous shades of gray (no, not 50!) and "tan", before settling on some that I liked and began actually putting paint on metal. This done, it was time for the water effects and basing the ships. I already had a tube of clear caulk (Clear DAP All Purpose Acrylic Caulk Plus Silicone), so wanted to give that a go first. I just squirted it out of the tube and applied it to the base using an old brush. That seemed to work pretty well. Then, while the caulk was still soft, I put the ship model about 3/4 of the way onto the back of the base and pushed it forward into position. This served to make a flatter trail to the rear of the ship for the wake and also "pile up" a bit of caulk at the front to make a bow wave of sorts. When cured, the caulk was a bit on the shiny side, so it risked a coat of Krylon Matte Finish spray on the whole assembly. After that, I added white paint for the bow wake, along the water next to the sides of the ship, and to a few random "waves". I semi dry-brushed the wake area, too. Overall the appearance was good, but I wanted to see how dry-brushing the whole water area of the base would look. Looked better, but is extra work. :-(
That's about it A picture of what I've done so far is below. Still have lots more to do. Next up is to finish painting and basing about 50 destroyers. I'll be putting them in divisions with 2 or 3 models, representing 3 – 6 actual destroyers, to a base as I show in the picture. The base coating has been done and bases are prepped for some of them, so hopefully won't take too long. "Sea" you next time! :-)
