Saxon Houses

The ones the poor folk would have lived in....:-(

Saxon conversions (Emhar)

A busy day yesterday, cutting off arms and heads, twisting arms and legs with a bit of gentle persuasion and a small pair of pliers :-D

The whole gang, so far

Saxon Warriors (Emhar)

Or, as with the Vikings...Emhar or Imex. as is shown in the PSR review.
Like the vikings, these are made of hard glueable plastic, and I´m in the process of converting a few now. The head swops are a dream...cut the head off one bod and glue on another (obviously the recipient has had his old head removed first)  using normal plastic kit glue.

These were sent to me along with the Vikings by Dan from the Command tent..and I say again, thanks mate...they are real fun to paint and convert. :-D

I went for a toned down colour scheme, no brightly coloured shileds etc.   I consider these the levy type of foot soldiers, no chain mail, basic helmets and weaponary.

One thing to watch out for...the thin parts like the shafts of weapons...only use a very tiny bit of glue on them...they melt very quickly!!!!

Federation Force Troopers (Dark Dream studios)

The only thing I´ve found that comes close to a review of this lot is at Toy Soldier HQ (scroll down), PSR haven´t covered them...yet :-D
A big thankyou to Alex for sending me these weird and wonderfull bods :-D 
I´ve also got the machines but so far have only managed to work out how one of them fits together. If anyone knows where I can find the build instructions, especially for the Imperial Force Cyborg Destroyer "Long Shadow" I´d be very gratefull.

Rifle group

Heavy weapons. From left to right, MG, some sort of ray gun, missile launcher, grenade launcher

The whole team in the ruins of @°§*'! (sorry, the alien for this place doesn´t translate) backed up with my scratch built A.P.U

Hello to Sasha (Zed1) from Zed´s Napoleonics blog Sasha is into Napoleonics...and a great job he does of them...some of his conversions are inspirational...he even paints their eyes!!!
Hello to Haarken from Martians & and Machine Guns blog .Colonial & Science Fiction Wargaming in the Victorian Age, very HG Wells, his Martian Tripods are lovely.
Hello to Smillie from Painting Diary Blog. A great painter with a sense of humour...his lateset post about PVA gold is well worth a read...I agree entirely with it..
Hello to Andrew. I´ve found you on Google + but no blog??

Revell Albatross D.III (Lt B. Loerzer 1917)

I´ve already built one of these, painted up in the colours of Ltn . Werner Voss, Jasta 2 Boelcke, June 1917.  but I really like the look of Albys so I couldn´t resist doing another.
This one is in the colours of Lt Bruno Loerzer, Jasta 26, westen front, summer 1917.

 Stringbags!!!! I love em!! :-D

Hello to Chasseur...from For Honour´s Sake blog. Long time member of the Bennos forum he´s now gone over to the "dark side"...the bigger than 20mm stuff!!!!!!!! :-D
The idea of making a drill into a mini lathe is a great one...I´m going to pinch that one mate.

Coates & Shine Indian Elephants

Coates & Shine, sounds a bit like a firm of solicitors in a Charles Dickens Novel. Still, their eles are a vast improvement on the Hat War elephants set

Hello to Christopher from Moodys adventures blog, the Professor Elemental´s Fighting trousers vid is well worth a look :-D
Hello to Nuno Mata. He has 4 blogs, the Action Figure Hospital one has some great stuff...I didn´t know there was a Matrix Morpheus figure.
Hello to Santyago and Vin...Thanks for following :-D
I can´t link back to your blogs..either blogger is acting up or your friend connect isn´t  set up...??

Fantasy Island

A question...did the makers of Avatar and Dragon hunter make up the floating islands they show ?
The Answer..No. They used references from a rare 12th century manuscript, the Libellus Plumbeus  which clearly shows a floating "island" and gives a full and indepth description of thier uses and users.
I have been given access to this document and have been able to recreate one of the scenes shown as shown below.

Here is the recreation of the floating  island (Insula natantes) An interesting fact I discovered is that the real reason for Stonehenge is not a sundial...but it´s a central docking point..a bit like a big harbour. Apparently there were lots of these structures around the country allowing the pilots of the islands to dock to take on supplies etc.

You may ask yourself  "How did these things travel??" This puzzled me at first but on closer inspection of the Libellus Plumbeus, I discoverd that they moved by means of light breezes along leylines, hence the Stonehenge dock  being on what is supposed to be central "hub" of ley lines

Here we see a farmer, who after helping to secure the anchor rope is asking wether his ploughing is straight. Life was much more simple back then eh??

All the buildings of the islands were built of Welsh blue stone, which is thought to contain magical powers. The tower holds the winding gear for the anchor rope and is a common feature of the islands.

What happened to these wonderfull floating mysteries??? Apparently in 1279, there was a massive hurricane which blew a lot of them out to sea, where lacking the powergrid of the ley lines they simply plumeted into the sea. One particually big one is reckoned to have become the isle of skye. The rest?? Who knows...probably all fell victim to soil erosion.

Hat Late Roman Missile troops

Not a bad set, even if the plastic is a bit soft and "paint resistant"
The plumbatii and archers are already incorporated into my  late imperial roman army and only the crossbowmen and Scorpians were left to do. 

Maypole dancers

Just for fun.:-D

Emhar Vikings (1/72nd)

Or theses days Emhar or Imex., anyway, they both use the same box art. These were kindly sent by Dan from the Command tent...again Dan,,many thanks :-D  Saxons and Zvezda Vikings soon.

The plastic, being hard and the glueable stuff, allows a lot of possible conversions

The bod in the middle is the original pose...he´s sporting last years fashion, a gold leafed jacket , Mr Grimbaldson to his right has a natty steel plate coat on while Mr Undwold, to the left has a simple "lets go Pillaging" leather Jerkin. Mr Undwold also carries the gangs crews Flag of a stoopiing Crow, which I got from Ray´s Blog Don´t throw a one, where there are more on the rack to choose from.

Horseshoe tower 1/72nd

A horseshoetower, in german a Backofenturm, Schanzturm, Schalen  oder Halbschalenturm. A combination of a round tower with a square one.. to qoute wikipedia; 

The horseshoe-shaped (or D-shaped) tower is a compromise that gives the best of a round and a square tower. The semicircular side (the one facing the attacker) could resist siege engines, while the rectangular part at the back gives internal space and a large fighting platform on top

This model is designed, made and available from  Fredericus-rex and painted by Conny´s wife, Petra.

A beautifull  looking model..

Here the tower is combinred with the portcullis gate

Zvezda Catapult

This is a  monster of a scorpian device...I can´t imagine how far it would fire the rocks supplied with the kit, let alone how far the bolts would fly if it were life size and real. !!
I´ve seen a Replica catapult (a re-enactment group) that fired a 40kg rock over 100 meters (they didn´t put it on full tension because of limited space) but it was roughly half the size  the Zvezda model would be if scaled up.
The actual size (it looks big next to a bod) isn´t that far fetched, quite small really...look at this beast!!!

This is a reproduction of a Roman catapult that apparently stood 8 meters tall and weighed 26 tonnes

If when you build it and take care not to glue the elavation support etc...it can be put into a downward firing position  (on a castle wall )...........or......

........raised to shoot upwards at a castle wall.

 A lovely little bit of kit...I´ll have to pinch the other from my romans and re-paint it.