Well sort of a night off… I didn’t get in until 22.30 tonight and was going to have a night off as I had been off to see my Eldest as Pugsley in the school production of the Adams Family. Although I was a proud dad and was amazed at her singing voice ( she never really sings in the house) it was a great night out and would have been If I had been a regular punter.

Anyway when I got back I thought I had better do something on the tanks…

Yeah I know the triangles are a bit thick in places, if I have time and can be bothered then I will go back and redo them.

I know I didn’t need the red triangle on them, but it makes them a bit more interesting and that is my story.

Well Tonight was busy, busy, busy so I really didn’t have time to do much on the tanks, but at least I managed something.

I managed to paint the tools on each and the hawsers on the Churchill

The other thing I managed was to paint the windscreens and windows on the Tilly and staff car…

I decided to do a little experiment. I painted them bright silver as an undercoat and when it was dry I went over it with a blue Contrast paint. The darker bit was a second layer, this will tone down when it dries. To be honest I am quite chuffed with the results.

I must apologise to anyone who heard a Geordie bloke swearing rather a lot this evening. It had dawned on me yesterday that I would need more dice for my tank game at the weekend. So, although I live on Shetland, I thought I would give Amazon a go and see if they could get it to me pretty quickly. They said it would be here by the 10th. That caused me a momentary wobble as the 10th would be too late as I needed….it….by…. the ….. oh Bollocks, by the 19th. For some reason I had got it into my head that the Games day was this weekend coming, in fact it is the weekend after, what is more, I made the poster to advertise it. I have been panicking all last week that I was running out of time and that somehow I had lost a week in my self imposed timetable. So I am now quite relieved that I have a bit longer to go.

I can now relax a bit, and as I am off next week it will give me a lot more time to crack on with things.

Well by further work I mean I applied a light tone wash…

They have certainly dulled down a bit from yesterday

I might dry brush them a bit tomorrow to get them back to a lighter tan.

I didn’t get much done today as this morning We put in a stove in the kitchen and this afternoon I dropped my kids off and, shock horror, actually went to a wargames club! Yes I did indeed… probably the first time in 2019.

I took my submarine game and Martin and I had a bash at it, we survived…just and limped back into Kiel. Our Score was a D, but at least we sank stuff and survived!

There are at least three (possibly four) gaming clubs up here. Thule which I was one of the founder members in 2007. This meets on a Thursday, but as I game with a mate who works different shift patterns sometimes the only day we can do is a Thursday ( plus I haven’t been there since about a July) not to mention where I work now and with my wife needing to be in various places on a Thursday I just haven’t managed to get this year at all. The ‘Shetland wargames’ Club meets on a Sunday and does mainly GW stuff, but over the years I have noticed them starting to do some historical stuff. The other two clubs are mainly Dungeons and Dragons Role play games. So I am going to give the Sunday club a go and see how I get on.

Well I bit the bullet and ordered a DBA Samurai army from Tin Soldier. This will get me started at least, it’s not the large one I wanted but it is less than half the price of the bigger one.

On the Up side, Battle Valour Games are now doing 15mm Samurai, and Martin, who I gamed with today is the uk supplier. I will purchase a sample pack to see how they compare size wise to Tin Soldier. Hopefully they will be a similar size to the Scalians which fit in well with Tin Soldier.

Tomorrow I will try and get some more painting done.

Well I am off with the British/commonwealth tanks and vehicles.

I fully intended to do a slate colour over the base colour then promptly forgot and chose green! Luckily General orders are my friend here.

1941 –  G.O.1272 now calls for a basic colour of Light Stone No.61 or  Portland Stone No.64, according to supplies with one disruptive colour over at the discretion of Commands i.e. Palestine , Malta , Trans-Jordan etc.  This cancels GO 297 of 1940 and GO 795 of 1941.   At first this may have been Slate in patterns similar to Caunter but later possibly Slate No. 34, Silver Grey No. 28 and Black have been noted in apparently random patterns

1942.  Over Light Stone 61 the single colour disruptive was still in force although many units did not employ it whilst others used a variety of schemes, designs and colours, some with black and/or white outlining.

I painted the tracks on the tank and the tyres on the wheeled vehicles with the same colour as the French armour.

These still need a wash putting on them to get some shading in… and then getting all the gubbins painted.

Tomorrow I will carry on with these and try and get them finished by the evening. Then onto the German armour.

I have suddenly thought that I need some walls etc to act as line of sight blockers/ cover. I have buildings and palm trees, but could really do with some small walled fields – the problem is I am running out of time.

Well okay, having two different colours is different right?

Hopefully they are now different enough to be distinguishable on the table now. Waiting for the paint to cure before cracking on with them. The Allied Stuff is more than likely to light a colour, but with a wash on it will darken up a fair bit.

Every time I look at the allied tanks I think I don’t have enough, then remember that I have all the French stuff too.

I did have a bit of a hiccup getting these done! All of a sudden the airbrush stopped pushing paint out. I was a bit miffed as I had just filled the cup and had to dump it!

After much swearing, prodding and fiddling it started again, so everything ended up getting a few coats over the white. No doubt tomorrow I will find the one with only one set of tracks and wheels painted.

As I had the ivory out, I though I might as well blast the brick sections on the houses.

A bit of clean up is required, but it was a heck of a lot faster than with a brush. I will give them all a wash of something brownish too to make them pop a bit more, that and paint all of the wood.

And finally we come to sheep, yes sheep… the woolly Bahh bahh things.

I was stood this morning waiting for my lift and I noticed something peculiar in the field of rams. They seemed to have ‘paired’ up. When one moved off then a second would follow. What made it a bit more weird is that they had paired thus…

One black face and one white face in each grouping. In this photo you can see the black faced ram following the white one. They kept like this in these pairs all the time I was there. Probably a total coincidence but weird nonetheless.

I did feel sorry for the one in the distance as he didn’t have any friends!

It wasn’t a bad morning this morning…

Definitely Autumnal….

Well I now think I have enough tanks for Games day. These are the final few that I have printed off and sprayed tonight.

As can be seen there are more than tanks here.

Two SAS Jeeps and the Chevrolet with a Breda in the back.

The Austin Tilly, a kubelwagen and staff car

Two MkIII’s and a MKII and finally a Churchill.

So that is enough German armour to keep me going for a while. Off the top of my head there are four MkIII’s, two MKII’s, a MKIV, three Stug and four 38T’s plus a sneaky little 222. I might still do a Marder II if I have time.

The other thing I sprayed this evening were some of the buildings.

There are still a couple to get roofs on and then sprayed, but to be honest if I don’t get them finished then I will have enough to go with.

The Char B got it’s base coat on the turret tonight. It needs its camouflage and wash doing, then giving it its number 3.

So what do I need to do next?

Spray the German and British tanks in the appropriate colours then paint up the bits that need doing with a brush. Unit markings for them all (not looking forwards to the British ones).

Get the houses painted. I am going for the ‘cop out’ white ones with cream bricks 😉.

Either use the polystyrene hills I have, or use them as a base and make my own… not sure yet.

Well I managed to get some paint onto the tracks of the French tanks tonight. I gave them a couple of coats of Basilicanum (or whatever it is called) Contrast paint…

I also managed to get the metalwork done on the chains on the back of the Char B’s.

I also managed to print my MkIII too. Yesterday I must have turned the knob as I pressed print and ended up with the LRDG set.

I have bothered photographing as it is a black (printed) MKIII, but it does look rather spiffy, on the allied tank front I was looking for the desert yellow for the French tank and came across this….

I will be able to spray the tanks with this, it might not be totally accurate, but it is better than the desert yellow.

Next thing on the tanks is to paint on the markings and possibly a roundel too….

As the dog had stolen my jam doughnut I thought I would add some Markings to them. I was going to do them in red or blue, but I am now thinking I would leave them in white for the second company with first and second platoon. If I want to be accurate (🤣🤣😂🤣) I will need to change the colour of one of the Char B’s to red or blue as there were only three of them per platoon.

On the car front, we are off to pick up a little runabout tomorrow evening, so by Friday we should have wheels again.

I have checked the piggy bank and I could get a DBA Samurai army from Tin Soldier that wouldn’t break the bank….hmmmm what to do!😱