The hobby week - 12 March - 18 March

Quite an unproductive week on the hobby front, too much going on in the rest of my world. 

Gaming

  • I had a couple of hours free and I didn't feel like working on anything so I had a game.  I played Ambush Alley set in Algeria, not as you might have expected in the 1950s/60s but in the 1880s.  Read about it here.  

Painting/modelling  

  • I did manage to get some hills cut out, textured and and a base coat done.  They will be used for Algeria and Mediterranean games.   I'll do a post on how I made these once they're complete.  It's early days and as seen in the photo I'm still trying to get the colour scheme right!

Research

  • The only benefit of having to commute again is more reading time.  This week I read "At the Edge of the World" about the French Foreign Legion from 1830 to 1930.  An enjoyable read, nowhere near as in-depth as Martin Windrow's marvellous "Our Friends Beneath the Sands", (which is double the size) but well worth it.
  • I've been doing a little bit of research into 19th Century conflicts.  I'm thinking very much along the lines of something small in scale but large in scope as a next project.  

Incoming!

Like buses all three of the orders that I've been waiting for arrived at the same time this week.  
  • First up was an order from Newline Designs for my Sikh Wars project.  This gives me all the remaining figures I need to field a small brigade size force for each side.  It also gives me a Lead Hillock which is something I'm not accustomed to dealing with!
  • On the same day a copy of "Jungle of Snakes" a book about counterinsurgency warfare arrived.  The postage cost more than the book which is mad, but it's going to be an interesting read covering 100 years of counterinsurgency operations. 
  • And finally, a couple of packs of 6mm MDF ACW figures from Commission Figurines were the last to hit the door mat.  I listened to Walt on the God's Own Scale podcast and was intrigued so ordered a few packs.  I've only just got them so too early to give a considered opinion.  
This week's goodies

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 Victrix late-Romans

Image
As I assembled the forces for my first game using the late-Roman and Germanics that I've been working on for the last few months, I realised I needed a few more figures to make up the units.  I needed an extra pedes for each infantry unit and a leader for the missile troops.  I didn't have any more specific late-Romans left so I rooted through my other Victrix sprues. The bodies for the two spearmen came from a sprue I had from the Victrix Ancient Germans set.  Belt details aside, there's very little difference between the clothing across much of the ranges.  The hands holding the spear come from the Unarmoured Late-Romans set as do the heads.  I've got so many spare heads from that one pack I could outfit whole legions!  The shields are also from that set finished with Little Big Man transfers. I'm using Warlords of Erehwon to play with and each unit is usually a minimum of four strong with a leader figure.  I had four staff slingers and four archers but no leaders
Read more