Forward Observer – another Infinity podcast

Forward Observer is another Infinity podcast that is well worth checking out. Good faction reviews and suggestions for force lists. If you’re new to the game then their introductory episode is for you. (Thank you Martin for the tip)

As an Infinity bonus the chaps at D6G have devoted Episode 116 to Infinity. Haven’t listened to it yet, but it contains a lot of background and faction information and rules discussions.

Fail… and again

Long time, no posts. Lots of work and other things have taken far too much time.

Oh, and those Infinity figures…

I got really inspired by listening to Infinity O-12 podcast. Started on four figures. Everything turned out well, really well.

But I dropped one of them, just a couple of centimetres.

Nothing broke.

But I dropped it on to my palette. Straight into a blob of wet paint. First time that happened.

Cursing I picked up the figure, and cleaned it the best I could.

That was bad enough. But….

I picked up another of the figures. Grabbed the paint brush, and promptly dropped that figure too. Into the same blob of wet paint. Aaaaaaargh!

That had certainly never happened before. I took two weeks off from modelling. I was just too frustrated.

A couple of days ago I went back to the painting table, took out a couple of boxes of 20mm WWII figures and got going again. It feels really good to be back.

You’ll soon see a review of Armourfast’s Pz IVD, and after that an assortment of Zvezda kits. Also some more 6mm Italians, for the game next week.

Welcome CPBelt with A league of ordinary gamers. Really nice site, and what can I say – Girls und Panzers…. A must see! (I’m lost, I have a Lee-tank in the plastics mountain. I must paint it pink. And a red StuG…. and…)

Happy New Modelling Year everybody. 

Storing your minis the IKEA-way

This weekend I went to IKEA on a special wargamer mission. I bought two ALEX drawer units on wheels. They are 67 cm wide, 48 cm deep and 66cm high and have six drawers, three low and three higher, and are supplied with small wheels (that seems to be called castors). It’s 32 kg per package, so you probably need a car.

They were easy to assemble, and I installed the wheels on one, and placed the other on top, and secured it with jointing plates. After that I took a trip to the local arts-shop Panduro Hobby and bought 2mm rubber mats. The mats just needed some trimming, and they fit into the drawers. Having them will avoid having the miniatures sliding about in the drawers when I open or close them.

The result: at last a decent storage place for my minis. As they multiplied they got more and more crammed into whatever drawers, boxes and shelves I had.

Now I can have them all in one place, sorted so I can find them easily, and I will have space for all gaming paraphernalia and some terrain also.

The drawers are perfect as they are just the right height.

Highly recommended, and good for our trade balance too if you buy them J

Flygvapenmuseum – Swedish Air Force Museum – part 4 – Spitfire and Catalina.

Another British plane, this one a S31 or Spitfire PR Mk XIX. 50 bought in 1948 for photo reconnaissance.

Tp 47 or Catalina (Tp - transport). Three bought from Canada in 1947 and used in sea-rescue. One unarmed was shot down in 1952 by a Soviet MiG 15, making it a very cold war indeed. It was looking for another lost plane, a DC-3 reconnaissance plane that had been shot down a couple of days earlier. The crew of the Catalina was rescued, but the DC3 crew was lost.

Both planes were found in 2003, and what is left of the DC3 is in the museum.

A baddie, a MiG 15

Even more to come...

Flygvapenmuseum – Swedish Air Force Museum – part 3 – WWII Swedish planes

Sweden made quite a few planes during WWII

B-18 or SAAB 18. Designed during the war, but delivered from October -45. 119 made and this one made an emergency landing on ice. The ice broke after a couple of days and the plane sunk. It was rescued in 1979, after 33 years on the bottom of the sea, and has been restored since then.

B17 or SAAB 17. Bomber and reconnaissance, in service from 1941. 322 made and could take 900 kg bombs.

Sorry about the quality of this photo

 Note the retractable wheels

J22 or FFVS J22. Around 200 made, and in service from 1943.

A Bofors 40mm AA-gun, with some planes in the background

More to come...

Welcome follower Martin with the very nice blogs Dropship Horizon, about 15mm SF gaming, and Fire Broadside!, one of the sites I gave the Liebster Award.

Preparing for Flemcon

Madly painting the last italian big men for tomorrows game at Flemcon. They will probably be ready tomorrow morning. Why did I completely forget them on the painting table?

We will play Operation Supercharge, or the WWII equivalent Charge of the Light Brigade, in 6mm.

Also Dux Gondorianum and maybe some WWWII.

Hope to see some of you there!

Flygvapenmuseum – Swedish Air Force Museum – part 2 – more foreign planes

Some other foreign WWII-planes

B4 or Hawker Hart. Some were used in early war, and four were sent to the Finnish Winter War. This one is painted as one such.

J8 or Gloster Gladiator. Bought from the UK before the war. 12 served during the Winter War, and this one is painted as one of those.

S14 or Fieseler Fi 156 Storch. Two bought in 38, and another six German ones emergency landed during the war and was used afterwards.

B3 or Junkers Ju 86. Bought before WWII, and this is the only surviving Ju 86 in the world. Too bad I didn’t take more pictures of it.

S6 or Fokker CV-E. 14 bought from Holland in the late 20:s, and a further 35 were licence-built in Sweden.

J9 or Seversky Republic EP-1. 60 bought in 1940 from the USA.

J26 or P51D Mustang – around 100 surplus planes bought after the war, and 93 of them sold in 1953 to Israel, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. This plane was sold to Israel but bought back in -66.

More to come....

Liebster Blog Award for me?

I saw this Liebster Blog Award thingie the first time during the weekend, and I was more than surprised when Smillie from Painting Diary gave the award to me. Very pleasantly surprised I must say. Thanks a lot Smillie!

So, what is this award then? Well, it is essentially a way of saying “Hey, here’s a blog I like! Check it out!”

There are rules:

- Copy and paste the award on your blog linking it to the blogger who has given it to you.

- Pass the award to your top 5 favourite blogs with less than 200 followers by leaving a comment on one of their posts to notify them that they have won the award and listing them on your own blog.

- Sit back and bask in that warm fuzzy feeling that comes with knowing that you have just made someone's day!

- There is no obligation to pass this on to anyone else but it is nice if you do.

Bloody difficult to only point at just five good blogs, of all I follow. So many good ones.

Anyway, these are my five awardees:

Learning by doing by friend Thomas. A lot about Too Fat Lardies’ games and what our group plays with - WWII, dux Brittaniarum and more.

Figurfanatikern by the minis fanatic Laffe. Also in the group and also a proud owner of a big plastics and metal mountain. Fantasy, SF and WWII.

Gaming with Too Fat Lardies is a Spanish site about just that. Good taste as they have found THE gaming rules company.

Jacksarge’s Wargames Ramblings – a lot of WWII stuff, and all very well painted. Lots of inspiration there, and some good tips.

Fire Broadside! - lots of SF and Infinity. Well worth a visit!

Go check them out, and make their day.

Flygvapenmuseum – Swedish Air Force Museum – part 1 – Italian planes

On a business trip to Linköping i had the fortune to have two hours  to spend before my trip home, so I jumped into a taxi and drove to Flygvapenmuseum, the Swedish Air Force Museum.

I had never visited it before, so it was a real treat. A great museum if you are at all interested in aeroplanes, and a must if you happen to be near. I give it a 5 out of 5 rating.

I took photos like mad, and will show some of them the next couple of days. Hope you enjoy.

In this part some Italian planes that served in the Swedish Airforce during WWII. We bought quite a few Italian planes, as those were essentially the only things for sale in 1939-40.

First off is the J11 (J = jakt = fighter), or Fiat C.R.42 Falco. One of only two preserved in the world, it seems.  60 saw service during the war.

J20 or Reggiane RE 2000. 60 bought from Italy.

B16/S16 (S = spaning = reconnaissance, B = bomber) or Caproni CA313. 54 bought, and not popular at all due to rotten quality. This is a full scale model with some original parts, made for a TV-film.

More to come.

More 28mm Kobolds from Otherworld

A bunch of Kobolds from Otherworld.

First is a couple of fierce females from the Kobold Tribal Pack, dressed in their finest. Really nice figures, and I like the orange dresses and whitish aprons. Wouldn’t like to be between them and their cooking pot, especially not if I was a prisoner.

Next their kiddies, from the same pack. Noisy lot.

The males are from the Kobold Warriors II pack.

Colours used:

Skin, kiddies – Vallejo Panzer Aces 303 Yellowish Rust

Skin, females – 301 Light Rust

Skin, males – Humbrol Rust or 302 Dark Rust.

Dresses and shield – Citadel Blazing Orange

Wicker shields – Vallejo Panzer Aces 310 Old Wood

Wood – Vallejo 843 Cork Brown

Horns and teeth – Bone White

Washed with Devlan Mud, or Black wash for the dark rust.

See the commanders in an earlier post.

Infinity O-12 podcast

I found a new-ish podcast called Infinity O-12.

My Infinity project is stumbling along. I love the figures, but they compete with fantasy figures, 20 + 6 mm WWII and the odd modern zombie.Now I must concentrate on the Infinity-figures I have, and do some serious painting, so that I can at least get some game going and try the rules.

At the moment I’ve completed the Haqqislam starter box, I have some more Haqqislam figures on the painting table, more or less painted, and an Aleph starter box waiting to be built and painted.

So what I really needed was some inspiration, and that I found in this podcast.

It’s bi-weekly, about two hours long, and filled with good tips on rules, factions and what not.

If you have any interest in Infinity then you should check this out. Highly recommended!

To the painting table...

German Big Men in 20mm for IABSM

The first batch of new big men for I Aint Been Shot Mom. The idea is to represent a level 1 man with one figure, a level 2 with two, etc up to four men for the highest ranking Big Men.

I have already converted some old figures into level 1 Big Men, simply by placing them on square bases, as opposed to circular ones for ordinary men.

These guys are newly painted.

First of the level 2 Big Men. Figures from Caesar German Army

Another level 2. Airfix German Infantry and Revell German Infantry 

A level 3 Big Man. Figures from Airfix Reconnaissance Set, unknown and Ceasar German Army.

Level 4 Big Man. The officer is a metal one I got from friend Daniel, and he was part of a group build. Great figure. Periscope from Revell German Armoured Infantry. The man with rifle is Caesar German Army, and the one with a SMG is from the Airfix Reconnaissance Set. The man with the back towards us is unknown.