From NoelW: Sand and Sea

For a reason I can't fathom, I particularly like desert battles. Currently in my list of projects is Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt, C19th Sudan, the Crusades and WW2 Western Desert.

The main problem with the last of these is cost. Apart from skirmish games, you need tanks and armoured cars and transports and artillery. You may, perhaps, be familiar with the way a project can snowball as, strangely, once you've one tank, you find you need two more, then you have to have A/T capacity to fight against it, then you need a tow vehicle to pull the gun - and so on.

One idea I had to save a little of the cost here was to find "playworn" toys that can be repainted. There's an auction house not too far from my home which has toy sales every three months or so, and very often there are various boxes of a dozen or more playworn diecast vehicles which can be bought for the price of one or two new Warlord or Blitzkrieg tanks. There are generally Dinky, Corgi, Lledo, Matchbox or Solido models, but they can be any known manufacturer and some unknown ones, and may date as far back as the 40s.

"Playworn" means "bashed about a bit and probably with pieces missing". The same auction may also sell the same models in "collectable" condition, for which you might need to bid ten or twenty times the price of playworn. For the wargamer, though, who intends to repaint or perhaps even kitbash the model, playworn is ideal.

Here's a Dinky toy, dating from the 1950s/60s, for which you might pay £70+ if in top condition with its box, but for which I paid £1 and repainted this week for the desert.

Similarly, a Quad tow tractor of about the same age:

And a (more recent) Solido jeep:

The main problem with doing things this way is the different scales such models come in. Obviously, in a random auction lot, you're stuck with whatever you've bid for (and I've found I've bought some very strange things sometimes!) The two trucks are okay for 28mm figs, but the Solido model is probably 1/43rd, so way too big.

You can see this when I put all three together.

Nevertheless, the jeep doesn't look massively out of place, so it'll accompany my 8th army until I've something more suitable.

I've spent most of my time this week working on two more of the beautiful Black Seas ships: the merchants. I need these for a planned article, but I also think they're very nice looking models. Unfortunately, I've not quite done them the justice I'd hoped for - there are several features here I wish I'd done better. Even so, I'm pretty pleased with the results, and I think they'll be good enough to illustrate the article, if properly arranged.

Small merchant:

Large merchant:

And both ships together:

They're flagged for the East India Company, but I've made the flags detachable so with a switch of flag and pennant they can become prizes for any suitable nation. 

As for imaginary points: that's 30 for the trucks, which will also go to my side challenge with Stuart, making a running total of 305 - I don't think that I'm going to catch him! And I'm giving myself 20 points for the ships, which I think reflects the amount of work they demanded. That's two more slots filled in my initial plan, for a total of 739 points in the QChallenge, but I'm still falling behind on that, too. Need to pull your finger out, Noel!

Project	New Task	‘Points’	Old Task	‘Points’
Agincourt
AWI	Farmstead	3
Black Seas (1/700th)	2 merchants	20
British in Egypt: 1801			Generals de Rolls’ regiment	30 60
Cape Wars	12 infantry	60
Carthaginians
Crusades	Command group	20
ECW
French in Egypt: 1801	Guns	50	Command Gun crew	75
Frostgrave/fantasy	3 Treemen	24	Frankie	5
Italian Wars
Lord of the Rings
Minden (15mm)
Ottoman
Peninsular War			12 Spanish	60
Republican Romans
Sikh/Afghan Wars	Command stand 8 Irregulars	15 40
1860s British IF			Union rebasing	0
1880s, the Sudan	Buildings	15
Walmington/Sealion			3 Civvies 6 zombies Bandstand	15 30 2
Waterloo
WW2 Desert	3 trucks	30
Zulu War	NNI Frontier Horse Natal Carbineers	30 60 50	Pearson & Chelmsford 4 foot	25 20
TOTAL		417		322