Long Weekend and Assorted Great War Canadians

A belated happy Canada Day to all my fellow Canadian compatriots and happy Independence Day to all the Americans checking out the blog tomorrow! I hope you’ve all had a great long weekend (how often does that work out that Canada Day is on a Friday and Independence Day is on a Monday?).

I spent Friday finishing off Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season Two (so I could return it to the library of Saturday). Saturday I spent pretty much the whole day (well… 10 hours of it!) playing Angola with some friends:

A very long game of Angola (covering only the first 10 months of the 30 year civil war). Brent and I played the MPLA/FAPLA (which was considered two separate factions for game purposes) John played the FNLA (with some help from Zaire and assorted Mercenaries) and Kurtis played UNITA (and the South Africans). it was a tough game and there was a lot of back and forth in the first half - utter chaos - I felt totally lost. In the second half more clear lines consolidated and I thought things were looking up for the MPLA/FAPLA, but in the last round FNLA and UNITA really turned it around for the win! Fun, challenging game. Love to try it again sometime.

This was probably at the zenith of the MPLA/FAPLA game. The yellow is the MPLA – which I played – and the red is the FAPLA – which my partner Brent played. John’s FNLA was coming down from the north and Kurits’ UNITA forces working their way up from the south.

After I finish this post I'll probably be doing some yard work... (unless those clouds roll in a bit quicker and it starts raining... do I sound like I'm stalling...? I might be stalling...).

As I mentioned earlier I ordered a LOT of stuff over the last month… and most of it has arrived in the last few weeks. So I’ve been spending most of my hobby time assembling, prepping, basing, priming and gooping miniatures so they’d all be ready for painting – whenever I got to that! I have worked on a few fun things that have lingered on my workbench long enough to get some paint on them.

A staff member for the Second Division from 1st Corps. The 1st Corp miniatures are a bit on the chunky side, but there are a few interesting sculpts and they have a lot of character.

I added some of the same nylon screen door mesh I used for all my other barbed wire around the base of the post he’s perched on. Looking at it now I’ve realized I should have drybrushed a bit of reddish brown on there to make it look a bit rusty…

Another 1st Corps mini – one of two snipers I picked up. I’m not as happy with this one (the painting that is) he’s got a tarp over him for camouflage and while I know printed camouflage was not in use in the great war, I couldn’t imagine a plain khaki tarp being used and thought perhaps they might paint on some blotches of… something… to work as camouflage. The lines I painted on look far to regular – and honestly they probably wouldn’t have had access to such nice green and brown paints… The next one I’ll try to paint with blotches of brown and grey – to look more like patches of mud or charcoal that’s been smeared on… maybe I’ll repaint this guy…

Trench Fighters from 1st Corps. These are kind of a fun set of guys. Most of them look like they’re wearing sweaters rather than the issued tunic – and I wasn’t sure what colours to use…

I’m particularly fond of these first two in the front – especially the guy with two pistols – the funny thing is: one is an automatic and the other is a revolver!? While not exactly useful for the Vimy game, I thought they might be a fun set of characters for some small scale trench raids or role-playing-type game.

Some casualties/morale failure markers – the walking wounded is from Wargames Foundry  and the two dead fellows are from Gripping Beast.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

I have a battalion of the Gripping Beast figures on the workbench – along with some mortars from 1st Corps, and machine-guns from a few different manufacturers… hopefully I’ll finish up some of those in the not-too-distant future.