Oliver's Army

 

"And how much did your father spend on those models?"

Catching Up with the Painting

As I write this paragraph, five more Italian infantry (for the surprise bonus extra squad in Chain of Command) are out in the garden being spray-varnished. Having already added the Bushwhacker and Churchill tank (see below dear reader), I realised that I really needed to hurry up and get this post out of the door before my painting progress made it longer than an undergraduate dissertation.

The last two plastic 'Mechs from my Lance Pack (of four)

Lockdown Labours

"Oh yes," I thought, "spending all my free time indoors I'll get plenty of painting and blogging done!" Har har har. Not only have I been dabbling in the videoed-games, the family clear-out of the lego (it's not like there's much else to do round here...) has occupied rather a lot of "model time". 

About half the lego in our mysterious boxes is now clogging up the dining room table. We didn't originally own the pirate ship, it came in bits in a box of lego some acquaintances were giving away.

How not to be seen

Private N. E. Seagoon of the 4th Armoured Thunderboxes has presented us with a poser: we do not know which tree he is behind, but we can soon find out.

Yes, it was the middle one.

Achtung Bagpiper!

20 mm Bagpiper (Britannia miniatures, sadly lacking kilt) with some fine brushwork on the tartan.

I wanted to get a figure, rather than a counter, to indicate force morale on the Chain-of-Command tracker (The Afrika Korps already have some surrendering chaps for this purpose) so I have a bagpiper. It only really works for Scottish units, but as the 51st Highland were at El-Alamein and the 15th Scots were in Normandy, that's the two theatres I have campaign packs for covered.

Some of these aren't technically tanks

Universal carriers: Spot the difference.

Note: universal carriers, not having a turret, are not tanks and therefore part of a balanced model painting diet. Which means the tanks and armoured cars to follow are entirely justified.

Tanks Again!

My mental health hasn't been great lately. This means plenty of models have been bought as retail therapy and painted in my secluded underground lair so there is plenty of content for the blog. Every cloud eh?

Airfix 1/76 T-34, assembled by my uncle, painted by me. During painting I gummed up the joint so unfortunately the gun doesn't elevate any more.

Slaves to Dorkness

I think my favourite strategy for getting stuff painted is to have four or five projects on the painting table at once, so that the desire to avoid painting one of them spurs you to paint another. Here is a case in point, I've started re-painting my chaos warriors (the first models I ever owned) for use in a future Kings of War army.

Re-painted Chaos warriors, now back in bold, bright colours with little regard for artistic coherence. Just as they should be. Flash used.

Unusually Timely Update

Some of you on social media will already have seen the new tank, unless I've been buried in the algorithms.

Another example of my unusual vehicle marking conventions: British white-red-white vertical stripes square converted into trans pride flag.

A Quick One Before 2019

Merry Christmas, Happy new something etc. Have a blog post for Christmas. I've got plenty of things 'almost done' so I thought it would be nice to show some works-in-progress for a change as I haven't done that for a bit.

I'd also like to mention the recent Meeples and Miniatures podcast where they are brave enough to discuss their mental health issues in detail. I thought this would be worth a mention as I've mentioned my (still ongoing) mental health stuff before and men need to talk about it more.

Peltasts almost finished, including two spare bases to fill out a 100 mm x 40 mm unit for Kings of War. Lovely uncomplicated miniatures from 1st Corps.

CoK Loot and Plans for Next Year

A morose air hung over the camp after the tournament. Two figures sat by a campfire, one a human with both arms in enormous plaster casts and the other a great beast-man with a bandaged lump on his head as large as an extra horn. One turned to the other and said: 

"It's no good. Next time we're going to have bring a competitive army list."

Gaming paraphernalia freebies. Tape measure not included as I'd lost it down the sofa by this point. 

Pre-Havoc Blogging

European Data Thingy preamble: Blogger and Google are using analytics, cookies and other data to spy on your house and plan the kidnapping of your dog. I do not personally store any of your personal information. I hope this message is legally watertight.

These are amongst the first models I ever owned, finally given them a proper paintjob.

This post was planned to go up before the tournament report, but it hasn't.

Base-ic Instinct

With the new models, I decided I needed some new bases to mount them on. Unfortunately, I underestimated the size of a peeg, so now I have 32 15 mm MDF circles and nothing to do with them, as well as an absence of 25 mm rounds and the suspicion that 30 mm might fit the fast attack options perfectly.

This picture doesn't really do it justice, but the bases are too small

Christmas Comes Late

Met the lovely family for the first time since Christmas. I had a lovely catch up and so on, but more importantly I picked up the parcels I've been waiting for for weeks!

Gunny Peegs [sic] by Bad Squiddo games, with 28mm 'human' for scale purposes.

I Need a New Spray-Varnish

Unlike many of my photos, the poor quality here is due to too much varnish blurring the models rather than shoddy camera work

My spray-varnish broke a nozzle late last year, and I thought I could use up the remaining varnish by holding the nozzle bit over the can and pressing down. This was good enough for the last round of varnishing, but this time I massively overdid it on a couple of models and ended up with fuzzy grey patches. Argh. Now I have to not only spend money on more varnish but also repaint these chaps to fix the harm as best I can.

Keep reading, there's more news under the break.

Send Help

WHAT HAVE I DONE

If you can't send help send more 'Mechs.

More Stuff I Haven't Painted Yet

One thing about moving house is that you go through all your wargaming stuff and find not only the models you painted badly at the age of 16, but also all the models you failed to paint at the age of 16.

Some well sculpted Perry Men of Gondor. The photograph makes them look a lot better painted than they actually are.

'Mechs 'Mechs 'Mechs

Exciting news in Kings of War, the long prophesied Global Campaign started last weekend, so I've been celebrating celebrated by painting my 'Mechs.

I'm not sure whether the indistinctness of the Wolverine (left) is due to my excellent camouflage painting skills or rubbish photography skills. Also Shadow Hawk (centre) and Locust (right).

Lawyers, 'Mechs and Money

Remember that lawsuit I mentioned in the last post? Well it turns out that some 'Mech designs and art have been creeping a little too close to the original designs, and Harmony Gold are suing again. A very appropriate time to talk about my latest (and hopefully final mech-related) buy.

The 3rd edition, chock full of 80's art and bad casting.

Not Even Justice, I Want to Get Truth!

Today's title comes from Fang of the Sun Dougram, and the link between an influential giant robot anime and toy soldiers will be made clear later in this post. 

Wolverine (left) and Shadow Hawk (right) from Fang of the Sun Dougram, Phoenix Hawk (centre) from Super Dimensional Fortress Macross