A sniping exercise.

The parcel arrived a day early...

I noticed a batch of HO houses on ebay - 31 of the things plus a broken one. At the time it was £19 with £7 postage and going up in £1 increments... so I thought it was worth watching. 8 seconds before the auction ending I put in a maximum bid for about half of what I thought it was worth - and got it.

It was a large box.

31 buildings of variable quality in total.

I think this church is the star.

A couple of other buildings are in the same style.

A few buildings can be put together as terraces.

Others are more chalet style.

Or even have garden fences.

Oh yes... the 31 excludes a broken but repairble one!

So that's the haul. If you reckon than ebay buildings like this usually have an average price tag of £5 or more each it means the whole lot would normally be about £150 - excluding postage. For this lot, postage was £7, the buildings themselves cost...£26!!!

Apache

These guys seem to have been very active in the last week or so... I assume they are flying down from Mildenhall to the Wash ranges for practice? Again, assuming they are American rather than British, didn't know any bases near by operated them, either British or American.

Ebay opportunism

Hopefully Part 1 - with Part 2 in the post...

Although not heavily involved with the 20mm WW2/Pulp stuff at the moment, I do still keep an eye out for things on Ebay. Saw these, thought 'I'll try an offer', didn't expect it to be accepted - it was, they've arrived. Needa little bit of work, but frankly for all I know in alternate Lovecraftian universes they might have had satellite dishes in the 20s/30s...

The hopefully Part 2 bit should arrive on Saturday... and makes this one look... well, I'll wait until Saturday...

Corps XIII, the Caspians.

Or Corps XV,  the Pactyans, XVI Utians and Mycians and XVII Paricanians. So the possibilty of 4 separate units...

Early Persian types, patterned tunics.

Should probably have patterned cloak and trousers but that seemed a bit overkill so left them plain. Other units I'll start seeing how it looks...

One thing I think I will do is do some of these on 3Bw bases rather than Ps.

One strange aside... for the last few the followers gadget doesn't seem to have been working and I couldn't find out why. Suddenly it's back...

And back to late Achaemenids...

The second of my projected three units of light javelin cavalry.

Yellow headdress suggesting the 'National Army' colours

The rest is less based on historical colours. However, those historical colours seem to be more elite rather than line units - line cavalry seem to be more single colours...

But overall these do the job.

Latest moulds have arrived...

Looks like everything is there - should start trying them out in.... half an hour?

This is how the masters look when returned. Some of those heads and javelins are already down for reuse...

The moulds themselves had a strange journey. Should have arrived last night at about 9pm. Tracking was saying at that time that they were on time... and in Tamsworth. Which is further away from us than Nottingham is. Think somebody got things a bit wrong!

What is it about breweries?

It just seems that I must have a brewery model for both my pulp scales... so just bought an HO one for the 20mm figures....

German, of course... but then, that seems to be all you can get. Suppose Faller, Vollmer and Kibri are probably all German companies?

Quite a big model with good detail.

Including inside detail - though I might normally finish up using this to add extra outside detail.

Corps VII The Sakae

Brigaded with the Bactrians, this lot are basically the Garrison GA8 Gallic archer with a Rose Gorytus.

A bit more ornate than some of the more recent figures.

Think I should probably decorate the bowcases a bit more. No problem there - bases haven't arrived yet so can still do it.

Some Prussian cuirassiers

Now right back on track for a couple of days...

Russian cuirassiers painted up as Prussians.

Helmet crest not quite the same, but then the horses aren't the right ones anyway.

Still, they do the job.

Comparison with the original Russian test figure. The uniforms are similar enough so that I'll probably still use Russians as Prussians and Prussians as Russians when I need to.

More test figures

A few more quick examples to see how they look painted - Hollywood Philistine, Late Achaemenid archer and 'Arab/Turkish' archer.

The shield motif on the Philistine shield is basically a Biblical reference - Canaanites worshipping golden calf/bull. The Persian figure is the same as the Caspian, etc, currently being made into a mould, the other two will hopefully go on the next batch of moulds. I might give the Philistine a thicker spear for ease of casting.

Back on track? - LATE Achaemenid cavalry

Having been distracted from Napoleonics to late Achaemenids to early Achaemenids I'm now (temporarily?) partially back on track with a unit of late light cavalry...

I've based the colour scheme on 'The Persian Army 560-330BC' by Sekunda and Chew.

The Sekunda book has the Persian 'regulars' wearing a yellow hood; I went for red. 'Based on'. I'll probably do a mix of colour schemes (including yellow hoods) on these to suggest regular/line units and levies.

Overall, colours work well. It isn't often I use yellow as it tends to have very poor covering power.

20mm Turco-Arabic cavalry

Very much spur-of-the-moment conversions!

It started with me thinking about Arabs for the early Achaemenids, then thinking about the headgear of some of the Sea People tribes. At some point I remembered that the Napoleonics had a Mameluk figure and I thought...

Think they look pretty good. Starting with the horse archer, tunic and trousers rather than robes - hence more of a Turkish look rather than Arab.

The lancer is simply the Sarmatian cataphract with bowcase removed and shield added. Being robed, this figure or variations of it  should be able to provide most of the light lance armed Arab cavalry - both mailed and simply robed. So, even if not 100% accurate, I'm quite pleased wiyh how these turned out - and infantry should be easy as well!

OK, those worked, some don't. Remember I mentioned having a look at those East Ethiopians? First attempt looks wrong in just about every way - colour scheme doesn't work, headdress doesn't work... This one could take a while!

A few more Thracians

Unit upgraded to 6 elements...

So now the 'Corps' looks like this.

The 'new' figures are the ones at the front.

Corps XXIV - Bithynian Thracians.

Based on G15, Peltast with leather armour and shield with javelin and shield - same as the Milyae figures though final product looks a lot different.

Foxskin cap and black tunic. I did make a basic mistake with this unit - thinking 12 figure/24 figure rather than elements - I should have made 18 of them.

Decorated cloaks belted in. I did a mix of plain colour/striped/checkered cloaks to give variety. The cowhide pattern on the shields looks good - haven't got it right for cloaks (see attempts at goatskin cloaks on Lycians to date!)

Figure, simply filed down any armour then built up the cloak and cap from green stuff - I feel I should have textured the foxskin cap, at the moment it does look a bit 'blobby'.

The original G15 - from a time when my painting skills were better.

Corps XIV Sarangian Bowman.

Mounted archer rebased as an infantry archer.

For some reason I did an extra element.

I don't usually decorate the trousers these days but made the effort this time!

On the other hand I left the officer's shield and bowcases plain.

I've also based the Scythians and Milyae. Bases shorteage over for now.

Originally I was going to put these on thelatest mould - however, it was easy enough to do this unit and I already have three other Persian archer figures anyway. The spaces have been given back to the Milyae.

Officially in remission!

Just had my latest telephone appointment. Blood and urine tests taken by community nurse yesterday, everything normal for second set running, meds halved again and next appointment in three months.

So, after about 15 months, still in high risk area due to meds but a lot better situation to be in.