New Year

First post of 2010.

Hope you all had a great time over the holiday period. Personally it was very busy with work followed by catching up with family and friends, so not much time for wargaming or blogging. However my 2010 painting points are under way with a few Samurai Generals and a unit of AWI Yankees in Hunting shirts.

Wargaming plans for the new year are manifold. Possibly most looking forward to C.O.W. in July, but also the Towton game I will be putting on at the WMMMS show in Wolverhampton in March. AWI will feature heavily come April with Peter Pig releasing their Washingtons Arny rules and figure range. I have made a start with a couple of American units done and a British battalion on the stocks.

With 2155 painting points for the year, I have to say it has been the most productive year ever for me. That includes a lenghty hiatus over the summer during which I scratchbuilt an Imperial City for the clubs 40K players. I have doubts that I will hit that points total again, purely because I completed two large projects that had been sitting around for a while. Both the Wars of the Roses and the Samurai collections were figure intensive, and though I plan to add to them they are both at a point where I can play most of the scenarios in the Bloody Barons and Battles in the Age of War rule books.

ECW, AK47 and Sudan collections will be getting some attention with additions here and there.I didnt play as many games I would have liked but I hope to improve on that this year with more games at home and hopefully at the club too. I do hope to get at least one game in for each of the periods I play. Not too ambitious I think.

As well as the AWI, I will look to complete one other new project, either WW1 for which I have most of the figures (both early and late war) or else Wild West. Cowboys would only be a small project so I may be able to do both but wont punish myself if I dont!

Show wise I intend to get to the usual suspects. York in February, WMMMS in March, Triples in April, Partizan in May and September and Phalanx in June. COWS fills the gap in July. I most likely will miss Salute this year and may replace it with Fisticuffs in Weymouth. I also would like to get to a couple of Stuart Meechams RFCM days and Miles Miltons PBI. I need to be careful with my planning and hope some of these days fall on rest days otherwise I will be using a lot of annual leave up!

The big change for the blog will hopefully be more photographic content. I hope to photograph most of my collection over the year.

More soon!

The end is nigh

End of the year that is. Time soon to take stock of my year in wargaming, and look to the future to make plans for the coming year.

In the last month or so I have really kicked on helped by my 'Big Push'. I have nearly hit 2000 painting points, of interest to no one but me I know but it has been a very useful exercise to see how much I could paint when I put my mind to it. The target of 2000 points is just over 5 foot figures per day. With my painting style I can the paint 20 in an hour, excluding basing. But when embroiled in the day to day hassle of real life finding an hour can be tricky. Then of course you need the discipline and motivation to actually sit down and crack out the paint. So its not as easy as it sounds. But this year, despite a long hiatus over the summer months, I will hit my target easily.

I have now completed two 800 point Samurai armies, less 4 generals, 2 makus and some casualties. They will be done in the next few days after which I plan a grand review which I will photograph. The Samurai has somewhat taken over the Wars of the Roses project for which I have 5 units of Retinue troops undercoated and sitting patiently waiting for their time in the spot light. They SHOULD be done before years end, but I am in no rush.

I have a table booked for the WMMMS show in March to play Towton. I am still undecided on what to do for the scenary. I am currently leaning towards mdf/chipboard with sculpted hills all covered in snow. The other, cheaper and more practical option is a white sheet which I think I could get to look very nice with some work. I will blog my decision and run a short tutorial on which ever route I go.

I am off now to make a start on my Makus.

More soon...

Painting points

Church from Peter Pig. Based on 6" square of cork tile for PBI


Pair of Normandy houses with rear yards again on 6" square of cork.

Pair of Normandy shops.

Of interest only to myself is the fact that I passed points total for last year a couple of days ago. Not bad considering i had fallen so far behind schedule. I guess a knock on the head has its benefits after all! Can I push onto 2000 points by years end? No reason why not. I have on the go at the moment 5 large buildings from Peter Pigs Normandy range. I painted some of these a couple of years ago and sold them for a very good price on Ebay. I may base them up on the cork tiles again but undecided as yet. Each of these will earn me 10 painting points. Possibly under selling myself as I would say they take longer to paint than 10 figures but I'll stick to my system of 5 points per building. Each of the Peter Pig models is actually two buildings joined together.

I finished my early war Russians for PBI too, but still undecided whether to go with snowy bases on them. I have 4 T34's and 2 self propelled guns (possibly SU100's but I'm not much of a tanky) on the go. Again I'm undecided whether to do them in a white wash scheme or not. There was a nice article in Wargames Illustrated a couple of months ago where you paint the tanks green then put toothpaste onto areas of the tank where paint would wear off through general use. Then spray the tank white, let it dry before rubbing off the toothpaste creating an effect of paint chipping. Sounds a bit too much like Military Modelling to me and I'm a wargamer so I may just go down the 'paint it green and weather it with some brown paint' route.

I'll let you know and put up some pictures.

I am now going to Warfare (http://www.readingwargames.co.uk/warfare.asp) as Lisa is visiting friends just outside Reading. Due to doctors orders I can't drive any distance at the moment hence missing Stewart Meechams Bloody Barons day in a couple of weeks. So an order will be going into Peter Pig later tonight or tomorrow to replenish the reduced lead pile.

Looking forward to it as although I went to September Partizan I went from a night shift and was knackered and at Derby I only went for a couple of hours due to work in the afternoon. Its a good show that I went to a couple of years ago (maybe 5?) at which I bought Patrols in the Sudan. I'll also be looking for an impulse buy or two!

Oh, and following advice from the great and the good at Wargames Developments (see link), I have decided to go to the Conference of Wargamers next year. More on this soon.

The Pledge

As of today I am on 693 points, closing in on the half way point of last years total. Of course last year I did not include any scenary and I also painted 2,500 points of Empire troops for Warhammer Fantasy Battles (which I am contemplating selling) and also a 6mm WW2 Russian army for Blitzkrieg Commander. I used these once and didn't particulalry enjoy the game so these may go to.

I am thinking of selling all of my GW stuff which includes the Empire, an Orc and Goblin army (both painted) and a Skaven army (unpainted) as well as a whole load of Lord of the Rings stuff and 40K. No passion for it any more although I do enjoy some of the ficiton particularly the 40K Heresy stuff. I will keep a small Wood Elf army so I have something to play with at the club. This isn't painted yet but it can wait until inspiration hits me.

I took collection of another Kaiser Rushworth case and some trays to fill a case I got last year designed to hold GW stuff. Now at last my PITS stuff has a home!

I really must get the WW1 stuff on the painting table soon. With my order from Salute I may try and kerb spending until September Partizan. I have more than enough to keep me going, and it would be good to see my lead pile reducing considerably this year.

Some discussion on the RFCM YahooGroup about Hammerin Iron hex sizes got me thinking of getting the ships out again. Maybe a couple more ships to add to the collection wouldn't hurt!

More soon