New Troops arrive.

I jusr recieves my latest order of figures from Spencer Smith. About Two weeks from time of order to recieving from England to NY, USA.

The figures are packed in plastic bags. Bodies arms and heads together with each bag marked by components.

Here's this orders contents

Cavalry galloping, Lemmon Sqeezer, Lance Upright                        To be painted as R.C.M.P.

Home Service marching, Home Service at the trail, Officer Home service, German Full Dress Picklehaube,Flag,Sword at slope.

To be painted as Argentine Military School Cadets

Home Service NCO-Crew, Officer kneeling, Kepi,Prussian style Jager,Empty, Raised.

To be painted as Costa Rican and Swiss.

Ghurkha, Lemmon Squeezer, rifle at the trail.

To be painted as US Army 1916

Casting are pretty clean. I know the Kukri wasn't used by the US but this was the pose I wanted for these troops. Carving it off is an option but leaving it on will be easier. When this lot is painted I should have enough figures for a game, two months if I stay on schedule.

Paint Table Saturday 2/15/14

After all the shoveling from Thursday's snow I was thinking of just veging out but I remembered PTS so down to the table

Not much done Spent about an hour. I should reorganize/clean the work area but...

Two scales/ One day Paint Table saturday

I've found this from Sofie's Blog to be good motivation for putting paint to metal.

first up 10th US Cavalry in 40mm

touching up some mistakes is all that's left for these.

And some work was done on my distraction project

15mm Carthiginian's from Viking Forge.

I'm off tomorrow so hope to finish up the Little Britons figures

The next Regiment is ready

It was a good weekend for painting. I finished sealing the 2nd regiment for the Toy Soldier project. I'll have to do some research to come up with a name.  Progress has been made on the 10th Cavalry. An order was placed and is now shipping from Peter at Spencer Smith. I've ordered figures for the R,C.M.P. , Military School of Argentina, Swiss and Costa Rican Artillery and, 1916 US army.

10th US Cavalry a WIP

I've been working on the 10th U.S. I hope to get them done this weekend. Overall I pretty happy so far. I black primed the jackets with gesso after spray priming white. This gave the jackets a good deep blue color and has kept everything else bright.

here's the paint table that I really should be cleaning up. 

Distracted but Happy

Not much happening on the LB front. The first unit of red coats has been painted and based now I'm waiting on warmer weather to seal coat them. The 10th U.S. Cavalry are coming along  with most of the first coat done. Pictures next week.

The distraction has been Pulse of Battle Ancient rules from Piquet. I'm not sure what prompted me to order these as Ancients aren't one of my major periods but I got in on the pre-order and the price was reasonable. Well I'm pretty happy that I did. They're a well laid out set of rules, an Army builder and short history lesson for several periods and two card decks. I've been a fan of Piquet for years and this looks like a great addition to the family.

Of course even though I had some Roman and Numidian armies for DBA there wasn't enough command figures and I felt I needed some more units to make a balanced gaming force. So it was off to the Viking Forge to see what was available. I wanted the figures to match my existing armies. Viking Forge sell the figures individually at $.40 a piece. I ordered about 50 figures giving me 5 command figures per side and an additional 10 units. I have to say knowing that these figures have been around for ages I didn't have high expectations for quality of the molds however they were cleanly cast with out flash and few mold lines. In fact the lines are so negligible that I may just wash and prime. I'm very happy with my purchase. Communication with them was good and shipping was quick.

I'm not unhappy with this distraction so far as every part has been top quality and I cut my original Viking Forge order down from 110 figures to a more manageable 46.

Next week should see the next order off to Spencer Smith.

Army recruitment.

As I thought of how to build my army or which armies to model I looked at the models available from Spencer Smith. The obvious choice would have been British troops but there weren't any historical opponents. Next was Franco/Prussian War but I had that in 15mm. I then thought of a American Canadian conflict set in the 1890's. A little research showed that there was quite an array of uniform types available to both sides with the colorful City militias on the american side and dress uniforms of the Canadians. I ordered the first troops based on this.

However, while on vacation I saw a box of Britans figures in a museum in Uruguay  and thought why not build units based on countries I'd been to. I felt this would add to the interest of the units and be a souvenir of sorts. Back to researching to see how plausible this would be.  Well is seems most countries based uniforms on the British, French or Prussian model so figures were available and color guides could be found.

So there we have it. Units based on places I've been. Now it's off to planing a trip to Scotland because I want a unit in kilts:-)