Happy New Year!

Hi All

I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their support of the podcast and this website over the past year, and wish you all a very Happy New Year.

Neil

Hawgleg Productions…

Ironically, soon after the latest podcast episode was published, news was posted on TGN that the home of Mike Mitchell, co-founder of Hawgleg Productions who publish the Gutshot rules, was badly damaged by Hurrican Ike.

Thankfully, it appears that no-one has been hurt.

Mike & family, our thoughts & prayers are with you and your neighbours.

Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy #36 – Vietnam Special

The latest issue (#36) of Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy magazine has just been released, and it’s a nice one for Vietnam War fans as it’s main focus is on the 1968 Tet Offensive.

Part of the Dossier feature is a look at what figures are available to game Vietnam in various scales. It covers 28mm, but not in as much depth as my own Beginners Guide to Gaming Vietnam in 28mm.

However, the glaring ommission to my mind is for 20mm gamers. The author obviously majors in either 28mm, 15mm or 6mm, and essentially ignores 20mm except for mentioning plastic kits – and so completely fails to mention the excellent Vietnam range produced by Britannia Miniatures, which provides everything that you need to game the war in 20mm.

I hope this redresses the balance somewhat…

My first 6mm figures

Well, I’ve just finished painting my first few strips of 6mm French.

I must admit to being somewhat disappointed with the outcome so far, though I cannot quite put my finger on why.

Maybe it’s because I’m not used to painting the scale (still too geared towards what 28mm figures look like?), and I know that you can’t really completely judge a figure until it’s based and finished, but I do know that I’m not happy with the result at the moment.

Having had a conversation with a friend, I have decided that I needed a new set of paint brushes, and so the weekend saw me purchase a set of Windsor & Newton brushes – only the Galeria range – but this company has a very good reputation, so I am looking forward to seeing how they perform in comparison with the brushes I have been using up until now (primarily Games Workshop).

Getting under way

Well, the second painting project of the new year is under way, as I’ve finally managed to put paint to metal.

Capitalizing on my enthusiasm from Hammerhead last weekend, and the Marechal de l’Empire game on Wednesday, I decided to crack on and start painting my Baccus 6mm French army.

So, I opened the French Army bag up, grabbed all the line infantry, several lolly sticks, some PVA glue and got sticking. The lolly sticks are big enough to fit 5 strips of Infantry onto, so I decided that each battalion would occupy a stick, and my command strips would all be painted together.

Next job was to wait for the glue to dry and then out with the spray paint (on a cold and windy day – not the best prospect for spray painting: frozen fingers and paint going everywhere except where it’s supposed to!)

So, after just over an hour of cleaning up, sticking and spray painting, my first batch of French Infantry is ready for painting: 200 infantry plus 40 command figures – it still seems the start of a large mountain to climb, but I’m currently reciting the mantra from Peter Berry – “Paint the unit, not the man!”