Walcheren fever

Where have I been............I have been in Australia on and off over the last few months which has coincided with  a downturn in wargaming\painting hobby itself. I was going to take part in the ACW Gettysburg refight in Christchurch this weekend but I had to pull out as I needed to be in Australia yet again for work. I have also sold a TC3 property (after some lengthy process as the buyer turned out to be one of the biggest idiots I have ever dealt with), changed jobs and run a half marathon.

However, I am not in Australia I am home (in NZ) in bed with pneumonia and have been in bed since Thursday morning. It looks like I will be in bed for a few days yet as I am trying to avoid going into hospital as they are such frightful places and Id rather stay here drugged up to the hilt, reading about Astronomy on the laptop and playing Napoleonic PC games. I got sick as I was tired from constant travel, dealing with idiots, the fact its horribly cold in nz at the moment and general lack of sleep due to children, work and coughs.

To amuse myself I found a Napoleonic add-on for a game called mount and blade warband - which is extremely entertaining. Its a first person shooter and you can be one of several troop types per nation and it is multiplayer, so every person in the game is another real person.

It also has musicians so you can play regimental music for the host nation, and also play pianos

But enough of this silliness !!
Anyways hopefully once the lurg has gone I might look at getting fernando enterprises to paint some figures for me to get a project going asap.

Take care all.
Paul

Merry Xmas and happy New Year

Belated as per usual but I have been on banks Peninsular since Xmas Eve and have only now got internet at the holiday house in stunning Timaru. As such I don't have any figures or paints with me so it will be a week at least until I can get painting again. I plan to have fun with my family at Caroline Bay, sit on the beach and get as much sleep as I can.

Have a safe new years everyone.

Below are my 15mm Peter Pig Ansars and Tribesmen, a photo I found on the camera !

Pics

 So finally I got the camera out and have taken a tonne of pictures which I will post over the next few days. It was a really nice day today but I didn't get a chance to take any pics outside which is why my late night pictures are pretty poor. I'm in a pretty bad mood at the moment so my commentary will be brief.

I'm getting into some more 15mm Napoleonic, I started these guys 6 months ago and I have forgotten what unit they are (Idiot!). The figures are Old Glory Wurtenburgers but I must have had grand plan to make them something else (and never noted what I was doing - Idiot !). The figures are undercoated and ready for shading and the works. (I'm painting 12 at a time)

I also found a very very very old unit of Italian Grenadiers so I have touched them up a little and hope to base them this week. They look fairly tired in this photo so hopefully based en mass they will smarten up  a bit.

 My flagsofwar standards also arrived so these have been glued onto the bases. Once the glue is set I will tidy the flags up by touching up the gold edges of the flags to make them more realistic instead of paper printout looking.( The unit is the 83rd Pennsylvania )

 I have also just about finished another two stands, a few corrections here and there will help...

 as well as some more shading on some faces.......

 Close up of the Colour party. Foolishly I didn't check my figure positioning when making the bases and I wish I had of uses another officer figure as his clone is on the other side.

Christmas Surprises

So November 4 I ordered another box of Perry 28mmm ACW from caliverbooks, Until I received this order I held off on the ACW painting (Added of course by my shaky thumb), a week later I was also tempted by a Peter pig 20% discount and some Irregular Miniatures 15mm Jungle animals. These were my xmas presents to myself and I left it at that.

Peter Pig arrived promptly as always, Irregular arrived but no Perry............so I placed it down to a small delay certain parcels get from time to time. I then took advantage of a mightyape.co.nz deal and ordered some Flames of War desert buildings - they contacted me and said it would be 2-3 weeks until they could send - which was fine for me - I'd get my ACW and then after Xmas some FoW - Everyone is a winner or so they say :).

They are pre-painted, yes its a little lazy of me but that's what money os for.

Mmm Dec 7 and still no Perry...........so I contacted Caliver and they apologised as my order was processed but nothing happened to it - BUGGER. Then a knock at the door and there was a FoW Desert Building package from mightyape being delivered 4 DAYS after ordering - HUZZAH. So I guess the Positive and Negative forces of wargaming luck have shown themselves today.


So I now need to make another Caliver order for some ACW and a box or two of 28mm plastic WSS figures that two people talked me into getting (well to be honest they only mentioned it, I talked myself into it very quickly.)

I have also tonight done a nights painting with no shakes - things are looking up. Hopefully I will have some pictures up.

The Twitch !

What is happening at the moment. Not a lot, I seem to be suffering some sort of nervous twitch in my left thumb which makes painting and holding figures steadily almost impossible. I did try however, but I would go to paint an Ansar’s rifle, twitch just as brush bristles touched led and then end up painting brown on his clothes. I had to revert to basing  (for spraying) and  undercoating new figures and painting the base coat on completed bases but based figures suck up a lot more space than when they are new in a bag so I’ve actually run out of storage boxes. There has also been some grumbling in the camp by my civilian camp followers about the space I am taking up in the kitchen, and I have been warned that a mutiny may occur.

Before the dreaded twitch I was going all out to finish my 15mm Zulu and Dervish armies and I made some headway, but alas I am now laying low until I can’t paint twitch free again. The Dervishes are Peter Pig and they are such a nice figures, I  whinged to myself that one of the figures had flash on the front and back (I’ve never seen flash on a PP figure before) so got out the old knife and pruned away. I then decided to engage my brain and realised as this particular tribesman was nude, then perhaps the “flash” at the front was actually his crown jewels and so I only pruned the flash at the front. I guess I just assumed it was flash and didn’t really have my 15mm figure penis check mind set on.

So I am currently just reading blogs and doing paperwork for solo campaigns I intend to run. One of those campaigns is to redo my Jaxonia Ubongo campaign as the last time I did it I seemed to have tremendous luck. On rereading the rules I found I had made a few mistakes and left out jungle encounters completely, but as I now have a bag of Jungle animals from Irregular Miniatures it looks like gorillas, crocodiles and various others beasts will also pray on the poor soldiers.

Its pretty boring with a twitchy thumb !

First ACW based and 15mm Altenguard Army.

So seeing as though have a tonne of stuff painted but not based properly I thought I'd spend the next session sorting some of this stuff out. First off I found the 28mm Russian 1812 Horse Artillery, filled my paint tray with dark brown and then proceeded to drop the first figure in head first - %&$^&!.

Then I did it again (%&$@! x 2) and gave up on the Napoleonic as I needed to clean two figures and it gave me the hump.

So I have based the first four bases of the 29th Pennsylvania. The standards are in the post at the moment, and when they arrive I will finish the pole as well as sort out Officer and NCO chevrons etc. I've gone for a plain old grass scheme with a few weeds and clumps of brush, typical sheep country !.

So I have another 20 figures to paint from the first box and the second box to go.

I then moved onto a 15mm Rally Round the King Army - Altenguard (basically based on 100YW English) - lots of bows, a few men at arms and a commander, I based the Brethren (Religious Paladin types) Knights as well as for some reason they were in the wrong box.

 I also noticed that the spears\spikey points all need fixing - yay. I also need to adorn the pike with a standard of some type.

Unfortunately I was a bit robotic now and accidentally based 3 Goblin Archer stands in the same grass theme so I called it a night there as I wanted to give them a rock\cave based theme. Looking at the RRTK boxes I have the following to finish.

Goblin (Bases to be flocked)
Border Kingdoms (Norman)
Elf
Dwarf
Imperium (Roman)

If less is more, then more must be awesome.

So onwards and upwards. I have been quite busy on the painting table, but rather lazy taking photos.

I have started to paint the bases of my 20mm Japanese, and then realised I have never done jungle bases before so will need some different decor. This is quite good timing as I need some tufts and flowers etc to make the lads below look pretty on their bases. The figures (16) are only 60% done as I still have to add the final shade\highlight layer, blanket rolls, brass n boots and head wear to go. The faces will also get a slight wash in some places, especially elephant man on the far left hand side.  only 56 to go :). My blues are quite light, but I'm happy with it, I have spent some time in museums around the USA in my traveling days and that good old blue uniform did vary considerably. I spent a lot of time in Alabama too over the course of a few years but rue the day I didn't buy that kepi in that trinket store.

And you can never have a Napoleonic 15mm army without Italians ............

So hopefully I'll bash out the rest of these Unions lads over the next few weeks, and I need to finalize my Peter Pig order. I've often wondered why he never seemed to advertise specials, but now I seem to have been in on a lucky discount draw and have got a hefty discount for one order only - HUZZAH !