Going east...

Having finished my last long term project of a 20mm DBM Camillan Roman army, the next projects rumble into view; despite the ever present mixture of bits and pieces that exist on most modeller-wargamers' painting table, it was naturally time to start two new projects.

The first one was accidental, I intended to rummage through my big bag of WW2 leftovers, mostly from my childhood and teens, when it seemed necessary to have one pack of everything, and paint off what units I could. It was onto ebay for the lot of them, maybe get a fiver for every ten or so?

Apparently, there really are a lot of people out there who are too lazy to paint there own figures.

Fine by me; there are a lot of things I can buy when I get £2 per figure for my paint jobs. It's a pay off for the years of practice and time spent trying techniques, that led to ways to knock up attractive figures for a reasonable expenditure of time and effort.

But rummaging to sell stuff, always leads down those dusty corridoor, to half decided plans.

So I ended up with some of my favourite figures back on the painting table, after nearly twenty years. Matchbox Japanese infantry. So it turned out, more than enough to defend a small island in Crossfire, or Rapid Fire. A couple of quick purchases from Frontline, and MMS soon provided a couple of tanks, an infantry gun and an anti tank gun to support them. In a week or two the Japanese will be ready to defend their atoll to the last against my innumerable americans...

But besides them it's another Japanese force that I really want to get stuck in to; hundreds of 20mm Samurai are beckoning. Two Warhammer armies are the plan - a Mix of Zvezda, Caeser, and Milton Bradley figures, timely as well with the Art Of War supplement on oriental armies due any day soon. Compared to Romans or World War two uniforms though, the Samurai are an altogether more daunting proposition. The only consolation being the small size needed to get started. A thousand point Samurai army will only need about 50 figures.

On top of them though there are still 30 28mm American GI's and Wermacht Inantry, on the paint table, along with a 1/48th Pak 40, a White Half Track, a 20mm German Flak wagen, a bunch of other oddments...

I don't think many wargamers have the will to avoid this situation though.