British artillery observation officer

As a little light relief from the other, larger projects on the bench at the moment, I painted these little chaps, the artillery observation team from Warlord. As you get a free A.O.O. for your Brits in Bolt Action, I thought I had better add one to the army as the first order of business after finishing the British starter set.

Really nice metals, quite a lot of flash on the guy with the binoculars, not all of which I managed to get (there's still some on the back of the Sten gun, quite a lot actually, but I've tried to camouflage it as well as I can). I find this is always a problem with me and metals, for some reason my eyes just don't register that flash and mold lines as well as I do on plastic and I always find some weird knobbles when I'm halfway through painting something.

First up, the officer himself...

As always, the camera has picked up some little bits that need touching up. This guy is a lovely model, but very tall in comparison to the warlord plastics, and this is compounded by him having a really thick tab on the base. To mitigate this problem a little I have placed all three of these guys on the plastic recessed Warlord bases instead of my usual 2p sized bases from Warbases, and it does help to bring them down to a slightly more regular height.

You can probably also see here that I don't paint eyes on my miniatures, just a little strip of dark brown. I know an eye adds a lot, but it's a huge pain to do, and I'm not aiming for my miniatures to win any painting prizes, so what's the point? I just want a good looking army done, and this is just one of the shortcuts I take to make sure I actually finish things. A slightly half-arsed but complete model is better to me than not finishing it because I let my ambition overrun my time.

This chap is my favourite, very simple design, but very clean and very enjoyable to paint. I've just spotted that I need to go back and do his canteen in the correct colour. Sod it. Oh well, off I go...

Hello world.

Hi everyone*, welcome to Playing Billy Suggers, a spooneristic and ocassionally foul-mouthed journey through my wargaming activities. This post is by way of a hello, and a little bit about me and my wargaming history. I shall intersperse it with pictures of what I have been working on lately; a warlord games British Army starter box, and a few other ww2 odds and ends, just to liven up the wall of text. Some of them will be a bit crap quality, like this first one, because they are snapshots from my phone. I'll try harder in future. Probably.

I have decided to ramp up my involvement in the hobby of late. For the last five years I have been languishing under the weight of a teaching job, and for the last two under the heel of a miniature tyrant (my son), and it's about bloody time I took some time and energy back to enjoy myself and get out of the house a bit. To this end, I have started to paint and build again, and I'm looking into local wargames clubs, with a view to actually going outdoors and meeting people. I've never really got the hang of doing it before, and doubt I'll be much better at this time, but I'm determined, dammit, that I shall be a quasi-hermit no longer.

I started wargaming back in about '91, having bought the Rogue Trader rulebook and a box of Space Orks. I'd been led to do so by Space Crusade, and a copy of White Dwarf bought randomly whilst on holiday on the Isle of Wight. It kept me entranced in the back of the car for the entire week and blew the mind of the ten year old who until then had been making dioramas with his airfix planes (thoroughly dunked in enamel and everything!). I played 40k religiously through until 3rd edition (and a renaissance during 5th and 6th), and WFB during the 3rd edition 'red phase'. I also played all the specialist games, and have serious soft spots for Blood Bowl, Warhammer Quest, and Necromunda to this day. I have zero interest in Age of Sigmar or the current iteration of 40k. I can't stand the scale creep, and don't think GW's current approach to miniatures lends itself to mass armies of the type I like to collect. I do still occasionally play 40k, but it is with select friends who I played with back when I was a neophyte, and only because I own an entire Ultramarine 4th company, and it would be a crime to spend that much money on something and have to keep it in a box in the loft.

I went to Salute about 8 years ago for the first time, and lo! the veil was lifted from mine eyes and I beheld the glory of the vast range of other games out there. I'm still flitting between systems, but have finally realised that you collect a period, not a rule set. To that end I am currently reviving my interest with WW2 miniatures (mainly Warlord at the moment, but I plan to branch out at some point). I also have several small dark ages warbands used mainly for SAGA but ripe for expansion if I desire, and a Crusader army, ostensibly built for a War & Conquest refight of Arsuff that I had in mind, but currently languishing as a half finished project. Most of my stuff is 28mm, because that is what I enjoy painting, but I'd very much like to try a smaller scale with either ancients or napoleonics.

That's it, really. I look forward to yelling into this void again. I'll leave you with a couple of tanks, because everyone loves tanks, right?

*Or no-one, as the case may be. I have very few expectations that this blog will get read at all, but I'm going to do it anyway. Call it my folly.