The Painted Thumb

No game reports this week. Just some progress on my Flames of War US list. I opened my box of Battlefront 105mm artillery. There are lots of components to this unit! There are four guns with custom bases and five figures to go with each gun, a custom base for the artillery command team, one stand for the observer, one stand for the HQ team, and one jeep. My list includes a second jeep for some reason. Luckily, I have an extra jeep already base coated. The guns are metal and in spite of the good packaging, they were badly bent and needed to be straightened into place. I stumbled on a good trick of placing the guns on the grid of my craft mat and using the grid as a reference. This helped tremendously. I base coated the guns and jeeps with Vallejo Brown-Violet, the un-official "green" of the US Army. And I used the handy Testor's spray paint kit. This really saved some time. The custom bases were resin. I had never worked with resin before so I primed it just to...

Lone Star Historical Miniatures held another Muster Game Day this past weekend. This was called the April Muster and it is the third such event we have held. Basically, we occupy one of the game rooms at the FLGS and run about 4-6 games from different time periods. These are single-day events  but they have a convention atmosphere. They are free to attend and anyone can drop by and join a game. The events have been great opportunities to get the word out on Historical Miniatures and lure in new players. The games played were: Johnny Reb (ACW) Wings of Glory 5150: Fringe Space - Ed Texiera of Two Hour Wargames came by to run this game. WWII Continuation - a homebrew game created by a club member, based on the Finn-Soviet front during 1941-1944 I played in the Wings of Glory game.  Ian Straus had put out three beautiful battle mats that made a large area for us to play on.  I chose to play the iconic German Fokker Dr1 triplane. Carl was my ally on the German sid...

Flames of War progress report: I finished this small unit for my Mid-War list. The CO, the 2inC and some bazooka teams for escorts. These painted up quick and easy. I chose the two-toned colors for these guys instead of the later all-green uniforms. This army will be a mixed bag of old and new uniforms. I so wish I could have done the entire list in the same colors. Perhaps, I could have two lists, one for Mid-War and another for Late-War, each with the appropriate colored shirts and trousers!  Yes! That would be the ideal solution. But, time is my enemy right now and I'd just like to get an entire list completed.   My overall progress so far. I'll flock the bases after all the painting is done to ensure a consistent style. This past weekend, my good friend Dave held a clearance sale. His intentions are to pare down his lead pile. Going forward, he plans to stick with just a few game systems that he loves playing. Dave has a huge collection of painted and unpa...