Here,There and Everywhere

A bit of a mixed bag in this update of the Blog today. No games of course since Monday's Wars of the French Revolution game, but I have managed some painting! In no significant order, we have: a Command Stand for the English Civil War; a Japanese Type 1 antitank gun and crew; and lastly, well you'll just have to wait, I don't want to excite any Welsh readers!
If you recall I went to Barrage in Stafford the other Sunday and amongst my loot was the Warlord Games mounted ECW officer. I got him, you might remember, because he came with different heads, so I could add 'my own head in 28mm' to create a figure for Obadiah Bykleigh and here he is ~

Obadiah Bykleigh, Gentleman, circa 1644! The two other figures on the base are a Perry Miniatures pikeman casualty and the Warlord Games free figure that came with the Black Powder variant of their rules for the ECW period. Now I must be truthful here, as a 'stout fellow' myself, the head is a little large for the slimmer figure of the officer, but if we all squint at it on the table we will find that it will pass muster!
Continuing on the Warlord Games theme I also bought at Barrage a Japanese antitank gun and crew. Now, their kits are notoriously fiddly, especially for those of us like me who are indifferent modelers! They also fail to come with any instruction to help convert the kit of parts into the finished article. With my previous experience of these faults I quickly checked their site for the PDF download. Guess what? Of course there wasn't one! So I wrote in and helpfully learnt that its not even on the 'to do' list yet! But, they did email me some helpful photos which were enough to get it done. However, it did take three days to do, waiting overnight for each stage to set hard enough for handling when adding the next part! It comes with three crew figures, two gunners and an officer or NCO. They seem very small compared to the infantry I have, but then they are crouching low. Judge for yourself  from the picture ~

Finally, for my by now over excited Welsh reader perhaps, the Curteys' Miniatures shepherd and flock of sheep which Jon kindly gave me ~

The shepherd seems a Dark Ages sort to me, so they can figure easily in our Late Roman games as an objective marker or obstacle blocking a pathway! You would have to be very keen to spend time painting each one lovingly, so unsurprisingly I opted for a quick and easy approach. I sprayed them white first, then gave them a heavy wash of GW's Agrax Earth (or whatever its called today!) I left that to dry overnight and then applied several increasingly sparse dry brushes of Valejo Ivory. The horns I roughly painted with Foundry Rawhide shade and then dry brushed with the same firm's Rawhide Middle pot. I painted the base with GW's old Graveyard Earth and applied patches of static grass and there we are ~

I think the best that can be said about them is that they look alright from the usual gaming distance! My other painting has been some extra figures for my VBCW games set around Wolverhampton and South Staffordshire, some Footsore Miniatures British Militia for my growing Wolverhampton Workers' Militia unit. Sadly they were the expected poor castings again! Someone really does need to look at quality control where ever they are being cast! They await finishing, but today I've been hacking back the jungle, or gardening as its often misnamed! They will have to wait, I may just discover a lost city if I press on...