Remaining stuff to paint and THE GAME

I did have this list below as part of the layout but I looked at it a couple of times and got understandedly depressed because I knew that wasn't even near half of the lead mountain. I took it off and put it in a post where hopefully I can come back every so often and check progress.

6mm (all Irregular)

Loads of the litle blighters including-in no particular period order:

Egyptians, Hittites, Franco-Prussian (both Franco and Prussian), Late WW I French plus others I can't remember unless I go looking. In total, about a size 8 shoe box full.

10mm

Gauls (0), Remaining -all of em

Romans (28), Remaining -none

Chinese (52) Remaining (66i, 18c)

Mongols (about 20c), Remaining -none

15mm

Polish Renaissance (0), Remaining -all of em

Cossack Renaissance (0), Remaining -all of em

Marlburian British (216i) Remaining lots!

Marlburian Prussian (0), Remaining -all of em

WWII Germans (0), Remaining -all of em

25/28mm

Carthaginians (150i, 4c), Remaining -(40+i, 8c)

It's the Game this afternoon, Irons v Gunners. According to Zola, take the game to them and they don't like it, stop them playing their neat passing game (Wenger is to be commended for this, nice football, pleasure to watch. Grieves me to say it but it's true.), and they are beatable. Lets hope so.

Keeping with the non-Mongol posts...

        Above: Polish Winged Hussars and the general, Grand Hetman Chodkiewitz. (Hinchcliffe                            and OG).
    Above:  Russian Foot Cossacks supported by Drab infantry. (Mix of Hinchcliffe, Essex and                           OG).
      Below: Polish commander chats to an officer. (Essex mounted figure converted from some                          Renaissance  figure or another with wing attached and scratch-built mace. Foot figure                    of unknown provenance).                                          

               Below:  The pride of the Polish army, the Winged Hussars (Hinchcliffe figures).


            Above: Big bugger of a cannon. (Crew -unknown. The cannon is a kids toy that fires                                  matchsticks -  the trigger can be seen below the barrel- but was too nice to pass up.)
Not much more to say after the abortive attempts to take piccys of Mongols and Poles/Russians the other day. YO is wending her way back from Uni next week and she has the bits to plug her camera card straight into her fliptop machine, hopefully I should get a look-see at my attempts.
While you are are holding your breath, here is my version of the old in-between-progarammes Test Card, (I'm afraid you'll have to play your own background music). its some piccys of my Polish Renaissance Army taken a few years ago. Compare them with the Mongols who were painted later -especially the skins, now I use a darker base colour and it seems to work. In fact the Polish was the first 25mm army I had painted in about 15 years so I was a bit rusty. But you wait until the Carthaginian pics come out (hopefully, because they were also on the camera when it went on strike). Conversions everywhere, bright colours abound, lots of the old MiniFigs from the WRG Macedonian and Punic Wars First Edition. (Remember that? If not ask your dad), Yes, I still have a copy as well as the original Armies and Enemies. I also have a copy of 3rd Ed. WRG Ancient rules; plus, if you really want to get old and rare, a copy of Rene North's Military Uniforms still sits on my bookshelf; Funcken's in French...the sad list goes on and so could I, but luckily for you I won't. There are also a shedload of old Lamming Greeks that I had lying about painted as Carthaginian veterans.  
As it is said locally, I am 'chuffed to little meatballs' with them...no, I haven't got a clue what it means either -it must be a Midlands thing.

Technology is vastly over rated!

When everything is going smoothly technology is a wonderful aid to modern living, but of course, when everthing is going smoothly you wonder why and more importantly, how long for. Take today for example. Got up -nothing new there- sun was shining -novelty value, off the scale for October in Birmingham. After breccy I said to the other half (OH), 'Suns out, so I'm going to take some piccys for the articles I'm writing'.
'Okay, but don't be too long coz I need to hang the washing out and you'll be in the way.'
'Shouldn't take long.' I said sprightly. (You can almost hear the patter of gremlin feet as they begin to queue just off camera, can't you.)
Struggled manfully with large cardboard storage crates -one of figures the other with terrrain- down from the loft; got the camera, tripod, spare batteries, carpet tiles for base and so on and managed to get it all into the garden. Knackered out so had a cup of tea, (supplied by considerate OH).
Laid out tiles, placed lines of trees in the background to obscure the garden fence and trellis, put a couple of other terrain bits across joins in tiles and put the figures on the table. Set up the tripod, locked down camera, took picture. Obligatory click from camera; one in the bag. Took another couple from other angles just cos I could. Things are going swimmingly. Moved figures out of shot, (see, I can be technical if I want), carefully organised next layout. Pressed button. Silence. the back of the camera was  dark. Now the lens was still open, the camera was pointed the right way, no thumb in shot etc., nothing but still dark. Not a sausage, bugger all. Technical hitch, thinks I. Unlocks camera, changes batteries so that the six megalomanical pixies are fed, tries again. Same response. Cussed a bit, fiddled a lot and tried again. Success...for another two pictures, then darkness once more. This went on for about an hour; a couple of piccys than lockout. Came to the logical conclusion that the camera, being of oriental manufacture, was not built for use in the English sunshine; obviously, the pixies are squinting too much to paint accurately.
OH came back from visit to neighbours and had a quick gripe about the mechanics of washing; hours of sunshine left to dry said washing equals more expense of using tumble dryer and the fact I said I wouldn't be that long etc. Had a quick strop myself before stuttering into silence under one of her best withering glares.
So now I have approx ten pictures that may be okay, I don't know coz I still cant' get into the ruddy camera to check.

10mm Expansionism and other stuff

Well, since Derby the painting brushes at chez ger have been hard at work and the following are now completed; For the Chinese, the two rocket launchers done in a rather nice red colour; a second unit of archers; the little diorama base of galloping horses with two Mongol 'minders', a little clump of trees in one corner and a rock from a beach on Mallorca in another. Yes, yes I know its not strictly accurate geographically speaking, but it looks half decent. Also, half done is a second Chinese crossbow unit.
When -or maybe I should say if- I ever do a Spanish army from any period or a Peninsular army of any nationality, the figure bases will be covered in small rocks and other detritus all collected from the same beach. Next year it will be sand from Tunisia for any north African army from any period. How much of an anorak is that! No, don't reply, it was a rhetorical question.
Tried something else in the way of tree manufacture the other day. In the local H'base they have green dyed sisal string in clumps to be used as hanging basket filler instead of poor old Pete. Wasn't an instant hit it must be said but maybe I will try again another day. If anyone can make it work let me know.
In between all of this, the keyboard has been taking a bit of a bladdering coz I mentioned to a certain magazine publisher at Derby that if he wanted I could do some articles on the Mongols. The so-and-so only went and said yes. So, there we are, steam rising from the pc, running out of candles and fingers worn down to the second knuckle, and don't even get me started on camera's. I offered to take some piccy's but apparently my 4 megalomanic-pixie camera can't paint the images well enough, you need six of the little buggers beavering away in the box. (Homage to Pratchett). Luckily YO had the required item -now all I need is a nice day. Ha! England in October, you must be having a Turkish mate. Never mind, the Met Office website will get bombarded with hits in the immediate future. Just in case.
Talking about England, the squad did well in the last two matches. Bit of a first half hiccup that could have gone pear-shaped against better opposition than the Khazaks but they came good in the end. Disgusted with the so-called 'fans' who booed Ashley Cole. The bloke made a mistake which led to a goal. You can't tell me that nobody has ever done anything like that before. Also, looking at the replay, Ferdinand the Elder is indicating for a back pass to James and behind him, the Khazak striker has already started a no more than hopeful run. Who was tracking him? The Invisible Man, that's who. Nobody moved or picked him up until the ball was in the air and then it was too late, the bloke had a half decent head start on everybody. Talk about rabbit's in headlights. Cole is probably pee'd off enough at himself without a few gumby's having a go as well. And that young kid saying that he needed to be taught a lesson. He's the one who could do with a lesson -one in respect. Ashley Cole deserved his place in that line-up and had a decent match before and after the incident. Then for the Belarus match Cole is 'injured'.  Whether his confidence is shot or what I don't know; I sincerely hope not and hope that he can get over it and play again. And of course that the gumby element in the crowd learn from their mistake. Booing anybody during a match for a mistake is not exactly confidence boosting is it? Rant over.
Found out what was wrong with the puter. Nothing to do with the machine itself but the mouse had got something stuck in the screen-rolling part of its components. A couple of swift taps with a size 3 rubber hammer  fixed it a treat. Working well enough now.

Derby Show

I like the Derby show, it takes me back to when I were a young lad in sunny Southend back in the early 70's and we used to go to nice sized shows, chat to a lot of people; get a chance to wander about a lot without having to fight your way past a testudo of backpacks to have a look at some manufatcurer or another's latest offerings and generally take in the atmosphere. Derby is all this and more. The split between traders and games is about right even though Dunc the Mac told me that there were over 70 traders there, not bad at all. Mind you, when you can go to a show and get everything you want and a bit more besides it must be good. (Thinking back, the choice of manufacturers back in the day was severely limited...Minfigs, Hinton Hunt and Hinchcliffe were the main stalwarts, although others were starting up -Warrior, Dixon, Lamming etc. But we were happy.) 

Some nice games on show, unfortunately my camera batteries died before I could get piccy's of all of them. It's strange sometimes you can't get a new slant on things for ages and then two come along along at once. Instead of the usual Wars of the Roses Medieval there was a nice Poles against Ottomans by the Derby Wargames Society and Stonewall put on a huge 25mm Medieval recreation of the Battle of Vaslui in 1475 -no, I'd never heard of it either, but it was nice all the same. Shedloads of 25mm figures on a humungously large 'L' shaped table. Apparently it was between Ottomans and loads of eastern European types.  Another game that immediately caught the eye was J A Designs and friends with their 10mm W W II. Very nicely painted. Check out his website at http://www.quarks-bar.co.uk/ The stuff you see there is the stuff they were using. 

Border Reivers and their 25mm Great Northern War Battle of Streszow put some very nicely painted figures on the table and I found out something really useful. For ages Mr Hilton and the others at LoA had been using cloth as the base for their standards, so have Border Reivers, (and Stonewall for that matter but they print theirs on). You know what they use? Old shirts! For crying out loud! It's so bloody obvious it's too obvious if you know what I mean. I've got about 10 old white shirts with logo's on that I will never wear again so my next 25mm army is going to have cloth standards...and probably every army I will ever paint after that. I was told if you superglue it to the pole then wrap around once and superglue again then paint the base colour on while its flat, that stiffens it up nicely. Another neat trick I found out from a gentleman at Stonewall. If you use a pice of brass tube and wrap the standard around that, the whole thing then slides over the pole. Glaringly obvious advantage -ECW, 30YW and probably others. One set of figures, two sets of standards. easy innit?

All good stuff.

Irregular were there with their 10mm range so another Mongol light cav unit (12 cav) plus a plethora of Chinese -1 x 24 archers, 2 x 24 crossbows, 1 x 42 halbardiers and 1 x 24 heavy cavalry, two wagons and two rocket launchers were duly purchased. Checked out the usefulness of other figures to use as Russians/Polish and was pleasantly surprised -most of the other TC range looks pretty handy.

Magister Militum supplied some free roaming horses and a bag of baggage camels for some little cameo bases of -funnily enough- wild horses and baggage camels.

Pendraken Normans can be used for Russian/Polish militia types.

Kallistra are nice but incompatible with the three above -they are too big, more like 12mm. However, saying that, I bought a bag of the Mongol Command. The reasoning behind this is that all the figures will be on the same base and away from everyone else so hopefully the difference will not be too noticable.

Didn't go a bundle on Old Glory. Looked at the siege range and thought I can do the same in card so I didn't bother.

All in all a good Saturday well spent.

I am getting really racked off with this bloody computer. The missus forgot to feed the hamster and he is not spinning the wheel or the elastic band is on its way out or whatever the problem is, it keeps losing my page or changing things and not telling me. I reckon it's going to be an 'up against the nearest wall job' pretty damn soon if it doesn't start behaving. 

Look out, another month has just shot past!

Above is a picture (also on the 10mm wargaming yahoo group website (http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/10mm-Miniatures/ ) of the first of my Roman cohorts.  Please ignore the table top, the garden hose, the fence and the wall in the background. Also before I get inundated with comments about the broken standared on the centre base...I know its broken, it happened after the bloke was glued down so there was nothing I could do. Mind you, it can only be seen if you enlarge the photo.
Well, October certainly crept up on me. All of a sudden it's the Derby show this weekend; probably going up on the Saturday. The older you get, the faster the time passes. (Whoever said that first should have immediately slapped a copyright on it -he'd be rolling in it by now.)
Mongol's and the rest have gone off the boil a bit, mainly because I don't have any more to paint...but I do have 10mm Romans and Gauls. Now, as of the time of this post the Romans have 3 cohorts of regulars plus two of supporting infantry and both units of cavalry for the legion.
While out on a walk the other day I worked out that an eight cohort strength legion, (yes, I know they were ten but in the field and all that), means that at a minimum of 42 figures per cohort I only need to paint another 210 of the little buggers, not including another two cohorts of supports, plus the legionary artillery and all the other attached impedimenta...Phew, no problem there then.
Don't get me started on the unpainted mini-mountain of Gauls!
Irons are still on a roll -apart for a glitch against Watford- but how long it will last is anybody's guess. Typical of WH, going out to lower league opposition, still, at the moment, a quick look at the table shows that they are in contention for Europe next year, although now that Ashton's out for x amount of months options up front are extremely limited, saying that, young Freddie Sears whacked four past West Brom reserves not too long ago. Definately good for the future that lad...although the future could be nearer than you think.