Friday 31 March 2023

‘Herding Butterflies’

 For those that know me or have followed my blog for some time they will know that my paint desk usually has 3 or 4 painting projects on the go at once! It’s just how my mind works, I need different figures in terms of scale or uniform so that I can paint what I fancy at that time! 

I envy those individuals who can focus on one period at the expense of everything else but my ‘butterfly’ mind just isn’t disciplined enough for that, the best I have been able to achieve is to stay within some fairly broad parameters, Ancient/ Darkages. 17th Century, 18th century British in the Caribbean and America, Napoleonic and ACW and that really is quite a lot and I’m sure there’s some other bits lurking on the fringes.

Since the sale of Crann Tara it has enabled me to dabble in all of these and make progress. In particular the ECW mainly due to the painting services of Lee Gramson who has painted about 90% of  the figures in my two armies. That is ongoing but I’m also quite tempted to move east in Europe and look at Cossacks/ Poles/ Ottomans. By Fire and Sword 2nd edition is currently on KS and I’m mighty tempted- so whilst mulling over thought I’d print a Russian church 🤦🏼


A little bit of filling to do where it’s glued but won’t take long and can then paint.

I also had a good run on painting those Warlord ‘epics’ for the Quatre Bras project, all the French are done just need basing finishing so I will show them later, in the meantime here’s a pic of the French characters, they need highlighting and some Matt varnish put on.





On a Wednesday my colleague usually pops round for a game, the last couple of weeks we’ve returned to board gaming and our focus has been on GMT’s Panzer. At present we are just about to progress from tank v tank action to adding infantry and artillery when I feel comfortable to write about a game in progress I shall do so.

I also received what appears to be a very interesting game, a cross over between board and figure gaming, Onus Traianus has excellent production qualities and includes standard rules, solo rules and campaign games. I’m still working through the contents but you can see the production quality is nice and the cards, which are used on the table top as units, could easily be replaced with figures or as some other gamers have already done they’re using the cards to try out other rule sets.



So just a few things floating around and in the background there’s my 15mm Ancient Thracian army which is just about 50% painted😁 variety is the spice of life! 

Keep safe.

8 comments:

The Jolly Broom Man said...

Wow Graham, smashing church. I bet that took a while to print?! Love the miniatures too…boney looks suitably morose!

Graham C said...

JBM
printed it in 6 pieces total time around 14 hours.

Norm said...

Good to see you getting to the Panzer game. The Church looks great, what scale did you print it to? Looking forward to an Epic outing …. I saw his a couple of days ago and was suitable inspired! LINK

http://sparkerswargames.blogspot.com/2023/03/black-powder-epic-acw-port-republic.html

He has settled on 3 bases to the unit, which has a good look to it.

Graham C said...

Norm,
The building is designed for 20mm so I printed at 60% and it’s still pretty big, the cabins are next so see how they turn out.
Panzer is enjoyable although Steve’s Panthers this week made short work of my Russians!
The three bases per unit for ACW looks good. At present I’m trying to be flexible so for games like Valour and fortitude a unit of 4 or 5 bases could be a battalion or a brigade.

Tiberian general said...

I love the epic Napoleonics and the church Graham.

Willz.

Independentwargamesgroup said...

Cant keep up with the way your mind works Graham. And a 3d printer, how on message are you.I must confess Ive got various periods stacked up on my desk, including Chaos Marines? for the Xenos Rampant rules. You need to dabble in the Wars of the Roses, I really think you will enjoy the Billhooks experience. Keep up the good work.

Graham C said...

Robbie
I can’t keep up either! They’re all on a theme of one period or another that I like and when I get in the groove I can paint a lot quickly. But I think the years of demo games and having to focus on painting lots of figures for a game has made me crave for the variety. I have some 15mm WOTR figures to do which I was going to use but just excludes me from joining in the events, I may build a small contingent let’s see how the summer develops.

Aly Morrison said...

It’s good to see that you have a healthy butterfly Graham…
I do like the look of the board game…

All the best. Aly