Silk Purses from Sow's Ears .

A few years ago I purchased off EBay a LARGE amount of plastic Spencer Smith ACW  plastic figures , rather cheaply as well and if I remember rightly belonging to  the renowned wargamer Stuart Asquith . My idea was to recreate the Battle of the Platteville Valley from Featherstones book and use his rules to play it . I have been slowly painting the armies up and am down to the last 2 infantry regiments to paint (got the other 10 done - but only 1 cavalry unit out of 4 ) , so when I came across the box of figures I thought I should at least get the infantry done ( actually the bottom of the box fell out and several hundred plastic figures cascaded to the floor ! which resulted in much blasphemy and having to find a new shoe box for them ). I started to clean them up - and remembered why it had taken so long to get this project finished , they being plastic have mould lines that need removing - a lot of them have been painted - or started being painted by their previous owner and this has obscured the flash , I started cleaning them - it say something about my fortitude to get them finished and glued to coins . Hmm I'm sure they will look better once sprayed black !? .Too be continued............ P.S there are some strange colour schemes going on in this box !?

New French Commander

First posted 12/09/12

The French have a new commander in the shape of Le Comte De Fru-Fru. here seen being shown the troop positions by the commander of the Regt. De Roi -  Lt.Col.Canonbert . The Comte has been put in charge after the Allies managed to destroy a prized cannon and plans to take the fight to enemy and show them who is boss ! ( Canonbert privately doubts the military abilities of the young C in C ). The Comte is another conversion from the basic pointing mounted command figure . The right arm being cut off and remodelled and the head cut off and refitted the other way around.

Bercheny Hussars.

First posted 09/09/12

Have cast and painted up some cavalry for the French in the shape of the Hussars Bercheny.

These are slightly more rotund than the older Holger Erikson figures and a bit harder to cast , the molds needed a few vents cutting into them to make sure the metal flowed to the extremities of the molds .

The Officer is from a different mold to mark him out and the Trumpeter is a conversion from the same casting.

I cast the figure removed the sword and arm and repositioned the arm , pinning it and using 'green stuff' for the joint . I then cast up a mounted trumpeter figure cut off the trumpet and hand and affixed to the Hussar . Then I  painted him - at this point I was very proud of myself -but 'pride cometh before the fall' and in this case literally - I dropped the figure on the floor and the horses ankles (fetlocks or whatever horses call their ankles) snapped off !. I leave it to my readers imagination as to the language at this point (my wife covered the younger cats ears up). But necessity being the mother of invention, when I had calmed down I drilled through the base and inserted a bit of brass rod , I then drilled a hole in the horses stomach and cut the rod to size and glued all together, a touch of green paint and a drop more varnish and all is well !

Aides de Camp.

Whilst sorting out my 40mm SYW-ish figures I decided my armies command groups looked a bit sparse - just the CinC and another mounted Officer , so I thought I'd add a dashing Aide de Camp to each army. This of course enabled me to spend time searching through various Hussar uniforms to find a couple of exotic ones to paint up . The figure on the left above is a Officer of the Prussian Belling Hussars for the Allies and the one on the right a Russian of the Slobodskiy Regiment of Hussars to aid the French Commander. The figures are a couple of Nurnberger Meisterzinn figures I had left over slightly converted by cutting their swords away and filing to look like a dispatch being carried in the hand..

Brrrr! - It's Cold Here !.

Been on my hands and knees under my wargaming table looking for a lost dice when I found an old box and in it my collection of Flintloque Fantasy figures . I haven't seen them for about 15/16 years and had quite forgotten about them .Flintloque is a fantasy skirmish Napoleonic game with Elves as the French , Orcs as the British etc . The rules are simple enough and the figures are a bit like 'Marmite' - you either love them or hate them !, these figures came from a boxed set called 'Deadloque' which was about the retreat from Moscow . The figures are full of character and a joy to paint - I found a lot unpainted and think I will paint some of them up and even maybe have a game or two .

Zombie Cossacks ! whatever next !!!

Comte De Fru-Fru's coach is ready !

I have finally got the coach and horses painted , was a bit stumped as to what colour scheme to do so had a look at various 'Google' images of coaches and came up with the above one - sort of 'Lord Mayor of London meets Cinderella . The coach is made by Irregular in their 42mm range.

The Comte is very pleased with the finished result and his friend Voltaire is enthusiastic (and secretly hopes he will get a ride in it )

I hope to cast up a couple of suitable figures to add to it as footmen .

Voltaire's  manservant 'Wee Jockie' (late of the Royal Ecosse Reg.) has his own opinion of the coach ! .

* it is magnificent but it is not war - having only 'Del Boy's' grasp of French I find it annoying when people put French quotes without a translation.

Bolt Action Photos.

Was going to do a photo report on the various Bolt Action WW2 games I have been playing but the usual thing happened - as the game hotted up I forgot to take photos ! . Here we see 'A' playing a master stroke as we battle for the control of the radio station in the middle of the board .

The table from my side , the bomb craters are Warhammer 40K moon craters - the building by 4Ground excellent and prepainted but a swine to put together !

My American Airborne MMG opens fire !.

And the Light Howitzer as well !.

The German Fallschirmjager sensibly take cover .

German snipers and F.A.O. hid in the destroyed house.

German Fallschirmjager MMG hide in the edge of a wood - but have been fired upon and have received 2 pin markers which hampers their ability to carry out orders and hit successfully .

A German squad moves across a corn field to take cover by the hedge line .

But are spotted and strafed by American air power .

One of the problems with photographing WW2 is that the figures are so camouflaged that they disappear into the scenery . This squad has a 'Run' order on their dice .

I'm afraid the above photos are a bit mixed up and are from several different games . I am enjoying the 'Bolt Action' rules - simple to play and very handy for soloing as the unit dice are drawn randomly from the bag , I've been playing the scenarios from the rule book which last 6 moves (50%chance of a 7th move) have a definite objective and victory conditions and so give a quick satisfying game.