Die-Cast Stuka for Battlegroup

 I finally took a gamble on a die-cast Stuka in 1/100 or 1/110 scale.  It was an African theatre Stuka, so I stripped it down, sanded stuff off, and repainted it in a fake generic Eastern Front/Italian scheme.

 

 

Plastic Soldier Company 8-Rads (15mm)

 I've been in a serious hobby lull since over-doing it at Siege of Augusta.  While I'm constantly working on random rules, etc...I just hadn't wanted to pick up a paint brush.

When this happens, I find 15mm is normally my easy "get out of the funk" scale since I can pick up some cool kit, paint it in an evening and feel like I accomplished something.

I grabbed the PSC 8-Rad kit (231 and variants), and threw together three of the five, stashing the last two in case I ever do grey stuff for early war.

I made a basic Sdkfz 231...one Sdkfz 233 (with the short 75mm assault gun), and a more rare Sdkfz 263 8-Rad, the weird command model featuring only a hull MG.

Convention: Siege of Augusta, 2023

Siege of Augusta occured this past weekend - a nice "medium" size convention, the type I generally prefer.  If I had to guess I'd think some 200-250 people attended over the weekend.

For some reason I decided to host games non-stop from Friday at noon through Saturday at midnight.  I brought no less than three of my own games, and ran them in large blocks, just firing up games as players showed up.

The curse of "I don't like technology" struck...when I realized I had snapped only a handful of pictures of other peoples' games before putting my phone away for the whole weekend.  I just don't like whipping out my phone...but I should have!

Fortunately I was able to scrounge pictures from other attendees on the Facebook page.

One of several rounds of Caverns, Crypts, & Catacombs.

The party considers its next move.

The small demo-dungeon.

Running Scrapheap on my new junk town table!

Intrepid adventurers encounter a spectre.

The junk town I set up for demo-ing Scrapheap.

Another shot of Caverns, Cryptes, & Catacombs.

The town for Shoot N' Skeaddle.

Another shot of Drake's Branch, my old west town.

A picture from my buddy's "rescue peasants" fantasy game he custom designed for the convention.

More of main street.

A Halfling struggling to catch up with his partners.

Another few shots of the Scrapheap table.

A post-apocalyptic game that I didn't decipher.

An attractive Civil War game.

I believe this was Franco-Prussian war.

One of the other two Old West games we had running on Friday.

An attractive ancients "trireme" era naval game.
 

Oldhammer: Blood Angel Space Marine Scouts

Struggled to get a good picture of these guys for some reason, but a squad of nice old metals, recovered from eBay minis.

Slightly...rough when picked up off eBay.

Stripped, cleaned, re-based, repainted.

Who wants to be a Slumtown Millionaire? Siege of Augusta this weekend!

Sorry for the poor pictures, but I just completed painting up some MDF slumtown stuff, so I'll have an additional "biome" or setting for my Scrapheap games.

TT Combat slum stack stuff.

In addition, I'll be running several of my games at Siege of Augusta this upcoming weekend.  I'll be running Shoot  N" Skedaddle and Scrapheap on Friday, and I'm planning Caverns, Crypts, & Catacombs and Scrapheap on Saturday.  Swing by and say hello - maybe get a playtest in with me.

Starting off 2023 strong.

For 2022, here are my hobby results:

2022 Models Painted: 214*

*For the purposes of counting models, a base of 15mm miniatures is treated as a single model (whereas a 15mm tank is considered one model).  Sadly I don't count terrain which I built/painted a ton of for the year!

Starting for 2023, we're already on a roll.  My normal goal each year is simple and attainable: 10 miniatures per month, or 120 for the year.

I completed four Reaper Worms for use as quasi-Tremors 'Graboids' for playing some Scrapheap.  Sadly they're Bones Black or basic Bones and the primer colour is still tacky a few days after application...a frustration I've experienced with a handful of other Bones miniatures.  It's not deal-breaking as they are simple, quickly painted and just scenario use models....but nonplussed regardless.

 

 

These models actually have pinkish inner maws with teeth, but I realized they don't show in the pictures.  These are each mounted on 50mm bases, and they stand 60-65mm in height --- so quite large!

Another start for 2023, wrapping up some 15mm T-34's from Flames of War (for use with Battlegroup).  Unlike 98% of Soviet players, I'm not a huge fan of the T-34...and the ones I do like are the shorter barrely 76.2mm models.  However, T-34/85s are an absolute staple of mid to late war Soviet forces, so I put together some remaining T-34's for use.  I imagine I'm probably done with T-34's for quite some time - having roughly 13-15 of them on hand.

Some ancient heralds, and some ancient Space Marines

 I had two leftover cavalry I decided to make into stand-in heroes, and stand-in couriers (which can be used to guarantee command rolls once a game) for FSF.

Given the cheap Horus Heresy Mk6 space marines all over eBay I grabbed a few sets to make some marines for possible 2nd edition games in the future (my buddies and I have been talking about doing some cooperative bug hunts).

Not overly stoked with the results, but Space Marines are Space Marines.  Amusingly the very first "expensive" thing I bought at age 14 with my first job was a painted squad of the original RTB01 Beakie marines from a local hobby shop.  They happened to be painted red, so this is all coming full circle now.

Just getting some stuff out of the queue...

As the year draws to a close, I find myself, for the first time in many years...with a slight "pile of shame".  Normally I'm pretty good about buying - opening - assembling - painting - playing.

I don't open packages, or build stuff ahead of my painting schedule, etc.  I only have one small shelf of "stuff to do", but that shelf has been a little heavier than normal lately.  So I'm now trying to make genuine progress toward clearing out boxes.

Most of this is simple; I just have too many projects on the boil at the moment...something I rarely find is the case.

 So, I wanted to build and paint something quick - threw these FoW 15mm Valentines together yesterday - primed and painted and finished them this afternoon.

 

A slow death by MDF...and some horsies.

I've been missing for a bit on my own blog due to spending several weeks gluing together MDF terrain (a backlog that had been building).  No pictures until that stuff starts to get painted/finished.

Having reached a suitable stopping point, I've gone back to finishing some models (and working on a new secret project - not a game this time!).

Some more light cavalry for the "not" Dacian force, and some army pics (some of which came out blurry, sorry).