Have been doing some thinking. Houses, streets and such…

At some point I am going to produce houses again. All the farm houses that I will be using for my “Battle at La Fière Bridge project” must be finished as the first thing – and I am very eager to get going. Making these farm houses will give me plenty of that kind of houses and the next thing in line will be classic small town houses in the best Normandy style, like those in Carentan, St-Lo or Sainte-Marie-du-Mont.

In the planning stage it is very easy to thinking about going back to my original plan that was to make molds of my houses and duplicate them – but I forget how boring that phase is compared to how much fun I have when making the originals. Making molds and cast several duplicates which I then can make small changes to, especially in the painting, for vareity is tempting compared to scratch build every single house, but I also know that the process will drain my energy…

I will need to make up my mind about which way to go. Until then I will keep studying photos and make sketches.

The Red Army at my doorstep

They are here now. The first platoon of my russian battlegroup. Organised into squads, support units, HQ, ‘spare bits’ and then put neatly into a box, where there is a chance that they will stay untouched for several years. Hopefully not.

I felt an urge to buy a full company, but my economy wont allow me doing that. I will buy a platoon or some gun crews now and then. The chance that I run out of figures to paint is second to none as I have 17 more boxes like this filled with figures…(!?!)

In my search for a 120mm mortar in transport mode, I today stumbled upon a new website selling gaming stuff that I thought was a danish online shop. They had several models that I don’t find in my usual shops and I quickly found some boxes that I couldn’t resist, especially some Zvezda AT and AA guns for my red horde, but also Nebelwerfers for my Fallschiermjägers.

A thing, I also ordered, that I especially look forward to have in my hands is two trucks, one polish Fiat and a Praga truck, both some I will mix together with Opel Blitz’s to give my german army a more “ragtag” kind of look. These two trucks are from the polish company called First to fight. This will be my first models from this brand and I can’t wait to see how the quality is.

After the order was placed I got the usual confirming email and found out that the shop wasn’t danish at all. This was a polish online shop… which for me isn’t a problem, but I found it quite fun that the url was danish and even the language was translated into danish. Well after I found out that it wasn’t a danish site I also found several errors in the translation that a dane wouldn’t do. Check it out yourself. Most of the brands are eastern European, but there is alsvo some Italeri and Dragon boxes. I give you the international url ;-) www.super-hobby.com

Russians from AB Figures – Out Now!

Some of the new russian AB Figures. All painted by Tony Barton himself.

Some years ago it was announced that AB Figures, the best 20mm WW2 metal figures if asking me, was closing their business down. This was bad news for me as these figures have been the backbone of all of my armies because of their big variety on poses, but mostly for their unmatched high standard. Some months later the good news came, the Australian based company Eureka Miniatures, headed by Nic Robson, had joined forces with Tony Barton, the sculptor of AB Figures, to continue manufacture the AB line. The first years Tony and Nic was busy making new moulds and fill in missing bits. But now they are ready to launch a new big batch of figures: Late War Russians!

Missing russian figures from AB has been the only reason to why I have not been doing Eastern front. And the news of them comming is both good and bad for me. Bad news because I already have a mountain of unpainted figures. Good news because I always wanted to build a russian battlegroup.

The new figures looks fantastic. I was tempted to order a full company right away, but managed to keep the order to a few US and German figs that I have been missing…
…and in the end a tiny russian platoon was also added to the order. Can’t wait to get them.

Buy them from: http://www.abfigures.com (outside Europe)
or http://www.fighting15sshop.co.uk (in Europe)