Jack of all trades and master of none

This weekend, I've spent varying amounts of time working on 3mm cavalry, 3mm Cold War artillery, helping Mrs. History PhD with the details of her new FOW Vietnam vehicle, and I was badly bitten by the 1/2400 WWII naval bug (after about three years since the last bite), so I've painted a number of Bay Area Yards' wonderful resin ship bases and dusted off a couple of GHQ ships. All of the above is a very verbose and evasive way of saying I haven't finished a damned thing, despite a considerable amount of time at the hobby desk this weekend! Does anyone else suffer from hobby Attention Deficit Disorder or is it just me?

In any case, here's one of my ship bases:

That's a British Abdiel class minelayer on it. As you'll notice, the stand is finished, but the ship is still in basic 507C light grey. I have yet to shade, detail, and add a camouflage scheme.

And I did manage to finish two squadrons of the Saxon Prinz Clemens Cheveauxleger Regiment for 1806:

Just another three squadrons to go. 

Hopefully, I'll be more ambitious next weekend. See ya!

3mm cavalry is a real pain in the ass!

This weekend, I've been fiddling with my long-neglected 1806 Saxon chevauxleger regiment. My chosen stand size for Napoleonics, 40mm x 20mm, should each hold two cavalry squadrons. When I have a regiment that needs an odd number of squadrons, I'll do a 20x20 stand as an end cap. 

Unfortunately, O8s cavalry is cast as files of two and not ranks (which would've made basing soooo much easier). So I'm having to go through the slow and painful process of gluing a file to the base and then texturing a thin line next to it, then gluing down the next file:

etc, etc, etc. It's the only way to get into that tiny, narrow space between files. Talk about tedious!! 

But I have discovered that painting 3mm horses is a breeze. This is always one chore that I absolutely detest in 6mm, but here, the details are so tiny that they can safely be slopped over with a suitable "horse colored" paint, of which I have three or four (I can't honestly have all the horses looking identical, now can I?). Stone Mountain Miniatures does a really great line of paints, part of which is an excellent selection of horse colors. 

So, on I go. More on all this when I have a few squadrons that are presentable. 

Scuds, Frogs, a Hoplite, and a bit of cavalry

This weekend I've again been trying to tidy up several partially completed projects that are littering the wargaming bookcase. 

The first is an East German Mil Mi-2 Hoplite:

The Hoplite entered service in 1965 and Soviet/WarPac forces used it primarily for liaison, reconnaissance, and air ambulance duties. Here's my East German Mi-2:

I've still got a Polish one to go. Unfortunately, once I finished this, I found that the model is literally too small for even my tiniest East German decals. There's just no room for them, so it will just have to go into battle "naked". 

Next up is my very first 1/600 cavalry! I decided to start off by continuing the Saxon theme that I began while doing the infantry a few posts ago, so I chose the chevauxleger regiments:

I specifically wanted to begin with the Prinz Clemens Regiment, but after I began painting these tiny things, I saw that doing the facings was entirely out of the question. Just too damned small!! But then it occurred to me that this was actually a benefit. Rather than have to paint the three individual Saxon chevauxleger regiments, I could use one to represent any of the three! So, here's the finished command stand:

Trumpeter in reversed colors.

As usual, I started out doing the command stand separately so that I could simply switch it out to change what regiment I'm representing. However, at 1/600, the standards of the individual regiments are totally indistinguishable, so the command stand can also be used with any of the units, as long as the trumpeter's color matches. Also as usual, I've deliberately made the pole for the standard overly tall and the standard itself a bit larger than true scale. 1/600 stuff benefits from anything eye-catching. 

And lastly, I'm also trying to finish off the final few stands of Scud B's and Frog 7's that have been lying around "for a coon's age" as my grandma was wont to say when I was a kid:

As with the last time I painted some of these, I went with Vallejo Gunship Green (895) for the missiles themselves. 

Well, that's a few things cleared out of the "to do" pile. Only 5000 things to go! I plan to get it all done in time for my 186th birthday! More BS next time!