Austrian Uhlans

I must admit to having had an awesome Christmas. The weather has been great our holiday house has been filled with guests and is now mercifully empty again. I've been hiking and biking and beach walking with the family. I've eaten too much and caught up on some reading which I had been planning. On blog related matters I have something to report as well.  I finished the Austrians I had been painting and all they require now is basing. I have been working on head swaps for my hussars and the Uhlans are taking shape as well.  Actually, they are Zvezda French "Polish" lancers but they scrub up to be 1813 Austrian Uhlans at a pinch. A belated Merry Christmas to all who stumble across my blog

Austrians Revisited

After a  year of not painting I have finally restarted my project. I am painting the last battalions of my "German" infantry. I have decided to paint the Hungarian battalions at the same time. These figures  are really quite pretty in their ranks. I will have to see over the next few weeks if the interest in painting can be rekindled but I must admit to really enjoying getting the paint brushes back out again.

Random post just to keep the blog alive

One of my anal retentive tendencies is to wish to "finish off" a collection. When it comes to Osprey Publications, a small but significant number of earlier issues are advertised on their site but have been out of print for a good many years. This tempts me but gives me no way to scratch the itch (which is very annoying). This means that I have to turn my attention to sites like Amazon or Ebay. Over the last few months, I have scoured the globe looking for these titles and as of today am only 5 away from feeling replete. This will mean something like 215 titles sitting in my hobby nook waiting for me to take out my paint brushes so that they can be consulted. I am hoping that the sheer bulk of these will shame me in to restarting my hobby in the New Year. I haven't posted a single newly painted figure in over a year and that really isn't good enough.

Anyway.... Blog post finished.

Delayed New Titles

Being a  little country our international infrastructure does not have a great depth. Case in point being a couple of weeks ago when a farmer decided to do some digging on his farm and took out the only pipeline which brings aviation fuel from the Marsden Point refinery to the rest of the country. This meant that international flights were severely curtailed. On one of those flights was my latest package containing my Napoleonic/18th century purchases. Anyway....2 weeks late they are safe on my book shelf.

Going Back to the 18th Century

I'm going through a bit of a 7 Years War thing at the moment. All my figures are Napoleonic but that might change. Some really interesting history 50 years earlier!

New titles on the doorstep.

Got home from mowing, hacking and mulching up at our holiday house and found these on the door step. Another 10-ish titles still in transit. Pretty sure McMillan publishers have my picture on their fridge at work. I am branching out a little in to the Seven Years War and British Empire in India. As of now however , I  am going to focus on getting my Austrian figures together for a possible 2018 Jan start.
The cool thing about this weekend was that I was able to get some reading done. Right now I'm reading Citizen Emperor by Philip Dwyer. Napoleon from Dwyer's perspective was a megalomaniac and an opportunist who was also a pretty crappy general. Not sure I agree with Dwyer but he has certainly put in the research and presents a compelling line of argument. I guess the "romantic" Napoleon of the mid to late Eighteenth century is the image that I am most comfortable with.

Church colours

Every day I walk past this sad old relic of a church and it is from this that I'll take my proposed colour scheme. Not quite the same style but passingly similar.

Playing with colours

My Father's Day church model was a snap together without glue affair. When finished, it was a really imposing model. Tonight, I got out my half forgotten paints to see what colour scheme it might have. I think it is modelled on some sort of Italian church.  Not ever having been to that part of the world myself, I have to fall back on my deep knowledge of NZ church architecture. I did actually attend church occasionally as a kid and I want this model to feel as cold and oppressive as the Anglican church next door to my old house.

In the second shot,  you can see a Revell American Revolutionary War figure a long way from home knocking on the door for spiritual guidance. Perhaps he speaks Italian.

A couple of new books for the library

The Peninsula War Atlas is a real tome and comes with its own cover. Real nice for the coffee table if I had any friends to gaze lovingly at it. My wife and daughter just looked at it at laughed.  The other is a regimental history of the 9th Infantry Battalion. Looks pretty cool also.

Father's Day

This year seems to be destined to be a year of buildings and books. Not a single figure paintbrush on the horizon.  On Sunday I steered by wife down to Toy World where she bought my Father's Day present. I've had my eye on thus model for a while and even though I have other church models I thought it might go well with the Italieri stone house I made last year. The model has mixed reviews but I still think it is quite an imposing capture point on a table. We'll see how it turns out over the next few weeks.

Cool! Just figured out how to post multiple images

Here are my Del Prado cavalry figures.  Now I can delete these from my phone.

Ospreys at home photo the second.

Well, most of the titles I have been wanting have finally found their way onto my bookshelf. Only about 15-20 to go. I decided to include the Seven Years War in my purchases because it is a logical lead up to the Napoleonic Wars and there are some awesome uniforms! Posting down to the bottom of the planet is surprisingly fast (3 weeks), although it does take about 2 weeks to actually process the order. It has been a fun experience to wait at the gate for my early Christmas presents. Next up - Austrian troops for real Christmas if HAT Industrie get their range to the shops in time?

Ospreys at home photo the first

Thoughts About a Stalled Hobby

The thing about hobby blogs is that if the other 99% of your real life sends you away in different directions - nothing ever gets added to the pages. Unfortunately, this is the case with my hobby of late. I haven’t painted since February and even that was a terrain piece not figures. I have no figures to paint on the horizon as well. I like looking back over this little blog because as I don't keep a diary, these little posts serve to remind me of the other things in my life which were happening at the same time. I don't really want to blog about business and family as I want to keep these aspects of my life to myself and I don't feel comfortable discussing others lives around me. They can do that for themselves if the fancy takes them.  

Anyway,  I am guessing that a year will pass before I feel the urge to continue the hobby.  Just to keep myself vaguely in the hobby I have decided to buy the Osprey Napoleonic titles which have been niggling at me to get over the years.  One of the cool things is that if you buy an Osprey Publishing Gold membership for about 90 pounds you get a 30% discount off your purchases. I am planning to spend around 600 pounds before the end of the month to snag the last of the titles so at least that keeps me in hobby territory. Once my bookcase is replete, I hope that (and the coming of spring and finally selling a business) will signal a kick starting period. I would really love to finish my Austrian army before I turn 50…..

So I'll promise myself to keep blogging about this cool little nugget of a hobby as often as a can. Next up photos of my Osprey collection?

La Haye Sainte

Since I'm on a roll, here is my completed Sarissa Precision Waterloo farmhouse guarded by some British infantry. This was a really fun and fast project. One week start to finish.

Time Life World War Two

When I was a kid my dad and I took a trip together to Wanaka to see uncle Bert and aunty Kathleen. Uncle Bert and his brother had farmed at the back of the Mile Flat at the back of Hampden for many years. Neither had married and when Willy died,  Bert sold up and moved to Oamaru. There he met Kathleen, a retired primary school teacher and they married. Later on in life they moved to Wanaka when it was on the cusp of becoming a tourist mecca. I guess they were pretty wealthy but they lived a quiet retired life.
This story reaches this blog because on my last trip over with my dad, I spotted a shelf with about 20 Time Life books on WW2. while I was there, I read as many as I could and when it came time to go Uncle Bert gave them all to me. I was quite stunned as they were bloody expensive books. Aunt Kathleen explained that Bert had finished with them and never really got the most out of them anyway because he had never learned how to read! Anyway,  now after all these years I have dragged the entire collection from storage under the house and have put them next to my office desk. Although I have ceased being too interested in WW2 it somehow seems fitting to have them next to me. They are a personnal taonga   and a link to my whanau turangawaewae. Thanks uncle Bert!

Austrian Artillery

Christmas has come and gone and I have had time to finish my "Galloping Guns." I despaired of ever getting these chaps finished but finally the extra horses were added to the teams to make them 6. Illustrations do tend to have six horses to a team so Hat's measly 4 was too hard on the nags in my opinion. Anyway, back to work on Wednesday. The game is quickening and big things are afoot in my life for this year. Blogging may become even more infrequent. The pretend wargames table is destined to gather a little more dust methinks.