Who needs Deserts

Having been forced out of my bed rather early this morning as a result of shopping being delivered or something equally boring, I had plenty of time to crack on and paint this.

The figure is from Empress, specifically their Modern Combat range, one of the SAS sets. I have been very slow in painting these up, despite having bought them some months back I think I only have two others painted (one of which is in an earlier blog post).

I have not previously tried to paint any sort of splinter type camo as it looked tough. However I thought I would have a bash at it this morning. So having grabbed an old pair of CS95 trousers for reference I cracked on. In the end I painted the trousers and baseball cap in CS95 camo pattern, and I am very pleased with the results. I will definitely be painting some of my other Empress Moderns up in the same sort of fashion as I like how the camo turned out and as I think it makes the figure look really nice.

Anyway trumpet blowing over, I hope any observers like my attempt at splinter camo.

Crazy Quad

I spent yesterday evening painting up this little beauty sculpted by Paul Hicks, and purchased from his new venture "Mutton Chop". The model was great to put together, if a bit fiddly, but this was due to my cack handedness rather than anything else. Painting wise I went for a racing green frame. The driver is painted up in RAF uniform so that he fits in with my Wittering Defence Force. His armband (not fully visible in the pictures) reads "WDV" which stands for Wittering Defence Volunteers, the militia arm of my force.

I added the little flag and pole myself, for no other reason than I thought it would look good. The colours are the modern tactical flashes of the RAF, so not really period but I think it looks fine none the less.

I recommend this model to anyone who fancies painting up something a bit different. I should add the model does not come with a base, and strictly speaking does not need one. However as I will be gaming with this model I was a bit concerned that my cack handed gluing and sticking would not be strong enough and under the rigours of gaming the model might break, hence the base which is an old Victrix stand.

Fine fighting men

I have spent this evening painting up another five of Musketeers early world war 1 British infantry. These five bring my total WW1 force up to a full platoon. I have an officer and a Sergeant left to paint up to lead these chaps.

Outside of this I had some time to pop up to Partizan at the weekend and picked up Mr Hick's new model, the Croydon Crusher, which is a sort of 1930's quad bike with a heavy machine gun, designed for use with VBCW. I have some plans for this model to make it even odder looking, but more on that in the future. Apart from that I purchased a rather nice Vickers tanks from BEF in resin which I will try and get put together at some point.

London Calling

Having bumped into Paul Hicks at a wargaming event last weekend I was able to purchase this lovely 28mm model of a telephone box from him. I couldn't resist painting this up and getting it based. I love how it looks and will be looking to pick up the post box he has also made. I believe Paul will be selling these through his own site "Mutton Chop" in the near future but in the mean time he can be contacted via the Gentleman's Wargaming Parlour. 



WW1 Early war Brits

Having recently received my order from Musketeer Miniatures I painted up these 5 chaps last night. I like how they turned out and they, and the other 7 models I have will bring my WW1 force up to a full platoon. I think what my force needs now is some light armour for use in VBCW and perhaps some artillery!

Bit of a sniffle

Saturday just gone I spent a very enjoyable days war gaming at a small event organised by Mort from GWP. The games were all VBCW and the goal was for the Anglican League to push through the defence lines of the SFF into a village they had been using as a raiding post. I was playing Anglican league and whilst I had a fun day I did not fair particularly well in terms of the battle.

Pulling some unfortunate "Random Event" cards my force ended up dropping dead as a result of an outbreak of the Spanish flu, this resulted in a fair amount of my force retiring from the battle each turn. In addition to that half way through the battle I pulled another random event card which resulted in me losing comms to some of my remaining units. Sufficed to say while I managed to whittle down the opposition and knock out a tankette my sickly army did not make it onto the main table.

Still a great game played against, and with some top chaps. A couple of pictures below (I forgot to take many during the day so these are the best ones).

Playing against Ook from GWP, this is the result of his first shot against my units with a mortar which was being fired from off table as support. 5 out of a 10 man squad wiped out!

Later in the game, I manage to knock out Ooks tankette with a lucky mortar round that scattered off his infantry and onto the back of the tank. Two lucky dice rolls later its main gun was destroyed and the tanks crew were both wounded.

My mortar team moves up to inspect its  work after Ook has withdrawn his forces off the table to the main SFF base/village.

A couple of chicks!

Spent this afternoon painting up these two models from Empress which I had, had knocking around for a while. I think they came with another set which has an LMG Gunner and Loader, featured in a post some time last year, but I never got around to painting up these two.

The pistol wielding model is painted up as an LDV/Home guard volunteer. The standard bearer (which needs a flag) has nice blue overalls with some LDV kit. I enjoyed painting these two although I don't think I have much use for them gaming wise at the moment.