Monday, November 18, 2013

Tau Weekend

This weekend, the wife and kids were out of town, and other than waste time on the computer and household chores, I also started a new miniatures project as a sort of time constrained challenge.

Now, you might think that it would be sensible to complete an existing project, and you would be correct.  However, this project did use (mostly) existing miniatures.  As I mentioned a while back, I have a "reserve army" of Tau.  I call them a reserve army, because they are in boxes in shrink wrap, completely untouched (much like dwarves, Eldar, DoW, and more other things than I am willing to mention at this time).  Anyway, they are reserve no longer, because I opened up those battleforces this weekend, and built AND painted a nice little force of Firewarriors.  Although I did buy a new box of pathfinders to go with it...

Crummy Phone Pictures:
 
Pile of sprues waiting to be clipped and realized
after 4.75 hours of clipping and gluing

 

Favorite pose, a NCO using Pathfinder arms
Basing in progress
 
Close up of base work
Brush primed with Gesso and paint mixture
 

All base layer paints finished!
Inked and ready for action
I still need to do a few highlights, finish the bases, and then seal them, but 90% of the work is done, and in only 15 hours to boot.  (~36 minutes per figure) I will post later this week some "lessons learned" about army painting, which may be old hat to you, but seem as new realisations to me.

Friday, November 15, 2013

Napoleon's Cavalry

Emir Bukhari
This week I finished reading Napoleon's Cavalry, by Emir Bukhari, illustrated by Angus McBride.  Supplied by my local library system, this book is a single volume compilation of five Osprey Men-At-Arms titles, and was published in 1979.  It covers Napoleon's Cuirassiers and Carabiners, Dragoons/Lancers, Hussars, Line Chasseurs, as well as Guard cavalry units.  I got it as a painting aid for the Perry plastic dragoons on foot that I got a while back.

Considering that Osprey still sells the constituent volumes for £10, this book seems to be an excellent value for anyone who is building more than one sort of regiment, or who just likes to look at colorful illustrations, particularly as it can be had used on Amazon for as little as $15. (or possibly free from your library)

This book does have the usual Osprey "style", where color plates are separated from relevant text, all other images are in black and white, and far too much attention paid to officers and other unusual members of a unit, but this is somehow more excusable in a book published in 1979 than it is in their modern reprints.

As you can see from the scan below, the original artwork is quite excellent, as you might expect from an Angus McBride book. With so many plates, the book is worthwhile to review, even if you do not value the text.
Who else would illustrate a Dragoon officer cleaning his muddy boot?
Speaking of the text, Mr. Bukhari's prose is quite refreshing, particularly after reading the mess that was my last Osprey title...  The text for the more important books covers uniforms, deployments, equipment, saddles, and all sorts of side information that makes it very entertaining.

So in conclusion, I highly recommend this book, and will be buying it for myself sometime in the future.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Evil-bay


I have been on what might be termed "an eBay Binge" lately, which seems more substantial than usual because I have been actually winning auctions.  In any case, the total money spent has gotten to the level where I could have put the money to more productive use, such as buying that Chaos Battalion I was bleating on about, or the bulk of the forces I had planned for Napoleonic skirmish, or a couple of 15mm sci-fi forces, or any other new project really, rather than just odds and ends for existing projects.

I am not sure what it is about eBay that bypasses my planning instinct, but it does... must be the allure of the deal, or in some cases old lead. (I did at least get some nice old figures though)

In painting news, I have nearly completed my Neo-Soviets, and they only need a few more touch ups, sealing, and basing to be "complete".