The end of the beginning?

Or the beginning of the end? To misquote Churchill.

Totals for June

Bought 185 (still havent arrived yet :( )
Painted 192

June's hitlist item, well and truly done, so all in all a good month, so its time to point my fevered brain at what I want to do with next month, July. I did have a whacky idea of starting a 10mm Dwarven army but since last night common sense has broken out here in the bunker. Mexican Dave has been cracking on with his 1/72 PSC Russians, so this morning I've been rooting out several untouched sprues of Valiant Germans, theres about 100+ figures still on the sprues plus about 40 in various stages of painting. Thats not to mention that Dave dissapeared up the road with about 60 of the  little  big buggers. So thats this coming months project, get a full platoon of these guys assembled with supporting weapons and purchase some support in the shape of some Pz IVs for them. I'd like to add some Hanomags or Trucks as well, simply because all the cool Panzergrenadiers cant be expected to walk around like some peasant Russians.

WHOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just looked and found out that although the Armourfast range of quick build stuff has gone up, used to be about £8 for two tanks, now the average seems to be just short of a tenner, but theyve gone a snuck a couple of essentials past my radar. Namely the ubiqeutous Pz IV and the long awaited Hanomag, well that'll be my German platoon having a couple of each, obviously.

So that looks like all I can sensibly buy for this project so a very light months spending.

Bought for July, 4.

Update, because of the "must have more" syndrome, I've just bought 68 more Valiant Tommies, my excuse is that I cant find the Vickers MGs or the PIATS that I built..

Update 2 : as the Armourfast kits are all around the tenner mark on e-bay I thought that was a HaT price hike, ermm no, check out http://armourfast.com/ the REAL price is £7.50, which for 2 vehicles isnt that bad at all.

Relative sizes in 28mm

Since I've got my hitlist item out of the way early on in the month I was thinking about what I'd like to get on with, and I came up with the thought of painting a squad of Germans up for Secrets of the Third Reich. It was only when I came to put the squad on the painting table that I saw just how different various figure companies must have different scaled rulers.

Both of these are descibed on the boxes as 28mm, but looking at that picture, I'm sure you'll agree that they actually look like they were different scales, not that 28mm is a scale, but a size. Using the magic of a steel ruler, I found that the Bolt Action figure on the left is 28mm to the top of the helmet, while the Shock Trooper on the right is about 28 to the centre of his goggles, making him nearer 35mm to the top of his helmet. A huge difference!

Do you think that the makers are doing this deliberatly? To try to tie you into their range and only their range. Its certainly a possibility.

So in short as I prefer the more Sci-Fi looks of the Shock Troopers, looks like I'll be ordering another box of them this month to gimme the MG teams for my squads.

June's here!!

Well despite what I had intended for this month, common sense has broken out in my household, after last months splurges my totals for May are :

Bought 150 (but 10 were already painted so dont count)

Painted 183

Hitlist progress

well see for yourself :)

The might of Carthage arrayed for battle, ok I have a little bit of flocking to do but thats all the little bleeps done and varnished. I think I'll consider that army well and truly complete as thats a 6 foot wall-to-wall frontage, that should be more than enough for a good sized scrap.

Its a bit of a mish-mash of an army with a General, a couple of leaders, 5 units of spears, 3 units of skirmishers, a unit of warband, 3 units of Light horse, 2 of Heavy Cavalry and one unit of Elephants. It has a bit of everything but not enough to use as your main arm. I guess I'll have to play with it and see how it fights.