ebay!

Well, over the bank holiday weekend I became slightly obsessed with ebay. I was sure there was a warhammer bargin on there somewhere. I lost several autions, which at the time almost made me cry, but on refection they weren't even good deals at the end. Most stuff seems to sell around the RRP anyway, which makes sence I guess; people stop bidding when the box that would cost you £15 in the shop get to £15 on ebay, I know I do.

In the end I found this lot on the 'buy it now' section, £15 for 19 spearmen. Not bad, considering that it would cost £30 if you where to buy 20 empire state troops from GW nowdays. Also there the classic 6th edition, and so go with my existing empire troops. I plan to partioally repaint them; the black parts of the uniform will get a blue coat so they match the Nordland blue and yellow of my army.

Laters....

Mantic Skeletons

So here is the first unit of 20 mantic skeletons. I went for a red 'uniform' as it contrasts with the colour schemes of my other fantasy armies.
40 Skeletons come in the army set, I have built them so that one regiment is spear armed and the one here is equipped with hand weapons.The shields are hand painted in a variety of generic heraldry patterns, just 'cus I fancied it really andI didn't want them to look too uniform. Also talthough they are predomantly red most of the figures actully dressed in a fair bit of brown cloth.

US artillery (I think).

This is a unit of US artillery, at least I think it. I painted the crew a while ago and can't remember if I painted them as US or British. I think they are US because although similar I think the British had darker blue coats, and more in the way of epaulets.
Anyhoo....

US Militia 1812

So continuing building my War of 1812 armies, I have painted up unit of US militia. They are old glory miniatures. As you can see they are a townish looking lot still in there civilian clothes.

Here you can see their officer in a united states army uniform. The militia where supposed to wear blue coats, but like this lot many didn't have uniforms. This officer has got himself one tailored, no doubt to impress the ladies.

I have another unit of militia still to paint for the americans. And thats is that army basically finised apart from a cannon or two and some dragoons.

Marching to battle...

89th Regiment of Foot

These where actually painted a little while ago, but here are the pictures anyway. As you can see they still need basing, but that won't take long. The 89th were present in the Niagara campaign 1814. My war of 1812 armies are roughly based on the real armies in that campaign.

I have done these as grenadiers, in case I ever want to field some, but generally they'll just be another line battalion in games. There is a slight conversion, (although I don't think its worthy being called so), the officer has a head swap from the Victrix British artillery box. Speaking of which...

This crew just need their bases painting, but the cannon is still bare plastic. The other two cannons and crews are still on the sprue. At least one of them is going to become Americans.

Easter is soon, and so the holiday should provide some painting time. However, I think this will be devoted to the Mantic undead army, which I am going to try and paint in only two weeks. It should be a good challenge, 114 minatures in 14 days. So probably no time for the war of 1812.
Over the summer holiday I plan to finish everything I have for 1812, so till then Canada is safe.
Anyway, laters....

Mantic Undead army

I have done a bad thing, and not stuck to my 2011 plan. I don't know how I could have been this weak. I have ordered the undead army set and a death king's cabal. costing a total of £54. I have been looking at mantics stuff for a while, but this is the first time I have bought any of their stuff.

They had a 'one day only' offer or scam as I would call it, if it were on sofas or something. Anyway I bought the stuff and got free shipping and 15% off.

So I can spend Easter, building the undead horde. The army set come with an amazing 110 models, compared to the 50 the GW undead box of the same price comes with. I got the 4 characters as well to lead them on. These can take on my warhammer empire army, using either the warhammer rules or the kings of war rules.

I went for undead, as I've never been a fan of elves, and I already have some GW Dwarfs (from scull pass). The mantic Dwarfs don't look like they would fit in next to the GW ones, so it's either start from scratch with the dwarfs or stick with GW.

This all means I now have Human, Orc/Goblin and now undead fantasy armies.

Looking at what I have to build and paint, its a flipping long list. But, funny things happen during holidays and I paint at a rate of knots. I think I'll probably set myself a challenging time limit to get the undead army ready for the battle field. After that there is still the empire knights, battalions and battalions of War of 1812 stuff, and god know what else.

Speaking of 1812, I got a load of Militia models for christmas from old glory and another company who I can't remeber the name of. I now have about 3 battalions worth.

Anyway, till next time...

15mm Travel Wargame Set.

WTF 15mm scale?!? Now normally I only buy 28mm tall toy soldiers, because I enjoy painting them in that size, (I have a sneaking suspicion I would really enjoy painting even bigger figures). I have dabbled in the dreaded 1:72 plastic figures, which I don't enjoy painting 'cus it just comes off when the rifle or ankles bend during the course of normal use, there are also several reasons I have gone off them, another reason I only normally do 28mm is because they have a visual appeal when painted. But all this what scale is best argument is not something I'll bore you with now, (maybe another time, eh?). My general opinion is just collect what you like the most, it's your hobby, but more importantly your money.

Anyway, so how did a 28mm fan, end up with a 15mm collection. Well it all started out when I had an idea, to have a 'travel' wargames set. This is because I live in two places, part of the time in England and part of my time in Wales, every few months I need to travel between these two places. And I like to take some miniatures to game with between them.

So what I needed was a travel game set, like you see for monopoly or Scrabble, the travel version of the game. Not to play on the train or back seat of the car, but to play on a bed side table, or a coffee table any small corner of flat space.

The first thing was to write down the criteria for a travel wargame.

• only needs small area to play
• quickish game, (no more than a couple of hours to finish)
• entirely self contained in one small box (all the pieces, dice, terrain, etc.)

So I googled 'travel wargame' and it came up with nothing usful. So I searched 'small wargame' and found this LINK ...