Monday 16 August 2010

The Interlude continues

Well that's it; last night I finally finished repainting the bases of my 6mm Germans -total of 110 vehicles and 11 infantry bases. One base coat, some washy blobs, two highlighting colours and finally, blobs of PVA for flock on each base. Now I've started on the Russians; in one way they are easier because there are only 94 vehicles and as yet no infantry (have to rectify that at Derby), but some of them need a bit of touching up seeing as I didn't paint them. Still, definitely not a spectator sport I can tell you! Thank God for Kerrang radio. Already got the guts ache and I've only done 21 T34/85's and 9 IS2's.  Then of course once they are done I have to make some terrain. It just goes on and on doesn't it, but in a perverse way that is what the hobby so interesting; variety is the spice of life and all that.
Hammers, eh? What can I say? Nothing really. Spoke to some Villa fans at work after the match who all said it was nice of West ham to turn up. Sad start. Mind you I have another sport I've got into over the last few months thanks to ESPN and that's Aussie Rules Football. Amazing game, seems to be a mix of rugby league, volleyball and any number of martial arts techniques. Where the football comes in is anybodies guess. The official web site is at
http://www.afl.com.au/ 
and an idiot's guide (that's me)  is at
http://www.australianrules.info/viewpage.php?page_id=3
To someone brought up on a diet of football (the proper one), scoring is strange, tactics are even stranger, scraps abound -on, off and around the ball. 22 players per side with 18 on the OVAL pitch at any given time and free swappsies with the other 4 , 7 refs (umpires). 4 quarters of nominally 25 minutes each. Incredible game, Have a look, I love it.

Friday 6 August 2010

Not 15mm Sassys

I haven't stopped posting on the other blog, it's just that that one is exclusively for the two ongoing 15mm  armies whereas this one is for everything else.
An occasional task that I have set myself is to tidy up the lid of the gaff so that I can set up a 6' by 5' table. I use the word occasional because, like most wargamers I have known over the years, we are magpies who collect and keep shedloads of bits and pieces knowing full well that the week after we throw something away we will need it. So in the next few days I will post a 'before' picture so you can see the magnitude of the task.
Now where is this leading, you may ask, and rightly so.
Reading through some of the blogs, and being somewhat of a solo wargamer, (at the moment anyway), I have thought about various periods that would work well as a solo project and a period that I already have armies in. In a flash it came to me -World War II. Now it just so happens that I  have most of the fighting elements of Das Reich Panzer Division at 1:5 -works out at 15 Panthers and 30 Mark IV's plus an attached Schwere Panzer Abteilung to start with,  as well as a sizable selection of Russians. So I dug them out from their video-case storage, blew the dust of the lids, and thought these only need the bases repainting and a coat of matt varnish and Robert is definitely your mother's brother. Now in front of the 24 half-painted Sassanid LI there is a battalion of 6mm Panthers with damp bases.
More as it happens.
Mick