Treemendus Scenics

This is my first attempt at creating my own trees. I used one of the kits available from the Treemendus website http://www.treemendus-scenics.co.uk/ which along with the strands of wire, horse hair, bark dust, scatter, glue and other bits also came with a handy 'how to..' guide. I was really surprised just how quick and easy it was to make the finished item, the whole thing must have taken me an hour in total (not including drying time for the filler on the base). The wire in the pack can easily be divided to make four medium sized trees suitable for 20mm-28mm gaming. After twisting the wires together to make the trunk, roots and branches I glued it to a thick card base and covered it with the filler. I left some of the tops of the roots protruding from the soil to give it a realistic effect. Afterwards I mixed the bark dust with PVA then coated the whole thing. Next I gave it an ink wash to bring out the detail a bit on the branches etc. Next I painted the earth base with a Vallejo Dark Chocolate Brown with a slight highlight. Whilst all this was drying I pulled apart the horse hair and sprayed it with a GW dark green spray, then covered it in hairspray whilst coating it with scatter. More PVA was applied to the base and some bark scatter added, then finally I gave the whole tree a blast with matt varnish spray to make sure everything stuck.
All in all, not a bad first effort I think. I'll probably save even more money by sourcing my own scatter, wire and individual items from now on, but if you've never attempted this before and fancy having everything in your hands ready to go then the Treemendus kits are ideal. (P.S. Extra special thanks to my girlfriend for having the patience to take the above photos whilst I made tea!)

Congreve Rocket

I thought I'd post up a couple of photos I took at the National Space Centre in Leicester last week. The Congreve Rocket is on the first floor along with some of the engines from the WW2 V-Weapons. Myself and my partner were there for the British Sci-Fi Convention. A really great weekend where we got chance to chat to some of our childhood heroes. The best part was maybe talking to Jamie Anderson (son of Gerry Anderson of Thunderbirds and Stingray fame) and having a hand sketched Judge Dredd picture given to me by 2000AD artist Lee Sullivan.
There's a ton of figures on the painting table right now, along with scenery and other stuff. I'll post up the pictures as soon as I've finished. In the meantime here's Davros!

AWI 28mm Highlanders

Some Redoubt Miniatures AWI Higlanders just off the painting table. The first time I've ever painted Tartan, so please excuse the rough lines and simple design. I went for a dark green (Vallejo Black Green) then some Prussian Blue lines overlaid with Flat Yellow. The Yellow came out quite bright so I went over the Tartan at the end with a Brown ink wash. Turned out OK I guess, but I'll keep trying some different techniques. Especially as I've had a load of Highland Clansmen through the post recently. I want to use these AWI figures for some FIW Musket and Tomahawk games. I bought them from Colonel Bills stall at Triples last year and was assured by folks they'd go alright with FIW.

Stealing from a Wargames Show?

On the drive up to the York Wargames Show a few weeks back, myself and a couple of friends discussed the occasional thefts from stallholders that take place now and again. This was mainly prompted by the disturbing report that one of our favourite regular vendors Dave Thomas had lost some Warlord ECW Battalia boxes to an outbreak of thievery at a previous event last year. I was shocked not only for the fact that it was a bit brazen to just grab and walk off with a fairly large amount of stuff like that, but also that anyone (who no doubt enjoys Wargaming) would steal from companies or individuals that are such an essential part of ones own hobby. Let's face it, robbery hardly contributes to the continuation of the hobby does it? Rather it aids its decline. My friend Simon also pointed out how weird it must be for these individuals to cast an eye across their collections and say to themselves "I nicked most of this". When we arrived at the show it was interesting to see that Dave T had quite reasonably taken the step of placing a CCTV camera at the back of his stall.

Sociologists and psychologists have a plethora of reasons for why people steal, but one thing we can be sure about is that lifting a load of model soldiers from a Wargames Show doesn't fall into the category of "stealing a loaf of bread to feed a starving family". More likely it's a case of petty selfishness and the concept of getting something for nothing. If someone wants to save money there's always a bargain on the Bring 'n' Buy stalls or EBay for god's sake.

Far from being 'faceless corporations' (and this may come as a surprise) but where Wargames Shows are concerned many of the traders are not making a fortune from what they do - in fact many of them have full or part time jobs outside of it, and the Wargaming business is quite often something they do as an extension of the passion they have for the hobby. If you inhabit the kind of moral grey area that makes it ok to rob from their business, then you may not appreciate that it's pretty much the same as putting your hand in someone's jacket and lifting their wallet or breaking into someone's house.

I know that this activity is likely down to a small percentage of unscrupulous people and that the majority of folks help to make Wargaming the kind of fun and inclusive community that it's meant to be.

A Little Local Difficulty...

So I decided to try and cut some bases today in the comfort of the living room, while my partner sat and used the computer. This inevitably put me within range of our two cats Sooty and Ralphy (aka "The Devil's Children"). As the photo shows, the allure of small metal men and bits of cardboard were too much to resist for them, and they took pleasure in batting everything around.

I've lept straight back into my 1866 Austro-Prussian project in the last few days. Yesterday saw me finish painting most of the infantry for a second Corps, and now I'm prepping and basing the Cavalry and Artillery. I'm slightly surprised at how much Pendraken 10mm stuff I have, as whilst delving through a box I came across another almost complete Austrian Army pack. So maybe I'll get a third Corps done? Depends on if I get totally narked off with painting White and Blue uniforms.

I read the latest couple of issues of Wargames Illustrated over the weekend too, which is nudging my interests in the direction of some WSS gaming in the future. I read Richard Holmes' book on Marlborough a couple of years back and thoroughly enjoyed it. Again the issue will be of expense and scale. Given how long it took me to get a decent 28mm French Napoleonic Army, I'm reluctant to spend loads on a WSS one in the same scale. Also, I agree with many that 15mm and 10mm give a great look to the larger battles like Blenheim etc. On the other hand 28mm will be good due to all the amazing and colourful uniforms and character figures. Then again there's always Barry Hilton's new skirmish game for the period: 'Donnybrook' (also in the new WI) which can utilize only a handful of figures and follows on from a lot of recent popular games like Muskets and Tomahawks and Saga.

French Indian Wars - 28mm British Regulars

These chaps are from AW Miniatures. I picked a couple of their unit packs up from the Triples show last year. I was impressed with their prices, and the figures themselves are a nice chunky size. They were great to paint, plus seeing as we're using the Muskets and Tomahawks skirmish rules I don't have to paint up loads of them. For these I used a black undercoat with about two layers of Vallejo Flat Red then adding some white to highlight a third coat. Same approach again with the yellow cuffs and turnbacks. The AW range is really coming along and I noticed recently that they've just produced a range of British Grenadiers for FIW too.

Display Cabinet for my Figures!

After years of wanting a display cabinet of some sort to place a selection of my models in, my girlfriend surprised me with this on Christmas Day. It comes as a flat pack from Argos, but was very easy to assemble. She'd apparently tried to purchase a similar one with lighting but due to stock shortages had to settle for one without. Despite this small setback I wandered down to the local hardware shop and managed to find a 60w strip light that fits in just nicely. The cabinet has a sliding glass front and four brackets to fit it to a wall if necessary (I'd advise on this, as it makes it very sturdy and less prone to knocks - especially if you have two cats tearing around the place as we do). There's an option to narrow the gaps between each section with a purchase of extra glass shelves but I thought this would make it a bit too crowded and more difficult for the light to penetrate down to the lower sections. I collect a fair bit of militaria again these days too, so I'm also intending to rotate it with my medal collection and other bits.