La production de figurines, malgré les progrès immenses de l’impression 3D, est étrangement en déclin. Cela s’explique évidemment aussi par la guerre…
Le siège de Rome 537
If you need an english version it’s not too much to foto the five text sections which are conveniently sized and then select scan and translate options in your smart phone.
Also Chariobaude has an excellent WordPress blog which I discovered way back in 2017 covering fantastic painting of late Roman miniatures.
Fortunately John over at “just needs varnish” reminded me that Dave Stone’s challenge started at the beginning of July.
Last year I had a very fruitful time in fact my challenge ran into the end of September! It did not do my figure painting any favours though.
Yet I had so much scenery waiting to be done it proved to be a rich vein.
Well this particular ore vein is still rich.
So far that is two churches and a railway station finally out of their boxes and just about built.
Painting may be a stumbling block – I get quite hesitant about colours. Cold north or warm south…..
* Could be I have drawn loads of early pacers who then fade away……..
I wonder what else will come from the pit of scenery?
The thing about one hour wargames is it’s genuinely “pick up” attraction. If you want to throw dice, move figures and get that war game with a purpose feeling for minimal preparation, then I find it’s a winner.
Yes, the mechanisms are abstract but you have to compromise somewhere and Neil Thomas rules generally offer that blend of compromises I like.
These battles were prompted by my reading atlas of the civil war and discovering Robert Sneeden – a Union Cartographer. https://thewargamingerratic.home.blog/2025/06/05/a-game-wow/
Rebel forces enter the fray
Rebel victory
So the second battle ends in Royalist defeat. It’s all square and all to play for…..
The royalists needed to escape through the town and up the great road……
And so victory to the rebels in the action and also the short campaign.
Today of course saw the end of 3 days of fighting at Gettysburg – the great Union victory which along with the capture of Vicksburg saw the war finally turn against the Confederate Southern States.
I was gifted this seaplane in a poor state. It was found in a clearance box at a car boot sale.
Some minor repairs to the floats struts plus my first ever plane support – magnet and all, then my current favourite background thrown in for good measure.
Fauxterre 1930 is my “nearly mechanised” campaign – long in the planning with little progress on the armies.
Essentially Rugia is under attack and their coastal command have had to draw in naval resources to cover potential invasion activity by their arch enemy Gombardia.
No idea about the kit or the plane modelled. I thought about a repaint but for now it’s fine for my solo campaigning – only my eye is offended if at all.
Who knows I might even actually build another plane after last year’s (2023/24) inaugural camomint 1939 reconnaissance spitfire in AHPC14.
https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/2024/01/from-lorenzo-reach-for-sky-camomint.html
Onwards and in this case upwards!
When I think about it this first half of 2025 has like 2024 been dominated by AHPC – analogue hobbies painting challenge. By contrast I managed only two shows yet one yielded one of the few games I have played.
That was a cowboy shootout using homemade rules…..
Not surprisingly it was Hammerhead at Newark.
Then I had a game of “what a cowboy”. My opponent loved “what a tanker” and reasoned WAC should be as enjoyable. Well that proved not quite the case. We will play again but it has slipped down the list.
Actually there is no list and until today my gaming had been quite limited.
Then I had a spur of the moment, moment no doubt brought on by quite a bit of reading about battles fought.
In this case ACW – I am reading western theatre actions at the moment.
I also have been reading my Colorado purchase – a soft cover book of maps showing the whole ACW war.
In the book are some contemporary maps by a certain Robert Knox Sneeden. He was a Union mapmaker who not only spent time as a confederate prisoner but was also a watercolour artist. Clearly he had a good eye! And by good fortune his maps and diaries have survived.
So taken with his work was I that I simply made an entry for today’s game in his style.
I played using one hour Wargames book, rules and scenario plus solo options for set up. Figures were what I fancied fielding!
Jumping on the back of John at just needs varnish and Zauberwurfs duel over some mechanised models I determined to follow up my AHPC15 logistics Lorries.
https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/2025/01/?m=1
Well it seems experimentation is the order of the day. Instead of just painting some vehicles in plain military colours I seem to have drifted into a look at contrast colours, and it’s a right mess. I had no plan – just paint a lighter base colour and let the contrasts do the rest.
Not the best outcome since I undercoated in grey or white then the Vallejo olive green seems to be quite translucent. End result is the shading is just highlighting my poor main colour work.
Ho hum.
An AHPC15 entry again and this time it was in pursuit of one of my pet projects. Fauxterre 1930 is a catch all for my 20th century escapades. I started with ww2 but have inexorably been drawn to an earlier time period. Basically I want the look of armies from the 1930’s. So thats most of the kit available in 1939 but also kit that went out of service after 1930 as countries mobilised for impending conflicts.
My recent lorry posting covered the origins of this project.
https://thewargamingerratic.home.blog/2025/04/13/the-painting-portrait-25f-logistics/
In this “later” between the wars period 2pdr guns were fine as were 37mm Anti tank guns – the bofors version being the subject of this entry.
First to Fight make a lot of kit I can find a use for and these anti tank guns caught my eye. They are slender and making them is not as easy as the few parts you get suggests. Complete with figures – I particularly liked the prone gun aimer?
Fauxterre 1930 remains a slow burn project not least because it started out as a “bricks and mortar” project – buy things from real shops by walking into them.
In this case these AT guns came from Monkbar Models in York, North Yorkshire.
Also from the same shop – the venerable airfix 6pdr with Bren carrier.
During AHPC14 I got into modelling instead of painting and specifically building models from household recycling – cardboard and plastic. The net is repleat with simply magnificent models done this way. I thought why not have a go.
Skinflint Games was an early discovery….
https://skinflintgames.wordpress.com/2023/08/08/hau-nau-haunebau-diy-flying-saucer/
https://skinflintgames.wordpress.com/2024/10/
Anyway back in October 2023 I started off my SciFi adventures on Fauxterre….
https://thewargamingerratic.home.blog/2023/10/18/painting-pedestal-23x-tacfos-the-game-episode-3/
I started to collect bits together for some spacecraft only to see the idea fade during AHPC14 as WW2 models took centre stage including a white reconnaissance spitfire – my first aeroplane kitbash in years.
https://thewargamingerratic.home.blog/tag/fantasy/
Well AHPC15 rejuvenated my modelling again. And so the scrapheap challenge spacecraft arrived – in fact two!
First up was my take on the Red Dwarf TV series red spaceship – now mine is a “klim” class space freighter often used by rogues.
https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/2025/02/from-johnb-filthy-lucre-or-wheres.html
Second was my Policing vehicle – a space customs machine in blue. Again its basis is a “klim” class frame!
https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/2025/03/from-john-b-abyss-violence-oi-their.html
Into the bargain I managed to paint up some magazine “freebie” dwarves and hobbits. AHPC15 as with AHPC14 drew me away from my projects and regular painting. While that meant less progress with my chosen periods the change was as good as a rest – as they say.
Indeed I have tended to use these APHC challenges to experiment with painting and modelling methods. Also the AHPC participation has certainly speeded up some of my painting habits. And that must be a good thing for a slowcoach like me.
Another entry from AHPC15. This time I was preoccupied with the challenge theme – Dantes Comedy where you had to descend each level into the abyss. Gluttony was the theme.
This is the link to my AHPC15 entry
https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/2025/01/from-john-b-28mm-space-marines-of-puls.html
AHPC15 not only saw me make progress with my mid C19th century armies. Much delayed Fauxterre 1930 or my Lockdown Bricks and Mortar Shop project actually got in on the act.
Back in Covid times I decided on a whim to try and build some WW2 armies by walking into shops and physically buying stuff! Yes I know this is a bit of an old technique nowadays. At the time the logic was “get out and about”.
As it happened I had found a book in a shop window and snapped it up by………walking in and buying it. At the time shopping was a weird but satisfying escape. Sold as a vintage item it was Charles Grant Snr’s Battle! Practical Wargaming (B!PW)
Now this book gave me a way into WW2 on the limited basis I was looking for. Also Grant was quite happy to use german and US kit for his Russian forces – in other words country kit for that country only was not that important (of course the Russians used any kit they could lay their hands as did the germans) and indeed his forces were RED v BLACK – pure fantasy. Ok so that meant Russians versus Germans in reality.
Now this fed my need for a “fantasy historical” WW2 set up. I would use the technical aspects of the period but mess up the actual forces involved and of course the countries would be make believe. Thats Fauxterre. Sorry no zombies or rayguns.
In keeping with a theme I had developed, Fauxterre 1930 started to take shape. Why 1930? Well I had on this particular journey become more and more interested in the early war set up and less and less the final years. This escalated into pre war when I started to look at aircraft. I was quite taken with the transition from biplane to monoplane. And before you know it I was looking at AFV technology.
Did you know – the fairy swordfish biplane flown by the British Royal Navy fleet air arm in the 1930’s was still in combat duty in summer 1945 armed with rockets! so much digression….
The net result is I am trying and failing to get Fauxterre 1930 off the ground. My Plastic Soldier Company US and Russian troops were my first choice for figures when it was Fauxterre 1940 and are fine for the early war period but somehow I don’t like the figures if I roll back a decade. I do like them but not for Fauxterre 1930! They work for Fauxterre 1940 so would be ok but that is parked for now.
On a trip to a toy show I picked up some bin end corgi trucks.
And before you know it I had added to my Fauxterre 1930 logistics kit.
This is a link to my AHPC15 entry.
https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/2025/01/from-johnb-sinews-of-war-143-corgi.html
The Wargaming Erratic 
