When the Dust Settles...

As mentioned in my previous post, I have directed most of my hobby attention to the Pendraken painting competition the past few months. I was also convinced into participating in Badger Games painting competition which is to be judged by the attendees of Adepticon. The model is a Space Goblin "musician"...such an awesome sculpt from Regiment Games (see below).

I have to have him shipped to Badger by March 15 so I need to get him finished ASAP. I have to admit that I'm a bit burnt out from the Pendraken competition and it's been a while since I painted 28mm or Gobbos for that matter. At this point I'm.just hoping not to embarrass myself with my entry. 

When the dust settles from the two competitions, I will ultimately return to my 10mm Crimean War project. Before that return, I think I might indulge in a small diversion project. 

I'm a big fan of Tumbling Dice's Wings at War rulesets. Their free game is Desert Spitfires which is a quick play set to refight the air conflict during the 1948 Arab/Israeli war.  

It's a pretty interesting conflict, Israeli had volunteer and mercenary pilots flying Czech versions of Me-109s against Egyptian Spitfires. The Israelis ultimately upgraded to Spitfires (and some Mustangs) and the Egyptians added Macchi fighters to their air fleet. B-17s, T-6 Harvard's, C-47s, and plenty of other planes also saw action in the war.

I had previously tackled (and fumbled) this project years before. Figures had been purchased and priming had occurred but it languished. When I looked at my aircraft from the previous attempt, they were loose and mixed in with other projects. I decided to order some new planes for the project to start fresh. Tumbling Dice sent a small envelope with my order in record time. 

The impetus for restarting this project is that I've been reading Angels in the Sky by Robert Gandt which is an awesome account of the early days of the Israeli Air Force. It's a very readable book and I highly recommend it. 

I think it will be a nice little break from the pressures of painting for competitions and will give me something I can easily finish before resuming the grind of finishing my Crimean War project.