Saturday, September 18, 2010

Random musings

September has started out well, painted 4 x 12 man imagi-nations units, and I will finish a US Para platoon for FoW tomorrow. Plan to knock out a GE grenadier platoon over the next week. That will leave me with teh 13 Hares from Splintered Light. I don't think I will get to the Hare Fort I have planned, but it will still cap two great months of painting.

I sold several hundred dollars of books and rules on TMP this month. I had gathered a collecting over the past few years while searching for the rules I wanted to use. I do like reading rules and seeing the concepts these use, but it was time to cull the herd. The benefit is that I then spent the money on painting and basing supplies, the final figures for my imagi-nation (for now!), and some terrain. I got the FoW Normandy beach defeses set...expensive, but it comes with some great bunkers that I can use with FoW and for skirmish gaming.

I also traded one book for several FoW items...got a great deal by getting 3 Shermans, a Ranger Platoon, a Fallschrimjager Platoon, and a US Armored Rifle Platoon.

While at work, I have drafted up some notes for my next imagi-nation campaign. It will be a multi-sided conflict in the Grand Dutchy of Hippo-Heimer just to the North of Katzenstein. Rather than a simple linear campaign, this one will involve some map moves and I want to incorporate the Mythic Game Generator into things for random events. I am still short on cavalry, so things will most likely kick off after I get them painted this winter.

Some thoughts on figures: When I started getting figures for my units, I was excited that there were all kinds of poses and unique sculpts. In hindsight, I like to have the units in the advancing pose and not have as many poses in the units. My units are mostly AB figures and Warmodelling/Fantassin figures with a few others thrown in. The AB figures can be bought individually, and that is nice. The Warmodelling come in packs of 8 for infantry...and 6 for command packs. This does force me to use an extra drummer in each unit to get a command stand and three line stands.

Colors: My imagination has troops in all kinds of colors. This is intentional even if it losses some continuity. I am trying out combinations for the future and I have found I like blues mixes with grey, white, or tan/brown for my units. I will keep this in mind when it comes time for my imagi-nation ancient troops.

Basing: I have been using pumice texture and static grass on the FoW bases. Looks good. I just bought some grass tufts to try out too. I am not sure about going back and texturing my imagi-nation figures. It would be a big project.

Rules: I have settled into some rules sets-
Skirmish: Song of Blades and Heroes (with varients)
WW II: Flames of War
Space ships: Starmada
Imagi-Nation: Carnage and Glory computer rules
Ancients: writing my own! Individual figures/losses.
---I like the Pique rules sets. May not use them exactly, but working some concepts into my ancients rules.

Photos: My camera skills are horrible. I need to go back and take new pictures of all the imagi-nation units.

Time to get painting.

4 comments:

  1. I would love to see better photos of your units! You've done much better on the miniatures front than I have. I've purchased plenty of figures, and prepped quite a few, but haven't painted very many. Mostly due to the hot weather and being either out of town or busy at work. I have been working on some terrain and reading rules for my Exploration of Afrodesia games to come. Basically lots of stuff in progress, but not so much completed.

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  2. I like your 'rainbow army', and of course would appreciate better pics -though at least you take the photos #horizontaly, not ± from above as so many do!

    For uniform colors, *yellow* is sadly underused, specially for coats: with of course while (light grey) it's the hue that combines well with the widest diversity of facing colors.

    Cheers!

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  3. I agree: grey is a fine uniform colour that is very friendly with other colours.

    Yellow coats have the virtue of standing out (like red and white - fine military colours both) - but I feel that they require undergarments (breeches and waistcoats) that are neither yellow nor white. The uniform coats of the Principality of Ursaminor are yellow; facings various reddish shades for the most part; but the boys have blue breeches. Gives a much nicer effect. Of course, there is nothing wrong with then supplying over-the-knee white gaiters for a very elegant look.

    I admire the progress you continue to make: my Altmark-Uberheim Infantry have been hanging fire for several weeks now...

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  4. I appreciate the positive comments and support. Keeping up the painting mojo can be a challenge at times, but putting things on the blog does help.

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