Where did you get those HaTs?

A slight hobby hiatus occurred last week, while we took a short break in sunny ( but breezy!) Great Yarmouth.  I didn't particularly seek out military history interest there, though the rather good Time and Tide Museum in the town covers the impact of the two world wars - Great Yarmouth suffered the first ever civilian fatalities from aerial bombardment in the UK, from a Zeppelin attack in 1915.  In return,  RNAS/RAF pilot Egbert Cadbury (of the chocolate-making family) shot down down no less than two Zeppelins while based at Great Yarmouth. Here's a picture that's included in the museum display -  Zeppelin L70 falling to Cadbury's DH4 

 (there is a blue plaque dedicated to Cadbury  which we found on a rather posh house on the town seafront where he lived, rather nice quarters for a junior officer). 

I did find a very good hobby  shopping opportunity, though, when I searched for model shops in the area - just down the coast at Lowestoft is the site of no less than the warehouse of Hannants,  "the online store for plastic model kits, plastic figures and accessories" - and the warehouse is open to visitors. We had aimed to take a look at Lowestoft anyway,  so we weren't even going out of our way.

not pretty, but a big enough place.. 

 

Once inside, I grabbed a phone picture of a corner of  the warehouse, which is quite something: 

There are just shelves and shelves and shelves of model kits here, I think the eleven-year-old me would have passed out with excitement! Visitors are allowed to wander round the ground floor, though not the upper decks, but if what you are looking for is shelved up there, the staff will happily go and pick it for you.    

I had worked out a small shopping list, having noticed that they stock the HaT range of 20mm plastic figures, and went away very happy with five boxes of Ancient Indians, Persians and Macedonians :

 

I bought Persian heavy cavalry, Indian Elephants, Indian Infantry, Persian Heavy Infantry and Macedonian Phalangites - they will bulk up my nascent  ancient armies nicely! I'm particularly pleased to get my first  war elephants  (there are two with crews, in the pack ) - should be fun to paint, I hope. Need I say that Hannants is well worth paying a visit if you are in the area.. 

I have had a little time for painting in the last few days, which I spent (with a table set up in the sunny garden!) applying paint to what should become seven battalions of Piedmontese infantry for my 1859 Risorgimento project. I'm getting into the swing of painting 6mm figures in this fashion;  I've done the jackets (navy blue) trousers (light blue) and shakos (black) of all these in a couple of hours tops, and it's not much more than a single brush-stroke front and back to cover each four-figure strip. 

 

The great vintage Minifgs re-basing project continues, this week's subjects  are a couple of units of Grenadiers de France. The first lot wear yellow facings and are on rather 'flocky' cardboard bases (which should be easy to remove, at least),  

 and the second unit have red facings, and a really rather lovely painting style, as seen in the close-up below    

  

The only 'downside' with these is that they are very securely stuck to machine-cut aluminium bases - I think they will be quite challenging to remove! We shall see.. 

Finally for this little round-up, some gaming has taken place: entirely  thanks to Jon at Palouse Wargaming Journal, who hosted a game of the battle of Montebello, 1800 and kindly invited me to join, along with three other players. I won't pre-empt Jon's report, but suffice it to say an excellent game was had with a pretty challenging scenario - many thanks to Jon and the other players!   Jon sent a couple of his pictures of the action, of which I will show one - described as 'the French high water mark', if that's not giving too much away! 

 

And that's all the news I have for now - the next thing is to keep on with painting the 6mm Piedmontese, which will complete their Division from my planned OOBs. I'd better start thinking how to use those HaT figures to enlarge my ancient armies, too, and make some plans for painting - the main incentive being to get those elephants into  action!   I will of course report progress - until then keep well, everyone.