Shopping spree

I had a long lunch today, and walked that little bit further out of town than my usual gaming store to the hobby store (Udisco). This is the warehouse sized place that sells all the other modelling stuff, whether it's model trains, planes. boats, RC cars, airplanes, helicopters, the works. They have a large (and I mean huge) selection of miniature soldiers in 1:72 and 1:35 scale. Up until my recent foray into historical minis, I have always gave this section a miss, but I decided to give this section a good browse.

In the end, I spent too much money in the place (I always do, but what they have is so reasonably priced compared to hobby stores), and came out with the following:

The Haul

Dead Trees

• box of dead trees
• box of 1:35 NATO tank ammo and boxes
• 2 packs of tree foliage (3 colours total)
• scenic long grass
• Bone saw with 2 blades (called a razor saw here)
• Water effect (same price as a small bottle in the games store for x10 the volume) this time it's the sculptable water effect rather than still water.
• 1 box 1/72 scale Mounted Samurai
• 1 box 1/72 Ashigaru-Yari

This may seem like completely random purchasing, but there's method to my madness, hear me out.

1/35 NATO 105mm shells

The dead trees are perfect for 28mm scenery and or bases, and the foliage will do them proud. Dead trees will go especially well on the kind of trench bases my current Khador seem to be based on. Go look at any WWI photography, dead trees everywhere in the trenches. The grass is great stuff, I already have some in a different colour, and going with the trench bases/scenery, the shell cases and boxes will fit right in. They did have some metal casings, but they seemed kind of skinny for what I wanted, and expensive (the sealed box meant I wasn't sure what the ones I bought were made from till I got them home. The razor saw was a bit of an extravagance. In theory, this will allow for better cleaner cutting for conversions. In practice, I'm a ways away from doing the kind of conversion that requires a razor saw.

Ok, so what are these made of?

 And the 1/72 Samurai? Yeah, that one is harder to justify, but I'll give them a post of their own to explain, and to showcase them.