Deserts and Tropical Colour Schemes

Getting closer to the end - thank the maker!

Bit of a mixed bag in that my gaming time has been severely curtailed due to the amount of decorating and DIY that has been ongoing. I have tackled a few things - details of which later - but to give you an idea of the scale of exactly what has been happening at Chez Crook.

Painted the shed
Painted the garage doors
Painted the second bedroom
Painted the downstairs cloakroom
Painted the lounge
Painted and repaired the fences both sides
Resealed and refurbished the decking
Ripped out and disposed of two alcove’s worth of wood and MDF units
Jet washed the patio and drive

The lounge needs a second coat on the woodwork - as was pointed out by Mr Fox the floorboards have been holystoned to within an inch of their lives - and the all new tropical white scheme has made a world of difference in respect of the all important lighting.

On the gaming side I finally managed to get up into the man cave to continue labelling Command and Colours Napoleonic blocks - the Russians in this case - and I managed to get all the infantry completed. The cavalry and artillery I will do tomorrow and I am hoping to get the remaining blocks completed over the coming week. I also have the the Medieval set to tackle which I will do immediately afterwards.

I have also been thinking more about the 1:600th collection and what I will be doing with it. If you recall all the figures are Tumbling Dice although I am making use of Peter Pig ACW artillery and the command groups. The reason for this is the only artillery available from Tumbling Dice is WW1 and WW2 - all of which feature gun shields.

The collection will be split up into two in that I have earmarked the close order infantry and cavalry to the 19th century and everything else to the 20th. That explains the need for the Peter Pig ACW figures.

As it stands I am looking at one of two sets up for the 19th century - either the British Invasion of Egypt or the Russo Turkish War. For the former there is the possibility of exploring the Sudan - 1:600th scale Mahdists? Whatever next? - and the latter has an interesting naval perspective. Of course the prospect of Nile gunboats is an interesting one....

For the 20th century the choice is wide and I currently wrestling with a number of options. The Arab Revolt (either the Senussi or the more traditional Revolt in the Hejaz) is really tempting alongside the regular operations in Palestine. I also rather fancy the WW2 Tunisian campaign and then on into Italy or even the South of France in 1944.

Whilst the continual rumination is ongoing I took a step back and decided that a game was in order and so I have set something up on a Portable Wargame basis that will be appearing on the blog in a couple of days.

Watch this space then!