40mm vehicles

Just finished weathering a 1:50th Solido BRDM and a 1:43rd 'Russian Diecast' Moskovitch....

HLBS and Graven Images 40mm size comparison

From the left: HLBS, HLBS, GI, HLBS, GI Conversion, HLBS. 

All Graven  Images figures were removed  from their internal bases, but generally scale up pretty well (although definitely at the  'strapping' end of the  spectrum!)

Goodbye thesis - hello hobby time

Just a  quick note to say that I  have  finally  finished my PhD  thesis, and  that it has been submitted,  so I  will hopefully be  back  to getting  hobbying  done soon

Until  a proper  update, here are some  views of the paint station, a few WiPs  and some  figures  in need of  basing...

HLBS 36mm/40nn/1:48th 'HEAT' modern crime range list

Richard at HLBS was kind enough to end me the original catalogue listings for the Heat 40mm modern crime range he used to produce, and I thought I'd pop it up here as an appendix to previous catalogue post

"40mm Police and Criminals range.

PC1        S.W.A.T. 6 multi-part figures with separate heads, torsos and legs. MP5, M4, M8 Shotgun and M24 sniper rifle. £14.00

PC2        S.W.A.T. 6 multi-part figures with separate heads, torsos and legs. G36, M8

Shotgun and M24 sniper rifle.           £14.00

PCS        SW1 & 2 Deal both sets     £25.00

PC3        Neil         £2.50

PC4        Chris       £2.50

PC5        Michael £2.50

PC6        Tony      £2.50

PC7        Tony#2 £2.50

Other useful figures that are compatible with this range.

Urban Guerrillas

UG1        European designer Guerrillas             £6.00

UG2        Militants in ski masks         £6.00

Law Enforcement

LE1        US Cops                £6.00

LE2        Undercover cops or armed perps      £6.00

LE3        US security and VIP                                            £6.00

CIA/FBI/Undercover cops                                              

US27      3^rd Special forces group/CIA civvies gear       £6.00     

The great thing about 40mm is the amount of 1/48^th scale models that are available to use in games. O gauge in model railways are actually 1/48^th scale, so buildings and street furniture are quite easy to obtain. Also because the figures are on bases making them a little taller on the ground 1/43^rd diecast vehicles don’t look out of place either.

Useful websites

www.wholesaletrains.com large range of “O” Gauge buildings and street furniture stocked

www.ashevillediecast.com stockists of 1/43^rd diecast cars such as GEARBOX police cars NEWRAY trucks amongst others

www.policecarmodels.com Stockists of 1/43^rd diecast police cars and decals"

Painting update - 28mm Arthurians and 40mm moderns

Probably the last painting update from me for a while - although I have stuff on the paint desk making progress, I don't think that they will be finished before packing overtakes them!

Something of a odd collection this time - more 40mm moderns,  including a couple of conversions (head swap on uzi guy and adding the cossack hat) and some test pieces to check that I can get away with just a paint conversion to 'shift' the African milita figures to eastern Europe.  I think they look good - a bit more ragged than some of the others, but I can atleast use them as bandits. The wattle fences are Rendera - I did the entire packs worth, but decided that too many pics would just get dull!

The werewolf is a Reaper bones model.  My first, and I must admit that I am generally impressed.  Once I've got a few more they can be set loose on a Arthurian village... ('The wolves are running master Kay!' - perhaps not quite the sort of wolves they meant in The Box of Delights, but they'll do! )

The little people are my take on the Alfar, although they owe more to the Brownies from Willow than Tolkien's elves. They are, literal, little savages - with bronze and stone weapons ( fey folk not liking iron), animal (rabbit? Squirrel?) furs and green clothing (from Scandinavian folklore, along with the pale skin tone and dark hair). The painting isn't my best, but I fully intend to field them enmass as per the 'action shot', where hopefully the limitations in painting won't show so much. The blood stains on the weapons were to add a touch of savagery to the figures,  and I envisaged some sort of sacrifice and dipping weapons in its blood to empower them.  Ib game each stand will get multiple low strength attacks, and I will use the chittering horde rule so that additional bases can support as if they had spears (to represent them swarming all over people). The chap with the owl is a shaman, and the single warrior with the downed germanic a hero of some sort.  Figures are all 15mms - a mix of Mick Yarrow prehistorics and unknown celts and zulus. I'm planning to do a fair few more of these...

There is a collection of hairy germanics of varying flavours.  I have too many of these chaps, unless I plan on gaming something like Mons Badonicus or Dyrham in 1:1 ratios.  And there are more to paint. (Put it this way - Cerdic began conquering what would become Wessex with 2-3 ships worth of men. Depending on the size of the ships, that could be anywhere between about 80 and about 240 warriors. I've got somewhere around 200). The eventual plan is to be able to form two mid period armies, to game the various wars between Christian and Pagan saxon kingdoms.  And maybe a separate force of Frankish mercenaries.

The Romano-Britons are segregated by shield designs based on their ability.  The levy have plain whitish shields (there's a vague reference in the Gododin to white washed shields,  as I've probably said before) whilst professional warriors and retainers have shield designs. All the red and white shields in this batch belong to a semi uniform group (matching tunics) which I envisaged as the guards from a Civitate eager to cling to its roman lineage, and trying to hark back to the Legions of old (heavily inspired by Tudric of Gwents troops in the Bernard Cornwell Warlord trilogy). The rest just have a mix of designs in assorted colours.  The bulk of the 'uniformed' troops are GB plastic dark age warriors with metal Westwind heads...

Painting update - 40mm moderns, 28mm Arthurians and CTs

I've been flitting between all sorts of projects the last couple of weeks - but have managed to get a fairly wide variety of things finished :-)

Assorted 40mm figures from HLBS, Irregular and Battle forge. Seperate weapons from TAG were used on quite a few figures.  Overall,  very pleased how these guys came out, and how well the figures mix together! 

I've almost finished the CTs - I think there are only 5 more after this lot. Only the pistol chap and the Bren gunner are stock, the others are converted Foundry figures and a weapons swap. The shotguns are the Miniature Mojo ones, and they fit in well with the Brittania sculpting style...

Lots of dark age fantasy stuff! Druids, farmers, a werewolf (inspired by the Frost Mark books as well as one who's name escapes me about a werewolf Avatar of Fenrir during the Viking era), possibly a 13th warband member or very lost arab, Black Shield Irish mercenaries (Cornwell has been a big inspiration! ), Romano-British Levy (white washed shields for some attempt at uniformity) and assorted germanic types.  Figures from Black Tree Designs, Foundry, Gripping Beast (including their plastic dark age warriors with West Wind heads), Eureka and West Wind (werewolf)

WiP update - various projects

It's been a while since I last posted, so I thought I better put something up before I fell out of the habit again.  :-)

Progress has mainly been focused on 40mm stuff, but the last week or so has seen me dabbling in all sorts of projects.  Between going to a reenactment (as a punter for once) getting me fired up for a dark age stuff, and restarting Sleeping Dogs getting me fired up for afokf I have been hopping between things like crazy.  I am still having issues doing text captions for pictures, so apologies in advance for the block of unlabelled pictures.  I was about to call them figures, which shows I have thesis writing firmly lodged at the back of my mind! 

There is a 40mm Shirvan government soldier who has been converted to hold a TAG RPG-7, some Shirvan army special forces (originally early 90s green berets, updated with snazzy m4 carbines to show the governments western leaning), a couple of mercenaries (originally British royal marine Arctic warfare chaps, with TAG weapons), 28mm Malayan emergency CTs converted from Foundry ww2 Japanese (which will round out my CT platoon), assorted 15mm types (mick yarrow stone age and bronze age warriors, a few stray zulus) to act as 'hidden folk' for my dark ages games (definitely channeling the Brownies from Willow - I see these folks as pretty wild, with bronze and stone weapons and lots of rabbit and squirrel furs. The owl on the shaman's base, the severed head and the fallen tribesman are all an attempt to make them feel like they belong in a 28mm world, whilst  keeping the savage look), a couple of slightly converted early saxons, 3 Latino gangers which will end up joining my afokf triad and an overview of my painting desk (lots of romano British levy, a few saxons, the 40mm vdv from last time and various militia men in mixed camo schemes...)