Convention report, CoC sale and planning ahead

Phew, I managed to paint all the figures and finish nearly all terrain for GothCon, the biggest gaming convention in Sweden. But I will tell you more about that later on.

First I want to mention that Chain of Command has been nominated for an Origins Award in the Best Historical Miniatures Rules category. Rich is celebrating the good news with 15% off on Chain of Command until 1st of May. Now is a good time to pick up those tokens or jump off points you need, or why not the campaign supplement At the sharp end? And if you are like me and already have the rules and all the tokens and bits you need, then you can always splurge on one of the 28mm starter sets available: late war Germans and British.

Yep, you heard me, I have bought late war 28mm figures... I wasn't going to do that, it was an honest mistake. I was just going to complete the early war figures I already had, late war was always meant to be fought in 20mm... but those Crusader figures are just so damned nice, and 15% off an already discounted price was just too hard to resist. Add to that the fact that Italeri is collaborating with Warlord Games and will be releasing a line of 1/56 scale models -- rumours have been flying that Italeri already was doing the plastic hanomags and M3 halftracks for Bolt Action, but this new info is confirmed from both Italeri and Warlord Games. They will start with a Sherman, a Cromwell, a Panther and a Puma eight-wheeled armoured car, all late war stuff fitting for Normandy. There has been no announcement wether the kits are upscaled versions of their 1/72 models or not. I was also expecting some new terrain items, but instead Warlord Games will be selling Italeri's 1/72 scale stonewalls as 28mm, increasing the price without increasing the size, something that didn't go down well on The Miniatures Page.

The original kit...

...and the Warlord Games set. It's even the exact same pieces rearranged slightly.

So how did the convention go? Read more after the break. (Warning! Pictures of hairy wargamers!)

Bridge over troubled water

Small update, between ferverently painting stuff for Gothcon (just shy of two weeks away!)

What do you call the middle of a song? Oh, you've heard that joke.

This is of course the Italeri bridge I previewed earlier. Basecoated, washed and drybrushed in much the same way as the small shrine from last post.

Building the world's smallest crucifix

For the record I'm an atheist, or maybe a heathen. Pagan, whatever. I don't care, I don't believe.

But the little people who live on my gaming table are probably religious, more or less anyway. There's a saying that there are no atheists in a fox hole and that may be true. But if we are a little bit more serious the inhabitants of Normandy in 1944 would mostly be of the Christian faith. So when I saw this little roadside shrine on eBay I knew it would fit right in.

Made by Extratech, the copyright is 1999 but the kit is still available.

More US Paratroopers painted.

Hi gang. Been slaving away on my paras and completed a big load of them. I was going to do them six at a time but for some reason I nearly completed six and then I started on the next batch. However as I can't count very well I actually painted nine more... well, here they are.

Half a squad of grunts. Note the poor sods lugging around the browning MG.

More after the break.

Painting table Saturday

There's a thing now on blogger where you show your painting table on Saturday. It was started by Sofie of Sofie's Paint Blog who also drew the nice graphic below.

I have forgotten about it previously, or I wasn't doing any painting on Saturdays, but today I remembered. Too bad I'm not painting,  just doing a lot of assembling. But here goes.

Yep, todays painting table is the kitchen table! 

Jump Off Points for Chain of Command

A wrecked cart and a lot of battlefield debris from Sgts Mess.

Oooh look a motorcycle! That will look spiffing in a ditch!

Until next time.

Electric!

I'm sorry for the lack of updates, but fear not dear friends, I have been making progress. My work sent me on a three day course out of town. I did bring some paints and some miniatures but I mostly did undercoating and shading work. Too dark in the hotel room to paint properly. When I got back home I was a bit tired of painting US paras so I decided to do some scenery items for a change.

A transformer station. No, not the kind that turns into a giant robot.

Elhiem US Paratroopers Painting Guide

I have finally recieved all I need to start painting the forces for Easter's demo game at GothCon in Gothenburg.

Some lurrverly figures from Elhiem, or Matt as his real name is.

When I ordered the figures last summer I simply ordered a pack of everything, thinking it would give me roughly a platoon sized force. However, the 82nd and 101st airborne had very different equipment in Normandy which meant I couldn't use some packs and didn't have enough of other packs. I also realised when I was about to start painting that I was out of round bases. After a frenzy of completing orders I was finally able to start painting last week.

PSC Panther A with Zimmerit Review

This will be a quick build and I will let the photos do the most of the talking. Afterwards I will give you my thoughts on the kit.

The finest Krupp steel, but in plastic.

For those unfamiliar with The Plastic Soldier Company, they do fast build affordable WW2 models and figures aimed at Wargamers. They recently released a kit with two Panthers with Zimmerit in 1/72 (or 20mm) which is what we will be looking at today. You get two model tanks in the box for £13.95. Presumably the Zimmerit is harder to sculpt and mold since you get three tanks for the same price in PSC's other kits.

4Ground 20mm Hayloft build and review

As you might be aware of, 4Ground are makers of very fine, pre-painted MDF building kits. So far their kits have only been available in 15 and 28mm much to my sadness as they look very good indeed. Now Plastic Soldier Company have released  a line of 20mm buildings made by 4Ground to specifications by PSC. The first release is a Normandy farm complex available either as one large bundle or as individual buildings.

The whole shablooie. The Big Kahuna. The Mother of all Farm complexes. You get the picture.

I couldn't resist ordering one of the buildings when PSC had their black friday sale recently and opted for the Hayloft, top right in the above picture.

Battling the Black Dog

So this is my 200th blog post, not counting the handful of drafts that never were finished. I promised a give-away when I reached this number, but not today. Maybe tomorrow, or the day thereafter. Soon anyway, I'm currently pilfering around and excavating the nether regions of my lead mountain for suitable items.

The Lead Mountain according to Wikipedia. Yes, it's a real place!!!

But in this post I want to talk about something else; I recently suffered a bout of depression. Churchill described getting visits from "his dreaded black dog" now and then. It's really a fitting description. It's hard to explain how it feels to people who haven't suffered from real depression, but I will try. Feel free to skip the text and only look at the eye-candy at the end if you don't like to read my ramblings. Don't forget to tune in for the giveaway next time, though.

Mirliton Italian Soldiers in Tropical Uniform

In a couple of weeks we will be hosting a Chain of Command game at Flemcon in Stockholm. It will feature a LRDG attack on an italian airfield. We have lots of LRDG vehicles, but almost no Italian defenders. Actually there are very few italian miniatures available. I guess it's because the Italian soldier of WW2 isn't quite hyped up as much as say, the Waffen SS or the soviet Guards Armoured divisions.

Betrayed by higher command and a crappy domestic arms industry, the Italian soldier nevertheless fought with great tenacity in several theatres including North Africa and the Eastern front. Luckily for us, there are some small companies producing Italian models and miniatures, including Mirliton Miniatures, from you guessed it, Italy. I decided to order a few items to try them out, and lo and behold, a few weeks later a package arrived.

Mmm... the golden brown hiding precious treasures...

British Steel -- Revell Churchill

In a bout of nostalgia and inspired by my mate Jocke's blog posts about his Normandie trip, I decided to kick off my summer holiday by building the old Matchbox Churchill AVRE in 1:76 scale. This is of course the re-released version by Revell. It comes with a folding girder bridge but I decided to build it without the bridge, as I don't think I will be playing many bridge-laying scenarios.

British steel in form of the Churchill AVRE close support tank.

 AVRE stands for "Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers" and was a collective name for a number of variants used by engineers for various purposes. This version carries a 290mm petard mortar for demolishing bunkers and strongholds. Just what I need for Chain of Command. (But of course I can use it in IABSM too or any other WW2 game.)

PSC Stug WIP Progress!

I have been making progress on my PSC StuGs. I managed to find the side skirts which I had placed "somewhere easy to find" -- which of course meant it wasn't. But I digress. I bought three sheets of the GW Kampfgruppe Normandy transfers when they were on sale but of course I can't find them now either. Luckily I managed to find some transfers in an old Esci StuG kit.

The skirts camo pattern and decals done. Now they just need fading and weathering.

The Esci kit had four sets of crosses and different numbers but in the same style. This meant that they were sufficient for all my PSC StugS and I will have one set left for the Esci kit. Eventually it will be the fourth StuG in my unit.

PSC StuG WIP

These three babies have been poorly neglected since January, when I built them and their Universal Carrier brethren. In a bout of sudden guilt-fueled energy I decided to do something about this. A sunny sunday afternoon was spent in the shade furiously mixing and brushing paint on the StuGs while the kids sloshed around in the pool.

Three little Stuggies went to the market...

Lancer Miniatures review

Lancer Miniatures is a relatively new company and looks like it's driven by a fellow wargamer, judging from the posts they have made on a couple of gaming forums I'm on. They sell their own line of metal figures and resin scenery in 20mm or 1/72 scale. They do both WW1 and WW2 and they sell some other ranges besides their own, including some plastic models. They are also selling the BlitzKrieg Miniatures range of 1/72 and 1/48 scale resin vehicles and some other stuff. As a nice touch Lancer Miniatures supply one of their own crew figures with some of the vehicles to add to the incentive of buying from them instead of directly from Blitzkrieg Miniatures.

A section of british infantry and a piat team from Lancer Miniatures.

The miniatures cost 60 pence each, and you can either buy them in squad packs (ten miniatures for 6 pounds) or smaller packs like a team for £1.20 or five riflemen for £3.00, and so on. Some are even available singly, like a sniper or the figure walking with a bren gun. So what did I think about them?

PSC british infantry finished shots

It's been a while since I finished painting a squad of Plastic Soldier Company British infantry, but I couldn't varnish them because of the cold weather. Well, now that Sweden has finally thawed I was able to spray them. In the mean time I had managed to paint a command stand as well and I decided to tart up the bases on the finished figures for this photoshoot.

Forwards men! For King and Country, Tea and Bisquits!

PSC Carriers finished!

Its been a while since I updated, sorry about that. I went away during Easter but I did finish the carriers first.

A nice little trio.

I took these photos on my workbench as the newly-glued static grass still was drying. I used my mobile phone since my regular camera had gone AWOL. I think you can make out the details anyway.

Old Stuff Day: SNAFU

March the 2nd is "Old Stuff Day", where we dig up some old post that we like but didn't get the exposure it deserved for some reason. Started by the Warhammer 39.999 blog originally, there a couple of blogs I follow that do this too. And I did last year, so why not make it a tradition?

So here's a post from waaaay back in april 2011, it only recieved some 25 hits for some reason. It was when I wrote in Swedish, but especially for this day I have translated the text to glorious Swenglish and Gibberish:

Modelling update

It has been a slow couple of weeks lately. We have been moving books and bookshelves at home in preparation for the gaming table that will finally grace my home. But that takes space, which means a lot of books have to go into storage or just plain being thrown away. (Mostly old crime novels or obsolete history and programming books.)

Carriers being painted, drivers and metal detailing getting some colour.

Work is progressing in teensy-weensy steps, but I have also hit on a couple of snags.

Barbed Wire WIP

Just a quickie today to show some of my barbed wire fences to my mates, Jocke and Thomas.

Nothing to do with a bad film starring Pamela Anderson.