Paint Table Sunday: Warriors of Rohan

I'm carrying on with my three projects at a time approach, so my current work is some Savage Core Jaguar Tribe and Atlanteans and some Star Wars Battle Droids.  The Jaguar tribe are coming along and I did a bit on them today but they have fiddly shields to do so they will not be done this week, I think.

Yesterday I finished twelve warriors of Rohan from the Fields of Pelennor boxed set. I had to find the shields which were in the box and was depressed at how many figures there are still to paint, considering I did army of the dead and orcs a year and a half ago!  I had more varnish problems with these. Some time ago I switched to Vallelo polyurethane matt varnish as the Humbrol was drying and leaving white patches. However this time the Vallejo didn't not dry matt on some paints I had used a Citadel shade on. Frustrated I stirred some Humbrol for twelve minutes and put it over the shiny bits. Seemed to be OK but was still leaving the odd white patches which I had to paint over.  I wish there was a matt varnish that actually worked reliably!

I need to start thinking about what should come in next.  Ideally, I want something that is not just started but well on the way so I can get them done reasonably quickly, as I find figures with a lot of work still to do on them rather depressing. I keep some of my most recent (i.e. the last seven years or so) figures in little plastic tubs behind my chair on one of my bookshelves.  I need to look at what is in here and see what I could push along. At present I am thinking of my 1864 Danes as there are only a few (nine?) of them and they have a quite simple uniform.  At least none of these need preparing as they are all based and undercoated at least.  However Charlotte wants me to do some riders of Rohan. I did start six some years ago but they are in a box somewhere and I don't know which box. 

The redoubtable Mike Siggins commented on Facebook this week that he hadn't worn a watch for thirty years but was now thinking of getting one. I find this very peculiar. I have worn a watch every day since I started senior school at eleven. I really cannot understand people who say that they have the time on their mobile phones. So, when they want to see the time they have to get their phone out of their pocket and look at it (and maybe even unlock it first), as opposed to just a quick flick of the wrist and there it is. Also what if the sun is out? Then you can't see anything on a mobile phone screen. Do people then have to find a tree to stand under? Also I cannot see the numbers on my phone as they are so small, so then I would have to get my glasses out too. Hence why my everyday watch is this one, as it is so clear. I went to a meeting once at a big architects firm and they were all wearing this watch (based on the clocks at Swiss railway stations) as it is a design classic! One more thing, of course, I don't usually carry my mobile phone on me as I don't want it microwaving my brain every hour of the day. Mostly I forget to charge it up too. 

This weeks annoyance is people drinking beer out of bottles. Again, just why? I have been watching several US TV series lately and I'm sorry but I think men drinking from silly little beer bottles looks childish or even, he said, not worrying about being politically incorrect, effeminate. They look like they have baby's beakers as they sip, sip, sip ineffectually. The worst example, oddly, is the otherwise estimable Perdita Weeks in Magnum. When she does it, obviously to look like one of the boys, she looks very uncomfortable doing so.  She purses her lips and tries to sip, sip sip, a tiny amount of beer. Glasses is what you need for beer. Big glasses so you can get a proper mouthful not a baby beaker serving. Cognac is for sipping. Beer is for quaffing! And as for that idiotic idea of sticking citrus fruit into the neck of the bottle to restrict the flow even more and make the beer taste like washing up liquid. Really. That is why you live in a Third World country, Mexicans! I absolutely refuse to drink beer out of bottle!

Today's music is the soundtrack to  Prehistoric Park by Daniel Pemberton, who went to the same school as I did. It goes very well as background music when painting Lost World type tribesmen. Speaking of which, I have discovered I can get Amazon Prime on my TV. This has been available for years for me but I didn't know how to do it but Charlotte set it up so she could watch Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon for her birthday. The Old Bat watched it too but as she walked out of Star Wars and has never seen another science fiction film in her life all the in jokes were totally lost on her. I have always wanted to watch the Man in the High Castle but instead I am watching Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Excellent! Dodgy CGI dinosaurs, the same location as I'm a Celebrity Get me Out of Here, lots of Australians with equally dodgy English accents and tribe of the week (no more than twenty of them) in a forty foot across set.. And, of course, Jennifer O'Dell in her little leather outfit and Rachel Blakely looking lovely too. I wonder what Conan Doyle would have thought of it? I wonder what he would have thought of his estate taking the money and running, as well? 

Oh, alright here is a picture of O'Dell as Veronica (a name which holds a lot of resonance for the Legatus). She designed this outfit herself so was not exploited by the costume department as you might think. As the credits say, ' befriended by an untamed beauty'. Apart from her hair, that is, which is always tamed to within an inch of her prehistoric curling tongs.

Today's wallpaper is this lovely breakfast time study by William Breakspeare (1856-1914) from Birmingham.   Not a very well known painter but he exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer exhibition eight times and studied in Paris for a time.

Paint Table Sunday: Locate and cement

No doubt quite a lot of you remember the days when Airfix kits had written instructions, before the days when pandering to Johnny Foreigner saw the end of the phrase 'locate and cement' in favour of pictorial instructions, as these ignorant foreigners didn't understand English (although, in reality, they almost certainly did). Apparently, Airfix are doing very well during the lockdown with sales beating even the pre-Christmas period and they were even mentioned in the Times a week or so ago. While I would love to have a go at an Airfix kit (or finish that 1/48th Spitfire I have actually done quite a bit of) sadly the pressures of my current work for the government means I do not have all the spare time others do. I have to say the Airfix PR team are playing a blinder in pushing their product as a boredom reliever through social media (shudders, even as I type the words)  and I am pleased they are doing well, as they have been through several rocky periods in the past and they are a real part of my childhood.

That's not to say I have eschewed the heady smell of polystyrene cement altogether, as I am working on two sets of plastic figures at present. Admittedly, there is not much gluing to be done on the Games Workshop Warriors of Rohan, other than sticking on a few shields. I had a good day on them yesterday; now that I am happily (mostly) embracing my blotchy painting style. I did make one mistake on them, though.  One of the many problems with my eyesight is a loss of colour sensitivity, so I have, for example, difficulty in distinguishing some blues from greens. I did one of those online colour blindness tests recently and only scored two out of twenty, although, apparently, colour blindness is much more common in men. Oddly, the problem is worse in bright sunlight. This has become an issue when painting the Rohan figures, Stupidly I painted all the slightly different greens on the base colours first and then decided to shade them some time later. Usually, I paint the base colour and then shade it straight away. As a result I could not tell which paint I had used on parts of them and ended up shading them with the wrong greens. I am not going back to re-do them but will remember this when I start the Rohan warriors on horses later in the year. As the Old Bat's very Scottish grandmother used to say: 'No-one running for their life will notice'.  

A very different plastic prospect are the Star Wars Legion battle droids that are Project 4 for 2020 and will shortly become Project 3 as the Rohan warriors are nearly done (or maybe I should just keep adding numbers rather than just having three numbered projects). Incidentally, I had a conference call with someone this week and she insisted on pronouncing it 'proe (rhymes with Edgar Allan) -ject' not 'prodge-ect'. It drove me mad. Short 'o'! Short 'o'!  Being Irish is no excuse! Goodness me these droids are a fiddle, though. As you can see from the above they come in lots of teeny-tiny pieces with teeny tiny instruction which you have to locate, cut off, sand and then cement.  I thought I had made four, sometime last year but, disappointingly, I discovered I had only put together two of them, I put together another two yesterday and it took over an hour. Far too stressful to be relaxing. I thought Victrix Napoleonics were bad but they are as simple as Duplo compared with these.

They're all called Roger...

Having got these under way (they do look good when constructed) I idly considered getting them some opponents. Clone Troopers, perhaps. This is when I discovered that the Star Wars Legion stuff is almost impossible to obtain. Is this just a UK problem? Is it because they are made in China? What is the point of launching a big game from an enormously well known franchise if you can't get any of the product? Poor management and distribution. I was ready to spend some of my new pension money on it but can't!  Maybe I'll buy a Rohan house instead. Except you can't.

I have been looking, inevitably, at a load of other wargames stuff which I shouldn't be thinking about and two are from the Plastic Soldier Company, a firm I have never bought anything from (yes, there are some). Firstly, I watched a You Tube video (embarrassingly, as I always feel if I do this my IQ will drop twenty points, I'll start calling it 'follidge', slurping tea noisily, having a disgusting beard and all the other things that put me right off YouTube hobby videos) on PSC's Mortem et Glorium rules. Please can we have no more Latin names for wargames rules? It just reminds me of Latin at school and cursed Caecilius, his ugly family and nasty dog.  This video effectively put me right off the rules as they were one of those sets where vast proportions of units can be knocked out in one turn. I had decided to look at them because of their new 15mm plastic figure, which I saw previewed in Wargames Illustrated. These are made of some sort of bendy plastic (or resin); perhaps like the John Carter figures. The figures are quite  nice (not very nice) although they suffer from cricket bat sword syndrome. The video was quite well done but I couldn't follow the rules for the life of me and don't wear a hat indoors! Such are the things that loses the Legatus as a customer. I think I'll stick to metals for this scale (not that I have really painted any 15mm metals yet).  Possibly this will be Proect Five or Six this year.

Also coming out soon from PSC is a new range of 10mm tanks and figures for an imagined WW3 game set in 1983 called Battlegroup Northag (ugly name; it sound like a witch from Yorkshire). The tanks look very nice but the figures are squat and horrid.  They are all in the new bendy plastic so I can see a lot of flaking gun barrels like the old Airfix polyurethene tanks. Maybe this is why the complete barrel is not shown on the box as it has gone bendy! Now I have, in the past, flirted with the idea of wargaming this imaginary alternative history, mainly because I enjoyed a book by Harold Coyle called Team Yankee many years ago. This featured a Soviet nuclear strike on Birmingham, which seems like an excellent concept.  In fact, my sister, who knows about such things, once told me that in the event of a conventional war in Europe the Russian;s first tactical nuclear target was actually Staines, where I am from, because Heathrow Airport would have been a major staging point for US aircraft.

Of course Team Yankee is already another, 15mm, game by Flames of War but, again, I am not impressed by the figures nor the Warhammer 40,000 style point blank tank conflict. If the PSC ones had had US opponents instead of British I might have been in trouble. Worryingly Victrix's promised 12mm figures for WW2 look really nice but I am safe on those for a while. Anyway. as I am struggling to paint 28mm figures, 12mm is surely lunacy.  But...

One game which is real science fiction but I have always been interested in is The Drowned Earth. I like the setting and I really like the figures and, like Savage Core, it utilisse small forces. I had a chat with the friendly chaps behind it at Salute about three years ago and, sadly, they said it was not possible to play it solo. However they are launching a solo version next week, pitting your forces against dinosaurs. One of which is Baryonyx, Surrey's very own dinosaur, the first skeleton of which was found only ten miles from where I live. Hmm...

While assembling my droids I listened to the extended version of John Williams music for Star Wars The Phantom Menace.  In retrospect this is, I think, the fourth best of his nine Star Wars Scores (The Empire Strikes Back is the best, of course and the loss of Herbert Spencer as orchestrator was felt in the later scores).  I like it more and more. As the Old Bat is still mostly in bed I then watched the film again in the evening, purely to research the droids, of course.  I don't suppose the Star Wars Legion people will ever release a Gungan army, sadly, as who wouldn't want to squash Jar Jar Binks with a hover tank?

Today's naked lady comes form the brush of French artist Yves Diey (1892-1985). This picture, which dates from the early fifties, was sold at Christies eight years ago for £2,750. Bargain!

Paint Table Saturday: Three projects

It's paint table Sunday and I have realised that it is counter-productive to write blog posts when I could be painting so I am doing this, retrospectively, now that the good light has gone. I get bored painting, very quickly, and given my eye issues I no longer find it relaxing and  can only manage about forty five minutes at a time, now.  To stop myself getting too bored, therefore, I usually have around three active projects on the go at the same time.

I began these warriors of Rohan, for Lord of the Rings, back early last year but have pulled them out again. I have now located their shields and today I finished the base coats of them, So for the next few weeks it will be onto shading.

First completed figures of 2020

This week I finished the Lucid Eye Red Simians and as the factions for this game are only seven figures I dug out another unit I had started. In fact all I had done on these was the flesh base coat. Why do I hate the word 'flesh'? It gives me the shivers and I never use it in spoken English. It's like the American  'panties' or 'tights' or 'offal'. Just nasty, creepy words that make my brain recoil.

Next up, therefore are the Jaguar Tribe who are based, I believe, on some Aztec period Central American people. I haven't looked up how they should look as the historical name of the people is too complicated for me to remember. It was like yesterday when my father in law asked me what antibiotics the Old Bat was on and I couldn't for the life of me remember or pronounce their names. The Bat had a relapse last week and the doctor sent her to Epsom Hospital. They actually put her in a bed in the Covid-19 ward (interestingly, only four people in it) while they did tests. Oddly, they didn't test for the Chinese Virus as they were sure that she had had it. They put her chest pains down to Gastroesophageal reflux and presecribed some pills, They let her out of the hospital and the next day she felt worse. By Friday she couldn't breathe but, fortunately, the local doctor rang up to check on her. She prescribed some antibiotics and I just managed to get them before the pharmacy closed. Just as well as by eight in the evening she couldn't breath or speak (that's how you know the Old Bat is really ill). However the antibiotics kicked in and this morning she is tired but much better. The doctor had rightly diagnosed pneumonia (which a lot of Chinese Virus patients seem to be getting afterwards). So, anyway I moved the Jaguar tribe along yesterday between running errands for the Bat.

Also, as part of the Jaguar faction, there are a couple of, well, Jaguars. I will paint one as black and try to paint the other in its spotted form, although that may be a bit ambitious.

Finally, my third unit under way is another Lucid Eye Savage Core unit, the Atlanteans, who I based and undercoated on today. They are are, basically, Ancient Greeks. I have painted quite a lot of Greeks so should be able to manage these. I need to decide on a colour scheme for them. As they are not historical I can go wild so I think I am going to use the colour scheme I used for Lucius Verus who, in turn, I based on a costume from Cleopatra (1963).

So, these three projects should keep my busy, although I am flat out at work at the moment writing a very long report so can't paint during the day. Maybe I can get a bit done some mornings but the weather is not going to be so bright next week.

I usually drink Lifeboat Tea but have nearly run out so have not opened the last two boxes I have (because if you finish your last boxes you will get the Chinese Virus and die) so am currently drinking Fortnum & Mason's Queen Anne tea which is loose leaf. Now, I used to be a terrible tea snob at university and we all only drank leaf tea. It's years since I have had it at home but it is a bit of a revelation, not least as regards price per mug. The box I have (which was part of a hamper my parents in law were given at Christmas) is £12.95 a tin. But twenty-five teabags of the same stuff is £5.95.  This makes the loose tea much, much better value. I started the tin three weeks ago and have over a third left. twenty-five tea bags, costing nearly half the price of a tin, would have lasted me about three days.  I think it was my slinky lady friend K, at Oxford, who used to drink this. It is certainly fragrant, elegant, warming and, indeed, familiar. There is a Fortnum & Mason shop in the Royal Exchange in the City, so when I can next go to London I might get some more or try Royal Blend, which is the one I used to have.

So, finally, what are my annoyances this week? One wargaming and one not. A really major annoyance is that on my new computer keyboard the insert key is next to the backspace key, something I don't remember from my old keyboard. So when I hit the backspace key (which I do a lot) I more often than not hit the insert key. This turns my cursor into a blue block which starts gobbling up text until  I notice. It is not good for my blood pressure!  Argh! It's just done it again while writing this paragraph.  The second annoyance is bases on wargames ships. Now, I have ranted on before as to my inability to comprehend why people put bases on AFV models (they aren't going to fall over!) but the new Warlord Games WW2 ship game (which I might have been interested in) come with the most ludicrous bases I have ever seen on a ship model. They are all stuck on something that looks like a French bread pizza base. Talk about an instant no sale. The models for their Cruel Seas weren't like this! Anyway, these naval games seem to require huge amounts of on board (to coin a phrase) clutter and I don't like tokens and cards next to units.

To go with my Savage Core painting, I am listening to American ambient composer Michael Stearns' atmospheric 1995 album, The Lost World.  It really is a perfect accompaniment!

Today's wallpaper is the accurate if unimaginatively named 'bathers' (1920) by the Belgian painter Théo van Rysselberghe (1862-1926). It was painted toward the end of his life, in the South of France, like most of his nude groups.

It's not Salute!

Today is not Salute! Well, well, hardly any of you (except Eric the Shed) have wondered what has happened to the Legatus blog. It is just over a year since I last posted; easily the longest interval since I began this blog back in April 2006. So why did I stop? There are two reasons, really. Firstly, I am now using Facebook to keep up to date with the hobby more than blogger (Facebook posts can be so much shorter to write or, rather, they are with me) but, secondly, I haven't really been painting anything. I had a good start to 2019 with some Byzantines and Indian Mutiny figures but then I stopped. I did finish one figure since I stopped blogging: a Modiphius John Carter Great White Ape which I finished in August.  

My most recently completed figure (August 2019)

I based the colour scheme on the cover of the Edgar Rice Burroughs paperback I had when I first read the John Carter stories back in the seventies.  I meant to get straight on and paint some more of these very nice figures (not so nice to cut off their sprues and assemble - this figure took me an hour to construct). I really enjoyed painting it but when I went back to some 28mm ones (John Carter himself was supposed to be next) I struggled with the small size and my fluctuating eyesight.  Now my eye consultant is pleased (and I am pleased to have such a slinky eye consultant) with the progress on my eyes following laser treatment and eye injections but I realise that I will never be able to paint like I could ten years ago. Gradually I am coming to terms with this but this is where Facebook is a nightmare because many people on it do the most amazing work (why are so many superb painters Spanish - is it the light?). I just cannot comprehend how they can paint the way they do.  I wouldn't mind if I could paint quickly like Eric the Shed but I can't do that either!

One thing that annoys me with the Facebook groups I am on is when someone posts something obviously utterly brilliant (a Victrix Roman I saw today) and they ask people what they think. Talk about fishing for compliments. Hideous. Even worse is when people post things and other people comment negatively in a 'it should be a darker blue' sort of way.  Of course these people are inevitably foreign. They do not realise that the way to do it in Britain is to quietly deride something you don't like without saying anything!  It is very bad form and very vulgar to say what you actually think. In our second year at university, a Canadian Rhodes Scholar joined our legal year group. After about a week he grabbed one of us and asked: 'why does nobody talk to me, come and visit me (being North American he probably said the annoying "come visit me") or sit with me at lunch?" We all smiled and were non-committal. The answer, of course, was that he was five feet tall, had a voice that made him sound exactly like Mickey Mouse and he kept telling everyone he already had five degrees. "Canadian degrees?, asked one of our year, now a QC.  We should have said you are short, squeaky, Canadian, too pushy and a show off. But we didn't. We just sneered at him behind his back. The proper British way.

Another thing that is annoying me about Facebook pages is people who show their finished figures by holding them in their fingers. Why? Do they not have a flat surface to put them on? I don't want to see your revolting, grimy, paint stained fingers. And the person who uses their hand as a palette! Good grief.

I have to thank Alastair for showing me how to stop my Facebook notifications being swamped by dozens of posts a day from the Star Wars Legion and Lord of the Rings groups. I now have turned opff notifications from all groups so I only see posts from friends )hopefully).

Brexit has seen me delete many Facebook 'friends'. I see lots of people say 'we can agree to disagree'. How feeble! If you disagree with me you are wrong and I don't want anything to do with you. I didn't speak to my best friend for six weeks following a 'discussion' about Brexit, so if you are an ephemeral Facebook friend you have no chance!  I have also started getting friend requests from people who, when you look at their page, have no content on it. I am not interested in chasing friends for the sake of it. If you have no content I have no interest in you (exception to Eric the Shed as I appreciate his Facebook stance) and he is a proper acquaintance I know in real life.

The other reason that I haven't done any painting is that the Old Bat doesn't like it.  One of my lady friends opined that I shouldn't keep calling her the Old Bat (even though her sister does) so sometimes I will refer to her as the Bag for Life instead. The Bat for Life has no hobbies. She does not do leisure time. Her entire life is an endless list of jobs to be done. She thinks I should be spending my time doing jobs too. It gets her really mad if I am painting because she says I should be mowing the lawn (a constant cri de coeur), or sweeping up leaves (a more pointless activity I cannot imagine) or fixing the tiles in the bathroom that have fallen off etc. The problem is that I have dyspraxia and I just can't do the more complex DIY tasks she requires (or even the easy ones - the number of time I have mown over the mower cord). I can't do them to her standard, anyway, If I try she berates me for being useless. So now I absolutely refuse to do anything if I know she can do a better job. Which she invariably can. I pay for your life, I say, so you can do domestic jobs. This was all well and good until several big contracts we had got delayed. All our work is for overseas governments and we are often tripped up by their budgeting cycle, so the work I was supposed to do in Botswana in the Autumn and Egypt in January and February has been delayed. These two jobs would have, essentially, paid for my life for a year but no contracts no money. "You should be finding a better job", cackles the Bat. So if I even looked like I was moving unpainted figures around I got barked at and told to get a job in Sainsburys, if I had that much spare time. I applied once, years ago and they turned me down. Then,  of course, came the Chinese Virus and all of our work was postponed indefinitely (I am supposed to be in Cairo at present).  Fortunately, a piece of work for the UK government in Nigeria has appeared and I can do that from home, so now I am allowed to paint again (a bit). I am certainly not like these people who have spent the last few weeks just painting while being paid by their employers. I manage the odd hour here and there if the light is good.  I tried a bit yesterday but it was raining and hopeless even with two daylight bulbs on but today was better and I am enjoying it again.

Then, of course, it appeared that the Bat caught the virus. She had many of the symptoms (her sister is a former GP and was convinced she had it) and was bedridden for a week and I had to sleep downstairs on the floor (as Guy had been sent home early from Exeter University and filled the spare room with junk). I went to bed early as I was tired too but actually enjoyed reading in bed, which I can't when I am in with the Bag for Life. I am reading Sax Rohmer's The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu which is all about the evil Chinese bringing a mysterious virus to London. Hmm. The poor virus didn't stand a chance when pitted against the Bat, however, and she was soon up and about and nagging again in no time. Charlotte and I rued the end of our quiet civilised time together, discussing dinosaurs, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and the Isle of Wight heritage Facebook page.  All of us had some symptoms and all of us feel very fatigued but we could have had some other bug, for all we know.  Given I have some high risk factors (underlying health issues is the trendy term) I have to be especially careful.  "If you get it you will definitely die", said the Bat, delightedly. 

So what other things have happened to the Legatus in the last twelve months? Don't worry there is not now going to be 24 paragraphs of tedium. In fact, one of the good things about it being a year is that I can justify not going into any great detail as it has been so long, so:

Charlotte and the very Old Bat on the terrace of our hotel. Charlotte was allowed a Bellini but I had to have water.

• We all went to Venice for the Old Bat's sixtieth birthday (it was too hot). 
• Guy got his BA from Oxford Brookes and started a masters at Exeter University. This is costing a fortune, which hasn't helped the finances at all, as he doesn't get a student loan for the academic fees and we have to pay his third term's accommodation of £2500, even though he won't be going back.  Grr!
• Charlotte slept a lot and lately has been growing plants and re-learning the recorder. So she tootles away playing Cantina Band, Harry Potter and Jurassic Park.
• I went to Warsaw (again) and Beirut (for the first time) (it was too hot).  I really liked Beirut with nice food, superb wine and many lovely ladies, especially in and around the Parliament which is where I was based.

What a hoot!

• I had an owl stuck in my study and we had to call animal rescue to rescue it. They filmed it all and wanted to put it on TV but the Old Bat had a sudden panic and rang them up to ask them not to show it as she had her old clothes on and hadn't tidied the house.

• My sister got married for the first time and I had to give her away. Her husband is an otherwise estimable chap so I am not sure why he wanted to take my sister on but he has transformed her into a happy, jolly person who is rather less frightening than she used to be. 
• I had my sixtieth birthday and the very next day, on my way down to Cowes, was called an OAP by the girl in the ferry ticket office. No party or presents though, due to the finances, having had to just pay £8000 towards Guys fees and accommodation..

Warriors of Rohan are currently under way

So, (he said, to annoy John Treadaway who hates that) what about wargaming? It is a long, long time since I had a wargame at Eric the Shed's but I am still buying the magazines and looking greedily at all the lovely new figures. How many times have I said that I have to rationalise? But I really do. A lot of figures are going to have to go. The key issue is space in my room. I don't have any and have random boxes all over the floor.  None of this has stopped me looking at more stuff, though.  I keep looking at all these new dark ages style fantasy plastics but think they are pointless for me given how many LotR figures I have. I am intrigued by Victrix's 12mm WW2 but will wait until they do, perhaps, North Africa as a lot less scenery is needed than for NW Europe. One thing I might give another whirl is Frostgrave, as they have released some solo scenarios for it and I picked up that and the rule book for free as a download. The magic aspect might be too complex for my simple mind though. Solo has got to be the way forward for me from now on, I think, so I am also looking at Rangers of Shadow Deep which has a solo play option, especially if I can use some of my LotR figures for it.

I bought into West Wind's War and Empire Dark Ages Kickstarter even though these are 15mm as I have started some tentative use of washes on my figures for the first time in fifty years of painting figures; notably on the Lord of the Rings figures I painted at the end of 2018,  It's still cheating, though.  I also used it a little on some Fireforge Byzantine archers which I had to finish before I went to Salute last year or I could not justify buying any more figures!

I have several Kickstartes still to arrive and at least one looks like it never will (Black Hallows townsfolk) but hope Jurassic World and Pirates of the Dread Sea will materialise. The worst one is Acheson creations Kongo Africa. I sent my survey in in December 2017 and haven't received a single thing. I will certainly never buy anything from them again. To me, now, they are the Chinese of the wargames world. I quite like some of the new plastic fauns and centaurs from Wargames Atlantic (to be fair they are not technically their figures) but they are made in China and I am now boycotting Chinese goods. 

I think that is enough rambling for what should have been one of my most enjoyable days of the year (and yes, as you may gather, I do blame the Chinese).  Having got this post out the way I hope to do some more increasingly blotchy painting and more blogging going forward.

As I am painting Lord of the Rings figures, today's music has to be Howard Shore's soundtrack music. My iTunes playlist of this is 21 hours and 35 minutes!

Bare back on a bearskin 

Today's wallpaper is by Delphin Enjolras (1857-1945) who originally started as a landscape painter before focussing almost exclusively on his favourite subject of women, usually depicted naked and lit in interesting ways.  All of his work was done in pastel rather than paint.

Paint Table Sunday and a Martian

It's Paint Table Easter Sunday and, thankfully, the family have gone down to Hampshire for the usual family Easter Egg Hunt, leaving me in peace. I couldn't go this year as I had some work to do and there wasn't a seat for me in the car, for reasons too complex and tedious to go into. So, apart from the work, which I am having to spend hours on ever day of the holiday weekend because the World Bank have brought a report deadline forward, I have been getting some painting done. The original Paint Table Saturday was first a blog and then a Google+ group originally set up by a lady in Belgium. It really helped me focus on my painting for a while but now, with Google removing Google+, it has disappeared so I don't need to keep to a Paint Table Saturday and Sunday is actually a better day for this so it will be Paint Table Sunday from now on and I hope to post a bit more often.

Having finished a figure this week (see below) it was time to reassess my next unit and I decided to put the Napoleonic British aside for a while as it is a 25 man (and a horse) unit and so I got the 1864 Danes out again as there are only 12 of them, Hopefully, I can move these along a bit over the next ten days and get them finished for the end of April which will bring me back to a unit a month this year.

The one figure I finished this weekend was this Modiphius John Carter Thark. This has taken a long time to do as I wasn't quite sure how to handle it but it turned out OK, helped by the fact that it is a nice big figure.  I need to have another look at the rules but they are very much a Role Playing Game which will need other players and a games master so I may try and adapt some other rules for it. Lord of the Rings might work, I think, Next up will be the Giant White Ape and, if I am brave, Dejah Thoris. Plenty to be getting on with anyway, helped a lot by the lighter evenings.

Now what I should be doing is getting rid of surplus figures but instead I have bought quite a lot lately, including some more Star Wars figures at 25% off and the Lord of the Rings made to order deal. With this you have a week to place an order and they will then cast (in metal) just the number that are ordered. I ordered the whole lot on the basis that I can always sell on any I don't want (or, maybe, already have!).  I can sort of justify this because I have at least painted  a lot of LoTR figures in the last few months.

This weekend I have been on Facebook four years.  If you had asked me I would probably have said two years but time flies by when you are plummeting towards death and everything in life happened 40% longer ago than you think. Although you wouldn't guess it from the number of pictures of food and Martinis I post, I did it solely for wargames purposes, as I found that manufacturers were posting news of new releases on Facebook long before they appeared on websites.  I have around 250 'friends' and some I have even met in real life (if there is such a thing).  I do cull those who bang on about politics and try only to link up with those who post wargames material too. I also have ditched people who post too often. There was nice lady who did fantasy maps but she was posting about ten times a day and it clogged up my feed so, however interesting, it was stopping me seeing the hobby posts I wanted to see.  She was like the dreaded Tango01 from The Miniature Page!  Other things annoy me on Facebook but then that is no different from everything else in this so called life. The worst, however; even worse than people who bang on about politics, even worse than people who post brilliant painting and then fish for compliments, even worse than people who post pictures of Minions, even worse than people who post cute homilies (all Americans), even worse than people who write in that big colour background sign style (how do they do that?), even worse than people who say 'hey guys' or call themselves 'a noob', the absolute worse and the thing that sends my blood boiling are people who post gifs of faces reacting to things.  It's far, far worse than emojis, which are, at least small. Presumably there must be websites of these horrors somewhere. I was going to find one to illustrate the point but when I searched for gifs in my windows explorer all I got were a few pictures of naked ladies running along the beach (thanks Sophie) which would not be appropriate, however delightful.

Anyway, speaking of naked ladies, today's wallpaper is this superbly tactile painting by Earl Moran, which I found in my pin-up section of my PC when looking for a suitable Easter picture for my Facebook page yesterday. Moran (1893-1984) discovered a young lady named Norma Jean Dougherty and she modelled for him for four years from 1949. They remained friends even after she became Marilyn Monroe. Already an established pin-up artist, he had been doing calendars for Brown & Bigelow since 1932 and a 1940 Life feature on him made him a huge star. In those days, in a calendar of 12 pictures, the publishers would allow the artist to include onc nude a year and Moran's were more sensual than any others.  Later in his life he concentrated solely on nudes and this one comes from that period, dating from around 1970.  Nearly all of his work was in pastels, amazingly.

Having been working my way through Martian themed music, today's music is the expanded soundtrack to Total Recall (1990) by Jerry Goldsmith which has some striking 'alien' sounding cues and is one of his best scores, with an excellent blend of orchestral and electronic music.

The Old Bat was out at  a friend's 60th birthday party last night, so I watched Diamonds are Forever (1971) hence we have Jill St John on Legatus 'Wargames Ladies here.

Wargames Review of the Year 2018

Victrix Carthaginian war elephants.  A good start to the year.

Determined not to issue my wargames review of the year when the crocuses are coming out I have decided to start it before Christmas. In fact, 2018 saw very little wargaming but an otherwise disastrous hobby year was saved by a late flurry of painting.


Figures Painted

The Army of the Dead from the Lord of the Rings Painted in just five weeks!

I began the year full of good intentions and a nice project of the lovely Victrix war elephants but having finished the pachyderms I had a failure of nerve as regards shield transfers on curved surfaces so haven't quite completed them. I have just four crew to complete so will try to get them done in January. I counted each rider and elephant as two figures so I had completed just four figures come October.  I did do some odd bits on my Fireforge Byzantines and started some Napoleonic British but was stymied by continued struggles with my eyesight and can now only paint in bright daylight.  I have had a series of injections into my left eye and it has really improved my vision in that eye, which was my weaker one but is now the stronger. Today, the hospital has recommended that I get my right eye done too over the next six months.

My painting year was saved, however by the Sculpting Painting and Gaming Facebook Group. Someone had the brilliant idea of having a 'paint 30 minutes a day' challenge. I set to work to do some more figures for the Lord of the Rings and although I haven't managed to paint quite every day I have painted the most for about four years. So my completed totals are:

Lord of the Rings: 89
Punic Wars: 4
Total:93

Ninety-three figures in a year is my best total since 2014. I have also finished another nine Byzantines in the first couple of days of January.  I tried using washes for the first time (hit and miss) and acrylics (definitely a miss) and I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that I just can't see to paint as well as I could even two years ago.  Figures with shield transfers, even though they are a pig to put on, make my figures look much better than they are.


Wargames played 

Just one wargame, again, in 2018 with a Napoleonic game for Richard Sharpe and associates at Eric the Shed's.  Epic scenery, of course, and an entertaining large skirmish which also incorporated offshore naval; bombardment.  Sadly, that was my last visit to the Shed as I am too unreliable an invitee because of evening conference calls as well as my total inability to remember or understand rules. Although I have now discovered the reason for this, as it turns out that I am dyspraxic. This explains many things about me; such as the fact that I didn't learn to tie my shoelaces until I was about fourteen, still struggle with tying ties and cannot do knots for sailing. It also explains my total inability to play ball games such as football, tennis or golf or play computer games. This may also be why I can't use tools, do DIY, constantly drop things, trip over all the time, can't parallel park and have difficulty reversing the car (I cannot comprehend how people can reverse into a parking place at a supermarket and always choose those slots with an empty space on each side). I basically cannot envisage stuff in three dimensions and my brain just freezes.  Difficulty in interpreting rules of games is part of this, it seems, which may explain why I can read them but cannot imagine how they work out in practice.  I'm too stupid for wargaming, basically, as I have long suspected.

So it will be solo gaming going forward, if any, where I don't feel pressured to think quickly, so I am going to focus for next year on rules that allow for this (like The Men who would be Kings and the new Sons of Mars gladiatorial set).


Scenics

I started a number of scenic projects in 2017 but haven't progressed any of them at all in 2018, apart from some undercoating.  Several projects have got stuck because I started painting them and now can't remember what colours I used on them.  I did buy some more stuff from Grand Manner before they went to only selling painted items, principally a Zulu village and some Sudan type houses. I really hope to move some of this along this year.  I have been buying the occasional piece of aquarium terrain, and plastic plants though, for my Lost Word/Savage Core project.

Shows

Sixth from the left

I did get to Salute this year and it was, as ever, nice to catch up with other bloggers but that was my only show as I didn't get to either Warfare (I hate driving into Reading) or Colours, due to having to collect Guy from Oxford for the end of term. Anyway, I really do not need any more hobby stuff!


Lead (plastic and resin) Pile 

I stopped recording my purchases this year so have no idea how the lead pile increase went but I bought a lot, mainly in the second half of the year.  I bought the Red Book of the Elf King figures but may sell these on as I can't do them justice in paint, especially now that I am painting Middle Earth again.  I also bought the Star Wars Legion boxed set but I have seen so many exceptionally well-painted figures for this it has put me off painting them, even though I have wanted such figures since 1977.  I have bought quite a few plastics (Victrix Republican Romans, Perry Zulus, Lord of the Rings Pelennor boxed set and Fireforge Byzantines) and some metal figures too, such as more North West Frontier, Stronghold female Vikings and even some English Civil War.   I also bought some more resin Raging Heroes figures although assembling them looks to be a nightmare!


Kickstarters

I did buy into a number of Kickstarters.  I couldn't resist the 28mm Bunny Girls from Dark Fable miniatures even though I have no idea what I will do with them but I did create this Osprey cover for them!  Not that I would need an Osprey as I know pretty much everything about the evolution of the uniform! At least these have arrived, as has another load of Ancient Egyptian ladies, also from Dark Fable.  Other ones I backed and am still waiting for are the John Carter of Mars roleplaying game figures, the Black Hallows townsfolk and the War and Empire Dark Ages figures.  I am still also waiting for anything from Kongo Acheson Creations African scenery which I supported back in 2017. In February, nearly four years after I ordered then, my Wargods of Olympus figures arrived. I am not planning to play the game but use the figures for Jason and the Argonauts.



Wargames Rules

I didn't get many sets of rules this year, which is just as well as I never use them! The new consolidated Middle Earth rules were in the battle of Pellenor Fields set. I also got some Back of Beyond scenarios. The main rules were the Red Book of the Elf King ones and the Sons of Mars gladiatorial rules which are supposed to work for solo play.

Wargames Blogs and Facebook

I only posted twenty times on my main blog (this one) in 2018, which is the least ever. Mainly this is because, of course, I didn't really paint anything until the last quarter of the year. I also only posted on four of my other blogs.  The most popular of these, with nearly 200,000 visits, is my Sudan War one and I haven't posted on that since 2012, although it still gets around 2000 visits a month.  I passed 750,000 vies on this blog this year and the most popular post, with 2025 views, was my Salute post.

I am posting more on Facebook, hence the lack of blog posts and in the last few months there have even been some wargaming posts! This time last year I had 151 friends and today I have 246, although I have deleted a lot due to political posts. The real positive aspect of Facebook for me is the groups and I have joined a lot of these this year. The most influential was the Sculpting Painting and Gaming group as someone came up with the idea of a paint for thirty minutes a day challenge and this has re-energised my painting.  In the last 9 weeks, since the challenge began at the beginning of November, I have averaged four hours forty two minutes painting a week.  I hope to keep this going!

Plans for this Year

I want to keep my painting momentum going but need to finish a few odds and ends including the War elephant and the Byzantine spear unit. I have the first unit of Byzantine archers ready for painting now (undercoated today). I also want to dig some figures out of my 'under way' pile which I can complete fairly quickly. I'd like to do some more ACW, some more North West Frontier and also some more on the 1864 Danes. If I am brave I will go back to my British Napoleonics too, although I am stymied on those by not being able to work out which arms I need to fit for which pose and I don't want to paint them all and find I don't need half of them! . It's the dyspraxia again!  I have also, at last, found the painting reference I have been looking for for my Franco-Prussian War figures so they might get some attention this year too.

Distractions

Another Facebook group I joined was the Mediocre modellers group on the basis that I might have to move onto making model kits if I couldn't paint figures any more.  The name proved to be a total misnomer, however. with people posting the most amazing things. any of these (and on some of the figure groups too) have the poster saying something like "Hey, guys, this came out OK, I suppose, what do you guys think". They then show some incredible example of construction/painting.  One day I am going to tell them not to fish for compliments because it is vulgar, desperate and arrogant. The false humility does not fool me. These are my most hated hobby group of people of the year (even more than the 'we shouldn't paint small figures of objectified women' types.  Sorry, I will continue to appreciate women as beautiful objects (as long as you don't treat them like objects) and that includes tiny sculptures of them. You are girly men (like Chris Boardman banging on about abolishing podium girls at cycling races).

Anyway, I bought a Tamiya Sherman to have a go at in the a dark evenings when I can't paint.


Musical Accompaniment

While writing this post I listened to John Williams' soundtracks for the first three Harry Potter films although I am not really a fan of the films and certainly haven't read the books. I have just ordered the limited edition seven CD extended soundtracks for the first three films.  Charlotte has been trying to persuade me to get the new Harry Potter miniatures game but I have heard bad things about the quality control of the set: broken and missing parts, mainly. The real issue is that I just wouldn't be able to paint them properly!

Next time it will be my non-wargaming review of the year.