Ins and outs, each to their own

Last week has seen some comings and goings. I finally decided to sell the 100 or so Venexia 15mm Italian Wars figures that I bought on a whim in January.  I listed them on eBay Tuesday afternoon and when I got up Wednesday morning they'd already sold.  That left me with no figures, yes 0 figures to paint, a position I haven't been in for 23 years or so.  I must admit although I like to operate on a very manageable ie. one or two months worth of figures to paint, this had gone too far and I was left feeling slightly out of sorts weird as that may sound.

Thankfully this uneasy situation didn't last long as on Friday my order from Newline Designs arrived. 24 regular Sikh infantry, 24 Sepoys and four British infantry to be used as skirmishers.   That'll keep me going nicely until I go on holiday in a couple of weeks and for a bit when I get back.  

Why did I sell the Italian Wars figures?  I don't have a lead mountain so I’d had plenty of opportunities in the nine months since I bought them to start on the figures and I'd prioritised other projects instead.  The Sikh Wars figures I started on the day they were delivered. 

I suppose one of the things this tells me is don't be enticed by offers UNLESS it's something that you were GENUINELY considering buying anyway.  I lost a little on these so it wasn't a saving at all in the end.  

I've had a passing interest in The Italian Wars for many years ( I even did a school project on landsknechts), but I can't say it's anything I've read about in any great detail in recent years.  A real interest in the history of the period was missing for me.   (One of the three questions).

Additionally, I already have a 16th Century Pike & Shot collection in the form of my fictional Spanish Invasion of Elizabethan England/Dutch Revolt/French Wars of Religion project.  Would an Italian Wars project give me anything particularly different to game? (Another of the three questions).

Finally when it came to it I was a bit underwhelmed by the Venexia figures.  I think I'd read so many good things that I was expecting to be really wowed but unfortunately wasn't.  Perfectly good but just didn't grab me.  Chacun à son goût as they say over the Channel. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

City ruins scatter terrain

Image
2024 and 2025 will see the 80th anniversary of many of the great city battles of the Second World War, such as Warsaw, Budapest, Königsberg and Berlin to name but a few.  With this is mind I've been looking at my terrain collection.  My city terrain is centred around some marvellous 20mm MDF buildings I got from Commission Figurines at Salute back in 2014.  I built some rubble piles a few years ago, but when I got it all out of the loft it didn't look very impressive so I decided to make some more. The first job was to sort the base materials.  I used four different materials: cork board; 5mm foam board; old plywood bases and old credit cards.  The cork board and foam board are great materials for this type of terrain proving height, being relatively strong, easy to cut and very lightweight.  I started by pulling apart pieces of cork board to the rough sizes I wanted and then set about the pieces with a Stanley knife and an old screwdriver.  It's very easy to carve irregul
Read more

28mm Victrix Late-Roman Archers and Slingers

Image
When I first embarked on my Late-Roman project a year or so ago, I bought a few sample sprues from Gripping Beast, Wargames Atlantic and Victrix.  The Victrix one was from the Late Roman Archers and Slingers set.  The quality of these convinced me to choose Victrix for the project and I duly ordered up some sets.  After working my way slowly through these I finally went back to this original frame.  These are absolutely lovely models.  There's loads of variety and they go together beautifully.  The instruction sheet which I got from the Victrix website makes a massive difference in this regard.  I really enjoyed working on these.  They were quick to assemble and quick to paint up being in a uniform of sorts.   I only have the one frame, but I took a couple of the bodies from some of the Dark Age Archers that I was working on at the same time ( here ) and added some spare arms to make another pair of staff slingers.  This worked pretty well adding variety to the poses.  I'll do
Read more

More 28mm Dark Age warriors

Image
As a bit of a palette cleanser while working my way through the 15mm Landsknechts, I started on a half dozen Victrix Dark Age Archers.   I'd completed a  first batch of these in January and it was good to get back to them.  The original intention was to use these as Norse warriors for my Ragnarok project.  Since then though I've been looking at making them more useable for a longer period of history.  Therefore, with the exception of the sword armed warrior who is very Viking, I've tried to make them quite generic.  As before nearly all the parts came from the Victrix Dark Age Archers set, with a few extras from the Victrix Viking sprue.  These were used to make the sword and seax armed figures.  There was the usual amputations and other bits of minor surgery to make things fit and that's all part of the fun with these plastic figures.  I followed the same process as before and methodically took notes of what parts I used for each figure.  This helped to make sure that
Read more