..the Christmas and New Year hiatus..

...so, there it goes! Hope you all had good Christmas's, it didn't exactly hang around did it?!

It seems to me that every year Christmas just comes and goes quicker and quicker... and this years was no exception. It's a huge shame; if I had my way the week before Christmas would last a month as there's nothing like that sense of expectation even at my advanced age - but it comes and goes in about 5 minutes flat..

Either way - despite the best efforts of an awful cough and cold which started on Christmas Eve and is only just departing now, Steve the Wargamer had an excellent Christmas. I ate far too much, tried to drink too much but had to give in (cough and cold defeated me this time!), and watched far more television than can be healthy for anyone!

Highlights under the tree for me this year were a couple of the new Osprey "Tactics" books ("British Napoleonic Infantry" and "WWII Desert Tactics" - pictured), some DVD’s (the incomparable Gregory Peck in "12 O’Clock High", and the new Indiana Jones effort which I've not seen yet), a 'shed-load' of book tokens to spend on tomes of my choice, and more bottles of interesting beer than I can safely fit in the cupboard in the garage! Santa was very good to me indeed...

Thoughts now turn somewhat delightfully on what to spend those vouchers on! I have a huge list of books that I have been meaning to buy as a result of the myriads of suggestions on various blogs, at the Old School Wargame group, and elsewhere... I like to use them to buy "significant" purchases, the kind of books that you wouldn't normally buy, so at the moment I have Troiani's "Soldiers of the American Revolution" in my sights... more on that when I make my mind up.

Next up, I've just finished basing the 12mm armour that I bought on the recent visit to Minifigs so for your delectation I include some photo's. I suspect that these will very definitely be the last of my painting points for 2008.. :o))

First up is the British command vehicle, this is a Bedford QLR Radio Truck (BV58) and of them all, this is the one I'm most happy with. I got the idea for the surveying poles from a painted example on someone else's site (which I now can't remember the name of), the figure was a spare from my parts box. I've also decided to go with the new basing technique for my desert stuff - nothing extraordinary, just using real sand (with grit) instead of the sand coloured flock I was using. Think it looks a lot better...Next is a couple of shots of the Panzer IV's with the long barrelled 75mm.. enough for a unit for Blitzkrieg Commander - first a close up:

..and then a shot of all three:

Last up a German half track made up as a command vehicle (Sd Kfz 251/3), and a PzJgr I. The latter is without a doubt the most difficult model I've ever had to put together, the shield alone came in three separate parts (and in 12mm that's small) - at one point I lost one of the side pieces and found it stuck to my thumb! To be honest it still looks a bit like a dogs dinner but it painted up OK, and now it's based it fits the bill...but never again!

...and finally for this post a preview of what's coming up in the next post. The next post will contain the first fruits of the virtual game that DG and I are playing in the American War of Independence campaign - the table is set time to start moving some troops.. I'm planning to play this as per the game Stokes is playing over at his blog site - let's see whether we're as succesful as he is!