Category Archives: Make History!

Kings Own 4th Regiment

It was only through attempting to paint these figures that I became aware of how difficult it is to get into the hobby that I enjoy so much. The actual process of painting is a skill in itself that you have to learn but the real barrier for me was the difficulty in finding the correct reference material and help and advice on how to put together a Napoleonic army. If I found this difficult, then I think that many a newcomer to the hobby must be deterred before they even start. And where do you start? Sure there’s plenty of great websites and forums on the internet but they often are difficult to find and contain conflicting advise. There’s also the problem that you can never find the correct piece of information just when you want it.

So I plan to do a series of web logs charting my progress as I build my first British Napoleonic Army. Yes, I did say Army and I know I haven’t finished my first Battalion yet but I have resolved to have a historical army completed by the end of this year…..To track my progress, or lack of it on this subject, check out the Make History category of my blog.

I haven’t abandoned my Necron army. Far from it, I’ve still got a number of projects on the go and I’ve completed a couple that were started in previous articles. However, I think that having two very diferent armies and modelling projects on the go will allow me to have a change and learn new techniques and face new challenges. I also think that the contrast between the two facets of the hobby, that is Science Fiction & Fantasy versus Historical will provide a refreshing change.

Finally, I need to change the way I write my blog, so watch out for shorter posts and hopefully, more frequent ones …

Wow! What a Christmas! I can’t believe how quickly time has flown since my last blog post. I had intended to write at least one more blog entry before the new year but I was caught out by just how busy Christmas turned out to be. This of course, is good news, so a big thank you to the record number of customers that visited my ebay shop. I can now pay the rent for another month! It wasn’t just business that was occupying me. Thanks to some really hard work on my part, I now have the body of a god…unfortunately it’s Buddha…so no more mince pies for me for a while.

It’s strange how in such a short period you can experience such highs & lows. One minute I was enjoying the perfect family Christmas at my Daughters (thank you again Victoria & Ed!), being waited on hand & foot, the next I am on the phone worrying because my Father had been taken into Hospital 240 miles away and was trying to establish that he was OK…He was, thank goodness and is now back home safely ( Thank you to the nurses at Torbay Hospital).

In between times, I have managed to get to see James Cameroons ‘Avatar’, which was absolutely brilliant in 3D, been to the pantomime with my young nieces Lucy & Hannah, celebrated New Year at a great party, read Antony Bevoirs book on the downfall of Berlin, watched too much TV ( The Gruffalo was the TV highlight for me), played numerous weird board games, usually under the influence of alcohol, got totally hooked on Generation Kill ( a DVD boxed set….’stay frosty people’ ….’Hitman Alpha to Godfather actual’…you’ve got to watch it if you remotely enjoyed Three Kings or Band of Brothers) and as I have already alluded to, eaten and imbided far too many calories.

So here I am on a quiet, snowy Saturday Morning, hangover now cured and ready to face the New Year. So it’s New Years resolution time. I actually enjoy setting New Years resolutions because I tend to think of them as an opportunity to dream about what I would like to do over the coming year rather than the things that I am going to stop doing. The whole New years resolution thing seems to have been hijacked by the anti fun brigade and the health police. Well I’m not going to worry about the odd half a stone that I’ve put on. It will tend to disappear over the next month now that I’m not surrounded by sausage rolls,mince pies, Pork pie (mmmm…proper Melton Mowbray pork pie & Cranberry jelly…stop it!), tins of Quality Street, Cold turkey, Cold Ham, Home made Chips, Bubble & Squeak, Christmas Cake and other such temptations. And the chances are that I will get slightly more exercise than popping the ring pull off the next can of Carling now that I am back at work so lets think about the important things in life, making model soldiers and model kits.

A good place to start with these things is to look at where you are now. In case you haven’t noticed,I really like making models of Necrons and this will continue. So my first New Years resolution is to complete my Necron Apocalypse army. I currently have around 6500 points of Necrons but there are a couple of areas where I am short. I have managed to get hold of a cheap Monolith as well as buying another new Monolith kit. My plan is that I will refurbish the second hand Monolith in the same style as my existing one and the other kit will also have the same paint scheme but will have LED lighting in it. I will then have 3 monoliths to field and just for fun, I will ambush one of my regular 40k opponents with a 3 monolith army list….hurrah!

I am also working on a Doomsday Monolith, here’s a sneak preview of the work in progress. Once finished, I intend to ensure that I organise a proper Apocalypse Battle so watch out for the battle report later in the year.

Also on the WIP list is a piece of scenery that I have put to one side. It’s meant to be an abandoned Imperial outpost that is part of a campaign that I completed last year. As it was, we fought the battle by improvising with the scenery that we had, so this piece was not used. I’m in the process of re writing the campaign and I will organise a re fight of the campaign so the Outpost will be finished.

The next piece that I’m working on is a mini diorama using the limited edition Necron Scarab on a dissecting table. I had sort of finished it….here it is.

However, I’m not happy with it and I am going to add an Imperial scribe/scientist & a couple of Skull servos from the Inquisitor boxed set that I have had in the loft for some years. I think that this will then make a nice display piece along with my Necron Santa diorama!

As far as other Necron models go, I still have plenty of ideas yet so these will not be the only Necron projects. Now that I have strength in depth on the basic units I will ease up on these and only build conversions or scratch built projects, unless of course GW release a new codex, although my inside sources seem to indicate that this is unlikely, at least in the first half of the year. In the meantime, there is plenty of source material on the C’tan Forum and elsewhere on the web to keep me busy.

Finally, as far as the Necrons go, I have obtained some Battle field Gothic Necron Ships. I will definitely paint these and I hope to learn to use them in the game itself. I have grand ideas about combining all the 40k formats into one huge campaign and to this end I have also bought the Planetary Empire set. I’ll paint this to match my imagined world of Akhenaten III and modify some of the tiles to look like Necron outposts & cities. I also think that these tiles will make interesting bases fo the Battlefield Gothic Ships so I’ll give that a go as well.

I still enjoy playing 40K more than any of the other GW systems so although I am tempted to start a Fantasy army I think that my other GW project for the year is more likely to be another 40K army. I already have space marines and Imperial Guard so another Xenos army beckons……Tyranids! I don’t intend to build a massive army but it would be nice to alternate between tyranids and Necrons at the club so I’m going to paint a 2000pt Tyranid army once I catch sight of the new codex.

One of the other highlights of Christmas was that just before we broke up for the holidays, I was invited to Warlord Games Christmas get together and was lucky enough to get involved in a huge war game played with Napoleonic Armies using the new Black Powder Rules. It was great! The Black Powder rules are very playable and give just the sort of relaxed, enjoyable game that make you want to play again and again. I really enjoy rules sets that allow you to play without getting hung up on the rules themselves and Black Powder does just this. With this in mind, I am going to start my own Napoleonic Army. I have a set of Victrix Waterloo British Infantry that I have started to make & paint:

This really will be a long term project as at the rate that I paint it will take a month just to get this box finished but I will persevere and keep you updated with my progress.

My final New Years Resolution for my modelling projects is to start my own miniature version of Bovington Tank Museum. I visited Bovington in October last year and I thought that it was brilliant! I have many pictures and I will do a more thorough review at a later date. However, it was for me an inspiring visit and I would really like to start my own Tank Museum in miniature. I’ve always been fascinated by armoured warfare and I have in the past, built many a model tank. I became slightly disillusioned with this side of the hobby following an encounter with one of the pedantic ‘know it alls’ that you occasionally come across in the hobby. Unfortunately, I was young enough and impressionable enough to be upset by him criticising my work. It wouldn’t happen these days, l have thicker skin and if I ever do meet this sort ( fortunately, it’s very rare) I can just walk away smiling at their ignorance. However, the scale model scene can be daunting and although modellers such as Steve Zaloga can be inspirational, trying to produce something that looks half as good as their models seems to be beyond my ability. That said, I’m going to start again and start with a simple build from the box kit and see how I get on. So you can expect to see my Tank Model collection start this year. I plan to start at the beginning with one of the Emhar WW1 Tanks……

So all of the above should mean that I am kept busy with plenty of modelling projects, lots to learn, books to read, internet to research, games to play, it looks like 2010 is going to be great!

So what are my predictions for 2010.

Well for me, the recession will mean that we will spend more time at home, so I can build more models. I will look for ways to do this as cost effectively as possible and pass these ideas on through my Blog, so keep reading.

The improvements in technology will mean that more model soldiers become available in Plastic rather than metal, so it will become cheaper to build bigger armies. I think that Napoleonics will come back into fashion and the rise of historical & Factual wargames will lead the suits at GW to start thinking a bit more about their customers rather than their share price.

28mm scale will dominate wargaming and smaller scales will fall out of fashion as some gamers start to turn to 54mm. The exception to this will be Flames of War, which will continue to grow.

The continuing growth in the cottage industry side of the modelling business will mean more choice than ever for modellers and the internet will be the increasing place to buy your model supplies and do your research.

There will be a revival of Airfix thanks to the James May effect and their re tooled models will start to gain the respect of Modellers that Airfix used to have. This will help the continued growth of the grey haired brigade of modellers re entering the hobby.

Watch out for the first 3D printers to produce model soldiers to order.

More model kits will contain brass etched parts, resin extras, aluminium & metal gun barrels and non plastic extras under the influence of the growth of Chinese & Korean kit manufacturers.

Oh, and England will win the World Cup….No, I’m serious!

Happy New Year and enjoy your modelling!

I’m sorry if you were expecting one of my usual kit reviews but I just wanted to take the opportunity to give another view of whats going on in the postal industry. This article is in response to the column in Saturday’s Times by Andrew Ellson, the Personal finance editor, who having had a very important document lost in the post, decided to go into print with his personal tantrum and write a vitriolic article about service provided by the Royal Mail.

I know a bit about the service provided by the Royal Mail and so I thought that I would give my perspective on the issue. If you haven’t already figured it out, I write this Blog in support of an online Model shop and an growing ebay business. I absolutely rely on the Royal mail to deliver to my customers and the stats from where I am sitting are as follows.

I have dispatched approaching 10,000 parcels in the last few years (check out my feedback on ebay, this isn’t a made up stat or unconfirmed urban myth that journalists like). Of those, no more than 12 have gone astray. That is the actual number of customers that have said that they have not received their item and investigation has confirmed that this is the case. To be fair, there are probably a similar number who, for various reasons, have never contacted me. There are also about half that number who said that they hadn’t got the parcel but it turned out that the parcel was at the local sorting office and either they couldn’t be bothered to collect it or the postie hadn’t put the required card through the customers door.

Now here’s the thing that fascinates me. Of the 12 missing parcels that I have claimed for, 8 were overseas. I wont go into specific countries other than to say the hotter the country, the more likely your parcel is to be late or lost. The exception being Australia, because they seem to be good at everything. Italy is particularly bad and the South of France is worse than the North. I base those views purely on the number of e mails and claims that I have to deal with.

As for late delivery’s, I suspect the Royal Mails’ record isn’t quite so good but take a look again at my feedback and the customer comments thanking me for fast delivery. Well, it’s thanks to the Royal Mail. My commitment is to post all paid for orders within one working day of receipt of payment and that’s what I do. The Royal Mail does the rest.

I too had a special delivery go astray this weekend. It was very annoying for my customer, who was relying on receiving the item and had paid

I’ve just received the latest kits from Italeri and thought that I’d pass on the news. I understand that the 1/72 scale kits may be reissues from Esci but never the less, they are great additions to the Italeri range and it’s nice to see them available again.

I particularly like the Panzer II kit. You can now build a complete collection of Panzers from the first, the Panzer I, right throught to the King Tiger, all in 1/72 scale and all Italeri kits. I think that this would make a nice collection and a super example of Tank development though the Second World War.

The other new releases include the Sd.Kfz 251/7 Pionerpanzerwagen:

The Sd.Kfz.124 Wespe,

And finally, the Panzerjager 1,

All of these are currently available from my ebay shop you can easily track them down by using the shop search box or clicking into the Italeri Kits category. I hope that you enjoy your modelling!

When it comes to buying on line, it’s not always easy to decide whether a new product is right for you. It’s usually a safe decision if you have bought products from a company before. Lets face it, when Games Workshop release their latest Tank or figure, you will have a pretty good idea of what to expect in terms of quality and style and a picture will be enough to help you decide whether you want it or not. Likewise, when Airfix or Italeri release a new scale model of, say, a 1/72 scale Sherman Tank, then you will have a clear idea of what you will get. There’s also usually reviews of these new releases in the trade press such as Military Modelling that will help you to decide if the kit is right for you.

But what about the smaller company releases? Or what if you are new to the hobby? How do you know whether what your buying is going to be right for you. I know that it’s tricky enough when you can get to a model shop but at least you can handle the product. Mind you, these days everything is sealed and you are not always made to feel that you can take a peek inside the box. So with that in mind I thought that I would add a series of reviews to my blog. Now I’m not a professional kit reviewer and I dont have access to scale drawings of models so I’m not going to be able to tell you if a model is 0.5mm to short or if the style of boots on a certain type of 5th century B.C. Assyrian Warrior is right or wrong. So if you’re looking for that information, move on, there are other sites that will do it better than I ever can.

Actually, I’m not into that sort of detail either, but I’ll save that discussion for another day. What I can do, is show you the contents of a kit, tell you whether I like it ( I tend to be positive, I’m selling these products!) and give you the alternatives that I know about. So for my first look at ‘What’s in the box?’ I’ve chosen the Gothic City Buildings by Pegasus. Why, you may ask. Well, first of all, I like this company. It’s based in America and they produce a nice range of reasonably priced scenic kits and accessories that are great for wargamers, as well as a super collection of scale models and soldiers. To see the range check out my shop, I have most of what is available most of the time!

So what do you get in the box?

Box Contents

You don’t get the Games Workshop Chapter Master! He’s there to show you the scale. You do get a huge amount of plastic which is as follows:

Gate, Pillars and short walls

As you can see , there is one entrance or gate section, 24 pillars (only six in the picture) and six short walls (8.25cms long), the picture shows two of them, front & back.

There are 6 short window sections ( 8.25cms long) and 6 long wall sections (16.5cms long).

Finally, you get 6 sprues of gargoyles and details for the building.

There’s the Chapter Master again to show you the height of the walls, which are about 8.25cms tall. So that’s enough parts to build a really big impressive centre piece for your wargames table or to use as a back ground for a diorama. The only thing that would have improved this kit would be a roof or floors for the buildings. This is easily remedied with some plasticard but it would have been nice to have included this in the box.

I think that this set is a great way to build scenery for your warhammer 40k games and of course it would be ideal for complementing the new planet strike, City fight and apocalypse supplements.

So if you are looking fo some competively priced scenery for your wargames, pegasus is a great place to start. As well as the Gothic City Buildings there are three other building sets available, some ready built gothic rubble and packs of bricks so there’s no reason why you couldn’t build your own city to battle over. As always, take a look in my ebay shop for prices and availability!

I can’t help it but I like the whole necron army concept. I’ve been playing warhammer40K since the second edition and collecting before that. If you dont believe me, I’ll upload some ancient figures that I painted back in 1983 and I’m not sure who will be the most embarrassed, me for the standard of painting or Citadel, for the standards of production……Still, that’s another story, back to the Necrons.

When the first Necron Raiders were released I grabbed a few of the figures but there wasn’t really enough variety to prize me away from Space Marines and Imperial Guard. However, on the release of the new 5th edition rules I thought that it was time to try a new Army and Necrons came to mind.

Lets be fair, part of the attraction was the fairly simple paint job. I’m not the fastest painter in the hobby and I do like to field a painted army, so Necrons were ideal. The other attraction was the fairly limited choice of unit types. This would give me the chance to collect every type of unit and try them in different combinations in different situations.

Having decided on Necrons as the new army, the next choice was to work on the colour scheme. That took about 5 seconds….I went for a very conservative silver. Well, they’re robots that look remarkably like Terminators (I’m sure any simililarity is purely co incidental, a company like Games Workshop wouldn’t dream of taking somebody else’s IP…..’I’ll be back’ indeed!) However, just to add a bit of colour I went back and added red to the shoulder pads.

The final bit was to decide on a basing scheme. After advise from the professionals from Middle Earth Studios, the clever people who paint the commissions for my shop, I decided on a simple Terracotta, highlighted up with bleached Bone and a touch of white. To seperate out the squads, I put scarabs on the bases of some and used a green crystal on the others. The Green crystals were to represent some sort of alien vegetation and became part of the background story as my army developed.

So I’ve got a basic colour scheme, a consistent basing system and the start of a background story, my army was on the way!

I mentioned the collecting thing earlier. Of course, having a true anorack gene embedded in me, I had to incorporate some of the older Necron models. So I painted the classic models that I had collected to form another squad.

I also had some Space Crusade Chaos Androids, which look like they were the forerunners for the Necrons, so I painted these in a similar style to form another squad of troops. As you can see, one had a broken gun, so I replaced it with a spare necron gun.

Finally, I said that I liked collecting. I found these special necrons issued to celebrate Games Workshops silver anniversary. I use them as Objectives during missions…..

So, that just about covers the troops, next time I’ll look at the HQ section…I’ll be back……

Welcome to the Arcane Scenery & Models blog. The blog thing is a whole new experience for me but I’ve had some great technical advise from Millie at Liquid Ozone so hopefully it will all work well. I aim to add at least one entry a week to keep you up to date with whats going on in the Arcane Scenery World.

So the blog will be a mixture of Trade News & Gossip, progress in the shop, and general thoughts about the business & hobby. I’ve been told to keep these thoughts as neutral as possible as I mustn’t upset customers. Well I wouldn’t want to upset anyone on purpose but sometimes an honest appraisal gets the debate moving. However, if you you have another perspective, please let me know, but try to keep it reasonably polite, as death threats are a bit depressing, particularly when it concerns a hobby!

Also on the Blog will be the occasional Battle report & campaign for all of you Warhammer 40k fans. I’ll also include a few articles that I wrote about my Necron Army. I’m a big fan of Warhammer 40K and I’ve recently shifted my allegiance from Imperial Guard to Necrons. It was a brilliant bit of timing as the New Imperial Guard Codex was published this year and it is full of my favourite models…Tanks!

Anyone that is interested in life outside of Warhammer will also get a look in. I’ll do some reviews of the latest kits & products that go through the shop. I’m also going to take a few retropective looks at some of the products that I sell so I hope that this will build into a hobby guide as well. I often think that there should be more of a cross over between the Fantasy side of the hobby and the Military scale side. There are many tricks & techniques each could learn from the other and many products that are suitable (and often better value) for both sides of the hobby. Hmm sounds like the basis for a future entry…

So that’s about it for now. I need to get on and pack todays orders but before I go here’s a few pictures of our new location. Yes, as well as a new web site, we’ve moved into new premises but as you can see it’s all now set up and ready to expand with even more goodies!