1st Lothians and Borders Yeomanry

So I've made some more progress on my 6mm WW2 project. As I have run out of infantry figures (due to pick up some more after Christmas) I decided to model one of the Divisional support elements.

This is the 1st Lothian and Borders Yeomanry. They are currently missing a regimental HQ stand, but that will follow after Christmas when Santa will be bringing me more bases.

The 1st LBY were of course part of the 51st Highland Division and were lightly armed in 1939/40 with Carriers and Vickers Light Mk VIB  Tanks. They were broken down into A, B, C and HQ Squadrons with each Squadron sub divided into 6 troops. Troops 1 and 2 of each Squadron were equipped with Vickers Light Tanks whilst Troops 3, 4, 5 and 6 were all Carrier equipped.

The HQ Squadron was equipped with both light tanks and carriers in addition to lorries and motorcycles (the usual supply/maintenance kit which would follow a tank regiment around). I have not had much luck finding sufficient information about precisely what the HQ Squadron was equipped with so I have decided to model it with two Troops of Vickers, two Troops of Carriers and an HQ stand of Carrier and Staff car.

As I mentioned above I will also be creating the Regimental HQ stand after Christmas.

 HQ Squadron (as I have decided to model it)

A, B and C Squadrons, I will have to do something to mark out the Squadron command stand in the future but it will do for now.


This group also represents the last of my "old" basing method and size. After Christmas I will be using slightly larger bases as I am finding the 20x20 bases a bit to fiddly handling wise. So once I have new bases and ordered some more infantry I should be able to press on and finish the final Infantry Battalion of one of the Divisions 3 Brigades. Before then pressing on and creating the other 6 Battalions which will make up the remaining 2 Brigades.

After that merry lot of Infantry stands is completed I will be able to get on with the fun stuff, Artillery, Machine Gun Battalions and other support elements. Of course as Santa will be bringing me 6mm Naps I might get distracted from my WW2 project.

4th Battalion, The Seaforth Highlanders

Continuing with my 51st Highland Division project this is another Infantry Battalion. I still need to paint up some more trucks for the Battalion motor pool but mostly done.

Going to work on 1st Lothians and Border Yeomanry next which is basically a light tank Battalion equipped with Vickers and Bren Gun Carriers. I thought they would make for a nice break from painting up Infantry Battalions. I only need to paint one more Infantry Battalion to have the 152nd Infantry Brigade completed.

Still tons of stuff to do for the division though, another two Infantry Brigades and a shed load of support units. Should keep me quiet, I'm going to be trying my hand at some 6mm Napoleonic's in the New Year which should be fun.

It's been some time

Well its been something like 6 months since I posted anything at all, so there's something ironic about my first post resurrecting the blog being of some zombies. I can't even say I painted these recently as I painted them six months ago and just lost all interest in modelling/painting etc shortly afterwards so they never made it on to the blog.

The figures are the studio miniatures plastics, with some modifications by me. The first one I have punked up by adding a bit of hair and a hood to the jacket nothing fancy but it works for me.

This guy goes with another studio miniatures plastic zombie I turned into a cop awhile a go. I wanted my zombie cop to have a partner so sculpted some shirt onto this one along with a belt, holster and some equipment pouches. I like it, again nothing fancy but it works.

This guy has had nothing really done to him except that I stuck a rifle in his hand as though he is a hunter, or national guardsman that's been turned and is still dragging his weapon along with him.

I might have got my modelling and painting mojo back, I'm really not sure. I'm going to have a go at some painting this week and see how I feel.

Cheers

Kickstarter - Precinct by Jim Walls

Well I finally joined the masses of Kickstarting!

I was browsing around on PCGamer last night and noticed an article about how Jim Walls (of the old and outstanding Police Quest games) was going to come out of retirement and with an old colleague from Sierra Online and create Precinct a successor to the old Police Quest games.

Now I loved the police quest games as a kid and oddly just played through them again, despite the appalling graphics and fiddly controls of the originals what still shines through is the top notch gameplay which was enhanced no end by Jim Walls background as a former cop.

The game gave you different paths and was hard, it also pulled no punches in making you think and I really hope that style is kept, as making it difficult was what made it half the fun.

I have always wanted someone to remake these games with modern graphics but the same decision based difficult gameplay.

Well this is up on Kickstarter at the moment and I'm excited just from the very limited concept art/video they have up. I think this looks amazing and would really encourage everyone to jump in and fund this. I am an old school PC Gamer and would love for this to be made.

Check out the old games, look past the graphics and you will notice how deep and emerging the gameplay is.

The Kickstarter is here

In modelling news I'm fiddling with some zombie figures at the moment and who knows I might actually paint them!

Why 28mm and I are going through a trial seperation

Just finished painting up this figure from Hasslefree, I wanted a manga kind of look for his top and hair, and of course his golden gun. I'm reasonably happy with how it turned out although I think on reflection the purple is a bit flat and needed more highlights/shading.

As the name of the post suggests I'm having a trial separation from painting 28mm (mostly). Over the last 3 years or so I have painted a lot of WW1/WW2 type stuff in 28mm which required me to finish squads and platoons etc. As a result I'm actually quite tired/bored with painting units of beige/khaki 28mm figures, equally I just don't seem to have the stamina to paint the same colour scheme over any groups of 28mm figures at the moment.

So I'm going to have a break. Instead I will be working on my 6mm projects, and "single" 28mm figures so Zombies, post apoc or fantasy figures that are not part of units but would be on their own so I can just work on that one figure without feeling I have another 9 to do before its finished.

I'm sure I'll end up going back to collecting 28mm army's but at the moment I'm a bit fed up painting tons of 28mm and I have enough troops for the games I actually game (VBCW) to not need more troops.

SALE - THE LEAD PILE

So I've come to a realisation, I will probably never get round to painting a lot of what is sitting in the "lead pile". So Rather than sit on the pile having it take up space for no reason I have decided to have a clear out. This is by no means all of my lead pile but is a lot of stuff which I doubt I will ever paint, or wont paint anytime soon.

So I am looking to shift the lot as, for convenience sake, a single lot. As such I am offering a big discount on retail for this lot.

The pile consists of

40 Warlord Plastic Scottish Covenanters (with metal command) still on the sprues except for about 5 figures worth of bits which are in a jiffy bag. Nothing painted

8 US Vietnam era troops from The Assault Group Undercoated only

1 Hasslefree Grymm LMG Team unpainted fresh lead

Empress British Javelin Team

Black Scorpion Resin Pirate

3 Polish Para's from Warlord (Bolt Action)

30 WW2 British Infantry figures (20mm) from Stonewall figures 26 unpainted rest fresh lead

20 Warlord WW2 Belgian army figures

1 Warlord WW2 Belgian Boyes AT Team

1 LAF Figure (one of the medieval lady cook ones)

10 Artizan Designs Figures from "A Very Private Army Range" (the dads army looking infantry)

21 x Random figures mostly Artizan with some Musketeer Miniatures mostly WW1/WW2 with some other stuff.

Now sold. Expect new projects in the future!

Lady In Red

Just finished painting up this figure from Hasslefree Miniatures. I've had her for a while but only just got around to slapping some paint on. I went with a light coloured trench coat (rather than the more traditional black) and red for the cat suit. I'm pretty pleased with the results, the red in particular turned out just how I wanted it to.

More 6mm Brits

So I realised having painted my 3 Carrier Platoon stands that I needed a fourth carrier stand as the Platoon HQ. So here is the 3 Platoon Stands with their HQ stand which is just represented by the Carrier with an officer figure.

This means that my Battalion is now completed and I'm pretty pleased with how it looks

You can see the Carrier Platoon at the back, the four infantry company's that make up the Battalions strength and the command stands. On the right are the 6 trucks that represent the Admin Platoon (motorpool)

I'm down to dribs and drabs in my 6mm pile, not enough of any one thing to create a full company or group. I was however able to scrape together enough bits to make the 1st Company for one of the Machine Gun Battalions that was attached to the Division, which was better than nothing.

Pictures a bit naff on this one (light's going) but again I'm quite happy you have the three Platoons and the HQ stand which is represented by the Tilly.

Covenanter Troops

I have spent the last couple of nights painting up my first six Covenanters in Government grey! The figures are from the Perry's range and the base is one of Warbases 2p MDF multi bases. I opted to base my figures on 2p pieces and then just use a multibase so that I could use the figures for other things, and on bigger bases if necessary.

These were supposed to be painted quickly and more simply than usual but I basically couldn't break from my normal painting pattern. I think in total it took me something like 18 or 20 hours to paint up and base these figures. Hardly quick but I'm pleased with the results and that's all that really matters.

I might press on and do more of these for the regiment or break and paint something in 6mm over the weekend and paint the next batch next week. Who knows.

Partizan 2013

This weekend was Partizan in Newark, as per usual Panzerkaput and myself came up with and put on a VBCW game. It was a busy year with about 10 of the guys of the Very British Civil Forum turning up to game the demo in the end ,which made for a frantic but very fun game.

The game itself was set on the very edge of Leicester with Royalist/BUF forces attacking the city through the Village of Evington aiming to capture the General Hospital (the large building in the background of the picture above) As far as I am concerned the game was a roaring success we seemed to attract a fair bit of interest from the public and I spoke to lots of people about the game and terrain etc.

I was particularly pleased with how well my Hospital and terraced housing looked on the table as I had built both in relative isolation and was worried pretty much right up until the moment people started gaming that they would look too big or not right etc.

 This was our "period" display at the end of the table, Art and background on the battle by Panzerkaput with period weapons and equipment provided on the day by our forum member Captain Bigglesmay, who also spent the whole day in WW1 British uniform with webbing. Given that I was wearing jeans and a Shirt and today my back is killing me, I shudder to think how sore he must of been by the end of the day!

 Picture of my Hospital on the edge of Leicester, I was so pleased with how it looked on the table!

 More of the table with buildings brought along by a number of our forum members. Tym off the forum built the wonderful allotment squares seen in the bottom complete with greenhouse!

Another shot of my Hospital and my terraced housing which I used to edge the board.

Arty shot looking down the road towards the Hospital (just visible) I was really pleased with how "full" the table looked.

More arty farty picture taking, again I am chuffed with how nice our game looked.

Shot of forum member Burnin' Coals Mower Bomber, words cannot explain how fantastic this looks in the flesh, there are more pictures of this over on the Forum and it really is a work of art.

And what with spending money, chatting, and minding our own game I completely forgot to photograph any of the other lovely games which were there. However I did take this snap of my personal favourite which was this WW2 Desert Scrap which was on the table behind ours. The figures and terrain looked amazing and there where some great entrenchments which had been built into the terrain boards so they were actually below ground level.

Loot wise I picked up loads of ECW figures for my Scots army and some Warbases 2p multibases so I can have the figures for skirmish or bigger battles. I got some Highlanders from Warlords which are nice sculpts but I think I may now be a devotee of the Perrys. I have not previously looked at their ECW range in the flesh (as it were) but had a look at them on Sunday and bought a load of their Scots straight away. Nice simple, but detailed, clean sculpts and lovely casting, I think I was paying something like £6 for 6 figures so it was great value as well.

The question of what to do to top this years game is immediately at the front of my mind (being the sad git that I am) and I do have a probably over the top, difficult idea which I will probably start planning quite soon.

Thanks to everyone who came and said hello and looked at our table, Partizan felt very busy this year (which was great) and I had a top weekend.

Just Trucking

Continuing my 6mm project this is the Admin (motor pool) element for my first Infantry Battalion. I just need to finish off the carrier platoon stands and the Battalion will be done! Rather than press ahead with the next Infantry Battalion in the Brigade I will probably do one of the Divisional support elements, armored recon, AT or something so I can paint something different. Then I'll switch back to an Infantry Battalion and go back and forth like that until the Division is completed.

Off to Partizan on Saturday! spent last night packing terrain and miniatures into boxes and now have 6 large plastic crates of terrain blocking up much of the bedroom. Looking forward to meeting up with the chaps, and seeing the game come together (as well as picking up some traditional loot!)

6mm Battalion Support Elements

You may recall a previous post which showed off the 4 Company's which make up the Infantry elements of the 2nd Battalion Seaforth Highlanders which in turn form part of the larger 51st Highland Division which I am working on.

Well having finished most of my Partizan stuff I had time last night to paint up and base 4 of the stands which are part of 2nd Battalion's support elements.

As before I have tried to make the command stands as little diorama's and I'm pleased with the results. I painted the trucks just green and canvas this time as the camo pattern on my previous ones was not working for me, and wasn't really accurate anyway. Not pictured are the previous Company HQ stands which I have also repainted to match these.

This is the Battalion Commander stand, which comprises of 3 figures a truck and staff car.

AA Platoon, which in this period in an infantry Battalion was just the Bren Gun mounted on the air defence tripod. I modeled this to look like one team has already setup and the other two have just piled out of the back of the lorry and an officer is pointing them to their setup point.

Mortar Platoon, in time I might make some stores to put in the trailer from putty or something.

Signals Platoon - I just decided to go with a Tilly and trailer here. I think in reality these guys had a truck, but I went with the Tilly as I used to be in Signals in the RAF and we rocked around in land rovers with trailers so I went with this as the period equivalent! I overdid the reflection on the glass a bit so the front of the Tilly looks a bit like it has eyes, but its all good.

Still do do is the Carrier Platoon and Pioneer Platoon as well as the Admin Platoon. The Admin Platoon was basically the Battalion motor pool so I have just got a selection of trucks for this, same goes for the Carrier Platoon I have just based some Bren Gun Carriers.

The Pioneer Platoon is more difficult, in reality it had access to Motorbikes (one I believe) and I would like to model this, if anyone knows if any figure makers make a 6mm motorbike please leave a comment, otherwise I will bodge one from putty.

Once the remaining Platoons are painted (I only have the Pioneer Platoon to make) the 2nd Battalion Seaforth Highlanders will be complete!

The benefit of building my units in the way I am is that I can use the stands to represent Platoon's and Company's or squads depending on what size of 6mm game I wanted to play.

The eventual order of Battle for the Division will be as follows

1st (Highland) Infantry Division, 1939-1940

152nd Infantry Brigade

2nd Battalion, The Seaforth Highlanders (regular army)
4th Battalion, The Seaforth Highlanders
4th Battalion, The Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders

153rd Infantry Brigade

4th Battalion, The Black Watch
1st Battalion, The Gordon Highlanders (regular army)
5th Battalion, The Gordon Highlanders

154th Infantry Brigade

1st Battalion, The Black Watch (regular army)
7th Battalion, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders
8th Battalion, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

Divisional Support Units
1st Lothians & Border Yeomanry
75th (Highland) Regiment, Royal Artillery
76th (Highland) Regiment, Royal Artillery
77th (Highland) Regiment, Royal Artillery
51st (West Highland) Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Artillery
236th Field Company, Royal Engineers
237th Field Company, Royal Engineers
238th Field Company, Royal Engineers
1st Battalion, The Princess Louise's Kensington Regiment (The Middlesex Regiment) (Machine Gun)
7th Battalion, The Royal Northumberland Fusiliers(Machine Gun)
7th Battalion, The Royal Norfolk Regiment (Infantry Sappers)
6th Battalion, The Royal Scots Fusiliers (Infantry Sappers)

As you can see I have a hell of a lot to do before this project is anything like complete, but its meant as a seriously long term project as the Division's history in the early period has always interested me.

Wheel Arch Repair

 As the name of the post suggests this is a quick post about how I spent the last couple of very sunny days. If your interest in cars is no existent then by all means run for the hills now as you will no doubt find what follows a bit dull.

As the first picture shows I found some rust had developed around my rear drivers side wheel arch over winter. Living in rural Scotland I wasn't really surprised as the car spends a lot of the year coated in salt from the roads. My car is a little over 10 years old and not worth much more than a few grand now a days so I wasn't going to pay to have the paintwork repaired. So I decided to just repair the body work myself, I've never done a large repair like this before so it was a bit of a learning experience.

 Firstly I masked off the wheel arch so I could sand off the paint and rust without fear of slipping and knackering the rest of the paintwork. I masked off to the first lip of the arch so that when I spray the area the edge where my new paint meets the factory paint is more natural and looks like a shadow.

Working first with aluminium oxide sandpaper to remove the rust I then used varying grades of sandpaper to sand the metal and paint work as smooth as I could. I'm not looking for a pro finish as the car is old just something I can live with.

You can see from the circular marks on the metal where the rust had been starting to affect the metal given enough time the rust would have eaten through the wheel arch. 

 All smoothed off and ready for undercoating. If the car was newer and I wasn't lazy I would have used anti-rust treatment over the area to prevent the rust coming back. As the car only has a couple of years life left in it I didn't bother with the anti-rust treatment.

Undercoated using red primer, having first masked off the area using newspaper and sheets. I covered the back end of the car in newspaper and the rest of the car in a big dust sheet. Its important to cover all the glass on the side you are spraying on as the particles can travel quite far and whilst they might not show up on your body work they will on your glass. 

Having left the undercoat to cure overnight (24 hours) I then hit the area with the correct top coat, I didn't bother sanding between primer and topcoat, but if you want a smoother finish you should. Again my car is old and I wasn't hugely bothered by the finish.

And here's the finished result. Please note the white bits visible in the picture are just bits of masking tape I haven't picked off yet. 

I will wait about 48 hours to make sure the paint is fully cured and then use hot soapy water to take of the last of the masking tape which is still stuck along the spray line. Personally I'm pretty happy with the result its not perfect but unless you stand and stair at the wheel arch its not obvious that its been sprayed. The only bit I didn't do very well is in the bottom right of the picture. I should have taken the paint further over to make the line smoother, but I can live with it.

Anyway that's how I spent some summery afternoons on the driveway, it was cheap easy and quite rewarding. I've got some more major body work repairs (Panel damage following a bump the wife had in the car) to bore you all with at some point in the summer so there's something to look forward to! :D

In modelling related news I had a bash at putting together the Warlord Plastic ECW infantry, they are nice casting but reawakened why I usually avoid plastic infantry like the plague. Will be switching to lead highlanders from their range, and lead Scots from Perry's or Renegade.

This also appears to be my 300th Post so yay me. thanks for all of you who have followed my meandering blog and all the nice comments left by you kind folks over the years. The comments and support received for posts always spurs me onto keep painting and work harder.

Cheers

Fade to Grey

I'll apologise in advance as this is probably not very interesting to most people. But I have spent the evening trying out a new painting style (for me anyway) and thought I would share.

Basically I am going to be assembling a Covenanter ECW army in 28mm in the near future. I already have some figures, as per my earlier post, but I was concerned that my usual painting method of starting with a dark colour and lightening it up to a highlight (usually over 4 to 5 coats for a war-gaming figure, if I was painting a one of figure for my mini cabinet it might be way more) would result in me taking just way way to long to assemble the force. My fear was also that this technique would result in me suffering with project fatigue quite quickly.

So having spent some time looking over some Blogs and the usual hordes of information online I noticed that a lot of people seem to use the Tri-Colour technique to paint big groups of figures. What you  see above is an hour or so's messing around with some figures testing out the colour Grey using the Tri-Colour concept.

I don't have a proper "Tri- Colour" set so I just picked three Grey's from my paint collection that looked like a reasonable match. As such the finish will never look right on the above figures as the paints I have used are just that little bit to far apart tonally, but it let me try the technique and I can see if I am failing technically without needing the right colours.

(Yes I know this is basically a post about me painting Grey on trousers 5 times, dull huh)

So my first attempt at the technique is on the far right labeled as 1 and the last attempt is number 5 on the far left. Some close ups below. There pretty rough as this was just to try the technique not paint a figure for display or anything. Also I have only painted the trousers on each figure so the rest of the figure is just undercoat.

Now I think number 5 shows promise technically speaking as I think I have broadly grasped the way this Tri-Colour thingy should work. It's not super pretty or anything but I think with the right Tri-Colour set applied in this way I can quickly produce  blocks of ECW infantry that look pretty good, and will certainly meet the 2 feet does it look good on the table test.

As I said before colour wise this test set were doomed never to look right as I just didn't have colours that matched closely enough, but I think its enough to tell if I am getting it right or not.

If anyone has made it this far, thanks for reading, and if you have any comments, tips etc regarding Tri-Colour please do leave a comment.

Thanks

So it seems I am weak

This is a start of a new project (and me bitching about how weak I am) the Scots from Warlord are part of my new ECW project which I will be working on for the next few months. The plan is to collect a force and then me and some of the guys from the VBCF Forum will meet up and have a game.

The bitching part of this post is because I broke and bought from Games Workshop having vowed not to give them anymore of my cash.

When I was still but a nipper I wanted to get the Clan Escher gang for Necromunda but what with one thing or another never did. As Games Workshop are waving goodbye to their specialist ranges and won't be producing the figures again I decided to just buy the basic 8 figure gang (which was typically expensive for GW). What can I say I'm weak I've always wanted them and if I let the figures disappear into horrendously expensive collectors land or just vanish entirely I would have been irritated at myself for all time.

So there you have it straight from the horses mouth I am weak and the hobby is strong!

Sand Table

This is the little project I have been working on for the last couple of days, this is for this years game at Partizan and (sad as it is) is a tiny version of this years table layout!

This is supposed to represent the senior Royalist/BUF officers preparing their assault on Leicester and it roughly matches the local map. With the village of Evington in the corner nearest the officer in the red top, North Evington Infirmary is the large building in the middle (see my earlier "Hospital Build" terrain posts) and the outskirts of Leicester itself at the end of the table in the foreground.  Its a silly little thing but I like it and it came out pretty well, all things considered. Obviously its not been made to scale or anything but I think it looks okay and works well as the officers sand table.

Top down view of the map

The camera has done something a bit weird with the colours so the red looks much glossier than it is.

Royalist Officer

Following on from the earlier post regarding the BUF adviser I have this evening bashed through and finished painting up this Artizan figure as a Royalist officer to match my existing force. Its a really simple figure to paint (which again I have painted previously but decided to strip and re-use). I'm pleased although he's not as neatly painted as the other figure as I am in a bit of a rush to try and finish this and other things.

BUF Advisor

I haven't painted a figure in awhile so I thought I would post his up this afternoon. Painted up in about 4 hours (give or take) whilst watching films online. I've painted this figure which is a Paul Hicks available from Empress. I have previously painted the figure but was not really happy with the finish so I stripped it and decided to re-paint it.

I'm really happy with the repaint which is supposed to represented a BUF Officer or Advisor.

Its going to be used in a small Diorama I am building to go with this years Partizan game. Hopefully I will get the piece finished before June!

The other reason I have been so quiet over the last few days is because the project which is taking up most of my hobby time is my entry for this years Trash Bash 2013 (details of the comp are here Trash Bash 2013)
This years competition is to take a computer mouse and use it as the basis for a deep strike type vehicle. We have been asked not to post WIP threads of our entries until after the winner is drawn, so I can't say much more about my entry. But I am pretty pleased with it so far and just hope I can get it painted in time before June 1st which is the closing date!

In case you haven't noticed I really have managed to put myself under pressure to get about 3 things ready all by June!

Spreading the Word

For those of you who like having the opportunity to win prizes you should head on over to Tamsin's rather good blog where she is having a very generous prize draw Wargaming Girl all the rules are on the blog but basically every comment you make bags you an entry in the draw, and if you link to the competition on your own blog that gets you another 5 entries. So here I am shamelessly pimping Tamsins draw for my own ends!

Seriously though check it out she has been very generous with the prizes, and its a top blog.