Mea Culpa - Lots!

I recently had reason to do a search on this blog for some of the earliest content, and realised I had been blogging for quite a while. Not as early as some of my first wargames websites, back when blog wasn't even a word. In 1999..  http://dbm.freehosting.net/cancon2000.htm  (back in the day when we had 79 players at Cancon  - and I famously rolled my first dice in a 6 round tournament with a 1,1,1,1.)

But I have been sadly remiss updating this blog for some time. Since August! Mea Culpa. I plead, tiredness, work, life, Mastodon, watching Twitter become 'TrainWreck' (tm) and just general slackness. 

It hasn't meant I haven't been doing wargames stuff, sadly, few games, but lots of reading, purchasing, printing and even some painting.

So first of all, success stories - finished two platoons plus core supports for Chain of Command - 

British Airborne - 28mm

A mix of Offensive, Artizan, Warlord, 1st Corps, and even Renegade (PIAT teams). 

BEF - mainly 1st Corps with 3d printed AT support. I also made progress with their armour supports, here they are with silly putty masking for the camouflage. All 3d prints. The Vickers VIb are particularly nice, from Arvernes on Wargaming 3d.

Then there was the Panzer IV kickstarter (including a Panther add-on), from Night Sky also on wargaming3d. To which I have added some Lee and Stuarts from Thingiverse.

It included some rather nice tank crew...  these will see a  lot of use I think. The heads are separate.

Then there are the ongoing items of terrain. The rather nice Warbases Russian Chapel... 

Some cows..  Warlord games, loads of filling - annoying, but I can't find decent 3d print files for dead cows, or horses, or pigs even.

The 10/12mm stuff hasn't been neglected either.. some Farms/BUA for 'O Group' or 'Iron Cross'. 

Burned Out

And then there has come the insanity..   first of all, this in my FLGS caught my eye... 

Which of course, led to this...

And this...

Oops...  and then there was this..   Alex at @StormOfSteelwargaming is to blame..  WW1.

This eclectic workbench... 

What on earth was I thinking? Maybe prepping for 'What a Cowboy'... 

And then there were these.. 

Why do I do it to myself..  there's a bunch of Perry figures to do XIV Army in Burma. Thus explaining the Lee and Stuart tanks.

Altogether now,  dum dum dum, dum de dah, dum de dah...  

Making for a Mutiny

Like lots of other wargamers I invest a lot of time and effort into collecting and painting figures and models. My terrain; however, could use some work. As I've recently been collecting figures for the Indian Mutiny, my existing collection wasn't going to cut it. 

I also have figures for Napoleonics in the Peninsula Campaign, WW2 in Sicily, plus there's Mexico if I wanted to do Maximilian, Northern Africa.. etc. So I figured that with a bit of cunning and some removable roofs, I could bash together something that (if you squinted a bit, and with suitable specialist pieces) would just about pass muster for all these. 

The base models were bought very cheaply from ebay JB models for £12 for 5 basic adobe shells. White glue and chinchilla sand masked the obvious 'flatness' of the MDF. 

Some Wills HO pantile sheets, thick card and a hot glue gun were used to make the roofs.

I then attached them to bases, added walls from foam, brush bristles, and my usual pva and sand textured base mix.

But who knew the foam walls would melt under an aerosol undercoat...  oops.

Well, that's annoying, but crack on, and slap on coats of cheap acrylic umber, ochre, cream and sienna for the tiles.

Ok, looking the part, and usable in a number of terrain regions. Now add roofs...

And suitable for a few more. I also had another building..

More upmarket this one. Still needs a trellis and benches on the deck. I also picked up some 'Arabic' buildings, from the same source, that got a similar treatment.

 Just some tufts, dried grass and bushes, and a few bits of scatter to add, and I will have quite a nice little conurbation.  I also have a nice ornamental Indian fountain, some carts and villagers that I think will really make this work. Not bad for a couple of days building.

New printer

I managed to just about kill the old Photon S printer, so decided to bite the bullet and get a new one...

The build volume is about 5 times that of the Photon S with quality very similar. It does open up new possibilities like buildings...

Perry figure for scale...   and of course, very easy to print off loads of teeny tiny tanks.

For some reason, unlike the green translucent stuff, this one came with a free 1 litre bottle of the basic grey. I think I prefer this  it seems a little more elastic than the green. 

So now I am on the hunt for more free building files...  and I need to buy more resin!

Claymore 2022 - Picture Heavy

The first wargames show I have been to since 2019. And to be honest, pretty much the first time I have been out in a 'crowd' since February 2020. I think in that time, my going out has been two visits to family on the West Coast, two funerals, and two restaurants, other than the fortnightly game with one other wargamer. 

So once I got over my shock at being among people again, as always the venue was Edinburgh College where the bring and buy was in what seemed to be a weights room (all those mirrors) and the games and traders in two decent sized halls. I saw (I think) two people wearing masks. It also came as a shock how close and up personal people want to get - 'in your face' it felt like. But I caught up with a few folk I hadn't seen in years - so that was very pleasant.

So here are the games:

Carentan - Rules - Battlegroup Normandy - Club?

Tunisia - Rules - Battlegroup Normandy - Club - Leuchars

Bautzen - Rules ? - Club - Tyneside

Bautzen again

Blackhawk Down - Rules and Club Unknown

Somewhere in Russia - Rules- Bolt Action - Club - Dunfermline 

Somewhere in the West - Rules - Dead Man's Hand - Club - Dunfermline

Edinburgh Playtest Group

Extreme G Racing - Glasgow?? 

Trouble in The Borders - Rules - Border Wars - Flags of War

Frostgrave

Adam Park (Singapore) - Rules ? - Club - Gothenburg Gamers

Adam Park (Singapore) - 2

Imjin River in 6mm - Rules - All Hell Let Loose - Club ?

Iron Brigade

Samurai Naval - Rules -? - Club - Kirriemuir

Battle of Lemnos - Rules - ? - Club - Gourock

Viva Mexico - Rules - Sharp Practice 2 - Club - ??

Pod Racing

Pydna - Massed Pike

Pydna 2 - Rules - 'Nemo me Impune Lacessit' (unpublished) - Club - Immortals

Pydna Details

Mons Graupius - Rules - Strength & Honour - Charley 

Sci Fi? 

Indian Mutiny - Rules - ? - Club - SPIT

Test of Resolve - unsure of Club

Not a clue, but all the buildings are available from Warbases!

So that was it. I have to say, none of the games really inspired me. The Imjin River one is superb but in my view, the impact is limited by the scale. I liked the Iron Brigade game a lot. The Indian Mutiny game had visual impact but I would have preferred the MDF buildings to be tarted up a bit, the Mexican game suffered form the same thing. The Mons Graupius game was very cool, but I can hardly complain about Imjin in 6mm and let Charley get away with 2mm... 

And what of loot... ? well, I felt obliged to spend some hard earned on Perry plastic, and Supreme Littleness Designs do some fantastic MDF buildings... a rummage in Colonel Bill's 50p bargain bin usually pays dividends, and then a Russian School from Warbases, and some Wild Boar. also Warbases. Finally in addition to some decals, I picked up some Pendraken 10mm Early WW2 French to go with all the vehicles I have been printing.

Couple of Indian Mutiny, Russian Flamethrower, WW2 Italian Officer and casualty.

I was handed the inflatable shell.. no, I don't know either...

On the whole a pleasant day out. And it looks like being the only wargames show in Scotland this year.

1/150 WW2 for Iron Cross and BKC

As promised, I followed up on my WW2 US forces with a roughly Normandy themed German force. Again, all 3d printed. I wasn't so keen on the infantry, but they will do. 

Similarly to the US, I wish I had added crew figures to the open topped vehicles. This time I added some foliage to add a bit more interest as well. Just some small clump foliage added with PVA, then lightly drybrushed yellow ochre. 

The painting was very simple - the airbrush got a workout, added tracks etc. washed everything in Agrax Earthshade, lightly drybrushed Vallejo Buff. My only annoyance is that the I94 decals from Pendraken are quite badly out of register on all 6 sheets I used. 

The stl files were all from Thingiverse again, scaled down to 66.7% from the 1:100 files from M. Bergman. 

I also printed myself off some 1/150 1940 French and some 1941 Russians. Next up will be some 40/41 Germans who can face off either (yes I know, but a PzIVD is a PzIVD, especially in 1/150). 

Hopefully I will get to Claymore in Edinburgh this weekend, and collect some more bases. I might do some Early War BEF as well... we shall see.

1/150 WW2 for Iron Cross & BKC

I am not quite sure how many different sets of WW2 rules I have played. I do know my first were home-made, then the first published set I ever used were Charles Grants 'Battle- for Practical Wargamers'- courtesy of Mr Carnegie and Blackness Library, early 1970s. More recently, I have played Blitzkrieg Commander (BKC), Airfix Battles, some hex based games whose name escapes me and Chain of Command (CoC). In between there has been Rapid Fire, WRG 1925-1950, Operation Warboard, and several others. 

My favourite set at the moment is CoC, but it's principally a platoon level infantry game, other arms are support only. So no real chance to get squadrons of tanks on the table, and a very different command experience from other sets. I purchased Dave Brown's O Group, thinking it would give me the opportunity to get a few more AFV on the table and decided that as I already have WW2 forces in 28mm, 20mm, 15mm & 6mm, O Group would be perfect for 10/12mm. 

Why another scale? Well, I am limited by the 1800mm x 1200mm table top I can squeeze into the magnificent man-shed, and if I didn't want hub to hub Shermans, then I needed to operate in a smaller scale. I have roads and other terrain in 15mm and buildings in 6mm, which visually will work. Plus, in 10/12mm, no one expects painting to be anything other than impressionistic. Finally, I have a 3d printer, and there are excellent free files available for most vehicles for the major combatants. Simply rescaling 1/100 print files (15mm) to 66.7% gives me a load of options, albeit at the cost of some fragile prints. I believe Pendrakens excellent range of vehicles are scaled to 1/150, so these are directly comparable. 

My first two prints were 1944 & 1945 US, with an opposing Late War German Kampfgruppe. O Group generally uses 2 models for a troup/squadron, so common vehicles I printed off in sixes, with pairs for the other options. 

Of course, my usual opponent Martin, having introduced me to the Cold War rules, 7 Days to the River Rhine (7DttRR), then decided to try out it's stablemate, Iron Cross. I might write up my thoughts on these in a future post, but they seem to work quite well. I still want to give O Group a decent try, but between BKC2, O Group and Iron Cross, I have plenty of options. 

Naturally, Martin was also keen to get some new toys on the table. He already has substantial British & German forces for Later War, so I sorted him out with a few Soviets.. (although I did put my foot down and insisted that no one needed a dozen IS2..)

My next post will show the Germans...  hopefully,  soon!