Rumours of my death...

...have been for the most part greatly exaggerated, honest.

The Roundhead cavalry mass at Slat Mill Ford, ready to
prevent the Royalist rearguard reaching Hay's Bridge

Three weeks vacation in the USA, followed by a week back at work which involved handing in my notice (new job, 20 min commute rather than 1 hour 45 mins!), followed by most of three weeks off with a vile imported American strain of something that landed me with a nasty chest infection, no voice and worse almost no brain. Last week at current job this week!

Hopefully, I'll get caught up soon. Did manage to paint 5 Renegade ECW artillery crew and a culverin over the weekend, though, and then used them in a refight of the Battle of Cropredy Bridge at club last night. I'll gloss over the details, suffice it to say that the Royalist rearguard (me) didn't make it to Hay's Bridge...

Army Painter

I cannot tell a lie, I am an unashamed fan of Army Painter. For a self-confessed mediocre painter (compounded by the fact that I don't see in 3D!), it's a godsend. All I ask of my armies is that they pass the 'two-feet test' - do they look decent from normal gaming distance? I'm never going to win a best-painted army contest at a tournament, but... at least mine are painted, and you can tell what they're meant to be. So the Army Painter approach of blocking on the colours and letting the dip pick out some of the details is by far and away the best for me.

The small corner of my desk dedicated to spray cans has been growing of late, and for good reason - the current stash runs to:

• Matt Black - horses, character figures, sometimes Romans
• Human Flesh (had to buy this on eBay as Army Painter have discontinued it - c'mon, guys!) - Celts/Ancient Britons (man is THIS ever a timesaver!)
• Dragon Red - ECW
• Navy Blue - ECW
• Fur Brown - chariots, artillery (again with the massive timesaver)
• Army Green - WW2 Brits
• Matt White - everything else (I've flirted with the Citadal black and white sprays, but I don't think they cover quite as well, or dry as fast).
• Anti-shine spray - everything!

As I have some Normans and possibly some Parthian cataphracts coming up, I may well invest in the Plate  Mail spray as well. 

I'm also hearing good things about the AP superglue, of all things, from Trev at Rift, and their brush line. My one gripe is the dip does seem prone to dry up unless you're super careful with the lid of the tin, which means not wiping the brush on the edge, and using subtlety and a hammer to re-close the lid. 

Running out, and goop

Made a sizeable dent in the unpainted stash this past couple of weeks - a unit of EIR Auxillae (Warlord), as well as a start on an army of Brigantes tribesmen (and women) (mixed Warlord plastics and metals and Wargames Factory). The latter is for the narrative WAB campaign just starting at the club to replace the original planned Roman Civil War campaign (get well soon, Phil), It should be interesting since my army is a mix of the aforementioned Brigantes led by the much neglected Queen Cartimandua, with assistance from a bunch of Roman Auxillae. Usual last minute painting job - first session is tonight!

In doing this, I found myself running out of assorted stuff right, left and centre - black undercoat spray (horses), white undercoat spray (most other things), dark brown, red, grey, black acrylics, usable brushes, and worst of all the Tamiya dark earth textured paint I use for basing.

Most of this was no problem - Trevor down at the Rift in Peterborough is our Friendly Local Games Shop proprietor, and he usually has a decent stock of most things - but the only local stockist for the Tamiya paint is our other excellent local emporium, Trains4U. "No problem", I thought on Saturday, "won't need it till Sunday, can nip out and grab some after church tomorrow, and win Wife Points by having gardened today..." Imagine my unconfined joy to discover on Sunday lunchtime their Sunday opening is quote "winter months only."

Right. Time to cook up a replacement - basically the Tamiya stuff is a thick earth-brown goop containing sand-like particles. A quick trawl of various blogs suggested everything ranging from coloured Polyfilla to a mix of PVA, acrylic sealant, sawdust, paint and casting plaster, but in the end I plumped for a fairly simple recipe: roughly equal parts sand, PVA and dark earth paint. (The one downside of this is that the only dark earth paint I had to hand is a jar of Citadel Graveyard Earth, which is pretty much now an empty jar of Citadel Graveyard Earth - note to self to buy something suitable in bulk from someone other than Citadel).

And it worked - obviously, it does dry in the mixing pot over time (nothing that a surprisingly small amount of water won't stave off), but if you get the proportions right it's better than the Tamiya in it can be worked with a brush around feet and bases, and has the great advantage of containing enough PVA to allow me to dip straightaway in my favourite Javis Moorland Scatter.

All in all? Happy. And I'm done bar the last coat of Army Painter anti-shine, which I'll spray on when I get home from work and should be dry in time for club. It would be the same without an army smelling of varnish, anyway!

In the painting queue....

Just undercoated (in black, in the hope that a bit of careful drybrushing will bring out the rarher soft detail in the mail) 18 hybrid Wargames Factory legionaries with Warlord heads and shields. In the end, I went with a small piece of sprue and heavy application of liquid poly solvent to make the Warlord heads sit right.

Behind them in the queue are two Renegade ECW 9 pdrs and crew for my Royalist army, as well as two boxes of Wargames Factory Celts and a box of chariots - my son (who is 11) wants to wargame, so I figure some adversaries for the Romans seems like a good plan.

Also on the way from eBay are a box of WF Persian Cavalry, which I have designs on turing into the start of a Parthian army. I really need to get the master spreadsheet up to date just to prove how... erm... well I'm doing on reducing the stash? *winning smile*

WIP (cont'd)

Just a short note to prove I haven't dropped off the face of the planet. Spent the weekend researching Norman castles (Castle Rising and Castle Acre) for future wargaming purposes, am now busy finishing off the ECW stuff - yesterday I finished off 40 pike and shot and a dozen firelocks bar the dip, assembled and undercoated 24 cavalry, and painted 24 horses....

Today, the rest has to be ready to dip by about 5pm, so any other blogging activity is going to have to wait :D

Sorting out the collection...

Took an hour to sort through the Battle Games in Middle Earth figure stash, which is... scary. As far as I'm aware I have the complete set. Considering keeping the Rohan metals (if I can figure out which are which!), the orc and Rohan plastics (half of which I've painted already) and maybe the 3rd age Gondor plastics, and eBay-ing the rest. There's quite a few rarities in there, judging by some eBay prices, so that should raise some funds for ... gee, I dunno. Some Napoleonics....? :)

Current projects

Two things on the go at present:

28mmm Early Imperial Roman army for WAB 
I seem to have been collecting figures of late, starting with a Warlord Games Imperial Roman Starter Army and adding a bunch of Wargames Factory stuff off eBay. Painting has started! The end line up (which is an insane amount of points I'll never field all at once, I guess), will be....

• 18 Praetorians (Warlord)
• 18 Veteran Legionaries (Warlord)
• 3 x 18 Regular Legionaries (Warlord) - lorica segmentata
• 3 x 18 Regular Legionaries (mostly Wargames Factory 'Caesar's Legions' with Warlord rectangular shields and no helmet crests) - lorica hamata
• 12 36 Auxilliary cavalry (Wargames Factory, and boy were THEY hard to find)
• 12 Allied Germanic cavalry (Wargames Factory)
• 12 Allied Celt cavalry (Wargames Factory)
• 2 x 12 Auxilliary infantry (Warlord)
• 9 Balearic slingers (Wargames Factory - painted from the Numidian set)
• 9 Numidian archers (Wargames Factory - painted from the Numidian set)
• 10 Allied skirmishers (Wargames Factory - painted from the Numidian set)
• General, Aqulifer.

28mm Lord of the Rings troops

These are my 'break from the Romans' painting job. Foolishly, I bought the whole of the "Battlegames in MiddleEarth" partwork, so I have loads of sprues of various things to paint. First off, enough Rohirrim to pass as a Dark Ages warband for a club session, then we'll see what I fancy, I guess.