20mm WW2 Painted British Home Guard 1/72.

The Home Guard (initially "Local Defence Volunteers" or LDV, or in slang, Look-Duck-Vanish, hence the name change) was a defence organisation of the British Army during the Second World War. Operational from 1940 until 1944, the Home Guard—comprising 1.5 million local volunteers otherwise ineligible for military service, usually owing to age, hence the nickname 'Dad's Army' — acted as a secondary defence force, in case of invasion by the forces of Nazi Germany and their allies.^[1][2] The Home Guard guarded the coastal areas of Britain and other important places such as airfields, factories and explosives stores.


More information here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Guard_(United_Kingdom)

These are some of my Home Guard forces defending a bridge from Sgts Mess http://www.sgts-mess.com/ for my What If? Operation Sealion WW2 Game, a mixed bag quality wise but not too bad seeing as I need them.

The bottom 3 pictures before the award pictures are for a fellow blogger Dr. Willett's Workshop http://drwillettsworkshop.blogspot.com/ (good blog, go visit) who asked for some comparison shots on a samurai building picture I posted last week.

Got this award from the zombie overlord over at http://zombehseverywhereman.blogspot.com/ , go visit the zombie madness and thank you to zombie prince.

If you knew me persoally you'd know that very few people would associate me with sushine as I am considered more with black clouds, thunder and depessions but Kicking Rocks  http://ggc151.blogspot.com/ (go visit, good blog) nominated me and I thank him for it

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Now a lot of people have been debating these awards as everything from a good thing to a fecking bad thing, me I have no problem with them and I find them good for promoting around the blog community, so if you read this blog today and you want an award to promote your blog please take one or both and link me if you feel like it to say where you got it or the people who originally gave it to me, I don't mind. Some of the blogs I sent awards to recently took it less than positively but that's the beauty of the blogosphere.

Angry Movie Lurker Review 36: The Mutant Chronicles (3 STARS).

At the end of the Ice Age, The Machine came from the outer space with the purpose to change men into mutants. However, a hero defeated the device and a great seal was laid over The Machine. In 2707, the depleted world is ruled by four Corporations: Mishima, Bauhaus, Capitol and Imperial that are in constant war. During a battle between Capitol and Bauhaus, the great seal is broken and The Machine works again transforming soldiers and civilians in hordes of mutants. A small part of the population escapes to Mars, leaving millions of people behind. The man of faith and leader of an ancient brotherhood Brother Samuel is a believer of God and the Chronicles, a bible about the mutants. With the city under siege of the mutants, he visits the Corporations' leader Constantine asking for an aircraft and twenty men for a suicide mission to destroy The Machine, planting a bomb and a detonator following the knowledge of the Chronicles. He recruits the tough Major 'Mitch' Hunter; the Bauhaus Lieutenant Maximillian von Steiner; the keeper of the Chronicles Severian that is under a vow of silence; the gorgeous and lethal Corporal Valerie Duval; Corporal Juba Kim Wu; Captain John McGuire; and Corporal Jesus 'El Jesus' de Barrera. Together they become the last hope of Earth against the evil mutants.


This is a strange movie as described above but it's like Victorian Sci-Fi at times with beautiful flying machines but also with futuristic tommies and germans with fantastic weapons in the first world war trenches, it's a dark and grim movie with a good cast (Thomas Jane, Ron Perlman, Sean Pertwee, Devon Aoki etc.....) plus more zombie/mutants than you can shake a stick at but where the movie suffers is a little too much CGI and some shocking dialogue but all this can be overcome and an entertaing, well detailed movie can be found. 

Portuguese in Japan, my 28mm painted Rodrigues.

This so-called namban (literally, "southern barbarian") screen depicts some of the Portuguese who arrived in Japan in the Azuchi-Momoyama and very early Edo periods. There remain today only about 60 examples of this namban genre. This is an especially important work because the name of its painter, Kano Naizen, is known. The bottom screen shows Portuguese departing from a port in one of their colonies in Southeast Asia, and the top screen shows them entering a Japanese port and engaging in trade activities. A group of the foreigners are walking in the direction of a Jesuit chapel (nambanji). The artist was active during the Azuchi-Momoyama period and was a close associate of military and political leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi.


1543—Portuguese Arrive in Japan


Blown off course during a storm, Portuguese traders shipwrecked near Tangeshima island off the southern coast of Japan. Intrigued by the Portuguese firearms, the local daimyo warlord bought two guns from the European sailors and commissioned his swordsmith to make copies. The daimyo then asked the Portuguese for shooting lessons.



1549—Jesuit Missionaries Settle in Japan

Eager for more firearms, the Japanese warlords welcomed trade with the Portuguese. Along with trade, the Portuguese brought Christian missionaries, and in 1549, Francis Xavier established Japan's first mission at Kagoshima. Jesuit missionary Luis Frois arrived later and wrote Historia de Japan, which covered the years 1549-1593. The book provided most of the known information about contemporary Japan at that time.

I have used a mixture of wargames foundry elizabethan british and spanish figures to portray the portuguese conquistadors or sometimes known as discoverers and this figure is listed as Lord Hawksmoor in the foundry catalogue. I have about 80 portuguese in total including Jesuits and artillery and will post pictures of the rest, somebody asked how many samurai I had, I have hundreds including ninja, ronin, Ikko Ikki etc...... 

My Rodrigues bought a long time ago, bonus points for where that name comes from?