Palm Trees

I bought a set of Palm Trees from Timecast while at Salute earlier in the year. I've used these before and know what good quality they are so I decided to get some more, but I have only just got round to doing something with them. I have mounted pairs of trees on small metal washers using Super Glue Gel and then adding base sand for extra weight to improve stability. The Trees are metal and remarkably resilient but needed a repaint after I had handled them a few times.

I'll use these as 'set dressing' for my Libyan town and desert layouts. At just £6.00 for eight trees they aren't prohibitively expensive so I'll probably buy a couple more packs and base them up the same way again. 

Apothecary

I'm still waiting for my last few models for my Desert Raiders project. Apparently GHQ have had some IT issues and presumably this has had a knock on effect with regards restocking their UK suppliers. Its frustrating for me but I bet there have been some late nights and worried sales managers in Minnesota while they get their system back online. Anyway, in the meantime I've been buying yet more resin buildings from my favourite 6mm stockist, Leven Miniatures. The first to make it off the painting table is the Middle Eastern Apothecary building. 

This will be added to my other town buildings, of which I have quite a collection now. As always I have kept my painting simple with a base coat of Desert Sand, highlighted with Ivory and washed with Quickshade soft tone. The wash gives these buildings a grubby look that I think looks much more authentic. 

Repainting my Mat-o-War

I'm still waiting for the last few figures I need for my Desert Raiders game so in the meantime with today being fathers day (ergo "Dad can do what he likes, even if its painting day") I have been 'tinkering' with a few peripheral jobs that needed my attention. I've painted some more Z-Gauge track (again ordered from Japan) which means I now have about 7ft, ample for my games. But the other odd job I have undertaken today is repainting my Mat-o-War. The mat is actually designed to be painted and is thick enough that you can paint each side differently. I've left the reverse side plain for now but the 'gaming' side has been given a makeover. 

Back when I bought this mat I used an assortment of spray paints to 'desertify' the surface (yes, it is a word... albeit one I just mashed together) but it always seemed a bit too dark. Last year I also bought a load of hills from TSS but these are very light coloured and stand out quite starkly against the darker tones of the mat-o-war. I bought the hills in two batches and the colour of the flock covering them differed quite a lot so what I had was a mat and hills in various shades of sand. In an effort to bring them all together I have revisited and repainted the mat and hills using some new spray paints I bought specifically for the purpose.

"Don't worry darling, it'll grow out!"

I started with a dusting of Desert Yellow to give a consistent 'base' colour to the mat and hills. Over this I used several cans of Ivory/Ibis White from the Halfords vehicle paint range. These sprays are excellent value and I can't recommend them enough for this sort of job. The result is quite soft edged and suitably light in tone which now more closely matches my figure bases. The hills now blend much better with the mat although it has to be said the above picture doesn't do the finished look justice. You'll just have to trust me when I say they look much better.

The state of the lawn however is another matter.

The Rejects get a Facebook Page

Many friends and fellow gamers know myself and Ray from Posties Rejects through our Blogs, but we aren't the only members of this group. So after a long delay the Rejects have finally embraced Social Media by setting up a Facebook Page. This will give us a convenient place to post pictures of our games, make announcements of events and chat with our many friends on facebook. It will also give the non Blog owning members of the Rejects a chance to engage with the wargaming community and our many friends in online. 

Facebook isn't for everyone (I'm a long time user and even I have my reservations) but if you have an account take a quick peek at our page and maybe grace us with a 'Like'. We'd love to hear from you.

Broadside 2015

Sunday started for Posties Rejects very very early. I was up around 5:30 and by seven we had all gathered at Reject HQ and started to load up the cars for our trip to the Broadside Wargames show in Sittingbourne. We arrived and started setting up quickly and were largely finished by 9am so we had time for a quick look around before getting our Border Reivers game started a little early. By the time the show had official started we were already into the second turn of our game and had spoken to several visitors. By the end of the day we had talked to hundreds of visitors and seen plenty of old friends. 

As usual I shot a load of photo's although this time most were, understandably, of our own demo game. I also treated myself to a few purchases including yet another game mat, this time a 3x3 printed desert mat from Tiny Wargames. Despite these purchases I ended the day with more money than I started having sold some more of my 15mm figures via Lesleys Bits Box. 

Posties Rejects - Border Reivers Game

Postie setting up

Pre Game chat

Our game was a fictitious game set in the year 1590, somewhere in the Scottish Middle March. Helen the young teenage daughter of Steven (Mad Dog) Stapleton has sneaked away from the family home in England and crossed the border into Scotland, to be with her lover Robert (The Fearless), son of Walter (Wally) Armstrong. Since both families hate each other, Robert has pleaded with his Mother and Father to let Helen stay in the family home, this they reluctantly agreed to as they know it’s only a matter of time before the Stapleton’s arrive to claim their daughter back! 

The Armstrong's defend their Bastille House

Meanwhile the Stephen (Mad Dog) Stapleton has come to get his Daughter back!   

The game gets underway

Mark and Surjit play the English and move quickly to reach the farmstead

The actions develops quickly and Ray and I - playing the Scottish Armstrong's - are caught off guard and wrong footed.

Armstrong defenders start to be wiped out before they can retreat to the safety of the house.

Gunshots are exchanged as the action heats up.

Posties Rejects at Broadside

Some of Posties excellent casualty figure begin to litter the table.

Fighting swirls around the Bastille House

English attackers quickly reach the walls of the house and very quickly the defenders are trapped. With all reinforcements also neutralised we decided to call this a British win and restart another game.

For the second game we only had a couple of hours remaining so we put more Scottish units on the table at the start and closed the gap between both side so move the action along quicker.

Ray and I now played the English...but our luck didn't change much. My troops swept over the hill to attack but were wiped out by some uncannily good dice rolling from Mark. 

Meanwhile Surjit managed to shoot Lord Stapleton out of his saddle with some dubious marksmanship (none of us - including the umpire I hasten to add - actually heard him nominate our leader as the target or saw the dice roll... draw your own conclusions!!)

Marks Scottish cavalry sweeping towards mine.

Once again we called this second game a win for Surjit and Mark. 

Other Games at Broadside

Of course there were plenty of other games at Broadside and we all took a break half way through the day for a quick look around the other tables. Here's a quick selection of my favourite games.

Shepway Wargamers Heart of Darkness game was truly spectacular and a very worthy winner of Best in Show

Crush the Kaiser

Southend Wargames club

Southend Wargames Club

Skirmish Wargames - Paddle Wheels, Ponchos & Palm Trees

East Street Games - Bullets and Brains

Rainham Wargames Club

Imperial Skies

Saving Private Ryan

Saving Private Ryan

Batmobile!

Gotham Screamland

Society of Ancients

A mega game of X-Wing

Medway Wargames

The standard of games varied a lot this year, with some simple (but entertaining) games through to the deserved winner of Best in Show, Shepway Wargamers Heart of Darkness table. Their game looked spectacular and being situated next to ours were were watching the action on their table almost as were were on our own. I enjoyed the demo games on display and its always great to meet up with friends from other groups. 

Meet the Rejects at Broadside Tomorrow!

Just a quick reminder that I will be joining the rest of Posties Rejects at the Broadside Wargames Show tomorrow. We will be putting on a demo of Posties very own Border Reivers game. You'll be able to see us (and maybe even roll some dice) on table G15. Broadside will be held once again at the Swallows Leisure Centre at Sittingbourne in Kent (Postcode for SatNav ME10 4NT).

We have a very long day ahead of us (we gather at Reject HQ at 7am!!) but we are all looking forward to a great day out and chance to talk to as many fellow wargamers and other guests as possible. We are a friendly bunch so don't feel intimidated, come over and say hello. 

6mm (Z-Gauge) Rail Track

A couple of weeks ago I ordered some Z-Gauge railway track from a company in Japan. No I haven't abandoned the pleasures of wargaming for a model train set (not that there is anything wrong with that hobby, I hasten to add) but I do need some rail track terrain suitable for my 6mm North Africa project. I've been looking for a long time and have considered various resin and metal products by companies such as Leven Miniatures, Timecast and Irregular but none of these were really what I wanted. As the pictures on the Timecast site show the Z-Gauge railway track is pretty close to 6mm so in the end I decided to give this a try. 

A protracted Internet shopping search narrowed my choices down to a couple of manufacturers and in the end I settled on track made by Rokuhan. The prices seem to vary a lot but I found a company in Japan that sold what I was looking for at a very reasonable price. I only bought one pack consisting of four pieces which will make just short of 3ft of track. This was a 'test purchase' after all and a single pack will be ample for my current project. Of course I had to repaint the track to suit my North African setting but I'm really happy with the finished look and will definitely buy some more in the future.

For the record I cleaned the track in soapy water before painting just as I would for any other resin or plastic model. Then I spray painted the whole track using a can of Bolt Action English Uniform Brown and dry brushed with Vallejo Tan Yellow (912) and Ivory (918) to the same formula I employ on my North Africa bases. Then came the fiddly bit. I painted all the wooden track ties using Chocolate Brown (872) and the track itself in Gunmetal (863). The last touch was to 'dirty' the track a little with some of the ModelMates Rust Effect weathering liquid I bought at salute.

Four sections of track make just short of 3ft

A certain rather famous railway station...

As I said earlier I will be buying some more track in the future, but for now I have enough for my current project. 

Desert Rock Formations

When I was at Salute earlier in the year I came across these resin rock formations and picked up a set. These are suitable for pretty much any scale and I decided these would look good as wind eroded rock features on my 6mm desert games. Painting these couldn't have been simpler, a quick base coat and then drybrushed in increasingly light shades of sand. The finishing touch was some short Silfor Late Fall grass tufts. I use these on all my bases because at 6mm scale they look just like the tough thorny scrub bushes that are often seen in the Libyan desert.

An LRDG Patrol winds its way through a rocky pass.

I haven't been getting much painting done this week, partly due to a heavy week at work (utterly knackered when I get home) but also because I'm still waiting for the delivery of some models I ordered. Hopefully these will turn up soon and I can get on with the last few bases for my Desert Raiders project.

UPDATE: These are made by Wargames Terrain Workshop and retail about £3-4 per pack (this lot is three packs worth).