Cheap Black Hawk Helicopter

Picked up a new collectible magazine at the news agents today

http://helicopter-magazine.com/the-collection/

Came with a very nice US Black Hawk helicopter in 1/72 scale for a bargain price of £2.99. As usual with this things the next issue is cheap (a Sea King heli) before they get expensive from issue 3.

The wife bought me a copy of Force on Force for my Birthday so a cheap Black Hawk might be just the thing to kick off a little Modern skirmish in 20mm.........

2011 -thank goodness that's over. Looking forward to 2012

It would be fair to say 2011 hasn't been the best of years on the hobby front "real" life has found away of making sure that it has intruded on my hobby several times this year.

Putting my back out, financial wobbles with the family budget, risk of redundancy (luckily averted but stressful at the time), my motorbike going to the great scrap yard in the sky, being knocked off my new motorbike by a new driver and the my kids seeming to have endless social functions and clubs to attend.

Have all combined to make for a very poor hobby output this year either enforced, like trying to paint with a bad back, or just plain sapping my enthusiasm for doing anything.

So drawing a blue line under 2011 I'm looking forward to trying to get more hobby time in 2012

I have projects I really should finish off which include

* a few extras for my new AK-47 army (a couple of armoured cars and some air power)

* a soviet Fow infantry battalion (half done just need to finish painting all those pesky infantry)

* a Fow US tank company (half done again more infantry to paint and some tanks)

* Darkest Africa Arabs (mostly done just 24 Askaris and some baggage and one offs like attendants to go)

Projects for which I have all the miniatures but are yet to be assembled or see a lick of paint include

* GWs Dreadfleet game basically I need to assemble and paint the whole thing

* a US taskforce for Rapid Fire to go against my German Kampfgruppe

* an entire Mantic Elf army that I got cheap last year

Projects for which I have nothing but take my fancy at the moment include

* more Darkest Africa Ngoni, Ila, Lozi/Kokolo and British lakes company all looking tempting

* to branch out my Darkest Africa stuff into VSF with steam tanks, dirigibles and fantastic troop types.

* post Apocalyptic skirmish games road warriors, zombies, mutants, survivors and gangs of guys in SM gear (well maybe not the last ones) - talking to my 10 year old about this other day and he reckons this is what I should go for.

So plenty to have a go at in 2012 just got to get stuck in and see how I go.

Cheers and happy new year everyone.

Jon

Christmas goodies

Well Christmas day is gone the kids have come down from a code 10 mega - hyper to a slightly more controllable code 9 very- hyper. Boxing day is when we traditionally go to my wife's parents for a few days and re-live Christmas day all over again.

Before I find myself cut off from the Internet for a few days I thought I list this years hobby Christmas prezzies. Not a lot this year, due to the financial climate, cuts have been made and like most parents the kids came first. The wife and I stuck mainly to sensible presents like clothes. However I did get a couple of hobby things.

A copy of Chris Peers in the Heart of Africa rules and the accompanying Army list book. Which were needed in light of my plans to do more African colonial stuff in 2012

A couple of Warhammer Ancients Army books El Cid and Spartacus. I don't really play WAB any more but I like the army books which are always a good read and these ones where going cheap as GW had a sale on Warhammer historical stuff before Christmas.

My mum and dad give me a few quid which has been ring fenced for a hobby purchase not sure what yet though as there are so many things I'd like and so little cash these days.

The big present though is a copy of GW Dreadfleet from my in-laws ( I haven't actually had yet but I should get it today). I'm not normally a fan of modern GW but this game called out to me both because I loved Man'O'war back in the day and because it is a one off game with everything in the box (so I won't need to by anything else).


Right I'm off to get ready to spend a few days with the in-laws eating and drinking and watching lots of sub standard christmas telly.

Cheers Jon

Merry Christmas everyone

Merry Christmas everyone. Hope you all get lots of nice hobby related Christmas presents.

Jon

Cheap jungle terrain 2

So here are my finished jungle terrain pieces using the plastic aquarium plants I got from the 99p store. I made ten pieces mounted on old CDs (I always collect any old CDs/DVDs I come across). I already had some jungle terrain I bought at a wargames show many years ago that was a bit tired looking and based as individual pieces. I broke the old scenery of their bases and added them to my 99p store pieces to make quite a nice mix of foliage. A bit of sand paint and flock finished off the CDs nicely.

I'm pretty pleased with the results. The only down side is that my 6x4 table rather swallows up the ten pieces I think I really need another ten. Looks like another trip to the 99p store is on the cards.

Jon

Cheap Jungle terrain

While being dragged around the shops by the wife yesterday (another downside of works overtime ban) I ended up in the local 99p store were I found these plastic aquarium plants. There were lots of different packs ranging from 4 small ,3 medium or 2 large plants on a resin base for a princely 99p a pack (not surprisingly).

I picked up five packs and plan to renovate my existing jungle terrain on to CD bases with these added jungle foliage. It might not be very realistic for really world conflicts but will certainly do for Sci-fi and fantasy games. In particular my jungle loving Slann army will feel much more at home.

Cheers Jon

Life can really screw with your hobbies - part 3

Well I returned to work today after almost three weeks off with a back injury. First memo on my desk from senior management is regarding redundancies, apparently we need to shed 50-60 staff. No compulsory redundancies yet natural wastage and an attractive voluntary scheme are on offer first. No new staff are to be taken on the rest of us are just going to have work harder and longer to cover the shortfall (and be grateful that we still have a job too).

I have to admit I toyed with the idea of taking voluntary in my lunch break and going into the figure painting business. But even after 15 years employment the numbers don't stack up. On top of which one thing that working for Games Workshop in my mis-spent youth taught me is that the quickest way to fall out of love with your hobby is to turn it into a job. As I can't afford to leave/lose my job I can look forward to sleepless nights wondering if I'll end up on the money saving hit list Ho-hum.

Of more concern to my hobby though is an immediate ban on overtime I used to put in a few hours a month to bring in another £50-100 a month most of which goes on toys. That's gone now so the hobby budget has just taken a big hit.

Thinking about at work today though I've decided that I can turn this into a positive. Last week in a fit of boredom I decided to have a good go through the wargames room. It was rather worrying that I had a round 12 unfinished armies and projects. Some are within a whisker of being finished others have a lot to do. I've decided to try and devote one month to each army and project to get it finished. what hobby budget I do have I need to use to finish things rather than start new ones. It's a plan I don't now if it will work but it's worth a try.

First off for February is to finish of my Mantic dwarf army shouldn't be too hard as its 3/4s done anyway...........

Something Fun

Found this on the net I thought it was really fun. This bloke has basically modelled up the old action force toys into 28mm miniatures

http://actionforcevsredshadows.blogspot.com/

As a kid I had stacks of Action force and Cobra which used to battle it out on my bedroom floor. Seeing them in 28mm just tickled me in a nostalgic way. Sadly it looks like their hasn't been an update to the blog in a while it would be great to see more.

It's oh so quiet....

If it seems a bit quiet on here it's not that I'm not doing anything on the hobby front, just not anything worth posting about. I could tell you about the couple of hours I spent going through and re-organising my paints but it wouldn't be much fun.

All my Christmas goodies have turned up now. Sadly a couple of my orders were wrong so I'm now trying to sort those out. Mostly I've ordered a lot of plastic for Christmas so instead of painting I'm spending lots of time cutting, cleaning and sticking together lots of multi part plastic which really doesn't seem worth posting pictures of if I'm honest.

It's a two pronged attack on the hobby front. At home I'm putting together my Rapid Fire US armoured task force. At work in my lunch break I'm putting the second round of my Mantic undead army together. Hopefully by the end of next week I can start to get some painting going and then have some nice pics to post up.

The only other thing I've been doing is putting some new scenery together for my wargames table hopefully some pictures of my efforts will be posted up soon.

Cheers Jon

Bargain rule sets from Northstar

Well winter is here and rather predictably my painting output has dropped like a stone. For those who don't know my wargames room/ painting area is my garage which is at the bottom of the garden, while I've done it out nicely boarding up all the walls, adding a new floor and installing a heater. This time of year it is still rather cold and unappealing when weighed up against surfing the net or watching telly in a nice warm house. Add in the snow and sub zero temperatures, sick children, the coming of Christmas and work and painting wise the last two and half weeks have produced very little on the hobby front.



Having said that a couple of nights ago I forced myself to go down the garage and paint up my newly arrived Ready to Roll trucks for my SS panzer grenadiers from Chiltern miniatures. They painted up surprisingly quickly so hopeful some pictures will be posted up in the next couple of days.




In the mean time I picked up three sets of Chris peers rules going cheap from North Star
http://www.northstarfigures.com/list.php?spo=1&page=1

First I picked up armies in crisis which is basically a WW2 version of Contemptible Little Armies with a few bolt ons. Not a big fan of CLA mostly because I feel the no moving and firing rule encourages both sides to play too defensively. Mostly there is little advantage to moving into firing range of the enemy who can then fire on you knowing you can 't return fire for a turn. Having said that they're simple and quick and I'm tempted to use them for solo games where I can tinker with the rules without upsetting anyone.




Second I picked up Empire of the Steppes which covers purely the 90 odd years of the great Mongol conquests. Again this appears to be CLA with add bolt ons for period feel. Having said that it looks like it would give a good game and really tries to capture steppe nomad warfare something many ancients rules don't do very well in my opinion. There are also around thirty army lists which are interesting and appear well researched



Last but not least is Advance the Flag ACW rules. These look very interesting, there are some similarities with Chris Peers other rule sets but this set is aimed at Corps level actions so a base of multiple miniatures represents a regiment and four bases a brigade. I'm quite taken with these I bought them thinking I might do something with my Perry plastic ACW miniatures as they are aimed at 28s. I actually think they would look better with 2/6/10mm miniatures though as four 28mm miniatures representing a regiment looks a bit odd to me. Of the three sets I think these are the ones that are most likely to form a new project for 2011.

Cheers Jon

My wargames room

I gave my wargames room a good tidy a couple of weekends ago and took some pictures before it reverts back to it's normal untidy state. Thought I'd post them to show my little wargames sanctuary.

Basically my room is the garage. Our house has an unusual double length (rather than the more usual double width) garage. I divided the garage down the middle with a stud wall and boarded up the breeze block walls and added a raised floor.

Like most garages the insulation leaves a bit to be desired being rather warm in the summer and bloody freezing in the winter. Also when I convinced the lady wife to let me have my room it was on the condition that I shared with the tumble dryer (boo).

The display cabinets are from good old IKEA. The wargames table is built from MDF with coasters to make it easy to move around it also has six map draws (saved from a skip) built in to one end to provide more figure storage.

Jon