Facing my Waterloo

Just a quick post as I'm currently abroad in Belgium for the Waterloo bicentennial! It's been a busy couple of days visiting museums and battlefields and all of it will be crowned by the massive Waterloo reenactments that take place on Friday and Saturday. One memory card of my camera is already full and I think a few more will still meet the same fate :)

So stay tuned for pics from arguably one of the most important anniversaries of the year.

Review: Xtracrylix Purisol Paint Remover

With Fairy Power Spray being pretty much useless nowadays and my last "proper" bottle running out, I was on the lookout for a suitable replacement. There are hundreds of threads on different forums on the subject with quite contradictory results so I wasn't too keen on trying something like brake fluid for example.

And then I bumped into this magical liquid called Xtracrylix Purisol Paint Remover. Not much could be found about it, but there was some praise so I figured I'd give it a try. I bought two bottles of Hannants for 3 pounds a piece. There's only 25ml of the stuff in a bottle so it is pretty darn expensive. With the cost in mind I was really expecting good results.

Important thing to note is that it is marked as being "Harmful to Health" so I'd suggest wearing protective gloves. There is also a very strong odor so ventilation is recommended as well. In the interest of science I naturally neglected both. It did cause some minor irritation on my skin so this definitely isn't something you want to leave anywhere near children or animals.

But to the most important part. Does it actually remove paint? I picked an old Chaos Space Marine model with a super thick paint job on it that actually concealed most of the details and the paint had been stuck on the model for years. In the instructions the recommended procedure is to brush the liquid on after which the paint should peel right off. On my test model I had negligible effect with paint coming of only on some raised areas before all the liquid had evaporated.

Glorious paint job with liberally applied unthinned globs of paint. Can this be remedied?

With a slight disappointment I decided to try the more traditional way of submerging the model in the liquid. One 25ml bottle was just enough to cover the miniature. This time the results were far better with paint literally peeling off into the liquid after only a few minutes of being submerged. After about 5 minutes I took the mini out and swept about 95% of the paint away with an old toothbrush. Another 5 minutes in the liquid after that removed the rest with a bit of help from a toothpick.

 After about 10 minutes in the liquid the paint literally peeled off. Good as new!

This method of submerging also doesn't waste that much of the precious and darn expensive paint remover. I've stored mine in an airtight jar that I can use to dip miniatures in. After a few test minis there isn't any noticeable decrease in it's performance so I think it will last for quite long this way. There is quite a build up of paint on the bottom, but I'd reckon using a strainer to remove that would help.

All in all a wonderful product that really removes paint better than anything I've used before. It is pretty expensive though so I'd recommend storing it in a jar where you can submerge miniatures instead of wasting it by painting it on them. I still need to test it more to see how many times I can use the liquid before it stops working, but in the mean time this is definitely the best product I've seen on the market.

Russia 1812: First Battle of Polotsk

Clearing up some backlog from my silence with a few pictures from our third Russia 1812 campaign game. This time back on the northern front with the First Battle of Polotsk. Not many pictures here as I simply forgot to take pics in the heat of the battle, but more can be found at Napoleon Complex Gaming with a more indepth AAR as well.

The real battle took place after Oudinot had retreated to Polotsk after the Battle of Klyastitzy. General Wittgenstein attacked a Bavarian force that was slightly separated from the main French body in an attempt to destroy it before the French could react. In the heavy fighting that took place Marshal Oudinot himself was wounded and the losses to the Bavarian troops were very heaving including the loss of much of their General Staff. In the end the French forces would prevail, but the attack by Wittgenstein in effect put an end to the northern advance towards St. Petersburg.

Our game was slightly altered as we didn't really have too many Bavarians in our collections and my freshly painted Swiss and Croatian troops yearned for battle. Historically the  Swiss 9th Division was mainly a reserve force during the battle being stationed across the river in the town of Polotsk separated from the main battle that raged around the town of Spas which the Bavarians defended.

The battle concentrated around the small town of Spas with the Russian and Swiss forces being engaged in a constant point blank firing and close quarters fighting. Casualties were heavy on both sides with the opposing divisions in the area being in effect decimated. The game ended with both sides having to withdraw due to heavy losses. Being on the French side I naturally considered it a moral victory as my Swiss troops were able to hold the Russian bear at bay.

 

 

Showing signs of life

Whoah it's been quite a while since the last update. I guess now is the time to blame the usual suspects such as real life and work, but to be honest it's also partly because I haven't really felt like blogging. Though I have been following other peoples blogs constantly, updating mine hasn't really been on top of my priorities. 

I'm not sure if I should just continue with the blog like I've done before mainly posting pics of things I've painted or actually try to post something more "useful". I think my main issue I have with just posting painted stuff is that you rarely if ever get any real feedback that you could use to maybe improve yourself and your painting. I'm not innocent of this either as to be honest mostly when I write comments on other peoples blogs I do tend to stick to the usual praising phrases even if I at least try to come up with some remark about some nice little conversion or something especially good with the paint job. The same issue is with forums as well with little real conversation to be had and mostly just more or less meaningless comments with "Great paintjob!" being pretty much as prosaic as it gets.

Still just posting pics does give myself some sort of a log of what I've been doing in the past and hopefully see some progress in painting skills along the way. But outside of that I feel like I should try come up with something else to post so that the blog would have a purpose. I'm just not really sure what that should be. Better written AARs with maps etc. might be a good way to go, or writing down some of the scenarios that I've been playing or running. Or writing some more tutorials or product reviews could be the way to go. Well I guess I'll have to try figure something out

On another note I haven't been really been idle in my hobby pursuits finishing 13 battalions of Swiss and Croat troops in the last two months as well as getting quite a few games played. I haven't really gotten around to taking pictures of these, but will probably have to do that sometime in the future.

With the majority of my Russia 1812 miniature project done I needed to do something completely different so I've been building up one of the 4Ground buildings that a clubmate had bought for our club. Excellent stuff and they've really improved their buildings and have some clever ways of hiding the joints. They do look very nice, but are extremely time consuming to build as all the doors etc. are working. It took me about three evenings to build up with about 6 hours of work put in along the way.

My ETC tournament list has also seen some changes so I needed a couple of more miniatures done. A few more EW tanks in the form of PzIIc's and two Char B1 Flammenwerfers put into better use after the capitulation of France. The B1's will probably not see much use as they are too slow compared to everything else, but as I already had them I thought I might as well paint them up as dark grey panzers are breeze to do. Though they do tend to cause the same effect as King Tigers in Late War with people really putting too much effort into destroying them compared to the threat that they actually pose. The PzIIc's on the otherhand will be a major component in the list as in the end I wanted a fast hard hitting force instead of a more static line with larger firepower. Funny enough the one I'm going with now is very close to the first draft I had. Should have just stuck with that before listening to too much advice :)