Month: July 2014

A new approach to the painting problem

Like most wargamers I have a massive store of unpainted plastic and metal in the toy cupboard.
Here is my new approach.
I open the paints drawer and select the front, left hand paint pot.
Next I go through all the stockpile and extract anything that needs the selected colour.
I paint for one evening using only the selected colour, then return it to the back of the drawer.
Today it looks like an evening of 6mm ACW Union trousers.
Next selection is black! What will that throw up???

An update after several weeks away

Hello readers,
Having been dormant for a couple of months ( was it really that long?) it’s time to update what I have been getting up to.
Most of my wargaming time has been taken up with the e-mail campaign of the Peninsular War in 1808.
I now (as of today) have eight generals running armies in Spain and Portugal.
The campaign has been running since late April and is now in its fourth week in campaign time. As yet I have not posted anything because it would reveal information that some of the players do not yet have. Communications take a long time in 19th century Spain.
I intend to post the news in the Peninsular War pages one month after they happened in the campaign.
My other projects:
I am nearing retirement at the end of 2014 and have a small pot of money to play with. I have ordered, for the second time in my wargaming life, figures painted by someone else. I await my 6mm French, Spanish and Anglo-Portuguese armies for the aforementioned champaign. They will replace the home-grown armies in the toy cupboard.
Also in 6mm I am painting my generic “Red Army” and “Blue Army” for use at Napoleonic reenactments for my “this is where von Reisswitz got the idea from” demonstrations
And with retirement looming I am reverting to my teenage years. I have been grabbing from Ebay every set of Airfix Infantry Combat Group, Matchbox WW2 figures and Merit railway scenery that I can afford, as well as the old Airfix polythene vehicles range.
I have two projects in mind.
For WW2 I am using the matchbox soldiers and Airfix tanks, etc. with the rules from the “Operation Warboard” book.
The Infantry Combat Group, Centurion and Patton tanks will be used to bring my Imagination of the island of Belgica into the 1950s. I suspect that both sides will be equipped with the good old 25pdr gun salvaged from the WW2 games. Motor transport is mainly by amphibious DUKW models. I never did like the Airfix SP gun model or the 6×6 truck. At a recent wargames sale I grabbed an old copy of WRG 1925-1950 rules which I will try again, for the sake of nostalgia.
I see a lot of old school conversions in the style of Charles Grant and Terry Wise looming.
I am also building forces using Revell WW2 figures for “Chain of Command” rules.
Roll on retirement!