If you build it they will come.

Hi gang. Just a brief update, because to be honest, I have nothing to show.

From time to time I get stuck in a rut. I tire of painting and just keep building stuff. When I have completed building whatever I was working on, I start something new instead of finishing the project with a lick of paint. It's also at this time I go mad and buy a lot of stuff in a feeble attempt to fool myself that I'm not avoiding the issue.

Thinking about Saga

Taking a break from World War II I've been thinking about hairy brutes raiding and pillaging across Britain, taking lives, slaves and gold for Oden. In short, I have been fiddling with my Viking warband for Saga and reading the rulebook, thinking of what to do next.

My warband is assembled although not painted yet. It consists of my warlord with his bodyguard of four hearthguard, leading a band of eight warriors, four berserkers and twelve levies with bows. According to the rulebook the levies are "thralls" but I'm not too keen about that. First and foremost, "thrall" is the old norse word for "slave" and if I decide to go raiding I definitely do not want a bunch of slaves at my back with bows. That one is a no-brainer, if you don't want to get shot in the back, don't give your slaves weapons. Secondly, my bow-armed figures are mixture of old Wargames Foundry viking bowmen, with several carrying swords at their belt and some having cloaks and/or chainmail hauberks. So my levies will be a mix of young men on their first raid and older veterans that might not be fit to fight in the front ranks anymore but can bolster the others with their experience.

Two thirds of the bowmen. So far the only finished figures in the warband.

Plastic Soldier Company, 1/72 Panzerkampfwagen IV build

Well, my eagerly awaited box of Panzer IV's from the Plastic Soldier Company finally arrived. It was an impulse-buy following the announcement from North Star Military figures that they had recieved a few pack of Viking Dice for Saga. While ordering these I happened to order the Panzer IV's as well. It was an honest mistake, guv, swear on my mother's grave. Collateral shopping you might call it.

Anyway, I ordered two weeks ago. A parcel from UK to Sweden used to take about a week. If you were lucky you could order on monday and have it arrive on thursday, but usually it would arrive the next monday. I was able to calculate that the mail flights were on sundays and wednesdays from the regular arrival of my orders; always on mondays and thursdays. But nowadays it usually takes almost two weeks. Either the UK or Swedish postal services have really cut down on their staff or the amount of packages has increased enormously.

But on to the kit. The box contains three Panzer IV tanks and costs around £13. The tanks are fast-build, meaning that the kit has few parts and is aimed at wargamers. It is computer-designed and simply an up-scale of their 15mm kit. Although some of the details are simplified the overall detailing is good and the tanks really do look the part. Fastbuild kits for wargamers have been around for a while, but what's unique about this kit is that it offers the possibility to build four various versions of the Panzer IV. But more on that later. Let's take a look at what's in the box!

Old Stuff Day

Apparently March the 2nd was "Old Stuff Day", where you dig into the blog archive and repost an old post. Originator was the Warhammer 39.999 blog and although I missed the date I decided to dig something old and moldy up.

Before I started this painting blog I used to keep a series of project posts at our club forum and I think translating one of those would be quite suitable.  This was originally posted in two parts in september 2009 and detailed my preparations for a convention game about the Winter War at Stockholms Spelkonvent in december 2009. I have taken the liberty of editing the posts slightly while translating them to english. So without further ado, here is a blast from the past.

A pair of Frontline Resin's T26 soviet light tanks.

Aaaaalright, I have done some work on the T-26's. Cute little things.

Plastic Soldier Company, 1/72 WW2 British Infantry review

I recently bought a box of 1/72 scale British Infantry from the Plastic Soldier Company for my long-term Western Europe late ww2 project. My goal is to have enough british and german forces as well as terrain to play almost any scenario I wish. This means I need about a company of infantry per side, a couple of platoons of tanks and various support weapons. Still a long way off, but progressing slow and steady. As I'm a long-time sufferer of GAD -- Gamer's Aquisition Disorder -- I just couldn't resist adding these to the pile.

A sprue of british infantry. Inside each box are three identical sprues, for a total of 66 figures.

Now, the first thing that has to be said about Plastic Soldier Company, is that they are extremely good value for your money. Depending on where you buy it, this box of 66 figures will set you back around £11. From the contents you can assemble a whole platoon of infantry, with enough extra figures to build a lot of command and extra assets. If you scrounge a bit and are careful about what options you use, it's possible to get three platoons out of two boxes. That's your company right there! (I did a breakdown of how to assemble a platoon earlier, using the german box from PSC. Unfortunately it's in Swedish, but if you want to have look it's here.)

Dusty little jeep and friends

There have been some bad news regarding our planned LRDG game. The convention we were supposed to be playing at will probably be cancelled. While there are other conventions in our general area they are all too early in time, so our planning is all off. We will probably be hosting a game at one of them, but it will not be the LRDG game. So there's a bit of conundrum for us: firstly we all have invested some time, and not a little amount of money buying stuff for the game. In my case I have bought a Caproni bomber model as well as some italian figures and a staff vehicle from SHQ. Secondly, we have to figure out (pardon the pun) a suitable scenario and prepare the forces needen, in a short time. Therefore we have to do something eastern front since we have a lot of suitable terrain and large german and soviet forces. However our gimmick is to play a battle from 70 years ago, so this year we have to do something that happened in 1942. Most of our stuff will still be usable so there will be a minimum of investment in new stuff. Although those long-barreled Panzer F2 do look very tempting... yes, a platoon of those will do. Just a small one though...

All this mean that my motivation for working on the LRDG project has been quite low. I still plan to finish it and we will probably playing a small game on our own, but it's more work than fun now, sadly. Since I sort of ran out of steam I haven't finished allt the vehicles, but I thought I would show what I have done so far.

The harsh contrasts of the chipping has been muted by MIG Pigments.