More armies

First up we have Imperial Romans on the left and Carthaginians on the right. In the centre of the box are some Carthaginian elephants and near them are the Roman onager and ballistae. 6mm Irregular.




ACW Union in a bit of a mess. 6mm Irregular.



WW I 1914 Germans. Loads of infantry, a few cavalry and a shedload of artillery. 6mm Irregular.



In the middle is the artillery while above them are 1914 French and below are 1916 French. Some Renault tanks in the bottom right. The reason for the different types is because the French changed uniform colour from dark blue coats and red trousers to horizon blue in about 1915. Even in 6mm this change is noticeable.



British 1914. I decided to use them all through the war because in that scale the difference between a cap and a helmet is not that noticeable especially if the uniform colour is the same. A shot down aircraft of indeterminate pedigree and some male tanks complete the force. 6mm Irregular.



Modern Polish Army from a variety of manufacturers. Not painted by yours truly.



WW II Japanese. This army includes some home made Landing Craft at the top left. Lots of not very good tanks and loads of infantry.Most if not all Irregular. tried some small conversions in this army and made a few destroyed tanks; one losing a track and another 'brewing up' with its turret on the ground next to it.



One of my earliest and biggest 15mm armies, that of ECW Parliamentarian. Began painting in 1981 and finished in 1983. thorough mix of manufacturers including Mini Figs, Mikes Models, Warrior and others. The command figures in the lower centre are Naismith.



Han Chinese 15mm mostly Essex. The majority painted by me including the chariots. this army was painted in 1984-5. The dirty brown colour on the bases is proper dried dirt -I was in my 'keep it natural' phase of wargaming at the time. Never used it before or since.



Still not dry I trust?

Mick

Old Figures - new pictures.

The other day as I was having a rummage, trying to find those errant ACW 15mm figures I was speaking about earlier when I had a thought. This is a golden opportunity to get some pictures of other armies. Now bearing in mind that time was a bit limited in that I had to go to work later so I only managed to get some of them done.

All pics are of course clickable.

First off is my 6mm ECW Royalist army with Rupert's infantry 3rd up on the left. all are Irregular. Not painted by me, all other armies in this post are.



Sassanid Persians. From top left to bottom right: Light cavalry, Levy infantry, clibs and catties mix then half a dozen pachyderms. General is on a base at the front. 6mm by Irregular.



Next up, Renaissance Turks with Spahi's of the Porte and other spahi's on the top left. Janissaries bottom left, next to them is the artillery contingent made up of 4 big bu**ers and then some generic light cavalry. On the right of the Spahi's are some mad light cavalry in tigerskin cloaks. Top right is a collection of levies/ basic fighting troops. General out front. 6mm Irregular.



Confederate ACW army. Loads of infantry, cavalry and a few guns. Even got some wounded markers for these. Organised a la Fly and Furry Ruleset. Again 6mm Irreglar.



Mongols. Light cavalry on left, heavies on the right. This may seem a tad small against other armies but don't forget I can cull quite a few of the others to make up numbers if I so wish. Guess what...6mm Irregular.



That's it for this time.

The Irons - Half the job done.

Good result for the Hammers last night. First half was all WH with only the Blues keeper managing to limit the score to 1-0 to the Irons; the rest of the team just couldn't cope. McLeish must have put a rocket up their collective ar**s in the interval coz they came out like a different team. Good header but cr*p defending by the Hammers led to the equaliser. Then Obinna, in a fit of stupidity kicked back at Larsson who like most players nowadays went down as if he'd been wellied in the nads by a baseball bat. (Strange though, less than a minute later he was taking a free kick on the other side of the pitch. What do they put in that spray, eh?) Straight red, off he went, no argument from anybody. Grant brought on Cole who scored probably one of the softest goals of his career. It was going so slowly that when it hit the net there was only a slight bulge. That doyen of football punditry Alan Hanson -a man I have disliked as a player ever since 1976-7 when Southend hosted Liverpool in the FA Cup and Hanson pulled the Southend striker down when he was clear through- reckoned the ball was traveling at no miles per hour as it crossed the line?? The one moment when Foster got it wrong. I felt for the bloke; made some cracking saves in the first half and it looked as though he was a bit unsighted as the ball trickled under his trailing leg. So it ended 2-1 to the Hammers.

MO said he had to take deep, calming breaths when Blues scored otherwise it could have been lampshade time for the poor so-and-so. I will probably have to do the same on the 26th.

Everything still to play for. Should be good as long as WH don't come up here to defend a tenuous one goal lead.

Bring it on! Can't wait!

PS Roots Hall, Southend's home ground usually had anywhere between 4-6,000 supporters at a match. On that particular cold night during the worst snow for donkey's years there were over 30,000 crammed into the place -at that time probably most of the local population of the town! I'm telling you, sardines in a tin have more breathing space. 0-0 it finished but the Shrimpers got bladdered in the replay.

A woodland pond

This is really a WIP just to show the stages of construction.
The first picture has already got all of the basic elements in place. The observant reader will have noticed that the tops of two stones have been left uncovered.





The reason for the lack of wood glue and sand is because I have a weighty piece of steel that I lay across things to stop them warping.



The water is now done and varnished with a single coat of Ronseal Gloss varnish, the base colour is on and the reeds have been a coat of ochre. This was a learning exercise for me in that I have not made such a large area of water before.
HINT. If possible paint and varnish the water BEFORE you wood glue and sand the thing because the sand gets everywhere, even when you thought it was all stuck down!

Who's been a busy little chappie, then?

Recently, I have been mostly making terrain. So far I have several single trees, two pieces of broken ground using old cd's as the base, two small woods/copses/spinney's on card bases and a woodland pond (currently unfinished but just needing a bit of drybrushing and some foliage glued on).

I thought I would share my method of construction. The basic construction is the same for everything, it's just the materials and the application that occasionally differ.

1. First off there is the broken ground on a cd base as mentioned on the post before last.



Simply done.
A) Scratch a cd base with some glass paper to increase the adhesion.
B) Using some propriety adhesive such as Hard as Nails or Sticks like S**T, glue various sized stones on the base.
C) Fill in the gaps around the bottoms of the stones with filler.
D) At this point you can stick down some home made tufty things (as outlined earlier in the blog).
E) Cover with wood glue and sand, then paint.

2. Next the small wood. For this I used twigs cut from the last of the seasons hedge trimmings as the trunks.

A) Glue some random stones down as outlined above and, using a contact adhesive such as Evostick or UHU, stick down the trunks in a previously arranged dry run. Put glue on both surfaces and leave it to go tacky before pushing the two together otherwise you will have to prop up the trunks so that they don't fall over.



B) Once the glue has dried thoroughly slop some Hard as Nails all around the bottom of the trunks as another layer of adhesion. Once this is solid then add the filler; a further covering around the trunk bases, gap filling on the stones and some random lumps to break up the flatness of the base.



C) Once that has dried cover with wood glue and sand.



D) I now paint all my bases in exactly the same way with the same colours. First off is a coat of a mid earth brown -mixed at Homebase- followed by areas of a wash of burnt umber.



E) This is followed with dry brushed Antique Gold and then Cream, both acrylics from Anita paints. Attach some patches of flock and shrubs and the base is finished.



F) In the summer I saw some dyed sisal used by people who make their own hanging baskets and thought it may work for tree canopy. If it worked then at £4.99 for a big bag it should make about 20-30 trees -cheap as chips. The 'branches' of the twigs are now coated in contact adhesive and clumps of the stuff are glued on. Trim off any errant string and that's it.



The figures have been included for scale. They are the small diorama of some 15mm Sassanid levy preparing to defend themselves against an enemy threat.



There are four layers of gunk around each of the trre trunks so that should hold them securely in place. The only thing with these is that you have to wait for each layer of gunk to dry before you can slap on the next. But I think it's worth it.


Another method I thought of was using pipe cleaners for tree trunks. This method involved twisting three or four together, leaving about an inch at the bottom to splay out for the 'roots' and make them as tall as you like. Glue the roots using a hot glue gun to a piece of thick card or one of those custom made circular bases. I have added a couple of small stones for a bit of added weight.
(In the background you can see the next unit of levy half done as well as some more undercoated Hunnic Mongols.)



Paint the trunk with a reasonably thin mix of wood glue, filler and water and when dry paint and add the foliage.




Keep yer bristles moist.

Mick

Only about football, this one.

MO came up from the smoke for the festivities, got turfed off the train at Coventry with no explanation only that trains weren't going any further, (found out later power lines were down between Coventry and Brummagem International), on the day before all the white stuff fell from the sky. While he has been up here he has already bought my birthday present, wait for it, wait for it...a ticket to see the Blues v the Hammers in the second leg, Carling Cup semi-final. So on 26th January, MO, my Bluenose mate across the road and myself will be going to St Andrews for the match. Outnumbered again, and I will have to sit with the Blues fans but I'm going, that's the main thing. Can't wait. Meanwhile MO, the lucky so-snd-so, has a mate darn sarth who is also a Hammers fan and the git is also going to the first leg at Upton Park on 11th January.

Swining weather!

Well, since the last a fair bit has happened -some of it may even be interesting.

You know how sometimes you don't fancy painting but want to watch the telly even less? I had one of those evenings a few weeks ago, so just for the craic I typed my name into Google to see what I had been up to on the tinterweb. I found an item that said some bloke had got a set of WWI Rules from me some 30 years ago. I traced the link and found him on the WD3 Wargaming Community. Sent a message via the forum and found out that we went to the same wargames club in Southend decades ago. Still chatting every so often. How small the electronic world can be.

The most amazing thing happened to me at work the other week. I was talking to a colleague about nothing much when he said he noticed that I was always reading in the canteen and that he had a book I might be interested in. I thought nothing more of it until a week later when he gave me a carrier bag. I opened it to find a hand written diary from his missus' grandfather who was in the RGA in WWI and it was an account from early 1917 to mid 1918 when he was sent back to Blighty. Hand drawn maps and all. Court martial offence if discovered of course, but what a read. What I have is actually a copy made by him immediately on his return to England while the original, apparently covered in muck and who knows what else, currently resides in the Imperial War Museum.A contemporary account that is over 90 years old. Fantastic stuff!

Made some trees using twisted pipe-cleaners for the trunks and some hanging-basket-filler-stuff I bought from Homebase (a DIY chain here in the Old Country). Took some each-stage pictures then, by accident, promptly deleted them all- Muppet. I'm quite impressed by them. Got some dried privet twigs left over from the last hedge trim of the year on the worktop so I'm going to try them out next. Probably not as versatile as the pipe-cleaners for bendiness but will be finished a lot faster. I also tried out the method of using old CD's as terrain bases and made a couple of rocky outcrops which look pretty good as well. Once again, due to my mechanical ineptitude I lost those pics as well. Sphericals!

I've made a decision to integrate the two blogs into this one, so all further writeups about the Sassy's and the Byz Boys will be on this one along with everything else.

The weather here -either rain, cold, overcast, wind, snow or a combination of all of them-hasn't really been conducive to external photography which is all well and good because I haven't really got anything new to show you. The 3rd unit of Sassy Levy, (Donnington Figures), is more than half finished but I had a minor Sabbatical on them while terrain building. Not much left for them now, then I might make a more serious start on the Byz Boys.
or
I might just start a new project.
Bit of historical background here. Years ago that nice Mr Macfarlane run a show at Birmingham Uni in Edgbaston. I was in a club that offered to help the traders to move their wares in and out of the venue and as a thank you we were given chits that were redeemable at various manufacturers. Now with my chits and some judicial swapping I managed to acquire enough credit wonga to purchase a whole mess of figures. To date those figures have sat in a box somewhere in the manse. When I can find the little monkeys they will be the start of my new period...15mm ACW. Now this is different because all I need to buy is the Rebs because I believe I already have all the Bluebellies in the shape of inf. cav. and art. I will need. I also have a copy of Fly & Furry Rules so I might use them although I'm unconvinced of 20 x 20 bases with 3-5 figs on each. Yes, alright, thats the ruleset standard but I don't want RSI from shifting all the bl**dy bases around. At the other end of the scale my usual 60 x 40's are just too big -an 8 base brigade comes in at a huge 480mm or over 18" frontage; far too much for my board. Hmmmmm, needs a bit of thought.
The other thing that has stopped me in the past is that, years ago, there was a book-shop in Brum from a nationwide chain called County Books. From the Military Section I purchased a bout 15 imported books on the ACW -the usual fare, battles, biographies etc- including books II, III and IV from the definitive Battles and Leaders of the Civil War for about £7.99 apiece. I obviously asked about the first book and was told that it would be in at some time. Well, that was about 10 years ago, the Bull Ring has been pulled down and rebuilt and you guessed it, the shop went with it. No bl**dy book. Then, last month on whim, I checked Amazon. It was there, Book I of the Battles and Leaders. So that is my Crimble pressie from YO this year. Now all things considered, in early 2011 I will finally get round to reading the whole set.

News

Last Sunday, YO and I were having a chat and she said that she wanted to get rid of some of her old stuff down at the local Tip/Recycling Centre. Ha, thinks I as a brilliant opportunity presented itself. The local Wickes' DIY Superstore is near the Tip sooo, if I went with her -coz I don't drive and she does- I could pop in and check out the prices of the nice insulation boards that everybody in wargaming circles has been raving about. Using proper English measurements, not the imported stuff, it worked out at £4.99 for a 4' x 1' 6" board. After a niggle with a rather monosyllabic staff-person over an advertising display that said, plain as day, Buy 3 or more and get them at £3.99 each we walked out with three. (Never did get to the Tip by the way, YO changed her mind.)

Now, up until a few days ago I was prepared, even though my sawing is not the best, to cut them into 6 x 2' squares. Then I had a St. Paul's moment. Leave them alone with the nice and, most importantly, accurate straight edges and work on them as they are. Brilliant...apart from one thing -I only bought 3 of them! So now I can have a brick pattern of boards or a long, thin one. I know, the answer is simple, buy another one, but seeing as YO lives over the other side of the city, I don't know when she will be coming over again to get it. Anyway, there really isn't any rush, all 3 are sitting up here in the tower still in their virginal pinkness waiting for yours truly to extricate his digit and clear out some of the accumulated tat. Then I will be able to set up an 8' x 3' 6" table. Don't worry too much about the width, after all, nearly all my wargaming figures are 15mm or smaller so there will be nice open flanks for my cavalry armies.

Had a good old think about this and have decided to have the boards basically flat with some low bits of lumpiness glued on to break up the playing field look. All other terrain pieces like roads, rivers and marshes etc, will be freestanding.

Once I get going on the project I will try to post some pics but don't hold your breath, the house lights up here are good but possibly not quite good enough for photography. We will see when the time comes.

Keep yer bristles straight.

Mick

Derby purchases

Just thought I would share with you my purchases this year at the show.

Figures
5 x 6mm Irregular WWII German nebewerfer plus tows for Das Reich
5 x 6mm Irregular WW II Russian 76.2 field guns plus tows
1 x 10mm battlepack of Irregular Ancient Gauls/British (100 pieces)plus 3 extra chariots, (making 12 in total), and some more warband to make up the numbers.
3 x 10mm cohortes of Romans (1 regular, 2 auxiliary) (90 figures)
3 x 15mm Irregular Sassanid Persian bolt throwers
30 x 15mm Donnington Sassanid Levy infantry
5 x 15mm Donnington Sassanid cavalry (general, standard bearer and 3 guards)
9 x 15mm Museum Miniatures Mongol LC. (I do like these figures, one piece castings, good variety of positions, full of animation and movement -hmmm, might even end up with a whole tumen of them later.)
6 x 10mm Pendrakan Roman bolt throwers

Bases and Terrain
Proper green paint by Vallejo for WWII Russians
3 x bags of different coloured thick flock powder and a set of 7 brightly coloured tiny bits to make flower heads from. Looked good on the Sheffield Irregulars stand. I admit it, I had a go and it seems to work okay.
6 x Timecast 6mm Russian Front buildings (for a bit of variety).
2 x packs of 14 pre-cut MDF bases
2 x pack of round bases for generals (got 2 because it was a BOGOF deal).
The last two items are from a company called Warbases, nice blokes, good deal. Unfortunately, you'll have to Google it coz I can't get the linky thingy to work.

Books
Plus what I considered to be a real steal from one of the bookshops there, a mint copy of Great Battles of the Civil War by J. Macdonald for £5 ( do your own conversion if reqd.)

Derby report

As I mentioned previously, I went to Derby today. Boy do I like that show, none of the hugeness and impersonality of Salute-in-the-aircraft-hanger that is Excel, but a nice sized friendly show. I even said as much to one of the organizers whom I got chatting to. A good day was had by all. YO dropped me at the uni campus then went off in a cloud of dust to go shopping in Derby with the missus -result. And guess what, I remembered the camera, in fact I took two just to be sure. 107 photos all found, some not bad, others okay and some a bit blurred but I know what they are so I'll keep them anyway.
Some really good games this year. A 40mm ACW with about 1200 figures and some outstanding and eye catching flags. A large 'L' shaped version of Waterloo and a game with a very impressive model of the granary at Apern-Essling, both in 25mm. And then I came across a game after a my own heart, a refight of Liegnitz (Mongols v Polish in 1241) by the Curteys lads, a nice 15mm version of Fontenoy and a visually impressive 25mm WWII involving a fight over two railway bridges. Got everything I wanted -and some stuff I didn't but couldn't resist, you know how it is. Also spoke to some people who gave me a tutorial on how to make some nice, flowery bases. More on this when I try it myself. Unfortunately, it was a bit uncomfortable sitting on a hard chair coz I have a mahoosive abscess on my posterior which is giving me some stick at the mo.

Pics and yet more pics

To back up the story reported earlier about re-doing the bases of my W W II Das Reich and the Russians, here is the proof. First off, the Germans. As per, all are clickable for hugeness.






Now here are the Russians, which incidentally, I didn't paint. I inherited them from a mate who gave up wargaming after a few tries in different periods. His loss, my gain. Hey, ho, such is the way the wheel of fortune turns.



I think I'm finally getting a bit of a handle on this posting malarkey; now I can move pictures around within the post for effect. (How long has it taken me? No, don't answer that, I get upset easily.)

Problems and solutions.

The problem is -as you can read in my other blog- techno-lology based; the solution...go out and have a shopping figurefest! So I will follow my own advice and go to Derby armed with a camera and some cash. This year I want to get some more b and p's for the Sassys; a few more Mongols, but the big(ish) spend this year is going to be getting more 10mm Romans and Brits. Currently standing at Romans 4 infantry cohorts (1 auxiliary) and 2 cavalry units, all painted, to Brits...nothing, not a sausage, bugger all. However, I intend to rectify that next weekend. The Romans will be increased by 2 more cohorts (1 auxiliary) and the Gauls by getting another Irregular Battlepack plus b and p's giving me a total of nearly 300 infantry (10 units), 2 cavalry units and 4 chariot units.

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.

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

They think its all over! It bl**dy well is now!

Well, what can you say about the World Cup. Rated up there with the best and yet fell at the second hurdle. No doubt there will be much wailing, finger pointing, distancing from any limelight just in case and gnashing of teeth from any number of the footballing hierarchy but it's the supporters I feel sorry for.  The poor bu**ers spent well above an arm and a leg to follow their beloved country's  team to the bottom of the planet and what do they get... 360 minutes of shambolic ineptitude from the top down. Sort it out for God's sake! How is it we can invent games but within ten minutes the world and his brother are better at them than we are?
And another thing, possibly trivial to some of you anti-royalists but important to me at least, shouldn't you be proud to be chosen to represent your country? Next time its on, watch the England rugby players when our National Anthem is played, chests are thrust forward and they are singing their lungs out with pride. England footballers, hardly any of them move their lips and even that seems an effort. Perhaps they don't know the words? Too busy getting their heads into the 'right place/mindset' I suppose. Overpaid prima donna's the lot of them. So they got kicked out early, never mind eh? Come back home on a specially chartered plane to a safe area away from any possibly angry fans; whisked away in German cars (how's that for irony?); home to their respective companions before jetting off to the Caribbean or the Maldives or somewhere equally exotic to recover from the stress. Good, get rid of them and replace them with footballers who play for the love of the game and country not just for the outrageous salary it can bring.
 For one mistake, Ashley Cole was booed for several games afterwards. Except for Green-who to my mind was exonerated after several other keepers had similar problems with the new ball at the tournament- and James who was MotM against Germany, for such a lacklustre performance it should happen to all of them when the new season starts...for a long time.
The FA, (thats Football Association by the way, not the other abbreviation),  needs to take a collective step back away from their sinecurist positions and start getting people in place who know the game: then listen to them once they're there. Wilkinson and Brooking are the proverbial voices in the wilderness, banging their heads against a brick wall of white collar aggrandizement.
Plus, don't get me started on the new Jubulani ball and that goal. 
So now I have a bit of a dilemma. Being of Anglo-Saxon descent from way back in the genealogical mists of time and a proud Englishman, I naturally follow England. But the Saxon bit is very important because my surname is one of the few derivations of the word sax and actually means Saxon. So now I will transfer my allegiance to Germany, the better team on the night and eventual winners of the tournament. I hope. (Still, 5-1 is still better than 4-1 by my maths, so we are ahead overall.)
Bloody Hell, I could go on all night...but luckily for you I won't. I've had enough now anyway. Only two years to wait for the European Championship. Bring it on!

Mick