Salad Days?

Am I regressing to my youth as I approach retirement?  I think I may be.

When I was in my early teens I was a keen modeller spending a large part of my pocket money on at least one Airfix kit a week.  Of course I also had lots of the HO/OO plastic Airfix figures. I had both sides for the American Civil War (ACW) and the Western Desert in WWII.

Status Report

After all that stodgy stuff about L’Art De La Guerre (ADLG) in the last post I thought I’d just write a short piece about my current projects.  The following are all 15 mm:

• TYW artillery.  The three guns are done and the crew will be started next week.
• TYW musketeers. I’m half way through three battlegroups worth of these to bulk out my TYW collection.
• TYW infantry command. These are underway.  Some are destined for generic musketeer elements while the majority are for some Early German Protestant command elements.
• TYW Transylvanians.  I bought samples at Britcon and have nearly finished them all.  It’s been fun getting the colour palette right and I’ve even been edge highlighting blackened armour!
• WWII 8th Army.  Slowly working my way through a largish pile of infantry in batches of 4-8 figures each time.

Having a lot of projects isn’t that novel.  I suspect I have far fewer than many but the main thing is that I’m making progress with all of them.  In the last weeks I have finished and in some cases based:

• Eight bases of TYW musketeers (8 x 3 = 24 infantry).
• One batch of 8th Army (8 infantry).
• One battlegroup of Akinji light horse (8 x 2 = 8 cavalry).
• Three bases of TYW command each with two hand-painted Danish flags.

I think it’s far to say I have got my painting “mojo working”. When I’ve finished the Translyvanians I’ll get my camera out and take some pictures.

Silly Season

Once the UK goes on its summer holidays the country enters the silly season for news. However, the silly season usually starts in August so I was surprised when two press releases heralded its early arrival in the wargaming world:

1. Battlefront announced that they were to ban non-Battlefront models from competitions that they organise and sponsor.
2. Slitherine announced their intention to release version 2.0 of Field of Glory as an app for iPad, PC and Mac.

Given that I am enjoying the Northern League's Field of Glory competition and have been thinking about trying FOW these announcements were a double blow.

The common factor is the lack of consumer consideration and the marketing speak used in both announcements. As examples of the latter Battlefront used the deliciously concocted phrase "the FOW Hobby" whilst Slitherine were quoted as "proud to again be leading the charge and continuing the Wargames Revolution".

Flames of War - 8th Army Mortar Platoon

In March I post the test base of my first attempt at some 15 mm WWII figures from Peter Pig. Speedy as ever, I've now finished the whole mortar platoon so it's time to post another photo:



Over size photo. Click for enlarged, "warts and all", photo.

I’ve Joined The Tufty Club

Whilst at Phalanx I decided to buy some painted 15 mm Russian figures from the bring and buy. I bought painted figures because I want to experiment with my basing technique and use some Stilfor tufts as I'd read so much about them.

So I bought 25 figures and some 2 & 4 mm plain spring tufts. After a few hours work this is a sample of what I'd achieved:



Not the best picture in the world but you get the idea. Of course it's never that simple so the rest of this post covers what I leant.

15 mm T34 - Work In Progress

In early February I bought a box of 5 Plastic Soldier Company 15 mm T34s. They looked great and stirred memories of the Airfix kits of my youth. The plan was to use them to see if I could, and enjoyed, painted tanks.

Needless to say they've sat on my shelf until this week when I decided it was time to build and paint a test kit. Here's a work in progress shot. The base isn't quite finished and I need to get some transfers for the turret but otherwise it's done.



Overall I'm pleased with the end result. I aimed for a cartoon representation of a tank that will stand out on the table. As always the build didn't go according to plan.

Flames of War - 8th Army

After years of painting medieval figures for DBx and now FOG I thought I'd try something a bit different. So here we have my first attempt at some 15 mm WWII figures from Peter Pig.


Over size photo. Click for enlarged, "warts and all", photo.


"Life size" photo