Cold War US Troops

Yes indeed, I finished painting something this year. I managed 1st Squad of my Cold War US troops. I am not wild about the camo. But hopefully it is not too hideous. I like how the M113s turned out. I have 1st Squad's track and the command track finished.

But that is not all. I just finished with the platoon command dismounts. I have the platoon leader, the platoon sergeant, a forward Observer team, the platoon RATELO and a Stinger missile operator. I am short a medic but I did not have any suitable figures for it.

I also began work on the other two squads and their M113s. Hopefully, by the end of next month, I will have enough miniatures done to be able to get in a game with them. Still tempting me from my lead pile is some supports for my Soviets. I have some Eureka Soviets with an underslung grenade launcher, a Soviet Automatic Grenade launcher team and a heavy machinegun team. Things are starting to come together for this project.

Welcomes

I think I have been remiss in not noting the recent increase in followers lately.

Darcy Perry is the most recent of the followers here. He is a busy man with no less than 4 blogs of his own.

DARCY PERRY BAND
Harmonica Masters Of New Zealand
Hits To Kill
Music Lessons

Also please welcome Dai Dead. I can't find a link to his blog. Dai, if you send it to me, I will happily post a link.

Bill has also joined. I also can't find a link to your blog. Please send me a link if you have one.

The Vikings Have Landed

A lovely brown box arrived at my desk this afternoon. Opening it up revealed the Essex Viking Crew and the Viking ship that I had ordered.

The ship is tiny. It comes in at under 4 inches long. It is very wide as well. It makes it much more useful as a merchant ship than a warship. It is well built. The detail is very nicely done. It is ready to build with the sail lowered. The ship does not come with the tiller. The tiller comes with the separate crew pack. It has the oars. The rowers in the crew pack are made to place the hands of the rowers on top of the oars where the pierce the side of the hull. The ship does come with a set of shields to mount on the side of the ship. I think I may not use them though.

This could make for an interesting piece to have on a table. I could use it as objective for a Romano-British raid.

Finally Picked up a Paint Brush

I had a few minutes of free time and sat down with brush in hand and got some work done.

I managed to put down the base uniform color on an entire platoon of Cold War US troops. I also started on the camo on eight of those. Thus far I am uncertain how this will turn out. I also finished the camo on my second M113! I still have to use some ink and varnish on these but I really like how they are turning out.

Next, I started to fiddle with my new Romano-British that I just received. I have four horses and riders, four archers and 12 loot carrying Saxons (ok, they are really Vikings but they will be standing in) and a screaming bishop. I probably could have undercoated them but I was happy to get anything done.

The Cold War stuff is starting to come together. If I can get some more painting done next week, I might (yes its possible) get the platoon complete.

Invading Early Saxons

Well I seem unwilling to let things sit for too long. I placed an order yesterday for a pack of Essex Miniatures Dark Age boat crew. This gives me 8 oarsmen and a helmsman. Then I picked up their tiny longship.

The Essex longship has 4 rowing benches for the 8 oarsmen that are in their pack. Fiddling around on the internet I found a cool graphic of the ships found at the Skuldelev site. This graphic is pulled from this neat site: http://www.donsmaps.com/viking1.html

The Essex longship is about the size of the small cargo ship. (I found another image that showed their rowing benches but I can't find it now.) Now the Essex longship is roughly 80mm in size. I already have a Peter Pig longship. It is 6" in size (152mm roughly). It sports 14 "rowers" on 7 benches even though I grabbed the sailed one instead of the rowed one. Still a rather small ship in comparison to the Skuldelev 5 which is a small warship. That one has 13 rowing benches. So what I am looking for is at least one more longship for my growing fleet. Actually, I still want the Peter Pig Rowed ship as well.

What I will do with my small navy is still undecided. I want to use them to represent the arrival of reinforcements and change the Saxon reinforcements that show up to be based on ship's crews. So as the reputation of my Saxon lord grows, he would gain additional ships crews to his service. Its still an idea in flux.

One idea is for the scenario in one of the TFL specials which features a landing. That would be great fun in and of itself. But the thought of basing reinforcements by ships crews is what is sticking in my head. I am just not sure how they would make any appearance on a table top.

Piddling Around With Dux Brit Again

I am still in a malaise when it comes to painting and I have not gotten in a single game yet this year. However, I have been looking at my Saxons, Picts and Romano-Brits again. I have the base forces for Romano-Brits and Saxons. I have most that I need for the Picts. What I lack is the reinforcements that would occur as a campaign continues.

So I found myself on E-Bay. I ended up winning a perfect auction for me. It had 6 saxon elites (which I really did not need), five RB Heavy Shock cavalry and 12 RB archers. Those are way more archers than I need. But all are Splintered Light figures which dominate existing troops so they will fit right in.

But that is not all I was looking at. I ended up picking up some Viking figures that I thought might prove useful. I picked up the high value loot pack and the Vikings carrying loot packs. Neither are very useful for the game, BUT, I thought they would be useful for when troops capture loot in the game to mark who is running off with stuff.

Now there were other things that I was looking at too. Essex Miniatures has a pack of Vikings at oars with a steersman. I really want to make a longship or the like for my incoming raiders. The old Two Dragons line also had such a pack but I can't find anyone who has them. Rumor has it that they also had a nice longship. I want to make my own as the ones that I have found on-line are all smaller than I would like to have. I have held off on buying the Essex pack so far. I want to try to paint something before I buy any more figures. (Who am I kidding...)

Anyway, it felt nice to at least think about the hobby a bit.

Another Great Giveaway

Pendragon is doing a giveaway. He has a very nice 28mm Norman church up for grabs. Head over to his site and check it out.

4 http://pendragonwithout.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/10000-page-views-giveaway-and-boobs.html

Can't Beat a Great Giveaway

Its the little things that make me smile. Its been a rotten couple of weeks for me lately. Family health issues. Traveling to Florida to sit in a hospital for days on end. And yesterday, I wrecked my car. But then a thin "ray" of light shines through the darkness.

Yep, Ray is doing a giveaway on his blog and it is grand. I really would like the Peter Pig lot but give it a look. There is not a bad item there. The cowboy offerings are nice as is...well everything.

Take a look: http://onelover-ray.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/500-posts-mega-blog-giveaway.html