April update - Austrian Cannon

April was another very lacklustre month. I managed to pull my thumb out and finish banging out some cannon at the end of the month.

These are from frontrank and there is a heap of crew to paint up as well (primed only). 4 foot cannon, and 2 horse (with the funny benches).

I possibly ended up using an overly dark ochre colour, but I'm sure campaigning is a grubby business.















I also got around to cutting up a bunch of dowel as measuring sticks for General du Corp. The long sticks are for artillery (how fitting), medium command, small movement. I ended up with a single stick from Doug which is astonishingly smooth compared to my own. I do wonder if thats the wonders of people using/holding/fiddling with them till they smooth, or if I just ended up with crappy wood and paint.


 The last addition to the painted pile is some old GW oil drums. I *didn't* actually paint these myself. I someone managed to convince my buddy Garret to do so. I suppose that's ALMOST like painting it myself (he said lying to himself). Garret did a great job weathering these and used some colours I wouldn't have selected myself. I quite like that aspect and can appreciate why some hobbyists swap painting squads with their buddies.

Micro Armour Infantry Ambush

I barely missed a Cold War game March 16th. At that point social distancing was being promoted, I work in healthcare, and I was probably a bit ahead of the curve in reading about the horrors in Italy. I decided to bottle out as a good example. Great sadness.

Doug sent another package (AMBUSH!) back in mid February. I had intended up doing up another highlight post on what is a(nother!) princely gift. The original plan was to do the big reveal along with the cold war game planned during the march break.....alas.

I'm not positive what army these folks are from.....I suspect they are warsaw pact east germans (I have seen some pics of the brown outfit, and the helmet looks a bit similar). As Doug notes: 'at this scale it doesn't matter!'.

 We have a hq section, engineering, mortar and AT support.

The three rifle....battalions? are all the same, hq unit, 2 heavy machine guns, and 9 rifle stands.  I feel like I may have enough troops for human wave attacks at this point.

A huge thanks and shout out to Doug!

March update - random 'progress'

March has been a bit of a bust. The COVID disaster has complicated our lives but both my wife and I work at the hospital so aren't working any less. My mother in law is now living with us as we expected our childcare situation to complicate if not disappear (though not, thankfully, yet). Mentally I'm a bit zapped so have found it pretty hard to pull myself away from easily accessible entertainment on the computer to actually start painting. Boo.

Let's look at what has been done. The Austrian infantry made some progress with all the black work finally done. Although, what's that in the bottom right? It's some standard  bearers that just arrived with the artillery.....







We have a critical shortage of guns for our game. I ordered a lot from frontrank when funds freed up to match the infantry I'd slowly stockpiled.

I'm a bit (or more than a bit) dubious the convention will go ahead. I need to plan to not screwing up the crew though, so I'm going to still try and get the painting done. Worst case is I do the minimal cannons and a few infantry. I can even imagine a situation where I don't go and hand off the figs to our mastermind (Doug) to haul down there.

The guns are inked on the left but not on the right. I tried using 'payne's grey' ink which was a bit dark, and some of Les' magic ink 'SOFT' that I made up from a recipe on dakka dakka...looks better. 

Feb update - Batch painting blues

I've hit the phase of painting where not much seems to happen for a long period of time/effort. Suddenly they will be done....one day.

I managed to get the grey primer I was waiting for, sprayed my figs during a break in the weather and felt like my hand was going to get frostbite. I've gotten blue pants, hair, and skin done. Today I banged out the first colour on the horses for the officers within units.


 BEHOLD! It appears like I've done almost nothing!

I decided to break up the monotony a bit by jumping in on "Fembruary Challenge" by leadballoony. The idea is to paint up a/some female models with a look towards how they are represented in the hobby. I shall post in the future, but *spoiler alert* it's pretty pneumatic/trashy/non physiological. You can see (barely) a preview in the lower right corner.

No one expects micro armour in the mail!

Much to my delight this morning I received a parcel. Idly contemplating what nerd item it might be based on size and weight I was pulling a blank and then I noticed the return address was in the nearby city. My wargaming friend Doug (dots of paint blog) struck again!






No doubt inspired by my Cold War AAR in early January he pulled out some micro armour from his collection that hasn't been getting enough training and sent them to me. SURPRISE THE EAST GERMANS AND CANADIANS ARE CLASHING IN MY HOUSE! A princely gift as I hastened to send him a message.




His note informs me that these are circa '83 forces which happen to be deployed to their bases about that same time (!!). A couple of barrels got repositioned, a few units needed to be reglued to their base, and a missing tank turret, but these veterans have stood the cold war test very well.

More pictures after the break......

28mm Austrians March - Depot Battallion

January would seem to be the month for raising your units, load the magazines, and make grandiose plans for the coming campaigns.

I have, so far, managed to assembly my entire collection of Austrian plastic that had been stockpiled. The lions share of these are victrix models which have different poses (and 2 arms!) so are much more time consuming to assemble than the marching Perry's.

In rough numbers I have a bit over 150 Austrians. Some miscellaneous stuff was also assembled to try and clean the computer desk up a bit. I intended to prime them up for the 'look I've done work!' shot, but the local game store is out of stock of the 'wraithbone' coloured priming I'm hoping to use. The plan, roughly, will be:  to prime off white, basecoat some flesh and other colours that benefit from a wash, ink it, and highlight everything necessary.

I converted some metal colonel figs with helmets to bicornes to make some higher level (field) officers. I think the heads might be sitting a bit proud on the cut neck, but I don't relish drilling out the neck so I'll live with it. 

2020 Resolutions

After some rumination on I've decided to make my resolutions with some 'stretch goals'. I reckon I can make some 'easy win' resolutions that can, nonetheless, be extended into harder to achieve items that might otherwise create a silly long list. Generally speaking there will be 3 levels of success to achieve, and hopefully this means I will get less total failures in 12 months and more qualified success.

 

1/. Host cowboy game - play unpainted//partially painted//fully painted

The prepainted buildings I have seemed to be popular and one of the local gamers already wants an invite. So.....the demand is there. Painted status really refers to cowboy figs. I'm a little dubious I have enough so that may direct a bit of spending this year.

2/. Paint Austrians for enfilade// paint hussar rampant for enfilade //paint 2 sides for hussar rampant

It looks as though I'm setting up to paint roughly 100 figs for my contribution. The hussar rampant stuff will be another 6 or 12 cavalry so I'm dubious I'd reach the final target.

3/. Frostgrave OR hardwired OR Pulp Alley OR some osprey skirmish ruleset - play unpainted//paint one side//paint both sides

I've been expressing a desire to play a skirmish game for years. It's time to do it, and damn the need for painted figs. If I like it and play then painting will follow I suspect. There is also the likelyhood that any figs I table will easily port between most of the rules mentioned above.

4/. Decreased Kickstarter & nerdery expenditures by 20%//Only 3 kickstarters in the year//no kickstarters

2019 was a big year for acquisitions. This must be brought under control. Kickstarters are ever so tempting, but I actually like some of the smaller offerings the most, so hopefully putting a cap on absolute numbers will result in ignoring big shiny stuff in favor of the indie stuff.

5/. # of blog posts/regular hobby updates: 26 in a year// at least 2 per month// 1 every 2 weeks

While the numbers are literally the same over the course of the year, the important thing is the frequency. Vomiting forth a half dozen posts in a month and then silence for half a year is sub-standard.

6/. Minimum figs: 1 per week (easy...)//stretch 1 per week not enfilade related

Lol. The 1st stage should be easy given my enfilade commitments. It should probably be doubled.

7/. paint and/or give away more than I buy (negative growth)//paint more

 The most likely resolution to fail miserably.

AAR Fistful of TOWs: tank clash

One of our local gamers, Nate, has been quietly beating the microarmour drum for a few months. Having completed some units, and with a new gamer having an impressive stock of microarmour a game suddenly materialized. Nate essentially GM'd it having played solo once of since. The system is fistful of TOW's (3 perhaps?). He wanted to simplify as much as possible so there was no artillery, air support, and very limited infantry. Tank clash, 1982 cold war goes hot!

Warsaw pact troops race in from the left, while the imperialist lackey running god NATO troops (myself included) engaged at their extreme range to attempt to thin the ranks of red. 

2019/2020 New Years Post

Yikes! This year was a bust hobby wise. Our toddler (1st child) seemed to hoover up more and more of my time and attention (I understand this is a thing). A new work rotation resulted in a lot of extra evening shifts which totally kibosh my hobby work on those weeks. There was also some tricky scheduling hoops I had to jump through to accommodate my wife's weird work schedule and child care.

28mm: 60 young guard + 3 french dragoons
15mm: none
Terrain: assembled 5 pre-painted cowboy buildings

Accumulation of game material leap in leaps and bounds. I suppose when you don't do, it's easy to accumulate to fill in the void. My roleplaying game activity was pleasingly full for most of the year....which while good in some ways definitely put the bite on wargaming.

2019 Resolutions

1/. Host at least one game of General du Corp with my own figs

-This requires getting the rules, making some range sticks, and painting up enough french to field a force.
FAIL. I really made minimal progress on this. A bit of an OOB, and the french are primed. A big push for enfilade 2020 might see some progress on this front. 

2/. Finish my game craft mini buildings OR sigma event buildings

-The gamecraft buildings I've been chipping away at, but have had for many years. Shameful really. The sigma would be the easy version I can bang out in the fall if I've been bad.
FAIL. I have primed the sigma buildings with azithal highlights, and was doing a trial paint on the 1st one. Once I've committed to the scheme it should probably go fast. It would help if I was actually putting in time on painting though......

3/. Host/play one of: frostgrave, fistful of lead/galactic heroes, hardwired, or other small skirmish game

Previous resolutions to do a skirmish game (both sides) have failed...numerous times.
FAIL. I managed to get in two skirmish games....of carnevale. Garrets games fully hosted. Just the type of thing I'd like to host for myself. 

4/.  Complete the french oob for snappy nappy for either austerlitz OR marengo. 

I should have a lot of what I need. This will help focus the efforts onto what I should actually be painting for my 15mm french. 

PARTIAL SUCCESS. Austerlitz is done up but the numbers are pretty bananas though compared to what I have. Consider 15mm nothing got done this year, my plan to stepping stone into a push to host this is fairly stalled.

2020 Resolutions
I'm ruminating on the resolutions still. The holidays were a bit bananas and I didn't get as much retrospective time as usual. I'm trying to decide how I'll improve my success rate, especially as some items come up year after year as fails...


Pictures of the years work after the break.....