Vorwarts!

Today was an interesting day. First of all, I'd barely been in work half an hour when the shopping centre's alarm sounded (AWOOOGAH, AWOOOGAH, in best Calvin & Hobbes tradition) followed shortly after by our own fire alarm system. So off we all trotted into the glorious early April sunshine, while I fretted about the very hard to replace stuff in my paint-kit that I take to work each day! It turned out to be a duff sprinkler unit, but the excitement didn't wear off for a few hours so that was good.

Then, when I was sat down at lunch happily painting my Darendaran command squad (Yellow Company, Black Battalion, Darendaran X Mech. if you must know), the area manager came in and looked at me somewhat askance. Ah well. It keeps me sane and harms no-one; although he seemed surprised to find me still painting the same figures when he came back 40 minutes later. Well... yes?

Anyway, on my way home, I nipped into the Leamington Games Club to try and pick up the turret heavy flamer that's missing from Blue Platoon Squad 4's Chimera, only to discover that the fellow I was swapping bits with had forgotten it! Ah well. I stopped to chat to Rob, who is one of the glorious lunatics behind Prodos Games, and Will, the manager of GW Leamington Spa. They were about to be engaged in a game of Flames of War, the GW-esque 15mm approach to WW2. I was quite taken by their forces, and when Rob said he wanted to play early war games, I - perhaps foolishly - volunteered to raise a German force to fight his Poles.

I've got time to kill, and I'm quite looking forwards to the idea of a unit of 1939 German Whermacht, with their Pz. Is and IIs, not to mention their 35t and 38t Czechoslovak tanks and other weird and wonderful bits of kit. Peter Pig will, I think, be my first port of call as the prices that Battlefront charge are a bit much in my opinion.

So, today, I discussed Men of Company B, Slaughterloo, Flames of War, and Warhammer 40,000. Today was a good day.

Oh, and here are those Chimeras:

A terrible photo (I really must take more care in future). I'll take a better one tomorrow.

And, just for fun...

...a comparison between an original Darendaran X trooper (left) and one with the newer uniform (right).

Part of my unpainted mountain:

On the left is the full-strength Red Platoon (plus company Commissar); on the right is the under-strength Blue Platoon (still awaiting three rocket launcher teams. Yellow Company Command and most of Red (Weapons) Squad #4 are currently either being painted or undercoated.

All told the Darendaran Tenth number some 90 figures supported by 11 AIFVs, three Sentinel walkers, two Demolisher infantry support tanks, and a Hellhound flame-tank. I'm hoping to get the whole lot painted, based and finished this year. If I only finish one army this year I want it to be the Tenth Mechanised.

Oh, and just for Al Front:

Undercoated!