He's sneaked off again

Yes, I admit it, the bad dose of flu, the lousy weather and a late deal meant that I took a couple of weeks off painting to visit Malta.

For those interested, in the picture I'm at the Upper Barracca Gardens in Valletta above the Saluting Battery

Slow progress with the Saracens

As is always the case with irregular figures I'm quite slow, but that is partly explained by the fact that I'm painting the whole lot as a "single batch" In fact I'm painting a number of sub-batches with varying colours.
Still I'll be glad when they are all done

D-Day afternoon in 6mm

A bit of a test this time, these pictures were taken on my Hudl during a BKC game set around the advance of British 3rd Division from Perriers ridge towards Caen, played over this weekend.

British 185th Brigade struggling to cross Perriers ridge ( three blunders in the first two moves!)


A view from the German defenders


21st Panzer arrives


Panzer Grenadiers


My units (the right flank of the British force) makes progress but soon stalled under intense German artillery fire




Remains of a panzer battalion after hit by aircraft, artillery and naval gunfire.


German defenders of Caen


Still there is another panzer battalion (but Somuas and short barreled Panzer IVs)


Light is fading, so the Hudl fails to capture much action


An enjoyable day with Andrew and Ian, I couldn't make the Sunday, but the action was heading for a historical result.

Zombie apocalypse - Cromwells finished

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last two weeks, having done my family duties and visited my parents two weeks back I picked up their flu bug, which was not helped by getting my flu inoculation, so ever since I've been doing a rather bad impression of a Zombie Apocalypse for anyone who has seen me. Painting progress has been virtually nil.

But starting with small steps progress is underway. I've worked on a trio of the excellent Airfix Cromwells as well as preparing most of my medievals. AS with all of my NW Europe British these are marked up for the Guards Armoured Division and in this case the 2nd Welsh Guards. These are intended to replace my existing models from Frontline, but before they are sold off I plan to play a Villers-Bocage game.



My Saracens are now all prepared and under-coated so hopefully I can start making some progress against my November plans

On the workbench - November 2013

Crumbs, are we that far through the year already. Well after a week away down in Deepst Devon, just off Dartmoor I had better get back on with my annual targets, so it has to be work on my Saracens. Having inspected the figures the intended army will just be a modest force, to be added to as I find suitable figures, Turkoman/Arab horse archers being the biggest gap, so my Tartars and Parthian lights will have to cover their absence to start with. So my plan looks like:

• Three 16 man units of spear armed foot
• Three 16 man units of foot archers
• One 4 man unit of horse archers
• Two 6 man units of Ghulams
• Plus commanders

In addition I'll also work on

• Three Airfix Cromwells
• The two  DAK Lorraine Schleppers with 150mm
• A pair of 2pdrs on Portees and a matching dismounted pair
• A US Radio truck, I was much taken by Phil's version at the D-Day+6 game so I'll be adding one to my forces converted from the Airfix GMC.
• Plus other remnants that seem to be encroaching on my workspace

The radio truck

US half tracks

Having escaped from the South West just before the storm hit, I returned home to complete this trio of M3 half tracks by Plastic Soldier. Although nicely detailed and easy to assemble I'm not sure if I'll buy any more for my US forces. The biggest issue is that they are markedly larger then the Airfix and Italeri models I already have in my collection.

It's nice to have crew provided but these are also on the large side and don't fit all that well if you want a packed vehicle. I didn't bother with the rear stowage as it just makes an oversized vehicle even bigger and also replace the tarpaulins with one made of green stuff after I realised how poorly the provided ones was modelled.

For those interested here's a comparison with the Airfix model

D-Day+6 - the other sectors

Apart from the adjoining sectors I had little knowledge of the progress of the game in the other sectors. Overall it was an Allied win.

The pictures are in order of play rather than sector

An attemped panoramic view of the table

Don attempting to organise us

Western sectors (US)

101st paras advancing (they were on my left and we could provide shirt range support to each other if possible

US 2nd Armoured approaching Caretan

While their HQ hides itself away from harm

Armoured infantry entering Caretan, the scene of much street fighting

Artillery supporting 6th FJ REgiment opens fire on Caretan

17th SS Panzer Grenadier division deploying to confront 2nd US Armoured Division

All quiet in the 452nd German Infantry Division v's 29th US Infantry Division sector

2nd Panzer artillery deploying

And their PAKs

Panzer Lehr storms forwards

12th SS Panzer Division v's 3rd Canadian Infantry Division

21st Panzer Division v's British 3rd Infantry Division

From the 3rd Divisions perspective

Canadian 3rd Division

British 50th Infantry Division

British 7th Armoured

Confrontation down the Trungy to Quesnay Guesnon road

Plenty of tucks for the US 29th Division

2nd US Armoured

View of the table from the Eastern end (Germans to the left

Caretan, it was in two sectors, for the Allies the problem was the river/canal on the northern side restricting access

Units of 101st Airborne moving up to the west of Caretan

a footbridge comes in handy

6th FJ regiment struggling to attack Caretan, Artillery from 91st Airlanding in support

German 352nd Infantry v's US 29th Infantry

2nd Panzer under pressure

A couple of views of the whole table during the lunch break



Another view of the 101st Airborne

Blazing shermans from 2nd Armoured, but they held the line

29th US Infantry pushing forward into enemy territory