Reading, Bath, Bristol, Beverly Hills

Well, it's been a busy week. I came back from a trip to Poland last Friday and did a quick trip to Warfare in Reading on Saturday. I bought quite a few more Crusader Normans and got some LBM shield transfers for them and managed to finish a batch to add to the other one I did last week. I am really enjoying painting these as they are so quick and easy to do.

I acquired a Great War Miniatures Mark IV tank as I am reading the truly excellent Band of Brigands by Christy Campbell at the moment which is about the development of the tank in World War 1. Of course, that means I will have to acquire some late war World War 1 figures to add to my early war figures. I am glad to see that GWM have just announced their first early war cavalry as the production of the promised Uhlans will stop me hankering after the lovely Helion cavalry that Matt has been painting on his Waterloo to Mons Blog (I love his new Danes!). http://matratmatt.blogspot.com/ I bought some trench pieces, mainly for my little boy but also to be used in WW1.

I also bought a few more Perry Sudan so I can finish my small unit of British Mounted Infantry. Putting Camel Corps riders on Cavalry horses looks fine and I only need a four man unit. Hopefully I can finish these at Christmas.

This week I visited our Bristol office and stayed with my friends in Bath. They have a huge Games Workshop in Bath and I went in to have a look at the new plastic modular battleround. I have to say it was much more impressive in real life than on the web. The hills are much taller than they look in pictures. There are several annoying sections full of Warhammer type skulls but I reckon I can just use plastic filler to cover them. They said I could buy one, even though it was a day before the release, but unfortunately I wouldn't have been able to get it on the train. It comes in a carry case but it is still 24"x24"x8". Too big to lug around! I reckon I need three, one for desert, one for Northern Europe and one for Mediterranean areas. It's £150 though (I am sure it was £100 when I first looked!) so it will have to wait until after Christmas (if they have any left, they havent made that many it seems).

I got back from Bath yesterday but am now in Terminal 5 at Heathrow (again!) waiting for my flight to Los Angeles. It's not one of my favourite flights as it's eleven and a half hours during the day so you always arrive shattered. Never mind a few days in the sunshine at the Beverly Hilton should set me up for my conference on Tuesday. Then it's Anaheim, Tallahassee, Miami Beach, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Washington DC. I don't get home until 19th December so that will comprehensively torpedo this year's painting targets, even with a good go at Christmas!

So there probably won't be very many entries for a while!

The Workbench

The Normans are coming, the Normans, are coming!

Everything is up in the air since my last workbench post. Three weeks ago it was all about plastic Warlord Games Romans with a subsidiary concentration on WW1 Germans, Zulu Wars, Sudan Highlanders and Early Saxons. That was before I bought some Perry French plastics of course! Looking forward to very little painting time between now and Christmas (I will be travelling for four weeks) my workbench is now looking very different!

At least I finished the batch of Early Saxons I was working on but this has got me back into Dark Ages again. With my little boy doing the invasions of 1066 at school I rounded up a few odd Anglo Saxons I had in the lead pile for basing; a mixture of Gripping Beast and Black Tree Design. I am very fussy about not mixing miniatures from different manufacturers but for warband types even I don't mind so much. Then I saw Foundry had a good sale on Darkest Africa and went and bought an army deal of Baluchi mercenaries. Given that I wasn't paying the postage I added a couple of packs of their new (ish) Anglo Saxons too. The Baluchis are great (I'd forgotten just how good (especially with faces) Mr Copplestone is compared with many of his rivals) and I will paint some up fairly soon.

I was in Oman recently and see that many of the figures are armed with the characteristic khanjar dagger. I was quite tempted to bring one of these back but I only had hand luggage on the way back from Muscat to Dubai and didn't think the security people would have been too impressed!

The real surprise were the Anglo Saxons. There has been a lot of criticism lately over Foundry's new offerings (there is a lot of criticism of Foundry anyway) but these Anglo Saxons are superb. Lots of real character and wonderful sculpts. On these the criticism is that they only have round shields but kite shields are easy enough to buy (Gripping Beast and Crusader do packs of them). Anyway by not giving them too many kite shields I can use them for the earlier King Alfred period; confining the Kite shields to those figures who are obviously late 11th century.

To compound the Dark Ages revival I also got a good lot of Crusader Norman infantry on eBay and the one I have painted was very quick to do. I have just ordered some bowmen and a few cavalry. I also ordered a pack of Crusader's Anglo Saxons. I suspect that these will be a bit shorter than the Foundry figures but mixed up it shouldn't be too noticeable.

I'm still working on the Napoleonics though!

Plastic v Metal Perry French Napoleonic

Plastic on the left, metal on the right

Metal on the left, plastic on the right

Well, I have started work on my first French unit (100th Line) and have actually completed two figures this weekend, which is not bad as I had to go around a possible school for my little boy and attended the Barry Gray 100th anniversary concert at the Festival Hall.

I did two figures in greatcoats so I could get them done quickly. A few observations. The plastic figures have better faces, more inscale rifles and bayonets but less fur detail on their packs (I had to paint a fur effect rather than dry brushing). There is only one small bit on the left coat turnback where the figure is indistinct because of the moulding process (not visible on the greatcoat figure). The detail on the rifle is not as crisp as the metal figure but then it doesn't bend either!

The main difference is that the plastics have the round pom poms of the first battalion whereas the metals have the flat discs of the subsequent battalions. This only applies to fusiliers, of course, the flank companies had the same shako plumes.

100th Line so far. One of the first two units to engage the Dutch 27th Jaegers at Quatre Bras

This has an effect on my first unit. The 100th Line had 3 battalions at Quatre Bras and at 1/33 the regiment comes out as 3 battalions of 12. I think a 36 man unit should be fine for the Charles Grant rules. I need another drummer and a mounted Colonel for this unit so will send off an order to the Perries next week. I also need a flag so will look at GMB for that.

With my left over plastics and metals I have started to base some figures for the 4th light, the other regiment in Jamin's 2nd Brigade of Foy's 6th Division. This will be a bigger unit with 48 figures (he says casually).

The next three French are under way along with a couple more Dutch Jaegers and a cuirassier. I can't believe I am painting Napoleonics again!

The Arab Revolt

The last thing I need is another army to build, but Artizan have just announced their new range of Arab Revolt figures. Oh dear! I travel to Jordan a lot on business and my father in law is close to the Jordanian Royal family (lets face it, King Hussein met his first wife on the set of Lawrence of Arabia). When I was at University I was Art Director of the Oxford Union Magazine and we were always being told that Lawrence had read every book in the Union library (obviously a man with a low boredom threshold). President of the Oxford Union when I was there was one William Hague and, of course, David Cameron is a Brasenose man like me (although, sadly, much younger).

The key thing for me is will Artizan make Arabs on camels rather than just infantry? The camels would clinch it for me. Then I'd have to buy a lot of Turks (somewhere else I travel to a lot).

Bases tonight.

I have just bought a nice metal ruler in Smiths so can make some more bases tonight! I have run out of drawer space for my lead pile so am having to base stuff to put it into the "in progress" boxes. I have a load of Warlord Games figures to base plus some more Sudan camels.

I hate making bases but it's just too dark to paint much at the moment and I feel less pressured now I know I cannot possibly hit my yearly target. I am travelling to Poland the week after next and then the end of the following week I am off to California, Florida, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Washingto DC on a three week painting busting business trip.

Oh well, there is always the Christmas holidays I suppose.

Painted figures for October

Probably equivalent to 8 normal figures!

Not a brilliant month again. Only 12 figures painted.

8 Zulus

4 Sudan highlanders

That's 191 figures in 43 weeks or 4.48 figures a week. Well short of my target of six a week: I should have painted 258 by now. I'd have to paint over a hundred between now and the end of the year to catch up.

Citadel Realm of Battle Gameboard

I am very excited about the new games Workshop modular plastic battle board! During our pirate games on Monday Mike of Black Hat and I were discussing the fact that one of the things that stopped us playing certain games was a lack of scenery. Although he was referring to things like the correct buildings for me it equally applies to not having the right surface.

I only recently acquired a Games Workshop battle mat so that if I was to run a game at the club I could have a reasonable surface to play on. Green snooker baize seems to be the default surface at the club but I can't say that I am particularly enamoured of it. My other issue is that I am not fond of separate hills; they always look ridiculous, especially the stepped ones.

These six plastic 2'x2' tiles look great however. Ideal for Lord of the Rings and, if you paint them appropriately very good for the Sudan. The rocks look just like the black ones in the Sudan desert. I suspect I may buy a couple of sets as they are only £100 each and they come in their own bag. They connect together using little clips so they won't slide about.

The really good news is that in this month's White Dwarf they indicated that they would be adding extra tiles for rivers etc. Fantastic!