Not nearly as productive as I had hoped for this month. But still busy from before sun up to after sundown.

This means, nothing new for January. However, I thought I’d post a quick picture from late last month when I was able to grab a few hours at the painting table. Please remember that I’m not a great painter; best I can say is that I manage to get paint in roughly the right places…

Anyhow, the above photo shows some quick conversion work I did over the holidays. The figure in the center was my starting point. The two flanking figures are the result of my conversion efforts. Nothing fancy here, pretty much a straight head swap along with a new shield. The head and shield are standard bits from Blasted Planets; an orc head and the shield is from the bits box (used on various Blasted Planets figures).

The idea was to create some new fantasy themed figure(s) for use on the game table. So, here we have a simple orc swordsman; he will be joined by a few more variations on same figure – I’ll be doing some sword swaps next. I’ll be adding another basic pose or two as well; conversions all – the others may include some gunpowder weapons. When I’m done, I’ll make a mold and cast up enough pieces to field an orc army or two. I typically paint orcs in two basic colour schemes: goblin-ish green (as seen in the photo) and red. This gives me two factions or tribes; I can use the tribes to distinguish units or I can simply fight a green vs. red battle.

More photos as I complete my various conversions. I’ll be sharing my game ideas as well; right now, I’m toying with a variation on the Commands & Colors system, but may mash things up a bit, since my troop types will be quite basic (infantry with: swords, spears and maybe muskets and perhaps some light cavalry types). I have a couple more busy weeks ahead, so progress will be slow until the first full week in February.

Join the discussion on Facebook; join our new group on Facebook and discus this or any other war game or miniatures related topic.

One for Diplomacy Players:

Diplomacy World #136

I especially enjoyed: Three-Player Variants: A Review, By Jack McHugh

A repeat from the HistoriFigs website…

2016 has been full of challenges…

We’ve been behind schedule all year long, and now we are faced with a new challenge; A few weeks back, Alison broke both wrists. The good news is that her recover progress has been very good. That said it will still be many weeks before she can resume normal activity. This leaves the bulk of farm chores to me. This leaves almost zero free time to cover shop duties (Alison does/did 95% of our casting).

Rather than allowing ourselves to fall even further behind, we have decided to enter Winter Quarters. In other words we will be limiting shipping to “In Stock” items; pretty much anything Bloodaxe Minitatures, Resistant Roosters, Blasted Planets or Adalen Miniatures. The Classic line is mostly cast on demand and production times are, at present, unpredictable.

We expect to exit Winter Quarters in the Spring of 2017; no date set as of yet. but we do expect to be back to normal capacity by mid May. In the meantime, should you need some figures from the Classic line, drop us a note, if we can fulfill the order in a timely manner we will gladly spin the molds for you.

Back from our road trip…

Now its time to spill the beans. Our trip to New York, Little Neck, New York (to be more accurate) served two purposes. One being a chance for Alison to catch up with an old friend and the other being to pickup a van load of Toy Soldiers.

By now you are asking: how does this all tie into Military Cast ? Just the short answer for today; Military Cast, was an importer of toy soldiers, military models, and the like. The business was run by Irving Bechky. Alison’s old friend is Allen Bechky, Irving’s youngest son.

Long story short (with more information in future posts); Irving passed away a number of years ago, and his family held onto his personal collection of soldiers as well as all the remaining stock of soldiers. Over the years many of the collection pieces have been sold or given away, but the there were still a number of pieces at the family home in Little Neck. After 60 years, at the same address, the time has come to sell the family home, and as part of the house cleaning and preparations for moving, the soldiers needed to find a new home and that new home is our home.

Over the next few months we will sort and catalog the soldiers, many of which are examples of figures not seen in over 40 years, after which we will make a determination of which pieces will be added to our collection and which will be offered for sale.

Much more information to follow along many more pictures. I’m envisioning a series of un-boxing posts as well as some more background information on Military Cast and the figures they imported.

Since our teaser posts included hints at Kilia and OKI flats we will start today’s photos with a quick shot of a carton containing Kilia and OKI flats, all in original boxes with original packing materials – these are new, old stock packages:

New, old stock Kilia and Oki flats

Our other teasers concerned SAE and Holger Eriksson figures:

SAE 54mm Soldiers of the World

SAE, 54mm unpainted

Some JAL 54mm, Napoleon’s Staff:

Napoleon

I’ll close out today’s photos and post with a photo of the first bit of Military Cast history that we saw upon our arrival:

The Military Cast mailbox…

Look for more pictures and information in the near future. Next time we will have a few pictures from Little Neck along with some more quick pictures from our initial figure review at the Bechky home.

Military Cast Tour 2016 powered by: Pearl Jam Radio and The Red Hot Chili Peppers – long drives require driving music…

The past week and weekend have been a busy time. Lots of school related activities and then alpaca shearing on Sunday. This week is a bit crazy busy too…

So, nothing new just yet.  However a couple more teaser images today:

More news after the 23rd (unless I can post from the road late next week). At which time we will be able to share some details, and most likely lots of pictures, on my new hobby related project.