Blog Birthday

Tuesday was the 1st anniversary of my blog and this is my 99th post. I was planning to either post on the day or on my hundreth post, I've done neither. I've had a great year and I would like to thank all my followers and readers for their support, kind words and suggestions throughout the year.
As most of you will know it all started with the Snow Lord allowing me to enter the  V Analogue Hobbies Challenge. .As that ended I started my own blog and haven't stopped since.
I won a voucher from the lovely people at Barrage miniatures and my 2 armoured cars and a couple of free extra terrain features arrived yesterday. Something to do at the weekend.

Rush for Africa - Prologue

The walled Beja village of Abu Qurqas slept and the 2 bored sentries new that soon the sun would be up and they could get warm.
Suddenly 3 figures in red robes rushed out of the night and attacked them,

Azeez and Kareem were not on guard by accident and they fought bravely holding off the sinister attackers. "ALARM! ALARM"

As Kareem went down under the flurry of attacks the villagers and their chief Mohammed rushed from their beds to repel the attackers. "They must not get the treasure. Kill them all!"

Azeez fought bravely holding up the attack but 2 of the invaders charged forward. From the gate a pistol shot rang out and another of the villagers fell.

The Beja rallied and charged the 1st two invaders and knocked one down but the other one was skilled and they couldn't overpower him

Seeing the attackers stagger Mohammed lead the charge forward towards their leader

However as Mohammed passed the fallen invader he sprung up and smashed him in the head, killing him instantly

This enraged the Beja and they fought ever more furiously to avenge their fallen leader. They took out the slayer of their leader and then the leader of the infidel thieves fell to the ground,

But they couldn't over power the thieves and as the last two Beja fell they knew that a dark force was going to be awakened. They had failed but there were others to guard the secret.

Carter passed the smelling salts under the nose of Lord Caernarvon whilst Thomas and Henry helped the dazed Douglas back to his feet. "My Lord. are you well? The Brotherhood can not afford to lose you. We have the first piece of the puzzle". "Burn the village Carter, nobody must know we were here. Quickly now, there is much to do."

This battle was fought using IHMN rules and the Brotherhood will be back.

Skraelings and Books

I've finished my Skraelings, who will now wait patiently for a Viking invasion

Glorious day here in the North East and in between gardening i went down to Tynemouth market, a flea market in the train station. Usually a good place to by random stuff and cake. Bought a pretzel and chocolate cake, nice. I also bought a good selection a books

£2.50 each

Another couple of quid

Useful for my Africa campaign

I have thinking about a campaign for a while now but as a predominantly solo gamer it's hard to have 2 active sides. However recently I've been enthused by a the potential for a Colonial African campaign. The plan is to have 3 colonial powers fighting for control of late 19thC Africa. The 3 powers are Britain, France and Germany with the Germans being mainly female figures, I have the cool Hinterland figs. This will enable me to have mainly passive natives. Along side the main campaigns there will be smaller adventures and stories.

As is the way with my campaigns they will only be intermittently played so hopefully won't become the main focus of my blog. Also it means I have a lot of figs to paint, managed to pick the era with the most amount of painting to do - typical. It is also a return to my gaming roots, my first metal soldiers were 15mm Peter Laing Zulus.

More Reinforcements

I had another parcel today, which is a good job as I've already finished the Trolls and nearly finished the Skraelings

Like the Trolls, even if they are a little passive. They look like the worlds worst boy band, well not the worst but the ugliest, well not the ugliest but you get the picture.

The parcel was from Dixon's and contained their Dahomey collection (56 figs for £60). They are French colonial troops, and opponents, including female head hunters.

I have the starting of a plan for a Colonial campaign involving Brits, Germans and French fighting over an Imagination Africa using IHMN or Heart of Africa and another set of rules for major battles (once I've found a good one - suggestions welcome. )

The figs are great

French Foreign Legion in tropical dress - I already have some in classic desert attire

Dahomey men - slave traders possibly

Africa personalities including a guy dressed only in an officers jacket and kepi. Looks like the doorman in a nudist colony

Native porters - good objectives

Dahomey warrior women - these will work as askaris for my entirely female German force (Hinterland minis)

Colonial Trialleurs

The trialleurs inspired me to get out the bits box and convert 6spare ACW Zouaves into more Trialleurs

I used heads and arms + guns from the Perry Ansar box, will add sleeves later. The officer is a Prussian 19th century officer with a Wolsley type hat and some of the buttons removed.

Generally a good day and nothing to do all weekend but potter about - genius

Post Challenge Reinforcements

Not really done any painting since the challenge, think I've earned the rest. I did win 2 prizes during the challenge awards, a 30 euro voucher from Barrage Miniatures which I've used to buy a couple of  Bussing A5P heavy armoured cars for the VBCW collection.

I also won a £75 voucher from Westfalia Miniatures for painting the 2nd most number of figs. Will buy some Afghans I think with this.

Please visit their sites, they have some cool stuff and were generous enough to support the challenge. I won  a prize from Barrage last year and the boats and armoured car I got are great.

I've also been shopping. I got a £5 voucher from Warlord Games and bought these Russian Partizans for VBCW. Started to paint them but mojo off at moment. I've found Warlord figs a little hit and miss but these are really nice.

Since I played Blood Eagle I've been looking for more opponents for the Vikings and bought these Skraelings and Trolls from CP Models. They are great figs and will fight well against the Vikings The Skraelings have stone weapons so I will give them a -1 when the spears and arrows are being used against armour.

The trolls are really big and look really impressive.

Finally I've also ordered the Dahomey collection from Dixon Miniatures to give me some other powers for a Colonial Campaign I have in mind. Will post them when they arrive. That will probably all until Partizan in May. Not been there before and fancy a big show.

Michael Awdry is a Beautiful Human Being

During the recent VI Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge I had a side challenge with Michael Awdry of 28mm Victorian Warfare fame to paint the most number of Zulus. I was speed painting my fairly rubbish miniatures and Michael was painting his to is usual high standard, so I set up a 4:1 handicap to make it a fair challenge. I won, although it was fairly close. The prize to the winner was a Zulu Induna and Michael's figure arrived in the post this morning. Its a beautiful piece of work and I think  the first figure I have that has been painted by someone else.

He will look great leading my Impis into battle.
For those of you who have not seen my Zulus I'm pretty pleased with them. I bought the figs of ebay and they are a pretty poor lot, either with boring poses or poorly cast. I based them in groups of 12 and used coia to represent  elephant grass. The figures were painted simply with basic shading and I put the effort into the shields, these are most of the figs with a few other singly based figs

This is the only appropriate song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtqXuK2Ga3s

Thank you Michael

The late arrival of skeletons

At end of January I ordered some posable 25mm skeletons from ebob miniatures. They arrived Wednesday, too late for the challenge I like ebob's stuff and I don't ind waiting but in the age of easy electronic communication I would like to at least receive an order confirmation.
Any way the figs look like this

They are small and slender and my sausage fingers broke the 1st arm. However more care on my behalf and some superglue enable me to turn them into these

The figures were undercoated in Halfords grey car primer, given a heavy dry brushing with off white and then washed in peat brown ink. The weapons and shields were given a rusty look with either green for the bronze or Foundry scarlet shade for the iron.

I left the ground directly under the figs black and added a brown tuft to give the impression that they are spreading death as then move.

I'm pretty pleased with these. 

I've been fighting a VBCW for a couple of days but my small table isn't really big enough for battles with rifles so it's entirely down to terrain and a little static. Does look pretty though, Its Anglican league vs a German naval landing party

 German Naval Party

Naval Landing Party

Lindesfarne Monks