Recap

A pretty lousy week has finally come to an end. Hopefully there won't be any more sicknesses or injuries for awhile.

While I didn't finish anything this week, I've got 5 more 15mm British tanks (3 Shermans and 2 Stuarts) on the verge of completion. Should be able to wrap them up tomorrow night.

I started assembling the BMP-3 that I got from Imprint Models tonight. It's a great looking resin model. If you're looking for a modern vehicle to go with 28mm figures, check them out.

While I missed another AD&D session, I did get some gaming in. My son and I played Doom: The Boardgame and Marvel Heroscape. When we played Doom I left out a lot, mainly the cards since though he can read it would have taken him forever to read the cards and I don't think he would have understood how to use them.

When we played Heroscape we used the basic rules and he had no problem understanding what to do. He beat me in the first game and then I beat him in the second. Lots of fun.

Gabe rolling some dice.

The winner and his villains.

Gabe moving his demons. He always wants to be the bad guys!

Got a lot of goodies this week. The aforementioned BMP-3 arrived the day after some Ospreys concerning the Waffen SS and Herman Goring Division that I ordered off of Amazon.com. When I'm done these British I'm going to start on the Germans that I have. Also stopped by Your Hobby Place in Martinsburg West Virginia and picked up the Marvel Heroscape game and Battlelore.

Quick Post

It's been a tough week on the home front. Both of my kids have been sick, and one had to be taken to the emergency room after he got hit in the eye with a bungie cord. Long story there, suffice it to say that four kids jumping on a trampoline equals eye injury. Anyway, he's ok now, but my painting time has been limited this week.

Tonight I did airbrush the base coat onto my 28mm Land Rovers that I got from The Assault Group (TAG). I also assembled a Maxim machine gun and two mortars that I got from Bolt Action Miniatures. These will be used by the militia forces in my modern Africa game for Historicon. I have to say it was a real pain gluing them together.

The other thing I did tonight was take all of my TAG African militia/army figures out of storage so I can start organizing my Historicon game. Some of the figures need a little repair since they were damaged when we moved back in 06. I have used them since the move but only a small number of them. For Historicon I intend on using all 80 (estimated) of them, though I do think I'm making this game too big. We shall see.

Capitals Lose in Overtime

Well, all good things come to an end I suppose. The good news is I won't have to spend time watching them on TV anymore, so I'll have more time to paint!

I set up what I have for my Historicon game so far and took some pictures. It was quite fun doing so.



Green Berets deploy from a Little Bird while a Blackhawk hovers overhead.

Close-up of the Green Berets.

Humvee column preparing to move in.

Recap

Basically this week I finished up several things I had been working on over the past month or so. I finished my SAS and 15mm British infantry, and the flight stands for my 1/48th helicopters. I also assembled and primed two 15mm Stuart light tanks and three more Shermans, along with two 28mm Land Rovers for my SAS to ride in. Those are what I'll be painting this week.

Here are some pictures of the SAS and one of my helicopters.

Twilight Struggle

With my wife out of town and me up most of the night with a sick child I didn't feel much like painting anything today. However, once my son was feeling better and taking a nap, I opened up and punched my copy of Twilight Struggle and read through the rules and played a turn solo.





I can see why this game is so well received. Even though I was playing by myself I really enjoyed it. It probably helps that I like anything to do with the Cold War, but I think just about anybody would like this game.

In the game the US and USSR attempt to gain control of countries through "Influence." Influence markers are placed by spending operations points which are gained by playing cards. Cards are either played for operations points or as events, such as the Soviet blockade of West Berlin. These events usually result in one player gaining or losing influence in particular countries. One twist though is if you play a card for ops points but the event depicted is your opponents event (denoted by a white or red star) then the event happens as well. For example, when I was playing the Soviets' cards, I played Marshall Plan which gave me 4 ops points. However, the event also happened which resulted in the US gaining influence in all of the countries of Western Europe. However, the ops points spent resulted in the Soviets gaining control of France, a "battleground" state. Some countries are battlegrounds which come into play when scoring and effect the Defcon level (coup attempts in battlegrounds move the Defcon marker closer to nuclear war).

Anyhow, without going too much further into a detailed explanation of the rules, the Soviets were one country away from an automatic victory in the first turn.

Seems like a great game.

A Few Pictures

These are some of the 15mm British I've been working on. They are based for Command Decision: Test of Battle, the rules we are using for our Anzio campaign.



Medium machine gun and light mortar stands.



Forward observer.



Infantry armed with rifles and smg's.



Battalion commander.

3 Sherman M4's and a 105mm howitzer.

Been a long day. I'll try and post the 28mm stuff I've been working on tomorrow.

SAS Are "Done"

I put done in quotes because they're not quite completely done. Everything is finished except the eyes. I want to try a new eye painting method with them. Well, new for me at least. That is painting the socket area black, then painting the "white" of the eye white (obviously) over the black, and then black for the pupil. Before I would have just painted the white part and then put a black dot (roughly) in the center. But I've been looking at some photos of miniatures lately that have a black outline around the white area and I think it looks pretty good. Hopefully my attempt will turn out as well.

Spent a bit of time tonight working on my helicopter flight stands, and I'm pretty pleased with them. I glued poly-fill to the dowels and then spray painted it tan in order to give the appearance of dust being kicked up by the helicopter's rotors. It looks pretty cool, but I am concerned the poly-fill will come off quite easily. I'll have to tell the players to handle them with care.

Pictures coming soon.

Quick Update

Just a quick post tonight.

My SAS figures are practically finished. I spent a good two hours on them tonight, and all that's left to do is to finish up the bases and varnish them. I'll try to post some pictures by the end of the week.

I've discovered a new podcast. It's not really that new but it's new to me. It's called Meeples and Miniatures and it's done by an Englishman named Neil Shuck (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/neil.shuck/). He covers both boardgames and miniature wargames. I'm really enjoying it so far. I've gotten tired of all of the video/computer game podcasts I normally listen to. Must be getting to old.

Monday Night Quarterback

I was planning on posting tonight a recap of what I did over the weekend, and decided it would be cool to make Monday night posts a regular thing reviewing what I did gaming wise over the past week.

One thing I did was start this blog. Not sure if it's motivating me to paint figures since I've been pretty motivated ever since Cold Wars. But, I am pleased that I've made more than one post since the last time I started a blog one post is all I did.

As for painting, I finished basing around 16 stands of 15mm WW2 British for Command Decision. Most of these were two figure infantry stands with a couple of one figure command stands mixed in. I also finished up four 15mm Shermans and assembled and primered three more Shermans and two Stuarts. This is all for my club's Anzio campaign.

For my Historicon modern game, as I mentioned the other night I was hoping to get a lot done on Sunday. Well, I didn't quite get done what I wanted, but that was mainly due to besides painting up the SAS I have I also worked on flight stands for the game. All in all I'm pretty pleased since tonight I was able to complete all of the fleshy parts and basic uniforms for the 10 SAS figures. I'm considerably less pleased with the quality but I'll save my musings on that for another post.

As for gaming, I didn't play a single thing this past week. Actually, that's how most weeks are with me. I usually always make our bi-weekly Dungeons and Dragons game, but I just wasn't up for the two hour drive (more on that in another post) and I was eager to work on my figures anyway. This week doesn't look so good for gaming either since my wife is going out of town this weekend and I'll be looking after our two sons while she's gone. Maybe I'll break out Triumph of Chaos, a boardgame by Clash of Arms on the Russian Civil War, and start learning the rules.

Later.

Gardening

The weekend arrived and with it came expectations of doing a lot of painting. However, a trip to Home Depot with my 6 year old son to pick up gardening supplies lasted 3 times as long as I had anticipated. Couple that with my mom and aunt stopping by for dinner, and I didn't get down into the basement until 10 pm. Since I was tired the only painting I did was some flesh on my TAG British SAS. I also cleaned and assembled two Quality Castings Stuart tanks and two Battlefront Lloyd carriers.

Not much on the agenda for tomorrow, save for watching the Washington Capitals playoff game, so hopefully I'll make some headway with the SAS.

Added some stuff

Added some lists to the blog. This weekend I'll try to count up what I've painted this year.

As for miniatures tonight I cleaned and based 10 Assault Group (TAG) British SAS figures. By based I mean I super-glued them to 20mm Games Workshop slotta bases. I also cleaned and glued the wheels on the two (TAG) Land Rovers that I have.

Speaking of bases, I've had trouble deciding on and sticking to a particular base. I have a lot of 28mm TAG modern African minis based on washers. But with the figures I've done lately I've used the afore mentioned GW bases. I like both styles and I can't seem to stick with one or the other. Actually, I had decided to use the GW bases exclusively from now on and I was planning on re-basing the figures that are on washers. But, I was looking at some pictures of minis based on washers (or something similarly flat) and now I'm not so sure. For right now I'm sticking with the GW bases, though I doubt I'm going to re-base the other figures I have.

Later.

First post, why am I here?

The long and the short of why I started this blog is because I'm lazy. Specifically, I'm a lazy wargamer. I have too many figures that are unpainted and too many projects unfinished. I'm sure I'm not alone in this, and one of my friends has more unpainted figures in his basement than most of the vendors at HMGS cons have to sell. However, he has a lot of projects and games that are complete, and that's what I want to work on. Not just painting all of the figures I have laying around, but finishing projects and running games.

Here are some pictures of my unpainted lead.

The above bin holds all of the ships that fought at Tsushima. This is perhaps my biggest shame. I bought them at Historicon 06, and not a single one of them has been opened.

It may seem foolish for someone who has miniatures to paint to waste time writing a blog, but I feel that if I put this up on the Internets for anybody (or nobody) to see, I'll be motivated to get things done. Basically, my hope is that I will work more on my minis so I can post my progress here. That's the idea.

One more thing. I named this Lead and Cardboard since I've been getting into playing boardgames over the past year or so. Also, I didn't call it Lazy Mike or something like that since I want the blog to be about my wargaming hobby in general. And my main inspiration for starting it was Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog http://saskminigamer.blogspot.com/

Till next time...