Flames of War and more....

Well I am very nearly out of German Flames of War models to paint, granted I do have several models yet to finish, a couple of SDkfz 250 half tracks, two Wespe's and a half dozen Opel Blitz trucks, all of these are more than half done, plus the six small bases of infantry from the new Infantry Aces blister, and my latest and quite possibly last purchase for a while on the FoW front a Bergpanther recovery vehicle.

Unfortunately I have been a rather busy over the last couple of weeks with other things that needed priority on my attention and time. I had a load of scenery to complete for Battlefront Miniatures, thirty feet of various river sections, with another thirty feet sat in boxes in my workshop awaiting attention, in addition to that little lot I cut up a 6 foot by 4 foot door mat which makes excellent 'wheat fields' for 15mm scale, unfortunately for me I picked the hottest day of the year to carve that mat up, so I was drenched in sweat by the time I was finished, however there was a large box of fields all boxed up and ready to go back to Battlefront.

My time over the last two weeks was not going to be my own either as I also had several articles to write up for both Wargames Illustrated and White Dwarf magazines, its surprising where all the time goes when you start doing jobs like that. Although last Friday I did mange to get a bit of painting done for myself first thing. I had to take my youngest daughter Kirsty for a medical assessment at lunchtime on the far side of Sheffield following a car accident she was involved in a couple of months ago, which meant that I was not able to get much time in the workshop.

However the time I had available in the morning meant that I could do a little bit of work on the two new 15mm scenery pieces I picked up from Battlefront on Thursday, a ruined Monastary and Vineyard set from the new Cassino ranges. They are very nice straight out of the box for the price, they are only priced at £15.00 per set which is great value for money, but I wanted to add another level of detail and weathering to them, so they were duly drybrushed and painted slightly differently to the boxed versions, however I am quite happy with the finished result and they now 'tie in' much more with my other small (but growing) collection of 15mm Western European buildings and ruins.

This week will see another thirty feet of river sections completed and the 8 foot by 4 foot roll of door mat currently sat in the workshop, cut up into 'wheat fields', hopefully it will not be quite so hot when I start to carve that roll up. Variations on a theme will be the order of the day for this roll of mat, with burned and scorched sections of fields rather than just plain fields.

Mind you, its not just been scenery and assembling of FoW models I have looked at this last couple of weeks. I managed to get a game of Warmachine in at COGS two weeks ago, one of my club mates has a tourament coming up at Maelstrom Games and wanted a practice game, so out came my Menoth army. I have concluded that I am not totally satisfied with some aspects of my Protectorate army, and so I am looking to sell some of them, I do not want to get rid of everything, but I want to hit the 're set' button and start again, get rid of models I never use, (there are quite a few), and maybe get some infantry type units that I have not looked at so far, I am not completely 100% decided which way to jump and will 'wing it' as I go along.

I also managed to dust off my collection of Circle Orboros models though, These have been assembled and primed for about three years or more, but I never got around to actually painting any of them. I plan to revisit this Hordes force and add to it in the near future, as I love some of the Warp Wolf models and hopefully get some games in too.

This coming Saturday (9th July), sees me at the Mantic Games open day in Bulwell near Nottingham and I shall be at the Festival of History in Kelmarsh North Northamptomshire on Sunday 17th July in the war games marquee, manning the GCN stand.