So what's new?

Truth to be told, not a lot.

A week back at work while still recovering from being ill, left me with little energy or inclination to paint or model.

I've spent the weekend recuperating and messing about with various projects or projected projects to be more precise.....

Saturday saw me messing about with trains; before you ask dear reader, I have not embarked on a new or parallel hobby involving model railroads (once uncharitably described by some wargamers online as "the chuff-puff loony brigade" from someone who plays with toy soldiers ....). I know many wargamers combine the two (several on the VWC) and there are obvious crossovers....

So what was I doing? Two projects awaiting paint are RCW / Back of Beyond and Mexican Revolution, both in 15mm. Many were acquired several years ago. Both conflicts involved the use of trains, both armoured and as transports. I had picked up some IIRC either HO or N gauge flexi-track many years ago only to discover I should have got TT track or after some reading, HOm track to be precise. Obviously, no-one makes trains in "15mm" apart from Peter Pig and HOm is the track they suggest.

You can buy "collectable" trains of roughly the correct size to complement the limited offerings from Peter Pig , and these can be acquired cheap. Rolling stock is more problematic, but I'd picked up on spec a Roco modern train with old fashioned (to my eyes) carriages and some TT Triang goods wagons. Along with these, I had found a couple of flexi 3 foot HOm track and so I was seeing how well they worked...

What I need are longer goods wagons / box cars; I'm beginning to think these would be better scratch built or converted from HO......

I also spent several hours downloading a Battle Cry mini-campaign for Garibaldi's invasion of Sicily and Naples. I've seen this done in 54mm by a couple of bloggers. After looking at various ranges, I've decided I have enough SSM ACW and Napoleonic figures to do it in 30mm with crude plastic conversions, many just being simple paint jobs. I finished by hunting out various pictures online, many of which I'd had on a tablet but deleted when it ran out of memory.

Sunday was followed by hunting out some Megablitz OOBs for WW2 Western Desert that again had been deleted previously. While engaged in this, I had a chance discovery of a 1967 OOB for the IDF in Hebrew......

The download managed to scramble and delete parts of the layout. As I don't read Hebrew, this was no great loss but it had removed the Arabic numbers visible online. I recognised these as unit and artillery calibre numbers. So extracting these,  I spent a couple of hours adding, checking and confirming information I already had which proved very useful.

Many years ago I collaborated with a couple of US gents to work out a definitive IDF OOB and as best as we could of the Arab armies. For the IDF, there's a Russian source which seems to derive from a common source as the Hebrew one, but they differ slightly or rather this recent discovery, adds to the gaps....

The IDF are notoriously secretive, even about 1967 formations and contemporary sources reflect this with some disguised formation IDs; added to which is the practice of referring to the formation by the commander's name (first or surname) or nickname, and the cross posting of units.....

Anyway, I have managed to get a much better handle on the artillery. For the Arabs, the Jordanians are the most complete, followed by the Egyptians with the Syrians being anonymous below brigade level, apart from a few battalions. ToEs are also uncertain for all the Arabs.

So, my weekend has been trains and research.......

January update

Whatever cold / flu  virus I picked up settled firmly on my chest last week resulting in much coughing, wheezing, sneezing and generally feeling unwell. There was little I could do physically that didn't result in a coughing fit and leaving me exhausted and washed out, usually falling asleep in the afternoon.

Taking the week off work, I attempted to distract myself with more painting. I wasn't very productive, finding after one or two colours I didn't have the energy to continue. Getting old is a pain!

Anyway, with the worst of my affliction behind me (still lingering unfortunately) I managed to finish off the painting on Saturday before a restorative tonic of the VWC.

So, continuing the Frankenstein creations of the Electorate of Banst, I present the Flying (horse) artillery.

The limbers date back to my first acquisition of SSMs from the late Ronald Spencer Smith himself. They were originally created for the Austrian and Prussian forces of the SYW for WRG's 1685-1845 out of SSM limber wheels, balsa, wire, cocktail sticks and chopped about Napoleonic Lifeguard figures. They languished along with the SSMs in a tin then box after deciding to use "proper" metal figures. They were resurrected for Banst with chopping, headswaps and application of Greenstuff.

  

Guns and gunners; the artillery figures are all standard SSM AWI artillery with an ACW kepi head covered with Greenstuff plumes for a sort of Tarleton / French dragoon look. The ACW figures went for civilian militia / rebels with the artillerymens tricornes. The guns are the British Napoleonic carriage from someone's abortive conversion which I further chopped about and reduced in size. The guns barrels are plastic ship's cannons from source unknown which were used way back when for Austrian 3 pdr battalion guns.

I'm slowly working my way through Banst, helped by a limited palette  of colours, most straight from the pot.

New Year painting and fighting the lurgi!

Not the best of starts to 2024; before Xmas I had a chesty cough that kept coming and going. Number one son went out with his friends and came back with a stinking cold. Almost inevitably, I have come down with it as well. A Covid test showed negative, so I assume I have fallen victim to a combined cold and flu virus.

Cue coughing, sneezing, alternate runny or blocked up nose, disturbed sleep and generally feeling under the weather. Copious application of over the counter remedies has provided some relief. Amazingly, despite this I have managed to do some painting. I forced myself to have a go and found not only was I so zoned out I was able to concentrate and focus on the painting which distracted me from the cold/flu. I was careful not to push it too far; when I started making mistakes or felt tired I gave up for the day.

I tackled some more SSMs as they are undemanding to  paint once you have done 100 or more, simple block colours on black undercoat. I bit the bullet and brought down the box for Banst.

Banst is one of the Electoral states, ruled by an Elector that doesn't seem to get on with anyone! His character is one of the few militarily excellent personalities, his cards coming out as "War, Dominant" which in this campaign is going to be close to military genius! I see the army as a potential mercenary force.

The army was originally going to be made up of "left over" figures; I had some Napoleonic SSM cuirassiers in helmet and some of the later Peter Johnstone 25mm plastic SSM additions - much smaller than the classic SSM. I also sort of fancied doing an army to reflect some of Marechal du Saxe's less wacky ideas; plentiful skirmishers, amussette light artillery and a neo-classical organisation based around Roman legions. His real life Volunteers du Saxe provided uniforms and lancers. By the time it came to recreate the army with these ideas, I had managed to accumulate enough SSMs that I could use the smaller figures for head conversions on standard SSM bodies so they matched the other armies.

So here's last week's painting. I have already painted two more infantry units. Unusually, instead of ploughing through all the line infantry, instead I varied it by painting the other main components of the first "Legion" of mixed infantry, cavalry and amussette. There will be two such formations and two batteries of "flying" (horse) artillery.

Scratch-built amussette and mobile shield. The gunner is a converted frontiersman / cowboy from SSM with a head swap and carving.

Line infantry - two more "Cohorts" are painted - Princepes, Hastati and Triari.

Skirmishers - Velites - converted Napoleonic SSM 

Horse - Dragoons

Light cav Hussars and Lancers