A growing town

      A belated Merry Christmas to everyone reading this, I'm only two days late. . .

      This post is a mix of a model painted and a bit of my Christmas haul, but it's stuff that all ties together quite nicely. The four buildings in the picture below are from two different ranges, three of them are conflix, merchant's, guild master's and money lender's houses respectively, while the last is from the Ziterdes range.

      Ziterdes is a manufacturer that I have heard about before but never really had much to do with. I bought a couple of small bits of theirs from a little model shop I stumbled across a few weeks back, and then talked myself into going back and buying another couple of much bigger bits from the range. This building is the first of those two bigger purchases and took quite a bit more work than the last two bits I bought. The models don't come anywhere near as nicely painted as the website seems to suggest they do but an hour's work repainting it and I still think they are good value for money, especially when mixed into my current collection of buildings.

Thanks for reading.

Eyes front, officer present

        Although I still haven't managed to organise a game of Bolt Action using my own figures, I have been putting some effort into getting a decent mix of figures ready for proposed games in the new year. Finished and packed away into their case are the minimum two squads needed for a platoon, a couple of specialist units, an armoured car and various tanks, a list of figures I was pretty chuffed with. So onto my painting desk went an infantry support gun team and another squad of infantry, then I sat down to work out how many points I had just so I had an idea of how big a game I could start looking to organise and I realised something, I hadn't painted up an officer.
       So this week has been all about painting up the odds and sods of the left over German figures that have been floating around the periphery of my painting desk, not including the whole squad which got pushed back in priority, to try and get this particular project to the playable stage.

German officer, his adj and a light artillery team

                                   

An officer and his adjacent

                                   

75mm LeIG I8 light artillery

       I think the reason I hadn't painted up an officer was because this guy had worked his way onto my painting desk a while back, he left me with the vague feeling that I did have a German officer painted, just a pity it turned out to be a vampire one.

Thanks for reading

Bits and Pieces



      After another busy week at work that spilled over to the weekend, my hobby time was severely limited but I managed to get some painting and gaming time in.

       First up are a couple of bit of scenery I bought ready painted so I can't really claim the credit for them, but I like them so much I thought I would put them up. They are made my a German company called Ziterdes, and are made from a solid foam so they are really light. I found them in a little old model shop that I stumbled across by accident and liked them so much I had to grab them, all I have had to do to make them table worthy is add a couple of clumps of grass just to blend them in a bit.

 

     Next up is an actual hobby project. I have wanted a centre point for my planned town scenery and I have been struggling to settle on an idea I really liked, but I was fairly sure I wanted it to involve the gripping beast Alfred the great figure I bought on the spur of the moment at salute a few years back. Then I came across the components section of Fenris games' site and found the base of some kind of magical water fountain and knew I had the basis of my statue. The pillar, however, was just from my bits box and I have no idea where I got it from.
     I'm not sure if its too tall as it towers over everything else I will be putting in the town, but then I suppose that is kind of the point of it. It's obviously not being maintained or looked after so it will suit any period of war I plan to put it in.

 

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Rock and roll

      I named this post rock and roll, as it was something I found myself thinking as I carefully tried to take the best photo of my weekend's painting achievements. How did I get to the point where I would have a cart and five barrels to show for a quiet weekend of painting?
      The cart is a warbases' mdf model and the barrels are from an O gauge railway scenery pack which I bought at the same railway show I got the hedges from in a post I did last month. I'm on a proper scenery drive at the moment and this is just another step in that process, filling the role of street cover.

      On a completely separate note, I had a play around with the way I shoot the images I use in the blog, and I think this way looks so much sharper and clearer, so I am hoping this will be the end to the apologies about terrible photography.

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Infantry advance

     The models into this post aren't newly painted, so I won't represent them as such, but they are newly based, as when I painted them earlier in the year I wasn't sure how I wanted their bases to look. My current German spurt of interest spurred me to get everything ready to play with, and not just the tanks which have been taking all my time up recently.
     So far, ignoring my tanks, I have 2 squads of infantry, a panzerfaust team, a medic and an armoured car finished. All I am missing is an office of some sort and that will be a minimum platoon plus a few extra toys to play with.
   

     The Germans advance through an, oddly British looking, village constantly on the look out for the allies.

     Now back to the painting desk, I have a lot more to get finished as a big parcel of unpainted PMC buildings turned up in the post this week, and I want to get another squad of infantry painted up.

T-Rex

    Before I even start my normal spiel about what I have been painting, or apologising for the photography or any of the normal stuff I tend to do at the beginning of the post, I want to go straight in with accusations. So here it is, I blame Michael Awdry for this post, it is entirely his fault. There I was, minding my own business and boom, yet another blog on dinosaurs, and there I was buying yet more toys online on a website I had never heard of before, but now have saved . . .. So when I got home I figured I had better get one of the dinosaurs sitting in my backlog of 'to do' projects moved into the 'done' projects pile. So here it is; my T-Rex, how can you do dinosaurs without a T-Rex?

 

 

     He hasn't been painted or touched up at all, just stuck to a base and based like everything else. Much as I wouldn't have picked this colour scheme if he was being painted from scratch (he'd probably be a reddish brown colour), I quite like it.

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More on the scenery front

      On a wargaming front, I had two major plans for this year;

1, Get as many games in as possible. I had been too long without getting my gaming fix in and I wanted this year to be the year I really scratched that itch, so I could just settle down and play games when ever I was able afterwards.
2, Sort out my dire scenery collection. My collection comprised of a few random bits and pieces that didn't really come together to form a full table of anything.

      The first one has been going pretty well so far, I smashed my aim of 52 games back in August I think, but the second aim was being slightly more elusive. I had a vague plan that the scenery guy that I bought the walled field I use to take photos on would be the main supplier of my new scenery collection, but as I managed to miss all three shows that I normally see him at this year, and I gather he doesn't have a website, that plan hasn't worked out. So, plan B; pick up scenery from other sources on my travels, which is something I would have done anyway to supplement.

      On Saturday I was at the NEC in Birmingham for the National Railway Show with my dad and on my wander round I found a few different guys selling their own stunning looking trees (if you see their willow trees you will understand just how nice this things can be) and I had an idea. To supplement the weird mix of trees that I am slowly buying (First set of trees & Second lot of trees) I decided to buy myself one of their silver birches, as, for a small outlay, this tree should really stand out in a dense forest, and set of their flexi hedges. 

       So my collection now has about 3 and a half foot of hedges and another tree in it, and all I have had to do is base them up in the usual way and I added a set of stiles from the warbases' range to add a bit of interest.

     Next time I see this particular tree making company I will have to pick up another couple of silver birches, a willow and another few foot of hedges, as these things seem to do the job quite nicely. I need to organise some time to get a photo of my whole forest now really.

Thanks for reading.

Another distraction . . .

      I am going to shock a lot of people with the revelation that I may have got distracted again, but there is a unit sitting on my painting desk, very nearly finished, and through no fault of it's own, another project has come along and overtaken it.

     The bolt action tank war event I went to last weekend has really given me the tank painting bug, and something had to be done to sate it, and this is my attempt; a warlord games SDNFZ 222 armoured car. Much as I do want, and probably will still get in the near future, more German tanks, I needed something a bit more useful for a small game and going through the models the shop had to offer, I felt that this was much more useful as infantry support than another stonking great tank.

     As ever, I don't think my photos do it justice but it will make a nice addition to my German WW2 army.

     Also, I have updated my post about the tank war event day to include the video Templarcrusade01 made, and can be found right down the bottom of the page here.

Thanks for reading.

Tank Wars

       Today was Tank Wars at Wayland games, a sort of promo tournament / intro gaming day for Bolt Action and their new supplement Tank Wars. The ticket price included a blind choice of tank kit, from the list of; Panther, T-34 and Sherman, a morning of building the kit then being taught how to paint them, including washes and weathering powders, and then lastly having a big game overseen by Alessio Cavatore, currently one of Warlord games' rules writers but formerly of GW fame.

       I picked the German Panther, which fits perfectly into my fledgling German bolt action army that I started a good year or so ago. Much as building a kit with no instructions and only a vague idea of how the model is supposed to look is really frustrating, it was still a laugh having 20 odd of you all in the same boat and copying each other. The painting stage was where the day really started to come alive, being shown painting techniques by Brian from templarcrusade01, who was both a great guy and an amazing teacher. Being shown different ways of using the humble wash and chipping techniques was a really inspiring, but it was the weathering powders that really opened my eyes to the new possibilities. 

     The next picture shows my tank finished other than a last minute German cross I added to each side of the turret. I really do think this could be the best painted model I have ever done, and to have taken it from bare plastic to finished and gaming in the space of 2 hours is just stunning. It's just a pity that the photography doesn't do it quite the justice it deserves.

The variations in effects on the same tank. The middle one is my one.

      The first game was a mixed sides fight, where the organisers tried to split each of the 3 tanks evenly between the two sides. They picked a Panther commander from each side to be the force captains, and Ross was picked for his side, while I got the other, although I very quickly gave Alessio second in command.

Cover and an objective, easy.

My only kill of the day, the Sherman on the hill. My tank is the Panther on the right.

Where it all went wrong

    The games themselves were probably two of the best games I have ever played. The atmosphere was amazing, the games just flowed and it worked without any of the normal nit-picking war games can devolve into.  Even though my side lost in the first game, it was still a seriously good game, while the second one was possibly even more fun.

     The just to top off a great day, I won the award for 'most objectives captured', which will go up on the wall of my man-cave, somewhere near my new tank I think. Oh, and I got my copy of the Bolt Action rulebook signed by Alessio . . .

       Templarcrusade01 was making another video blog while he was at the event and did a few interviews and during game reviews. Here is the Tank Wars video for you to watch. I have to say, seeing myself on camera is a weird experience. (Look for the guy with blonde hair and a grey t-shirt).

Until next time, thanks for reading.

Another dinosaur

     It's been a slow couple of weeks in terms of getting any hobby done, and it looks like it is going to continue for a while yet, but I have managed to get another dinosaur painted up in my spare time. It's been a while since I've posted a new dinosaur on here.

     This model is of an Euoplocephalus, a heavily armed herbivorous dinosaur. I stumbled upon this in the cheap toy section in Wilko's and figured, with a repaint, it would be a really good addition to my dinosaur collection. 

Thanks for reading

Zomtober: Week 4

Zomtober zombie count: 23

     So here it is, the last Sunday of zomtober, another batch of zombies finished and, for some reason, a small batch of half finished zombies is still sitting on my painting desk. It is safe is assume that zomtober has properly infected me and my painting desk.

     This week I managed to get 8 zombies finished in time to meet the upload deadline and here they are; a real mix of plastic and metal zombies from a few different companies.

       I see this zombie scientist as the probable cause of the outbreak, who knows what he was messing with to create the infection.

    Two different pictures of my horde; the first is my efforts from zomtober, all 23 zombies, the second is of all my zombies that have been on the blog so far. I think it looks like a reasonable sized horde, maybe not enough for a massive game, but enough to start with.

      What do I do now zomtober is over? I might get withdrawal symptoms. Although, I do still need to sort out my lighting. . .
Thanks again for reading. 

Zomtober: Week 3

   

Zomtober zombie count:15

     Zomtober, week 3, a day early? I'm out all day tomorrow at another Star Trek Attack Wing tournament and as I don't want to miss the submission date, here it it. It's not my most impressive submission to zomtober so far, but my painting time has dried up quite a bit. Although I'm really aiming to do a big old blow out for the last post, next weekend. 

    Like my first week's zombie line up, this one is made up of three plastic zombies from the zombie studio sprue and a single wargames factory zombie vixen figure. I am trying to focus a bit more on the pure bulk of this horde again, as I feel I may have got a bit distracted by the shiny metal models that fell through my letter box, or I dug out of my lead pile, last week. 

      I'm also halfway through another couple of zombies, so even if next week is another busy one I should have something to submit, although my aim is to get above 20 before the end of October, that's starting to feel a little high.

Thanks for reading.

The goblin horde

     I think this post needs to start with an apology to Michael Awdry for putting you to shame with the speed I am getting my painting done at the moment. I can only say it won't last and its only because of quick, easy colour schemes.

     Carrying on from that though, here is the last few bases I needed for the standard sized Hordes of the Things army. Another 3 bases of basic spearmen, my hero and a behemoth, simply because it's a fantasy army and I can.

      So, this is what it all looks like ranked up, not bad for a quick bit of painting after work, in front of the tv. It really does show what a limited palette colour scheme can achieve. I just can't wait to get them onto the table top now for a game.

Thanks for reading

Zomtober: Week 2

Zomtober zombie count:11

      So deadline day again, that came round quickly, and here are this week's submissions.

     First up is a zombie mime, every horde needs a mime, What? They don't? Ok, lets move quickly onto the big zombie. Every horde needs a massive, hard to kill zombie, that you can imagine taking shotgun shell after shotgun shell and still coming. On a differnt note, this figure reminded me a lot of a guy I used to work with.

     Last up, are another of my plastic zombies, a figure whose face I am really unimpressed with the sculpting on, and some zombie dogs that I picked up a couple of weeks ago from the Essex Warrior's show. I was kind of hoping to be the first to get something like this up, this zomtober but Roy's attempt was first, and I have to say, a lot better than these. Zombie dogs should fill out the necessary fast zombie slot of the horde, they don't have to be strong, just too fast to deal with.

Thanks for reading