The Midweekender 1: Celebrations Time!

Midweekender???

No, that's not a typo... Being posted on a Wednesday you might be expecting this to be called the Midweeker, but not in my case. A few years ago I decided to make use of our 4/5 employment possibility, taking Wednesdays as my day off. Not long after that I started referring to my day off as my "Midweekend", much to the annoyance of some of my co-workers :-)
And with more than a nudge and a wink to the Beasts of War crew and their Weekender shows... you get the idea.

And no, celebrationS time isn't a typo either.

Celebration 1:

Yes, it's here at last, my 100th post!!! It only took me slightly more than seven years to get to this point, with many long silences... Right now I seem to be in a more productive period with nearly ten procent of all posts getting published in the last month alone. OK, that includes the rather pointless "Happy New Year" post I used to get the 100th post to coincide with...

Celebration 2:

Finishing a project at what is, for me in any case, warp speeds... And a planned project at that, not some impulse buy at a wargames show or something like that.

I'v always had the idea to do something with Early WW2 and with having bought the "France and the Allies" book for Bolt Action (impulse buy at the news agent) the plan to start a French force came to take form. So with Crisis 2015 approaching I made use of Peter Pig's preorder discount to get a platoon pack with an AT gun and crew and a few vehicles as support. And now, just under two months after getting my hands on them, here they are:

French Regular Platoon (Bolt Action)

• 2nd Lt with NCO (1 accompanying man): 60 pts
• Regular squad with 6 additional soldiers, 1 additional soldier with pistol, light machine gun and VB launcher: 157 pts
• 2nd squad as above: 157 pts
• 3rd squad as above: 157 pts
• Light AT gun: 25mm gun with 2 crew: 50 pts
• Tank Somua S35: 135 pts
• Armoured Car AMD Panhard 178: 115 pts

In total, 40 infantry, one gun and two vehicles for 831 points with 9 spare infantry all done, ready for action. Quite the achievement for me (for virtual pats on the back, go to the comments section :-) )

Celebration 3:

Taking the blog to the next level and embracing this multimedia fad with (drumroll please)...

Yes, I dusted off that years old, seldom used mini camcorder and tried it out to see if I could make video that would look good enough on Youtube. And I was pleasantly surprised considering its age and low specs. No fancy (or even basic) video editing at this time, that's the next hurdle to jump.

My high tech recording studio... one more tech level back and I would have to handcrank the camera!

Thanks for reading (and watching)
Happy painting and gaming!

Untill post 101

Saturday Paint Table 14: Out with the old, in with the new

A new year, a new blog post! And a completely new load of figures on my desk! I finished the French platoon, all varnished and now waiting to get flocked. The perfect job for tomorrow...

While ending my French project I had already started on the first couple of German troops and now I have cleaned up the rest of them (the few that I still had cents for to base them on). So I'll get them done together with the tracks of that Zvezda Pz38t to get a flying start for a BA German platoon later on. The guns are a bunch of Soviet infantry guns by PSC that had been abandoned after a basecoat many months ago. They are now waiting for the final coat of varnish, just a quick thing that I got out of the way.

For a slight change of pace I'll be moving away from 15mm WW2 after that and get Scooby and the gang done. They have been standing around in a basecoat since right after I bought them at Crisis (2014 I think, and hope). The other small project I want to cross of my list are the Terminator Genisys endoskeletons. I bought a box of plastic ones at Crisis last year and together with the two blisters of special weapons/"characters", so that would be 13 figures (and 4 crawlers) in total. Another limited and manageable force.
Just imagine, completing two forces only months after buying them at Crisis??? Surely the End Times must be upon us :-)

Happy painting and gaming!!!
See you next week...

All the Best for 2016!!!

Have a great new year in gaming!
Buy lots of new shiny toys!
But make sure you paint more than you buy :-)
Have lots of games and may your dice be with you!

Enjoy your hobby in 2016!

Most Wonderful Days 12 and 13

Quite the jump, going from day 1 to 12 in one leap. But to be honest, the first week of my time off was mostly spent hanging around, catching up on some chores, emptying the hard drive of my digital tv decoder and going for some walks in the forest, enjoying the ridiculously good weather.
The amount of painting and reading rules and other gaming related activities was too small to make a blog post worth the effort. And when I got back into action on day 8, it would have just been "painting my French troops", "painting my French troops", "still painting my French troops" for days on end... I just kept that for the paint table post.

Meanwhile I was cuting into my painting and gaming by dipping into my SF collection and rereading Jack Vance's Night Lamp... Doing stuff like that doesn't just eat up time, but the Gaean Reach background where several of Vance's stories are based only leads to thinking about a Traveller version of that leading to pondering 15mm SF gaming leading to ogling the different sales announced on TMP leading to "must resist temptation"... 

But I might just be able to resist those dark urges, mostly because I might be spending my money on old books. I must have come across a mention of the Fighting Fantasy books recently, making me dig out the 10 book edition I picked up a year ago or so on ebay.
So now I'm fighting my way through Firetop Mountain again. I was pretty lucky when rolling up my character, getting the maximum skill score and all but 1 of the possible stamina points. To compensate the character then rolled pretty low for his own luck. But with those scores you don't want to be lucky enough to sneak past someone, you just want to go and bury your sword in its skull :-)
Now all that made me look up how many FF books there are... leading to a possible outbreak of "Pokemon Syndrome" (gotta catch'em all). Only 49 more books to find... Here we go again.
Less money to add to Mount Plastic and Lead Hill though, the idea might have some advantages.

Possibly one of the reasons I have been painting that much over the last few days was that my HWK-290 didn't arrive before christmas. I needed this X-wing model to play several of the scenarios in the Heroes of the Aturi Cluster Solo/Co-op campaign. I have yet to play it, but it looks like a great fan made product and being free, you can't go wrong.
But first things first, where's that warlock hiding?

Happy painting and gaming!!!

Paint Table Saturday 13: Les Boches sont là!

After skipping a week because, well, there was nothing to report, I'm back with some real progress. The first week of my vacation wass all but productive on the hobby front: I painted pretty much nothing, blogged nothing, barely read anything games related... where did that week go and what did I do with it???

And then week 2 began! Now, a few days later, two thirds of my French infantry is painted and has moved to the varnishing stage, the remaining third needs only a few more details to be done and should be finished ome time tomorrow.

I've been googling my vehicles to pick out some camouflage patterns, though I wonder in what part of France that Somua's camo would actually work. They'll all need some heavy drybrushing to tone them down... tone them down a lot.
I started cleaning up the first of my PSC early war Germans and here they are, waiting very impatiently for their turn. So, not only will I finish one project/force in a mindblowing short period, I will start the opposing force right after it... I must be dreaming...
Just don't get sidetracked by those pesky kids :-)

Happy painting and gaming!!!

Most Wonderful Day 1

I guess it's all downhill from now...First thing during my time off from work was:

With cinema programs changing on wednesdays here in Belgium, the movie opened here on the 16th.  So come 10 am, there I was :-)
Without spoiling it for you, let me just say that George Lucas is now the second best Star Wars director. Star Wars is back!!!

When I got home I found my copy of Iron Cross had allready arrived after ordering it during the weekend. Shipped about as fast as the rules are supposed to play. I'll probably post a small review later during the holidays, but if you want to know more, just go the Meeples and Miniatures podcast that made me buy this set of rules.

After taking some time to recover from the shock and stun left by The Force Awakens (you'll understand soon enough) and reading the Iron Cross rules I got stuck in with the first of my new Gunpla kits: a production run version of the Gundam prototype.

For day they are forecasting a rather sunny day with temperatures up to 15° (I love global warming!) so that means some cleanup in the garden... There goes my hobby time. Good thing it's dark early.

Happy painting and Gaming!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

As if getting home from work for the last time this year wasn't enough fun by itself, I was greeted by a big(gish) box from my Japanese plastic Crack dealer :-)

Kitty says, watch me, watch me, watch me, I'm here too, watch me!!!

Looks like my French platoon might have to wait a few more days before I continue painting them. Watching the first three Star Wars movies again in anticipation of tomorrow morning's trip to the cinema has been cutting into my painting time, but now this arrives...

Time to get out the Samurai Robots Battle Royale rules by  Ganesha Games and give them a good read. Plenty of time to try them out with a few solo skirmishes. Just one of many gaming activities for the next 19 days!!!

Oh, and blogging is on the list too, so a small milestone is just around the corner...

Happy painting and gaming!!!

Paint Table Saturday 12: the Early Bird Edition

Well well, aren't I spoiling you? Another paint table post, on a Saturday no less... and earlier than ever. Ok, I had to get this out now or be late because I'll be off on a family visit in a bit so that's the day done for. So I did a little quick spot of painting, snapped a few pics before I have to move out.

Still working on my Peter Pig French and I got to a pretty surprising point earlier in the week. All models were on the table now with at least the basic flesh and uniform (or basecoat for the vehicles). Did I really go from picking up a new force at Crisis to have everything based and out of bare metal to work in progress in a month time???

Now I'm even contemplating being able to finish, yes, FINISH, this project within the "1 figure average per day" limit with the count starting at Crisis. I have until the 29th to pull that off. And being at the webbing and weapons stage now and my year's end vacation starting this Tuesday evening... it's definitely on the table (pun intended).

Happy painting and gaming!

Paint Table Saturday 11: Now With Extra Plastic

For my doing, hot on the heels of the last installment and for once bang on schedule... I had hoped to finish prepping my entire French platoon by now, but I got sidetracked a bit earlier this week when my order from Tokyo Hobby arrived. With his low low prices and cheap shipping, I just can't find those kits in Europe at that price level.

After picking up a load of other cheap 1/48 modern US kits for the Terminator Genisys I was still looking for a Hummer in that scale. And there seem to be surprisingly few of those around. So back to my favourite Japanese plastic crack dealer for the Tamiya model. Not completely finished yet to have easy acces while painting, but that's just some small details. 

The Hummer was so cheap that I still had enough room left before hitting the €22 dutyfree import limit to buy a gunpla kit. Those Bandai kits are incredible value for money! A multi coloured fully poseable snap fit kit standing 12cm tall... for about ten euros (including shipping). To give Ganesha Games' big robot game a spin I now have another three kits on the way from Japan and am brushing up on Gundam history on Youtube.

So with the plastic kit building done, it was back to the painting table to continue work on my Peter Pig French forces. Some more batches of infantry were added to the line as were the antitank gun and the Panhard armoured car. Leaving only the Somua tank and nine more infantry to get the entire force in production, leaving a few gun crew that I don't need at this time. All in all, no too bad for me...
Let's see if I can keep up this blistereing pace :-)

Happy gaming and painting!
See you next time...

Paint Table Saturday(ish) 10: Surprised?

Admit it, you must be surprised to see me again after more than seven months... Yikes, seven months... and nothing to show for painting wise. That last handfull of Russians? Still there just as I left them after finishing my last post. Oddly enough, just as I was about to finish those last troops, I lost all interest in FoW. Haven't played a game of it since then. Not that I have stopped miniature gaming all together, many a battle of Confrontation, Star Wars and lately Kings of War has been fought.

The post is called Saturday(ish) mostly because the picture was taken on Sunday, not so much because I only got around to posting it half a week late.

In the last few weeks I did return to painting just a little bit. I had some 15mm plaster walls that I got around to. In the background, the abandoned Russians. And in the foreground, the project that got me painting again: a small platoon of early war French from Peter Pig for Bolt Action and in a later stage Battlegroup Blitzkrieg. I picked those up at this year's Crisis show in Antwerp and after putting together another pile of 4Ground MDF buildings I cleaned up and based the first few riflemen and got out the paintbrushes again. At the time of writing I have been slowly working away on those and the next few figures are about to join them.

Untill next time (no promises about when :-)  )
Happy painting and gaming!

Paint Table Saturday 9: The Final Push

Last time you and I were confronted with an as good as empty painting table and me not really sure what to do next... The week after that I put the finishing touches on a couple of guns, some more 15mm Russians, a bunch of 6mm SU-85s, catching up with some odds and ends....
And I also started (and completed) a few 15 Russian gun crew bringing me back to my seriously depleted stash of FoW Russki's... With only about fourty figures left from the infantry gun kit and a Maxim platoon (and there should also be one or two bailed out tank crew somewhere...) left, I decided the time has come for the Final Push and claim victory over my Russian infantry models.

So this week I started cleaning and prepping some of them and made some nice progress towards the objective even though it got stalled for a few days. And the (at last) nice weather is delaying operations a bit too, the inevitable yearly power washing of the deck and other garden chores need getting done too. But once the big jobs were done, out came my mini painting station and last post's Stormtrooper (excellent kit btw, no Star Wars fan should be without one :-) ).

Hope you are having a beautiful weekend with some nice weather too. See you next time!

Happy painting and gaming!!!