SELWG 2016 - Lootz

This morning I got up nice and early to head down Saarff ov tha rivva (the lands where black-cab drivers do not go...) to Crystal Palace for SELWG. I actually got there a good few minutes before the doors opened, so joined the queue.

My first stop once inside was to pay my obeisance to The Evil Mr Tuffley. After a brief chat about the rapidly expanding new and resculpted lines I handed over the grand sum of £6 for a pack each of the new ESU and NSL Jaeger SAW troopers, before he managed to persuade me to diversify into the Moongrunt range as well!
Hobby news - TEMT hopes to have all the support weapon packs for the ESU, NSL Jaeger, Islamic Federation and OutRim Coalition ranges ready in time for Warfare in November.

After I made my escape from temptation, I made my way to the games on the balcony area intending to make a start on my usual round of taking pics of all the games. At this point I discovered that I'd forgotten my camera. Oh well, I just began a tour of all the games before shopping,

I did meet up and chat with various people while I was there: Postie, Ray, Clint, Ian and Big Lee from the Rejects; Peter W, Clive, Ian G, Ian N, Martin B, Andy, Sean, Bart and Jerry from the Central London club (I did see a couple of others at various times but didn't get to chat); plus a couple of bloggers - Simon (Big Red Bat) and Dave Showell (If In Doubt, Charge!). I'm sure I've forgotten a few people, but that's my memory for you.

The GZG figures were the only ones I purchased at the show; the rest of my spending was on terrain and small bits. After a few tours around the traders and games I finally popped along to Essex Miniatures to collect a small package of figures which I had purchased during the week for collection at the show.

Anyway, I guess it's time for pics of the lootz:

My Essex package

Cacti and corn stalks for Mexicagrave

Some loose weapons for Salutesville

Airbrush hexocam stencils

Primer, paints, mini-dice and the GZG figures

Road and river sections

I decided to open up the road and river section packs to see what you get:
Edit to add: The figures in these pics are on a 40mm square base

Latex river/stream sections from Early War Miniatures

Felt-backed road sections from S&A Scenics

I think I may end up buying another pack of the road sections from S&A Scenics to ensure that I have enough for a decent road layout on a 6' x 4' table, but I reckon that 7' of river/stream should be plenty (especially at £37 a pack!).

Saturday Workbench

Gosh! Three weeks without posting. Sorry for leaving you bereft of my inane verbiosity for so long. The fact is that until today I didn't have anything to post about. Well, that's not strictly true - if I'd downloaded pics from my camera, I could have done an AAR of a game of Full Thrust. But I haven't actually done any painting over the past few weeks as I first of all got a bug to watch the whole of Babylon 5 again (including the films and "Crusade") and this past week I've been a bit wiped out in the evenings.

Anyhoos, I'm back in the swing of things now and have started work on the scatter terrain pieces that I primed a few weeks ago. At the moment I'm doing the stacks of sacks - they've had basecoats and a shading wash so far; the next step is to paint the integral bases that some of them have. I'll do that tomorrow and then switch to some of the other pieces, probably the crates and tea-chests.

WIP pics:

I used 3 different basecoats - Ivory, Pale Sand and White Grey - before a thin sepia wash

During the week I have been prepping the GZG figures I bought at Colours. I'll be sticking them on bases during the week while paint dries on the terrain. I expect that I'll just prime them for now, ready for painting during this year's Challenge.

Colours 2016 - The Lootz

Yes, it's the swagbag post from yesterday's trip to Colours. I did go with some purchases in mind, some potential purchases and enough money for any unintended ones.

The full haul

An unplanned purchase

The book was unplanned as were the average dice; the steel bases and the resin cargo bits were planned

The Pulp Figures pack was unintended; the GZG stuff next to it was a "see how they look" plan

 The GZG stuff - 2 packs each of the two new NSL codes (Jaegers) and the two new ESU Naval Infantry codes. They also had a new pack each for the OutRim Coalition and the Islamic Federation - I didn't buy those though. Mr Tuffley is going to be expanding all those ranges over the next few months it seems.

Bit of a SNAFU with these Essex cavalry...

The SNAFU was that I aksed for 4 packs of PNR23 and 3 of PNR24 which were Napoleonic Cossacks (to add some variety to my SYW ones - their costume and equipment hadn't changed much). When I unpacked my bag on getting home I discovered that they'd mistakenly given me PNB23 and PNB24 - Napoleonic British Hussars. So, I'm going to have to sort out exchanging them.

Static grass and a Flock Box from Warpainter

Who is the evil criminal genius of Salutesville?*

 *Postie, obviously!

Contents of the Flock Box package

The Flock Box wasn't a planned purchase as I hadn't realised that the company who produces them was going to be there. I had previously seen a number of reviews and was considering buying one, but wanted to see it for myself before doing so. My luck was in (although my wallet's luck wasn't, although for £35 it wasn't that drastic). That included a bottle of "tackifier" glue for making tufts, although that was a special deal at the show.

This morning I went out to get some batteries and some silicone paper to test it out. It turns out that the greaseproof paper I bought wasn't the siliconised variety. However, I'd also bought some parchment paper with and without foil backing. They were siliconised and seemed to work well, especially the foil-backed one. Why do you need siliconised paper? For making tufts of course - the silicone allows you to peel them off for sticking onto bases. I also tried it with PVA on a figure base - it worked very well for that too.

Now I just need to buy myself a plastic-handled metal sieve and I'll be all set to mass produce tufts for myself.

Colours 2016 - The Games (Loads of Pics!)

This morning I got up early to head down to Newbury Racecourse to attend Colours. I haven't been for a few years for a number of reasons, so it was about time. Because I'd got up so early, I was actually there before doors opened. Luckily, the organisers had the good sense to walk along the queue taking entrance money to speed up the flow when the doors opened.

As soon as they let us in, I headed straight up to the first floor to the GZG stand as the Evil Mr Tuffley ("He who pitilessly produces new shinies to extract money from poor gamers") had announced new shinies that I simply had to buy - stocks would of course be limited so it was a case of get in quick before they all go.

Once that little bit of spending was done, I popped up to the second floor where all* the games were located to take pics before it got crowded (and before my bag got too heavy for me to easily take photos. But enough blather - pics of the games:


Battle for Balooistan (Wargames Association of Reading; Black Ops)

Battle for Kyoto (Solent Wagames Club; Sharpe Practice)

Fishguard 1794 (Tring Wargames Club)

Siege of Portsmouth 1642 (Solent Wargames Club) - 2mm siege campaign game

Battle of Cedar Mountain (Loughton Strike Force?; "Picket's Charge" rules - available soon)

Battle of Halfway (Southbourne Tabletop & Boardgamers; Space Vixens From Mars)

I was too early - no ships on the table!

Russo-Finnish War (Loughton Strike Force)

Rivet Wars (Braintree Wargames Group)

Caught at Kut (Adrian Shepherd and Friends)

Franco-Prussian War (Oxford Wargames Club; 6mm)

28mm Ancients (not listed; Warlord rules)

Heroes of Normandie (Diceni Demo Team)

Operation Monster (Abingdon Wargames Club)

Frostgrave (Maidstone & District Gamers)

Dvina River, RCW (Naval Wargames Society) - see David Manley's blog for more info

Courage Behind Enemy Lines (Petersfield Black Hole Wargamers)

This was an interesting participation game for six players who each got a single character - a commando or a spy. I played in one game and had the spy. Our group managed to achieve six of our eight objectives, although one of our commandos did get killed. I achieved my character's objective in the second turn - acquire the uniform of a senior German officer - I managed to sneak up behind him, stun him with poison, tie him up and take the uniform with my 4 actions all whilst remaining hidden. I also managed to heal one of the commandos - sadly he undid my good work and got himself shot again.

Reno's Attack on the Little Big Horn (Liverpool War Games Association; 10mm)

Blurry pic - the 7th Cavalry must have been charging too fast for my camera!

Pandeminion (Reading Independent Wargamers)

Tankette - early WW2 (Huntingdon & District Wargames Society; 1:35 scale)

Dux Bellorum (Steve Deeprose)

Brotherhoods of Mars (South London Warlords; Warhammer 40K)

Mau Mau Uprising (Skirmish Wargames Collective; 54mm?)

Battle Over the Trenches (Wings of Glory Aerodrome)

2nd Coronea (Society of Ancients)

Achtung Gringo! (Crush The Kaiser Wargaming)

Operation Overlord (Crawley Wargames Club)

The tournament area (Guildball, Imperial Assault, Bolt Action)

Phew! That's a lot of pics! Once I'd taken those I did some shopping, had lunch (chatting with an Australian who hadn't been to a UK show before), played in the commando game, did some more shopping, looked back in on a few of the games, did some final shopping then headed home.

I'll do a lootz post tomorrow.