Another Wooden Soldiers Blog

Most of this post references work on other people's blog, but there are also references to my old blog posts. Please be sure to click on the links and see the examples.

I recently received a link about another blog – Funny Little Wars - Molatero – that features a wooden soldiers, and how Stephen Beat is making them.

In Stephen's first post, given that he talked about using doll pegs, I thought he was going for the same style as Kenneth Van Pelt, over at The Penny Whistle blog. The first figures Stephen shows are called "clothespins" here and are the main component that Kenneth used for not only figures, but for his really outstanding WWI aircraft. But as you read further in that first blog post you see that he cuts off the bottom and essentially makes a "pawn".

I once experimented with clothespins. The ones I was using were flat, so it made for a really nice painting surface for my Greek during the Trojan Wars. In the end, although it did provide some interesting shapes and ideas, it was still more sawing than I was doing with pawns, which I had invested rather heavily in when I five bags of 200! (Yes, I still have the majority of them, unused. 😕)

In Stephen's second blog post the figure really starts to take shape. The most amazing piece is the rifle, as it looks like it has been cut out from a popsicle stick or similar. Really nice work, but talk to me after you have made an army's worth of them! 😆 The cartoon-style face is exactly the style I like, and it really works well with these figures. The oversized eyes and moustache really 'pop', making the figure stand out. Stephen does not make feet for the figure, but rather paints them on. This definitely simplifies the build, lowers the cost of the figure, and helps the figure retain strength. (See Matt's recent posts about how he is guarding against troop breakage with his Dark Age warriors.)

The most recent blog post shows the figure in all its final splendor. The glossy varnish suits the style of the figure (I used Pledge's Future Floor Wax) as it not only protects the paint, but it brightens it too. The varnish Stephen used seems to have the same quality. The colors are deeper and richer than in the photo before spraying.

I look forward to seeing more of Stephen's work, especially how he does cavalry and artillery pieces. (Challenge sent, Stephen! 😃)

Matt is Joining the Blog

Last weekend I played the first miniatures game in a long time. Too bad the rules ... sucked. But it did help reinvigorate me to get back into miniatures gaming. So I started taking inventory of what I have and where I left off in my projects. As I was digging through some old rules looking for one particular set I ran across a copy of Arrayed for Battle!, which is the set written by Matt Kirkhart and was used for his Battle of Zama, which he ran at Cold Wars 2012. (You can see my battle report of the games I played.) I flew all the way from Arizona to Pennsylvania to play in those games and to meet Matt, whom I had met online through the Wargaming on a Budget forum on Yahoo. (I would link to it, but the forum has been overrun with posts about Warhammer 40K paper models.) I also competed in the 28mm DBA tournament with my wooden Armenian army. I lost badly as I did not really know how to play that army. But they sure looked cool!

Looking at the pictures of Matt and John's armies from Zama, and at Matt's armies depicted in the rules, I started wondering what Matt was up to. I emailed him and found out that he too had taken a hiatus of sorts from miniatures gaming. But, rather than moving away from making "craftees" Matt focused his energies into creating figures for fantasy role-playing rather than historical battles. He sent me some pictures and I thought that I just had to post them. Hopefully in the near future Matt – who has agreed to co-author this blog – will give us some insight into the components, construction methods, and painting techniques used to make the items below. See if you can spot the wooden shapes that he used.

– Dale

Hello everyone!  Good to be back, and I want to thank Dale for inviting me to make some posts to his blog.  It has been about two years or so since I posted anything to the Yahoo group about any of the Craftees I was making during this time.  In general, I decided to return to my gaming roots, mainly because I got into a gaming group that plays the games of my youth, mainly D&D.  As part of my nostalgic return to my youth, in terms of my Craftees I decided to try and make a Craftee version of the popular (back in the day) Heroquest board game.  I started to work on this project of creating a Craftee version of Heroquest and then decided that I would shift to doing more classic D&D monsters and dungeon pieces.  And then, of course, what happened is that I decided to write a set of simple rules inspired by classic old-school D&D and Heroquest that I could use to play games with my new figures.  I can write more about that later, but for now, I've included some shots of some of the Craftee fantasy figures I've done so far.  I put together a game set up using my new little fellows.

This first picture is a view of the whole board in the game so far.  The heroes have become a bit spread out, but down in the bottom room you can see a warrior priest and a dwarf doing battle with a couple of skeletons and a ghoul, with a halfling supporting them about to backstab a zombie.  The room has a closed single-wide door, a torture rack (I tried to directly copy the one from the Heroquest game), a wooden crate, and a mysterious collection of mushrooms growing over in the corner.  The heroes appear unaware of the vicious giant rats sneaking up the narrow passage to their rear.

Next we have the center hallway and turn section that also has an unopened single-wide door.  The knight (facing the camera) battles an evil chaos knight, while the elf shoots an arrow at an umber hulk who has wandered into the hallway (no idea how he got through the single-wide door!).  To the elf's left is a gray ooze reaching up to attack her by surprise!

Finally the far room is a burial chamber with a double-wide door, four marble pillars, a container of unholy water, a sarcophagus (also copied from the original Heroquest game) dominates the center of the room, and a carrion crawler opposes a barbarian and a wizard (who is not visible in this picture but will be in some of the pictures below).



This is a close up of the first room and the lower part of the hallway and turn tiles.  You have a good view of the monsters as well as the heroic knight.  The tiles themselves are pre-cut pieces of thin wood from a craft store that I painted to represent rooms, hallways, and turn sections.  As you can see, the squares in the hallway are not quite the same size as those in the room.  I tried to free hand paint everything, which gives it the "look" I want, but if you choose to do that, you have to be okay with some less than precise dungeon tile connections.  But hey, it's a dungeon, right?



The hallway and turn section, and the final room are shown here.  The gray ooze miniature is just hot glue that I pulled up in some places while the glue was cooling to make it look like it is "reaching" towards a hero in an attack.  Standard paint job and unlike most of my other Craftees, I actually put a gloss clear-coat on the gray ooze to make it look ... well ... "oozy."  You also have a pretty good view of the wizard in this picture, casting a spell to help out the barbarian fighting the carrion crawler.



And a close-up of the Burial Room.



Dale and I will talk about construction and painting of these guys in later posts.  I just wanted to give everyone an update about what Craftee project I have been working on over the past couple of years.  I also have some sci-fi figures that I'll post pictures of as well, sort of "Craftee Space Marines."

– Matt

New rules to boot!?! And Craftee Space Marines! I can hardly wait.

– Dale

On the Workbench

Welcome

First off, I have been remiss in welcoming my new readers. Welcome to Maverick Collecting, Scott B. Lesch, Foss1066, Dan, el frances, littlejohn, Mark Burgess, David Crook, SA ROE, Mr. Monkeytail, and Hammster Chomiczewski! I hope you enjoy the articles and, although a blog is not much of a medium for discussion, I hope you post comments and suggest future topics.

Resources

Some new blogs out there that have caught my eye (and are related to this): Little People Go to War, Go! Game Labs, Beighton's Shipyard, and the Skull and Crown (of the famous Wooden Wars project). You really need to check these out.

Of course, blogs I have highlighted before (or think I have ...) are: Toy Making Dad, John Acar's Craftee section, and the Penny Whistle's clothespin work. Again, good ideas and inspiration.

Last but not least, join up on the Wargaming on a Budget forum on Yahoo. There are a lot of like-minded people there. Not always wood-oriented (paper does not count!), but still good information.

New Goodies

I found out that there is a Woodcraft store in Tucson, about 80 miles away from me, so I went and visited it, hoping to pick up a Proxxon jig saw. No luck. They don't carry Proxxon anymore, but could order it. I can get it on Amazon cheaply, so I passed. I did, however, pick up rotary drill bits for sanding and power carving (i.e. carving with Dremel type tools). A total of 120 bits (four sets of 30 bits, each of a different grit level) for $32.00. I was happy. All kinds of shapes and sizes, so I will have some fun experimenting with them.

Leibster Award(s)

Update: I forgot to mention that this blog was nominated for Leibster Awards by John's Wargames and Kingdom of Katzenstein. Thanks guys, I really appreciate it. I highly recommend that readers check out these blogs and the others that I have mentioned above. My Dale's Wargames blog was also nominated and I pointed out some blogs to read there too. That said, the goal of the Leibster Awards is to point people to some of the less traveled blogs, and I hope I have done that here.

On the Workbench

I have a number of projects going simultaneously, mostly because I suffer from distraction. Starting in the workshop, where the cutting, sanding, and gluing goes on.

My fascination with the miniature rules Saga has got me making a Dark Ages army (or three). I am starting off with the Anglo-Danish. Still being built are the Warriors, which will have spears and shields. Right now I have finished the basic helmet shape and am using heavily-thinned wood filler to try and smooth out the curves.


The horses are for an upcoming Welsh army. I will have the Hearthguard mounted.

I always keep a couple of sets of spare arms and feet, just in case I want to do some experimentation. (I sound like Dr. Frankenstein!)

I have had these Napoleonic cavalry – British Light Dragoons and a mounted British Officer – for a long time now. As I decided that I liked the new style of horse (with a spool as the neck), I broke apart the unfinished models and re-worked them. Wait until I do that with fully painted models ...

I accidentally left my wood filler out with the lid not fully closed, causing it to dry up badly. I was about to chuck it into the trash, but decided to look up on the internet and see if there was a way of bring it back. It turns out that Elmers recommends you simply put water into it and stir, stir, stir. I put a little too much and it came out thin. I started experimenting a bit with the thinned wood filler and found that I could use it like "Green Stuff" putty and "sculpt" limited shapes, like beards and long hair. Here I have decided to dip the heads into the wood filler and build up a helmet or cap. As this experiment progresses, I will keep you updated.

When I was doing the hat experiments (in a previous blog article), I had not finished them, especially with regards to the peaks of the caps. Here are some of the previous experiments, along with two new Knightly experiments (on the right).

I wanted to experiment with sheet foam to make pelisses for hussars, so I needed to make some basic hussar figures first. Here they are, but no pelisses. (See, this is what happens when you get distracted by new projects before the old ones are done.)

This picture came out a little dark, but it is the modern African soldier in a beret (hat experiments), with an AK-47 (Insta-Mold experiment to make small accessories), I like the camo, but it was tedious to paint. I am not sure I could do a whole squad of them, all in one go.

I played a big game of Napoleonics (skirmish) and it inspired me to start painting these Prussian Jagers hat I built six months ago. The officer is a little red faced because I seem to have misplaced one of the painted soldiers, but found two others that I forgot to paint with the others!

Here are the Levy bowmen of the Anglo-Danish army I am building for Saga. The bows were power-sanded from spare bits of wood. They are starting to come together.

These are my current pride and joy! The Anglo-Danish huscarls with 2-handed axes were just plain fun to put together. Axe heads and arms are made of foam. I glued the arms to the axe handles and once dry, glued the arms to the body. Once that was dry I rubbed super glue (Gorilla Glue Super Glue, of course) into the foam and then pinned the arms and axe handle into the position I wanted. Once the super glue was dry the pose stayed put. I then glued on the axe heads.

You can see the Anglo-Danish Warlord, with his Danish axe, started on the lower left. Using sheet foam and zig-zag cutting scissors I created a horse tail plume for his helmet.

Well, that is it for now. Hope you like the sneak peek at the projects to come.