Back of Beyond.

Absolutely no progress on the painting front this week because of this:

A case of what is locally & rather quaintly referred to as Dick finger ( a reference I believe to the swollen & purple end of an injured digit). The up-shoot of in-advisedly getting said digit caught between two pieces of heavy duty steel section in a moment of in-attention. Suffice to say it served to wake me up a bit.
As a consequence no painting done this week, so I've been sorting out some of the miniatures in storage, including the titular Back of Beyond items from Copplestone Castings. So in the absence of any new stuff, I offer instead this retrospective.

Warlord Chinese "75"

Warlord Chinese MG.

Chinese Mortar, apparently mortars were very popular in 1920's Chinese Armies.

As were executions to encourage the troops.

Bolshevik Maxim gun, elite crew.

Bolshevik Maxim, regular crew.

Bolshevik Lewis gunner.

Soviet Naval Maxim.

Austin Armoured Car.

Bolshevik "75".

Some seriously nice stuff from Mark Copplestone, I can only wonder as to why he undertook to produce miniatures for such an obscure time & place as 1920's Central Asia, but I'm glad he did. This is the reason I was introduced to the books of Peter Hopkirk & such fascinating & diverse characters as Roman Ungern Sternberg, Col. F. M. Bailey & Sven Hedin.

WMMS2014.

On what was hopefully the first of a long succession of sunny March days Mr. Ireland & I made the 40 mile trip to Wolverhampton for our local wargaming show.

Nice to get out & have a look round at the trade stands & demo/participation games though not much to really catch the eye in either department. The highlight of the demo games by some way was a large Yom Kippur war set up in 20mm with some excellent terrain & miniatures. This was run a close second by Hougoumont in 28mm, this seems to have done the rounds of UK shows in the last year but does look good in the flesh; particularly well executed fur fabric turf it must be said.
The continuing dearth of ancients games does continue to puzzle me though, there are some very good ranges of miniatures available after all & plenty of evidence here on the web that there is still an active contingent of gamers who enjoy the period, perhaps its time to actually put the ancients collection under the glare of public scrutiny & bring ancients gaming back to the Midlands.

Not too many highlights in the purchasing department either, a unit each of Crusader Thracians & Polemarch Tarentines purchased from Col. Bills at very reasonable prices ( 20 infantry & 10 cavalry for £40 odd quid) were the only buys this year, nothing else really grabbed me though I did have a serious look at Commands & Colours Ancients by GMT games, didn't bite though, waited until this morning & ordered it from my local boardgame supplier for 20% less than rrp. I'm far too much of a scrooge to do impulse buying these days & at least I can put money in a friends pocket this way.
Interesting to note the growth in laser cut accessories, the number of vendors selling them has been increasing over the last couple of years & some of them are very good indeed, for my money they make very convincing timber structures but don't capture the look of stone or brick or slate very well. This market I think is hitting saturation point.

All in all an O.K. morning out, nothing to get really excited about but with the world at your finger tips its rare that the next new thing slips past the aegis eye; the show seemed well attended as always but we both felt it was a little flat compared with previous years & its hard to escape the fact that the age demographic is decidedly the wrong side of 40, though mercifully incidences of 'soap dodging' have almost disappeared these days.
Enough philosophising for now must go & undercoat figures.

Imperial Alejandro with Flag.

Finally knuckled down to providing a flag for Imperial Alejandro this morning. It was raining again & I couldn't face being wet on the Sabbath so seemed as good a time as any.

The flag was downloaded some time ago from the Capitan Games website & re-touched with acrylics to sharpen up the colours & modify the style of the cross. The escutcheons at the ends of the cross of Burgundy are actually those of the Concepcion Regiment, but the eagles depicted are close enough to those of Imperial Alejandro to be left alone. They should I believe be double headed, but its hard to tell from more than a foot away.

Here is the Regiment as of today, one more base of Fusileros to complete & then its onto the Gran Colombians.

Orinoco Miniatures Gran Colombian Fusilero.

Instead of buckling down to painting a Spanish flag for the  Imperial Alejandro last night I took the easy way out and painted up another miniature instead.

Really getting into this period again after a brief lay off, its good to be able to get on with painting miniatures rather than having to covert & assemble as I've had to do up till now. Looking forward to seeing what comes next for this range; the wargaming half of my brain says artillery crew would be useful, the painting half says mounted personalities. Have to wait & see.

Spanish Infantry Command.

As predicted the amount of figures completed in the last few days has dropped back to usual glacial levels as the working week kicked in, but to give myself a little Friday night fillip got these Orinoco Miniatures Spanish Command underway. Not enough time to do the flag, that is tonights task when I finally knock off.

Together with the fusiliers completed last weekend these are starting to build into a nice unit:

Imperial Alejandro based for Fire & Fury.

Spanish Infantry Update.

Got the first base of these finished late last night despite having a minor eye injury, a consequence of using a chainsaw with my helmet visor up. It has at least forced me to honour the Sabbath so I might get a bit more painting done after lunch. This might be the last opportunity for a while though, last weeks gales have made me a very busy man with at least a months work on top of the usual work load, it is as they say an ill wind that blows no good.
Anyway on to the eye candy:

Took advantage of some rare sunshine to snap these outdoors on my Panion board ( which has since been used for much more far ranging locales), natural light is a lot more forgiving of my rudimentary photographic skills.
P.S. If you want to pinch these pictures for your Orinoco Miniatures blog Mark please feel free.

Orinoco Miniatures Spanish Infantry.

After a month long post xmas hiatus I've got some enthusiasm back for painting historical miniatures. The spark for this revival, a package of rather excellent stuff from Orinoco Miniatures in Prague.

First off the characteristically slow conveyor belt:

Regimiento Imperial Alejandro, Flank Co.

Back view showing stowage.

Once again more excellent sculpting from Orinoco with only the barest hint of flash on the casting, detail good & sharp and size wise comparable with Perry miniatures. Looking forward to painting the rest of this order as & when time permits.