Happy 'Bear'thday to Bleaseworld

Well today is Bleaseworld's 1st birthday. 40 followers, 12o posts and 21,763 visitors (since 29th March) certainly gives me a warm, glowy feeling. Thanks to everyone who visits, follows and says nice things, it's much appreciated and the raison 'd'etre for the blog (to encourage me to paint more) appears to have been quite success, though perhaps I need to focus on getting specific projects completed...

Today's 'bear'thday post (sorry, couldn't resist...) is this lovely West Wind dwarf hero on grizzly bear (Varan the Bear). This is a really nice, impressive model (the base is 50mm by 50mm) that didn't take that long to paint, especially given it has been staring at me in its black undercoat glory for the last six months or so. I'm sure it will look good as part of Saul's dwarf army, he was suitably impressed with it when he saw it completed last night.

1 Squadron AFC 'Brisfits'

Back to World War One and I've finished the two Skytrex Bristol F2 fighters I've had sitting around for a while. I was baulking at doing these as I'd decided to try the white/PC10 camo scheme used in Palestine by the likes of No. 111 Squadron and No. 1 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps in 1917/18. Eventually I bit the bullet over the weekend and cracked on after making sure the white undercoat was really 'white' and even.

I went for two slightly different versions of the scheme, one having PC10 one top of the fuselage with a white tailfin, the other a completely white fuselage with PC10 tailfin.

As usual it was once the decals went on (more of the excellent Dom's Decals - memo to self, order some more), that everything 'came together'. I chickened out of trying to paint serial numbers on the fins, whilst they are quite bold I no longer have the eye for such small neat detail...

This two colour scheme is really quite pleasing and unusually eye-catching - who knows, I might even paint up an Ottoman D.II or two as opponents, though Germans will do just as well...

Mantic Eleven Spearman

Ikea has ridden to the rescue and helped me get my painting mojo back! I've doubled my display cabinet space with the purchase and fitting of three more of their Bertby display cabinets which now cover the backwall of the games room (see below). The additional space allowed me to clear the work area and WIP shelves of finished models and since then I've been bent over the painting work top beavering away...

First to benefit from the renewed enthusiasm was these Mantic Elven Spearmen. Whilst I've still got the front command rank to finish I thought you might like to see these given my fun painting them gold at the beginning of the year.

I must confess I was becoming really dispirited with these as they did not "look right" at any stage until right at the death when I put the flock on and they suddenly looked okay. The shield decals attempted to thwart me by going foggy despite using decal fix (bloody GW Eldar decals) but I've disguised this with a bit of paint on the worst parts.

Overall I'm quite pleased with them as my first dipped 28mm figures and now feel it's worth cracking on to finish off the small army I bought a while back (though I might try a different approach to base coating instead of using gold).

Next the Bristol Fighters which are nearly done...

Osmanlı Havaalini Kuvvetleri completed...

Here are some photos of the Ottoman Airship Force completed for Aeronef Over The Aegean (the photoshoot was done today and came out well). I am very pleased with the final look and may be to buy an Abdul Aziz class aerostat battleship at some stage to complete the fleet...

Turgut Reis class cruiser

Muin-I-Zaffer class aerostat cruiser

Assari Shaevket class aerostat destroyer

Yarhisar class fast torpedo aerostat

Keyk class Patrol aerostat

War balloon

Kindjal class aeroplane

Sprue Town - complete...

After watching Doctor Zhivago (during which, in an ad break, I'd undercoated Sprue Town), I decided to see whether I could slap some paint on it so it looked vaguely Aegean (after a quick Google of Turkish Aegean village...). With the judicious use of a fan heater to speed drying along it's now finished. I have resisted the temptation to paint doors, city gates etc as this is only supposed to be a bit of representational terrain not a scale model.

It did occur to me that this use of sprue could work for seaside buildings for Man O'War etc, as well as numerous native dwellings on Earth, Mars and maybe even underwater. SWMBO is impressed as it didn't actually cost anything other than a bit of paint and glue...

Sprue Town - work in progress

With the Ottomans finished I was about to take the photos and realised I didn't have an appropriate target for the Syren to bomb! Inspired by the efforts of Eli on I See Lead People I decided to knock something up out of balsa, but had a Eureka! moment when I realised that I had tons of sprue that could be used (this is pretty much Space Marine sprue and some Mantic Elves). The only commercial item is the clump of trees from Irregular that I already had sat around and didn't have the time to make some from putty.

If I had more time I would have done things slightly different, such as a more natural looking mound in the centre instead of a slottabase, but given the minimal effort required I'm pleased with it and hope to slap some paint on it this afternoon.

Ottomans - work in progress...

Just thought I'd grab the last bit of natural light and take a quick photo of the Ottoman Fleet as they stand at present. Had a good day yesterday painting wise and broke the back of them, with some detailing today. Need to glue the magnets on but that'll have to wait 'till this evening. Also need to come up with a good way of basing the aeroplanes...

Update: I've reloaded the photo. Now if you click on it, it enlarges. No idea why it didn't do that earlier...

Osmanlı Havaalini Kuvvetleri

Having mislaid my Ottoman aeronef fleet, scratchbuilt by David Crook, I had to place an emergency order into Brigade to have some appropriate models for Aeronef Over the Aegean.

Despite the Brigade workshop being buried under several feet of snow, Tony came up trumps and the Turkish element of the AOTA pack Brigade are releasing arrived this morning.

After a flurry of lunchtime activity the models have all been tidied up, stuck together as required and have had a good undercoat. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to crack on with painting the models. I'm not 100% keen on the Brigade Turkish paint scheme so will be coming up with my own for the Osmanlı Havaalini Kuvvetleri (Ottoman Airship Force).

In my research for historic aerial and naval paint schemes of the Ottoman Empire I did come across this excellent website, Turkey in the First World War, well worth a look at, especially the pre-1914 pages.

The Most Influential Set of Rules of the Millenium...

Over the years I've been a bit of a rules magpie, buying sets that I never play, looking for ideas and the holy grail of sets. This week two new sets arrived at snow covered Blease Towers; Warlord's Black Powder and Black Hat's Martian Empires.

What both have in common is the obvious influence of Warmaster, probably one of the best sets of wargames rules ever written and sadly allowed to sit in a dusty corner by Games Workshop who continue to champion mechanisms in their core games that went out with the Ark.

However, Warmaster's influence is such that it transcends this mistreatment and also periods, Blitzkrieg Commander et al all have it at heart, Black Powder unsurprisingly does (as it was written by Rick Priestly) but so does Martian Empires.

Black Powder is the latest in the search for the holy grail of

a playable set of Napoleonic wargames rules and something I can use with the ACW stuff I bought from Perry's. I haven't had a chance to read them yet (I keep getting distracted by the pretty pictures), but so far so good and the mechanisms I am familiar with from Warmaster are here so they should not be too hard to pick up...

Martian Empires was an impulse buy as I have no real wish to do 15/18mm VSF but I read an interesting report on the Warlords of Mars blog that that resulted in me sending off an order to Black Hat who currently have them at a reduced price. The rules show definite Warmaster influences in the issuing of orders etc but this is what attracted me to them. Production is good, full colour but copied rather than printed by the look of it. The photos are nicely inspiring, I don't like the idea of VSF hover tanks (and have discounted the models to date) but a bit of conversion could add some wheels or tracks underneath... I did start a small 10mm VSF force for Land Ironclads on Mars and as the base sizes are the same (Warmaster size!!) I might use the figures for both. My only bug bear is the inclusion of the Prussian army in 1880 in the game, surely they should be called Germans by then!

Painting is currently in that mid way "I don't like it" phase on the Mantic Elves, hopefully the dip will work some miracles because at the moment they look bloody awful...

Priceless Tomes

As is often the way when looking for one thing you come across another long lost and forgotten. In my case the happy rediscovery was my copy of Charles Grant's and Stuart Asquith's Scenarios For All Ages. A follow up to Grant's equally excellent Scenarios For Wargames, the book contains 52 different scenarios most of which can be adapted to any period.

Like most 'golden age' wargames books the emphasis is on creating objective driven scenario based games rather than meaningless balanced points contests, indeed many of the scenarios included are unbalanced but that doesn't mean they are one sided.

I'd forgotten what a gold mine of ideas this book was and if you haven't got a copy of either then click on the link(s) above and get a copy off Amazon - 24p for a challenging game and one a week for a whole year is a bargain that any wargamer can't ignore...