"The minds, they are a-changin'...."

Kurz and Allison - The Battle of Five Forks

I have at last got my small order to Navwar in the post which means that work on the stalled WW2 North Atlantic naval project can resume once the models arrive. I shall be pleased to get this off the paint tray as it has dragged on for longer than I would have liked. Changing my mind about the models to use (if you recall it was a destroyer related issue - the models are too large) midway through the first batch did not help, neither did the summer heatwave!

I have made enquiries about the models I shall be using for my Portable North African Wargame and so expect to start acquiring material for this shortly. Initially it will be the Legion and the Berbers but phase two will see the addition of the British and some Turkish advisers for the Sanussi revolt during the Great War. This will give me a good excuse to get some Rolls Royce Armoured Cars! The beauty of this project is that, in true Portable Wargame style, will be pretty compact in terms of the amount of material I will be need.

The biggest single piece of news though, concerns the 30mm Spencer Smith Balkan project.

For a variety of reasons I shall not be pursuing this. The figures I shall be getting which are from the classic ACW range will instead be used as intended - in other words they will be used for the ACW.

I shall still be organising them using Charge! as a guide and with figures based individually. I will also use the wonderful Kurz and Allison prints as my painting guide so expect a suitably garish (and glossy) old school toy soldier vibe with them! I shall use the armies with a variety of rule sets with the Neil Thomas 19th Century set added to the Portable Wargame, Charge! or even Battle Cry as the mood takes me.

I have opted to do this simply because the variety of troop types for the Balkans is much larger than the Spencer Smith range can readily cope with. 

The naval dimension in support of this project will be scratch built and the plan is to have generic looking models that will fit on to a 5.5" (across the flat sides) hex. This means they can be slightly larger than my previous models. I also intend painting these in what I would describe as an old toy soldier style so clean and tidy and stylised.

The Grand Duchy of Artois and the Electorate of Kronenbourg will appear in due course but in their 18th century plumage - as I originally intended.