Hurrah for the Gunners!

Fairly 'armless.

Awaiting their arms are a couple of Stadden infantry converted-with-paint to serve as gunners. I'm going to make a go of slicing some rifle arms about to see what can be done about their final look.

Thanks to everyone for their comments on the "Year Without Lead" post.

Having made the decision, I feel surprisingly good about it all. I've even had a friend join me in his own Lead Fast. Who knows - perhaps this could become the new "Movember"!

I'm planning to start on New Years' Eve and carry through the whole of 2014. To answer Jeff, yes I have a few last minute purchases planned.

Ross, I agree on your point about being more tightly focussed. A few small games would not hurt either.

PS - doing something about my eBay account might not hurt, either.

A Year Without Lead?

For some reason this week I've been in something of a reflective mood with regard to how I've been approaching my hobby in recent months. I think it comes from looking at a painting desk littered with bits and pieces of projects begun with wild enthusiasm and then dropped about three weeks later.

I've seen myself do this before. I think it was what led me to become for a while a disciple of the "project management" approach to the hobby. This had it's benefits. there is no way opn this earth I would have painted quite so many Spencer Smith plastics as I did (about 1200) going about in my usual amateurish way.

I dropped it though as it seemed too joyless a way of pursuing the hobby. Sure, I was getting excellent results, but I wasn't really enjoying the process too much. So, in pursuit of fun, I let myself go mad and pursue any old thing with no goals in mind whatever.

Now this was very satisfying, at least to the spendthrift in me, but it did lead to a big painting funk in the second half of the year as my piles of unpainted or part-painted things started to sap my will to continue with anything much.

So what to do?

What to do? Part of me wants to take a complete break from the hobby for a year and see whether I want to carry on afterwards. Knowing me, I doubt that's at all likely, but I am really in a mood to pack everything up and at least NOT BUY anything for a year. Part of my current malaise is at least partly based on guilt at pissing away huge amounts of money on stuff that basically gets put on a pile and left.

I'm curious to see how much money I'd save if I took a year off - a year without lead as it were.

Perhaps this is the year I could live off my hump. Maybe I could try to turn my lead-mountain into a lead mole-hill.

A year without lead.

Colenso, 15th December 1899

I'm finding myself quite inspired by Ross's efforts on the Boer War at the moment and as a result have taken up reading Pakenham at the moment as well as warious other bits and bobs including the Practical Wargamer Yearbook for 1999.This has led me on to read up a little on Colenso, Buller's last battle before he was superceeded as the commander of thritish forces in South Aftrica by Roberts.

Colenso was planned as a battle fought in the cause of the relief of Ladysmith.

As far as battles go, it was something of a flash in the pan as things went wrong for the British from the get-go. The boers would see it differently, of course! and indeed they had made masterly use of terrain and concelment in preparing their positions which, in conjunction with the smokeless powder used by their rifles and artillery used, rendered them practically invisible.

Buller wanted to assault the Boer positions on the far side of the Tugela which meandered through the battlefield by means of certain drifts (or fords) which provided crossing points. It would have been a bloody business for obvious reasons, but Buller had numbers (21,000 men in five brigades) and ought to have been able to do it.

However, things went terribly wrong, and the battle turned more into a rescue operation.

Rather than fight the whole battle out, the following possibilities come to mind:

Pulling Hart's Head out of the Noose.
*Hart believes his own maps rather than his native guide and actually finds the Bridle drift. The battle is then a straight crossing of the Tugela by his four Irish battalions in the teeth of the fire of one Boer unit.
*Hart's western-most unit stubles across the Drift by accident.
*Hart sees that he's heading straight into a salient, realises his error and sends out patrols left and right to ascertain the location of the Drift. This could make an interesting game. Sort of a river crossing where you have to find the ford!

Pulling Long's Fat out of the Fire.
*Long realises he's too close to the boer trench lines and pulls back, covered bu the naval guns.
*It's all gone horribly awry for Long, and it's down you you to save some honour by retreiving the guns in the face of intense rifle fire. This might make a good skirmish game. The British player might be tested by deciding on more or less infantry fire-support at the expense of additional gun teams.

Keep the Kop!
* Your Cavalrymen and Mounted Infantry have taken Hlangwane. If you had some guns and infantry to protect them, your fire could enfilade the whole Boer position, rendering it untenable. But could you hold out against increasingly strong Boer counter-attacks and will the Staff reply to your pleas for re-inforcement in time... or at all?

The Walking Dead...

Urrrh... Brainzzzzz...

Not too sure why I painted these, really. I seem to have had them in my collection since about 1986. I guess they finally "arrived" in the painting queue!

I would like to get some suitably undead decals for the shields, though.

Now - evil glowing green eyes or not?

Slowly but Surely

The Band Plays On

 I'm taking my time with this job, obviously! The next 2-3 miniatures are primed for painting now.

Re-Enactors?

Littler Little Wars

 I'm just starting to get into the swing of things for my "Littler Little Wars" project. As you can see, I've made a start on a few things as I try to come to grips with the overall look I want for the miniatures. I've compromised to a degree - I didn't really want to do a job as straightforward as that on the original Britains because I want to be able to use these with my Franco-Prussian War minis. 

 I won't be using line infantry as gunners. Fortunately the Stadden infantry come with a moveable rifle-arm on a peg which I will replace with something more suitable for a gunner. With a blue coat and a ball replacing the spike on his helmet, I feel he will do admirably.

How could I go past this glorious Boer War 4.7 " gun from TVAG? I bought a brace to make up a neat little battery. I tried to keep the paint job as true to the Britains gun as I possibly could. I might detail the spy-glass just a little... Half a dozen gunners to serve the gun with an officer to direct their activities per piece, two pieces per battery and a mounted officer to oversee the lot. I'd love to find something suitable to use as a GS Wagon.

 While I was away I took along a few horses and a few notions to try out. I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.

And Skinners Horse take them out for a spin. They all need degrees of touching up due to handling whilst they were being painted. Curses! Oddly though, in looking at them I am reminded that Britains boxes only held about half a dozen cavalry and eight infantry. Food for thought?

The Army of the King of Kings

The Great King has many of these, for yea, truly, they are without number. Or provenance. Can anyone shed any light as to who might have produced these? I initially thought Tradition 25mm, but no, the catalogue is mute on these.

I bought them off eBay about a year ago thinking, that with a little work they could be made quite acceptable. Now I'm thinking they are pretty acceptable in their own right and have moved right on up the re-basing schedule.

On the topic of the Tradition catalogue, there are some nice-looking hoplites there. Hmmm?

UPDATE - I've created a new blog to carry the burden of all these portentious ancient writings:

http://spaaaartaaans.blogspot.com.au/

Finnish Sturmi

The Bits

 Sometimes - more fool I - I get to work early, sometimes I can't be bothered getting up from my desk on my lunch break. So what to do?

Make a plastic model kit of course! The Airfix StuG III has always been one of my favourites and despite being more than fifty years old, holds up pretty well today. Oh sure, the details may be a bit soft here and there, but dimensionally, the old girl's pretty good. Well, in every way except the weedy main armament.


The Bob

 So, a quick fossick in the spares box and we have one of many PAK 40 barrels left over from all those Opel Blitz kits and we are sorted.

Next step, while enthusiasm was high was to take the pin vise and drill out the wheel holes - all eighty-four of them. While the pin vise was still hot, I carefully drilled out the PAK 40 muzzle-brake.

So, a few words on the kit - it's a StuG III G, late production type with the cast "sow's head" mantlet. A fair basis on which to produce one of the batch of 30 the Finns took delivery of in 1944 and then modified on the basis of their own experience.

For me this means concrete armour on the drivers and loaders positions, an armoured shield on the drivers visor, extra applique armour on the lower hull sides, adding the tool-box rack over the rear engine deck, fine mesh grills over the engine intakes and then of course plastering the while thing with zimmeritt.

The first step then will be to assemble the hull and get those applique plates on.

PS - This morning whilst at home I got cracking on a dozen of the 20mm Garrison Phrygians to go with some of the new chappies - using these latter as painting models. Lovely kit.

Well, well, well. Look what we have here.

'Shun!

So, after teasing you all unmercifully with hints on reception commites and so on, they have arrived.

I had been talking on and off for months about acquiring these from an enigmatic and doubtless wildly eccentric gamer, rules writer, raconteur and general man about town. It was a long dance, but finally we took the plunge*, and I certainly am delighted to welcome these and other figures to my own ancients collection. I will be doing a few more posts on the RM collection as we go on, so watch this space.

Today we have a neat little phalanx of Rospak Greeks. I've been an admirer of the "Rospak" plastic ancients for some time and am glad to say they look as good in the flesh as they do in various images I have pored over in the on-line world. So far as I understand they were only relatively briefly available in 1981-82 from Heroics and Ross and are therefore fairly difficult to find nowadays.

*OK, I finally extracted my finger...

Welcoming Committee 2

Not the 300.

Perhaps waiting for some Persians? Who can say. Rose Prestige Greeks from Garrison Miniatures. Shield decals are from VVV and the wire spears are from North Star. The rest is all me. And I think I need to invest in some microset and microsol. And some gloss varnish.

The Shape of Things to Come

I got a couple of nice packages in the mail yesterday. One from TVAG with my 4.7" guns in it, and another all the way from Sweden. Now apart from the Emperor Napoleon I and a small selection of the Grenadiers of His Imperial Guard, there were also a few nice British bandsmen.

I am holding myself from doing anything more than cleaning and priming them at the moment as there are another 8 Greeks in the queue ahead of them, but the weekend is starting to beckon.

Plots and Schemes

What's that Sahib?

One has as ever too many projects on the go. You may have noticed over the past couple of weeks images of old Rose Medes, Traditon Redcoats and so on. These are part of my two principal projects at the moment. On the one hand I'm getting an ancients army off the ground. It's looking like it'll shape up as Greeks and Persians, so I'm assuming Marathon and Platea will be on the cards at some stage. I've just knocked out a dozen Skythian/Saka archers and for the first time in a really long while I am really enjoying the painting. I'm just about to move onto a 24-strong Greek Phalanx (first of about 6 or 7, I think) who are also from Garrison/Rose and they are proving to be good fun as well, so things are looking up.

With regard to the bengal lancers above, I want a Britains-style army in 30mm, so off to the lead-pile and the Tradition catalogue I went. I had the Bengal lancer castings knocking about for quite a while - they'd been looking for a job and nothing quite seemed to fit, but this just might do. I'll add to them more cavalry from the "Crimea" range. Hussars first; led by Lord Cardigan methinks, and why not? Then some infantry - from the Corps of Drums range, I'm looking at three 18-strong units, with an option on the HR Grenadier Guards and some of the Household Cavalry, too.

Artillery is tricky, but there is a 4.7" in the Houston's Guns range at TVAG, and I think the Conoisseur Colonial 9lb might also do the trick. Gunners will need to be worked up from the Stadden infantry figures, or perhaps from the Indian Army range?

Anyway, give it six months and I hope to be out in the backyard with a smart brigade facing off against my Alzheimers and Prussians with a clockwork train and a monitor to boot - all in time for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

Reception Committee

Led by Hornaphernes the Mighty, the Medes stand ready in reserve

Awaiting new arrivals are my 30mm Rose Prestige Medean infantry. A lovely figure and so easy to paint. The next block of 8 is ready to be started. 24 down, 16 to go!

Test Shots

Stadden 30mm British Infantry 1890

 A valiant Toy Soldier marches by. I wonder how this might look with some of the Houston 4.7" on Land Carriage that TVAG are selling. Hm.

Yes, I lost the left arm

And now that I see him, the piping on the tunic needs a tidy up, I forgot the piping on his collar and - ah - shouldn't the cuffs on his tunic be of the "jam pot" variety? Still, I do like the way the jacket, trousers and equipment came up. Checking my Osprey, it looks as though his personal equipment was very accurately done, too.

The View from the Cubby House

I thought I'd drop by and let the world know what is passing over my painting desk at the moment.

First along in the current queue have been some lovely Rose Prestige Medes. Sixteen in all to start forming the core of a Persian army. More on this project as we go on. Pictures to follow.

I have been painting a great deal of US and Vichy armour and softskins of late. Not too sure why, but it has been very enjoyable. I'm looking at the Torch landings - perhaps the Safi scenario from the first Rapid Fire! book.

FT-17s with purely speculative markings!

Airfix M3 Lee with patent saggy tracks.

Two utterly pointless purchases from Tradition - 30mm British Corps of Drums and Grenadiers of the Garde Imperiale led by none other than the Emperor Napoleon I. Heaven knows why, or what I shall do with them, but by golly they do scratch a very persistent itch.

Finally, in closing, I note the passing of Mr Don Featherstone. I won't go into his seminal influence upon the hobby, his often reported kindnesses and generosities. There are better writers than me doing that in a hundred blogs and magazine articles. I would wish though that his final moments were filled with memories of his children playing in the sun on one perfect day.

Out Black Spot!

For the past month or so I've been afflicted by the hobby Black Dog. A strong case of the can't be bothereds. I've been slleping in rather than getting up and painting. Watching a video in the evening instead of assembling placcy bits.

Terrible.

But I think I've broken out. I painted a bakers' dozen of Camel Corps this week. And assembled an Airfix jeep. That's got to count, eh?

But to make sure. To make really sure. To make really really sure I'm taking part in a painting challenge. From the 30th of this month to the 30th Novenmber. 90 days. 90 days to paint... something.

I'm thinking of four Charge!-sized units of foot. What a good opportunity to make use of my old Saxon Army. I think i got about 30 figures into that. So, lets see, about 170 to go. We'll see if I can get through that and perhaps throw in some cavalry and guns too.

Can it be done? Only one way to find out.

Hold On To Your Bounce Sticks

A man and his Stick

Whilst watching an episode of Dexter tonight, I took out a piece of quarter-round beading and manufactured a measuring stick to go with my fast-play Sudan rules "The Quickie and the Flame".

I quite like little devices such as this. They combine the fun of gizmology with a handy reference in the quick of the fight.

Someone needs to lose some weight.

Fife and Drum Kickstarter Project Goes Gangbusters

It's really good to see such a worthy and high-quality project like Jim Purky's AWI Kickstarter getting the support it merits.

While AWI is not really my "thing" I've put my money where my mouth is and bought in.

Buy some of his artillery and train equipments while you're at it. They are designed by one of the best regarded researchers of the 7YW out there, Mr Christian Rogge.

Go Jim.

Sudan Campaign - Move 1 Completed.

If you are so moved, I have finished the first move of my new Sudan Campaign.

The wrap-up may be read here:

http://www.bloodreddesertsands.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/move-1-wrap-up.html

The short version is that after one small battle in Western Sudan and a few small skirmishes in the North the rebellion is somewhat in decline. North Sudan has - for now at least - been pacified. The beseiged garrisons seem to be holding out well enough with plenty of supplies laid in.

Let's see what Move 2 has in store!

Those Blood-Red Desert Sands

I have spent the past few days quietly re-painting the basing on my Sudan collection. It's been built up over the past 8 years or so, and over time as my style and paint stocks have varied, they have taken on a pretty motley appearance.

In working on them, I have decided to undertake a small Sudan campaign.

It's not terribly historical and telescopes the events of the Mahdi Revolt into 20 campaign moves. Still, I hope it reflects some of the flavour of the period.

The campaign system is that Steve Winter published on his old "The Colonial Angle" wesbiste.

I'll be preparing and putting up my materials over the rest of this week and hopefully kick things off this time next week.

If you are at all interested, please come and walk with me over those Blood Red Desert Sands.

A brief diversion

On my front doorstep (which we never use and hence what follows) a few weeks back was a parcel that had come to me from the UK. I opened it and it turned out to be the copy of Duncan Head's "Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars". I had ordered it in February and promptly forgotten about it. I am sure it arrived with all despatch and had waitied there patiently for me to notice it.

A pleasant surprise you may say, and indeed it was. Even more surprising was the fact that the snails had deigned merely to nibble lightly upon the envelope before nicking off in search of some lettuce instead.

 Well, I was flicking through it today - these books are extremely flick-friendly, you understand - and what a treat it is. Three-paragraph battle descriptions, sections on the composition and descriptions of the Armies and so on.

Then you come to Ian Heath's illustrations. There are 188 of them.

Fair use, yeah Ian?

I invite you to admire them and then ask yourself why no-one seems (that I can see) to have picked up on their "look" to do a range of 30mm miniatures. The only thing with which I can compare them is the work of the German flat engravers. Such clean lines. Such nice anatomy. Such uncluttered simplicity.

UPDATE - OK there are these from Garrison:

Rose Prestige Greek - buy them in huge quantities, they are gorgeous.

But that's about it so far as I can tell. Someone... anyone.. please!