Painted Figures for September

It's late coming as I have been out of the country most of the month so far.

Well, it was eight, easily my worst month so far. The yearly total is 211 in 39 weeks or 5.41 figures per week. I am now 23 figures behind schedule. That is going to be difficult to make up unless..I paint more Beja!

Musketeer Miniatures Early Saxons 5

Musketeer Miniatures Great North War Swede 1

Artizan Spartan 1

Artizan Sky Pirate 1

Never mind October is looking better and I have just finished my first two figures for two weeks. One is another Spartan General, you can see him on my Spartan WAB blog.

The other is the first of my Musketeer Miniatures Russians from the Great North War.

Talking of Great Wars I ordered some of Great War Miniatures new early WW1 British today as they look very nice. This is pretty silly as I actually have quite a few of Renegade's WW1 figures painted and they are not compatible but they never finished the range with the figures I wanted and I am really interested in BEF period WW1 so might be willing to start again.

The other good news is that I had a good go at the first six Sudan KRRC and not only repainted the base shade rifle green but did the shading on the coats and trousers, repainted the helmets and got the base coat of the leatherwork done. Should finish them next weekend. I think its just these grey uniforms I don't like!

Blog List: Hit Parade Top Ten

I now have 10 wargaming blogs on the go and set them up mainly so I had a way of posting pictures to answer queries on TMP along the lines of "how do Gripping Beast Vikings look next to Artizan" and also to get me to focus on my armies (you can see how well that has worked). I saw a free counter on someone else's site and put them on mine at the end of August. Much to my amazement other people out their have actually been looking at them, and this is without me putting "I have a new blog" postings on TMP (which I consider rather infra dignitatem). So, after six weeks of counting I thought I would assemble the 10 in order of views so far.

19th Century Sudan Armies has had an amazing 1132 views
Legatus Wargames Armies (this one) has had 534 views

Spartan WAB has had 387 views

Byzantine WAB has had 282 views

Cavegirls in Fur Bikinis has had 258 views (no doubt due to the pictures of Raquel Welch)

Punic War WAB has had 160 views

Dark Ages WAB has had 101 views

Return to Darkest Africa has had 81 views

Pulp Warriors has had 38 views

Swashbucklers has had 10 views (basically just me)

I will review this once in a while to see how things develop.

I took yesterday off, having just come back from Prague, as I had basically had enough after eight flights in ten days. As a result I got on very well with the next batches of Spartans, Early Saxons and a couple of others. I seem to have recovered my enthusiasm for painting (except for the Sudan, sadly) and hope to finish these figures at the weekend.

Ancient Germans

Someone on The Miniatures Page was asking to see pictures of Foundry Ancient Germans so I dug some of mine out. Oh dear, I wish I hadn't. I painted these years ago and they look very ropey now. Most still haven't got my proper static grass bases yet and the cavalry ones are too small so will have to be redone.

I will have to tidy them up before putting them into my new army boxes.

Arizona in Arizona

I've spent the last ten days in the Western US visiting Los Angeles, Orange County, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Sacramento. Not much military stuff to be seen (although there is quite a good little California Military museum in Old Sacramento which I went to last year) but I did enjoy the new expanded USS Arizona museum in the State Capitol building in Phoenix.

They have a splendid model of the Arizona and a small part of the ship itself in a room with information on the ship and it's history.


They also have another room containing the silverware of the ship, which is certainly impressive.

I stayed in a lot of hotels during the week but my favourites were the Beverly Hilton, venue of the Golden Globes every year and the Bellagio in Las Vegas of Oceans 11 fame.

Another fleapit hotel.

The most exciting part of the trip was not seeing David Beckam in his SUV in Beverly Hills, nor sitting next to Kenneth Branagh at lunch or indeed the fifty or so starlets queuing up for an audition in Hollywood but a sighting of a Bugatti Veyron outside the Beverly Hilton. Never seen one before! Stunning!

Brrrm!

David Gemmel Trojan trilogy

I'm in sunny Beverly Hills and have just been sitting by the pool finishing Shield of Thunder by David Gemmell which I started on the flight over. I read Lord of the Silver Bow when it first came out but didn't buy the second book when I had heard Gemmel had died as I didn't want to invest a lot of emotional capital into a book where there was no resolution to the story. However, his wife finished the book and it was published recently so I picked it up as an airport only trade edition on the way out.

I remember enjoying the first book without being able to remember anything about it! I think part of my confusion was because I read the Lindsay Clarke War at Troy shortly before. The Clarke books are more to do with Gods and the principals. The Gemmel books eschew supernaturals and look at some of the supporting cast more.

From a wargaming point of view the second book is very good, particularly towards the end where Hektor's Trojan forces are fighting Thrakians in Thraki (naturally). There are a couple of set piece battles: holding the pass and the Battle of Carpea which would make a change from all that sitting outside Troy. They also suggest other battles as part of this campaign. Better still I think I now have a use for all those Foundry Northern European Bronze Age figures who are now going to be cast as Thrakians.

Maybe another blog calls!

More Musketeer Miniatures on the way..

I ordered some more Swedes today so I can build a unit. This was just as well as I heard that SELWG has been cancelled due to asbestos being found in the building. I managed to get a few base colours down on the first Russian this evening but I found out today that my US trip is definitely on. I leave on Friday for Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego, Las Vegas and Sacramento and don't return until Sunday week.

It looks like my monthly total will be seven for September!

Warhammer Ancient Battles Armies

It is a source of much amusement to the likes of Mike, of Black Hat Miniatures, that I am constantly working on dozens of Warhammer Ancient Battles Armies but never actually finish one (if you can ever finish an army!)

Recently I have decided to admit that I am never going to get some armies painted so they will have to go on eBay. These include my Ancient Egyptians, Aztecs, American Civil War and American War of Independence figures.

A quick analysis of what I have left, just for WAB, is still rather alarming (figures in bold I actually have one or more units painted, figures in italics a a half dozen or dozen or so figures. The rest are unpainted or only consist of one or two painted figures:

Trojan
Mycenae
Bronze Age Northern European
Classical Spartan
Classical Greek
Later Spartans
Macedonian Greek
Republican Roman

Carthaginian
Caesarian Roman
Early Imperial Roman
Third Century Roman
Gallic
Ancient German

Ancient Iberian

Early Saxon
Romano British
Late Saxon
Carolingian
Viking
Andalusian
Byzantine
Crusader
Seljuk

The only ones I am currently working on are the Early Saxons. The various Greek armies only get a bold entry as I painted over 60 skirmishers and cavalry for Cynoscephalae and they can be used across several armies. The three armies which are closest to being viable WAB armies are the Early Imperial Roman (1500 pts), Gallic (600 pts) Viking (600 pts) and Ancient Germans (1200 pts). I keep thinking that I need to get on and do a couple more units for these bigger ones. A unit of Cavalry, another unit of Auxiliaries, and a bolt thrower would probably give me 2000 points for the Romans (they are currently about 1600).

So many armies so little time.