Some painting, terrain, and a second hand find

This week I managed to finish painting a unit of Highlanders for my Anglo-Zulu War project. These figures, other than the officer, are nicely converted old Airfix Napoleonic Highlanders and have had an interesting journey before finally reaching my painting table.

Converted Airfix Highlanders that were recently gifted and are now painted and based. The officer is from a HaT kit. I could not resist adding the bagpipes.

A view from the front.

The figures originally belonged to John of the "Wargame Hermit: Solo Wargaming" blog before being passed on to James of the "Solo Slow Wargaming" and "The Chauvinistic Blog" blogs. James had been unable to find a use for these, along with a selection of other Colonial miniatures, so very kindly passed them on to me. I wrote about this unexpected gift a couple of posts ago (here). They have now been repainted and based, and make a very useful addition to my growing British force.

A couple of weeks ago I placed a bid on what appeared to be some Peter Laing 15mm American War of Independence (AWI) figures judging by the photo. Fortunately, they turned out to be exactly that and some 60 figures. The Peter Laing range has been unavailable for many years and are difficult to find.

The Peter Laing AWI figures. Alas only one cavalry figure, I could do with another 4 to make a unit.

I originally bought my Peter Laing AWI collection back in 1978, although it remained unpainted until around 2015 when I returned to historical wargaming after reading "One-Hour Wargames" by Neil Thomas. These newly acquired figures will be a very useful addition to the collection and should allow me to add a few more units.

Finally, on to terrain, or more specifically - sci-fi terrain. I am always on the lookout for inexpensive items that can be repurposed for the tabletop, and during a visit to our local $2 shop I spotted some plastic flowers whose heads looked as though they might make some interesting alien plants.

Plastic flowers purchased for sci-fi terrain.

The flowers are removed from the stem and the connector at the bottom clipped off so the flower can sit flat on the tabletop.

Some nice colourful alien terrain.

For around $5 I decided they were worth a buy. Once home, I removed the flower heads from their stems and found that, with clipping off the base that attached them to the stems and a little bending, they sat nicely on the tabletop. I think they look best arranged in clusters of two or three adding some distinctive colours to the tabletop.