Leiston Abbey Chapel

I spent last Saturday walking round the spectacular RSPB reserve at Minsmere in Suffolk, from a lot of the hides I could see some mysterious ruins in the background, as it happened the footpath back to the campsite happened to go straight past them.

As I approached the ruins of the 12th century chapel (all that's left of a once much larger abbey) actually turned out to be somewhat smaller than they looked from across the reserve.  But then as we got very close they suddenly got a lot more interesting, as I noticed what seemed to be a pillbox built inside!  The information board confirmed my suspicions this was in fact a WW2 pillbox built inside a scheduled ancient monument.  I've never seen anything quite like it.

The rest of the abbey got pulled down in the 14th century and the stone moved three miles or so down the road to a new Leiston Abbey which is currently a free to access English Heritage property.  We visited this larger and more impressive ruin as well (pic below), but it didn't have the same charm as the little pillbox in the ruin.

From The Painting Table #19

Another collection of my recently completed minis today, lets start with a couple of randoms;

Wargames Foundry have this absolutely fantastic of throwing in a free mini or two with orders and here we have two of my recent freebies from them.  On the left we have an armoured skeleton painted up for use in warhammer quest and/or dungeon saga and on the right we have what I think is supposed to be father Christmas, but I've painted him up for use as a druid in my Forces of Nature army for Kings of War.

A bit of a impulse buy from ebay here.  These are three WW2 flames of war Churchill tanks, converted according to the previous owner into flame throwers for use in the Dieppe raid.  I don't know enough about the history to ascertain the arcuracy, but they're a nice addition to my collection and I got them at a good price.

Onto Deadzone now, starting with this Strider that has been captured by the Plague.  This is the third strider that I've painted and I'm a big fan of them, I've still got a rebel captured one to go at some point as well.

Finally we have a squad of Enforcers, also for Deadzone, based on the hard plastics with additional resin shields and guns.  I've got a lot of the Enforcer plastics and they're very good.  In fact all the Enforcers that I have for Deadzone are actually enough to make a small army, which is quite convenient as there's a Warpath Kickstarter about to start......

Tamiya 1/35 German WW2 Panzer Kampfwaagen II Ausf. F/G

A couple of months ago when I was off work for a week I popped into my new local Hobbycraft store to see if it had anything worth keeping an eye on for a hobbyist like me.  Most of the store is full of stuff that was no good, but tucked at the back they did have a model kit section.  It was dominated by Airfix, but had a few kits from other brands as well and I came away with this kit of an early WW2 German tank made by Tamiya. 

This was my first kit from Tamiya and was at a much larger scale than my normal 1/72 or 1/76 vehicles, so I didn't know exactly what I'd be getting until I opened up the box when I got home.  The kit was your standard hard plastic, but very well produced with sharp hard details, it was pretty easy to put together, with mostly large parts with detail already moulded on, rather than the adding of fiddly details as separate parts, like on most Airfix kits.  I'm not sure which approach I prefer.  This is also the first kit that I've ever managed to make where the tracks can actually rotate after construction.  Weather that says more about my abilities or various kits I'm not sure.

It also came with five figures which surprised me (although if I'd have read the box properly it shouldn't have!) a tank commander and a few Germans in desert gear.  These are the first 1/35 scale figures I've ever had and they're huge.  I've only stuck one together so far and have yet to paint him, not sure that I ever will.

The main reason I'm not fussed about painting these figs is that I decided to paint up my tank not in the desert scheme, but in one more suitable for northern Europe.  It was a bit odd painting a tank in this scale as well and I tried a slightly different approach, with more shaded areas, you can see the results below.

From The Painting Table #14 - This Month I have Been Painting.......

All sorts of random things really, none of the stuff belongs to specific projects or armies/warbands that needed work, I just fancied pulling a few models I liked the look of out of the pile and painting them up.

 

First up is this pack of 'Hollywood heroes' made my warlord games for the anglo-zulu war of 1879.  Of course based on the main characters from the awesome film 'Zulu', now I don't normally hold with minis of bona fide historical personalities being given a Hollywood makeover, but Zulu is such a fantastic movie I'm willing to make an exception in this case.  In case you needed telling from left to right we have; Private Henry Hook, Lt John Chard, Lt Gonville Bromhead & Colour-Sergeant Bourne.

 

 

I've also painted a selection of what would have been termed 'Imperial agents' back in the day (like 20 years ago I know) for warhammer 40K, after painting them I did think they would make a nice little inquisitorial warband, I might have to dig out the old rouge trader inquisitor I have in my collection and give him a lick of paint too.

 

 

This is a classic Adeptus Arbite armed with a bolt gun, rather than their characteristic shotguns.  I've been trying to get hold of a full squad of these at a reasonable price for ages, but have failed miserably, seems I'm not the only one who likes them.  I'm not sure what it is about them either, they are old and very flat posed, and technically not very good models, but something about them still screams cool to me.

 

I'm rather proud of how this callidus assassin came out, I think one of my better paint jobs.  Vindicare and callidus are my two favourite assassin temples, who doesn't love polymorphine.

 

An Imperial Guard colonel here, painted to match the rest of my Imperial Guard detatchment.  Although it started as an allied contingent I've managed to acquire enough Imperial Guard for them to form a small army on their own now, if only I could face up to painting another 50 or so guardsmen.

 

And finally for the Imperials this Inquisitorial scribe.

 

Some more classic citadel now, this time for warhammer fantasy in the shape of these 3 classic Norse miniatures.  These were spares I had when I picked up a whole lot of classic Norse minis for a Mordheim warband, these didn't find a place in that warband, but again I just really like the models and they've found their place on the shelf.

 

 

 

And finally another random Airfix kit that I bought, this time a British Bofors 40mm gun and tractor from WW2 in 1:76 scale.  I like these little airfix kits with more than one element too them, it makes for an interesting build and looks good on the shelf.  The tractor was a slightly more challenging build than I was expecting as well.  I've painted this one for action in northern Europe after D-Day, not for north Africa as it is on the box, just because I prefer it in green!

More For Flames of War #2

It's been a quiet month on this blog, but it's been sunny and I've been enjoying myself outside a lot.  However that doesn't mean that I've got no hobby done, we've played some good games and I've painted a bunch of minis, I just haven't felt the urge to write about them for some reason.  Today I finally photographed the latest batch of minis for flames of war, as usual from a mix of companies, not just 'official' Battlefront ones.

 

Lets start with this British TOG 2* which I bought after seeing the real one at Bovington earlier in the year.  It's a true beast of a tank, ridiculously big and impractical, but I think fantastically cool, I'm rather proud of the camouflage paint job as well.  The TOG 2* wasn't used in combat and was an experimental tank which is included in the Mid-War Monsters book.  We're playing and collecting late war, but can't help adding a few of the nuts vehicles from this book into our games, just because we can really.

These are two infantry command stands to act as company HQ and 2inC stands for when I field a British infantry list.  I think that they're from the Italy range, but look generic enough to me to fill in for almost any formation.

Switching to the Germans now for these two armoured cars.  Here we have a Sd Kfz 223 (radio) from battlefront and a zvezda Sd Kfz 222 (2cm), I already have one of these cars so can now field a recon platoon.

The next four tanks came as a single lot off of ebay, the auction said they were made by 'peter pig' which isn't a company that I'm familiar with, but they came at the right price and I now have four more tanks for my German force.  Starting with this Tiger, which is awesome just because it a Tiger.

The bulk of the lot were these Panzer IV's.  They're not the best minis ever and the side plating seems to be attached at a slightly off angle, but they will do their job.

Somehow this means I seem to have acquired a German army without particulary intending too.  If I take out the tiger I get a list coming in at just under 1500ptsusing the SS panzer division list from Atlantik Wall.  I've no idea if this is a reasonable list, but lots of tanks is fun.

Flames of War - Overwhelmed By Overlord & Atlantik Wall

As anyone who pops by here regularly will know I've recently been painting a lot of tanks and other minis for flames of war.  I've played several small battles and have been expanding my mini collection in a quite random way.  I decided it was time for a bit of structure and managed to get the 'Overlord' and 'Atlantik Wall' sourcebooks on the Normandy invasion from ebay at a good price (£30 for the pair, when normal RRP is £30 each).

I was expecting something akin to a 40K codex book (which retail at the same price), but boy was I wrong!  Whilst these have the same RRP as a GW codex they completely blow them out of the water in sheer size of book and quantity of content.  The quality is pretty amazing too, each book contains many, many lists representing all the different formations that fought in the campaign as well as loads of historical detail on the formations and a whole bunch of historical figures that fought in Normandy.  The books are hardback, have a bigger footprint than a GW codex and come with a much more substantial page count (240 for Atlantik Wall and over 300 for Overlord).

The problem is it's almost too much information, I really don't know where to start.  It's difficult enough trying to find formations that work with what I've got, let alone thinking about future additions.  I can see why it's done this way, but part of me wants an all singing all dancing 40K style list which isn't based on any particular historical formation.  Hopefully a bit of time and a lot of flicking through will help me make sense of it all.

From The Painting Table #12

Here we go again with another collection of newly painted minis for your perusal.

Starting with this classic Dwarf Lord min for Warhammer fantasy.  Covered in Runic Gromril armour this is one tough cookie.

Next up we have these three objective markers to use with my 40K space marine army.  I believe they were originally from the 3rd ed boxed set, although I got these with some other bits off ebay.  The little side coils were painted with boltgun metal, like the rest of the piece and the given a thin coat of blue wash, it's not something that I've tried before, and I'm quite pleased with the final effect.

Moving away from GW and to Mantic games now and another merc for deadzone.  This time the kickstarter exclusive Project Oberon.  Project Oberon belong to the species 'the nameless' who are among my favourite races in the warpath universe, hopefully we'll see a few more of them in deadzone at some point.

Onto flames of war now with this Soviet T34/85 obr 1943 from Battlefront.

And finally this German Sd.Kfz.22 armoured car from Zvezda's art of tactics range that I will also use for flames of war.  I've bought a few kits from the art of tactics range over the last few months and although this is the smallest of those it was also the biggest pain to build.  This was clearly due to the difficulties due to the shape of the vehicle, but I wouldn't advise just 'snap-fitting' this together like they suggest is possible.  With a little work however you can get a good result out of this cheap little kit.

PSC Stuart Jalopy Conversions for Flames of War

In my post on my recent acquisitions for flames of war I showed off my new platoon of Stuarts from the plastic soldier company and highlighted the insane amount of spare parts that came with the kit and I asked for some suggestions of how to use them.  Luckily Red Dog came to my aid and suggested I tried to make some Jalopies out of them.  I have to confess that I'd never heard of a 'Jalopy' at this point, but after a quick bit of research I discovered what he was on about, turretless Stuarts found in some late war British lists (I've even found a list they feature in amongst the many I've downloaded from battlefront over the last couple of years), it seemed like I might just be able to make it work and decided to give it a go.

The first step was easy, stick the tracks to the chassis, but this highlighted the essential problem, whilst most of the parts to create a new tank were there, certain crucial bits were missing.  There was no bottom fronts, backs or bottoms.  The fronts were built from the spare ammo carriers from the late production model tipped upside down, the backs were just a bit of thick card decorated with stowage, and well who needs bottoms anyway.

I affixed another piece of thick card under where the turret should be and then added spare tank commanders and machine guns that I had left over from the Open Fire boxed set.  All that was missing then were the hull mounted machine guns which I created simply with a small section of stiff wire with a dash of liquid green stuff to cover the joint.

I know that these aren't perfect, but I'm really rather pleased with myself for creating what are essentially four free tanks!  Thanks again to Red Dog for such a great idea.  On a final note does anybody know what 'Jalopy' means?  Its seems like an odd name.