Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The fleet has left the shipyards!

I have been tied up with work, soldiering, and family time. A last gasp of overtime and I enjoyed a very pleasant day being spoiled rotten by my family. The kids helped my wife make lasagna and a chocolate cake for my birthday Sunday. They also gave me new ink and cardstock for printing PDF terrain, a new t-shirt for running, the dvd" hobbit", and authorization to download new stuff to build from wargame vault! I also got to vicariously view the great time many had at salute...I can only hope that I may yet make the pilgrimage to the show. For now, I have to horde my vacation days to supplement the family income when I perform military drills. I take a pay cut every time I don the army uniform, and I have to make sure my kids are covered for food, shelter, clothing, and FUN!
My 10 year old daughter smoked me in a two mile run my birthday morning. She beat me by almost a whole minute with a time of 16:35. She has been benefitting from sleep and all sorts of nutritious food my civilian pay allows no doubt! After she gloated and I got a nap in, I was awoken to my great birthday feast of LASAGNA! then I was whisked away to watch GI Joe. My son really did enjoy the movie(soldiers and ninjas), my girls were bored but excited to be with dad, while my wife was ogling The Rock just a tad much! :)
Because several of my blogging friends and a fellow soldier from across the pond(Crpl Grosse) are from the United Kingdom, I thought all of you would get a kick out of this new running shirt in hi-vis green. I don't follow futbol, soccer..I'm more Football American style and hockey, or playing Lacrosse with my cousins in two feet of snow with hockey sticks, baseball bats, and actual warclubs using a basketball as our play ball. Why? because the "ting" sound it makes when struck by a stick or impacting a cousin's face! I do gather that MU is cut from the same cloth as NY Yankees, where you love them or hate them....perhaps I'll wear this shirt if I ever get a chance to make it to Salute! :)
Being a spry 45, it amazes me that it is a lightweight material designed to wisk heat and moisture from the body...and to think all these years I have been running in old sweatpants, cotton T-shirts and gulping water only after I got my breath back. I guess I have been doing it all wrong!

I did manage to finish my fleet for the second time.

Here is a better shot showing all the various classes of ships I own.

the large battleship with the red prow suffered another break courtesy of my kid's kitten who is too curious for his own good! Mr Fluffybottoms only lives because I do not want to emotionally scar my kids. The listing to the port side will just have to be chalked up to previous damage to port side engines and stabilizers.

It is a battleship with all sorts of prow weaponry and launch bays for scores of fighter craft.

Task Force Gold firestorm frigates

Task Force Crimson Firestorm frigates

a heavy cruiser from task force gold with fighter craft launchbays and a pair of dauntless light cruisers. The dauntless class trades armor for speed and hits like a standard cruiser

The heavy hitters of task force Gold

The gun line of Task Force Crimson

I'm glad I repainted the smaller ships prows to match the task force heavies. I think it really brings out the distinctive form of the ships.

Some of the keen eyed may have noticed these merchantmen lurking on my paint table. Before the incident, They shared the camouflage of the fleet. A friend of mine used to mix them up with my escorts and target the wrong ships when we played the convoy scenario. I figured I'd make it easy for him to spot the merchantmen this time. I gave them a light brush of black with a wash and repainted them in simple colors. They also are not blue, but I distressingly have noted that I did paint one gray!
 
That will be it for this week, The weather has not been kind so I haven't been able to prime my Napoleonics. I still have to build the French yet anyway. It'll be a bit before my skirmish forces for the Peninsular War are ready for the spotlight. I should have the 28mm Pinzgauer up by next week, It's only a month late from the game it WAS supposed to feature in.
And with that, I'm off to bed before I have to work tonight!