And do your tunic up!

"A spot of medicinal brandy would set me up, sir!"
"Brandy's for heroes, Mister Hook..."

Zulu is just my favorite movie ever. I used to have a six foot tall original movie poster, but lost it in a move! A few years back, I even subscribed to Wargames Illustrated just to get the Mark Copplestone Hollywood and historical figures of Gonville Bromhead. So it definitely warms my heart to see this figure pack of Chard, Bromhead, Colour Sergeant Bourne and Private Hook from Empress Miniatures. Apparently, these new figures will be available in about a month, although my order is already in. I still retain no illusions about doing Rorke's Drift in 25mm, though. That's too many Zulus to paint!

"Sixty! I painted at least sixty, wouldn't you say?"
"That leaves three thousand, nine hundred and forty..."


A crossed eye stereographic picture of Bromhead leading British soldiers!

Another Week, Another Platoon

I could get used to this! Unfortunately, this could be it for a while as I head into some vacation time. However, I'm very proud of this unit of Battlefront M4A1 Shermans. I thought they turned out very nicely. I like the tank commander on the left-- remind you of anyone? I don't suppose it's too late to sculpt a beard and mount loudspeakers on the sides of the tank! Maybe when I get around to the decals. Anyway, this should give me a satisfying enough selection to run a largish game between my US Airborne and Panzergrenadiers, so I'm happy. I'll probably be looking to flesh the Germans out now that I have some more Allied support. Now, off for some historical research at Netflix.

Battlefront Panzer IV ausf. H platoon

Another dalliance whilst I wait my next order of early war panzers-- late war panzers! Panzer IV Hs, to be exact. My son has been making noises about playing Flames of War with me, and I have to think it will be more fun for him to have tanks out there. Next up will be some US Shermans and then the fur will fly. I thought these wound up looking pretty nice. They're a little more involved than the early war stuff which I can just paint grey! Ah well, the American Shermans should be easy-- just OD green. Oh yeah, I should go back and put some insignias on here, I forgot about that. I even picked up some decal solvent. Not really a priority right now, though.

I have been cranking out figures lately! Work has been very busy. It's better than having nothing to do, but it's a bit stressful and I have definitely been turning to painting miniatures to relieve some of the stress. This weekend will have a welcome return to some gaming after a few weeks absence and I'm looking forward to it.

More 40k Deathwatch

A couple of more 40k Deathwatch space marines I painted up as a distraction. I expect a large upsurge in Deathwatch interest soon! Since Deathwatch marines come from other chapters to serve the Inquisition, I selected two of the more esoteric chapters I could find-- the sergeant is from the Death Eagles, and the heavy bolter is from the Flame Eagles. The sergeant's back banner is free-handed. It's not great, but it's not that bad. Not being an artist, I'm not too disappointed.

Fall Gelb!

I got a couple of Panzer IIs done for France 1940. The Panzer II was the most numerous German tanks in 1940 by twice as much as any other, yet with a 20mm gun and 14.5mm armor was considered unsuitable for tank on tank combat at the time. That's kind of what intrigues me about the period-- if we play company scale Flames of War, the French should dominate. Yet at division scale Field of Battle, the German's superior tactics and command and control should come to the fore, as they did historically. I wonder if I should include some radio aerials on these? The better, more numerous and more integrated German radios played a big part in their victory. I'm really looking forward to getting a game going! These three Pz IIs are Old Glory Command Decision Pz II d-e's. I'm not sure why I bought that model, it would seem the b-c model would have been correct. Anyway, I have another pack of b-c's coming, I should be 50% correct when I field them!

The number of command stands shall be ten---

"Eleven, sir!"

I gave myself until midnight Sunday, basically a week, to get the command stands done for France 1940. I had laid out all my figures, primed them, and then let them sit on my desk until the weekend and I had time to paint them. Well, I didn't have quite as much time as I had hoped, but 11:45 PM Sunday rolled around with me popping them off the tongue depressors and scoring the bases in order to glue them on, just under my deadline. But, lo, what's this? An extra base?? After counting and counting-- I had shorted my figures one stand. Sigh. So, one deadline blown and three figures still left to paint before I can move on to the armor...

Nice custom maps with the GIMP

Having nice maps adds a lot to any game. Here is a nice article about using the free software GIMP to make some high quality maps. Although geared towards RPG maps, obviously it would work for anything. I haven't tried it yet-- it looks complicated, but it has step-by-step instructions, so it should be doable. The results look like it's probably worth the time to figure out. One of these days...