Home Guard completed

The top picture shows the set with the "sea of potatoes" bases. The bottom picture shows the beach shingle look I should have done for the bases (from Seaford Beach). But who cares, these were such fun to paint!

I've found 2 more sets of foundry "England Invaded" models, which include Germans and a few civilians. I really should be painting up squads for my Brightorian Guard army, but I suspect I'll end up painting a few WW2 miniatures over the forthcoming bank holiday.

WW2 Sussex Home Guard

OK, its not an old WW2 photo. In fact its modern day Bishopstone station, being guarded by the 2 Home Guard models I painted the other day. Bishopstone station is an interesting building as it is Art Deco, with 2 hideous (but practical) brick pill boxes "grafted on". I think it was built about 1938. It is on the Lewes to Seaford branch line (now single track) between Seaford and Newhaven.

Newhaven harbour has a fort and Seaford has a Martello tower, and beyond both towns steep cliffs replace the beach. Therefore the beach at Bishopstone would definitely be an option for German raiding parties (or even part of an invasion). Probably a better option for taking Newhaven harbour and its strategic swing bridge, than a frontal assault past the fort and the cliff face pill boxes.

I think I detect the ingredients for a good WW2 skirmish scenario!

Dark Elves for sale

I've just put a load of Dark Elf items up for auction on Ebay (listings should appear in the left column of this page). This week I'm listing the mounted models i.e. cold ones and dark riders.

Next week I'll list the infantry and special weapons. It will take a few days to sort through them but so far I know I will be listing

• Witch Elves (see pic)
• Black Ark Corsairs (see pic)
• Spear men
• Repeater Crossbow men
• Champions and other command figures
• Repeating Bolt Thrower
• Characters e.g. Sorceress
  

All of these are metal and many out of production (Marauder models). The detail on them is better than the new plastics (take a look at the dragon skin cloaks on the Corsairs).

WW2 Home Guard

I could not resist painting these Home Guard instead of painting up more Imperial Guard. I've actually painted up 7 figures altogether, so I'll post the others after I've based them (with oversized beach shingle that looks like they're walking on potatoes!).

For reasons of copyright and trademark, I should point out these are from a range called England Invaded by Foundry Miniatures. Try not to confuse them with the soldiers in the clip below, although if you freeze the clip at 2:14, Pike and Wilson do resemble the above miniatures. Also at 6:58 Fraser makes remarks about Godfrey that would not get into a modern "PC" script today.

Brightorian troopers

The plan for this week was to build and paint a squad of 10 bog standard Cadian guardsmen, so that I could make some progress with my Brightorian Guard. What actually happened was 4 troopers were built and painted in different colour schemes, with 3 different types of heads!

In mitigation I ask is it possible to paint up a plain green squad when within arms reach I can see

• Dremmel tools and drills
• Westwind SRS heads (Indian and Paras!)
• 11 shades of green and blue paints (including jade green and ice blue)
• the tail end of my painting self discipline as it leaves the location

To say I am easily distracted would be an understatement. It might sound sad that I've made little progress with this army over the last 9 years, but I can assure you it's been 9 years of pure fun ;-)