Baby, I'm ready to go.

It's amazing that no matter how much time you spend on a paint job, no matter how carefully you check it over and no matter how good it looks on the table, the moment you take a photograph of it you'll find a tiny hidden unpainted spot. Well sod it.

These are Royal Horseless Artillery Gun Trucks, mounting a very heavy quick-firing gun facing forward and a smaller gatling type machine gun firing backwards. They're Atlantis toys (surprise surprise) which originally featured a lever to pull the driver into the body of the truck and pop up a duplicate of him in the rear firing position. A little bit of tinkering and some snapped plastic fixed both figures in the "out" position. I then added a stratchbuilt gatling-type main cannon and a smokestack... I should point out this was all done eight years ago and as a result the decor around the smokestack is a little tattered looking and really needs replacing. For the paint job I really wanted something more reminiscent of an artillery limber than an armoured fighting vehicle, so without knowing that colour the RHA painted their limbers in 1889, I went for a dark green with yellow trim. It looked absolutely hideous right up until the final drybrushing, when I think it just about came together in a garish sort of way.

And here we have philanthropist, bon viveur and not the least bit criminally insane genius Doctor Vesuvius, standing in front of the Molemachine with his trusty companion, Wolesley. Mini-Me is of course the Chinese Gordon figure from Design 28 Miniatures which this year is free with every order over £25. Wolesley is, I think, from a West Wind Miniatures pack of Victorian Civilians from their Gothic Horror range. And the Molemachine is, of course, an Atlantis toy, put together from bits of the submarine playset and painted in a similar colour scheme to the Thunder Hammer tank.

Jonesy, Mi Hermano Sympatico, came around this afternoon and we did a final stocktake of all the figures and vehicles painted for this big game, coming up with a total of 180 men and horses - actually on reflection we didn't count the Springenpanzer crew, or any of the character figures I've been doing as a sideshow so the real figure is probably closer to 195.

It was with some trepidation, therefore, that I confessed to having placed an order for another hundred or so figures with Renegade Miniatures - some WWI Austro-Hungarians to be painted up as regular troops for the Evil Genius force (which I think will look rather splendid in burgundy, black and gold to match his vehicles) and some ACW troops in shell jackets & kepi, which when painted green will form the basis of my longed for Fenian Legion.

I'm glad to say that Jonesy maintain a cool demeanour at the news that the painting we had just completed was not the end of the job, however when I started talking about which figures to buy for a Russian army, he did suggest, politely, that maybe I should wait until I had the other two armies finished first?

The only thing that remains is to stat out all the vehicles and draw up playsheets for them and all the troop units. Oh and print initiative cards for them all..

I guess I'd best get on with it then.