On the Painting Desk: Perry Miniature's Travel Battle

 

As a palette cleanser from all that Heroquest, I am going to shift gears and work on something different.  I want to take a weekend or two to paint up my Travel Battle by Perry Miniatures.  This is a Horse-and-Musket game that uses 8mm miniatures on a pair of gridded terrain plates.  It is the ultimate Kitchen Table game.  

Box is also a carry-case

I spray undercoated all the components with Grey Seer.  I guess this was a mistake, as the core rules claim that the minis do not need to be undercoated.  Woops!  The rules have a small painting guide that I have all ready messed up!  Oh well.  

For the terrain boards, I did not want to use my fancy paints.  Those are too expensive for this type of project.  Instead, I picked up some Big Box craft paints.  I got a nice pack of 10 or so Nature colors for $10 USD.  These come pretty thick to start, but you can water them down and they work just fine.  I also picked up a make-up brush for the amount of Drybrushing I was planning on doing.  I also used some of the Speed Paint markers for certain touch-ups and a few other spots.  

I really should have taken more "in progress" shots.  The "grass" took two-layers of dark green, and two drybrush coats of progressively lighter greens.  The farms I used a couple different base coats of brown and a layer of drybrush. The roads were tough to not mess up as well.  Finally, I painted the little houses and forest canopies with my Speedpaint Markers.  

As finishing touches, I trimmed the edge of the board in straight black to give them a nice clean edge.  Then, I sprayed a protective coat over the whole thing to protect it from harm when we play.  I really find the terrain boards pretty cool because no matter which edges you line up, they match!  This board took me a nice Saturday to complete.  

From there, it was onto the two armies.  Each army was a pair of identical sprues with a light cavalry unit, Heavy Cavalry unit, a Guards Infantry unit, two Brigade Commanders, and some regular infantry units too.  Each infantry unit took two rows of soldiers, cavalry three horsemen, and commanders are singles.  I tend to think of these armies as British and French, but the rules only refer to them as Blue and Red. 

I started by painting the "Red" team.  I painted them on the sprue, which is not something I normally do!  I painted their pants with Holy White.  Then, I painted the coats with Slaughter Red.  The Shakos were Grim Black.  I painted the muskets and backpacks with Hardened Leather.  Horses were a mix of Graveyard Grey, Runic Grey, Holy White, Harden Leather, and Dark Wood.  I then washed them with Dark tone.  One done, I went back and painted all their skin Crusader Skin and did some touch-ups with some metallics, Zealot Yellow and some bands with White acrylic.  Once done, I sprayed them with protective enamel.   

Painted the "Red" Army took me a night of effort.  A few days later, I turned my attention to the "Blue" Team.  The horses I painted the same way, and I stuck with the white pants.  However, instead of Slaughter Red on the jackets, I used Magic Blue to try and get a bright blue coat.  Unlike the "Red" army, I decided to paint the chest straps with Holy White.  Shakos were Grim Black and Muskets and Backpacks were Hardened Leather.  Very similar to the "Red" army except for the jackets.  This was another night of work.   

At 8mm, it is more about getting the right dot of color in the right place.  This is not the smallest I have painted, but I found this scale harder than when I painted ancient 6mm.  The level of detail always surprises me at this scale.  You really can not see it that well at arm's length, but it is there.  I also used speedpaints, but they are not well suited for this scale.  I prefer my traditional Armypainter paints for this scale and historicals.  However, they were not available and were packed away.  Also regretted using Dark tone, I should have used a Sepia-tone ink instead of a Black-based ink.  Oh well, lessons learned or something?     

Once I had the "Red" and "Blue" army painted up it was time to get them on their bases.  I had previously painted them with the same Greens I used on the board.  I painted them at the same time.  Once mounted, I rimmed the bases with white and then painted Red or Blue to match the army.  Finally, I sprayed it down with a protective coat.  This is going to be a travel game, so it needs to be able to stand-up to wear and tear.  

Armies deployed

With all of this painted up, it was time to set it all up on the table.  

I am not sure how to put this on the Painting Tracker, but I will figure it out!  This freed up time and space for me to start working on my Vandal army for the Late Roman period.  Watch this space for some big bulk painting projects, however I will need to dig out my traditional paints before I start doing those.   

Until next time! 

All packed away in the carry-case.  Ready to travel! 

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