The old west watering hole

     "When you begin a cattle drive, you can't expect to say you are finished until you have visited a fancy woman and played some games of chance".

                                                                                         - Wild Bill Hickok

     Like I said in my last Dead Man's Hand post, I had planned a few more buildings at least, and a saloon had to be on that list. This is another 4ground kit in the form of Rogan's Bar - renamed to the mended drum - and it's friendly barkeep. 

    This was the most involved kit from this range that I have had to build, most of them can be built without instructions once you have a couple under your belt, but I wouldn't advice that with this one, but having actual window is a really nice addition.

The barkeep is from Brigade Games - one of their hired help pack. Something about him just screamed barman to me. Maybe it's the shotgun?

It's images like this that make me think I need to work out how to make some tumble weed.

       The more I look at these images while I write this the more it is being cemented into my head that I need to buy the second-floor addition to this kit. That bar just isn't imposing enough yet.

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No job for the peasants

     Let me start with a statement of fact; I hate painting cavalry. No idea why, it's completely irrational, but its the reason my armies are always made up of rank upon rank of infantry.

    On that note, here is a unit I have been meaning to do for a long while but haven't managed to work up the courage to even buy until about a month ago. A unit of mounted men at arms for my growing Lion's Rampant force:

     I have kept the colour scheme overly simple, keeping them in-line with the foot versions, rather going to town as I had originally planned, as I wanted them to fit into the established force without effort. Although, I have future plans to paint up a unit with a much more elaborate set of heraldry.

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Did someone call in the armour?

     I based my Canadian tank wars army on what I found to be the 'normal' formation used by late 1944 by the Canadian army in Europe. The ideal, full strength and fully equipped platoon would consist of 5 tanks, 3 Sherman and 2 Sherman Firefly, so that is what I have done, but I had points left over and wanted something with a bit of punch, so added a wolverine tank destroyer, who has probably got himself lost and repurposed. As with all of my Bolt Action armies I am not trying to recreate a set regiment or battle, I am more interested in building a competitive list that I can enjoy playing, but importantly, in my head, that is believable and/or justifiable. 

 Death Wish - command Sherman.

 Danger and Doll - Shermans.

 Dastardly and Duke - Firefly Shermans.

 Devil Dog and Defender - Wolverine and Sherman ARV.

      As ever I tried to put some research into the markings that my tanks should carry, then promptly forgot half of it in the excitement of getting my hands on the models themselves, so don't treat these markings as gospel.
      As Death Wish is modelling, the front three markings are, for me, the important ones; The red square with numbers in shows this is a fighting armoured regiment, the yellow disc shows the bridge weight of the vehicle (in this case all Canadian Shermans had the weight of 33, which in the British army was only carried by the firefly variant) and the division badge (in this case the green of the Canadian 4th). Name wise, it was common for British tank regiments to all name their tanks with names that start with their company letter, so; in this case, mine are from D company, hence all the D names. Again I have worked on the assumption that this carried on across to the Candians as well.

         Gubbins on the back of the tanks. British tanks were notoriously messy with the crews covering their tanks with basically everything they could get their hands on. Not sure if mine are messy enough yet, but I have more stowage and bits on order so this can change in the future.

That's all for this time. I doubt I will surprise anyone by saying I have a few more tanks on my painting table, so they will appear on here in the not too distant future, but next time, something less Bolt Action-y.

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The Canadian infantry arrive

      My Canadian infantry have been a real labour of love, and at times, hate, but now they are done and I have managed a couple of games with them, I'm really enjoying the end result. These guys were a real slog at times but I have done exactly what I wanted to do with this army, additions will now be small and quick to do, so I should be able to play whatever I want.

    I've built/painted the equivalent of 4, 10 man squads, each with an nco with smg, at least one more smg, a lmg and loader, and the left overs with rifles. Then to make sure I have something for every job, I have; a piat team, light and medium mortars, mmg, sniper and 5 man engineer squad who I see as a cheeky little extra unit in games where I need them. Then lastly I have my HQ units, my lt and adjacent, a forward artillery officer and adjacent, a captain for bigger games and an adjacent for my medic*.

* This was my infantry done until an order arrived from North Star and ruined it all . . . But the order includes a guy who looks like a better medic than the one Warlord supplies.

 HQ units

 Piat, sniper and light mortar.

 Medium mortar, mmg and flamer.

The engineers, 4 rifles and nco with smg for good measure.

 The NCOs.

The brave, unwashed masses.

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Dinosaur or Monster?

      It's been a while since my blog was graced with a dinosaur, but now that's about to change. This is the Megalosaur from Antediluvian Miniatures*, one of the two victorian Crystal Palace dinosaurs. Now that I have said all that it's time for an omission; I'm not planning on using as a dinosaur, this thing just looked too generic monster for my liking. I can see this thing living in dark caves scaring the peasantry until a Knight came along to do his thing. Ok so I might have gotten a little carried away there.

* I'm really glad I only had to write that name and not pronounce it.

     I'm not going to take credit for this find though, I had one of those emails during the week from another guy at the club (Antmaster) who had obviously stumbled across this company himself, and I sold from the moment I saw it.

      Now I have the photos up online I'm not sure about the base, I think that may be re-done in the future, but I think this thing will look amazing as part of a Dragon's Rampant army as a men-at-arms equivalent in the future.

       I bought a few more bits as part of the same order that will be painted as part of my dinosaur project, but I haven't even started on them yet so they will have to be a topic for another day.

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Viking Trader's Knarr

      In a break from all the writing about Bolt Action I have done recently, I have decided to throw in something completely different, so here is the Viking Knarr I bought at Salute 2013, finally finished. The model is by Warbases and like the ash wastes vehicles I did a few weeks back, it is more of a scratch build aid than a kit in it's own right. I have to say, once I got my head around what I needed to do to make it look right, it was a really good project to pass some time, plus it put me into a really good place to get on with my next big, non-army project.

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Canadian deployment begins

     I am going to try and present the bulk of my WW2 Canadian army over the course of 3 posts, this one will be the odds and sods of my armour, next will be all my infantry and last will be my tank wars platoon. I will then try and have some non-bolt action bits lined up as the last months of this blog have been fairly Bolt Action solid and I am in danger of losing the 'random meanderings' part of my title.

Left to right; Daimler armoured car, universal carrier, Cromwell tank, 

quad tractor and a 6 pounder gun in the front row.

The Cromwell is the tank I become unstuck on. As far as I can work out, the Canadian 4th division tank companies were based around Shermans, so they had no Cromwell companies, but as the British spread equipment to each of the commonwealth countries, they must have had one or two at some point. . .

The universal carrier, the only model on this post that wasn't bought for a specific army list, I just really liked the look of the kit. Even though I don't have an actual use for it at the moment, I am absurdly pleased with how this one came out.

   

Daimler armoured car, quad tractor and 6 pounder anti-tank gun.

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