What Ever Happened to Fay Wray?

That delicate satin draped frame.

I bought very little at the Other Partizan but I needed something to mount on the top of my pyramid, Luckily Cortani and Pulp miniatures came to the rescue

Cortani have an Aztec altar piece that fits nicely on the top of the pyramid. Pulp Miniatures have a pack of 1930's female captives including a brilliant King Kong piece of Fay Wray strung up between 2 posts awaiting the big ape.

The Cortani piece comes with its own altar top of a small monolith with a crocodile head piece

Overall I'm very pleased with the bits and now for a bit of pulp action

The Other Partizan 2018

Yesterday me, Dave, James and Scotty wandered down to Newark for the Other Partizan today. We were putting on another massive Sudan battle using a tiny fraction of Dave's huge, and wonderful Sudan collection.
Saturday was curry and about 5 pints to many.
Sunday up bright and early and very hungover. I'm getting too old for this drinking lark, and very out of practice. We met up with Ray and Postie, who had come up from Gravesend, pleasure to meet them, hope he's remembered to pay his Dartford toll
On with the battle

The layout. Egyptian army at the bottom, Me, Imperials in the village at the top, James with Mahdists in the middle, Dave vs me and Scotty vs James. The Brits were low on supplies, I had them in the huge baggage train. I was low on water and needed to get to the oasis in the middle before saving James

The Egyptians, couple of unit of Camel Corps, unit of lancers, 5 units of infantry, 4 cannon and some scouts. These are terrible troops and 1/2 are fresh off the painting table so I've got no chance

James has 3 units of infantry and some bits. James is a proud Scotsman and he has the Cameron Highlanders. problem is that James always manages to get every Scottish unit he commands slaughtered to a man. So things aren't looking good

Fuzzies facing James, i have a similar number facing me

I form a line as quick as I can as Dave launches an all out attack

On both flanks of my army

Dave even has a Gatling gun. My scouts rush out and take it out but are caught by the Fuzzies behind and are routed

Dave smashes into my line and one of my Egyptian infantry units simply disappears. Excellent

At the other end Scotty is launching wave after wave against James and although he is standing firm he is taking casualties

The Mahdists attack me again but I've got my cannons in place and although I keep falling back as a result of melee the cannons reek bloody hell and keep the Mahdists away. I forgot to take photos for the next bit, the exciting bit. I manage to get a regiment of camel corps to outflank the Mahdists and roll them up in 2 turns

My path is cleared and I can run to rescue James, but we went home before this happened.

So obviously I went shopping. Strangely enough i barely bought anything

Book on Meriwether Lewis, a mouldy book for £1

Altar piece for my pyramid

Couple of packs of Empress modern SAS

The freebie, a sitting WW1 Tommy

Pulp female captives, including a King Kong style Faye Wray, great for the pyramid

Finally the author Harry Sidebottom was at the show, he's often there. I was reading his latest, it's great and I really like his lead character - Ballista. These are a different series and I picked them up, he signed them and gave me a free Ballista figure by Aventine. Nice guy

Really good weekend out. Will post some of the other games later

Pyramid of Doom - It's never the Pyramid of Bunnies is it

I now have visions of a rabbit gymnastics team - sorry.
A rainy Sunday, England thrashing India at the cricket, obviously time for paining. I'd bought this pyramid from Amera Plastic Mouldings and it's suitably big

I can use it for loads of things and me and the rest of The Old Guard are running a participation game at Hammerhead next year. This could be the focus of our planned game.

I needed something to make it pop and thought about hieroglyphs, you can buy really cool hieroglyph printing blocks from USA, only £4 plus £12 p&p for a 3 week delivery time. So needed a new plan.

I use skull shaped beads as casualty markers and used one of these to make plaster skull faces which I used to line the walls of the pyramid

Like this

And this

etc.

etc.

etc

etc

except for the back which I covered in skulls like the other sides.

Annoyingly I only have very green flock so I used lots of tufts to make it look a little overgrown. I even stuck some growing out of the eyes of the skulls. I didn't coat it with sand, don't think it would have worked as well for this than for the houses, it's not an adobe pyramid

Overall I'm really pleased with this. I will look out an altar and a small building for the top. If different faces I could have used I think that would have helped with the overall effect

Finished the Amera Buildings

Typing quickly as Amera Plastic Mouldings has given me a shout out on their Facebook page for the painting I did of their really cool Nissen (Quonset) hut. Their last shout out broke the record for hits on my modest blog, which was nice.Those who frequent this page, "we few, we happy few" that my painting is of a fun standard, I'm a professional geologist not a painter.
I've finished 4 of the 5 buildings I bought from them

3 North African houses. I used mount board on the bases to give a little more rigidity. I mixed fine sand with emulsion paint (Wilko tester pots are keeping terrain painting alive and affordable). I then painted 2 of them with more emulsion paint (retro ochre) and then dry brushed. The darker coloured  house on the left was coated in sand the same way and then sprayed with Montana Gold Sand coloured spray paint. Hobbycraft have a deal of 4 cans for £20 (50% off) actually then don't but they forgot to take the sign down so I got them anyway for £20

Overall I'm pleased with these, they feel the right size with walls the correct thickness.

Next up the building that started this whole thing off, the Nissen hut, I really like this building and it was the reason I went to the Amera site in the 1st place, that and they are local to me in Prudhoe. Good to support the local economy

This was spray painted olive green after sticking on a card base. Don't forget to scuff up the glued surface if using PVA. I then washed if with a thin brown wash (Wilko Java Bean - have I mentioned Wilko already)

Windows are just painted black and window frames added in my trademark wonky style

This will be great for VBCW action, my favourite 

Overall I'm really pleased with these and can't recommend Amera enough. Now what I really need from then are waterline versions of their boats

Buildings from Amera Plastics

I spied out some 28mm buildings from Amera Plastics on the web, as they are a local company to me and very cheap I ordered some over the weekend and they arrived today. Luckily, or unluckily, I off work due to a weird reaction to my new diabetes meds. I have to take 2 per day for the rest of my life, and they've only given me 7:) I feel very sketchy and keep going to sleep. Hopefully it will pass.
On with the buildings they are simple vac formed plastic but sturdy. They are one piece and require no assembly, well the ones I bought didn't

Large Mayan style pyramid, this is big and should have added a figure for scale. It will double as a pulp pyramid and some darkest Africa ruin. Needs an altar or small building for the top. i have Egyptian and Mayan tomb layouts

I got out the spray paint and it painted up really well. Some dry brushing and sand will make it look really cool

I also got 3 North African buildings, same spray and same dry brushing plus adding windows and doors

Finally a Nissan Hut

Different colour spray paint and add some detaining and we are good to go

Overall these are really good and i only paid £30 for the lot including delivery. They have a wide range of stuff and will return for more stuff

Pontus 3 - maybe 4

The weather broke, still nice but less mad hot. So I managed to get some painting done. I'm back on the army of Mithridates and his quest to destroy the Roman Empire. He had a very diverse army, interesting to paint and gives me options for different army. The damn varnish went cloudy, on a bright and sunny day. I've spent 10 years varnishing with matt car lacquer and never had a problem. Move to proper modelling varnish and it's rubbish. Back to Halfords I think. I had to go back and touch up the black bits, hair mainly, post photos and they look OK.

All the figs, on 40x40 bases with a couple of generals on circular bases. These can used for Impetus  (don't like impetus), KoW (keep losing at this), Too the Strongest (yet to play and looks a bit linear) and Hail Caesar (never played). 

Sarmatian Horse Archers - enough for an army on their own

Black Sea Infantry - general has the casualty

Couple of bases of Generals and a base of Cataphracts

All are Forged in Battle with the exception of a couple of horses from Col Bills. Really loving this and have plans to buy some more 15mm at the Other Partizan too give me a couple of armies to fight each other or a really massive army.