Salute 2015 - Japanese Boards

We came across some fantastic looking games whilst at Salute. One of the games was Daishō – Skirmish Wargaming by Craig Cartmell and Charles Murton, authors of In Her Majesty's Service.

The other game; Defense of the Keep by Oshiro Model Terrain was a much larger table but looked amazing! The terrain and models looked fantastic.

Salute 2015 - Cold War Gone Hot (Wargames Illustrated)

One of our close friends, Nick Ayres has just released his new rule set at Salute 2015. Nick's rules are being used in the participation game on one of the Wargames Illustrated stands (GD04). The game is described below (taken from the Salute Website).

"Cold War Gone Hot - It’s the 1980’s and the Cold War has turned into World War Three! Take charge of a unit of Warsaw Pact or NATO troops as the battle for one of the main autobahns into West Germany becomes a chance to turn the tide…Participation Game, drop in and out as you like. 20mm figures, vehicles and more from the Leicester Phat Cats Wargames Club."

The board was created by both Nick Ayres and Philip Lewis and it looks amazing. If you are visiting Salute 2015, please check out their work.

For now, here are some photos of the game.

Salute 2015 - Alien Vs Predator

We were extremely lucky as Prodos games had contacted us and Leicester Phat Katz to help create two demo games for Salute this year. Overall our task was to create two boards and paint all the models for the games. Both of us at the Mountain of Metal, were tasked with painting the marines, commandos and power loaders. Photos of these will follow in another blog post.

For now, here are some photos of the two boards before the doors opened.

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We want to thank Prodos Games for all of their hard work and dedication to getting this game
released. There has been a lot of hard work from the guys and they still have a long way to go but the models are outstanding. So if you are visiting Salute today, please come to the Prodos Games stand to take a look!

TUTORIAL - Painting a Basic Log Cabin

Hi all! During display games at various war gaming shows I've received a few comments on the buildings I've painted so I thought I'd put together this tutorial on how to paint a basic log cabin which will look great on your board.

The  building I started off with was fine but some of the colours were a bit off for a log cabin; notice the grey in the roof which you normally wouldn't find in wood. 

I start off by base coating the entire building except the chimney with a java bean; a Wilkinson tester pot, although any dark brown will do.

For terrain and buildings, I recommend purchasing tester pots or standard acrylic paint as it's much cheaper than wasting your favourite pot of 'chosen brand' miniature paint. It's surprising how much paint you actually need, especially the more detailed, textured varieties. 

Once dry, I use beasty brown to dry brush the entire building. You only need a little colour so remember to dab off excess paint. 

I then dry brush again but with a lighter shade. This time I go for a orange/brown called scrofulous brown.

I also base coat the chimney using German Grey. 

Finally, I dry brush the chimney a lighter grey;in this case I used Luftwaffe Uniform WWII.Then I used a slightly watered down ink; Strong Tone, to wash the entire building. This helped bring back some of the details from dry brushing and toned down the colours. After these stages, you will be able to add more weathering or plant details if you'd like to make your building fancier but I hope this has helped cover the basic steps. 

As a recap, these are the paints I have used: 

Wilkinson Tester Pot ~ Java Bean (102)

Game Colour ~ Beasty Brown (72.043)

Game Colour ~ Scrofulous Brown (72038)

Model Colour ~ German Grey (70.995)

Model Colour ~ Luftwaffe Uniform WWII (70816)

Army Painter Ink ~ Strong Tone