What I've been up to...

I can't believe it's been over a month since I last posted - it's certainly not for a lack of activity, anyway!  I should really provide some sort of summary of what hobby-linked stuff I've been up to.      Over the past few weeks, I have:

Done pretty much no painting!
Okay, not a great one I'll grant you, but following my massive painting bender over Christmas I'm pretty relaxed about taking a little pause.  I've focused instead on playing some games, which has been much more enjoyable.

Played a massive board game of WW2!
I have long been a fan of block board-games, and to my mind GMT Games' "Europe Engulfed" is one of the top ones - certainly the best World War Two strategic level game I've played (as opposed to the massive economic simulator that Advanced Third Reich seemed to think it was.)  Over a few weekends I've been playing away at it, and - as I went along - wrote out a narrative of the game for myself.  I'll tidy it down, edit it up and post it on the blog.  I always find these alternative history AAR's to be fascinating reading when other people do it, so I'm finally having a go myself.  

Dug out my Hundred Years' War 6mm!
BBC 4 recently had on a little three-part series which was called 'Chivalry and Betrayal: The Hundred Years' War' - and I actually found it to be very good.  Also, you fundamentally don't see that many telly shows about wars of the middle ages, so thumbs-up for the Beeb simply for making it!  I was also moved to get my old half-rebased, half-unpainted models from Baccus 6mm out of the loft, for a spruce-up and a possible quick mess-around in some DBA-style games.


Ordered my 1/72 Army of the Potomac!
Yes, the completed 1/72 Confederates now have an enemy to face!  Or, at least they shortly will.  After much obsessive planning and preparing, I have swooped across various Amazon and Ebay marketplaces to gather all my odds and ends.  Due to the long gestation of the planning, I have also been able to basically get all the extras I wanted - such as the MDF bases for them all, some lead 'character' figures for generals, and also spray-paints to allow speedy mass-painting of all those blue coats.  

Perry Plastic Knights

Just a quick photo update of the figures I bought at Claymore 2012 - or some of them, at any rate.  These are the two boxes of Perry Plastic 'Mounted Men at Arms' - and very fine they look too!  I've gone for about two-thirds with lances (although there are enough parts for you to do them all that way, if you choose) and a third with hand-weapons like swords, axes, hammers, etc.  That's Twenty-four figures in total, which is enough for anything from about 6 bases in something like Impetus or two units in Hail Caesar or the like, without it looking at all unrealistic.  

I've decided I'm going to spray the horses down with a brown aerosol (the riders aren't yet glued on) and the knights can then get painted/sprayed metal along with a few bits of barding (horse-armour, basically) and glued into place before the final touching-up.  I'm making an effort to adopt more of an 'army-painter' method throughout, as I always tell myself I'll just do it by hand and then come to regret it halfway through!

Weekend's Results

I've had a quite productive weekend painting-wise, and thought I'd pass on the results:

 

First up, the newly-sprayed ACW figures are now ready for painting, and a start has been made.  I've done the first four bases if infantry (or, to think more encouragingly of it, around 8,000 men) full to completed painting and Devlan Mud coated on.  I also tested out two shades of green for two of the bases, as I intend to grass them and wasn't sure what it was worth doing as a 'base' colour.

Also, I have completed one General figure, plus I have managed to paint all the gun carriages on the army's cannon.  Tedious stuff to paint a cannon, what with all the gaps between the wheel spokes and so on - so it's nice to know it's gone for good!

In addition to this, I also managed to do a bit of re-basing!

 Here is the old 6mm army of Baccus Wars of the Roses figures which I found idling in the loft, and have now rebased on 40mm x 20mm 'traditional' sized DBA bases, with much prising off of models and swearing.  Above is an English 100-Years' War army while below is a Medieval French army.  More to follow, hopefully - plus a bit of tabletop gaming!