Top Charts Searches 2014

Well, my birthday is this week and it is one of the big ones. I thought I would celebrate it "Hobbit" style and instead of receiving gifts I would give some gifts instead. Its also an act of complete desperation as I try to break the 100 followers mark! I have been hanging at 97 for weeks it seems (and wouldn't you know it jumped to 99 as I typed this). Besides everyone else is doing it so I figured I could jump on the band wagon. Its an interesting mix of stuff, it reflects both my hobbies. Unfortunately I didn't find any true narrow gauge stuff but I think a couple of the books are worth a look if you are interested in the SP or the ATSF. The only thing that is really missing from this is any historical units, sorry, just can't quite give any of those up yet, maybe next year! And as it has become traditional the photos aren't particularly good

Here is the loot that will be randomly given away:

1) Reaper Mouslings: Two of these are currently in production 3577 Asiago Jones and  3576 Lara Craft. The third I can't find so I think he is the Convention Mousling from 2011. All I can tell you is he is wearing a badge.

2) And now a book: The Southern Pacific in Los Angeles. I had picked this up thinking that it would have some information on the ATSF Warehouse district. There were a couple of references to the ATSF in the book but not what I had hoped for.

3) McVey Studios - Vianna. I bought this one when it first came out and set it aside, the detail is so fine that it kind of scared me. Later Marike Reimer won the first Crystal Brush with this piece and I bought it again forgetting that I already had it.

4) Sante Fe...Steel Rails Through California, quite frankly I'm not sure where or when I picked this one up but it doesn't cover the area I'm interested in!

5) Victoria Lamb Miniatures Torgo's Trench Raiders. I love Victoria Lamb's work and I just picked these up from her when she came down to Texas after ReaperCon. If they had been her Imperial Guard minis I would have kept them but I can't think of anything I'm going to do with them. Hopefully somebody can use these beautiful pieces. She does great work.


6) Another book! The Polar Bears: Monty's Left Flank, Patrick Delaforce. Somehow along the line I managed to pick up two copies of this one. 

7) Defiance Games UAMC Infantry. When this hit the market I was very excited about it because I was thinking about doing Traveller in 28mm. I have since changed my mind and have gone to 15mm instead. So these are surplus. And no I never received the special edition Marine Sgt that was supposed to be shipped because I pre-ordered it.

8) Okay, something a little different for the model railroaders. An Exact Rail, Platinum Series Southern Pacific 62' Insulated Box Car in HO Scale. I bought this for my ATSF Warehouse District without paying attention to the length and its a bit to long for the layout. It won't make the curve in the brick canyon I have planned.

9) From Dark Sword Miniatures a Keith Parkinson MAsterworks Box  DSM 2002. I have intended to paint these for years but the sculpts just don't appeal to me.


10) And now another  Exact Rail, Platinum Series 62' Insulated Box Car for the D&RGW in HO Scale.

11) The last item up is another Dark Sword Miniatures Caldwell DSM 3001. Again something I intended to paint but the sculpts don't appeal to me. Maybe they will appeal to someone else.




12) The last one is a book I stumbled across and I think its a must if you are interested in WWI,
"His Time in Hell, A Texas Marine in France". The World War I memoir of Warren R Jackson. He fought from Verdun through Belleau Wood to the end of the War as part of the 6th Marine Regiment. A fascinating memoir that simply needs to be shared. I hope somebody out there will enjoy it.

So there are a dozen items, my gifts to you.

Here are the rules (because I'm a gamer and there must be rules).

1) You must be a public follower of my blog (just click that nifty follower button on the right if    you aren't a follower all ready). Sounds kind of like a cult but that's the rule.

2) Make a comment in this post (Like Santa Claus I will be cross checking followers to comments) and tell me what bits of loot you are interesting in (yes, you can just be in for all of them). This comment gets you one entry into the drawing for each item you are interested in.

3) There are no bonuses for additional comments! I have enough to do without counting how many times you manage to comment ;-)

4) There is a bonus for linking this post on your own blogs though. That will get two additional entries into each of  the drawings you are interested in. Although you do have to tell me about it, especially if you are brand new, shiny follower.

5) The cut-off date is May 29th and I'll announce the winners a couple of days after that. Hopefully I'll be able to ship everything out during the first week of June or so.

Thanks and Good Luck!

I'm thinking about making this a regular Friday post, something that will help me keep my projects in order and on track and maybe actually finish one or two of them before the end of the year. A couple of these do have real deadlines so that might help me stay on target. I'm going to sort of list these in a priority order, of course that is subject to change without notice.

1) RPG characters, finish. These are for my every other Saturday game. There are only six of them, you would think this was a slam dunk kind of thing. 1 Female Gnome Battlemage, 1 Male Dwarf Barbarian, 1 Male Dwarf Cleric (NPC, currently being played by someone interested in joining the group), 1 Female Human Rogue, 1 Male Human Cleric and 1 Male Elf Paladin. These only have to be tabletop paint jobs and are likely to see rough use. I would like to have these done for the next game so I have a week at this point.

2) SAGA Norman army, get started. These are the Perry Miniatures which are all prepped and just need to be mounted for painting and primed. I want to enter these in the army painting competition for Genghis Con XXXIV in February of 2013. So they are to get my best efforts. There are 87 miniatures here so I do need to get moving. I think rather than my normal assembly painting style I'm going to paint these up by SAGA points which should let me concentrate on just a small set of figures at a time. So 4 mounted Knights, 8 armored Spearmen, 8 Crossbows, 12 Archers or a single character. For the characters I plan on mounted and dismounted versions of the warlord plus a couple of small character vignettes.

3) SAGA Norman army, repair and touch-up. These are the Gripping Beast Miniatures which make a fine wargame army. Unfortunately some repair is necessary after they were returned to me. I have some new steel lances on the way to replace the cast pewter ones so those will become more survivable (and slight more dangerous to your opponent since they are actually quite sharp). I found some Gripping Beast crossbows to replace the two missing ones and I'm going to take a shot at sculpting a couple of tails to replace the missing ones on the horses (I think there are two missing tables). A little touch-up work after that and this will be an army to be proud of on the battlefield.

4) 15mm British Napoleonics, re-base and paint.  After initially being very enthused about the LaSalle rules my group has kind of soured on them. Although others may disagree they just don't have the right "feel" to them. It has nothing to do with the weird turn sequence either (I have several games I enjoy that have weird turn sequences), its like the armies are just to generic and don't really seem to behave the way you expect them to behave. I can't really explain it better than that. So I'm mounting these up for Napoleon at War. This will let me use them for Napoleon's battles as well. The bases are a bit larger than Napoleon's Battles but pretty close. I have remounted one infantry unit (74th Highlanders, non-kilted) and started another last night (88th Connaught Rangers). These are mounted on six stands of four for a total of 24 figures which means I have 8 figures left over from each LaSalle unit I rebase. I'll have a bunch of extra center company infantry after I'm done so I guess my British infantry force is going to get a significant expansion which means I'll need more command, grenadier and light infantry minis to fill them out. Of the six stands one is grenadier, one is light, one is command (2 flags, an officer and a drummer, this counts as center company) and three center company stands. Each unit also gets two little skirmisher stands. These will be filled out mostly with regular light infantry but I'll do a proportion of them as rifles as well. Hopefully this will be the kickstart I need to actually get the artillery and cavalry done as well.

5) 15mm ACW, finish. I just need to get the union cavalry done for this army. Its never been a high priority since the union side rarely has cavalry and I have some older stuff that can be subbed in.

6) 28mm WWI USMC next unit. This has always been a side project so I'll fill it in a unit at a time as I feel like it. I have everything I need for this army now, including a couple of little FT-17s for support.

7) LoTR Helmingas finish. Originally this was going to be a display/tournament army that would have taken place last month. Unfortunately that tournament was cancelled when the organizer moved to the other side of the state for work. I have almost all the pieces for this one, the infantry component has been started and I think I have most of the cavalry component now. I'm missing two characters Eomer and Erkenbrand to finish off the army. I do intend to finish this army as I enjoy the game. There will probably be re-newed enthusiasm once the Hobbit is released.

8) Legion of the Damned 40K, acquire. This is a truly long term project and again is meant to be more of a display army than anything else. I have slowly been acquiring Legion of the Damned miniatures, both older and newer models to create an army. Now of course its not legal as an army but I'm not letting that stop me since I don't actually intend to play 40K with them. This will be a highly converted army and some of the ideas are still gelling while I acquire the various components (the cheaper the better!).

9) Genghis Con XXXIV entries. Its never to early to start on competition entries. I have all the components for my diorama and construction and painting can commence anytime now. I haven't decided on which individual piece I'll do, but I'm determined to have at least two entries in the competition this year.

10) Danish TYW in progress. Another display army for me, currently no one is playing so I don't feel rushed to get it done. My enthusiasm waxes and wanes on this one, however, I do want to get some work done on it to see my painting style mixes with the oil-wipe technique.

11) ATSF "the Patch" general work. Although construction proceeds at a snails pace it does slowly move forward as I work on rolling stock, motive power and the occasional building. The first priority there is to finish the brick freight house that I started. I found the clerestory windows that I misplaced that I need for the roof so I can get back to construction on that.

I think that's a reasonable accurate list at the moment. Of course its going to change on a whim, as other miniatures surface. I'm pretty sure that I have pirates and cowboys hidden away in drawers that would like to get painted. I'll probably add those to the list after I get my ships from the Laser Dreamworks Kickstarter and I get a look at the buildings from Battle Flag and Sarissa Precision.

So what's on your plate?

And by recent I mean arrived today! I haven't wanted a set of the express boxcars for sometime and I finally got them at a good price on eBay. Quite happy with that purchase. The second purchase wasn't quite so good. I didn't read the description or look at the photos closely enough on the auction for these. I thought I was buying ATSF SFRC mechanical refrigerator cars, instead these are ATSF (at least I got that part right) SFRD which are ice bunker refrigerator cars. Not sure that I could even technically use these on the 1974 -78 era layout. I probably will anyway, I'm not that much of a stickler and they probably won't look out of place on the layout anyway.

So yes, my trains are suffering as well. Currently one half of the ATSF Patch district has track layed but not wired. I need to figure out a way to keep the two hollow core doors tightly together. I was making good progress on rolling stock but I ran out of the Sergeant couplers that I was using. However, just last week a box  full of couplers arrived so I have no more excuses about not getting the entire fleet finished up. Its not like I have hundreds of cars, its more like 10 - 12. Oh and I would have swore that the two beer cars I got from Exact Rail were 50' and the are actually something over 60'. I'll probably just go ahead and sell those off or trade them.  I have five ATSF Reefers that need to be weathered as well as the two CF7s. I have four background building kits to get me started on the rear portion of the layout and a lot of grandiose plans in my head. Once the layout is up and in place and the track thoroughly tested things should move right along. Unfortunately I have way to many hobbies and I can't seem to give any of them up.

The other layout is in mothballs at the moment. That is my turn of the century Colorado and Northwestern RR. I'm unhappy with the track design so it came down for the time being so that it doesn't frustrate me. There are about 30 box cars and 20 short gondola cars for that along with 3 2-8-0 (Consolidation), 1 2-6-0 (Mogul) and a two truck Heisler (that really should be a three truck Climax but that was way outside of my price range). I also need to acquire a 2 truck Shay but I'll see how I feel about that.