Follow up on the Quarterly Review, Good Bye to the Wee Lads

 

2mm ACW, it seemed like a great idea at the time

     I have decided to work my way through my collection starting with the smallest scales and moving larger. This is largely due to the realization that my eyes are not clear enough, and my hands are not steady enough, to deal with micro-scale minis any more. Thus all of my "half-done" projects are stuck in a state of stasis. As this violates the first three rules; "rational", "attainable" and "desirable" the tiny figures are at the head of the parade out of The Vault. I intend to offer them around to my wargaming buddies first, then either put them on Ebay at fire-sale prices or find somebody who is new to the hobby and pass them along as a starter set.

 

these were produced by Irregular 

and, given the size, are really quite nice

 

the little terrain bits are what really sold me!

 

my friend Garrie painted the Confederates 

(heroically painting the stars and bars on the tiny flags)

 
the cavalry come with dismounts and empty horses

1/1200scale Fort Sumter

 

frankly, I'm not even sure why I bought this 

we weren't gaming ACW naval in that scale

perhaps an early manifestation of my fort fetish

 

it is a ruddy great lump of resin, over 6" across

 

it came with cannon

 

but the ones from Thoroughbred were SO much prettier!

 

it is a good looking model

 

of Fort Sumter in the "before" state

5mm Napoleonics

 

sometimes an interesting figure will lead me down a rabbit-hole

 

when I first saw that Stone Mountain was offering these 5mm (6mm?) 

figures I thought to myself; "I can finally do a battalion at 1:1 scale!

 

as with so many of my projects

 I got about 1/3 of thew way through before burning out

 

somewhere along the way I painted a bunch of British

 

these are Heroics and Ros 5mm

 

the Stone Mountain figures are rather nice, just too small!

 

true to form I found it much easier to but figures than to paint them

 

additional French and British infantry

 

supported by loads of cavalry

 

which look very good painted up!

 

it seems that I bought an entire Austrian Army from Irregular at some point

 

gotta have guns, lots of them!

 

Lord only know where they all came from

5mm ACW

 

another Irregular product, 

I got the Union troops finished before losing steam

 

not "pretty" by modern standards but they are effective en-masse

5mm Seven Years War

 

hey look! another fort!

 

Heroics and Ros with wagons from GHQ

 

I got more than halfway through this project, 

probably because there was a fort involved

 

this is where production stalled 

 

they paint up surprisingly well

mind you these are really 5mm tall, not like modern 8mm tall figures

 

my basing was primitive in the early 80's

 

they look particularly good in large groups

 

and absolutely smashing on a fortress wall!

 

I nicked the carraige-mounted cannon from an old boat model that I found at a garage sale

1/1200 scale Ship of the Line

 

I got a couple dozen finished before I gave up,

it only takes a minute to buy them, it takes hours to paint and assemble them

 

the real stalling point was when I tried to assemble fleets for the  War of 1812 on the Great Lakes

 

then of course there were these lovely ocean-going giants

and just gobs of ships that never escaped the packages!

 

Crimson Skies 

 

last but not least Crimson Skies,

 it was jolly fun in the two games that I got into at conventions

 but I could never get anybody else in the group to bite