Penkridge Purchases

I was in Staffordshire (land of the speed camera) at the Penkridge Wargames Sale on Sunday morning. It's a bit of a trek over the Peak District, always foggy of an early January morning, but worth it to see friends and pick up some bargains.

In a previous post on plans for 2024, I kind of hinted to something that's now firmed up in my mind. I want 2024, hobby-wise, to be a year in which I concentrate on making the most of collections I've already put together. That doesn't mean I won't buy new stuff but it's fair to say that pretty much everything I got at Penkridge was aimed at encouraging the use of existing toys.

These 28mm pack mules came from the Tiger Miniatures stand. They're pretty flexible - I can see them being used in a range of 19th (and possibly 18th) century settings. Their first use will likely be in an ACW Sharp Practice campaign that I'm just getting underway. (More on that in future posts - it's definitely using existing toys!)

Also from Tiger Miniatures was this statue. I previously bought a Ganesh statue from the same "50p any figure" box at Penkridge and it served well in the Hindu temple at Pandigore in the Woebetide Islands. I thought this god looked rather more suitable for turning the temple into a Gloranthan structure. Shame it was just a little late for the Christmas game!

I bought a couple of books.

I have a quite a library of Operation Sealion books and I hadn't seen this one before so it made sense to pick it up.

The book below is from the Osprey History range and it's badly mis-titled. Far from being a detailed look at the Huns at the time of Atilla, it covers Asian nomadic horsemen of many cultures from the first emergence of the Hsiung-Nu on the edge of China to the birth of Ghengis Khan! Still, it was only a fiver and it has some nice colour plates. I just need to avoid being dragged into wargaming 11th century Finno-Ugrians!

One of my plans was to seek out cheap 6mm models. A couple of packs really hit the spot.

This bubble pack contains a substantial number of GHQ modern US infantry. There's enough in there to put together a reinforced battalion for Cold War Commander. Possibly a few too many mortars and a little short on M47 Dragon ATGWs but they're painted to a reasonable standard. If, as I suspect, that's a whole pack, there's over £11-worth of metal in the pack. Cost me a fiver!

Another bargain (at £3) was this bag of Bacchus "Grenadiers-in-tall-mitre-caps". This is just the right quantity to allow me to add a converged grenadier battalion to my Great Northern War Russian army (who more often see the light of day as the forces of the imagi-nation of Zheltarus).

Yet more 6mm goodness in the form of a load of Battlescale resin buildings bought from Richard Phillips. I've painted a few previous buildings from this company and I have to say they're very nice castings. These ones were chosen to add to the terrain for this Spring's big Stary Boleslav game. I'm not sure they were intended to represent rural Czechoslovakia in 1948 but I'm sure I can make they look believable in that role.

Thanks are also due to Richard for handing me a pack of 28mm Grendel fuel drums.  

I'm under strict instructions to paint them up and use them when running some more Rogue Stars for Richard!