Another Irregular Update...could this be coming a bad habit?

   

  It, the blog, is certainly at the risk of becoming a neglected habit!!; playing third fiddle to my painting and gaming...or even fourth fiddle in the trio if you include my general day dreamy frothing about gaming which often get's between me and putting actual content into the blog. So let's me try and remedy that whilst fiddling (I'm not really fiddling nor playing any other musical instrument, folks, but it makes the blog that wee bit more amusing if you play along, if you'll pardon the pun. And, of course, if some of you are musically "gifted" and wish to play an instrument while you read this, that would be fabulous....erm....where the bloody hell was I? Oh yeah, the blog post; well here it is <tunes fiddle....sounds of cat like wailing....just in case your imagination hadn't kicked in yet>
   
      So what's new and what have I been doing or, sticking with the musical theme, what wargaming things have I been putting to the fiddle. Well, first up some Eastern Folk Music might be appropriate for the general frothing about the forthcoming Bolt Action supplement Fortress Budapest. My particular jazz folk intro for this book a la Stephane Grappelli has been the painting of the first of my (many) winter Germans.

     Richie and I have gone slightly Gonzo on this with, perhaps, me having the edge as I plan on doing the platoon's supporting vehicles; armoured and wheeled, in a winter cammo scheme but both of us intending to play Fortress Budapest (and the Battle Of The Bulge too) as soon as possible with appropriate terrain and figures. With only another 24 figures to build and paint from the Warlord box set and then the various other support troops and some very tasty figures from Empress Miniatures wearing Kharkov smocks I should have a fairly complete winter themed force which, of course, I swore to myself once upon a long ago, that I would never, ever do; so much for my steely self discipline; more like cheap kitchen foil....so those figures and getting my hands on any related published material; in this case the Battle For Budapest and The Armourer magazine, have been sustaining my Magyarian froth.

      

      Krisztian Ungvary's Battle For Budapest is taking a little bit of effort to get into; mostly because I am as thick a whale omlette but also because trying to follow the flow of the advance and encirclement by the Soviets has been a bit of a bind. The book is littered with maps but, crikey, some those Hungarian place names are a mental mouthful and the places named don't always appear on the maps which meant jumping onto Google Earth to find out exactly where they are in relation to other towns noted on the maps as well as the topography. However, I am now at the point were the Soviets have completed their encirclement and the actual battle is about to begin; more on the Battle For Budapest later

     The Armourer magazine I bought on a whim whilst slumming it in Tesco (normally I shop in Harrods, folks, or M&S; the Lidl bag is just a cover, I tell you) as it has The Siege Of Budapest writ large across the cover (Am I alone in always being on the lookout for wargames related stuff when they are being dragged around the shops? I wonder; answers in the comments below, and lets see if we can maybe set up a support group for people who think about wargaming almost constantly...a catchy title if ever there was one...anyhoo...the blog...the blog..) and a few interesting related articles within and lots of nice photos of weapons, medals etc......

....a very interesting magazine, besides the Budapest stuff, for the historical wargamer, methinks, This being the only copy I have bought but I might keep an eye out for it for future frothing.

     Next up, re-tuning my fiddle, and to the sound of a badly played excerpt from Elgar's Violin Sonata, I recently added another tutorial on the Paint All The Minis website, showing how I paint vehicles using the dry brushing method. I also have a similar post about the dry brushing method elsewhere in the blog. I used a Warlord Games/Italeri M10 Wolverine as the example vehicle and it looked fine; painted the British crew for it, posted my tutorial then thought "time to get this bad boy weathered" and, rushing and taking a rather slapdash approach to it, I  ended up making a right pig's ear of the whole thing. By the time I finally accepted I had ballsed it up it looked like this; really bad...a real bum note in my virtuous though not virtuoso efforts at Elgar's violin sonata, as it were...if we were to employ my fiddling theme..

Don't do this at home, kids. My slapdash attempt at weathering

       ....so, after making such a mess of the weathering it was back to the painting desk and a quick repaint (with a jig and reel on the fiddle for good measure) and all was well. Just need to get the blighter finished off. I just can't decide whether to put Allied stars on the sides of the hull or not. Also, and as an aside, I'm sure I have the parts somewhere to make an Achilles turret too for a bit of variety.

      

     Gaming wise, and this time to the tune of Paganini's Caprice No5 played in such a manner that Paganini no doubt spun a few revolutions in his grave, I managed to play another game of In Her Majesty's Name, this time using my Imperial Nightwatch company against Jamie's electrifying (pun intended...just saying..) company from Tesla's Travelling Exhibition, the rules for boith being found in the IHMN Gothic supplement. We had a cracking, fun and very hard fought game and the batrep will follow soon; promise. In the meantime here's a couple of teaser shots

The Imperial Nightwatch in action

Tesla's oddities come to town

     Now, applying my rosin to my bow, and scratching out Annakin's and Marton's The Longest Day theme in such a fashion that the Longest Day seemed to drag even longer, something else I really enjoy about gaming is digging into the back ground of the units and conflicts in which they took part in (and I am certainly not unique in that respect but, hey, it's my blog and it's all about me..me...me!! ) to try and get a feel for that unit or that campaign especially when it comes to narrative batreppipping.

     So, this June, Warlord are releasing their D Day campaign supplement and they have organised a campaign day down at Warlord HQ in Nottingham and Richie, Danny and I are heading down to take part. Danny and Richie are playing on the Allies side while I have plumped for the chance to play the fiendish Hun. After humming and ha-ing about whether to make up a 21st Panzer Divison platoon or maybe go for a Panzer Lehr force instead using Arizan Designs very nice looking, very tempting Panzer Lehr figures, I decided against both and am, instead, taking my Fallschirmjager.

My Fallschirmjaeger on parade. There's supposed to be a PAK40
in there too as well as an Opel Blitz mounted Flakvierling. Just
a Stug III to add 

     Primarily the decision was one of cost; I couldn't really justify getting a new platoon in the Panzer Lehr as it would have meant, and I am sure I wouldn't be alone in taking this approach, buying and building more vehicles just so I could add the Panzer Lehr symbol to them to make them "Panzer Lehr"........no doubt I will do that at some point in the future as the Artizan Figures look great and I am daft enough.

     No, my Fallschirmjager it is and I'll tell you why (whaddya mean "Must you"?)  They were the second Bolt Action platoon I bought and I want to revisit them with the paint brush as my painting skills now are way better than the ones I possessed back then. I want to do them some credit. The only thing I plan to add to them is a Stug III with a Fallschirmjager crew...well, crewman with Fallschirmjager helmet.....and foliage on the Stug III. But in the meantime, and getting back to my mention above of books, I have bought myself a copy of The Lions Of Carentan to help get me in the mood, as it were; to help maintain the froth level to just below the rim of the pot, if you will.

     And I must admit, from flicking through it, it looks like a corker. More about that and the Fallschirmjager platoon I take in the near future

     Lastly, and laying aside the fiddle as the strings have bust, the tuning pegs popped, and, surprisingly, a random elephant has sat on the fiddle (I say surprisingly as, around here, we are normally quite selective about which elephant gets to sit on our fiddles...but I digress...the blog...the blog..this way to the blog) and crushed it , I have bough yet another book, this time for some back ground to the Baltic Crusades where Danny and I will be locating our games of Lion Rampant and Hail Caesar (narratively speaking, because it's all about the narrative, dahlink!); Osprey Publishing's The Scandinavian Baltic Crusades 1100-1500 with illustrations by, in my humble opinion, the best illustrator they had, Mr Angus McBride. As Danny and I are planning/hoping/intending to play more Lion Rampant games and, maybe soon, our first game of Hail Caesar too, using the same miniatures  I thought I should get some background material for the setting of said games (any excuse to buy another flipping Osprey book, as the missus will tell you. But she'll tell you I am tall, dark, handsome and funny so I wouldn't trust her word ) It seems a slightly obscure period from the British perspective though apparently, back in the days of crusading it became a more popular, cheaper and fruitful place to go on crusade as opposed to the Holy Land, if you were a young knight out to win your spurs. There's a good discussion about it on the BBCs In Our Time programme on BBC Radio 4 if you are curious about it. 

     And that is that for this blog post. Lots more to come from the General's mess including painting these chaps and their vessel....

....so stay tuned....

pip pip,

El Generalissimo