summer vacation

Funny pair of words that, "summer vacation". When I was a kid, that was a promise of fun filled days with bike riding, swimming, camping, and setting up Marx toy soldiers in the backyard. Now as an adult, I have training both military and professional, overtime at work to cover the vacation of the other nightshift, and household projects and chores that are better suited to warmer and hopefully drier days! I also have to occupy my kids in nonelectronic activities. They seem to gravitate to gameboys when I'm not around! Vacation!? I can't even use that word as my vacation days are used to ease the days I have to take off of work for military training. I'm not really complaining though as seven more years will be all I'll have to suffer for. Then I may get to take an actual vacation while someone else takes overtime to cover my absence! For a summary of hobbydom, work is progressing on my British foot. I hope to have them up later this month..at least the Perry troops if not them and the Victrix. I really like the pop the red jackets get over the white undercoat. In the future, I am going to fall back to my trusty black primer and give the jackets a white layer of brush and see how that goes. I am very close to finishing the cardstock pinzgauer shuttle. This beastie needs to get finished real soon as it keeps missing deadlines for games! I also have a batch of Stotzels Structures that need to be cut, mounted, and assembled. I'm out of ink at the moment and low on cardstock. Household-6 says that I need to wrap up those projects that are printed before she will authorize budget expenditures on ink. It's not all bad though! If I'm a good boy, eat my veggies, weed the garden veggies and paint repair the house exterior; well, I'll get a new rulebook! I just got the chainreaction ruleset that is available free at wargames vault. I really like this set and it is the base set of rules( as I'm told) for most of 2hr wargames sets. I'm looking at ATZ better dead than zed or final fade out. The other choice is 5150 star army or new beginings. To be clear, I'm really more of a scifi skirmish type wargamer so I'm leaning 5150 with a thought of 5th Element/ Bladerunner type games. The Zombie stuff and Superheroes are the games my kids want to play. But muskets and mohawks or longrifle have me a bit interested for some FIW gaming. There can be only one..per my wife! ;) PS: Ever notice how in the summer we have all these events and gatherings perhaps induced by longer days!? I'm out and about lamenting the costs in gas( petrol for my European friends) I may be absent from my blog a bit, but I do have my nook and smartphone to keep up with the blogs from everyone else. So if little activity is seen, just know the old grunt is probably running, shooting, or at a family party trying to snatch a beer! On that note, Vampifan is in the hospital. I have no details, but I encourage all of you to visit his blog and leave an email. He may not have email or net access at the hospital, but I'm certain he will enjoy reading all the well wishes once he gets home. I know that I really appreciated the volumes of mail/email that I got overseas after missions...esp after the really bad ones.

just a little farther...

So, April was a bit of a blogging failure. I did not get very much done at all.Mostly this was due to work both security and military duties. I also was kept busy by my kids and birthday parties( mostly mine! ;) ), and a lot of wife mandated family activites! The later was yard work to include gardening and outdoor grilling. A big weekend was spent repairing an tending to the Rosa Sharon hedges and other plants that were waking up from the winter slumber. I also have been doing daily runs, insanity workouts and ruck marches/ runs; as fitness standards have not been relaxed and I have been doing little since deployment ended. This makes it hard on a 45 year old body as I do not have the quick recovery time of my youth! Despite the lack of April posts, I did get a bit done. A break in weather let me prime up the new Battle Fleet Gothic ships. I also printed up several Stozels Structures and added to my que of unbuilt PDF! I did some kit bashes with plastic troops, painted a bit on my incomplete armies that Household-6 wants done. In addition to this, I began painting the ork fleet and primered my Napoleonics. The fleet still needs a bit more work to be ready for a photoshoot. GW has ceased production on the Specialty Game range. With no available cash and lots to do, I can't order any available stock. I will try to pick up some more on Ebay and other sources later, but at the moment the fleets are locked in. The ork fleet is only four classes of ships which I have begun painting in the style of my 40k warband. The speed freaks Evil Sunz got some red and metal brute ram ships, the deff Skullz received some basic Onslaughts with the oscar like prows painted blue( blue is magic for them), the disiplined( for orks) Goffs got the big gunz frigates in black and red, and the military minded Blood Axes now own the unreliable torpedo frigates in gray and green. I'll have to dig out a few 40k ork squads to properly show off the paint once completed. I still have to figure on the chaos ships, but I'm leaning toward green and grey to match my nurgle marine traitors. I'm mostly excited to get started on my Nappies! The coats of primer are drying as I type! They are Victrix and Perry plastic. The British have Victrix Penninsular War Flank company and artillery and Perry plastic British line. I like the detail in the Perry models best, but Victrix let me build crouching infantry so I can form nice firing lines. I'll keep the regiments represented by individual manufacturers as although they match in size, the differences in sculpts do not mesh in the same unit! I primered them in white spray because I really want vibrant reds and whites. I hope to add a victrix center company, another flank company and additional artillery set. From Perry I will add another infantry company( or two as British Rifles are included! GOOO, SHARPE!), and a British cavalry set like the Hussars. The French do not have artillery yet, but they do have heavy cav and dragoons sculpted by the Perrys! I also have the Perry French line infantry. The sculpts are very good and the cav sets include casualty figures and battlefield debris which is very welcomed by me as the extras will dress up the artillery and make objective counters/ casualty dice counters. I plan on another two dragoon sets and a few more French cav sets...dismounted dragoons are also included! The French infantry was a mixed bag for me. The sculpts and options are great, but they are all marching! You can build six skirmishers, but no firing lines. Victrix has a large selection of French units, so I will see what they allow. I primed these fellows in black because of all the dark colors. I also prefer to work from black undercoats. The plan is to use the troops in skirmish games set in the Penninsular War and some of my favorite Sharpes books. I would not be suprised if I also do the Early India campaigns of Wellington as the Penninsular War uniforms are of the Period. I will eventually get around to the larger regimental/ division battles. This will be after I amass more troops. I'll nd to figure out basing too. I do not want to redo my work into block formations, so I will need to make movement trays to allow for the bigger clashes of formations. For now, Mr Sharpe will be taking on French cav, infantry, and dragoons trying to give time for the rearguard to spike the guns...after blasting some frogs to oblivion of course! ;)

short week and shipyards

First off, some apologies as I won't be posting photos of work-in-progress this time. Since all three of my girls are cheerleaders, I have numerous parental support venues to participate in. My two youngest daughters are also participants in" Girls on the Run" which promotes cardio and nutritional health in young girls...and also has led me to investigate some 3k and 5k running events in our area for a father and daughters day out. I also have training at work which when coupled with my long week means I only have two free days between the end and start of 12 hour shifts...night guard shifts at that! My 9 year old best buddy also has a fist sized tumor in her mouth which has led to her bleeding all over the house. She is a black lab St Bernard mix and over 150lbs which makes bath time a tiring event for both of us! But household-6 has decreed it must be done, and honestly anything is worthwhile that leads to comfort for Panda Bear.
I did dig out the box of shame from the shed....did I mention my AO(Area of Operations for non-military readers) of Michigan has conspired to be rainy and overcast with a prediction of snow for my two days off? Within the BoS I sorted out my Britains metal knights, Barclay podfoots, and BFG spaceships. I still have to figure out repair for the toy soldiers. I will need enamel paints for the Britains and will also need to pin the broken swords and lances. As they are circa 1998, I could buy them new with little cost. The three footmen and two mounted knights were a wedding gift from my wife, so for sentimental reasons a repair job will be preferable.
The Barclay podfoots are a whole different matter. Some of these old dimestore troops were my dad's when he was a boy, while others were purchased by myself at antique shops. Since they are antiques, painting them is out of the question, yet I would like to repair the broken feet and rifles. Some of the Barclay were crew served weapons out of a resin/wood type substance. A machine gun loader lost his head and the AA gun suffered a broken barrel. I will probably just attempt sparing use of super glue to fix the lads up...I'd like to try pinning, but for the nonmetal Barclays and the age of the material makes for an uncertain knowledge of how well they will handle the drilling even with a pin-vise.
So, now we are left with my broken space fleets.
One of my favorite periods of military history is the WW1 era. I personally tend to group the Crimerian war and the ACW into this era as industry really influenced the conflicts. It is also worth remembering that from the ACW to WW1 is within a half century and advances in technology were huge. The naval and amphibious operations of this period are another bit that I enjoy to read about and model. In fact, it was the dazzle patterns used in WW1 that inspired my paint job for the imperial fleet in BFG.
I used blue, white, grey and some black in painting the imperial ships. I used red and yellow for the prows and also to designate task forces. The ships all have really nice detail in turrets, antennae, and engines. Drybrushing, inking, and further spot colors brought these out enough to satisfy myself. The builds were pretty easy for them all, but I did have to use epoxy to fill in some gaps from construction. Mounting the ships to the flight bases was a huge pain as the base pegs did not fit cleanly into the ships, some of the battle ships were very heavy and care had to be taken to make sure the finished model did not list to a side as if already mortally wounded! I used careful trimming, pinning, and epoxy fill to fit the bases, I also made several jigs to help support the ships level on the bases while drying.
I am not the world's best mini painter, in fact I would say I'm a notch below mediocrity. With that said, I was very happy with how my careful work gave me a wonderful fleet. It was also a benchmark of my hobby as it was the first and only time I had completed all the forces for a game system. The collapse of the track shelves did the most damage to these ships. the spindly flight stands, tall masts and antennae, and the simple fact that hybrid models of metal and plastic ALWAYS are prone to breakage.
Being a consummate modeler, I think I have plenty of masts and plastic bits left over in my bit box to effect some repairs. I am not looking forward to the broken flight stands as my jigs were repurposed into terrain or lost. The pinning will be a huge pain as well.
So that concludes my hobby adventure for this week. Parts are collected and tentative plans for next week's work have been made...the shipyard is now open for repair and refit!