Balkan Wars and Vietnam

Just as a matter of record (and to reassure everybody that I have not gone completely barking mad!) – The Balkans Wars project has not been displaced by my minor flirtation with the Vietnam conflict! The current state of play with the Balkan 15mm figures is that the Bulgarians are just about ready for undercoating – I am prepping the artillery this evening – with the Turks to follow hard on their heels over the next few days. I am planning to undercoat the whole collection at once (to economise on spray paint!) and will then tackle each side separately. I have acquired the basing material (I use the pre cut plastic bases available from Essex Miniatures) and will be going with standard 40mm frontages for the figures.

The main uniform source I have at the present time is the Vachov title mentioned in my blog some time ago – supplemented by various painted figures I have seen across the net. Oh for an Osprey uniform title covering the war! Seriously though, I think I have enough to be going on with; certainly for 15mm anyway. Flags are a problem but it appears that in the Military Museum in Sofia there is a Balkan War room that has a good selection of Bulgarian flags – I need to pursue that lead methinks.

I am waiting on some of the wooden buildings mentioned previously from Amazon which will more than suffice for what I need and Cavalier at Tonbridge next month will see the acquisition (hopefully) of some terrain in the shape of trees etc. I hope to have the whole set up ready for Easter and I think that this is achievable, even for me!

As far as the Vietnam stuff is concerned have no fear – at this stage I am only going to push as far as using the variant of Memoir 44 I am working on. This adaptation of the game will be a minor diversion and nothing more – a cerebral exercise if you like. My thoughts and progress with this variant will feature on the blog though as I know that many readers are also Memoir 44 players and are therefore most welcome to contribute with any ideas and observations – in fact I am counting on this to a certain extent. No doubt in the interim I will also squirrel away some kits and books etc for the period over the course of the next few months but I will not even take the Vietnam figures out of the boxes, much less paint them, at least until the Balkans have been conquered!