In with the New Year

Happy New Year everyone and best wishes for 2018!

I started this blog 8 years ago in January of 2010. Since then I have posted 363 times with just over 119,000 views. I am pretty sure that many of the views are from Russian bots, but, nonetheless I appreciate all the views and sharing of comments from the community of gamers and hobbyists out there who might find something interesting in here on occasion. This is as close as I get to social media!

2017 was a solid production year for my workbench, I painted a lot more 15mm and 10mm stuff than in previous years as I picked up some Team Yankee and FOW stuff, as well as new projects in 10mm (Naps, WW2 and more recently early medieval). The 28s featured 40k as well as other historical periods.

The numbers are similar to previous years - just over 1,400 items painted so about 4 per day on average:

28mm: 232 foot, 24 mounted, 6 vehicle
20mm: 31 foot, 5 vehicles
15mm: 224 foot, 15 mounted, 48 vehicles
10mm: 415 foot, 62 tanks, 72 mounted, 4 guns
6mm: 122 vehicles, 216 infantry

total: 1108 foot, 121 mounted, 248 other

I played 26 games of DBA in 2018 and have now played 331 games lifetime.

Most recently, I have been working on 10mm WW2 stuff - here is my first batch of early war desert forces British vehicles by Pendraken. I failed to manage a reasonable Caunter scheme (too bloody difficult to get straight lines over these wee angular surfaces) so have just gone for sand for all of it. I splurged on 10mm decals too.

Christmas loot and a bunch of other stuff

I aquired a bunch of pre-painted 15mm terrain for FOW and TY from Santa, including escarpments (bracketing three newly painted Stugs)

A terraced house and corner shop- a shout out to my chum Scott who I ran into at the Mission Fun and Games Boxing Day sale, this was where I snapped up the large houses. Scott - thanks for letting me slip into line with you! Hope you did as well as I did at the sale - these were 50% off.

a church

terraced house with a pair of newly painted 3d printed Tigers

corner shop with house

Interior detail of one of the houses

interior detail of the church

Interior detail of the corner shop

A pair of Tigers - 3d printed by my chum Clayton - passing the terraced house with interior detail shown

Rocky hill

Stug hiding in the rocky hill

Closer in - nicely detailed Battlfront plastic Stug and home-printed Tiger

And finally, a unit of painted Imperial Harquebusiers for chum Jonathan

Well, not quite finally I guess, I also acquired a box of Leopard 1s which I painted in gelbolive to match my ArmiesArmies C1s. The Battlefront Leps are the ones with aerials:

Lots of stuff - 28mm TYW, 10mm medieval fantasy, 15mm FOW...

It's been a while since my last update, December always seems to be a busy month, but a variety of stuff came off the table.

First we have a unit of 28mm Swedish Pike and Shot (Warlord) completed for a friend - familiar figures, as I have probably painted more of these than anything else, but the steel helmets give then a very uniform and distinctive appearance.

 I also did some 10mm fantasy and medieval stuff - Elven cavalry and Treemen by Pendraken and I did a few stands of Old Glory Byzantines.

 

 
And a pair of Battlefront 15mm FOW tanks for my mid-war Grenadier company

And finally, an unusual story. This week I ordered an Arab Conquest army to fight the Byzantines. Strangely, PayPal held my payment for 72 hours while they reviewed whether my transaction "violated the terms of agreement". WTF?!?!?! This has never happened to me before after perhaps 10 years of regular PayPal use. I suspect it is because the order contained words "Islamic" "war" "muslim" "arab"etc... and somehow triggered an AI filter that marked it as a suspicious international transaction. Good think I didn't order a model of Isis (as in the Greek goddess...).

CSIS must have been disappointed to find out it was for a couple of hundred 10mm wargame figures!

Whither scale?

This week I knocked off a few 10mm models that arrived just in time for hosting a Juno Beach scenario on the weekend:

 And finally I painted a Battlefront 15mm Crusader and a 10mm Matilda - I can't decide which scale to go with for a new Western Desert project. The Flames of War 15mm stuff is lovely - but it's pricey, on the other hand Pendraken 10mm stuff is also great and half the price. Argh.....

Phoenix Guard, FOW and TYW Swedes

Flipping around between projects over the last couple of weeks - starting with a batch of 2nd hand and refurbished High Elf Phoenix Guard - these are old GW metals that I stripped and repainted.

 

Then I made a start on a mid-war FOW project - a company of 15mm Battlefront Grenadiers for a mid-war infantry company I am putting together to play 4th edition:

And finally in the last week I took on a job to paint some TYW Swedes and Imperials for a friend - there are very familiar Warlord 28mm models - same plastics as the ECW troops with some different helmets, command and some metal foot figures.

6mm Canadians for Team Yankee and a foray into FOW

This week I finished off some infantry and IFVs (M150, M125, M113 and M114 standing in for Lynx recon vehicles) for a 6mm Canadian 4CMBG force to play Team Yankee:

And I dabbled with some 15mm vehicles for FOW V4 after picking up the starter kit. I painted the Mk III and Mk IV in early panzergrau. I also picked up a couple of Zvezda 1:100 kits (and Mk III flamethrowing tanks and an Mk IVD notable for the lack of bustle). The Zvezda kits go together nicely but are a bit weedy compared to Battlefront and have shallower detail which shows in the pictures. They are also a bit lighter because I didn't undercoat them in black before working through the greys - my bad! That would have helped with depth.

Battlefront in the foreground with air recognition flag, Zvezda in the background

Zvezda in the foreground, Battlefront to the rear