COW 2022 - an announcement

 COW 2022 will not be held at Knuston Hall, which is closed until the autumn (details below).

The COW organisers are committed to holding a WD event this summer - either a VCOW over the weekend 8th - 10th July or a face to face COW at an alternative venue and possibly over a different weekend.

We hope to make an announcement at the end of this month.

The details from the Knuston Hall website and Facebook page are as follows: 

"Knuston Hall is currently closed and courses are cancelled until Autumn 2022.

The Council is reviewing operations, including looking at improvements to the facilities and safety upgrades.

We understand this will be disappointing for our customers and hope to conclude the review as quickly as possible.

In the meantime we are not taking any bookings for future courses and any monies paid for courses in the cancellation period will be refunded. We will not be transferring money to future courses.

We will be working through cancellations in date order and will be in touch with you regarding your booking.

Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience and disappointment this has caused."

Terribly tatty toy tank titivation

 

A while back I acquired a pair of nasty plastic Abrams tanks in about 1/50 scale. They can be seen in this post from 2016. This second - and mismatched - pair followed and were undercoated in black many months ago. I noticed them this morning while looking for something quite unrelated and decided to threaten them with the dangerous end of a paintbrush. 

A few hours later I devoted 20 minutes or so to the paintwork and here is the result. They’ll do. 

My painting reference. Well, more inspiration than reference really as I can’t claim to have followed any pattern. 

Plastic Warrior Show - it’s back!

 

I’m pleased to report that the PW show will reappear in May at the usual venue. 

Organising team stalwart Brian Carrick tells me that all but one of the traders who’d booked for 2020 have confirmed - the missing one due to a diary clash. 

I will be there with a table groaning under the weight of high quality items - do come and spend, or just say hello. 

My report on the last (2019) show is here: link. 

Shopping from the Paris show

 I mentioned earlier that there had been some retail incidents last weekend - here are some of the highlights. 

I’ll start with my final purchase of the day - a shoe box full of 100+ mostly medieval figures.  Makers are mainly Starlux with a few Clairet, Mokarex and a couple of Elastolin. The (Mokarex) chap above is one of my favourites - clearly a well-balanced individual. 

There are at least three of this fine Starlux pose. 

More aggressive poses. 

On the right, a dismounted knight by Starlux, while the Mokarex figure at left is none other than Ivanhoe. 

As you’d hope from a French maker, the Starlux Gauls are a delight. I wasn’t looking for any but I can’t bear to part with them!  

Of course, where you have Gauls you need some Romans to fight them. The small batch of Starlux was accompanied by the imposing Elastolin eagle bearer. 

The Gauls again. 

More Romans. 

Civilian figures are always handy. This pair from Mokarex - Thiers and Offenbach - have already been nicely painted. The cheapest figures of the day, they owe me only €1 for the two!

I also scored a box of more Mokarex civilian figures - mostly 20th Century celebrities. Here are Maurice Chevalier and Charles Trenet. The box contained many duplicates (triplicates indeed) and will be shared with a couple of friends. 

Victor Hugo and Gambetta (yes I know they’re 19th Century!)

Finally a change from plastic to lead. EDIT 04/04/22. These last chaps are actually French-made aluminium figures by Quiralu.  Which explains why they don’t  ‘sound’ like lead 🤭

This trio of Great War French are in desperate need of a repaint but they’re lovely old figures for a reasonable €5 each. 

So I make that about 160 figures, of which I’ll be keeping around 100 and passing on the rest.  A very successful show!