Better than Christmas!

Good things happen in threes I'm told. Well, it's certainly true here in GHQ of late. On Wednesday last week Dan Faulconbridge from Wargames Illustrated was here in GHQ doing a photoshoot (see previous Blog entry if you missed it) and bought me a few bits and pieces ~ Warlord Gurkhas and a Gurkha HMG set, a Matilda Mk1 and a Vickers MkVIc. On Thursday Sue and I went down to visit Matt and his family in Godalming for a few days. When we were leaving on Sunday I was presented with a gift that left me speechless, not easy if you know me either. I'll come back to that in due course. Arriving home on Sunday evening I found a card from the Post Office about a failed parcel delivery! Typical, always happens when I'm out! I've just taken delivery of said parcel; its from Warbases. Back to that in a moment too. But, not all good news, as today's game with Phil has been cancelled due to personal circumstances. Nothing serious, just real life intruding again.
Back to the Warbases parcel now: its a gift for helping realise their new Roman buildings range. I suggested the villa project a while back now and provided resources in the development phase, so it was really lovely to see on opening the package a complete Roman villa set waiting to be assembled. I shall work on that over the next month or so and post regular updates for any interested parties to follow. Watch this space, as they say. A few shots to start us off, including a dry run assembly of one of the wings of the villa ~

Turning now to Matt's gift which left me speechless: as you may know several years ago he designed and sculpted the original Wars of the French Revolution range for Trent Miniatures. Along the way it seems he's been painting up figures for fun and on Sunday he presented them to me as a gift. They comprise a whole Demi-Brigade de Ligne, enough Light Infantry to screen the entire Demi-Brigade, a 12ld gun and crew and a Hussar command set. As I said, I'm speechless on receiving such a wonderful gift. When you see them now, you will be amazed at the quality of his work, puts everything I've ever painted in the shade! Judge for yourself anyway ~

From the whole collection Matt had assembled I can create three Battalions to form a fifth Demi-Brigade de Ligne, although I shall need to rebase them to fit in with my style in the rest of the collection. I'll also need to sort out some flags as the ones Matt painted here are duplicates of Battalions which are already mustered. As I've no 40 x 40mm MDF bases anyway it will all need to wait a while anyhow. Now for a look at the figures in more detail ~

Matt tells me he only used a two colour system for every colour in the figures, but it just looks so much more to me. Perhaps the colours I use are too subtle to show as clearly in pictures? Interestingly, there are also some figures which don;t appear to have made it into production blisters, which is a shame as they lend more variety to the units, mainly of course infantry in the earlier helmet which can be seen in the centre of the following group. I'll have to ask Duncan about them as they are undoubtedly by Matt  ~

I like the way Matt has painted the gun, its much lighter than I would dare ~

I also received, as I said, enough Light Infantry to screen the Demi-Brigade in action. I like the colour scheme Matt chose for these and hope to make five skirmish bases from them. Again they seem to have some figures which didn't make it into production moulds ~

The Hussar command group will come into its own as a Light Cavalry command base. I already have two Regiments of Hussars, one still in the painting queue, and one of Chasseurs ~

Finally, although not a gift, Matt did lend me some resource materials which will come in useful in due course I hope ~

As I said, bar today's cancellation, a good few days here in GHQ. Let's hope the trend carries forward into the rest of 2017!