New Follower Friday

It’s Friday and this week there are three more followers of Mad Padre Wargames to welcome.
The Miniatures Man is Sweden’s Joakim Strom, one of the strong contingent of Scandinavians in the wargaming blogosphere.   He has a variety of interests, and a helpful way of describing his paint choices of each of the many figures he posts.   His blog is thriving, and recently celebrated a giveaway - sigh, I really wanted that Ork Deffkopta, too.  :(
Robert Audin seems to be relatively new to blogging - his Fiends In Waistcoats blog features a variety of interests, including a Victorian horror and Gothic and a new blog on gaming in the Lord of the Rings setting (a shared interest).  I’m not sure but I believe Robert lives in France.
The Lord of Excess is an interesting fellow, with a variety of blogs to his credit.  The most recent, I think, is his blog The Excessive Gamer.  He has an interest in boardgames and new as well as retro gaming and RPGs.  He’s also willing to say some positive, or at least balanced,  things about Games Workshop from time to time.  I always like contrarians.
Welcome aboard, friends.  I’m almost as excited about your joining this blog as I am about the Perry Brothers announcing a plastic box of American Civil War artillery.  Too much excitement for one day, and don’t even get me started about what I found at the Credit Valley Railway Company store today.

New Ottomans - And A January Wrap

Here are the final figures I am going to claim for January in the Too Fat Lardies painting challenge at Vis Lardica - my thanks to Robert Avery, or Mr. Motivator, as Richard Clarke has christened him, for helping us Lardie Lads and Lasses track our work in a way that is considerably less Olympian than Curt’s painting challenge, but still most helpful.  Here are four projects that have been seen on my Saturday Painting Desk posts for a few weeks now.
First, a Minifigs cannon for my Ottoman Turks.   Sultan Osman the Petulant will be pleased to take delivery of this gun, which will allow him to field an entire battery of cannon.   More on that in a later post, I think.   Minifigs made some good stuff in its day - this piece, I think, was part of their English Civil War range, and looks suitably exotic in Sultan Osman’s trademark blue and white.

The wooden carriage was done in an acrylic from FolkArt, Bavarian Blue, and washed with GW/Citadel Asuren (I’m sorry GW if I have that wrong, but I really can’t be bothered to spell nonsense names correctly) Blue, and it turned out rather splendidly.

And, the first three of the twelve Spahi of the Porte cavalry from The Assault Group that I purchased last year.  I have nine more to go, but at the rate I paint one-off figures, I need to go slow with three at a time or I get swamped in all the little choices.



I’m very happy with the way the vines and flowers pattern on this fellow’s shield and caparison turned out, and very grateful for the kind comments he got from you all as he was a WIP.  Nice to have him finished.  I am encouraged to try some more freehand work with the next chaps.



These figures bring my totals completed this year to:
28mm Mounted: 7
28mm Foot: 20
28mm Aritllery: 1
Also in January: kilometres run, 107.   I am hoping to reach 110 in February, but with three days fewer to do it in, I had better not slack off.
Thanks for looking and blessings to your die rolls and brushes!
Michael

Praise For The Flag Dude

 I think that any wargames manufacturer who makes a good product deserves to be recognized, and so today I want to sing the praises of a business called The Flag Dude.   I saw a blog somewhere with some of these products displayed and got curious, especially as I am refitting my SYW Russian regiments and starting a Prussian project on the side, all of which requires new flags.  Normally my go-to guy for flags is GMB in the UK, and I hasten to say that I love GMB’s products - the colour is vivid, the quality of paper is high, and the service is excellent.   I am just curious by nature and have somewhat of a magpie approach to vendors.
The Flag Dude is a self-described mom and pop operation, run by Rick and Amanda O’Brien, from the state of Alabama in the USA.   They do a wide range of lines.  Rick was very easy to deal with, and sent me several prompt emails clarifying aspects of my order, which arrived promptly on my doorstep.
What I didn’t really appreciate about Rick’s product (though it is quite apparent on his website) is that his product is a very different animal from GMB’s.   Not better, just different.   I expected a small manila envelope with the paper flags enclosed, and was prepared to cut and mount them a la GMB.  Instead, I was rather puzzled to receive a small cardboard box, which struck my as over-packaging.  However, when I opened it, this is what I discovered.

SYW 28mm flags for Russia’s Azovski Regiment, and well as for the 1st and 2nd Regiments of the Observaton Corps.   Note that the flags come attached to flagpoles, and are textured and folded to simulate being blown in the wind.  And the little tassels!   So cool.

A banner for my SYW Ottoman Spahi unit I am in the process of building, plus flags for the first regiment of Prussian fusiliers which is in the painting queue.   I love the little gold knob on the Spahi flag.

Here’s some attention to customer service that deserves praise.  Rick has cut little bits of foam core board to organize and identify the flags, as well as to protect them in shipment.   Very thoughtful.
I am very happy to commend Rick’s products to you.  They are not cheap - the whole order was around $60US, and twenty five years ago I made flags by freehand with pen, ink, and paint, but fortunately and blessedly, I can now afford the odd extravagance.    There is a school of thought that faces, bases and flags make the unit, so if presentation is important to you, and you can afford the luxury, you may agree with me that this is money well spent.   And, frankly, I enjoy supporting a cottage industry level of the hobby if the product is good, and Rick’s products are good.
So, a tip of the biretta and the Mad Padre’s blessing to the flag dude.

Saturday Night Painting Desk

I meant to do more painting than I did today but homework, plus a bumper crop of snow last night, had other designs on me.   Here’s a view of Appa the Volksbison, our trusty VW Westfalia, dreaming of warm summer road trips.

Now for the painting bench.  Quick and dirty photos tonight.

My Ottoman field gun(a Minifigs piece) is almost ready to be flocked, and the little ammunition box and bucket just need to be fixed up a bit.   This will give my Ottomans three cannon, and a fighting chance to hold against the masses of Russian artillery.  

 

Finally those three Assault Group Spahi are done and ready to be flocked.

15mm German tanks dirtied up after a black wash and ready for another date with the airbrush to get their cammo patterns, then the treads and some weathering and decals.

 

Next in the queue after these tanks are the PSC T34s mentioned in my last post, and then a unit of 28mm ACW Union infantry that have been half-finished for almost a year now.

Thanks for looking, and for Sofie for the idea of the Saturday night painting bench.   Blessings to your brushes!

New Follower Friday and This Week In The Hobby

It’s Friday again and time to acknowledge another five people who decided to publicly follow this blog in the last few months, and who I have been tardy in acknowledging.   

Aaron is, well, a man of mystery.   I don’t know anything about you, mate, so if you have a blog or a pet parakeet or anything else you’d like to mention in a comment, pray do so.  

Sgt. Steiner has a fondness for that classic film Cross of Iron and maintains an interesting blog - it’s always nice to see someone else who likes both miniatures and boardgames.  I gather he lives in Northern Ireland but is otherwise reticent about himself.

Mike, aka Fritz II, lives in Bayern, Germany, and is a talented painter with a particular interest in the Seven Years War, which is once again becoming a favourite period of mine.   I commend his excellent blog to all with an interest in the lace wars.

Shaun is a busy father and gamer in Australia.  His blog reveals a thoughtful guy who thinks a lot about rules and looks like it has a lot of interest for WW2 gamers - I shall be a frequent visitor.

Sofie Vandersmissen lives in Belgium and is a gifted and expressive painter who isn’t afraid to use bright colours in her palette, and does some nice fantasy figures.   Besides her blog, which is quite lovely, she has started a feature called Saturday painting table using Google Plus, which is a fine idea.

So we’re pretty much caught up, and at 136 followers and nearing 90,000 page views, I’m pleased that this blog is coming back to life, even if I wish I had more time to contribute to it.   This last week really brought home the realization that this semester at grad school will be a heavy one, and I am wishing I had more spare time.  I read a LOT last week, most school related.

Last Saturday night I did get a chance to visit James Manto over in Stratford.   In his capacity as the proprietor of J&M Miniatures I browsed his stock and was very smitten with some 15mm Russian front scenery from 4Ground, and while I didn’t buy it, I noted it for a whack of 15mm Russians that are in the painting queue.   As friends, we went downstairs for a beer and bit of a chat while doing some hobby work, always a pleasant evening.   James worked on chopping up some rather indifferent 15mm lead figures (from Qualify castings, I think) to use the upper halves of the figures with some home made foxholes and shell scraps, a clever idea.

While James chopped up soldiers, I spent the evening trying to get over fear that I will somehow break or ruin my spiffy new airbrush, and managed to prime a set of Plastic Soldier Company 15mm Russian tanks and a mixed bag of German 15mm armour using these excellent Vallejo products.  

The primers worked nicely, and I managed not to break the airbrush.   I realize, however, that cans of air are not very satisfactory, and if I want to use it more often, I really need to look at air compressors and find room in the appropriations legislation for one.  

And yes, that is a Tiger 1.  I don’t know, maybe it’s all those photos of Flames of War type armies that you see, but I almost feel I should apologize for having a Tiger when there are armies of them crawling over tabletops.  I suspect it’s the only 15mm Tiger model I will ever get, as I don’t generally like to use uber-tanks in gaming, but they were used on occasion and they are kind of sexy.  The other models are resin kits from a company called Gaming Models.  They aren’t perfect kits in that they are a little shy on detail  but they are relatively cheap and the customer service was excellent.

And the Russian T34s.  I am quite impressed with Plastic Soldier Company.  These kits went together in about fifteen minutes each, while I kept one eye on the evening news, and are perfectly serviceable, a quick and dirty way to get an army going.   All I need for them now is a source of 15mm Russian tank slogan and marking decals, though a lot of Russian armour, from what I’ve seen, was fairly minimalistic.

 

 

A few nice things came in the mail this week, and Mrs. Padre and I tried a board game called Mice and Mystics, but I will save those items for later posts.

Blessings to your brushes and dice rolls!

Michael

Saturday Night Painting Desk

 

I’m trying to keep up the lovely idea that Sofie started recently.

Three 28mm Spahis of the Porte from the renaissance range of The Assault Group.   Lovely figures.   Going slow on them since each demands his own colour scheme and I’m a bit rubbish when it comes to freehand painting.

I’m planning to add small red flowers (blobs, really) to the vines on the shield and caparison of the fellow on the left.

New Follower Friday

I finished last week’s Friday Followers post with a mention of Tom Young, a Texas-based war gamer and blogger.  I am giving Tom another shout-out here today, because of his latest post  showing an incredible diorama of the Alamo using 18mm figures, that he has incorporated into a coffee table.  I think we should all get ourselves invited to Tom’s house for coffee.   An amazing accomplishment.

Here are five more folks who began following this blog in the last few months, and who have not been recognized in a proper and timely manner.  I started this post yesterday, Friday, so it still counts as Friday followers, says I.

James Brewerton is a veteran gamer and painter living in the UK, and a man with a good heart.  You can cheer him on in the Analogue Hobbies painting challenge, where he is currently in a very respectable 5th place.  James has his own blog but it seems that real life has forced him to suspend it for the near future.  I can sympathize with that, but hope he returns soon.

Edwin King is one of the hobby’s true eccentrics, in the tradition of Conrad Kinch.   His blog, endearingly titled Thoughts of a Depressive Diplomatist, is not really depressing at all, and reveals him to be the sort of chap you could expect to have a fascinating chat with over a pint.   He is a fan of classic moustaches, among other things.  Go check out his blog.   Edwin is also one of the Analogue Challenge brush slingers.

Jur is a shadowy fellow indeed.  My unpaid intern tells me that her research shows him to be based in Germany, possibly Essen, and that he is a contributor to a gaming blog called Fortress.   Wilkomen, Jur.

Another German follower is Moiterei_1984, another of the Analogue Painting Challenge brush slingers and an insanely talented painter.  His blog, which my bad German translates as “Moiterei’s World of Colour”, is a great source of painting inspiration.

Gary Amos is one of my favourite kinds of Brits - cheerful, all over the place and slightly daft.   And, his blog, says, he writes like James Joyce, which I rather agree with.  He also does the ACW, and introduced me to some of the luscious figures done by Forgotten and Glorious.  Me want bad.

So thank you all for your interest in my blog, and for your own efforts to further our slightly mad hobby.

Blessings to your dice and brushes,

Michael

Heroes of Rohan: 28mm GW Rohirrim

A number of you had some very kind things to say about these Rohan chaps that were shown on my painting bench last Saturday, thanks to Sofie’s terrific Saturday Painting Bench project.   I’m happy to say that they were finished on Sunday.  These three fellows are from the Games Workshop Rohan Commanders box set from their Lord of the Rings line.   I’ve been collecting figures from this range since it first came out around 2005 (?), and for a while my teenage son and I played a lot of it.   I loved the look of the Jackson LOTR movies and the way that the Perry brothers brought them to life.   I have a fair number still to paint, and some plans to adapt the Too Fat Lardies Dux Bellorum Dark Ages rules to Middle Earth, but that’s all back burner stuff.  This was just a fun and limited excursion into my stack of unpainted figures.

Notice anything strange about the sword that the banner bearer is bearing?

 I was quite taken by this captain, the bravest and blondest of my figures, seen here as he subdues an underage Uruk Hai who tried to get into Helms Deep with fake ID.   The photo doesn’t quite do justice to the captain’s hair and skin, which I’m rather happy with.  This guy reminds me of Lord Flashhart from the old Blackadder shows.

 For several recent posts here I used the green backdrop on my light box, but this time I opted for the blue one.  What do you think -  do you like the blue backdrop better than the green one?

 

 The next few pics are of a GW blister pack, a Rohan outrider mounted and dismounted.  Not really sure what Outriders are.  I gather they are super scouts or something, and since they are metal figures, and pricey, I doubt I will buy any more, though he is a nice augment to the plastic Riders I already have.

 Amazing how useful the odd twig can be when it comes time for basing figures.   I

The green cloak on this and the other Riders uses a base green from a craft store acrylic, Thicket Green by FolkArt.  I have a huge bottle of it, it’s handy for all sorts of uses.   I used a Citadel/GW Thrakka Green (who thinks up these names?) wash and then lighter highlights of the Thicket Green mixed with small amounts of white.  A little bit of dry brushing at the end, using the same yellow ochre I use for the base colour, suggested dust and dirt on the hems of the cloaks.

 Finally, a single blister figure, a Rohan Royal Guard, a nice bit of heavy cavalry punch. Again, pricey, but one or two more of these fellows for Theoden or my other generals wouldn’t go amiss.

 I am a little annoyed at GW that they couldn’t cast a metal horse to go along with a metal rider.  The plastic horses are somewhat fragile, and the weight of the metal mounted figure doesn’t help.  I have a few GW plastic horses where the hoof snapped off from the base, leaving a horse figure that’s rather hard to reattach.  And that’s about all the bad things I’ll say about GW for this post.  

 

 

 From what I can see of the third party stockists I’ve visited in the past year, they have not been replacing their inventory on the original GW LOTR kit, though I imagine it might still be available at GW stores.  It is still listed on the GW web store, though their Hobbit movie franchise stuff (please don’t get me started) takes pride of place.  So I suspect I still have time to add more figures to my Rohirrim if I want, though there are so many good Dark Ages figures out there, I may augment my Rohan foot and fyrd-type levies with non-GW figures - I think I’m allowed to do that.  I need to look at Gripping Beast for sure.   Any suggestions as to Dark Ages mounted figures that might do as generic Rohirrim?

These figures bring my 2014 totals up to:

28mm Mounted:  4

28mm Foot: 20 (treating the Rohan bouncer and underage Uruk as two foot figures)

Thanks for looking.  Blessings to your dice and brushes,

Michael

For Sofie: Saturday Night Painting Desk

Sofie Vandersmissen is a talented painter who turns out some lovely fantasy figures.   On her blog today she suggests that other bloggers post pictures of what’s currently on their painting table on Saturday.

I think that’s a great idea, both to build the community of bloggers and to encourages us to have something on the go.  So here’s my table just before dinner tonight.  In the foreground are some 28mm GW warriors of Rohan from their Lord of the Rings range.   In the background are some items for my 28mm Ottoman army: a vintage Minifigs artillery piece from their English Civil War range, and some Spahis of the Porte from The Assault Group’s Renaissance range, which will be getting my full attention as soon as the Rohan boys are finished.

I could get these Rohan fellows done tonight, but Mrs. Padre and I are getting dolled up to go to the local jazz club like the hep cats we are.

Thanks for this idea, Sofie.

 

New Follower Friday and This Week In The Hobby

It’s been a busy week, the first of a new semester in my MA program in religious studies, and I have a stack of books and articles on my desk that will be demanding more and more of my attention.  I hope I don’t lose all the impetus I’ve generated in my hobby activities over the holidays, though I fear I will lose some of it.  Choices, choices.

There has been some impetus.  I’ve been watching, as best I can, the amazing work being done by the brush-slingers on this year’s Analogue Hobbies painting challenge.  The entries in the current Villains round include some quite amazing work, particularly Sidney Roundwood’s Mata Hara diorama, and Curt’s 1812 Retreat From Moscow figures, which make me cold just looking at them.  Well worth the look.   I am content with my decision to sit this year’s Challenge out do to my studies, but I am very grateful to one of the Too Fat Lardies fraternity, Robert Avery, for running a friendly little painting competition on his blog, as an incentive to get people painting figures.  It’ working for me.  Thanks, Robert.

This week in the hobby I made a rash decision to purchase a chap’s 6mm Napoleonic collection, and will be looking forward to 6000 or so little Russians, Austrians and Frenchies landing on my doorstep.  Watch for excited blog posts soon.  I also have some 28mm Wargames Foundry Prussians on order for my SYW project, some flags from The Flag Dude in the US, and some Games Workshop LOTR figures almost finished on the workbench to show off soon.  Other than some bracing online chess with MiLord Archduke Piccolo, no gaming, alas, but it’s been a good week hobby wise.  Tonight I came home from school with a new copy of Plaid Hat Games Mice and Mystics which I am hoping to interest Mrs. Padre in playing with me.  So far it seems promising, since she has a fondness for mice.  So all in all a good week hobby wise, though I can’t afford many more like it.

 It’s Friday again and time to catch up on thanking some of the folks who have decided to follow this blog recently.   

Thanks to:

Stuart Surridge, a member of a UK club, The Wyvern Wargamers, whose blog makes me lament the lack of such organized clubs here in wintry Canada.

James Fisher, a gamer from Down Under, who is part of the Avon Napoleonic Fellowship - their blog has some massive Napoleonic scraps, the kind of thing I bought all those little Nap chaps for.

Rob Hingley is a fellow Canadian, from Montreal, Quebec, and has an interesting blog featuring some fine painting.  He seems to have succumbed to the zombie craze, poor fellow.

Grigork is another UK gamer, whose tastes are far-flung.  The wallpaper of his blog proudly displays a very handsome feline fellow sitting on his war-games table, a homage to Ross McFarlane, perhaps?

Last but not least is Tom Young, from Round Rock, Texas, one of my favourite parts of the US, whose blog shows some amazing home-made scenery.  I wonder if he does commissions.  Tom is apparently a medieval re-enactor and is a braver man than I am.

Welcome to you all, sirs, and thank you for following my blog.   Right, I’m off, promised Mrs. Padre we’d go to see Inside Llewyn Davis tonight - I love a Coen Bros film.

Blessings to your brushes and die rolls,

Michael

Moral Courage On The Water: James McPherson On Union Naval Leadership

 “Damn the torpedoes!"

Followers of this blog will know that I have an interest in the American Civil War, particularly the naval bits.

I was delighted to learn today that one of my favourite ACW historians, James McPherson, recently published a book on the naval side of ACW, War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865 (UNC Press, 2012).   That was news to me.  If you are super-interested in this topic, Prof. McPherson has some comments on the book and on the period on YouTube here.  One of his main points is that the US Navy was far better prepared for the war than the US Army was in 1861, and because of its greater professionalism, was more efficient than the army.   It’s also interesting that the majority of the USN were from the North or were recent immigrants, and so the Navy didn’t split along north/south lines to the same extent than the army did.  Southerners in the Navy, like Virginia’s Farragut, remained in US service and didn’t experience the same prejudice that southern US soldiers like Thomas did.  

McPherson is a big fan of Farragut, who he says showed the same degree of “moral courage” in leadership at sea that Grant did on land.  “Citing Farragut’s decision to press forward at Mobile Bay after his lead ship Tecumseh struck a mine and sank, while Brooklyn, second in formation, veered off course and stopped.  It was at this point that Farragut could have said “Damn the torpedoes!”.  He added that Mobile Bay was the first unequivocal Union victory of 1864, followed by Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s takeover of Atlanta and Brig. Gen. Philip Sheridan’s burning of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.  McPherson stated that these three victories secured Lincoln’s re-election and the Union’s determination to win the war."

 There’s a brief summary of a talk on this subject given by McPherson to the Society for Military History here.  Fans of the naval side of the ACW should also want to know about this blog, The Civil War Naval Sesquicentennial - lots of good stuff there.

The Miniatures Man 50K Giveaway

 

The wargaming blogosphere is replete with generous people.   My friend The Miniatures Man (aka Joakim, one of the Scandinavian wargaming fraternity and one of my people by vague ethnicity) is having a give way at his blog to celebrate 50,000 hits.   I encourage you to go there, congratulate him, put your name in for the chance for some nice swag (including some vintage GW 40K stuff) and link his contest on your blog if you have one.

We here at Mad Padre Wargames love a good giveaway, a did one ourselves last year to celebrate reaching a 100 followers.  In fact, as the hit counter creeps to 88K hits, I am thinking that a contest for 150 followers and 100K hits may be in order, whenever that happens.

Cheers, and blessings to your brushes and die rolls,

MP

Achtung, Tentacles! More Weird War Thoughts

 

“Always with the tentacles!"

I blame young Kinch for putting me onto the Kickstarter campaign for the Modiphus/Spartan Games Achtung Cthulu project.  I was attracted to the project because of the excellent video with its creepy background music, and because of its compatibility with the Savage Worlds rules system, which I’ve invested in.   It looked tempting, and I filed it away as something to keep on my gaming radar screen.

Then, thanks to the Wargame News and Terrain blog (which I rely on more than TMP for hobby info), I see that Spartan Games has announced that the project will be a 2014 release, with some very interesting minis showcased.

So obviously Kickstarter works when you have two of the three top subjects of mass-market publishing, Nazis and the occult (the third, I am told, is cats, and if all three can be combined, you’re golden).  Sadly, Kickstarter projects for American Civl War ironclad rules and Indiegogo campaigns for ACW miniatures don’t have the same ability to get off the launch pad, which says something about where the mass audience for the hobby resides,  but I digress.

While my own Weird War Two visions are still unfocused, I like the idea of a more traditional vision of the occult, something I see as a mashup of Allo! Allo! and Hammer Studios.   I’m not sure that tentacled and slimy Ubersturmfuhrer Fishtruppen have a place in the milieu I am envisioning, though you never now.  Stargate SG1, which Mrs. Padre watched on Netflix over the holidays, all ten seasons worth,  always managed to serve up yet another universe-threatening enemy after the Egyptian god guys or whatever got defeated.   Maybe an “SG 1939” project could expand over time to have “S Commando” take on the fish men after the vampers and wolf men are defeated, but that seems rather crowded and busy, not to mention, unrealistic (I mean, cmon, you can’t have Nazi vampires AND fish men!).   I shall certainly be seeing what products the Achtung Cthulu project actually rolls out.

In the meantime, stay vigilant, chaps!

More Nasty Nazis: Pulp Figures Germans For Weird War Two

About a year ago I was blogging about a Weird War Two project that captured my crazed imagination.   As part of that project, I mentioned that I was agonizing about whether or not to paint swastikas on some newly purchased figures from Bob Murch’s Pulp Figures line.  That dilemma, and the rest of the figures, got shelved for a long time, but was finally resolved when I finished and based these chaps over the holidays.  On the suggestion of Panzer Kaput,  I opted for a simple cross, since I can’t abide painting a swastika and I think, had I painted them, it would make the images illegal in Germany, or so I recall from the Lead Adventurers Forum.  Seeing as I am blogging them now, I will count them towards my 2014 totals.

So here we have four menacing chaps with machine pistols. 

 

 

Two officers who are painted as vampires in the service of the sinister and shadowy SS Gruppenfuhrer Strasser.  They don’t need weapons.  Those red eyes have hypnotic powers and are just generally creepy.

 

 

Lesser ranking types, suitable for guard duties and managing roadblocks, check points, and other strategic entrances to Schloss Bad Guy.

 Sinister fellows with Lugers.  I especially like the fellow on the left with the matinee idol hair.

 

 Finally, Herr Klopp of the Gestapo, Count Strasser’s link with those upper echelons of the Nazi Party under his sway - wheels within wheels and all that.   His attache contains another bundle of cash diverted from the Reich’s coffers for Strasser’s secret projects.

 

 

The more I paint of Bob Murch’s figures, the more I like them.  Getting these guys finished has given me fresh energy to revisit my Weird War Two project.  I have a few more Nasty Nazis in the pipeline - more werewolves who will be part of another renegade Nazi organization, a rival to the SS Vampyr Boys, and a box of Warlord UK Commandoes.   Slow steps.  I am still not sure how I will get these fellows on the gaming table.  I need to revisit the Savage Worlds rules and take them for a test drive.

These figures get my 2014 totals to:

28mm Mounted: 2

28mm Foot: 15

Thanks for looking.  Cheers and blessings to your brushes,

Michael

New Follower Friday

It's been almost a year since I did a New Follower post on Friday, and amazingly, a few more people decided to follow this blog since March 2013.    The total is now 132, which is very gratifying.   I can't welcome everyone who joined in one post … well, I suppose I could, but I would rather parcel them out a bit over the next few weeks.

So, special thanks and recognition of five folks who started following this blog since last March.

 

David - sorry mate, don't know who you are, but welcome.

 

Lone Star Parson is an even madder padre than yours truly.  LSP is an Anglican priest from England who lives and works in Texas.  If you're interested in guns, ammo, horses and strong opinions, the Parson is your man.

 

David Crook is a war gamer from Essex in the UK, has a blog called A Wargaming Odyssey, and a refreshingly eclectic range of interests, judging by his blog, which is quite fascinating.

 

Miles runs a blog called Lair of the Uber Geek and seems only slightly mad, in a good way.  He is one of the brush-slingers in this year's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, where he is currently 9th out of a field of 60.   Impressive.

 

Last but not least is Timothy Duckworth.  I couldn't tell you anything about him to save my life, except his avatar shows a dark ages chap with a shield and I suspect he is a fellow follower of the Lard.

 

Anyway, welcome to you all, even if you've been around for a while.  I suspect someone's already told you about the health and dental plan and assigned you to a cubicle?   Splendid.

 

MP

 

 

More Russian SYW Generals and a Two-Year Battle

My first game of 2014 was the oldest wargame of all, a game of chess fought with my godson Brendan, whom I've bragged on here before.  The game actually took two years to play, because we started it on New Year's Eve and finished it the next day.  For a little chap of almost nine years old, he is good.  I had to use all of my leetle grey cells to pull off a win.   I predict a bright future for Brendan.

 

These figures were finished before the turn of the new year, but because they are getting blogged in 2014, I'm going to count them in this year's total.   Here are the other two Wargames Foundry Russian staff officers.

Here Major General Arkady Renko receives a report from an officer of Pandours.   The Pandour figure has been sitting around in my spares box for years, waiting for honest employment, and I think he fleshes out the vignette rather nicely.

 

 

 

Colonel Fyodor Korolenko, a dragoon officer, who will be my cavalry commander.  For now all he has to command is an unruly regiment of hussars, but I am hoping that some dragoons and cuirassiers will be in the procurement pipeline in 2014.

 

 

I am very fond of the Wargames Foundry ranges.  For many years Front Rank was my go-to line for SYW figures, but I like what Foundry does and have some more chaps on order, some Prussian infantry and some scruffy Russian hussar types.

Does anyone have some suggestions for other manufacturers of 28mm SYW Russian and Prussian figures?

Cheers and thanks for looking,

Michael