The hobby week - 19 March - 25 March

The real world impacted heavily on hobby time this week.  However, after a bit of time in the doldrums I rallied and got a few things done.  The blog is a year old today and I wrote a piece about it here. 

Painting/modelling  

  • I spent some more time on the Algerian/Mediterranean hills that I was working on last week, adding washes and highlights to improve the appearance.  I just can't get them to blend with the gaming cloth I bought last month so I put this batch to one side.  I think I need to take the cloth  down to Homebase and get some paint made up.  
  • While I had the bag with all the polystyrene in it down from the loft, I cut and shaped more hills.  I also added texture and gave them a coat of emulsion to seal them.  I'm hoping once I get the right colour paint it'll be a quick job to finish them.  I have learnt that painting blocks of polystyrene is amazingly therapeutic.  
Hot wire fun
  • To get me back in the swing of things I cleaned up and started painting a few Newline Designs 20mm British infantry for the Sikh Wars.  After a turbulent couple of weeks in the real world it was comforting to get back to this project.  I'd previously documented how I painted them, so it's a nice job to just do some painting without too much thinking.

Research and reading

  • I've been doing a bit of research into Ancients and in particular Biblical wargaming.  I think it's the impending release of Strength and Honour that's done it.  I really like the idea of the massed battle with tiny figures.  If fits the "small scale, big scope" aspiration I've had for a long while.  I'm just not enthused by the Romans much.  I will be monitoring it carefully though.  I seem to be forever looking for the perfect project - you know the one which is the right period, scale, manufacturer and rules all coming together.
  • Not really research but I have spent a bit of time sorting out my military history and wargaming PDFs.  I have hundreds of titles, to the point of not really knowing what I have got!  I've actually bought hard copies of stuff I had on PDF which is pretty dumb.  

Incoming!

No new stuff arriving this week.  I did finally print off my copy of Chain of Command so that's like having something new isn't it? 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 ...
Read more

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...
Read more

28mm Victrix Armoured Germanic Noble Warriors

Image
June started well as I completed the Victrix late-Roman Armoured Warriors I'd started on in May. I only had the one sprue of six to do and I finished them as noble Germanic/Gothic warriors.  They'll do as a unit of five with a leader, or I could use one as a champion and field a smaller unit for Warlords of Eherwon, which are the rules I'm currently using.  They're a nice addition to the Germanic force providing a bit of muscle.  As with all the Victrix kits they're top quality.  I was provided with a separate head sprue as well which is overkill really.  I have so many spare heads now I really don't know what to do with them.  It's a pity you can't buy the bits separately but that'd undo the whole business model I suspect.  Although some of it may get used for kitbashing unless you want to make a 20 headed monster all this plastic is going to sit there unused and inevitably it'll be thrown away.  I'm really not comfortable with the waste asp...
Read more