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