In praise of friends in our wonderful hobby.

The photographs which accompany this blog entry are important to what I want to reflect on so please don't be too hard on me for featuring only a part of a regiment here. The thing is I didn't pay for any of these figures, they were gifted to me by Colin and Phil ~

They will form the first of three bases of the 1st, the Royal Scots in what will down the line someway be my Highland Division. The officer I think was a Partizan freebie which Phil had kept safe all these years and the rankers are Great War Miniatures, one part of a parcel of figures Colin generously sent me. As in my opinion one should always receive any gift graciously I integrated these into my painting schedule alongside the Coldstream Guards while at the same time shooting off an order to North Star for the figures to make up the other two bases. The GWM's figures had been partially painted so I plopped them in the old Dettol bath for a few days. I don't know what they had been painted with but it didn't budge even a flake of paint! Mind, I have the most sterile figures in the hobby I'd think now! So I simply set to and overpainted them to match the rest of my 'style'! Of course in overpainting the figures inevitably lost some of their sharpness, but overall I'm satisfied with the outcome. At gaming distance on the tabletop battlefield they'll not be noticed anyway!

Now, in the past few months I've received gifts of figures from other friend as well - you may recall Jon's Foundry SYW British cavalry figures which I made up into my Hanoverian contingent for example - all evidence of the great spirit of community and mutual help and support which runs right through our wonderful hobby. I just thought that this needed saying, so I hope you'll indulge me here.

For any reader who has ventured this far without dying of boredom and is curious about the rest of Colin's parcel, well, here is a summary: a unit of GWM Russian Dragoons; two Warlord Games Russian 12lb guns & crews; several Warlord Games British infantry; a handful of Foundry Russians. I'd like to imagine that I can make good use of most of these as the Roosian force cross the painting desk here in GHQ in due course.