Spanish hobby plans!

We are here in Calpe for 6 weeks and our property hunt begins in earnest with plenty lined up to see. It was hot enough yesterday for my youngest daughter to get a touch of sunburn on her shoulders despite parental warnings.

View from the roof terrace towards Calpe and the Mediterranean.

I have two hobby related projects planned for life in Spain. Firstly, 18mm Blue Moon Napoleonics, and a newly acquired game - 'Sails of Glory' that recreates ship to ship action in the Napoleonic period. For those who have not seen it, the game features superb models of Napoleonic fighting ships, and the game can be further expanded by a whole range of different ship models. They come pre painted and are very nicely done, but I intend to add a little more detail to them in due course such as staining the sails, basic rigging, ratlines etc. I may well use the models with a different set of rules such as 'Action Under sail' and must admit it was the quality of the ships that attracted me to the game. I acquired my set at a discount from Dave Ryan due to a slightly damaged box corner, and then added a further two larger ship models, one French and one British, the latter being HMS Victory as I simply could not resist them. Once settled I'll feature this game and a review on the blog.

My Blue Moon order arrived from Andy Copestake at Old Glory and the figures are superb, I would say easily on a par with AB Miniatures. With the Peninsular War in mind and to reduce postage going forward I ordered a fair few packs as you can see below! Some pretty serious painting lies ahead. I have decided to base them conventionally in units of 16 figures to begin with, but may expand in the future. I'm trying to decide on a set of rules to use.

The quality of the Blue Moon figures is superb. Thanks to 'Big Andy' at Old Glory UK for getting my order out in time to make the journey to Spain.

I have settled on a painting area - my box of paints and brushes all survived the long journey intact - the light is so good that I wont need a painting lamp here. I had my eyes tested for new glasses before we left the UK and was delighted to be told my close sight was perfect, and even my distance sight had improved slightly, I had expected some deterioration. So as usual I remove my glasses to paint figures, not bad for a 60 year old.

Now to try and source some blu tac and superglue out here, and I want to order new brushes and MDF bases may have to come from the Uk possibly.

I'm also delighted to say that I'm only 20 minutes away from Parcent where Paul of the 'Napoleonic Wargaming' blog lives, and we plan to meet up for a coffee when he and his wife are here in Calpe on one of their weekly shopping trips.

Finally......... the Rioja is beautiful and less than half the price of the Uk!

The adventure begins!

Thank you for all of the messages wishing us good luck on our move, they are much appreciated. We are booked on flights to Alicante on the 14th April with an initial 6 week rental on a lovely villa as we view as many properties as possible that we have bookmarked. We are looking to buy a 5 or 6 bedroom villa with the obligatory pool and nice views as we have a large family and my wife is interested in offering B&B accommodation ..... her passion is cooking so guests would be well fed!

Whilst still here in the Uk I have been spending a lot of time reflecting on what to do next with my hobby time. I'm currently in a hotel overlooking the English Channel, it's cold and wet but the sailing club is out as are the fishermen, hardy souls. From Saturday onwards we have booked a lovely little cottage on the Kent/Sussex borders, dog friendly so I'm looking forward to getting out for some good walks. I'll be taking Commands & Colors with me, so plan a couple of evenings playing Peninsular scenarios from the base game, if necessary in front of the log burner!

I still feel the need to paint wargame figures and my thoughts have turned increasingly to the Peninsular War, I plan to visit as many battlefields as I can once settled. So I now have on order a goodly number of Blue Moon 15mm Napoleonics from Andy at Old Glory, they will be delivered to my Daughters house next week and will be driven out to Spain by my Son in Law on the 13th April along with my paint box and C&C sets. He is also taking Poppy the dog and Sheldon the cat, both of whom now have pet passports to travel.

And once there, I plan to work my way through the 'Sharpe' series again by way of inspiration!

Pastures new!

On Monday 26th March we complete on our house sale and a new adventure awaits as we move to Spain. I decided that I want to make a completely fresh start hobby wise too and so it was a pleasure to meet Rob this morning who has taken into his care my Hinchliffe ECW collection. After a bit of indecision - although I knew in my heart that I wanted to pass them on - it was with not a single regret that I saw them go to a new home where they will be well used and enjoyed. The fact that 'Wellington Man' who I know to be a big fan of the Hinchliffes may be visiting Rob on his travels and seeing them 'in the flesh' as it were was a bonus.

I wanted to make a complete break and so I am really pleased that I will be passing on the two fully painted sets of 'Travel Battle' to Bob Cordery, who will I'm sure get much pleasure from them in conjunction with his 'Portable Wargames' rules. Bob and I lived only a few minutes apart for more than a decade before we moved down to the Kent coast, yet we never met. I admire his commitment to the hobby.

I will be taking Commands & Colors Napoleonics and all the expansions that I have with me, funny enough speaking to Rob this morning I realised that the only expansion I don't have is the Spanish one, something of an irony considering where I am going, but I'll put that right and grab a copy before we leave for Spain mid April. I may also get the base game C&C ancients too. I do intend to expand my board game collection, but I'm sure that I'll paint something again once settled!

I'm sure that you will see something new appearing on this blog in due course, although it may be a couple of months before this happens.

All the best for now,

Lee.

Establishing desert tones and collectables.

I glued up the first section of 10 infantry from the Perry 'Desert Rat' set, they were far quicker and easier to put together than the Napoleonics I did a few years back, possibly because I have had a lot of practice with plastic multi part figures, but also there are a hell of a lot less separate parts to these latter figures. I then set about deciding how to approach painting them. After some thought I decided to stick with my trusty black base coat and to work with a fairly dry brush to build up the colours. I started with Vallejo British Uniform, highlighted with uniform + Off White. Still not happy with the resultant shade I went back to Flat Earth with about 20% added Off White and this produced a better shade to highlight with, again still keeping the brush fairly dry, not loaded with paint. At this point I felt I was close to the tones as illustrated on the box artwork, if a little patchy here and there. For the flesh I went a shade darker than usual Vallejo Beige Brown as the base and Sunny Flesh Tone as the highlight. At this stage I still did not feel happy 100%, the flesh needed a more suntanned look.  Vallejo Sepia Wash was brushed over the flesh - not forgetting the knees - and this produced a look that I was happy with. I also brushed a watered down wash of the same over equipment and uniform folds etc. They need varnishing, but on the whole I think they give a reasonable representation of the Desert Rats uniforms.

They will be based for Bolt Action with sand bases and represent a British Infantry Section consisting of a Sergeant with machine gun, 8 riflemen, one of whom supports the Bren Gunner with extra ammunition and the Bren Gunner himself. The Perry box contains 3 such sections together with mortar and anti tank rifle support weapons plus command figures/radio operator to complete a Platoon, as such it's very well thought out. Additional metal figures are available from Perry of course, including a fine Vickers medium machine gun section.

Bits and Bobs and a question.
With completion date set for 26th March we have been going through lots of old boxes from the garage and loft and found a few interesting things including my late Father in Laws small collection of pen/fruit knives, lots of old gold and silver jewellery, a Box Brownie camera and other things. Most of this has been sat in boxes since we moved into this house 14 years ago and it's been fun rediscovering these oddities.

A bit of research tells me that some of the fruit knives have quite an age, my favourite by far is this lovely little one with elegantly engraved mother of pearl handle and hallmarked silver ends and blade, the hallmark would appear to be for 1888 which I find remarkable, I'm keeping this one for myself! What I am most curious about is the object shown below, again it's hallmarked silver with a steel inset that opens and closes and appears to be designed as some kind of cutter? Too small for a cigar cutter, I would really be interested to know what it is? If any fellow bloggers have any ideas on the matter please share them with me.

Victorian Fruit Knife - Mother of Pearl with hallmarked silver blade and end caps

The mystery object - hallmarked silver body with steel moving insert section.

Any ideas.

Some of the collection - at left is a 1943 Farthing with a fold out blade.

Perry 'Travel Battle' sets completed.

I should start by saying that the '800 Hinchliffes' post was actually intended to be posted on the Civil War blog, but confusion between signing in and out between blogs meant I accidentally posted it here! Still I'm glad the video got good exposure and all comments are very much appreciated. My aged Golden Retriever Marcie decided to start click clacking around the kitchen and then take a long noisy drink, which made for some interesting background sound effects.

Painting time is at a premium and the house is full of packing boxes, some furniture is being sold off and we are making lots of trips to the recycling centre and charity shops. However, I have managed to finish off my two Travel Battle sets, purchased almost a year ago after the launch at Salute. I think it may be useful now and that it will live up to it's title.

The four plastic terrain tiles can be laid out in a variety of configurations and occupies a space of just 20"x 20", the grid is 1" squares. I must admit I find the tiles very pleasing on the eye with the winding roads, farms and outbuildings, fields and hills etc. All I did was to very carefully drybrush the green plastic with Vallejo Buff, paint the roads in Vallejo Flat earth and the fields the same before drybrushing with Flat Earth/Off White to add highlights. The figures were all black base coated and the colours carefully picked out, leaving some black to add depth, my usual small scale style. For variety I painted one French heavy cavalry unit as Dragoons, a simple paint job that seemed to work OK. I have - for the time being - left the plastic bases a flat green, but that may change.

So here we are, two sets that fit comfortably in one of the TB boxes. 16 bases of infantry, 8 bases of cavalry, 4 artillery and 4 Generals per side. The sets also include nice blue and red dice plus a set of somewhat simple, fast play rules that I'm about to try out.

A previous close up of the British infantry.

800 Hinchliffes!

This is the result of a pretty intensive 8 months collecting and painting Hinchliffe English Civil War figures. The video is a bit shaky in places as I move the camera around and refocus, but please bear with it for the close ups. I doubt that I will add any more figures now so it seemed a good time to lay everything out together and to record them before re-boxing them up.

Thanks to all who have inspired and encouraged me through this project, it helped keep me going, and a special thanks to Rob who's idea of expanding the shot wings to 24 figures has made a huge difference to the visual impact of the foot regiments.

Started in May 2017 the project was intended to replace the collection I sold off in 1979/80 as a young printing apprentice living in a Blackheath bedsit and finding myself short on the rent. Those went to John Tunstill at his shop 'Soldiers' in Lambeth SE London a generous offer from the tall, well spoken proprietor whom I have described as having something of the Edward Fox abut him. It was ironically my first visit to John's shop whilst still at school and on a trip to the Imperial War Museum that I first encountered the wonderful world of model soldiers that has continued to fascinate me to this day, so I dedicate this collection to him.

I would have been about 15 when I first entered John Tunstill's shop and encountered case after case of painted wargame figures including the entire early Mini figs range. This was before John moved into traditional 54mm collectors figures from which he made his fortune!

New Horizons!

I have seriously neglected this blog recently, having been very busy preparing for the move abroad. So much to think about, and having to let go of so much sentimental stuff to charity and recycling has left little energy for much else. The garage has been cleared, the loft is almost done, furniture has been let go to charity etc. Spanish houses tend to sell at least partially furnished, so we need to let go of more stuff yet. There is the matter of passport renewals before the price increase and currency exchange rates to keep in mind, it's all a bit daunting but nothing is going to stop us now. We are being guided by experienced professionals on both the property and currency markets so feel we are in good hands.

So where does this leave me on the hobby front? Well, most of my spare time has been spent on my English Civil War collection which now approaches 800 figures, but it's about done now and I'm going to finish it all off with magnetic basing and lining of the file boxes for travel. As part of the downsizing process I took the decision to sell off all of Flames of war collection and all of my French & Indian War collection. This might come as a bit of a shock to some, but it never really got used and the new owner has already given it it's first outing with the Sharpe Practice rules so I'm happy.

However, as painting soldiers is very much my method of unwinding and relaxing I decided to find myself a small project that will keep me painting until the move and this morning ordered two boxes of plastic figures from Perry Miniatures, the superb AfrikaKorps set and the Desert Rats set. I have never done the desert campaign but always fancied having a go and to be honest the pictures on the Perry site blew me away when I first saw them months ago. Each box makes up a platoon for Bolt Action and while I would have preferred not be sticking figures together again, I know the results will be worth it.

Well worth a look at the pics on the Perry site if you have never seen them, this will be the focus of this blog going forward. I removed the last post re F&I Wars as being no longer relevant as the game never got played, but if your into the desert campaign I hope you will continue to join me here as I build this one up.

Images borrowed from the Perry website, how inspirational is this?

Desert Rats. 

AfrikaKorps.