AWOL

Grandpa Bede, Becky, Chris and Grandpa George

Dear folks, I must apologise to those who follow my blog, but I am likely to be out of commission, or AWOL, until the 8th Feb..

My father, George - just turned 70 back in Nov 2011, has arrived from the UK for a vacation with us, and will be staying until the aforementioned date. Consequently my painting output will be seriously compromised until after this date.

Sad to say although he actually arrived 30 mins ahead of schedule... his journey was terrible due to a 14 hour delay leaving Heathrow for Singapore, due to a 'technical fault'... so he missed out on his overnight stop at Singapore where he could have at least got back to feeling human again..., so a brief 2hr stop and then crammed back on 'cattle-class'... but he has held up remarkably well, no doubt thanks to the the 'water of life'...

Talking of which, we hope to do some serious damage to this that he brought with him...

It has to be said we have had some warm-ups before tackling this beastie, with a bottle or two of Grants, but we'll get there...

Needless to say also, this blog post has taken me an age to type due to the effects of the aforementioned product... so I apologise if blog posts through this period are a bit hit and miss... thank you for your patience and understanding...

On a historical note (and wargaming?) I have managed to find out that 'the vicar'(as mentioned in prior blog post), who was a tanker in Normandy and onwards, has a real name; Alfred Hickman, a sergeant and commander of a tank that I believe was a sherman, and served with '15th Scottish', who may have operated alongside the Guards... He retired from the fire service aged 55 in 1972.... so if anyone can shed more info on this chap, I would be intrigued...

Signing off, Scott...

The Next Generation, Part2: Paint Station

In an effort to further encourage my son to get to grips with painting his 8th Army troops, I decided to make him his own 'paint station'. I roughly copied the 'GW design'... though I put the water container holder on the left of the station as he's left handed.

Its a simple construction made from 3mm MDF sheet. Pieces were cut out using a power-jigsaw, and sanded before being glued together with PVA wood glue. I considered using some small panel pins too, but 3mm is very thin to get one in without it splitting the MDF anyway, so I left it with glue only.

Very cheap to do, I think theres's probably less than $5 worth of MDF here. I'm not the best woodworker in the world, but it wasn't difficult to do, took about an hour or so...

Here's a quick plan:

...and the station as is...

So now he can set this on his desk, that can be put beside my painting table, when he wants to get some work done. And he wont be hogging my painting area so I can get on too!

Just need to get him an angle-poise lamp that can fix to the side of his desk and we're away.

As you can see from top picture, we have the first 24 infantry figures undercoated so far...

Like father like son...

The Next Generation - a new beginning

My recent interest in Flames of War, and WW2 gaming continues apace. To be honest since switching focus here I haven't ever played so many games with such regularity, as I have done recently against several opponents. So thats a good thing :-)

Considering expanding on WW2 periods, as Brett has an Italian force, I thought about doing something MidWar for Desert. I remembered from some time ago that good mate Roly had the beginnings of an 8th Army force lurking somewhere, so I queried with him whether he'd like to dust these guys off and get them into a playable state.

The Plastic Soldier Company has produced a set of Panzer III's that would mean a DAK Panzer force could be cheaply and quickly assembled.

However, I dont think WW2 was ever to the fore in Roly's gaming preferences, and in the end, Roly instead decided to offer these figures up as a gift to my son Christopher, to encourage him to start painting and gaming!

Apparently they had been a gift to Roly a long time ago, for Roly's son Oliver to get into painting and gaming. But Oliver never showed any real interest, hence the figures languished for a long time.

I think this was part of the reason for Roly offering them up they way he did. Its the kind of guy Roly is!

So my son, now has the makings of a small 8th Army infantry force. They are in the old style packaging and it may take a little while to figure out how to set them up, but thankfully there are guides for doing this on the FoW website, and painting guides too.

So today, father and son made a start trimming and filing up the first pack of infantry. With a bit of luck, if the local store is open today we're off to see if we can get the right colour paints for the uniforms :-)

AHWPC update 9/1/12

Well, I have managed slow but steady progress since my last update; I have painted and added the front Machine-gunner and rear passenger fired AA MG to each half track.

Look at little closer and you will now see their numbers have grown to 23. I have got the 3 Command halftracks done to the same standard now, the only difference being the command halftracks have their stowage done, but are absent the front machine-gunner!

They are starting to look useable now, and as such have had a couple of outings for me to try them out.

The first was against Mike, fielding my commando force in Hold the Line. I think its fair to say I overwhelmed his forces. Mike held on till his Shermans turned up from reserve hoping they would turn the tide, but once they got involved in a fire fight with my Panzer IVs, they quickly left the field... So things seemed to go well.

Next game was against Paul and his Brit paras, in a Breakthrough. Things seemed to go OK to start with, and luck certainly seemed on my side for first half of game, but from the half way point things quickly started to fall apart as I made poor tactical decisions at the same time the balance of luck shifted. I could have hung on perhaps and kept contesting the objective until my last PzGr platoon arrived, but by then I had grown somewhat demoralised and it was getting late too, so I capitulated that game.

But I learnt and awful lot more that game! :-)

I didnt take any in game pics as I didnt want to steal Curts thunder when I finally get these ready to deploy.

So a couple of games in the week too was very enjoyable, but dented my painting time severely!

After that saturday morning I had to work then saturday arvo I had a 'forest' of logs to cut up with chainsaw for fire wood so that just about buggered me for the rest of the day. Then sunday was my daughters 6th birthday, so again not much painting over the weekend.

But I am now pressing on with painting the passenger teams - 4 figures for each half track, and going to add the stowage.

Here's the 4 panzergrenadier team members for each halftrack. The only thing that puzzles me slightly is the guy with his head turned to one side is holding a U-shaped tube of something across his knees, and I can't figure out what its meant to be, to enable me to paint it the correct colour! Anybody any ideas, answers on a postcard to... (comments below would be great!)

The last days of Maelstroms January sale are running out so I grabbed a set of PSC Panthers on pre-order, and a few Total Battle Miniatures buildings.

Looking forward to more FoW soon! :-)

Quick post update - I've realised while trimming out the figures from the other sprues tonight, that the guy looking sideways is holding an MP40 submachinegun. But the barrel is so fine in the plastic, I've knocked it off while trimming and not realised... oh well, he's now holding a 'utility piece of iron'...

AHWPC update 2nd Jan

More work done on my Half-tracks:

Well, here they are. 20 PSC Half tracks pretty much done, I recently managed the following: (thanks to a turn to rainy weather here and having a couple of days off over the New Year break.)

• First up I drybrushed the HTs with 'dark yellow' in this case Foundry 30B. I find this nicely blends down the camo pattern.
• Then I panted in the tyres and internal seat backs in black
• Then I weathered the tracks and the wheels drybrushing a mid brown (vallejo german camo brown)
• I then painted up the 40 crew figures ( 2 for each HT), though I think this was one of those 'devotion to duty moments' - I fully painted them, even though once they are glued into position, and the top of the halftrack is glued into position, you'll only see their backs!

I did a bit of a google search on interior of the HT, and found this image:

...thanks to: http://www.sdkfz251.com/ - very useful site, and showed the side seats backs are a black vinyl or leather looking material, I would have left them yellow had I not seen this image...

So as they stand now they are 'done' and useable for gaming, but I still want to do the stowage, passenger crew figures, and add decals - I am just about to place an order for DOMs decals with Maelstromgames - so until they arrive, the HTs can't be fully finished...

But not too worry - doing the stowage and crews/passengers will take a little while and I still have to finish off the GzPzHQ three HTs and command stands and 'Shreks.

Anologue Hobbies Winter Painting Challenge (AHWPC) - update

Just a quick shot to show where I am upto:

• 20 PSC Half Tracks assembled, base coated, and washed
• 3 Typhoons assembled, undercoat basecoat done
• 3 Command HalfTracks from GpPzGr HQ pack assembled and base coated
• 3/4s of the ' driver' figures trimmed ready for paint for the PSC Half-Tracks.

So next jobs to do:

• Drybrush Halftracks 'middlestone'
• Paint halftracks tyres black
• Drybrush 'mud brown' to Half track wheels and tracks
• Do stowage options for halftracks
• Do crews for halftracks
• Wash command halftracks, do command figures for GpPzGr HQ
• Paint Typhoons
• Add decals to halftracks and typhoons

So still a fair bit to do, but its started raining here, and its set in for the weekend :-), so I'll get some painting done hopefully, and have a game of Flames of War lined up too!

A year in review (2011), and looking forward...

Well it’s that time of year, and what a year, to look back and reflect a little, and look forward to next years activities.

To start off with, the year really took off in terms of blogging output, from a handful of posts per year, and finally cracking double figures the last couple of years, I’ve jumped massively and gone over 80 posts this year, from 16 last year!

I can put this down to improvements in blogger itself (I updated my template options and enjoyed tweaking the appearance of the blog, and learned more how to use it).

I added features which improved the blogs look and the way it’s laid out. The Linked Within Widget has worked well I think, as did adding ‘popular posts’ but I think the biggest change, was fully ‘Labelling’ posts and putting a ‘cloud effect’ Label list in blog sidebar. This one action seemed to massively increase my blog hits.

I’ve turned off the ‘light-box’ effect for pictures, which I didn’t like (takes too long to load and view pictures with this effect – blogger are you listening?).

I’ve also made commenting easier. All this has seen my total blog hits soar, jumping to over 2000 per week now. Thank you all for stopping by and commenting :-)

I think the fact that I have joined as a follower to many great blogs out there, and comment frequently of these blogs, I believe has thus raised my blogging profile, so folks check back to my own blog. It really has opened up the blogging/hobby online community for me.

So what happened during the year?

Well…

January through to April, started off and continued well with many Lord of the Rings figures being painted, filling gaps in my collections and making new painted units available for LOTR SBG and the newer WOTR.
An odd couple of games of Black Powder, raised the profile of this game in my mind, and I looked to further my chances of fielding armies for this rule-set, instead of having to rely on others, to play a game. And thus Perry ACW and Napoleonic stuff was ordered.

May, saw an unexpected and complete change of tack after seeing Joe Harrison’s Leadwood, though this inspired my laterally as such and the great Pirate adventure of 2011 commenced. A few more LOTR projects were completed to clear the way so to speak for the Pirates.

June through to October, saw a great deal of Pirate (Legends of the High Seas) painting, modelling and gaming done. A great time of it was had. June also gave rise to my frustrations with gaming LOTR, and I think this dissatisfaction further made the switch to Pirates and LotHS that much easier, to throw myself into… Another idea was kicked off, again with Joe’s inspiration; for VSF, and though models and a rulebook (GASLIGHT) were bought, nothing much got painted, or played…. So Zulus, Colonial Brits and Prussians were added to the paint backlog.

November came around, and this found me at a lull. I still had some pirate things to finish off, but I was in a mood to clear various backlogs, so I finally completed the ACW regiment started back in March, ‘multi-based’ for various formats of play. November also saw my WW2 interest tweaked again, and this launched me off in another direction for the year, back in to Flames of War, with another project finished that had been started months if not years ago – more commandos, and also saw the start and completion of Panzers from PSC. Meeting a new chap to the area; Paul who plays FoW, and encouraging a couple of others to play; Brett & Chris, has certainly kept this interest going.

December, saw continued work on FoW matters, and late entry into Analogue Hobbies Winter Painting Challenge, with slow but steady progress to date.

So a good year all round I think with many diverse figures painted, terrain made, games played, and more added to the Plastic & Lead Mountain (PLM) ;-)

So what does 2012 have in store?

Well so long as the world doesn’t come to an abrupt Nostradamus-like end, then I hope to continue with many projects that have been started this year, and try and reduce the PLM.

Hopefully the Painting Challenge will keep me motivated through to March, and I expect to get current FoW projects completed. Whether I start on another one, I am unsure. I have had a hankering to do the 50th Div - Tyne Tees, as that’s my home area back in the UK. There is also talk of starting MidWar for FoW and I could be tempted by a DAK (Africa Korps) force…

Other than that I really must get on and start making a serious dent in my piles of plastic historic figures of various periods; WSS, Naps, ACW, Zulus & Colonial Brits, and the VSF Prussians, and I still need to finish my Brig!

I sincerely hope I don’t get tempted into any more periods, scales and projects, though I have been pondering skirmish gaming WW2 in either 20mm or 28mm, though not sure which rule set would be best…

Well that’s enough rambling from me.

As for what 2012 will bring, well… I am not going to dwell on Nostradamus or ancient Myan prophecies, rather I would view any possible events to be a fresh start for many, rather than an end of all things. What put me in mind of this is that my wife likes to play about with Tarot cards, nothing serious as such, taken with a pinch of salt, and all that…but one thing folks always dread coming up is the ‘Death’ card – yet this rarely literally means ‘death’. Usually it refers to the end of one phase of your life and the beginning of another… that’s how I will view much of the mumbo jumbo that has been spouted about 2012; a new start!

Another odd thing about this year is that I will be 42 years old. If we are to believe the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy; well, that’s the ‘Meaning of life, the universe and everything!’ So it could be a very interesting year for me!

Hope you all have a good one, and best wishes for 2012!