A Somewhat Productive Day

Thank goodness for public holidays. Having the day off work means I've been able to be quite productive.

I had been planning to take my SYW hussars, cuirassiers and commanders to work this week to prime them with grey Halfords primer, but the weather forecast doesn't look too promising for that. So, this morning I decided to prime them using the airbrush.

After that was done I needed to enter a couple of FoGR army lists into the standard spreadsheet. I've been cajoled into attending the Southern League match next Sunday. the theme is "Warriors" - any non-European (includes Buccaneers) list from the Cities of Gold and Colonies & Conquests books, with a minimum 16 bases of Warriors and a maximum 12 bases of battle cavalry. I've decided to take Koreans - it's a good excuse to get them out onto the table for three games. After deciding which of the two lists to use, I duly submitted it by email.

This afternoon I started the detailing work on the NSL vehicles - the dull colours first, followed by a wash of Army Painter strong tone (diluted to 50% to help it flow). I needed to let the wash dry for a few hours before finishing the detailing, so I took a break. Here's a pic taken just after applying the wash:

I wanted to make a start on the cavalry and commanders, so after my break I knocked on with painting the horses. I got all the basecoats done by early evening, then took another break. I still need to do the manes, tails and points for the chestnuts, bays and grey. Once those are done, it will be the wash step. I'm leaving that for tomorrow evening. Here's a pic of how I've left them:

After another short break for a spot of dinner, I carried on with the detailing on the NSL vehicles. It's all finished now. I just need to varnish them and do the basing. As the spray varnish will need decent weather, that may have to wait a few days.

A Somewhat Productive Week

Despite being somewhat tired every evening this week and spending much of yesterday trying to catch up a bit on sleep, I've actually been reasonably productive. During the week I was painting up some artillery for my SYW Russians. I'd pretty much finished them on Thursday night so I did the final details on Friday evening and varnished them. A bit later on I stuck them in a container with water in it to help loosen the PVA glue holding them onto the painting sticks. A couple of hours later I took them out and as I was plucking the figures off I noticed something frightful - everything seemed to have white splotches in random places. I then realised what it must have been - the varnish wasn't fully dry and the water must have been warm, causing the varnish to go cloudy. I decided to try something a little drastic, but it seemed to do the trick - a  mix of satin and matt varnishes with some of my ink washes.

Yesterday I got the figures stuck onto their bases and added basing gunk. This morning I added flock and glued the limbers into place behind the horses.

And without further ado, here are the pics:

4 pounder, 2 x 8 pounder, howitzer

As before, the guns are loose so that I can choose what gun to use depending on my army list and also to turn them round to show limbered/unlimbered.


This afternoon I've been having some fun with the airbrush. You may recall that toward the end of the Challenge I assembled a bunch of extra vehicles (mostly hover tanks) for my 15mm NSL force. Well, as they'd been sitting in the drawer ever since and I didn't have anything else primed and ready to go (OK, nothing else that I wanted to paint today) I set up the spray booth, sorted out the paints I'd need, found my little scraps of mesh for the camo patterns and got myself ready to go. And then I spotted that I hadn't added radio antennae to the vehicles. A couple of minutes with a cheap plastic brush, a hobby knife and some superglue and the antennae were in place.

I did my best to replicate the paint scheme of the original vehicles. The colours were easy as I'd made a note of them in a blog post at the time. It was more the technical side - I'd forgotten how much of a pig it was using the meshes for the camo.

Anyway, some pics of the various stages of WIP:

Dunkelgelb primer

Hull Red stripes

Dark Blue Grey diamond pattern

Diamond pattern close up

Camo Light Green dot pattern

Dot pattern close up

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by a small miniatures company in France, asking me if I'd be willing to review some of their figures. I had seen some of their figures during the Challenge and really liked the look of them, so I agreed. They then asked if there were any in particular that I would like to review. The list was very long, even after I knocked it back to a few examples of the singles and groups, so I just said "surprise me".

Anyhoos, earlier this week the package arrived:

On opening the package I was surprised - the figure they'd sent wasn't one of the ones which had made it to my pared down list, but was a very suitable one for me:

"Tania the Tanker" from Raging Heroes, whose pose and look is clearly inspired by "Rosie the Riveter" from the WW2 posters. The pic shows everything (except the delivery slip) that came in the package. I have opened the blister pack to take a look at the figure, but no pics for now - I'll be saving those for the review post. Let's just say it looks great and I look forward to painting her.

Back From Partizan (be warned - lots and lots of pics)

Well, what a great day I've had - it truly made up for the early Sunday start to catch the train to Newark. I had to wait a while for a cab to turn up in the taxi rank and there were two guys in the queue ahead of me. When they told the cabbie they wanted to go to the showground I quickly asked if they were going to Partizan and they were, so we shared the cab. They were Queenslanders on a European trip and had decided to take in Partizan while they were over here. So, to Dave and Shaun - if you read this, I do hope you enjoyed the show.

Not having been to the previous venue, I can't comment on that, but the new venue is possibly the best I've been to for a show. It was roomy, and the lighting was perfect for taking pics - lots of natural light through the windows and skylight panels and the artificial lights seemed to be daylight balanced. That meant no fiddling about with the camera to try to get the light balance (and ending up with a lot of blurry pics). Just point and click.

At 1pm we had the inaugural Northern meetup of bloggers which was quite well attended. There were a few other bloggers at the show, but they weren't able to get away from their games.

So, some meetup pics to kick things off:

DaveD taking a pic of me taking a pic of ....

Left to right in pic below: Curt, Loki (hiding at the back), Sidney Roundwood, Gareth(?), Ian, Tom(?), me (kneeling), DaveD, Craig Cartmell, Gary Amos, (forgot your name - how embarassing; kneeling), Martin C, Pete (Panzerkaput)

Thanks to Lady Sarah for taking the pic with my camera!)

Other bloggers who were at the show who didn't make it into these pics: Simon Miller, Henry Hyde, Roy Williamson(?), Graham (Cran Tara), Mike Whitaker, RedTroop...I'm sure there were some others. I know I kept getting stopped for a chat by people who read or follow my blog.


After arriving I decided to get pics of all the games before doing any shopping. OK, so I did do some shopping in between taking pics, but not a lot.

Aggro! (Ainsty Castings):

Saga (Gripping Beast):

The Chicago Way (Great Escape Games):

Leicester Phat Cats?

Kings of War (Mantic Games):

Blitzkrieg Miniatures:

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?

Wargames Developments:

Grantham Strategy Club?:

The Men Who Would Be King (Peterborough Wargames Club):

Raft Racing (KB Club?):

Chariot Racing (KB Club?):

Wings of Glory (Wings of Glory Aerodrome):

Sails of Glory (Wings of Glory Aerodrome):

COGS/GCN:

Minions Racing (RAF Wargames Association):

?

7TV (Crooked Dice):

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The Bunker:

Nottingham Wargames Club:

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Frostgrave (North Star):

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This game really stood out - what an inspired idea!:

That's right - clothes pegs!

Battle of the Somme (Kallistra):

WSS (Grimsby Wargames Club):

Napoleonic Anglo-Dutch Wars Naval (Grimsby Wargames Club):

Taken a bit later on

2nd St Albans (Like a Stonewall Games):

ACW (Bramley Barns Wargames Club):

Perry Miniatures:

Battle of Cisercium(?) using "To The Strongest" (Simon Miller):

I promised not to let on that this was actually a fantasy battle...

Caliver Books:

AWI game (Steve Jones):

Underground in a Maginot Line fort at Fort Vaux, Verdun (James Morris/Lenton Gamer):

VBCW (Very British Civil Forum - Panzerkaput et al):

Sharpe Practice 2 (??):

Panzerfauste:

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League of Gentlemen Alchemists?

It's the little details that give games terrain the extra "je ne sais quoi"

French Indo-China (Westbury Wargames):

Graham Cummings/Crann Tara Miniatures:

Mansfield Wargames Club:

Sharp Practice (Lincoln Miniature Warfare Society):

Once the bloggers meetup was over, another round of the games and the traders was in order. I then joined Curt, Lady Sarah, Sidney Roundwood and DaveD in repairing for an amiable Sunday afternoon meal at the Prince Rupert in Newark. We shared starts of breaded whitebait and baked Camembert (that's two separate starters!), followed by the Rupert Bar Board (pork pie, Lincolnshire pork sausages, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and warm bread with onion gravy, mustard and pickles). Excellent food and more than excellent company. I took this pic as we left the pub:

They then dropped me off at the station to catch my train. The next train, the 17.18 from Edinburgh was delayed and would actually arrive after the 17.45 train from Leeds. I caught the latter and got home a bit before 8pm, promptly taking pics of my loot:

More markers and a second deck for "The Chicago Way"

Painting supplies

MDF bases

Blue Moon 15mm SYW Russians

The show freebie figure

A box full of bubblewrap?

No! It was my "tribute" figure from Curt for helping with the Challenge! *big grin*

Of course Curt got my Curtgeld figure along with a pack of Copplestone Beat Cops I'd picked up for him at Salute and another present - he is now the proud owner of the "Oblitterator".


As I said at the start, a thoroughly enjoyable day out.