Friday 25 February 2011

Had a Senior Moment there,

On the last post I forgot to mention who made the Modern...mainly because I haven't a clue. I could narrow it down to maybe H & R or Navwar but thats as close as it gets. (In any event it's a bit of buckshee advertising for both firms.)

The Sassanids are definitely made by Donnington Miniatures.

Thursday 24 February 2011

At last, a nice day

It's been quite pleasant up here in the usually Wet Midlands so I dashed outside to take a few pics.
Now the thing is, I couldn't tell you what Mark or letter any of these so I will go with the type. Simples! (For me anyway. I've no doubt someone will let me know.)

A Chieftain. Now, on a veteren's forum he said that BAOR stuff was painted with any dark green they could get hold of although factory specimens were a 'bronze green'. Unless noted otherwise these have been painted with, as a base colour, Vallejo German Cam Green 70979, the netting is Flat Green 70968 dry-brushed with Light Green 70942. Black lines were painted on and the whole vehicle given a black wash before dry=brushing with Russian Uniform 70924. The models were given 2 coats of varnish, 1 of gloss and another of matt. The flock and foliage was sprayed with hair spray which unfortunately gave them a bit of a sheen.

One problem is that the green was a bit dark on the tanks and the black lines don't show up very well. (This problem has been rectified by using a lighter green on the Warrior MICV's.)



A Scorpion.



A Stalwart lorry.



This is the command base for the Chieftain regiment. Shows a Chieftain and a command Sultan. Now I know the aerial looks a bit thick but I tried using bristles and after the first 5 snapped I started using brass wire, unfortunately this is the thinnest I have.



A Challenger.



The whole Challenger regiment.



The Challenger command base with its Sultan.



The next three are of the latest Sassy Levy infantry unit.







Monday 21 February 2011

Pastoral Sqalour a la Wargamer

I know that last post I said that I wouldn't take any photo's of my painting table, I didn't lie, I just forgot that I had taken some a while ago. In fact, checking the puter info uploaded with the pics, they were taken at midnight on 2nd October last year, at the same time as I uploaded the pics from the Derby Show.

So here they are.

In one respect I am quite fortunate in that I have two tables in the tower, the computer table on the left in the top pic, and the painting table on the right in the lower. Nothing has changed, they are both still in a bit of a state, the only major difference is that the small heap of Sassy Levy have been finished.

By the way, in the top left of the puter table pic are two clay busts; these were made by EO and YO while still in full time education. In case you are wondering, they are my runtlings' artistic interpretation of yours truly. In the painting table pic, in front of the jars are two mall, white plastic hemispherical objects. They are actually the widgets from cans of Guinness cut in half, eventually to become the domes on the tops of some more 15mm Middle Eastern houses.




On a footballing front, I listened to the Irons v Burnley match on the radio up here while ripping Warriors from their old bases. 5-1 to the Irons. Result. Next stop is Stoke away in the next round. Stoke have a couple of unpredictably dangerous players, Mr Long Throw Delap and ex-Hammer Matty Etherington who can raise a line of dust as he barrels down the wing at a rate of knots. Keep them out of it and then you only have to worry about the strikers. Game's already won. (Yeah right. WH have done well so far, I just hope they haven't peaked too soon.)

Still blowing Bubbles (NO, not the simian -steady missus- I mean West Ham's signature tune for crying out loud!!!)

Sunday 20 February 2011

No names, no pack drill

There is a bloke up in the north east of this fair country who carries the blame for all of this. I was catching up on a few blogs that I check periodically and came across his postings about some modern 6mm Belgians, Russians and Brits that he was doing as another slight diversion. I took one look at them and thought, those are nicely done and a bit inspirational and as I've got a mess of that stuff, I'll dig it out and have a look. Dug it out, had a look and decided that they needed rebasing. Now, I do not undertake rebasing lightly, in fact as I posted on the WD3 forum the other week 'I would rather gnaw my own leg off than rebase figures'. Then I had a closer look and thought sod it, I'll go all the way and repaint the little bu**ers...and it's all his fault.

So on my workbench now, (which by the way I will not photograph because it is a perfect example of pastoral squalour but I know exactly where everything is and if I tidy it I'll never be able to find anything), I now have 6 15mm Sassy bolt-throwers plus crews, the army command element of 5 Sassy Catty's and Clibs cavalry, some more Hunnic Mongols and 2 recently completed 6mm tank regiments -one of Chieftains and the other of Challengers. The 6mm stuff all has brand new paint jobs and is on nice new bases, and finally, a half painted SP Artillery regiment, all organised to the Combined Arms Ruleset. Each tank regiment has 13 tanks plus command and supporting stuff, totalling 18 or 19 models per regiment. Following this I have a mechanised infantry battalion to do with 12 Warriors, an equal number of infantry bases plus all the ancillary FV432 b's and p's. After that its the towed artillery regiment, then the command elements for the whole lot. Then, once that lot is done, it's the turn of the Russians...and I say again, it's all his bl**dy fault. He shouldn't post such pics of nice models where poor, unsuspecting wargamers like myself can look at them and get all carried away on the 'Oh they're nice, mine could look like that' bandwagon.

And of course, another bl**dy problem is that now I've got to make shedloads of terrain for the little fellas. The upside is that it can be used for all my other 6mm armies as well.

6mm terrain, thats another story. I used to have a storage box full of buildings, woods, forests, roads et al and one evening in the dim past I had a game at a club near here. As usual, the game finished and we packed everything away and I left my box in the one of the large lockers at the centre, meaning to pick it up later. Then I promptly forgot all about it...until about 18 months ago. The problem was that in the intervening period the building had been pulled down -with my terrain box probably being skipped before hand. Still, never mind, I have a load of buildings that I made a good 20 years ago that I found the other day whilst looking for THE BOX OF 15MM ACW that I still cannot find. It's a start.

Fortunately, I have a week off work -holiday that had to be taken before the end of March- so I might even get some pics done of the little so and so's -if the weather behaves of course. Oh, and also some pics of the third unit of Sassy Levy infantry.