Shopping at Colours...

This used to be the grass car park

Honestly, you get no posts for months and then two in a day! I was up early this morning to walk to the station (the Old Bat refused to drive me) to get over to Surbiton to meet up with Eric the Shed, who drove me to Colours with John, another Shedizen.  Unlike Salute, which I go to on public transport, I always drove to Colours (last time I attempted it in 2015 I had to give up as the M25 was so bad) so I tend to focus on buying scenery when I go there.  Since I went there last time in 2013, Newbury race course have built loads of flats (the sort that IT people live in) there, meaning a different way in and a more sophisticated car park.  Good job Eric was driving as I wouldn't have found the way in at all.  Fortunately. the M25 Gods smiled and we were there by just after ten.

I didn't take any pictures inside, partly because it was so dark (it made Salute look like a Hollywood sound stage in comparison) and partly because there was nothing to take pictures of, really. Some of the traders were in areas so dark that they looked like caves.  My deteriorating eyesight struggled.  The games, on the top of the three floors, looked rather dull and were right on top of each other, so getting at them was almost impossible.   I always considered the show as number two after Salute and above Warfare in Reading, in ranking of those I go to regularly but this year it seemed a bit dingy and sad.  Not what it was.

I didn't really have a shopping list except a vague plan to look at trees and I certainly wasn't really planning to buy any figures.  The first thing I saw were some Congo style wooden shields at the Foundry stand.  Now I have wanted these for some time but they weren't on the Foundry website so I was very glad to pick them up, despite the usurious price of £10 for 12 shields. 

Having said I didn't like MDF for scenic basis I couldn't resist these for some intermediate follidge pieces.  They are mid-way between my washer bases and the CD one I have made and are quite thin.  I might try and sand the edges a bit as we have borrowed the Old Bat's father's corner sander.  However, I have a fear of power tools, generally, so I will have to be brave as it is never as easy to use them as it appears.  When it comes to using tools I am always seconds away from A&E.

Next up, were some trees for Africa.  No acacia types but these have the requisite tall trunks and high canopies I was looking for.  I need a lot more like this.

I wanted some big rocks for Savage Core as I had always liked the publicity shot they produced early on, of simians on a rock in the jungle.  This, I suspect, from the cave/opening in it, started life as an aquarium piece but I was very happy to buy a based one.  I then went back and bought another smaller rock.  I will re-paint then and add some follidge.

When I got back home and looked at the Savage Core Facebook page I realised, to my delight, that the rock model I had bought was exactly the same as the one Lucid Eye had used.   Very happy with this!

I did get a few figures.  Recently, Lucid Eye have announced that the various factions for Savage Core will be appearing in cold weather Ice Age type garb, so I picked up the first of the Amazons (although heavily dressed Amazons goes against my aesthetic sensibilities).  I had no idea why the range had a man dressed as a German officer holding a rock but the rules make it perfectly clear, so I picked him up too.

I got the Lucid Eye figures at the Crooked Dice stand, so took the opportunity to pick up the new female cultists who will probably see service in In Her Majesty's Name.  I added nine figures to the lead pile but I really am going to start selling some unpainted figures off as I desperately need the space and Eric the Shed was appalled by the number of unpainted figures I have got.  He reckons he has only about a hundred unpainted figures, whereas I think I have about eight thousand!

All in all, I was very happy with my purchases and it was very kind of Eric to give me a lift.  I whizzed around the show pretty quickly and we left at about one o'clock.  I had a chat with Eric and Matakishi, who I once played a game of Prehistoric Settlement with, at Guildford Wargames Club.  Staggeringly, he remembered me!  I also had a long chat and a bacon roll (my glamorous new doctor would not approve) with Mike of Black Hat Miniatures, who originally invited me to my first game at Guildford many years ago.  This was all remarkably social for me!

Sadly (well actually not), we heard last night that we had won a big bid I did a lot of work on for Colombia, which means six to eight frantic weeks of work (I will try and avoid the Bogota section as I am due to go to Africa again in early November and, possibly, Central America later that month).  It will put paid to my hoped for more hobby time, though.  Tomorrow, I won't have any time either as I have to take Charlotte to the airport to go back to Edinburgh.  She left it until the last minute (as she does with everything) to decide on her flight and, as a result, it cost me £293 single (British Airways are advertising flights to the US for £325 at the moment!) plus £60 excess baggage for an extra suitcase.  Think how much follidge I could have bought for that.  I could have got my naked girly statue for that too!  The children's university accommodation is going to cost me about £15,000 this year.  The least they could do is empty the dishwasher once in a while.  Children!  Who needs them?

Now then, now then, what's going on 'ere?

I have at last finished my policemen for my In Her Majesty's Name Scotland Yard Company.  I had been putting them off due to the necessity of having to paint the striped armbands that policemen had to wear on their left arms while on duty.  But by holding my breath and trusting in the Force they came out looking alright (from a distance!).  I need to locate the rest of the company now, as I have already painted Holmes and Watson.

Reinforcements for In Her Majesty's Name.

The excellent Wargame News and Terrain blog has highlighted the fact that Northstar are selling a random pack of four cultists from the Servants of Ra company for IHMN.  Now while I am determined to stop buying figures in the quantities I have over the last few years I have ordered a pack of four of these so I can reinforce my company.  I can justify this on the basis I have painted all my servants of Ra figures and will paint the reinforcements immediately.  

It will be interesting to see if they do the same for the rank and file of the other companies.  Let's hope so.  The Society of Thule definitely need more Jaegers to be available separately.

As regards the lead and plastic pile I have just put two boxes of Napoleonic plastics on eBay.  I am serious about getting rid of stuff I will never paint!  Much more to go!  Skirmish armies only for me from now on!

Hooray for Captain Spaulding, the African explorer!

"I've been looking for a girl like you - not you, but a girl like you"

The first two figures for September are two oddments that have been sitting around on the workbench.  I always have a number of these on the go  if I need a break from painting units; Afghans, in this case - although the end is now in sight on these.  

The Captain Geoffrey T (for Edgar) Spaulding figure (from the Marx Brothers Animal Crackers, of course) is a Copplestone Castings figure.  The film contains one of my favourite Groucho Marx lines: "We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed. But we're going back in a couple of months!"

Working out a colour scheme from a black and white film is a challenge and, at one point, I actually contemplated painting him in monochrome but that would have limited his use!  I wasn't sure whether to paint a band on the cigar so had to consult the only person I know who (occasionally) smokes cigars, my particular friend Sophie.  She informed me that removing the band can tear the leaf so she leaves it on although some think that leaving the band in place on an expensive cigar is showing off.  Picture reference of Groucho Mark, however, shows that he invariably removed the bands of his cigars.  So close, but no band.

The lady of the night is one of Tim Prow's Foundry figures and she will lurk around Victorian London.  I have a number of these to paint so really ought to get a gas lamp or two!  She is wearing a side-laced corset, although I have to say that it is not historically accurate as these only had lacing on one side, not both as sculpted here.

Captain Spaulding dates from 1930 so is more likely to appear in my long-contemplated 1920's Egypt project.  Eric the Shed has got me thinking about this again.  I am going over to the Shed again today, this time for a game of Muskets and Tomahawks, which will be too much for my poor brain. no doubt!

Back painting once more...

More Mexicans!

Things have been tremendously busy in the life of the Legatus and have not been helped by several IT issues meaning that I haven't had any spare time and if I have I haven't had access to a computer for long periods of time.  All is now sorted and so I hope to catch up on various urgent tasks, not least of which is sending out my prize draw winners figures, as it is now a month since the draw.  Apologies to the winners but getting to the post office has been impossible.  Anyway, this weekend I managed an hour or so on my next unit of Mexicans and finished the nine other figures I have been working on, in a somewhat desultory manner, for the last few weeks.

I finished 17 figures in May which was my best month of the year.  The longer evenings are certainly helping on the painting front.  I don't know if more than 17 will be possible in June but maybe a dozen is more realistic.  I didn't mange any in June last year but this June I have already managed five so far.  These pirates have been sitting on the paint table for far too long but now they are done.  I'll probably dig out a few more to keep building on them ready for the new Osprey On the Seven Seas Rules which come out in August.

I haven't done anything for IHMN for a bit but here are two new figures.  Firstly we have the North Star Moriarty (who will actually be Alberich von Tarnhelm in my companies).  More on him in my earlier post here.  I don't know where the monster figure came from, maybe he is a Foundry figure, but given the excellent news of the new IHMN Gothic supplement (online only at present) I knew I needed to get him painted.  

Next up were another three Afghan tribesmen from Artizan Designs.  Although irregular figures always take longer to paint, I am keeping a batch of these on the go and just painting the odd colour when I have time.  I have another six under way at present.  Very easy figures to paint.  

Finally, I did a test figure for the Orinoco Miniatures Latin American Wars of Independence British Legion.  This was also a nice easy subject so I will work on a few more.

£500 to move this two miles?

Lots of expenses this month what with the dreaded extension and things such as moving Charlotte from her halls of residence of the first year into her flat for the second year of university.  To move two suitcases and seven cardboard boxes of stuff Pickfords wanted £420 with VAT on top.  What a joke!  Fortunately we found a local firm that charged the comparatively bargain price of £192.  10 boxes of Perry plastics saved!

The work on the extension is driving me mad, not least because the Old Bat keeps wanting my opinion on carpets, bathroom tiles, lights, curtains and all sorts of other nonsense. I also thought that after pneumatic drilling the garage floor away it would quieten down; but not so far.  It's very hard to research the economic impact of direct flights to Bogota with a constant grating, high pitched whining in the background.  But enough of the Old Bat, the brick sawing is nearly as bad.  Also the builders have added significantly to our weekly shop by consuming huge boxes of tea bags (I always wondered who bought those 240 bag boxes), cans of Coke and biscuits.  I can't say that I have seen Wagon Wheels since the seventies but the builders love them.  And Club biscuits and Jaffa Cakes and Penguins and Hob Nobs and Kit Kats and chocolate caramel digestives.  It all got really out of hand when the Old Bat bought them Bahlsen Choco Leibniz biscuits at £1.80 for nine.  Can't they eat custard creams and bourbons like everyone else?  I'm going to do the next biscuit shop!  Maybe I'll get them fig rolls, that will teach them!

The scariest children's TV show ever made

My mother used to get my sister and I these "figgy biscuits" when we were little, largely, I suspect, on the basis that we hated them so much that we couldn't bear to eat more than one at a time.  I particularly remember being given them as a "treat" while watching Tales from Europe on television after school.  This was a collection of children's TV series from Europe (obviously) which were either dubbed or just had English narration over the top.  I particularly remember one featuring some boys and a motorbike filmed in Istanbul I think.  Every time I go to Istanbul, now, I think of fig rolls.

The really memorable Tales from Europe series, of course, was the utterly terrifying The Singing Ringing Tree.  Forget Dr Who, I never hid behind the sofa for that, but The Singing Ringing Tree gave me nightmares for decades.  Originally an East German film made in 1957, you can buy it on DVD, if you really want to scare your children to death, although the DVD is in its originally filmed colour, which is somehow less scary than the expressionist black and white version the BBC showed in the sixties.  Everyone is used to seeing people of "reduced stature" these days thanks to science fiction films and, indeed, the Paralympics, but in 1964 the scampering dwarf from Das singende, klingende Bäumchen  (it sounds even scarier in German) frightened the life out of me.

Girders!  We'll need biscuits after shifting these!

Anyway, stuff keeps arriving on large lorries at 6.00am in the morning, much to the neighbours' delight.  Do I really want to spend £4,500 on steel girders?  I do not but because of the sort of soil we have here we have had to have a complicated foundation put together with a sort of cage of girders underpinning tons of concrete.  You could build a rocket launching pad on the foundations!

I do have a floor, somewhere

My room is total chaos at present and is not helped by the fact that I have bought a couple of those CD album cases to hold my DVD collection.  I had filled all my shelves and had built up an overflow of three piles of DVD's which were over a three feet high and kept falling over.  So all the boxes are going to the dump and I will put them in the sleeves.  Except I don't have time to get on with it.  I haven't even unwrapped the second case.  I did start on my unwatched TV series and have already filled one 500 disc capacity case and have only reached the letter L.  I've still got the rest of my unwatched TV series, unwatched films, watched films and watched TV series to go.  In the meantime I can't find anything!

I don't need any more figures, of course, but was in Orc's Nest this week and saw the new Victrix Greek Unarmoured Hoplites and Archers so picked them up for no real reason whatsoever.  I constructed a few and had forgotten quite how long these multi-part plastics take to assemble.  I'm thinking about Greeks again because of the recent release by Foundry of the Steve Saleh sculpted Persians which have, after many years, seen the light of day for the first time.  These would be perfect to pitch against Macedonians.  Although I don't have any phalangites painted I do have 66 Greek skirmishers and 24 cavalry painted for the Cynoscephalae force I did for a Society of Ancients game in 2007.

My Foundry Greek heavy cavalry from 2007

I think Persians of this period are among the very worst wargames armies to paint.  The troops usually rate low points in most rules so you need lots of them and they have extremely complex patterned uniforms.  They are like Celts!  Or samurai! Anyway, I found a couple of Spartan officers I had started some time ago, so hopefully they will give me the opportunity to do a post on my Spartan blog this month. 

Now it's time to pay the builders their weekly money again!  

Quarterly review: 1 January-March 2014

Ra! Ra! Ra!

Well, I am not quite sure where the first three months of this year went.  Much of my weekends were taken up with flood related stuff for my parents in law, filling out endless planning application stuff for the extension, taking Guy to and from rowing and doing rather too much work at the weekend, due to a complication regarding my job which hopefully will settle down in the next couple of months.

At least I started the year with an actual wargame, thanks to Alastair who put on a very enjoyable game of In Her Majesty's Name for me.

It is amazing that I got any painting done at all, but the fact that I did and enjoyed it is almost completely down to the estimable Sofie and her Paint Table Saturday. Even the Old Bat now realises that on Saturday afternoon I am going to do some painting.  Perhaps her newly discovered equanimity is due to the thousands of pounds I keep shelling out for planning applications, building regulations, structural engineers, architects and loads of other parasites for what is a very small extension indeed.  This week she has found a "really nice carpet" - at £500 a square metre.  Stop going shopping in trendy shops in Cobham, Esher and Weybridge!  Go to Carpetright like everyone else!  Anyway, it all makes me a lot happier about having recently ordered the most expensive scenic item I have ever bought (and I have the Forge World Weathertop).  More on that when it arrives!

I'm actually well on the way with the second lot of oars now

I have actually painted 37 figures this quarter and have about 25 pretty close to completion.  Fairly dismal by most people's standards but I am very happy with it. I might have got my next batch of Mexicans finished this weekend but it is all hands to the oars to attempt to finish the Roman Galley for Big Red Bat's epic game at Salute next week (argh!).  I meant to do a lot in the evenings this week but I have been busy writing strategy papers for the Colombian government so have got nothing done since Sunday.  So, my painting for the first quarter has been as follows:

Victorian  Naval Brigade - 12

The Hobbit - 12

In Her Majesty's Name - 10

Empire of the Dead  - 2

Darkest Africa - 1

This is, for me, an incredibly focussed result!  I certainly plan to do more IHMN figures, with Scotland Yard next and then the new Prince of Wales' Extraordinary Company after that.  For The Hobbit it will probably be the Mirkwood Rangers next but only after I have watched the Desolation of Smaug which, hopefully, I should get from Amazon on Monday, as I still haven't seen it.  Charlotte is returning from Edinburgh for Easter tomorrow, though, so I expect she will grab it and do her usual thing of watching it so many times in a row that she knows all the dialogue off by heart (she can actually recite the whole script of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe).  

 Charlotte and the Old Bat are on the far left

I can't believe that Charlotte will be nineteen in a month's time.  This week one of the Old Bat's friends sent me this picture of her ante-natal group taken in 1995.  She was just like a little dolly and now she is studying astrophysics, eating industrial quantities of Tunnocks Caramel Wafers and is a proud member of the Edinburgh University Pole Dancing Society (she's always wanted to be either a pole dancer or an astronaut - this way she can keep both options open, I suppose).

Here she is now, about to attend her first toga party.  She couldn't wear a sheet like everyone else, of course, but got the Old Bat to make her an outfit and headdress which we had to post to her at great expense (we are always posting things at great expense up to Edinburgh - shoes mostly).

Anyway, back to painting and progress is good on the Boot Hill Mexicans, the Perry Confederation of the Rhine and the Orinoco Miniatures British Legion. If I can finish one batch of these a month I will be very happy, bearing in mind I completed nothing from May to October last year.  I ordered quite a few more Mexicans (they really are a joy to paint) so I can complete the Matamoros regiment at about 1/10 ratio.  These three companies of four, added to the six figures  I have already painted and the 14 figures nearly finished will complete the regiment.

¿Dónde está, Juan?

I was searching through one of my boxes and found a whole batch of 20 Boot Hill Mexicans I had completely forgotten about. They will form the beginning of the Tres Villas Activo regiment.  I also bought some of those splendid red clad lancers the Mexicans had, to form the Dolores cavalry regiment, although I seem to have lost one rider.  Hopefully the incredibly helpful Nick at Boot Hill can help me out with a replacement.  These are going to look spectacular painted!  I have also been buying some more books on the Texan War of Indpendence to keep me inspired.  I'm even contemplating another blog for my Americas projects!

Buy us, infidel!

Looking forward, it's Salute next weekend and I have manged to avoid going to Medellin at the same time but I will now probably have to go back to Colombia at the end of next month, although I have a cunning plan to add a historic side trip onto this visit.  I'm  really, really going to try to be good and not buy lots of figures as I have bought 270 in three months.  That said, the new Artizan Afghans look superb and they have just released seven packs this week.   But then there are the Empress Miniatures Jazz Age Colonials too.

Steve Saleh has just launched a new firm, Lucid Eye, for his sculpts and the most interesting for me are his Neanderthals.  Now I have someone to pitch against my Copplestone Cavemen!  Cavegirl raiding in prospect!

Those are proper BEF figures, those are

With the World War 1 anniversary this year I have been looking for some good BEF figures and Paul Hicks has just released his first batch of British and Germans for his Mutton Chop Miniatures.  I have a lot (well, forty) of painted Renegade Germans so needed something that would work with them (I didn't like the Renegade British as they got the hats completely wrong and the Great War Miniatures figures were variable).  I ordered a pack and they arrived this week.  They are taller than the lovely but small ones he did for Musketeer Miniatures and even better detailed.  I can now start on my British force!

A recent trip to Orc's Nest saw me pick up a box of the new Warlord US Marines.  I bet they sell bucket loads of these, especially to old Airfixy people like me!  The only disappointment with them is that all the helmets are either covered or have netting on them which is not really right for early battles like Guadalcanal.  Someone on one of the forums suggested I pick up some West Wind spare heads with plain helmets and it looks like these may well be an exact match size wise, much to my surprise.

I may, however, have to give a few tomato puree tube helmet straps for that authentic Airfix box cover look.  To be fair, the Warlord ones have some like this!

Talking of Airfix memories, the excellent Wargames News and Terrain site (which always trumps TMP on new releases, despite the latter's horde of Filipina editors) had this up today; the first result of the Warlord/Italaeri partnership.  Bet they sell bucket loads of these too.  I am going to get one even though I don't know what for yet (later Pacific I suppose). 1/56th Sherman!  Yum! Yum!

They need arms and scabbards attaching

Finally, on the new buy front (and there were other figures I haven't mentioned) I picked up half a dozen of Warfare Miniatures new Great Northern War Swedish Cavalry.  I have quite a few of Musketeer Miniatures infantry but found their Swedish infantry a bit disappointing as they were very static, not something I associate with Swedish cavalry of the period.  These are depicted at full tilt, however, and although a little bit smaller than the Musketeer ones hopefully won't look too odd with the infantry when painted.

So, let's hope I can get a good solid weekend done on the galley and then back to figure painting again!

The Music for this post was from Australian saxophonist Amy Dickson's new album Catch Me If You Can.  This features a work by John Williams, a saxophone concerto by another American film music composer, Michael Kamen, and some arrangements of some of Mark Knopfler's music for one of my  favourite eighties films, Local Hero.

Worth putting up with despite the yakking

I saw the latter at the cinema with my then girlfriend, the extraordinarily passionate V, whose cousin appeared in the film, as she continuously mentioned all through the showing.  So the Local Hero music always reminds me of her, which is a good thing because when she was good she was very, very good and when she was bad she was very, very bad indeed!

Royal Naval Brigade: Paint Table Saturday results!

I finished this unit of Copplestone Castings Naval Brigade figures yesterday, in comparatively quick time.  The ratings arrived from Copplestone (always very rapid service) about ten days ago and I bought the officers in Orc's Nest the following day.  I got most of the painting done last weekend and finished them in two sessions this weekend.

The idea behind these is that they will form part of a joint services task force based on the Prince of Wales Extraordinary company (my figures for which arrived from North Star late last week).  I only painted two out of the five officers but I may paint the others in due course.

Painting Naval Brigade figures involves a strange mixture of straightforward painting of a simple uniform and then the fiddling annoyance of painting stripes on their collars. Ten ratings means ninety stripes!

This is the third set of Naval Brigade figures I have painted.  The first were for my Sudan British Force and were Perry Miniatures.  I did these back in 2007.

I also did some for my Zambezi campaign back in early 2011.  These are the same Copplestone figures as the one's I have just done accept they are in their sennett hats and white, tropical uniforms.

You'd think that would be quite enough Naval Brigade but I will be getting some Mutineer Miniatures for the Indian Mutiny.  I was very inspired by a diorama at the Portsmouth Dockyard museum of the Naval Brigade in action during the Mutiny.

Confederation of the Rhine next.

There's only one piece I could possibly listen to while writing this post: Sir Henry Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs, which he produced in 1905 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar.  It's a disgrace that the BBC has cut this from the last night of the Proms lately as, according to them, it only contains English music.  Wood could have called it a Fantasia on English Sea Songs but he didn't!