Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Where your Council Tax goes...

I 'm trying to keep this blog more regular than it was in the 'winter season', but it's not helped upgrades to the home PC kill your internet connection. Still work has its uses!

It was a 'Bank Holiday' here in Britain yesterday, so extra time off all round. To be honest I seldom work a monday between late April and June anyhow, but that's council work for you.

No games to report, but I did get some painting in, when not cursing my computer. I managed to finish a Necromancer, who'd been sat on the painting table for 6 months awaiting some attention. I'll post shots when I can, as he's pretty nice. Commendable work from the Acrylics again.

I also knocked off a dozen Ork warrios for 40K. Recent battle experience has shown I just can't field enough Ork Boys to make classic Orky tactics (charge, accept huge losses on way in, once in contact, beat all comers to a bloody pulp) work. I'd intended painting them quickly, but not 'speed painting'; so they ended up with three layers of wet-brush to dry-brush highlighting, and extra detailing. Frankly more labour than cheap plastic figures bought off E-bay to bulk out my forces really warranted. Oh well.

Also over the weekend I picked up a set of the new Valiant Miniatures German infantry. You can tell that even as '20mm' plastic figures, these guys were put together by wargamers. They are hard plastic, multipart, chunky and tall. Average height foot to eye is 23.5mm. On the plus side the box contains all the parts to make a full Rapid Fire battalion of infantry, plus a force roster showing you what it would comprise (no points values, but hey, they ain't giving you the rules for free are they? Well actually they do on the rapid Fire website!). You get enough spare figures to assemble a couple of dozen other figures too. Plenty of heavy kit too - MG42's on sustained fire mountings, 80mm Mortars, Panzerfausts. Some of the posing is a bit static, but overall the best way to start a force. Only £9 a box too.

Check out their website here: http://www.valiantminiatures.com/

Personally the battalion is going to be painted up and stuck on E-bay; that still leaves me all the mortars and machine guns my Germans could ask for.

Now, if only I could get my home PC to work...

2 comments:

  1. Valiant are meant to be 25mm to compete with Artizan and the like. Agree that they are very good miniatures though.

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  2. I can't believe that. For a start I game WW2 in 28mm and these figures are not even close to that scale. What they do match is the old ESCI hard plastics, and more importantly the 20mm White metal models commonly used by wargamers. They have that chunky but accurate look of stuff by FAA or Platoon20.

    They are the same height as modern 1:72nd scale figures made by Revell, Italieri, Caeser and the likes; but both the medium (hard plastic) and taste (Rumford and co's I guess) mean that they bulkier.

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