Base coating the plastic Ogre miniatures

After priming all of the Ogre miniature plastics, it’s time to start base coating them. I’m taking the quick and dirty route, with Krylon Fusion spray paint.

That’s about 5000 vehicles, plus another 450 or so Ogres. I will start detail painting these in batches. I’ve decided I’m just going to follow the paint scheme I have always used for the metal miniatures.

Ogre Miniatures Set #2

I received my first shipment of Ogre Miniatures Set #2 (Too Many Minis Level):

 

So that's roughly 1000 plastic miniatures to go along with the approximately 2000 from OM Set #1. 

Adding those to my existing metal miniatures gives me roughly 10,000 Ogre miniatures of various ages and types. Guess I'd better get busy painting the new ones...

Contents of 1 box:

 

Ogre Miniature Painting Tips

I'm going to share a few tips and techniques I've picked up over the years. Tools, painting techniques, you name it.

Antennas for 6mm scale vehicles
 

I use black nylon paint brush bristles for antennas. They are cheap, plentiful, and you don't puncture your finger every time you pick up a mini, like you do with wire antennas. I recall thinking "I'm going to need a tetanus shot" after stabbing my finger on some Battletech mech wire antennas I did years ago...
 

I bought a cheap nylon bristle paint brush and cut the bristles off with scissors. I have been using those bristles for the last 25 years or so, and have yet to run out.
 

I usually leave the bristle long, and use a drop of superglue to attach it to the mini, sometimes I use a drop of accelerator so I don't have to hold it in place for too long. After the glue has dried for an hour or so, you can trim the antenna to length with scissors or flush cutters.
 

See my pictures in the GEV painting tutorial below.

 

 

Painting and Detailing Paneuropean GEV's
 

I got busy and painted a huge batch of GEV's recently, I was tired of the monochromatic red paint scheme. Basically there are 8 steps to doing this:
 

1) Priming - I usually prime my miniatures with Krylon Ultra Flat black. It sticks like crazy and dries fast. Of course, if I'm painting the vehicle light colors, then the black primer sucks. Luckily not many of my Ogre vehicles are light in color.

 

 

2) Base Coat - I sprayed the Paneuropean vehicles with Krylon Banner Red (satin) from a rattle can. Like I've said elsewhere, I believe in quick and dirty paint jobs for these. Krylon was nice enough to discontinue Banner Red (satin) from their line a few years ago, so I switched to their Banner Red (gloss). I figured I could just spray everything with Dullcote and they would all look the same. Nope. The gloss Banner Red is a little darker than the satin, so now I have a two-toned army. Oh well.

 

 

3) Skirt - I paint the skirt flat black all the way around the GEV with a craft store brand acrylic.

 

 

4) Windshield - The windshield is really two steps. I mix up a 50% wash of light blue paint and put a drop in each window. Capillary action usually does the rest, filling in the whole window. If not, a #0 brush can be used to work it into the edges. After that wash dries fully, I mix up another 50% wash, this time with dark (Navy) blue. I repeat the process of putting a drop in each window. The nice part about this technique is that it usually leaves a lighter colored "frame" around the window edges.

 

 

5) Lift Fan - I put a drop of 50% metallic silver wash in here, to highlight the blades. I also put a dot of black in each engine inlet and exhaust.

 

 

6) Guns - I pick out the 5 gun barrels with metallic gold.

 

 

7) Antenna - Just superglue the bristle into the antenna socket, let dry, and cut to size. You can also curl them with something to give them that swept-back look.

 

 

8) Flat Coat - I dust a couple of light coats of Dullcote over the whole miniature, for protection and to remove any glossiness.

Steps 2-6 from above:

 

Just cut some brush bristles to size

 

A close-up shot of a new batch

 

 

A flotilla of GEVs fresh off the assembly line!

 

Ogre Terrain Boards #3

Well, I've been working on these terrain boards for quite a while now, and they are starting to look pretty good. Well, to me at least. There are some amazingly talented people out there creating breathtaking terrain, and I'm not one of them. Anyway, I took the boards I made previously and carved some craters and depressions in them, and glued on some low hills.

I had thought about creating some mountainous terrain areas, but in Ogre scale, a 1" tall hill is pretty high. I used a hot wire foam cutter and a hacksaw blade for the rough shaping, then sandpaper and finally a green scratch pad to clean things up. What a mess! Thank goodness for the shop vacuum.

Once everything looked fairly smooth, I took them out to the garage and painted them with some light yellow latex paint left over from another project. This was just to seal the boards, and give something for the terrain materials to stick to. I let the boards dry for 24 hours or so.

I took one board at a time back down the basement and laid it out on my work table with lots of newspapers underneath. I made up some thinned glue mixture in a spray bottle. I used about 35% white glue, 60% water, and the rest was denatured alcohol to make sure the glue spread out easily.

I sprayed down the first board thoroughly, as in really wet. Then I started sprinkling some brown craft sand I picked up from Hobby Lobby. I covered the whole board with the sand in a thin layer, and let the board dry for about 12 hours.

The next day I lifted one end of the board and let the loose sand slide off. I tapped the board a few times to dislodge all the loose sand, then poured that sand back into my container for reuse. I sprayed down any areas that looked thin, and reapplied the sand. The board edges were especially tough to get covered well. This process was repeated for the other 3 boards until all were covered. I sprayed another coat of glue over all the boards to lock the sand down. I let them dry for another day or so.

I moved all the boards back downstairs to my work table for painting. I used a thin brown wash to highlight the craters and dry riverbed, then I got out my airbrush and sprayed a couple of lighter sand shades on the hills and wherever the sand looked too uniform. I'm still debating putting any kind of green on these boards, like thin grass or a few trees. Maybe later.

I think they look pretty good, although I am considering adding a few wrecked Ogre miniatures and debris here and there.

The next big step is coming up with a way to transport these to Origins in my car. Some sort of frame to allow stacking them is probably the way I will go.

I thought I'd put up a picture of my last terrain attempt, a replica of the original Ogre crater map using Heroscape tiles.

It still gets used occasionally. Maybe I'll make a GEV map to go with it someday.

Removing Paint From Ogre Miniatures With Pine-Sol

I have been picking up a lot of Ogre miniatures on the secondary market. While some of them have great paint jobs and need only a little touch-up to be integrated into my forces, others are not so lucky. I have experimented with various paint removal methods over the years, and have determined that Pine-Sol meets my needs most effectively. 

Pine-Sol is widely available, cheap, smells good, and I hear it can also be used to clean floors, although I don't have any personal experience in that area.


Here's a picture of a recently purchased batch that needed the paint removed:

These had been primed with spray enamel primer, then painted with a mixture of enamels and acrylics, and then in some cases had sand glued on their bases for texture. I pulled off any loosely glued parts for re-gluing later.

Into the Pine-Sol they go:

I use plastic containers with tight fitting lids, this one is from some sort of sliced deli meat product. I let them soak for about 24 hours, then I took the container to the kitchen sink and washed off the Pine-Sol with warm water and used a soft brass bristled brush to gently scrub any paint that had not just fallen off into the sink. Put the sink strainer in the drain or you may lose something down into the disposal, I hate when that happens.

Remember to wash out the sink when you are done or you'll hear about it from your significant other!


I let them dry on a couple of paper towels with a fan blowing on them and this was the result:

I think they look pretty good, and are ready to be primed and painted and added to my forces. I hope this article is of use to any of you Ogre miniature gamers with similar issues.

Smoke!



I found a really great idea online for making smoke, and I decided to use it for my Ogre miniatures games. It is pretty simple, here is what I did:

Materials list:
Polyester fiberfill
Black spray paint (flat)
Some small metal washers
Hobby paints (red, orange, yellow)

Tools:
Hot glue gun
Paintbrush

Tear up the fiberfill into appropriately sized pieces. Spray them with the black spray paint, and allow them to dry thoroughly. When they are dry, use the hot glue gun to attach them to the washers. The washers give them some weight so they do not fall over. Allow them to cool a bit. I glued mine on top of a ceramic tile so that I could easily peel them off without damaging them.

Once they are dry, use the red paint to paint the base of the cloud, then move up a bit using the orange and the yellow. Just dab the paint on, this is just a representation of smoke, after all. When dry they are pretty much done, although a light spray of flat sealer probably would not hurt.

Updates

I have been slacking in my blog updates, my apologies for that. Life gets in the way sometimes.

I have been working on multiple Ogre Miniatures projects, I just have not had a lot of time to blog about them:

• Started a new set of terrain boards (inspired by the Quindia Studios write-up).
• Picked up some used Ogre miniatures and have been working on stripping/repainting them.
• Started teaching my son Jonathan (8) how to play. He's also helping with the terrain boards.
• Re-thinking my existing Ogre miniature transport/storage solution.
• Getting the rest of my buildings painted.

I'll start updating more often, and get some pictures on here too. The new terrain boards are going to look great.

I've been hanging out on the Steve Jackson Games Ogre forum hoping to hear more about 6e. The sparse news that I have seen is not promising. Ogre still takes a back seat to anything Munchkin related. I know they have to keep the money coming in, but the lack of support and delays is depressing. Showing us cool prototypes and creating a dealer sell sheet shows that they intend to produce something eventually, but how many years will we have to wait?

Ogre Collection

I thought I'd put together a list of all my Ogres, and then I decided as long as I was going to do that, I might as well put up pictures of them as well...

Ogre Mark I

Ogre Mark II

Ogre Mark III

Ogre Mark III-B

Ogre Mark IV

Ogre Mark V

Ogre Mark VI

Fencer A & B

Doppelsoldner

Vulcan and 2 drones

Ninja

Ogrethulhu's

destroyed Ogre

and a group shot or two

Another cheap Ogre buildings project

In my seemingly endless pursuit of 1/300 scale (6mm) buildings for my Ogre and Battletech games, I have started yet another project using easily obtained materials.

I had been considering the construction of some "Quonset hut" looking buildings for a while, and during a trip to Lowe's I had an inspiration in the plumbing aisle. There was a display of PVC pipe, pre-cut in 2' lengths.

I picked one up and looked it over and thought "If I sliced this lengthwise and capped the ends, it would look like a Quonset hut/aircraft hangar".

So I bought some.

PVC pipe is sized by the internal diameter (for example, 2"), so the outside diameter is always somewhat larger. I bought three 2' sections in 3 different sizes: 2.5 (2.875")", 3" (3.5"), and 4" (4.5").

 I figure the largest size will be an Ogre factory/garage, since it scales out to be about 112' wide. I have an idea in the back of my head about an Ogre "assembly line" with multiple buildings in line with one another.

After getting them home I had a moment's hesitation about how I was going to cut them lengthwise, a bandsaw seemed like the best option, but I don't own one. Luckily a coworker of mine does have one, and he zipped them all in half for me. I used my power miter saw to chop them off into suitable lengths, and then sanded down the rough edges.

In my materials storage area I had a couple of large plastic sheets that I scrounged from somewhere, they were white and about 4' square and maybe 1/8" thick. I scored a line down one sheet and snapped off a piece for testing.

I knew from some past experiences that PVC pipe can be hard to glue, you can't glue it with epoxy, superglue, PVA, or anything else the average modeler has on his workbench. In plumbing they use a purple glue and a special cleaner to make the joints watertight.

I visited Lowe's again, and discovered they offer a glue for sticking PVC to almost all other plastics. The glue really stinks, be sure to use it in a well-ventilated area, but it stuck my test pieces together so well that the plastic failed before the glue joint.

I cut some appropriately sized rectangles out of the plastic and glued all of the ends on at once, to minimize the number of times I had to open the glue can. I was undecided on doors/windows, whether to cut them out or paint them on, so I left the ends solid for now.

After letting them dry for 24 hours or so, I used my Dremel tool with a cutoff disk to remove most of the excess plastic, then sanded the remainder using the Dremel and some sandpaper. You have to sand slowly to keep the plastic from heating up and melting though. I used some fine sandpaper to go over the pipe surfaces so the primer would hopefully adhere a bit better.

I used a light coat of gray primer to bring out any defects so I could sand them out, then primed them again when I was satisfied with the finish.

The next step will be to work out the door and window options, and then get them painted.

Ogre Infantry Painting

I spent a few hours last night working on painting my Ogre infantry miniatures. I had painted a batch of them a long time ago, but had never been happy with the bases, which I had simply painted a couple of shades of green.  I was looking at them the other night in preparation for more infantry painting, and decided I hated the bases. They looked like the infantry were standing on a golf course. Not likely in the Ogre universe. Not impossible, but not likely. If they did fight on a golf course I doubt that Chem Lawn would have been out recently to spray for weeds anyway.

So I painted over all of the green bases with a light gray. Looking through my supply of terrain materials, I found a partial container of Woodland Scenics Fine Ballast, in light gray. Hmmmm.

After cleaning, basing, and painting the new batch of infantry, I painted their bases to match the originals. I let everything dry overnight. The next day I made up a 50% white glue (PVA) and 50% water mix and painted this mixture onto an infantry base with a small brush. I covered the entire base with the glue mixture, making sure to get right up to the figures' boots.

I poured a small amount of the ballast into a plastic cup and then set the infantry base into the ballast and shook it around to get full coverage. I left the stand there for a couple of minutes and then pulled it out, and shook off the excess ballast. After a couple of taps on the base with the handle of a hobby knife to dislodge any stray ballast bits, I set it aside to dry. This process was repeated for the remainder of the infantry stands. When I was finished, I moved the whole pile to a nearby table and let a  small fan blow on them overnight to speed the drying process.

Once they were dry I wet down the ballast with a thin black wash, to add depth and sort of glue everything together some more. Put them back in front of the fan to dry some more. Once they are dry they will get a spray of Dull Cote and that should finish up the Ogre infantry for the near future.

A couple of shots of my workbench here...