Timmo, At my age painting is a chore! seeing other peoples painted figures is a real enjoyment, both Phil O and Tim H have visited this year and shown me some of their wonderful painted figures. Even though I am an 18th century boffin I love to look at all periods, Colonial being a favourite of mine. You are most welcome to visit anytime. At least then I can show you my fleet of ships, which have only left port once and that was only 11 of them. Thank you for the kind words on the sculpting front, for that reason if you visit I will open at least one of my pandoras boxes! Kindest John

John Thank you that's an extremely kind offer which I will take you up on! I'll PM when I return from my hols in mid June. I'll bring some figures to show, Perry Sudan, AB Napoleonics, perhaps some Copplestones. best Tim

John Ray wrote: <q>Your 18th century collection is so perfect with regiments of infantry of 54 figures. They seem less cumbersome than the 60+ regiments with the silly movement trays! </q> I don't know John, this system works fairly well for me and I kind of like removing each casualty, rather than going with a roster system or casualty rings. It gives me flexibility to use my figures for different rules systems or even use them for skirmish games. Eventually though, I will need to replace the foamcore and magnet sheet trays with MDF so that the tray has a tidier appearance. Rome wasn't built in a day though.

Primed the gallows, the ALBRU, the log cabin and the doctor's place today. Then I gave the cabin and the ALBRU a grey weathering. Don't know if I'll find time to do more about painting till Sunday.

To answer the question, I have recently shifted from painting SYW figures to my 1806 Project. We set up a game date in July so that I would have the motivation of a deadline to get me going again. Right now, I am working on French Napoleonic dragoons and 1806 Prussian musketeers.

Sorry Jim, You will never convince me, figure base to terrain board remains convention, not 16/24 figures floating on a Magic Carpet base! Just looks Silly, more so with the 1 INCH individual base, I thought 18th century Europe was fought shoulder to shoulder not like light infantry tactics, which some of the games look !!!! Well thats my View. The Fulda game with all the figures was played with 2 participants and not ampered by the old Peter Gilder style basing. John

finished off the french 15mm battalion. painted half a dozen 28mm cowboys. now started painting a few of the FIW British line figures. still to finish off a warhammer empire knights unit, and some 6mm ancients left to finish off. hopefully I will get them all finished off by the begining of next week.

Ah the joys of early retirement, at least retirement at an age when I have most of my marbles rattling around still, even after 32 years of wading through the dross of London and the great British public, and being shot at, stabbed and abused. Inspired by my visit to John R's I have finished all the British Civil War stuff I had on the go, and having temporarily run out of those, hit the lead the lead mountain to the tune of a battalion of Ghurkas (20 figs) and a battalion of Sikh infantry (22 figs), varnished and ready for basing. Just as well 'cos the mother in law from hell is coming this weekend and fun will have to be suspended till next week. Timmo if you do pop into John R's for coffee, make sure somebody knows where you are, 'cos I guarantee you won't want to leave, there are just so many goodies to see, and JR and Anne are the best hosts.

:doh: I don't think 'Colin' makes a very good Confederate name... :) Although Colin the Confederate is quite catchy... :hmm: No, Its easier if everybodies called George - Don't have trouble identifying them then - "Hello George. Morning George! Heard about George? Yes went AWOL with George didn't he George? No! Who said that? Me, George. Oh hi George - thought you'd been shot at Wilderness? No that was George.

On Sunday mornings I hear village football matches and it appears that everybody on both teams is called Dave. 'Dave', 'Dave', 'Dave' , 'Dave on me 'ed', 'Dave ,here Dave' etc

No painting this week, just work :( However I get to play this weekend, and have all next week off :mental: Torn between WW1 Russians, ECW, AWI and WoR. Or maybe all of them.

Well I painted the sample Negro of Havana last week and prepared another 6. Sample looked OK so I painted another 6 today. John

My progress has been at a crawling pace over the last week. I've not really been in the mood to paint. However 30 or so 28mm figures have been cleaned up, washed and primed with another 12 ready and waiting for a warm still day. I've found a better way to prime: mounting the figure with blu-tac on a well over-sized card base that I'm easily able to hold in my left hand I'm able to spray prime each in turn rotating as required for a quick even coverage. I protect myself with a surgical glove. As I'm able to rotate the figure I can quickly get paint into the undercuts. Reading and research have really taken over as prime interests and I enjoyed Partizan so there still been plenty of wargames related activity. Plans for the coming week or so are to just see what I feel like doing – I suspect I'll start some of those primed figures on Sunday.