I've made a start on the painting of my posse. Sure it's only the smallest of starts, but with my painting speed, any progress is good progress!

Undercoated and whitewashed the outside, ready to add some colour.

Being my test building, it's going to stay 'white', but after finishing the trim, I will be attempting the sign-writing!!

Of course, all three of the buildings I'm currently working on are essentially 'square' single story buildings - my good lady thinks I should try something a little more challenging. Amongst the PDFs I have, none come more challenging that The Grand Hotel.

Once I've managed to build this beauty, I'm thinking of converting the single story Whitewash City Hotel into the Whitewash City Whorehouse - just so Stu's whores have somewhere to hang out!

Probably the smallest building I will make for Whitewash city - the Bathhouse!

Customised the design slightly, removing the back door and adding a ladder so that snipers can access the roof!

The Men in Black. No, not Will Smith, but rather my posse of evil doers undercoated in back, ready for me to start painting!

You can probably tell that this is a different building. I gave up on the bakery after I realised that I wanted it built on a thicker base, so that the boardwalk out front was raised. This would also make it easier to attach the fence thingy that you tie your horse to. Basically this photo shows the progress after constructing the basic building of adding planks of 'wood' to add texture and detail to the front. Next up will be the door frame and window sills.

My two special characters from Dixons arrived today. I'll clean them up and base them tomorrow. Then I'll have to figure out a colour scheme for the rest of my cowboys.

Ok, so this is becoming a bit of a habit, but I've started another project before finishing the one I'm currently in the middle of.
A good friend has given me some cowboys to paint over Christmas, and I've ordered a couple of special characters from Dixons Miniatures to go with them.
Essentially we're planning on playing a bit of Legends of the Old West, so along with about 8 characters to paint, I figured I'd build a small town.
I managed to get some Whitewash City paper buildings, but being a sucker for punishment decided to use these as a template to build some using my spare corkboard.
The first building is coming along nicely, but I've already made one un-mend-able mistake.

Only time will tell if I can get enough down in time for regular gaming nights to kick off again in February.

Whilst browsing Dixon's website for a couple of special figures for my Legends of the Old West posse, I couldn't help myself and looked at their 28mm World War II figures where I discovered these chaps:



I'm going to have to seriously consider these for a little painting project sometime next year. If we ever get back into Pulp gaming, these will go down a treat.

Zombies highlighted... do I know what I'm doing? Nope. Will it work? Hope so!!

I decided to trial a quick pint job on some of my 15mm Zombies! I've decided to start with an undercoat of RED!!!! We'll see how well this actually progresses - knowing me it could take weeks or even months to finish them!

I decided to splash out recently and subscribe to the new look Wargames Illustrated, and as a bonus got to choose a small box set from Battlefront as an incentive. I decided to choose the 8.8cm PaK43 Anti-Tank Platoon, mainly because it was the only option available that would fit into my as yet un-started late war German army.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the new PaK43's come on sculpted resin bases, with the base of the gun becoming part of the actual base, making assembly (my most hated part of this hobby) a lot easier. This suits me down to the ground. It means I have a nice base with no real hassle. Of course, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if it was the right direction to go.

It seems that Battlefront are targeting the lowest common denominator these days, in an effort no doubt to get more people playing Flames of War. This is a great direction, don't get me wrong, but what about those of us who enjoy making our own bases, adding little bits of detail to make our army stand out, or to suit a specific battle?

Would it not be better to have two sets available, even if one was special order only, so that hard-core modelers could have the full kit with no sculpted base?

And if Battlefront are going to be re-modeling all their box sets to include sculpted resin bases, what about making a sculpted base for the command team, so that the whole set is consistent?

I do like the new PaK43, and may even get distracted enough to start on it before I've finished my long over due Brit Airborne.

A few years back I decided to try making a Russian apartment building out of foamcore. It turned out quite nice - not that there is really much to a Russian apartment building! But to make it just a little bit nicer, I found some Russian propaganda posters online and printed one out on my colour printer. Getting it the right size was a problem, as for it to be actual scale made it too small to recognise what was on it, so a happy middle goprund was reached with the poster being just a little larger than scale.

But the scale issue was one using preconceived notions that everyone made posters the same size. Looking at the picture above that I recently found in the book Absolute War, I now think my poster may have been way too small to be proper scale! Those Russians certainly knew how to make their point; with HUGE posters.

It's probably worth pointing out that my aims for this 'Carentan Project' is not to re-create Carentan in it's entirety, but to create some buildings loosely based on Matakishi's 28mm Carentan project.
For those who want a little more information than just the photos, I'm using 4.8mm Natural Cork Tiles - the ones you are supposed to use for flooring, for the walls and 2mm Cork Craft Sheets for the base. I gave up on using PVA after my first house and instead purchased a tube of Germany's finest glue, UHU - the glue I used to use in England as a youngster building model planes. The roofs are probably going to be made of card with some 2.8mm Cork supports.

Started the detailing on the second building.
And started to build the third building. Detailing on the first building will wait until I've worked out a few minor details.

Building two is well underway, thanks to a relaxing day at home.

I've decided that I quite like the 'close to actual scale' size of the buildings, but after reading some comments on the Flames of War forums, I realised that I could increase the spacing between the windows and floors to increase the size of the building without having to upscale the door or window size.
Side by side you can see that the new building is a fair bit bigger and will hopefully look great on my gaming table.

Artizan Designs have just released six new Thrilling Tales characters, three are British Bobbies from the inter-war period, and three are British mercenary types from the same time. They look good enough to be added to my wish list!

Wargames Factory have posted a picture of two of their hard plastic Zombies, painted by Neldoreth. Nice.

So I've decided to get back on track with my Carentan project, but decided to try building something to 15mm scale, with the doors being 20mm high and 10mm wide.

Whilst this may be true to scale, the building itself seems very small for a 3 story townhouse.

Though technically there is nothing wrong with the size, it looks quite good with the figures...

...you can only fit one medium base in the building.

In comparison, my first building attempt looks way out of scale for the models, but has more room to play in/around.

So how should I proceed, true to scale, or a larger, more 'playable' scale?

Let me start by saying that I love Battlefront, they have a great game system and range of figures, and some of the best customer support I've ever come across. So with the impending completion of my Late War British Airborne Army, I figured it was time to start planning a Late War German Army for them to fight against. Fortunately I had some Graphic Novels to trade in at King of Cards that game me a bit of money to spend. After looking through a couple of Flames of War Army Book, I decided to build an SS-Panzergrenadier Army, Starting with the SS-Panzergrenadier Company Box Set and a couple of 15cm NW41 Rocket Launcher blisters. I also have a couple of Tigers on order.

I have come across some rumblings in the Flames of War forums recently, talking about the new figures and how some people were not happy with them. But having such a good personal track record with Battlefront products, I dismissed these grumblings as the ravings of some anal perfectionists.

I had elected not to even open the box set until my Airborne were finished, but I couldn't resist. I had to have a peek.

I'm kind regretting taking a peak now, though it's probably better to find out sooner rather than later how awful the figure really are...

Who knew that zombies were good at handling the belt feed ammo for a German HMG. This dude could almost pass for that bad guy who wore a bag over his head in Batman Begins.

From this angle you can really see the detail in his face. That's what I call a blank expression!

The zombie machine gunner doesn't look much better either.

Shuffling zombies, this guys foot is so mangled he'll never be able to chase you down and eat you.

If you can ignore the excess flash around his face, you'll notice that his side arm is fused to his hand in a mash up between an small alien ray gun and a blob.

Form the other side you can actually see that he's a zombie.... love the hollow mangled face.... can't wait to add some pale green skin and oozing blood.

As for this guy, some one should have told him that you can't run if you hav two mangled legs that have been fused together...

And finally, the first thing I noticed when I opened the box was this sniper - he and everyone else who lies down on the job, no longer come with a 'base' to lie on like their standing or kneeling comrades, in fact - and it's a pity the photo doesn't really show it - he only has half legs. Perfect if you want to have him lying, submerged in a muddle puddle, but too bad if you wanted to base him on an urban base, lying on the pavement...

Maybe I'm expecting too much, but compared to my British Airborne figures, these guys are shit.

Update: Emailed Battlefront Customer Support at 5pm today.

Update #2: Just received the following reply, less that 24 hours after my initial email:

I'm happy to fully replace the box set in question, do you have a postal address
that doesn't have a P.O. Box number as our provider sometimes find it hard to
deliver to P.O. Boxes within New Zealand. Please let me know and I'll get the
replacment box set out to you ASAP.

I'll update again when the replacements arrive.

Update #3: One week to the day, brand new box set arrives. Will check out the quality at a later date!!!

Now I just have to get round to basing them!!

Managed to get some painting done over the weekend, including finishing the bases for some men I've had around for a while. If I keep at it, I might even finish my January challenge before the end of the year!!!

Some inspiration from the Flames of War forums.