406 Ups and Downs...and Stupidity in Paint Nomenclature

Hullo, All.

As always the weather's absolutely dreadful, so the photo I snapped yesterday with my mobile phone - mid-basecoating - is about all I can muster in terms of proof(!) but since then I've done a lot...with mixed results. With green being 'good' and red 'less so', I've now...

1. ...more-or-less devoured the Bolt Action rules. I'm not one for writing reviews, but I like how refreshingly open and explicitly simplistic they are. The book is lovely inded (helped by the Osprey illustrations) and it has a delightfully tongue-in-cheek tone throughout. An index would be helpful, but it's really very readable indeed.
2. ...basecoated my Matilda II. Now if you're not aware of this, please note that I have absolutely no understanding of colour. I'm not colour-blind, but I quite literally cannot see the image of a colour on a painting guide and recreate it. At all. And trust me - if you're like me with this, the names and code numbers that companies (like Vallejo and GW) assign to their colours REALLY don't help: for example (trying to paint my Matilda II) the colour Brown-Violet is neither brown nor violet and is in appearance a kind of dirty bluey-grey. I do not have a snowball's chance in hell here...
3. ...got the fivepence bases sorted for my reinforced 15mm Bolt Action rulebook: £1.75's worth in total. I stuck them, built them up them with filler and spray-basecoated them, along with some outstanding FoW sniper bases...and ONLY THEN did I realise I'd forgotten to texture them with sand. Doing so and painting over it cost me another hour.

   

   Based? - YES!   Sprayed? - YES!  Textured? - Oh, bugger.

4. ...painted the thress base colours onto my platoon HQ, 1 and 2 sections, the 2" mortar team and the Boys Rifle team...and here's where I hit trouble. The wonderful Dai was right: my troops (as it says on the back of BBX04) are indeed supposed to be in Italy. No problem,' thought I... until I realised that unlike any picture I can find of the BEF in 1940 they've all got their bloody sleeves rolled up. Downside of 15mm, eh? Bugger.

Still, the upside of 15mm at least is that having decided to sod it and paint them up in olive drab anyway I breezed through them at pace, and another two-hour session should enable me to finish the all of the paint on those core troops noted above (the remainder comprise 3 section, a sniper team and my artillery FOO's team). If by some chance I develop a sudden and uncharacteristic urge to play some Italian theate battles...well, then I guess maybe they're fresh reinforcements from England without their lighter battledress.

Experimental BA army lists to follow later this week.

...and don't worry: I aven't forgotten other projects. The Emperor keeps his watch over me yet...

- Drax.