Sigur goes South - The American Civil War

[Ray Rivers]

...Hope you like them!

Yes, we do very much! 

This.

Great work.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@DintheDin: Thanks very much. And that's a very good question about Kugelhagel. It was reviewed in Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy Magazine, so I kinda assumed that there was an English version. I asked the author and it seems like it's only available in German at the moment.

@Ray Rivers: Thanks, Sir!

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Right, the past weekend I've been to the Tabletop Knights' Gaming Day 2018 (spring edition). Here's my report:


http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2018/04/show-report-tabletop-knights-gd-spring.html




A good day out; hope you like the photos!



The upcoming Saturday we'll do the big Gettysburg day at the club in Vienna. A good excuse to paint up yet another ACW thing to put on the table for sheer prettiness:



This one's still rather WIP of course, but getting there in time I hope. Good brother virago and I will demo Longstreet. Wednesday evening we meet to have a game so I get a grasp again on the rules I'll demo.

[Flashman14]

Gorgeous - nice high-contrast highlights!

Even the darker ones are great - these Reb units especially:



I'm greedy and noticed a fair amount of pics from last year didn't load to my regret.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@Flashman14: Thanks very much! I'll pass the praise about these rebel units on to my compangon Virago. They're from his collection.

Did some more work on the wagon last night:




Hope you like it.



edit: Jeepers, no idea why I haven't thought of it earlier, but here we go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM5-xFenaZI&feature=youtu.be&t=20

[DintheDin]

@Flashman14: Thanks very much! I'll pass the praise about these rebel units on to my compangon Virago. They're from his collection.

Did some more work on the wagon last night:

Hope you like it.

Yes, we do! 
Cracking job Sigur! The colors pop! Cheers!

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@DintheDin: Thanks indeed! So far I thought the thing looked very drab. Anyway, once grass and such is on the base it'll look nice enough. I SHOULD write something onto the tarpaulin, but I'm not sure I dare to at this point as making the tarpaulin was a right pain in the rear. Let's see...

[Arthur]

The tarp looks very effective as it is : what did you use for it ? Tissue paper ?

I must confess this is the one detail that's been putting me off this particular set : the lazy sod in me baulks at the idea of having to add a home-made canvas top. A resin one would definitely have been preferable.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@Arthur: Thanks very much! Yeah, paper tissue. Usually things in such pretty simple modelling go rather fast, but not this time.

Took me two gos really. First I tried using a single layer of the tissue, measured everything, cut the thing to fit exactly, then I used small dabs of PVA glue at the ends of each of the struts(?) to put the piece of tissue in place, and then sprayed on a mix of water and PVA glue. Turned out the layer was way too thin (and a bit too big, to boot!). It shrivelled up, I tried to spread it out proper again, it tore (of course).... things were pretty annoying.

The next time I took a very unsuble approach: I used two layers (the tissue paper's three-layered), put a pool of PVA/water mix on the top of a static grass container on top, pulled the tissue through it so it's soaked, just put it around the struts, the paper was strongly soaked, so PVA/water mix ran everywhere over the painted model, the tissue was much too big, I used way too large scissors to cut the soaked tissue to size (the front and back I just roughly cut to size and just kind stuffed them into the wagon), more PVA/water ran everywhere, it went into the scissors, the ends I cut to fit were jagged like hell because soaked tissues really aren't easy to hold without tearing them up, then I noticed I'd cut a wee bit too much... it SHOULD have been a complete horror.

I stuck to it (it was deep into the night then already), did my best to save the thing, turned the jagged edge around a bit (it's the side toward the viewer in the photo above), "sculpted" it to look like it's affixed to the ends of the struts, just so the edge is more uneven and helps hide the jagged side. In between I sometimes used a brush full of PVA/water to keep the stuff wet and manipulated it a little. Usually that just made matters worse and I think it was entirely unnecessary. anyway, I just let it dry and on the next day I gave it a basecoat, drybrush, some highlights and shades, and done.

The only thing I think I really messed up is the frontmost strut having bent back a little. Would look much nicer if it (and the hindmost one) would bend a bit to the front and back respectively, so the canvas'd top is a bit longer than the actual wagon. Oh well. For how chaotic the second go was it turned out OK I think.

So in general I think it's really not that hard to do. It's annoying if you have to do it again. I'm sure there are better materials to use than a paper tissue, but that's what I had at hand at 2am. :p

Here's an ad page on TMP posted in 2008 with a bunch of Perrys releases including this wagon, with a very nice photo of two of these Michael Perry built and painted.

http://theminiaturespage.com/news/922597/

He used these jeweller's chains to connect the mules, which looks rather nice. I got some of these chains lying around somewhere. As soon as I can be bothered I'll see that I can find'em and put them on the model too.



On there they say that they considered a resin top, but that would have made the kit too expensive. Speaking of prices, check out the prices listed on this page. Dang. 12 quid for the ACW plastic infantry box...

[Arthur]

The twins changed their mind in the meantime and went with a very nice resin top for their French Napoleonic baggage wagon. Cheers for the modelling tips in any case.

As for Perry prices, it's interesting to note that over a period of ten years they have gone up 20 to 25% for the metal codes and 66% for the plastic sets.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@Arthur: I guess since 2008 they realized that people will pay very much for minis. I don't mind doing a little bit of proper modelling. At least there's a sense of achievement in that. Yeah, the price increases are rather interesting, aren't they.




Basing things done:




Well, the Longstreet game for Wednesday got called off, so I have to re-read Longstreet in preparation of tomorrow. Hope to get the rules right by then.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Here finally is my report of our Gettysburg Gaming Day:

http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2018/04/show-report-gettysburg-gaming-day.html




Hope you like the report. I'll go off to painting nurgly tentacles and other *******' details again...

[Ray Rivers]

That is some really super eye candy.

I think your 28mm folks need a bigger table though.

Looks like you have quite a few camp followers. That makes for a great climate for gaming and allows projects to move quite quickly from the idea phase to the let's get lots of troops on the table phase.

Fantastic report!

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@Ray Rivers: Thanks very much! Yeah, you know what people are like. In the club enviroment tables sometimes are smaller than they should be, and people want to put all of their collection on display if possible. It's really impressive how much 28mm ACW stuff we got here in and around Vienna. And people constantly add to their collections! The games we could set up...

[Battle Brush Sigur]

The blogpost about the Mule Wagon is up now:

https://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2018/06/showcase-american-civil-war-mule-wagon.html



Even got out the old image fakey software to throw the title picture against some nice backdrop. Fun fact: this actually is a Gettysburg landscape in the background.