Progress, sort of...

Sometimes I think that life would be easier if I just stuck to one thing at a time. But then I guess I wouldn't be a wargamer? As occasional readers of this blog may have noticed, a lot of stuff gets started, WIP ...  sort of progresses, and then I get distracted by something else. Of course work gets in the way, completing magazine articles for a Defence magazine, consulting work on service governance.. all the humdrum stuff, but usually it's a great inspiration, a chance sighting and the current project(s) get sidelined or slowed.

I'm determined to get a few things finished though. The Italian Condotta for DBMM, the US Marines of 1980, and the Medieval Germans c 1260 for DBMM.

Maybe it's typical of the way I work, lots of things on the go, a little bit here, a little bit there. So in the interests of keeping going, here's a couple of things on the table...

1/72 Diecast M48 getting an initial re-spray. I have given up finding any of the MARS/Galaxy 1/72 kits, so these will be stray Bundeswehr tanks rounded up to give additional armour support to the USMC. I suspect they will be easy prey for any half-modern Warsaw Pact armour, but I have a plan for that.

Of course, having Marines, I need Marine decals, and there aren't any in the spares box, so I printed some up on decal paper; and while I was at it, printed off decals for my Condotta flags & banners. Very pleased with how these came out. Inkjet on best photo setting, paper by Renascent, and a couple of sprays with Dullcote to fix the colours. Very much looking forward to getting these applied.

I did mention I had a plan for dealing with Warsaw Pact armour?  Here it is. The might AH-1J Seacobra attack helicopter, complete with unguided rockets, TOW, and a 30mm Vulcan cannon. The screen image in the background is the colour scheme I am aiming for, so a fair bit of airbrushing and weathering to do..  and of course, the decals... The canopy is white with PVA so I can airbrush - as the trick worked beautifully last time.

On the right the venerable A4 Skyhawk, US Navy support - a smaller scale diecast, but I may use the Father Ted argument...   "this one is far away".  Ideally it should also be in USMC livery, but they were pretty boring, so this one will do as is.

I am still expecting another couple of LVTP-7, and a CH46 Seaknight diecast, so my Marines can ride to battle in style, but that's it, no really, that's it...   a complete platoon, armour, air and transport.

And finally, did I mention I am easily distracted?  

So the Curtiss seaplane was incredibly cheap from a hobby shop seconds sale, and if you have one 'Porco Rosso' plane, well, you have to have the man himself. A quick trip to Hobbylink Japan and a few bucks and a couple of days later...  Maybe I will have to get some Pulp figures?..  hmmmm.

"Oh look...   shiny things...."

US Marines 1980

A casual comment by a friend that they were doing some Cold War stuff in 20mm caught my attention. Jason is using Bolt Action, but there is also the Too Fat Lardies Chain of Command (CoC) - now on special at 20% off for the WWII version, and the possible release of the Lardies 'IABNM' (I ain't been Nuked Mum').

Well, I already had some bits and pieces, and 20mm is dirt cheap. So looking at what I had, and what was out there, I figured I could do a quick and dirty USMC platoon plus supports. I don't much like the 'Super-Tanks' - and for someone of my vintage, Cold War is always going to be say 1979 - 1984. Add to that the super-cool MERDC camouflage, and it was an easy choice. I had toyed with the idea of BAOR (British Army of the Rhine), but someone else locally was already collecting that. Marine Amphibious Unit 32 used M60, LVTP7, Dragon ATGW, Cobra attack choppers and Sea Knight Helicopters, plus various support options such as 106mm Recoilless Rifles.

First up, a 1/72 M60A1 tank.. this was a MARS (Galaxy) kit, supposedly of a M60A1 with reactive armour, but I already knew from the review on 'OnTheWay' models, that it didn't have the reactive armour.

Note the amount of green stuff. Not an easy kit to build. The tracks are too long and melt with superglue, none of the turret rails or attachments actually fit into the cast 'depressions' (not holes). But it does have the look of the thing.

 Quick squirt of the PSC 'British Green' for an undercoat.

Get busy with the airbrush, I used the Citadel Base Colour XV-88 for the tan, Citadel 'Zandri Dust' for the sand, and Citadel 'Eshin Grey' for the 'black'. Plenty more work (chipping, weathering, added gear), but a good start.

For the Marines themselves, I grabbed a box of the excellent, ESCI 'Modern US Soldiers' - 'Modern in this context circa 1980'ish. Lovely casts, practical poses for wargaming, and 50 figures in the box gave me enough for 3 x 13 man squads, a command group, spare torsos for the M60A1, plus additional ATGW teams with the Dragon missile.

'Hey man, you think command has figured out where we're going yet?'

One of the appeals is that the Marines can use the unusual LVTP7 amphibian, readily available cheap as a pre-made model. This one clearly needs a repaint! - In the background is a Blackhawk, just being introduced at this time. This one is another pre-build, from a magazine, and in Desert colours. Some more repainting required. Ideally, it would be a CH46, but those are either hideously expensive or impossible to obtain. Obviously this UH60 is brand new, and being trialled.. ;-)

And as every bloke knows, you end up with a heap of change over time, so I raided my coin bucket. I like to base my plastic troops, to give them a bit more stability, and also so the figure itself doesn't get so much handling. A decent undercoat and acrylics really helps prevent the old flaking paint problem, but every little helps. I could have bought bases, but Australian 5 cent pieces are an ideal size, and work out way cheaper than washers or custom cut bases.

So - PVA on the coins - later they will get a PVA and sand coating to really make them solid. You might note that the windows of the Blackhawk have gone white. I thought about this for a while, as the pre-build has clear plastic window pieces, and I could have just oversprayed, then painted them in blue, but I am trying an experiment. I have painted over the clear plastic with PVA. Once this has dried, I will do the repaint, then try and peel off the PVA. I haven't tried this before, but I have read about it.

And yes..  success..  the windows peeled off easily, and the 'mask' worked perfectly.

Sweet Rides!

And the grunts got their bases coated with PVA + sand, next step, a dry brush with a pale olive green.


I have a Huey Cobra attack helicopter and two more LVTP7 on the way (pre-builds), cost, next to nothing, and I reckon this will be a cool little unit. Not sure about game effectiveness, but these are big squads, loads of firepower, and they're Marines...  'Ooo-Rah!'

Condotta - WIP

Just a couple of shots of work in progress.

Artillery park..  pretty much done other than basing, I do like how the gabions have come out on the base, but I think I may have to add an additional highlight to the wicker.

Militia spearmen, these will be combined on bases with crossbowmen, and a row of pavises to make up Bw(X) in DBMM terms, a mixed formation of bow and spear that can shoot, but isn't as vulnerable as unsupported bowmen.  Unusually I think I am going to have Bw at the front of the base with the long spears behind. I think it will look better, the spear points will protrude less so handling will be easier, and I think it will look cool. Only three of these bases are allowed in the army.

Ox-cart. Quite pleased with how this is turning out, I need to add highlights to the peasants tunic, touch up a couple of spots, and of course the base still needs a lot of work, but this will be very useful as baggage for any sort of medieval army. In the background is the Ducal tent, which has some base colours applied, but needs a lot more work. On the right you can just see the 'pig on a spit' base and the top picture shows this and the 'defend the loot' base. Both need very much more work.

Milanese Banners c1500

I tried to source Milanese flags for my Condotta, but found it a bit of a challenge. So in the end I hunted around the sources, and spent the day applying paint; not only to figures, but also some banners. Example:

So here they are:

Please feel free to download for your own use. Right click and select 'save link as'.

Baueda Camps and Guns

Baggage & Good In(Tent)ions...

As regular followers of this blog (are there any?) would know, I'm building up a c 1500 Milanese Condotta army for use with DBMM2.

One of the things I thought would be nice is to try and make the bases a little more scenic. So if in doubt, go to Baueda. They make great products, Claudio is a really good guy to deal with, the pricing is good, and service is fast. The only problem is..   I went to their site to order some gabions, (you know, baskets filled with dirt), to put on my artillery bases, and ended up with another 5 packets of stuff I just had to have...

Gabions, pots and sacks, camp-fire set and tents.

I ordered these little beauties on 5 August and they arrived from Europe on 27 August, which is pretty good going. From what I can tell, at least 8 days of that was good old 'Aussie' Post.

For good measure Claudio threw in free samples from the Hostis range. (Thanks Claudio!)This seems to be a foot Goth, (he will have to be painted with white skin, black clothing and lipstick..) a mounted Goth, and three poses of Norman foot, which seem to be dismounted knights.

These haven't yet been cleaned up but look like very nice castings, with nice undercut detail and should paint up very nicely. The dismounted knights would do very nicely for the First Crusade too, when many were forced to fight on foot after the loss of their horses.

I have checked the Baueda website, and I can't see these precise figures under any of their existing ranges, so I am guessing they form an extension to the Norman range, and the Goths a new variety of scruffy Germanics.

A word of warning though; these figures are genuine 15mm and will look very undersized compared to some of the heroic specimens out there. If anyone is genuinely interested, just comment, and I will put some Essex Normans and Lancashire Goths up for comparison.

Preparation

I like to drill out the tops of the tents (as you can see below I have three varieties - 15MDV, 15MDV-b and 15RNS).

This will allow me to add large banners to the tents, which just makes everything look better. For the parsimonious, not gluing the banners in will allow you to have interchangeable flags/banners for every army. If you do this though, make sure you keep the tent colours pretty generic.  

Pin Vice works out....

Next step, simple wood-glue (PVA) onto pre-cut bases (Olympian Games). Once on their bases I will add various shields, bags, boxes to add interest and variety to the scene, then undercoat with cheap spray car-primer white. Camp Guard figures get painted separately and added when basing is done.

And here's the real reason the Baueda order went in, in the first place, late 15th or early 16th century field artillery, behind gabions. 

As you can see in the background, you get a a sheet of 16 gabions, and these are easily clipped/broken out of the sheet. The guns will be painted separately, as will the five crew and various cannon-balls, and sacks and boxes from Baudea set LGS2.  They should look suitably busy, colourful and varied.

Take Three

So I had a paint disaster. After undercoating half the mounted in black. I changed my mind and went white. Spray cans, same brand, same type. And it just bubbled horribly. So three days of paint stripping  (yuck). I'm now back to where I started. Of course all lances etc. had to be replaced, so maybe 5 hours all up. Boo!

Italian Condotta - Army-Building

So over the years, as if by accident I have managed to acquire a fair amount of lead that would be suitable for Italian Condotta.

First it was winning a DBA sized Mirliton army, then picking up bits and pieces to pad it out - initially I intended to do a Venice in Greece style army for DBMM, with very small numbers of Knights, but supported by lots of Light Horse. Some of it got painted (badly, in a hurry), but most of it just sort of hung around in various stages of undercoat or raw lead.

When I went to build my Wallachian army, many of the figures intended for the Stradiots got cannibalised for Wallachian and allied Light Horse - then I was given another Mirliton DBA Condotta box. I started looking at various armies for something that caught my fancy, but other people at the club had, or were intending to build Florence, Venice and so on. Cesare Borgia's Papal Army looked interesting, but the heraldry didn't inspire. I thought about the Northern League, but I don't much like the idea of a red cross on a white background.. dull.

Ah-hah.. what's this imperial eagle quartered on a snake eating a man.. excellent. Sforza, and the DBMM list for Milan has plenty of fun options, including the options of Romagnol mercenary pike, Swiss Allies, Landsknechts and even city militia pike. So lots of colour, heraldry, and the luckless Ludovico Sforza as the commander. Ideal for the Battle of Novara, 8 April 1500.

 A quick lead audit later, and I would only need to add some additional Knight to make the minimums, plus if I wanted a Swiss Ally, those too would have to be on the purchase schedule. The old lead would have to be stripped of course. But now they are all ready to go under the brush.

The observant will note the patina remaining after paint stripping using oven cleaner.
 
By the time I am finished I will have (elements):
3 Italian Generals
2 household knights
10 condotta knights
7 mounted crossbowmen
2 artillery pieces
8 Romagnol mercenary pike
3 double based city militia bow/spear
4 Italian swordsmen
4 city militia pikemen
8 handgunners
18 Swiss pike
6 Swiss handgunners

So then it will just be a matter of deciding which ones to use in a game as this is a lot more than the standard 400AP worth we normally game with.