Sunday, September 20, 2015

La Haye Sainte



I picked up an old Airfix Waterloo Farmhouse set a few weeks ago and here are the results of a Saturday at the hobby table.I added windows, doors and an outhouse from other sets to make the finished product look nicer.
Really nice but short book on the action around an in the farmhouse during Waterloo.

Inside cover ( looking pretty much like the Airfix model!)
The skill level of this set is set at One.  This is perfect for an artistically challenged hobbyist like myself.



Plenty of work still to do but I'm quite happy with how things are progressing,

Monday, August 3, 2015

Disappointing Fort Kochi

A sewer inhabited by humans with a single canon mounted upside-down.

Not worth the trip really.

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Painting in India? Not a chance!

Any thoughts of doing a quick batch of Mysore troops has gone out the window. I did read an interesting title on the interminable journey to india though. It was entitled How the French Won the Battle of Waterloo (or at least think they did). It was not exactly a work of scholarly brilliance but it was a fun read. I don't disagree with the author's view that Napoleonic apologists have created a man far bigger  (napoleon accidental tallness joke) than ever really existed.

During this week I am planning on reading the three titles from Osprey on Waterloo if I get a chance. On the plane the biography of wellington should get a thrashing as well.

That's it from my horrid android phone!

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Victoria's version

The finished product!

Imex 1st Street Church

I picked up a variant of this model a few days ago in the hope of turning it into a little bit more 18th Centuryish.  It is still a little bit of a "work in progress' but here is my attempt...

I used Selley's No More Gaps to flesh out the weatherboards and then applied "stone" from an internet site. All done in less than 4 hours (and probably looks like it).

1st Street Church

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Please forgive my absence

Well it had to happen. Work got too much and the hobby fell by the wayside.  Over the last months I have only painted about 300 1805 French infantry in greatcoats and elites.  This has been an on again off again project.  I have been pretty active on Amazon building my Osprey collection as well as my 200th Waterloo anniversary mini-library.  I am still working my way through a biography of the Duke of Wellington as well as Chandler's Campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars.  Going forward, I don't have too many plans.  I do plan to do a bit of a tour of Fort Cochi in India when I am up that way next month but that is the closest I will get to an investigation of anything that Lord Wellington was near in India.  I am flying up to Mumbai for a quick meeting but unless my venue happens to be close to anything vaguely Wellingtonesque I won't get to see anything of the city that Wellington (then Wellesley) called home for a few years after defeating Tipu. 

I would love to take up a set of figures and paint then from woe to go over the week and call them my East India Company figs! Unfortunately, I don't have the right type of figure - I think I would need a couple of boxes of Hat British Naval figures to make a line battalion. I hope my trip fires up interest in painting Indian Napoleonic era figures. Unfortunately there is nothing on the market in plastic and probably not much in metal either. Still a Tipu army would look totally rad.

Cavalry!

Here are all my cavalry figures cluttering our dining table! 36 squadrons!

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Spanish artillery

Ok. So here is this week's project. They started off being 1805 french arty and underwent a few changes.  Off went the hats and on went Hat's Spanish infantry hats. A few chaps lost their arms and got a few specialist arms added with the help of a few pins to aid the glue. Overall I'm really happy with how these turned out. 6 figures per gun looks a little cluttered but in a nice way. Now my little Spanish Army is officially all-arms.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Highlanders from Airfix






Mint condition box!! Even the inside paper bit is included.

The Highlanders were the set I always wanted but never got when I was a kid. 6 boxes in total was the high tide mark of my Napoleonic childhood. I remember drooling over pictures of this box in Airfix magazines knowing that I would never really get a chance to buy it (or having it bought for me for Christmas).  I picked this box up in an internet sale a few years ago and the front box cover is on my S5 phone! The cover art on these boxes is so fantastic and inspiring that I still get a little chill (or thrill) when I look at them. They are always a bit of an oasis just to view when life gets a little too hectic.

Speaking of which - that is the end of my reviews of my old boxes. As you will notice from my posts I haven't written that much. This year has been a real roller coaster for me. I've been growing the business, my wife is starting a new job, the kids are now all in Secondary school, music lessons and maths lessons are kicking off in earnest and we've just bought a house and have to tend my mum's house in Hampden which our family has decided to hang onto as a holiday house..  All of these things are conspiring to place this blog and my hobby on the back burner until winter at least. So until the nights close in and the fire is burning in the log burner it is au revoir from me.  

Vive l’Empereur!

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Airfix French Infantry





These were the "meat 'n vegies" of the Airfix armies. The Brits always seemed to rout these guys pretty easily as I remember. No fun being an Airfix French infantry dude. They also didn't get the same painting attention as the Imperial Guard. Some (most ) never got painted at all. In my battels the British got to fire first and decimate the advancing French. These dudes were at the front and served as fodder for the Grenadiers at the back. In the end of my battle s on my bedroom floor it always came down to a fight between the Brits and the Imperial Guard. These dudes were always long dead.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

British Infantry




 Here are the "goodies" which held back the French for a large part of my childhood. I notice that the officer's sword has either run through too many Frenchies or has been chewed by a younger me.
I had two boxes of these dudes to fight three boxes of French.  I never managed to get Highland Infantry during my childhood. I did manage to buy a box from an online auction a few years back. Finally the forces are all together to fight in Airfixland for eternity!

Friday, February 13, 2015

The first of the sets which got me interested in Napoleonics

This was an awesome set and I got it when I was about eight or nine I think. Being a kid, the original box didn't survive my messy room and being continuously being opened and closed.  My sister brought back three boxes of Airfix when she returned from her Dunedin Youth Orchestra trip to Hobart and I can still remember the thrill of getting such a bounty from the strange land of Australia. These figures formed the mainstay of my battles for the next five or six years and decades later I actually repainted them (pictures on previous post somewhere). Just seen these figures sends me back to my childhood!  I will post the remaining three boxes over the next few days.





Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Hiatus again....

Work has been busy and getting the kids back to school mode has been time consuming. Add to that the unexpected passing of my mother and this has meant that for the week at least hobbies take a back seat.  I might add some photos of my 1/32 Airfix Napoleonic boxes to the blog next week.  They are truly works of 1970s art. They have been in my little memories cupboard for several years but it is time they saw the light of day again...

Thursday, January 22, 2015

State of the Hobby 2015


So... As I mentioned not much is happening. Took a day off work due to a nasty summer cold and actually did just stay in bed. On the hobby front, I decided to take stock of what I've got in terms of boxed 1/72 figs. These are the ones stored in the laundry. There is another disorganised stash in the sun room. We don't have space for a man cave and for the next few years at least my figs will languish in the dark. Anyway here for public viewing and my own strange fascination are the laundry figures. The images should be better than my normal efforts since I gave my old phone to my youngest daughter and am now using an Android phone with 8. something megapixels.
Mixed bunch of 1805 Arty, Guard cav Heavy ambulance and broken light ambulance + my cool little command tent


Unfinished Spanish Light and Line + Command figs from the Hat Allied Command box

Cool looking British Imex Arty snuggling uncomfortably next to Hat Middle Guard??

Hat Light Infantry looking seriously bitching.

This Christmas' efforts

Marmalukes next to 92nd Rifles? + some French Command stands and British Cav from Waterloo and one from the AWI.

Russian Arty looking a little under loved. These dudes need some TLC

Light Chassuers +Nassau + Wurtemburgers?

French Line + those above from the Confederation of the Rhine

Unhappy little command stands

Yey for the 1805 French Arty from Hat! These were a real treat. Unfortunately they are billeted next to some bedraggled Russian Zvezda Russian arty and some random horses
More French - Cant see from the picture size...

Brits in the Peninsular



French Line

Field works from Esci I think + Middle Guard?

Zvezda Lights + Imperial Guard

Unfinished Spanish

Line

Lancers, Hussars, Chassuers and Guard Chassuers??

Here come the Russians!!

Russian Cossacks, Lancers + plus a few uncomfortable Wurtemburgers

Guard Ruskies

French Dragoons and Curassiers + those dudes in white uniforms whose name escapes me.

Russian dragoons and cuirassiers

Ruskies

Poms

Russian Guars standing next to the stinky Russian levies.

More poms

More Christmas project

ditto



Russian line from Esci I think

Russian Hussars and British Command stands



Even more Russians
Here is the overview of the laundry figs
PS. Oh bugger! After uploading heaps of the photos seem blurry! Blame the Galaxy S5!!...Or a shitty photographer.