28mm Westphalian Light Infantry

This month it was back onto the Napoleonics. I picked up these from the York show and someone's bits box. The guy sold me 24 unpainted figures for just £7, so I was determined to dig around for a complete regiment. I decided on Westphalians after reading a Wargames Illustrated article on them a few years back. Not the most excellent of troops to field, but they do look quite splendid! I was also pondering some French allied expansion after having so much fun with my Italian and Polish Brigades during our club games. The models themselves I'm told are old 28mm Essex (?). I particularly liked the wounded officer/standard bearer!

I also decided to concentrate on my bases a bit more (basing had usually been an afterthought in my earlier modelling exploits). The shrubbery was provided by Tajima from their excellent range on Ebay.

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!