Planning (Well) Ahead!

I’ve lapsed a bit with posts this year since I haven’t been finishing much lately, although, as I’ve said before, I seem to find my time filled in well enough! So I thought maybe I’d just write a bit about stuff that’s being planned and prepared. There is only one pretty uninteresting picture for this post (below) so if you want to skip this post and get on with whatever you were doing beforehand please feel free to do so and thanks for dropping by!

It’s probably obvious from the picture that I’ve been re-sorting the lead pile and adding in little notes to remind me what everything is! Those figures in the picture are the ones I think I’d like to be working on soon (meaning this year). These are for projects that have been in the planning stage for decades so with that in mind it’s probably worth me talking about the projects themselves. This doesn’t mean other stuff won’t get done and since I reviewed both my storage situation and neglected projects at the end of last year I’ve made progress on all fronts (not much admittedly)!

Victorian Science Fiction

The original plan in the late 90s was to add some steamtech to my Boxer Rebellion armies and let them all fight it out with that! I collected some 15mm and 25mm figures and bits over the years that I might be able to use but never got started. Fast forward to 2022 and I’ve now got more 19th Century national and colonial armies completed that I can feed into this project! The plan is just to add small amounts of steamtech equipment and units into these armies and let them fight it out on a bigger scale than I’d originally planned. The first, small, generic units have now been base-coated and I’m hoping to finish some of them pretty soon! One of the main achievements has been completing my Squid army to invade Earth (see here) and make life that much more difficult for the humans!

Martian Empires

This is really a VSF sub-project. Back when I first planned it in the 90s, I bought some Peter Pig 15mm Green Martians (as found in Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars/Barsoom books) and converted a handful of ancient Greeks into Red Martians to fight them. I then proceeded to do nothing with them! I did, however collect bits and pieces that I could use and have now come back to this part of the project. Since Fighting 15s make some very nice Green Martians, I’ve bought a few to paint and see how they look and I’ve also bought some historical 20mm figures that I think will pass for Red Martians. At the moment the Red and Green Martians will form a combined force to fight both Squids and human invaders from Earth!

Second Afghan War

Having got my Boxer Rebellion British Empire force under way in the 90s I read a couple of articles in Wargames Illustrated about the Afghan army in the 19th Century and decided I’d like to make an Afghan force. I could get some Afghan irregular figures in 20mm scale but I had to convert regular infantry from WW1 Russian infantry. I got about 15 figures converted but then moved on and got no further. But I’ve recently discovered that Newline Designs now make Afghan regular troops in 20mm scale so this project is back in the running! A 19th Century Afghan army also fits into my VSF plans and can form a potential central Asian superpower!

Crimson Dust (Crimson Skies Ground Forces)

I started playing the Crimson Skies boardgame around 2000 (alternative 1930s aerial combat) and had an idea that I could build some 20mm scale ground forces to game with at the same time. This project didn’t get far but in the intervening years I’ve added enough 20mm WW1 and WW2 forces to my collection to think about starting this off again. As with the VSF project, the idea will be to add some extra units and equipment to existing armies to give them a 1930s character. I’ve got figures and equipment identified that I can use for this project but more than likely this will take longer to get realised than the projects described above.

Although it might sound like a lot of work, the figures and equipment I want for the above projects is relatively small, the aim throughout being to add extras to existing armies. The Martian Empires and Afghan War projects need some larger forces painting up but even these are a lot smaller than any of my individual historical 19th Century armies. If you’ve read this far, well done, and any suggestions for troops or equipment for these projects would be most welcome!