Having a hobby is supposed to be relaxing. In between my recent posts about the Pacific Northwest Writers Association (PNWA) Summer Conference, I'd take a time-out or three and work on some modern micro-armor figures. ("Micro" meaning 1/285th or 1/300th-scale; or 6mm).
Last year a friend of mine gave me a bunch of Israeli tanks he no longer wanted. So naturally I had to buy even more Soviet-made armor for an Arab force to pit against the Israelis. I decided to organize my new-found collection around the Sinai Theater of the Yom Kippur War (October 1973).
6mm is my favorite scale because it provides a sweeping panoramic view of modern or futuristic battles (World War II to science-fiction).
However, working with the fiddly-bits in this scale was frustrating. The worst part of this project was trying to attach machine-guns the size of sub-atomic particles on to the vehicles:
But once that ordeal was over, all I had to do is paint each figure one or two colors to make them look decent. Below is an American-made M-48 Israeli tank on the left facing off against an Soviet-made Egyptian T-55:
However, I have a long way to go before I achieve Master Craftsman status and paint like this:
Yes, this "Zelda" figure is the same size as my unpainted one next to the ballpoint pen. (Image from the GHQ on-line catalogue: http://www.ghqmodels.com/store/ghq-military-models.html ).
I couldn't place the machine guns on any of my 25 Zeldas as precisely as pictured above. I just slathered on the super-glue and plopped them on as best I could. Not getting my fingers sticky was an achievement in and of itself.
A couple days ago I realized the Egyptians needed some self-propelled artillery and some air defense vehicles.
So it's back to the game store...
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