(Lead) Mountain Musings - "Season Of Scenery" July 2021

"Approximately 40,000 bombs were dropped on Poland's Koźle Basin during World War Two."

This month's effort to diminish my ‘peak of potential’ will be significantly shaped by Dave Stone’s second annual Season of Scenery challenge over on his excellent “Wargames Terrain Workshop” blog. Ordinarily, I’m not the greatest fan of painting terrain, preferring to buy pre-pigmented buildings, walls and rock formations from the likes of “Gale Force Nine”, “Battle Systems” or “Tablescape” whenever possible.

However, I thought I’d use this event to hopefully power through a load of untouched plastic and resin pieces which has been sat upon my hobby table gathering dust for many a year or two. To start with I’ve quickly finished three of the remaining Shell Holes and Craters by “Warlord Games” I originally started working on in September last year.

"Flames Of War" WIPs - A Panzerfaust, an Officer and an NCO have been primed

I’ve previously finished the smallest of this set’s craters to act as an Artillery Barrage marker for "Konflikt '47", so having super-glued the remaining pieces to appropriately-sized “Citadel” round bases and given them an Abaddon Black undercoat, they were treated to a rough layer of Doombull Brown, a highlight of Rakarth Flesh and finally, a splash Agrax Earthshade wash.

In addition, I have gone halves on the “Hit The Beach” starter set for “Flames Of War” by “Battlefront Miniatures” in (yet) another attempt to try wargaming World War Two in 15mm scale. I’ll be tackling the two Panzergrenadier platoons and accompanying Panzer IV tanks for this particular project, and having acquired the recommended “Vallejo” colours for their uniforms, have made a start on my army’s Formation Command Panzerfaust SMG team.

June 2021 - No great change in my favourite manufacturers during the past month

Painting wise, the past four weeks have resulted in the second most productive June I’ve so far achieved. Admittedly, that is arguably hardly difficult as this particular month has historically always proved to be my worst time of the year for hobbying, but considering the significant number of 1:285 scale “Battletech” models by “Catalyst Game Labs” I finished during the period I’m rather pleased with my end result.

Frustratingly, this (6mm) turn out has though rather overtly demonstrated one of the weaknesses in the old “Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge” scoring system I use for recording my outputs, as despite pigmenting eleven mechs in a single month “Catalyst Game Labs” are simply no-where to be seen on my Top Manufacturer’s Chart. This is due to each model being awarded points dependent upon its scale rather than physical size (or time taken to actually complete). Ordinarily, this tends to even itself out over the course of a year with various tiny or straightforward 28mm figures creating some ‘slack’ for the much larger models I put a brush-tip to. However, for some of the smaller scales it’s a little harder to generate this 'slack', with just two points being the most some of the “Battletech” miniatures can achieve, even though some of them are actually 40mm in height…