Junkyard Planet: Painting, gaming, and a new arrival: 2023 midyear review

Well, here we are, halfway through the year, and nary a blog post to be seen! While there's been a fair bit keeping me occupied aside from gaming, I have managed to get some painting done, and a few games on the table. First up, a few add-ons for previous armies:

The dwarven contingent got an artillery piece - still considering whether I might expand them into a full army some day. Crew are mostly from the same set as the rest of the dwarves, though a random MiniArt Germanic warrior got conscripted as a fourth. The cannon barrel and most of the carriage are from the same Spanish sailors set that supplied my conquistadors; the wheels and the mantlet are from a Caesar Assyrian chariot I'd had around for ages.

And speaking of things I'd had around for ages, I finally found a use for a cheap plastic dinosaur skeleton kit/puzzle that I picked up somewhere years ago - outfitted with a makeshift howdah and a few crew, it provides a potential Behemoth for my Egyptian undead. I decided to paint it dark like many actual fossils, rather than a more recently dead bleached-bone appearance - who knows what the limits are for a skilled necromancer? 😉

In a more recent acquisition, I picked up a copy of the Germania Figuren Maya Sacrifice II set as a Christmas present for myself, and to provide some camp followers for my Maya DBA army. I haven't done much work with 3-D printed figures like these, and I was worried about snapping some of the more delicate bits, as they're a lot more brittle than the usual soft plastic I work with. Fortunately no such incidents occurred, and I enjoyed getting them painted up:

Since then, most of my painting has been expansion for the various Proxian forces. Nordalen has seen the greatest gains, with cavalry, artillery, and light infantry all added to their roster:

Cavalry from HaT Austrian Chevauxleger set

Artillery and light infantry from the Esci Crimean War Russians, same as the Nordalener line infantry.

Proxia has also seen a couple of battles so far this year, still using Neil Thomas's "Wargaming 19th Century Europe" rules. One (above) was a quick attempt at the Battle of Oeversee scenario from his book, with the Elabruner-Nordaleners as the Danes and the Occiterrans as the Austrians. The other was a meeting engagement using the classic "Dominant Hill" scenario. This ended up with a small surviving detachment of Occiterran infantry holed up in the Crossroads Church, with Elabruner artillery bombarding them from the hill above, but without enough infantry of their own left to mount an assault. Both sides have called for reinforcements, and perhaps at some point we shall see what happens next...

The other main source of battles has been a DBA bracket, pairing off all our various 20mm armies. More on this hopefully once it is eventually concluded...