Crawling Out of the Fog

The last few weeks have been a rapid succession of damage control actions in my life, after three months of neglect.  

April is always a busy month with family birthdays and tax time here in the US, but this year had some additional stuff going on, so my world is really just starting to get back to normal after four months of chaos, and my hobby is starting to creep back into my consciousness.

Thus far, I haven't done a lot of hands on stuff, no building or painting, and that Barbarossa game from February still sets, ready to be played, on my table.

Most recently, I picked up that  Kroot Hunting Pack box from GW.

Aside from the original imperial guard, the Kroot are clearly the best thing to ever come out of GW.  Regretfully,  I missed out on some of the more interesting Kroot stuff years back, picking up only some plastics and a single metal fig.  At some point, maybe around September of last year, I picked up the Kill Team Kroot box, keeping a near future and/or post apoc idea alive.  Parting with the money for it about killed me, but at some point down the road, I'll be happy I picked it up.  I hope.

I've also ordered a bunch of Team Yankee 15mm West German infantry for my Cold War gaming (which to my surprise, is taking forever to arrive).  It will allow me to put together a company of West Germans.  I will need to sculpt and cast their rides and support, some SPz 11-2 recce and HS.30 APCs.  I'll probably scratch the Jagdpanzer 90 and Rakette SS-11 vehicles as well, though may break down and just buy the Leopard Is, not sure yet.

Another purchased is a small number of post apoc figs from Hasslefree and couple other sources.  I've heard that Hasslefree is having some hiccups getting orders out, so we will see how that goes.  I'm in no rush, so hopefully, however it works out will be okay.

The last purchase was a 32mm printed viking fig that just looked like I'd enjoy painting, figuring I'd work it into some fantasy stuff eventually, but it turned out to be a bust.  The fig is very nicely sculpted, but the sword is severly warped, perpendicular to the plane of the blade, and two large areas of the shield are simply missing as the shield was too thin to print properly.  Unfortunately, I'm once again let down by the printed figure experience.

Beyond ordering the figs, the only work that I've done is some research (photos and scale drawings) for the German vehicles mentioned above and the French AMX-VCI (or AMX-VTT) and the AMX 13/75.  I'll probably also do the AMX 13 with the M24 turret just for grins, but again, I haven't actually started making any of them yet.

Recently, I dug out my BTR-50P, which I started in December and is about half done, and my loose plan moving forward is to master several of these vehicles, and some other bits for various periods and scales, then order a bunch of rubber and resin and cast up everything all at once.  We'll see how that works out.

As I'm not a warm weather person (much prefering the cold and snow of winter over the heat and humidity of summer), and with the weather warming in coming weeks, I expect to retreat back into the basement and get back into action soon.