Central Asian Magnetism

Hey Internet,

Just a very quick update. This week I have cracked on with the worryingly enjoyable task of re-basing all of my colonial russian/khivan stuff. Getting to around the 60 figure mark now. I also painted four whole russians!

Slightly more interestingly, due to my immense irritation with bent bayonets,  I have gone from storing my figures in foam boxes to storing them in lined box files.

I started out by lining the boxes with steel paper and attaching base magnets to my models, but that did not work out. The base magnets doubled the thickness of the model's bases, amongst some other things.



Rather grumpy that I had spent £20 on magnets that looked crap, I then found out that pennys are made of brazen steel rather than copper nowerdays, and are as a result magnetic! That meant I could just line the file boxes with cheap magnetic sheeting and they'd stick to it.....so that's what I did.



The magnetic attraction this way round isn't as good as having magnets on the models, but it is far cheaper and the models don't look awful, so its a winner on balance. The attraction isnt bad by any means though, as this photo shows they are happy to be lent on a 45 degree angle without any of them moving - so its plenty good enough to keep them safe on the back seat of a car.

Little Vicky

Hey Internets,

Ever since I was *yay high* I can remember going to the Bovington Tank Museum every year or so, and each time coming to the conclusion that the Vickers Independent was the finest example of an armoured vehicle in their expansive collection.

When Copplestone Castings brought out a kit for the thing I bought it without really thinking, and ever since it has bolstered the forces of the Tsar in their apparently eternal struggle against the foul Queen Victoria.

However, for a long time 'Little Vicky' had been painted in a rather unbefitting, gordy black and gold colour scheme, with some crappy bits of plastic crudely glued to it for a smoke stack (if you want to see it, its somewhere in the archives of this blog) - but times have changed.



Here she is in her new green and white livery. I chose the colours after seeing an Ottoman warship from the 1870's wearing the same paint, and deciding that it looked rather nifty.



Here she is with some Eureka Russians, just to show scale.

I have to say, I'm rather chuffed with her, and am quite looking forward to see her steaming across the table.

What do you think?

MM.

May Day in Khiva

Hey Internet,
I've accentually got a bit of painting done this week. I had two days off last with a nasty virusy bug thing, but put the time to good use, wrenching models off their naff old bases and glueing them on to pennys.

The bases are just fine gravel with tuffts of static grass.

They are painted with a simple 3 stage drybrush of Coat 'd Arms (CdA) Barbarian Leather, followed by CdA Mid Stone, followed by Games Workshop (GW) Kommando Kaki over a base coat of CdA Chocolate Brown.

So, here they are, with their new bases.

Some Russians. Figures are from Eureka, with a converted West Wind Officer in the background.


Some Arab Types. These figures are from all over the place, and not great...well...at least I am not happy with them. And I need more. Lots more.


And of course a few colonial adventurers. All from Wargames Foundry.