Small Hedges from Pendraken

Following on from my last Chain of Command game, the Battle for Le Renau Farm, I decided I needed more terrain options. In particular, I want terrain that would offer some cover but also be easily crossable. I have already painted up a lot of stone field walls and now I decided I needed some small hedges. So I turned to the internet for inspiration and I am really happy with what I found on the Pendraken Website. They make several sets of resin hedges that were ideal for my needs and at just £2.50 per foot wouldn't break the bank in terms of cost. 

As with all resin, I started by washing and scrubbing the models in hot soapy water to remove any oily residues from the casting process or from handling, and then left them overnight to dry. Once dry they were sprayed with my usual Brown primer and then given a coat of Dark Green (a can of Tamiya that I picked up for a couple of pounds on eBay) as a basecoat. Several layers of highlighting followed and with the ground and the gates picked out that was it. As usual, I sealed the models with several coats of varnish to protect the paintwork, so hopefully, these should be featuring in my games for many years to come. 

I bought enough straight sections for 6' of hedge with some additional gate sections and a couple of sets of curves and set of corners to make a total of about 10' of the hedge. Hopefully, that should be ample for my needs, but knowing me I'll end up buying more at some point in the future!

I'm now giving some thought to what other 'scatter terrain' I can work on to continue to enhance the look of my Normandy Games. I have some old prepainted sandbag emplacements that need a repaint so I may work on them next. Any other suggestions folks? 

Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge X - Body of Work

The Tenth Painting Challenge is over and I don't know about anyone else but I'm all brushed out for the time being. I need to clean up my Operations Room and find a home for the massive amount of stuff I painted! I've only had this hobby room for a few months and it's already FULL! I'm not complaining though, it has been a fantastic challenge and I've been more productive than at any time before. So time for my 'Body of Work' picture.

So what's in that mess-o-models? Quite a bit for me, I'm used to a smaller collection of work by the end of the Challenge. So here's a brief picture review of everything I managed to get done.

I think it must be obvious from these pictures that my work hasn't been dominated by 6mm this year. I had a quick look at my own personal 'Spreadsheet of doom' (yes I have my own!) and it turns out that 880 points from my 1400 total came from other scales. And worse still (according to RayR) nearly half my points were earned from work on a particular ice-bound Fantasy game. At this rate, I'm likely to have my membership of the Rejects revoked! Certainly, my reputation as 'the 6mm historical guy' is in doubt.

As already mentioned, I always keep a tally of my planned projects during the Challenge, tracking my progress as the week's tick past. I'm rather chuffed to say that I've outperformed myself at every stage of the competition. I've achieved a new 'personal best' and by every measure that I count, this has been my best Challenge ever. 

I'm already looking forward to the next Challenge and have started giving some thought as to what I want to paint. Alexanders army to face off against my Indians is a strong contender, but who knows. I look forward to seeing some of my fellow Challengers in the recently announced Quarantine Challenge and many more in December for Challenge XI.

Mammoth & Bison Riders

A slight change of tack from me today as I submit my contribution to a charity project for James MacCraggs (aka The Mad Tin Hatter). Last year James and his wife suffered a terrible loss and Jamea wrote very movingly of how he would like to raise money for charity (detailed here and here). 

Back in November Posties Rejects went to the Warfare show in Reading and on the way down there we discussed a joint contribution to this worthy cause. So when we got access to the trade hall we went straight to the Kallistra stand and each picked a couple of units to paint up. Ray has already painted his contribution and now it's my turn. Having just painted a load of 6mm Elephants I thought I should do something completely different.... 10mm Mammoths! 

I've not really painted 10mm before so this was interesting to see the difference between it and my normal scale. It was certainly fun to paint and I was able to use washes on these whereas I usually employ ink washes on my 6mm stuff. Interesting! 

Along with the Mammoths are more Barbarians this time riding Bison! Most impressive and very tough looking. 

James asked that submisssions not be based up so he will do this stage, but for the sake of presentation I have tacked these models to some plain bases. They will snap off easily when they are moved to their final home. 

Points wise, these are relatively simple. 2 Mammoth and six riders should get me 12 points and the 16 Bison riders will net another 32 points, so 44 points all in. One more step towards my target, and a modest contribution to a very worthy cause. 

The Challenge Prep Begins

The long process of Prep'ing for the Analogue Challenge has begun, and I thought I'd start with a little something to get Ray's blood pumping! I bought these Martian Tripods earlier in the year from Pendraken when I briefly flirted with the idea of doing the Anglo Martian War of 1895 in 6mm. Ironically it was the asymmetric nature of the struggle that eventually put me off pursuing the idea. I say ironically because I eventually decided to do the Anglo Zulu War instead, another asymmetric conflict from a few years earlier and one that probably inspired H.G. Wells to write his most famous work. 

I'm waiting for some large round bases for the Tripods then I'll undercoat them ready for the Challenge. Although I have pinned all the legs they still feel too fragile not to base these models to dd some extra rigidity. No idea if these will ever end up on the games table but I'm looking forward to painting them non-the-less.  

This 'Guide' to the Anglo Martian War of 1895 is an excellent companion
to the H.G.Wells Novel.

Salute 2016 Photo review

I've already posted my initial thoughts on Salute 2016 but having slept on it I have one additional observation to make and I suspect many others felt the same way as I. This years Salute had a weird vibe about it from the start. Several people and traders said the same thing and essentially I think it boils down to the fact that this years show had fewer Clubs and more traders running games. Consequently it felt more like a trade show this year rather than a celebration of our hobby. I've no idea of this was a commercial decision on behalf of the organisers or just the way it turned out but it did feel like there was a lot of unused space that could have been filled by more club demo's and participation games. I still enjoyed my day but it definitely felt different this year. I'd be interested to know what you thought.

It took a long time to sort through the 600+ pictures I took during the day! Many were reference shots of labels and posters so once I have the info transferred to the accompanying pictures I delete these. There were also a LOT of blurry pics and badly lit ones so the 600 got trimmed down to about 250, and that takes time. Then I label them, add tags and upload them, all of which takes a lot longer than writing this post! I have them in some sort of order now and here's a selection of my favourites.

The obligatory shot of the queue...lots of eager gamers!

Inside the vast Excel centre. 

Gillingham & Brown - 28mm - Action at Antietem

Gillingham & Brown - 28mm - Action at Antietem

The Young Padawan shooing... almost outspent me!

RAF - Formula Minion

Battle of Hooks Farm

Chesterfield Gaming Society - 28mm - Kings of War

Swordpoint - 28mm

Bill Gaskin & Friends -- 28mm - SYW - Battle of Wilhelmsta

Bill Gaskin & Friends -- 28mm - SYW - Battle of Wilhelmsta

Ian Smith & Friends - 40mm - Battle of Adrodas - Penninsula

Ian Smith & Friends - 40mm - Battle of Adrodas - Penninsula

Loughton Strike Force - 28mm - Russo-Finnish War - Battle of Raate Road

Loughton Strike Force - 28mm - Russo-Finnish War - Battle of Raate Road

Loughton Strike Force - 28mm - Russo-Finnish War - Battle of Raate Road

Operation Overlord Participation Game - Based on the Avalon Hill Boardgame
I actually signed up for a game and then completely forgot the time and missed my slot! Sorry guys, the game looked excellent.

Emily meets the locals

Postie gives me a tickle! 

The Padawn at the EM4 stand. She bought a lot from here!

Adrian McWalter and Quinton Dalton - Napoleonic - O'er the Hills

Adrian McWalter and Quinton Dalton - Napoleonic - O'er the Hills

New Buckenham Historical Wargamers - 28mm - Agincourt

Maidstone Wargames Society - 3mm - Road to Homs

The Blogger Meet Up. Great to see everyone again. See y'all next year!

Heroics and Ros - 6mm - 1986 - Soviet Invasion of Nato

Victrix - 54mm - Spain 1800

Victrix - 54mm - Spain 1800

Tunbridge Wells Wargaming Society - 15mm - All Quiet on the Martian Front

Tunbridge Wells Wargaming Society - 15mm - All Quiet on the Martian Front

A big Fantasy game but without a sign saying who was running it. 

Lost of Fantasy miniatures

Someone is impressed!

Sheffield Runelords - 1/24th - Mad Max: Stop the Truck

Crew & Nantwich Club - 28mm - ECW - The Bloody Siege of Bristol

Crew & Nantwich Club - 28mm - ECW - The Bloody Siege of Bristol

Crew & Nantwich Club - 28mm - ECW - The Bloody Siege of Bristol

K&R

Essex Gamers - 28mm - The Tet Offensive

Essex Gamers - 28mm - The Tet Offensive

Hammers Slammers

Dalauppror - 28mm - Foteviken 1134

There were many more smaller Demo's and lost of small Participation games but most of these seemed to be run by traders. Lots to see and even more traders to try and get around made the day even more exhausting than usual... or maybe I'm just getting old?!