More Post Office Troops

Recieved a delivery yesterday from Ebor miniatures. I've been visiting their site for a couple of years but never bought anything. However my recent VBCW spurt pushed me over the edge. These are WW1 Belgians and will fit nicely with my Post Office workers in overcoats. The figs are very nice indeed.

2 Hotchkiss machine guns pulled by dog teams. I love the irony of Post men having dog teams. Little disappointed that the guns can't be set up in firing position but will investigate modifying or just buying the matching firing set.

Next up an infantry squad, Couple of broken bayonets but otherwise lovely.

I have the next 4 weeks off on holiday, really need a holiday. No major plans, except visiting friends and doing so DIY. Hopefully weather will be nice and I can spend time at the beach. Oh and chance to do some gaming and painting.

Onward Christian Soldiers

So I had this idea for a VBCW fast attack force. I've been developing an Anglican League force to be mainly composed of regular types (I have no regular soldiers in any of my forces and that seems wrong).

First up an Empress Rolls Royce Armoured Car (this has been seen before last year)

Next a die cast Riley scout car with added machine gun. (again seen before)

An uparmoured bread van (again a die cast model with wood and plate armour and a Bren gun. This will hold a squad.

This is a Perry Chevrolet 37mm portee AT gun. This is a lovely model. Bolt action rules give this a 360 degree arc of fire which is nice

So good I photographed it twice

3 Perry motorcycle riders, good when you need a little more fire power in that important spot

Finally a group shot. I think this unit will be really good with lots of fire power and speed

To the Brits make sure you vote today. There was a man on the TV at the last election who said he would only vote when we had proper  democratic representation. Obviously he was an effing idiot. Don't be an effing idiot vote.

The Union Forever

Whilst putting away the Northumbrian Army I decided to rephotograph them all as individual units and they will appear at the end of the blog. First up the miners. These are a collection of various unions united to fight fascism and to be blunt posh patriarchal types who think they know better. The Miners Collective exists to the North of Newcastle

The full force

The Postal workers including 2 rockets. One of these is a very old Citadel Nippon rocket, the crews are Northstar Franco-Prussian War figs. I have just ordered a couple of units to expand this force.

2 mortar crews, mortars are home made out of a Biro

The miners a mix of Footsore and Perry plastic ACW figs with Perry 8th Army kit

Russian advisors - Copplestone and Warlord

The Fire brigade armed with flamethrowers obviously and an ATR

The Border Reivers - gun running and dodgy geezer types

The glorious Port Vale football team under manager Tom Morgan - Perry 8th army with webbing removed

General Militia- these will fight for whoever needs them, although they may decide to rise up and kick all the other sides out of their county

Miners armoured division, a Carden-Lloyd carrier

The miners aren't really equipped for the offensive but will be adept at raiding and defending their turf.

Next up the Northumbrian Army force of Lord Percy

The Hellfire Club of Lord Percy, the nobility and their retainers - at least 5 different manufacturers

German Naval assault squad - Tsuba miniatures

German Naval Squad

Crew of the Valkyrie - German Naval landing party

Lord Ridley's Estate - all my figs in bowler hats

Northumberland Constabulary

BUF - Footsore plus Perry Afrika Korps

Mortars

Northumberland Rangers - Warlord Finnish, Afrika Korps and random German Winter troops

Armoured Division

Which leaves me the Anglican league to paint, I have a really smart idea for them and I've bought the relevant figs. Hopefully I'll paint most of them this weekend.

Forces need songs. Miners should be this , Can't think of a Northumbrian one at moment, Northumbrian folk music is mainly played on the pipes and is haunting not stirring

Lord Percy's Northumbrian Army

I've been adding to my VBCW forces recently and have now completed the Fascist forces of Lord Percy as he strives to reform the Kingdom or Northumbria. I say finished but obviously that isn't true Let's say finished for this campaign season. As we left it Lord Percy had sent for German reinforcements to counter a rebellion on Lindesfarne. The Germans captured Lindesfarne but got butchered in the follow up battle of Belford Wood by the Belford cricket team and were forced off Lindesfarne to regroup further South.
This sordid affair caused a much larger uprising in the south around Hexham where the Anglican League seized control. I now have 3 factions in action with the Dinnington Miners Collective between Percy and the free city of Newcastle.
The final figure is Lord Percy's personal standard waving the Northumberland Flag

Clockwise from bottom left. Northumberian Rangers, armoured cars and tank, German naval brigade, Northumbrian Police immediately below them (Police are always tricky as they are the good guys but are in favour of law and order so have to end up with the Fascists), Lord Ridley's estate workers, mortars, the Hellfire Club (upper class asshole types) and the BUF bottom middle.

Next time the miners.

On a more personal and real world note, last night MP Jo Cox was murdered. I did not know her and she wasn't my MP but I am personnaly offended. This is not how democracies work. Our representatives are sacrosanct. With the EU referendum coming up I find myself becoming more political. Normally I don't trouble others with my opinions, and relax I'm not going to now, but this vote is the most important one in British history and the consequences will decide the future well being of our country. If you are a Brit then don't forget to vote on the 23rd

Büssing A5P Heavy Armoured Cars

I won a couple of prizes during the VI Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. The Westfalia one is yet to arrive but the Barrage Miniatures one arrived ages ago, I was a couple of  Bussing A5P Armoured cars for my VBCW collection.
They are huge vehicles that dwarf everything else in the collection

My dice bag has arrived and it's great

Dice Bag

I received an image of my completed dice bag by Matt Slade. It is now in the post but I couldn't wait to show it off so here's the image Matt sent me.

I think it looks great. For those that don't know "Naufragium sibi quisque facit" means " Each man makes his own shipwreck". I'm a great believer that hubris is what brings men down and this sums it up nicely for me. If I could have a crest of arms (and it would show shovels and picks and pottery - I'm not from posh stock) then this would be the motto.

It was £15 including postage and took a week including several emails from Matt to check the design at various stages. Proper chuffed.

Need to play Bolt Action now

"Sir we've fixed the tank"

So yesterday's horror show of the badly manufactured tank has been resolved

After much cleaning up it looked like this

It now looks like this

Provided you don't look too hard it actually looks pretty good

I've been going through my bits box to complete some figures for the VBCW collection and I have completed a BUF ATR team and a sniper team. These are made out of Perry Africa Korps and 8th Army plastics.

It's amazing what you can get done while England are messing up the football again To be fair they were fantastic and only Harry Kane had a poor game. His mind seemed to be elsewhere and should have brought on Vardy later in the game. Still they did look very good

The Perils of ebay

I've had I quiet painting week, not really in the mood for detailed work so I have a lot of 1/2 painted figures at the moment. I have bought a lot of stuff recently though. I want to keep most of it secret at the moment as I don't really want to show it off until it's done. I did buy some Bolt Action dice as I want to give that a try. I have also ordered a custom dice bag from Matt Slade.
I did buy a Renault FT-17 tank from ebay. It was a bargain at £11 inc. p &p and it didn't have a picture so I was wary. It came within 3 days and it was a bag of crap. It was cast in resin and was mainly flash and moulding errors. The turret didn't fit and the gun looked like a metal log. Very dissappointing. I reminded me of the fossil hunter kits you get as a child where you have a block of plaster that has to be chipped away to reveal the fossil underneath. So I got out the Stanley knife, the Dremel, a hacksaw (yep a hacksaw) and the pin drill and chipped away and chipped away and drilled and sawed until it started to resemble the tank. I had to make the gun from some metal rods they were in the bits box. I had to fill in some gaps with Milliput to leave this.

Leave it for a day to harden then I'll give it a wash and try to paint the bugger.

As you may have seen before I sometimes cast some figure bodies to make my own figures using spare arms and heads from the bits box. I had also ordered some weapon sprues from Warlord and produced these figures. The mould was cast from a plastic zombie body and gave a good base.

Some militita, the heads are ACW zouaves with trilbies from the ACW hats and flat caps from Milliput. 

Regular infantry. I have left off the webbing at the moment and will either add it as card or paint it on.

Off to try and get my painting mojo back whist the footy is on

Anglican League Fast Scout Car and a pond, oh and some hedges

So yesterday I bought a 2 seater 1930's sports car and decided to turn it into a fast recce car for the Anglican League

I did a camo paint job and added a radio (forgot to paint the aerial), an LMG (ammo feed is on wrong side but who cares). The 2 figures are white plastic figures from the art shop you know the sort that  get added to models of buildings. Little large (32mm) but they fit in the car very nicely. I just added some hats. 

Looks a little basic but does look very fast, idea for scouting and hit an run attacks

I recently saw a link to this tutorial on a blog (can't remember whose blog). It uses Poundland Epoxy Resin to make water effects. I've used the Poundland stuff before (I use their PVA as you get loads for £1 and it works).

So as a trial I made this pond (I've never used any form of "modelling water before). The trick is to paint the base the could you want for the water - I used a green brown. The pond too a whole tube of the resin - they don't seal back too well 

Not a good picture - too sunny today but had an hour to kill before this afternoon's BBQ

Finally I made some hedges out of pan scourers which I flocked. If only Poundland knew what their stuff was used for