23/01/2016

German Police battalion - Schuma

The Schutzmannschaft were German Auxiliary Police battalions use for rear area security and worse in Russia. Given I am painting some partisans I need these to provide some opposition. They were organised by nationality and wore a variety of uniforms, after some debate I decided to use a grey shade for all of them.
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Figures are the Strelets Police Battalion, they depict a variety of different uniforms and I decided that the grey would create a more consistent appearance except for those still in civilian clothes. Normally there would be a forth company with MMGs, but no figures were in the set so when needed I'll just add some from one of my normal German units.

21/01/2016

Winter War Russians

In keeping with the weather, here's another winter unit, this time the Strelets Red Army of Winter War I got for Christmas. The figures have lots of character and are much nicer than the Italeri and Pegasus figures I have in my other two battalion.


I'll be using it to accompany the rest of my Russians and I'll use the Zvezda mini-sets to provide the required MMG and mortar to make up a full RF battalion.

20/01/2016

Soviet Assault Engineers

A rather unfriendly unit to properly start the years painting. These are the Orion Soviet Assault Group in amoeba camouflage smocks and body armour. Unfortunately the amoeba pattern hasn't shown up too well in the pictures.

I don't expect to use the whole battalion together, but rather have the companies parcelled out to bolster ordinary infantry battalions

I also got a diecast early war FAMO from my daughter, so I quickly drybrushed it while finishing off the engineeers

15/01/2016

A few discoveries

These were found hidden away in the back of a cupboard at my parents house, The smaller figures are old 30mm Staddens , which are now the same as a small 28mm. The 54mms are a mix of Airfix, Historex and Tamiya. All were assembled and painted well over 40 years ago.

Now what do I do with them, I don't know anone interested in 54mm?

Also discovered in the bargain bin at "The Works" was this Christmas building for £1.50, it's quite suitable for 15mm or 20mm. But they only had one and I haven't seen any more.

13/01/2016

Jacobite Cavalry

First to be finished this year a couple of units for the '45. Prince Charlie's Lifeguard and the Fitz-James Cavalry. The figures for both units come from the old Revell SYW Austrian Cavalry. I've depicted Fitz-James Cavalry as a normal sized unit so I can do a what-if the majority of the unit were not intercepted by the Royal Navy.

The tartan crossbelts on the Lifeguards were difficult to do and I'm not sure whether it was worth the effort.

I'd like to add a unit of Highland Hussars, but I can't think what figures to use!

08/01/2016

On the workbench January 2016

An almost clean start, lots of clear space around my painting station, so it would have been off to a cracking start to the new year - except I've been clearing out my mother's house in preparation for her forthcoming move. In particular my late father's sheds which contained anything that might be of possibly use, I've already taken three car loads of steel to the tip so far!. On my return I intend to work on:-

  • Completing the Jacobite cavalry, which only need basing
  • Work on two units of WW2 Russian partisans, the Strelets winter and summer versions.
  • Plus a German police battalion to oppose them
  • Create a WW2 Russian Assault Engineer battalion.
  • Maybe start a battalion of Romanian infantry if I can gather together all the necessary heavy weapons

06/01/2016

Plans for 2016

Another year, another plan. Looking back at last year's and previous years performance, I always over-estimate how many topics I can cover. This is usually because I almost always add extra items in, so although the total items turned out is on plan the number of topics is not. Still I'm not letting that effect this year's plan.

For those interested in my "high" output, this is because I'm retired, my daughters are settled, so I have the time to devote to my hobby.

Onto my plan:

Painting/Modelling (all moderate sized projects)

  • Terrain - only a few bits needed like new hedges are needed, but I'm tempted to produce some proper winter terrain to go with my figures
  • Saracen cavalry and a few more archers (cf 2015)
  • Crusader cavalry (cf 2015)
  • HYW/WOTR English add some cavalry and a few more infantry (cf 2015)
  • Five Ancient German Warbands (18 strong) (cf 2015)
  • Some Assorted Ancient Light Troops to fill in various gaps in my armies (cf 2015)
  • Russian Partisans (cf 2015)
  • Upgrade my WW1 East African Germans with the new HaT figures (cf 2015) - really must do this!
  • Some extra Russians and Romanians for my WW2 winter games
  • More woodland Indians so I can fight more French & Indian War games
  • Plus a number of bits to fill in gaps in existing armies
Gaming
  • It looks like I won't need to produce anything for this years big game and my Lentini terrain will get another outing
  • One of the days at Gauntlet will be a Korsun pocket game, so I may need some terrain for this.
  • I'll also try and organise a big SYW game for one of the Deeside Defenders gaming weekends


Finally I'll continue the attempt to reduce the size of my stash!

04/01/2016

Review of 2015 - part 2

Having looking at progress against plan, hers's a breakdown of the 1,701 items I painted this year. Of this 61 were 28mm figures, the other 1,640 were 20mm as usual.

Breakdown by period:
Period
Total
WW2
764
Terrain
370
Napoleonic
290
Renaissance
93
Medieval
64
SYW
48
Colonial
45
WSS
18
AWI
8
WW1
1
Grand Total
1,701

  • The dominant theme for the year was WW2, mainly concentrated on the Axis winter forces, but also covering a lot of rebasing/reworking of existing items and various die-casts.
  • Next biggest is terrain, showing the majot effort on the terrain for the SOGG big game this summer covering the fighting at Lentini, Sicily.
  • The thrid biggest period is surprisingly Napoleonics, where a large number of Prussian and French cavalry were reworked and rebased ready for the Ligny game. Only 33 new figures were actually painted.
  • Renaissance was only concerned with my Cossacks and Wallachians.
  • Medieval was one of my failures this year, alsmost all of these are 28mm dark agre Saxons
  • SYW only comprised the two Jacobite units, with the cavalry to follow shortly
  • I had completely forgotten that I added some Egyptian cavalry and artillery to my Colonial (Sudan) forces

Breakdown by category:

Type
Total
Infantry
488
Terrain
370
Rework
358
Vehicle riders
148
Gunners
88
Tanks and AFVs
72
Cavalry
55
Artillery
34
Commanders
27
Equipment (Mortars/MMGs, etc)
19
Vehicles
19
Horses
12
Other
7
Limbers
2
Wagons
1
Aircraft
1
Grand Total
1,701
No surprise that infantry is first but the quantity of terrain for Lentini also shows up here. 2016 has also been marked by the amount of reworking/rebasing/touching up carried out, in some cases it would, in retrospect, have been easier to start from scratch. Note this category also includes the tarted up die-cast tanks. The number of vehicle riders produced is down to the numbers of crewmen provided in the PSC sets, and I still have loads left over.

Overall a fairly successful year of painting and modelling

Will

02/01/2016

Review of 2015 - part 1

Crumbs, it seems hardly any time since I reviewed my half year progress
Yes, over half the year has passed by already, so I thought I'd better do a quick progress check

Major Projects (at least 100 figures, month or more in effort)

  • I’ve committed to produce the terrain for one of the tables for this year’s big game, which covers the Allied landings in Sicily 1943. This will mean quite a lot of terrain construction, but at least I can still use the buildings from the SOTCW Achse & Avalanche game from 2009
  • Completed, but it was quite a lot of work
  • Axis winter forces – German/Italian/Hungarian (from 2014 plan)
  • Completed to a far greater extent than planned, I'll certainly be adding extra units to my forces, but that will be as needed
  • Finish the Jacobites, by adding French and Lowland units (from 2014 plan)
  • Mostly completed, two infantry units completed, currently working on some cavalry, My existing French Dillon regiment will cover the Irish picquets. But I haven't worked out how to model the Gardes Ecossais.

Minor Projects (in no particular order)

  • Saracen cavalry and a few more archers
  • Not yet started carried forward to 2016
  • Crusader cavalry
  • Not yet started carried forward to 2016
  • HYW/WOTR English add some cavalry and a few more infantry
  • Not yet started carried forward to 2016
  • Cossacks – expand the force mixing in some Wallachians (Lucky Toys Vlad Tepes set) to add some variety
  • ompleted
  • Ancient German Warbands
  • Not yet started carried forward to 2016
  • Some Assorted Ancient Light Troops to fill in various gaps in my armies
  • Not yet started carried forward to 2016
  • Russian Partisans
  • Not yet started carried forward to 2016
  • Carried over from 2014 is a British Desert Motor Battalion, plus transport and an Infantry battalion
  • Completed
  • Upgrade my WW1 East African Germans with the new HaT figures
  • Not yet started carried forward to 2016

Other activities

  • Refight Ligny from 1815 (everyone else is doing Waterloo)
  • Successfully completed a great couple of days gaming
  • The stash is still far too big; I want to get it down from six storage boxes to five by the time we move. In line with this, I plan to complete as many plastic kits as possible, there are over 40 there at present so completing these should free up one box at least.
  • Total failure - the total number of unpainted items in my database has decreased by a pathetic 23 items from 7,463 to 7,420. Although the number of kits has declined I have compensated by storing away some "Works" Russian tanks for a future expansion of my Winter WW2 to cover late WW2. So no change in storage
  • Continue the attempt No new armies until after we move – will be quite difficult to achieve if plastic figure manufacturers bring out something tempting.
  • Still managing, just

I'll cover the breakdown of what's been painted in part 2

01/01/2016

Happy New Year and the last of the old year

Finished yesterday just in time for the New Year.

A Zvezda 105mm LeFH and 88mm Flak 36 with various crew figures scavenged as suitable for my winter Germans. Thanks to Hat, PSC, Armourfast and some unknown manufacturer.


A quick fix for a winter parka is to sand down any detail then add a triangle of miliput/greenstuff to represent the folded down hood


I also had a nebelwerfer sitting in my box of bits, since I don't know when, so I added a few PSC Germans as crew. Behind are a couple of 20mm Flak trailers that have been based up and spare old painted figures added


Best wishes to everyone for 2016