Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone. Its the time of year I enjoy most with two very excitable young children and me on my annual break to enjoy the build up to the big day.
I have been rather busy preparing Vikings to paint in the coming evenings, I decided to get the Foundry purchases well and truly underway (tanks are boring) and will post a proper update between the Christmas and New Year period. Also I have a sneaking idea that I have Anglo Saxons and Normans on the way soon ;)

So I hope you all enjoy the festivities and will catch up with you soon.

What is it about this hobby?

I have been trying to decide what makes this hobby so interesting for me. It all started a long time ago, on a heavily patterned front room carpet and a few boxes of Airfix plastic figures one Christmas. Those figures were a box of Napoleonic Highlanders and French Line infantry. Along with the box was a simple set of rules and that was the start of a long journey.
Not content with bare plastic I sat for hours painting them into some resemblance of the pictures on the boxes. More Napoleonics followed until I got a few years older then started to collect lead figures again it was Napoleonics from Minifigs to start with. The gaming was always between me and a few selected friends.
It was my teenage years that really saw me get absorbed into the hobby fully, painting, reading historical books and role playing. However aside from the regular Dungeons & Dragons sessions very little other gaming although the collections of painted miniatures kept growing.
Early adulthood saw me drop off of the role play and back into wargaming always finding the local gaming club whenever I moved to a new area.
I regularly painted figures throughout and sold my 15mm collections to fund 28mm collections which along with a lead mountain that I hardly had room for I had to sell to start up a small business.
Now I have come full circle and in the main I am painting 15mm figures again, having decided that large collections are best achieved with smaller figures due to cost and skirmish games played with 28mm scale because they look more impressive.
Terrain has always figured in the journey too, after all it is now how I make a living or at least try too after having sold everything to fund it.
Having said all this and thought hard about what I enjoy most , for me it was a difficult decision as gaming at the club has the benefits of fun and good company, reading history expands the mind and always encourages me to build armies, terrain is very important to me as I like a good looking table to play on.
However it has to be the painting first. I certainly am not a great painter but overall I am always happy with the end result of my efforts, I use the painting as my bit of space and really enjoy making a figure come to life.
So now I ask the question which part of the hobby do you enjoy the most?

DAK work in progress

I have to admit to not having put much time into the DAK project recently. Partly due to the time of year and a pre-occupation with wrapping up my business affairs for a month. However I havent been idle, working on more terrain for the club and starting a couple of Saga tables for Craig and Kelly (more on those later).

I have chosen to finish the tank company by using models that save a few precious £'s.
Using the newish Zvesda 1/100th plastic kits.

These are near enough for me to use as Pz-IV E as the actual differences are minor.

These are the exact model required for the weapons platoon. I intend these to be a similar colour to the rest of the force but have areas of grey visible to represent older vehicles as they were retired to recon work mainly.

So how do they paint up, actually they take paint well with one major difference the acrylic needs to be very dry before applying the next coat or it lifts a little. Because these are ABS plastic I will be giving these a few extra coats of varnish once completed to ensure the paint stays put. The major plus side is the low cost and good detail on each model, much crisper than the resin metal mix efforts.

As you can see they are very much in progress but I like to think about extra details and plan what and where to place it. These should fit in very well with the exisisting models I have already completed.