Vive la France!

Another month, another post! Ok, it might be better if I posted more often than that, but then it might also be better if I won the lottery, and they're both about as likely at the moment.

Anyway, I've been painting! I had a couple of days off at the start of this week, and was able to make a decent dent in my new Bolt Action French force - 16 of these guys are now done...

Quick, men! Advance across this strangely flat and red battlefield!

I've conveniently selected models that can form two sensible squads (with an LMG team and a VB launcher in each) until I get more models painted. If I can get an officer done, then I'll have a legal Bolt Action force, admittedly one that only weighs in at 300 points.

Lined up for the team photo

I didn't intend it this way, but I ended up painting all of these models in one 16-model batch. I don't recommend that, it gets pretty dull, but it was an efficient way of getting a mass of models ready for the table, and I'm happy to have done it.

Close up number 1...

Having this many models to do at once did spur me to add some foliage to the bases, something I've never got around to for my Partisans, so that's nice!

...number 2...

Speaking of bases, these are also the first models to use the magnetic basing stuff that I bought at Vapnartak at the weekend. I've grown increasingly fed up with foam trays rubbing the paint off metal models in transit, so for new metals I'm now intending to use magnetic bases instead. A bit of testing (alright, playing) with this suggests that it would now be entirely possible to play a game across the door of the fridge, so that's one way to find space without having room for a table.

I was concerned that the extra height of the magnetic sheet would look really obvious, but that doesn't seem to be the case, thankfully.

...and number 3

I must confess, I did by some more models at Vapnartak, which means I've now definitely broken the rules of the Mountain Reduction Challenge, having used three jokers when I only had two. The models I bought were a pack of SWAT guys from The Assault Group - this was a case where seeing them in the flesh convinced me that they would do what I wanted, which didn't seem to be true when looking online, so that's nice.

Still, on my quest to paint more models than I buy in 2015, I'm doing well, as I now stand at:

Painted - 24
Bought - 4

Surely this will all go wrong at some point...