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.

Twilight Imperium GAME VI Timelapse.

A departure from my normal posts, I am actually participating in a game rather than just painting miniatures.
For those not familiar with it, Twilight Imperium is a game of galactic politics/conquest where a number of races compete to collect the most victory points by achieving objectives laid out on a track at the beginning of the game plus a player specific secret objective.
Despite having played Twilight Imperium previously I managed to come 5th out of 6 players due to my one major offensive in the game going badly wrong & having a secret objective that was well nigh un-achievable, but life's to short to dwell on these failures & there is always next time to pull off a stunning victory.
By the way, I'm the bearded gent in a black pullover facing the camera.

Peruvian infantry.

As 2014 begins to unfold I have resolved to complete a few ongoing projects before investing in more lead & plastic.
The first beneficiaries of this policy are these stands of Peruvian Infantry for the South American Wars of Independence project:

These are a mixture of Perry miniatures Napoleonic British bodies & Victrix French heads.

Next job in the pipeline is to re-base my ECW collection & at some point in the near future the postponed Korupedion game will take place else all the work re-basing the Hellenistic collection will have been in vain.

Re-basing Complete.

Finished off basing the Hellenistic collection this morning before tidying the hobby stuff back into its respective drawers. The last unit to get the treatment were some venerable, but very nice Foundry World of the Greeks archers:

That will be it for anything games related for a few days, leisure time for now will be occupied with eating, drinking & generally making merry, starting as of now with Clash of the Titans on Channel 5.

This year has been a non starter for actual wargaming, but I mean to finish the year with a flourish by taking on my usual opponent Mr. Ireland across the field of Korupedion ( Corupedium).
One of the more obscure Successor battles, Korupedion was fought in 281BC, north of Sardis in Western Asia Minor between the last of Alexander's Diadochi; Seleucus Nicator & Lysimachus. Both of these gentlemen were Septegenarians by this point but obviously still up for a good scrap.
Seleucus supposedly instigated the war because of some dynastic insult, but the real reason is more likely to have been the death of Ptolemy I Soter the year before. Ptolemy was an important ally of Lysimachus, helping sustain his somewhat un-popular rule & his demise would have given Seleucus an opportunity to invade  the Lysimachid territories in Macedonia & Greece finally re-uniting Alexander's empire.