100 Posts and Counting

Wow. I just realized I have kept this up for 100 posts. Not bad.

I am at a pausing point and wondering what to pursue next. My to do list is long but I am not sure what I want to try next.

1) Finish basing WW2 French infantry.
2) Paint Dark Age Early Saxons.
3) Paint Dark Age Britons.
4) Paint additional Naploleonic French
5) Paint Napoleonic Russians
6) Paint Napoleonic British
7) Paint and rig a 28 gun Frigate
8) Paint some terrain up.

Not sure what I want to do next. Any suggestions?

New Post on Platoon Forward Stories

I was able to get in a game of Sharp Practice over the weekend. I wrote up what happened to Captain Beesley and his light company over on Joe's Blog: http://platoonforwardstories.blogspot.com/.

It was a fun solo game. I was able to try a French column charging into a British line. It nearly worked. I remembered the more 1s than 6s rule this time and plenty of cards ended up being drawn. Mostly by the British. The French had lousy luck with Bonus Cards. Getting mostly useless ones.

One thought was to include a Pas De Charge card into the main deck for the French. This would be to offset the Sharp Practice card in the main deck for the British. That would have made the British position much more sticky as the French would have been able to close more rapidly.

JR Miniatures Stalingrad terrain

I started painting my two story ruin yesterday. I had it primed black with Army Painter black paint. I started painting the wooden floor and the primer started coming off as I painted. That got me scratching my head. What happened? I scrubbed the model down to remove most of the primer (about 75% came off). What did I do wrong? I thought I was supposed to prime resin. Does Army painter not work on resin?

Any ideas out there?

Finally Complete!

Well, I have finished with the Mud and Blood supplement for the Eastern Front featuring the Russians and Austro-Hungarians. I have 9 scenarios as part of it. That may change. Still reading on the 1915 Winter campaign in the Carpathians. That may add one or two to the mix if I find anything suitable.

That and some momentum has started with the Dark Ages supplement. I was glad to see that there is still interest on the lardy list for that.

Ramblings

Well the blog has actually reached 3,000 page views. Not too bad. This has proved to be a fun way to motivate myself to paint more.

I just picked up a JR Miniatures Stalingrad building online. It is the two story building corner with stairs leading to the second floor. I am very happy with the purchase. Now I just have to paint it up instead of leaving it as it is like most of my terrain.

Can someone offer any tips on painting ruined buildings? I am not sure really where to start.

Oh! Update on the East Front Mud & Blood. I have 8 scenarios finished for it as well as all of the text for the Austro-Hungarians and Russians. If I can carve out some time, I can get this finished in a few days.

The Dark Ages rules keep cropping back up with interest on the Lardy list. So instead of finishing a project, I dabbled with that a bit today. Trying to figure out how many scenarios to include with it. Not really sure.

Well, at least this kept me distracted from missing out on Historicon this year.

It strikes again

I finally have an evening to paint and relax last night. The 1/1250the scale ships are painted. All that is left is to paint the bases on 4 Vosper Mk II's and 4 MAS 555's. Below is a bad picture of where I am with these. I used the glue to use for waves. Also there is the submarine that I made for use. I created a cut piece of plastic to use as a superstructure and glued it to the base. I will use it as a model for one of the Italian ocean going subs.

So I reach the cupboard and pull out minis to paint. I reach for... 15mm French WWII. Hmmm.....

Well anyway, the painting went well. I managed to have two painting guides. One from Flames of War and the other from Crusader miniatures. I happened to have the paints listed in the Crusader guide so I went with it. The uniforms and great coats are all painted as well as the small packs and helmets. This was done for 8 men armed with VB launchers, 8 riflemen and 6 NCOs. These are all Peter Pig minis. Below is a truly awful picture of the miniatures on my painting tray. These were in a poorly lit garage and taken from a cell phone. I probably should delete it but I promised myself that I should add more pictures to this blog rather than just my lunatic ravings. So I guess it stays.

Coastal Patrol - Figurehead Merchantmen

The last post featured the Italian MAS boats. Now I have completed some merchantmen.

The tanker is a small coastal tanker of some 750 tons. The ship is was modeled after is the Ben Read. This must have been a hard luck ship as it ran aground twice in its career. The second time proved fatal to the tanker.

Then there are two trawlers. These to my eye looked similar to the Canadian Battle Class trawlers. So I painted them using their gray scheme.

The last of the merchantmen is a tramp steamer modeled after the Belford. This is the same length as the tanker as the original was 135' in length.

I am experimenting with adding additional waves on the base other than the bow wave and the wake. I am not sure how well this is turning out.

These should prove to be useful for coastal games. Next on to the British.