A visit to a Wargames show is always a good day out (my wife may have a slightly different view on this), being distinctly “old school” I like to have a good look at what I’m buying before I part with any of my hard earned cash, even in these internet photo heavy days you still can’t always get a good feel for the comparative size of a figure until you see it in the flesh (or metal). I actually spend more when my wife is with me, I still do my same old routine of walking one circuit of the hall just to look, then a second to buy all the things on my “pre-show” list and to nose about the things that caught my eye on the first circuit, by this time the bar (if there is one) is usually open, so in for a drink and something to eat and a ponder over what (if anything) else to buy. Then round once more for a final look before picking up any impulse buys, then off home and the inevitable “You know I should have bought those….(insert figure names here!)”. This is the part that really gets to my better half, so these days as we do our third circuit a chorus of “If you’d like it just buy it now!” often accompanies me round hence I spend more (“Oh poor you” I hear you shout).
Still as I mentioned last time we were on the lookout for additions to our 10mm fantasy armies and after Myles bought a plastic Dragon (surprise surprise!) from a second hand 
dealer (I think it’s a D&D pre-paint, but perfect size wise for 10mm), I decided to up the stakes by giving my dwarves a “Grand Battery”, well what’s a self respecting dwarf army without cannon! First port of call was “Kallistra” as I knew they did dwarf cannon as part of there “Hoards and Heroes” range, but nice as they were the dwarves didn’t really match my “Irregular” chaps (though if I want a Gyrocopter at a later date, I might have to bite the bullet!). Now “Irregular” don’t do a dwarf cannon set but they do quite a range of 10mm cannon and will let you root about in their boxes and mix and match bits up, so off I set to see Ian and Ron. What I came away with was four 1st world war artillery barrels (I think), eight wagon wheels, four dwarf standard bearers, four leaders, four standard infantry figures and a plan.
Firstly the mountings for the wheels on the barrels was too near the middle and too narrow, so I cut these off and drilled through the carriages nearer the front and glued a piece of florist wire through the hole, small “blocks” of greenstuff were added and then the wagon wheels. 
Small balls of greenstuff were then rolled out, while these were drying I hacked off the right arms and shoulders of the infantry figures (I deliberately picked ones without shields) and glued one ball on the side of each then added new arms and shoulders around these to make loaders. Next the leaders arms were simply bent so that there up-raised swords became downward pointing tapers. And finally the standard bearers had their standards trimmed and topped with a clump of textured greenstuff to make them into sponges (the only problem was all standard bearers have shields, so I had to extend their cloaks around their shoulders to cover them on the front), once they were glued to their bases I added a small pyramid of greenstuff cannon balls and hey presto a well served dwarf cannon.
All I need now is for Myles to pull his finger out and re-paint his Dragon and I can blast the scaly brute out of the sky! So that’s where we’re up to with the 10mm fantasy stuff at the moment, I hope to return to this later, but my next project has just arrived in the post, so next time, it’s 28mm Sci/Fi on the (very) cheap.
Cheers Roger.
Rantings from under the Wargames table 