29 April 2009

Been a bad Blogger!

Haven't posted much recently...sorry, RL has been making me busy. But I am in the midst of spring cleaning and trading off some superfluous stuff. You can find lists of said same here, here or here. I might be adding more to the trade pile so check in every so often and if you see something you want, get a hold of me.

I am deep into assembling 20mm kits and 15mm sci-fi figures as well these days. I can honestly rate kits to my satisfaction...and results might surprise you.

1. Dragon/DML- A pleasure to assemble their HMMWV and T-34/85 kits. Their instructions were logical and everything went together damn near flawlessly. The only real bummers were that I had to shave down the interiors of the HMMWV tires (filled the gaps with putty), and the T34/85 track was a bit of a bear to get the two ends to align and mate under the hot screwdriver.

2. Trumpeter- A fine kit, their LAV-25 was sheer joy to build and had no real assembly problems at ALL.

3. Itareri- The M4 I procured from them was an easy build, I left the interior parts off, and the parts as a whole were workmanlike and I had fun modding the kid a little bit with some spares.

4. UM- A decent offering from Eastern Europe...their Etched metal parts were fiddly, and sometimes, their instructions made one take a double take, and I had to improvise here and there, but it wasn't as bad as...

5. PST- While I am glad that SOMEBODY makes IS-2s and ISU-152s...putting together the IS-2 I did as a test piece was a bear. The tracks especially. Instructions were well, open to interpretation. Happily, I think I got pretty close to the intent.

6. Zaveda- Never again..I got the D30 together, but the wheel halves didn't mate properly...at this point...I am going to fill with putty and call a day...it was hell putting the gun together in the first place.

7. Matchbox- Not bad for an older kit...no real problems and it's it's usual solid, workmanlike self.

I still have plenty of kits to assemble. But, all in all, I am having fun, but I have taken a break to work on my 15mm stuff. Just tired of it not getting any "love" I suppose, and with all the new 15mm stuff hitting the market, I want to use my stuff!

Also printed up some cards for Ambush Alley: Force on Force on business card stock. Had a blast and I may have to reprint some, but it's not earth shattering. I also did some sci-fi backs and I will probably come up with some events for them soon!