Two lots of painting are going on at the moment. Napoleonic light French infantry in greatcoats and a couple of fast build Panther tanks.

The panthers have just had their prime camo blocked in, giving a traditional tri-colour pattern for 1943. All paints are Vallejo, the yellow is German Yellow from the air range, the brown is cavalry brown, which has a reddy hue to it and the green is a mix of Russian Green and the much lighter Uniform Green.

It all looks a bit harsh here, but it will be dampened back slightly as things progress. There is still plenty to do. The ‘Current Build’ tab has been updated.

Re the post below, I have rebased the French infantry, going to two bases. Two bases will give me line, assault column and can do square. The weakness is visually when attempting to use road march, but I can live with that for the benefits. To represent march, I just make a column and put a separate leader at it’s head.

This is now a 20 figure unit, so the 4 spare figures will go back into the stash for now.

The new bases are 80mm wide by 40mm deep, each with a frontage of 5 figures. The old basing only gave 4 figures over the same 80mm, so the new ‘bunching’ makes for a better looking unit, in my humble opinion!

This is just a rebase and flock, I have resisted the temptation to go in wit a brush for some highlights.

Another e-bay acquisition and lovely they are too! These are plastic French Line infantry by Warlord Games and I have a number of boxes of the same figures currently awaiting painting.

I saw these on e-bay and thought they would eventually go for a much higher price than the starting bid, so I threw in my bid, which was base price, plus £8, not expecting anything and here we are …. I won the auction.

There are 24 figures here,  though my units are in 20’s, plus these are based 2 figures to 40mm, but my basing is 5 figures to 80mm, so I get a bit of a tighter, shoulder to shoulder look.

I would normally be a bit fearful of re-basing these in case I did any damage, but they have been based onto plasticard, which looks to be a millimetre thick or even a tad less, so I will just see if I can get away with trimming the plasticard bases and then remounting to 2mm MDF.

Anyway, they are lovely and if I deduct the price of the box for the raw plastic of around £22, then these at £68 would work out at £46 for the painting, which for 24 figures, painted to a good standard, I consider very reasonable.

The e-bay listing attributes the painting to ‘Skinny Kit’, so I will mark up the new bases with that information, just as a thing of respect.

Plus, I will study these figures to help me paint my own French infantry to a better standard than I normally might!

I have a lot of raw plastic in the stash, so buying painted is a bit of an indulgence and will not be a regular thing, but just to have these is a joy and will motivate me to press on with my own stuff.

It should be said that whilst quite a bit of stuff has been ‘incoming’ of late, it is rather balanced by some good selling on e-bay over the past few weeks, as part of the big clear-out and streamlining.

On the painting sticks, I currently have a unit of French Light infantry 1812 - 1815, so they are later than the period that I am looking at (1809) ….. but, does this face looked concerned! :-) 

Face-to-face tonight - we put out another of the scenarios from Brothers at War, this time the first part of the Valverde battle.

Here, the Union under Roberts are trying to cross the ford to take on the Confederate forces before the CSA reinforcements arrive.

The Confederate forces pin the Union against the river, making it difficult for the Union to bring up more troops.

Roberts had difficulty in activating, as on several turns, his chits just didn’t come out of the draw cup, but the Union artillery made up for that, putting great hurt on the Confederate forces.

The Confederates brought up their artillery and employed it densely in the dry river bed, firing up and along the depression and clearing the Union from the thicket beyond.

As the Confederates drive in their attack, they take very heavy losses and break their brigade in doing so.

It is a year since Piggy Longton hit the table and the last game ended with some multiple twists that will all need addressing.

I picked up Dan Jones’ The Hollow Crown today at Waterstones, just to re-embed some of that factual knowledge that seeps into the Longton accounts.

I find him an easy read ….. essential when dealing with the multiple characters and complex  and changing inter-relationships of the powerful and influencers of the day.

I will read this with a particular eye kept out for matters relating to the Stanleys and Percys for when I start to take a closer look at Bosworth (again)!

The Sunday Times in their Book of the Year selection said ‘Written with the pace and flair of a novel .. this is not just an impressive example of old-fashioned narrative history, it is an epic soap opera based on serious scholarship’.

Re the Napoleonic Cuirassiers that I received from e-bay a few days ago and featured below, I have given them a little touch-up - initially against my better judgement, as I thought they were too nice to mess around with.

Their basing had quite a bit of stone showing which had been dry-brushed white. Then a small amount of static grass had been scattered here and there.

The cavalry had been painted up as the Polish 14th Cuirassiers, who were at Borodino 1812 for the Russian campaign, so I rather fancy the idea of the original owner was to give them a chilly look, but not too much, so that they were still functional for summer fighting.

I have already decided not to rebase these to my standard 80mm basing, but I thought I would bring the basing closer to the way I do stands.

This involved a light dry-brush of GW Zandri Dust over the white on the stones to gently kill the white, a coat of green paint to the base edge (over the brown) and then a generous tufting and flocking, to get them closer to my own basing.

Overall it works because it matches my own stuff, but to my eye, it also helps the figures stand out from their bases.

While I was in confident mood, I put some highlights in, just on the three primary colours, red, yellow and blue. At the end of all of that, they got a very light spraying of Humbrol mat varnish.

Anyway, the kids are getting me these for Christmas, so I will put them away now, but they will stay here ……. In case grandchildren discover them and think they are toys :-) 

I have added a page to the menu called ‘Current Build’. This will just follow the progress of an item of whatever description as it moves from the stash and inches its way towards the wargame table.

The first item up is a pair of Panther tanks from the Italeri fast build range.

In truth, these are not from the stash, but rather, were picked up today from Hobbycraft (UK arts & crafts store) and they just tickle my fancy, so here they are!

There are already two Panthers in the ‘mid way’ stage. They are Plastic Soldier Company (PSC) models, the ones with the zimmerit anti-tank paste on the body, these were made up about 18 months ago, but never painted.

The projects here will just be plodding projects that just ‘fit in’ with doing other things, so the ‘Current Build’ page can be expected to slowly drift along, but hopefully not 18 months!

I am not a modeller, these are just simple wargame projects. The new content will get added to the bottom of the page to keep a sense of chronological order.

Modelled as the 14th Polish Cuirassiers in Perry plastic 28mm. This was a single lot on e-bay, for a fixed price of £50, which I thought was very good.

I am collecting with 1809 in mind, but I am not that bothered about what units are what, so even though this is a unit fitting Borodino 1812, they will simply be nice cuirassiers to me.

I picked them up as a Christmas gift from the kids and they seem quite pleased that I am so easily sorted!

This is the first time that I have made the jump to order pre-painted (used). It is always hard to tell from an internet photo how things will actually look.

On ordering, I thought I might need to touch up a bit and perhaps re-base to fit my 80mm base frontages, but on arrival, I couldn’t be more delighted and will simply leave them as they are.

I now have to squirrel them away and wait for the big day.