Armoured Support For Imperial Japanese Army

I really should have finished a couple of units for the Japanese this week, by Saturday at least one more will be done as only the bases need finishing off. The Imperial Guard unit is very close to being finished too.Instead I did a bit on my British Home Service 17th lancers and been fiddling about with their pennants. Grrrrr.Heres a picture of a Ironclad armoured car, just need to add a decal on the turret then it will be done. As the weekend is fairly clear of activities I hope to post more pics of completed units then!!

Distractions

Work and family commitments have seen a pretty quiet time on the miniatures front for me. I am still plugging away at the Japanese infantry , I have managed to finish a scout steam armoured car for them, I will post some pics at the weekend.
Some exciting news , Great War Miniatures are releasing a Crimean War range. I looked at this period about 6 months ago but decided the ranges available were a bit limited, even Foundrys old range did not appeal. I bought a few boxes of soft plastics because there seem to be a good range available, far more economical too!
But I got bored cleaning the figures up so it got shelved. With Musketeer about to release Indian Mutiny figures too , I shall have to decide if I want to start buying into either of those conflicts. Both of them could have a VSF use though, so maybe a few skirmish units of each!

Managed to finish the Evzones and the Japanese Smoke stalkers today. Here a few pics.

Japanese and Greeks

Been hammering away at the Japanese , they are nice models but seem to take forever. I went to SELWG on sunday, had a nice day with my eldest son who played a geat game put on by Diamond Geezers, it was a WW2 raid game. I picked up a few extra Japanese from Redoubt to enable me to make up a third infantry unit , they are slightly bulkier than the Parroom ones but I think they will be ok together. Redoubt informed they are releasing a Russo-Japanese war range 1904-1905, they already have the Japanese so some Russians will be released hopefully by the end of the year.

My main purchase of the day was some Eureka from Fighting15s , amongst others I got a few bags of there Greek Evzones. These are tiny compared to the ones from Tiger, and even though I dont normally worry about scale creep , I am not sure these will look right on the same table. However, they may end up on Mars because they should not be too out of scale with the Parroom Brits etc. Here is a picture of the Japanese general , still need to finish off the base.

Bad boys Mors, Bad!!

I intended to crack on with the Japanese this weekend , unfortunately I got thinking about the Greeks during the week and after a post on TMP, on Friday I ordered from Tiger Miniatures 2 packs of each of the Evzones 1897 uniform, Cretan Gendarmes and Greek Irregulars.Fantastic service , they were delivered on Saturday morning, also a nice touch I thought was a 4 images printed out on the reciept showing 2 different uniform options for the evzones.Consequently I broke the rules I have made for myself, wasnt the first time and wont be the last, and started a new force before getting a reasonable amount finished of a force I am working on.Heres a wip shot,

Weekend Painting

Did about 5 hours today on my Japanese Infantry , still long way to go, my thought that they would be finished by the middle next week was a bit optimistic! I am painting a unit of line infantry , a unit of guard infantry and a unit of smoke stalkers, also got three characters and steam suit on the go,about 40 miniatures all by Parroom Station. Pics soon

Blogging issues

I need to spend some time working out how to do this malarky, the photos were meant to be under the written post. Booger

Home Service Life Guards by HLBS oop

Home Service Scots Greys by HLBS , now out of production. I bought quite a few cavalry at the begining of this year and will do a squadron as and when, I currently have 10 17th Lancers close to completion too.

Triumphapede heavy mounted artillery The Thunderer by Eureka Miniatures

Triumphapede light tricycle artillery The Rattler by Eureka Miniatures

A good evening painting!

Managed to get about 4 hours painting my Japanese tonight , aiming to have the infantry finished sometime middle of next week. I am doing three units each of 10 figures each plus a officer and a standard bearer , also there are three character miniatures. They have a steam armoured car and a automaton undercoated , and a gatling team and bugler still in there wrapper!
As a loose rule Im aiming my forces to be approx 30 infantry , 5 cavalry types, a steam contraption and probably a machine gun team and some automatons.

Actully on reflection none of the forces are likely to be that! But its a guide as a minimum requirement for a force. here are some photos of British troops that have been painted for a little while but I based over the weekend.

Japanese

I restarted my Japanese tonight, they have been cleaned, undercoated and some have been base coated for about a year , unfortunately I must have been distracted onto another project .... something I am guilty of often. I also need to finish off Mad Jack Hargreaves and the lightening gun and crew of my masked minions. Hargreaves is a inventor of some disrepute , although a member of L.A.S.T ( a loose association of scientists and adventurers with there own , sometimes evil , agenda) even they regard him as a maverick. He built the two steam automatons shown with the masked minions below, and has created his own walking steam suit. Pictures to come soon

Available to the highest bidder!!

Managed to get a few things finished over the weekend, seeing as I played cricket today and was out a lot of yesterday Im quite pleased.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to my little corner of the web. This blog will be about my interest in miniature gaming set during the Victorian era. I use the term gaming loosely, I tend to be more a collector and painter ( of limited ability) . Why have I started a blog? Well, I'm not too sure really but it will be a way of expressing myself without talking to myself......or the other voices I hear in my head sometimes :) .

I have interests in other periods and genres but more of that another time, this blog will deal in colonial and predominantly VSF gaming. To the uninitiated VSF stands for Victorian Science Fiction , I would prefer Victorian Adventure as a term as this would also cover games without a SF element as some of mine will be, but VSF is the standard term used.

My main interest is in 25/28mm scale which is good for small scale skirmishes , however I do have some 18mm Black hat miniatures which I painted when they first came out and am tempted to go back to them at some point , but I am determined to get my 28mm plans well and truly underway first.