First Post

Welcome to the first posting of my new blog; a few words by way of introduction:

Some may already know through posts I've made elsewhere on the 'net, that I concentrate on the smaller end of the 'scale', specifically all things 2mm to 10mm. I'm certainly no pro-painter, if anything, I favour what might be called a 'quick and dirty' paintjob, and like a lot of people, find that I end up concentrating far more time on the research, collecting and sorting out than I ever get to spend on gaming. 

I also like to do projects that are somewhat unconventional (at least to my mind), and so try to cover the less popular eras, or more obscure conflicts.

(Feel free to click on a picture for a larger view...)

This blog will form a backdrop for the various projects that I'm currently working on, and will be of interest to anyone who might be contemplating putting together wargaming armies that will neither break the budget, nor take over the house with their storage!

I'm hoping this format will enable me to catalogue my interests, explain my approach to each project, and help me to organise and prioritise that nemesis of all wargamer/collectors; an ever-growing mountain of lead....

Appearing amongst a cast of thousands should be some of the following:

1/3000th Naval: a project to create pre-dreadnought navies at the time of the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, tentatively titled "55 days at Sea", using Navwar miniatures.

1/450th, using Peter Pig's Pieces of Eight range of ships: Pirates! 

(I think that always requires an exclamation mark....Yar!...Avast there!...see, told you) Putting together a small fleet of privateers for fun.

In 6mm, 1/300th, the culmination of many years of collecting what was my main interest and and scale of choice: Microarmour, mainly from Navwar/Heroics and Ros, and now increasingly from the excellent Ian Armstrong Miniatures: the Desert and Mediterranean Theatre, from the Italian Invasion of Egypt in 1940 up to and including Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily in 1943. (Haven't found the energy to cross the straits at Messina yet...)

Also in 6mm, using Irregular Miniatures, the Northwest Frontier, specifically the Tirah Campaign of 1897.

Lastly in 6mm, again with Irregular Miniatures, an experiment in creating 'Not' Dr Who armies, starting with Daleks, and moving on to U.N.I.T troops and Sontarans, depending on how many lookalike minis I can find.

In 10mm, I have a large and probably over-ambitious idea to create armies for what I call the 'Era of Conquest', namely from the battle of Civitate in 1053 to the last knockings of the First Crusade in 1126 or so. 

This involves figures by Irregular, Pendraken, Magister Militum and Kallistra, and has been quite a challenge not only in the sense that I need Saxons, Danes, Normans, Early Crusaders, Komnenan Byzantines, Fatimids, Saljuqs, Syrians, etc, etc, but in sourcing figures that scale well together, given the differences amongst the manufacturers, in order to cover the various troop types.

Finally, also in 10mm, we have the 'Conquest of Morrocco', a chance to use Pendraken's Foreign Legion figures, with various types kidnapped from the Franco-Prussian and Afghan ranges as Sharifans, Chasseurs d'Afrique, and Tirailleurs Algeriens etc.

This is not to mention of course, a whole raft of ideas for the 'one true scale', namely 2mm, including 'Weird' World War 1, a riff on Brigade Models/Wessex Games' Land Ironclads, as well as Sci-Fi armies, with some 'Ogre' style input from some 6mm miniatures.

 I'm sure all of these and more will get some screen time, so feel free to drop by and have a look, or even leave a comment, if anything catches your eye.

Cheers, SteelonSand.