A bit of a preview

I blame the mother-in-law.

No really! If she hadn't gone shopping with my wife in Derby, I wouldn't have found myself in Modelzone in the Westfield Centre, contemplating what I could do with a 1/72 scale die-cast Sherman tank at £3.99! Or two...

Like many gamers I guess, the seeds of the hobby were probably sewn on childhood carpets, playing with soldiers from the likes of airfix and matchbox. And yet strangely enough I've never done any WWII gaming. Well thanks to those Shermans, and a pile of old model railway terrain inherited from my Grandad (and which has to come out of the attic soon anyway, so the builder can get to work) that's the plan. The aim (optimistically) will be that this will be a project with low time investment. Apart from buildings, I can mostly use my existing scenery collection; by using 1/72 scale figs (many of which are hang overs from those old carpet wars, plus some additions) I hopefully won't get too precious about paintjobs; and for vehicles I'm going to use a mix of die-casts (there's a good range out there these days) and stuff from the likes of armourfast.

I'm also going to try and keep that inner button counter under control. If I want to have a 76mm Sherman on the table and all I have is a model with a 105, I shall not give a fig!

Here's the first batch, the beginnings of a German infantry platoon (I'm working on two Armourfast StugIIIs for support). Next up should be some US Infantry.