Saturday, 28 March 2009

Still Painting

Things have been a tad busy recently ... for example, we moved house yesterday! Yet I managed some painting even on Thursday evening - how's that for dedication?

To be fair I have been very busy with the paintbrush for a while. I now have almost 60 Celt infantry ready for the 'dip'. As they're still in basic colours I decided not to photograph them. My normal style is a 3-4 colour Foundry-esque approach so seeing lots of very basic paint jobs is quite hard on the eye. But I'm sure the AP dip will do the job. Each figure has taken about 40 mins to paint as I couldn't resist doing the flesh and armour in two layers, plus there's the effort required for good check/stripe patterns and the woad tattoos. The WG Celt woad transfers make an excellent reference but are a real pig to apply, so I just copy some of the patterns and use a really small brush.

My initial 1,000pt Celt army requires about 75 infantry so I'm doing well in terms of targets. After that there's a bunch of cavalry, a few characters and some chariots.

Since we're in the process of moving it's quite feasible that I'll be without internet contact for a week or so (shudder!) but rest assured that I'll be ploughing on with my Celts with the aim of having some photos of the horde here on the blog asap.

Added to that are my plans for an AoA painting treat in the form of some Gripping Beast Romano-Brits and Welsh.

And in addition to that it now seems that I might be dragged in the direction of ECW by a combination of Warlord Games and my good friend Jimbo.

Best keep busy with those brushes!

Wednesday, 11 March 2009

WHW Bombshell

All the chatter on the WAB Forum and others suggest that GW have had some sort of business reorganisation and brought Warhammer Historical under the umbrella of Forgeworld. What it means for WAB I do not know. But sadly it seems that GW may no longer require the services of Mr Broom. If so, then I wish him well, especially in these uncertain financial times. I think he's done a great job at the helm of WHW.

As for Forgeworld taking up the reins ... Will GW continue to fund a rule set that basically doesn't sell their figures? That's an interesting question and I'm afraid that the answer is most probably 'no'.

However, the decision may not be purely financial - but I have no idea how much say, if any at all, the gaming enthusiast big shots have at GW HQ. Perhaps they will mothball any new WHW publications with a view to restoring them at a later date. Who knows. We'll just have to wait and see.

As for WAB v2.0, I expect that this will 'move things to the right' as they say in management speak.

Thankfully WAB has fairly large and energetic group of players so I'm sure it will carry on in one form or another ... I certainly hope so!

Don't forget
Keep Calm

Friday, 6 March 2009

Best laid plans ... ?

As I type I should, in fact, be on my way to the far frozen north of England for weekend of fun, friends and wargaming. But alas things have not exactly gone according to plan. Both my little'uns came home from school yesterday feeling under the weather. By late evening they were both definitely unwell... much coughing and chundering, high temps, ear-ache, snot, etc. Oh dear. Poor little monkeys.

So at almost the very last minute we've had to abandon our plans. Pity really because my children were really looking forward to it also. I've told them if they're well enough on Sunday afternoon then we'll head to the cinema.

As for Jim's AoC HRE, well they'll just have to wait a bit longer for a good drubbing at the hands of my trusty HYW English. ;-) Since neither myself or Jim have played in ages the delay will give us some more time to read the rules.

Normal service will be resumed shortly... I hope!