Interesting listening

 This postcast has an Interview withh Andy from Heroics and Ros. Its quite interesting on a number of levels. I was always worried how he was doing, but expanding the buisness 4 times since he has owned it he must be doing something right.

Friday night

 I'm going to start doing a friday-ish night update ofwhat I've been working on for the week. So without further ado let the slideshow begin.

Carrying on with the air support replacement project I've been painting Germans this week.

FW190's. I never realised they were so small.

A collection of Stukas

A wargaming cliche

The last photo comes from a story in "Stuka Pilot". Rudel writes that when his wing was re-equiped with FW190's they continued to fly cannon armed Stukas as well, though frequenty he was the only one flying them.

I have to sit down this weekend and do some soldering.

I aso finished up one of the P47 stands.

Makes a bit more sense now

I like the look though I'm not sure a large radial engine would toss out so much smoke. Now a delicate little P51......

The Imperial guard grenadiers got a flock and some flags.

I was having an e-mail chat with Mr Page this afternoon (slow Friday at work where I had several things to do, but not the kit or time to do them at the end of the week). He commeneted that next years project was rebasing his MSH stuff on 2mm laser cut MDF. For a moment I thought "wow that would be nice", then the pratical side of the brain pointed out just how many stands that might be. Initially the count was "lots" but then I wondered just how many stands it was. A quick guess was 1500 for both SH and MSH. 

After tea tonight I went into the room and had a quick approximate tally up and came up with a number of 2000 stands. And I was about to add that here when I remembered I had missed a box entirely.

2700.......

A bit of history

 One of the bonuses of getting a new phone is having access to the internet. Over the last 3-4 weeks I have started listening to some Podcasts from Gods Own Scale which has some interesting ramblings about wargaming wih the main aim being to promote 6mm wargaming. Theres even an episode chatting to Robert Dunlop who is a proponent of Great War Spearhead (which I really must have a go at). However I'm going to comment on his line which is "Keep talking about 6". I've noticed over the years (and moreso in the last 10 or so) that more people have noticed that you can play games in the more "pretty" periods of history that don't look like its a pub stoush on a Saturday night. Us 20th century "treadheads", as I think the owner of Baccus minatures once referred to us, worked out that 6mm was an ideal scale a lot longer ago, probably as its more convenient to fling sharp bits of metal 2000m at objects without it looking silly on a 6 by 4. Having a look through my collection last night I came up with these guys.

These were some of the first 6mm minatures I purchased back in 1983 and were fighting the cold war when it was Ultra-Modern. Still in their original paintjob which wasn't that bad for a 15 year old. They have survived being unbased due to a younger me baking the first layer of paint on; 200C in an oven for 10 minutes. It stinks and be very careful about the mix of metal that is used (lead doesn't melt at this temp, but I'm not sure about pewter). I also have in my collection Russians purchased before the colapse of the Soviet Union. So technically I've been talking about 6 for over 35 years. 

On the other hand, here's some figures on the painting bench this morning just after basing. There comes a time in every Napoleonic gamers life where he has to paint the French Imperial Guard. I have held off for a long time, but playing the campaigns of 1813 and 1814 means that unfortunately you just have to have these guys in the box. This week I've painted the Greanadiers, and am now starting on the Chasseurs.

In the last couple of weeks I painted most of the cavalry.

Front base is the 1st and 2nd lancers and behind is the Horse Grenadiers and Empress Dragoons. I've also done the Chassers de Cheval. Oddly enough I in the last couple of Baccus orders I forgot the Middle guard figures and so these were ordered during the last Baccus open cart session. Oh and if anyone has an interest in the spare figures that I haven't used (36 Horse Grenadiers anyone?) drop me a line.

After the Guardis finished I will probably start on the 3000 pts of Prussians curretly sitting in the sun. Theres a corps of Poles to do but it will be nice to have another opponent for the French.

More modern air support

 As a follow up to the last post, Peter and I also went halves on some NATO aircraft sets. As part of my SH/MSH air support replacement program I got the following.

Front left to right Gazelle, Lynx and Harrier, back PAH-1, UH-1 and an out of focus Saab Draken (Danes). My Brits have never actually had any air support so I'm sure it will be apreciated.

Next up the Russians and more Helicopters.

 

L to R Mi-4 Hound, Mi-8 Hip and Mi-6 Hook with a Hind in the back to scale. Now I knew that the Mi-6 was big but this is just enormous. In teamYankee you would not be able to fire the length of the cargo bay. Oh and a Mig 21's as well.

Finally I could not resist his set after my reading on the air war over North Vietnam. A complete SA-2 battery complete wth the "Spoon Rest" early warning radar and "Fan Song" fire control radar.

 The "Spoon Rest" radar array is printed on acetate (though possibly a bit thicker might be nice). The "Fan Song" looks like it was invented by a mad scientist on a wild weekend bender. I'd hate to see it change direction quickly.

"It won't track the target".

" Then stick more radar dishes on it!"

More air support

 As part of my ongoing saga in replacing my SH and MSH air support I was having an e-mail discussion with Peter a coule of monts back. He was interested in buying some more 3mm aircraft (there is a bag of similar models in the Page strategic lead pile) but was not sure about buying packs of 8. My imediate reply was "so what are you interetsed in...". It turns out that great minds think alike and fools seldom differ (take your pick).

The offshoot was another order from Picoarmour. Again when it arrived I pondered the decontamination procedures and then remembered it had been in the post for nearly 4 weeks. I''ll split it into 2 posts with the first up being German air support. Now by late war this is rather optimistic but doesn't stop anyone collecting models does it.

So from left to right we have HS129's, Ju87G's, Ju87B's and some FW190D's. Again I.'m really impressed with the casting (the Stukas with 37mm are very nicely done) and I'm looking forward to painting them.

Back to Normality?

 Yesterday I participated in the rarest of events in these strange days, I went to a wargaming convention.

Call to Arms is the annual wargaming convention run by the Welington Warlords and due to its timing later in the year had not been blanketly cancelled. I had said yes to coming down several months ago. However I had forgotten what this entailed. Not in terms of game oganisation, but more from actual organisation. Out of bed at 5:45 for a 6:15 off. Sun rise south of Shannon and despite the procession of roadworks I was at the hall in Wellington by 8:20, beating my friends by 15 minutes.

 The game was WW2 Spearhead and featured an attack by the 6th Panzer division on a prepared Russian defence in July 1943. I can't tell you much else as I don't seem to have picked up the scenario notes.

The 3 battalions were in level 2 entrenchments with minefields in front. The black lengths represent anti-tank ditches.

I comanded the units on the right and Paul the units on the left. I had a halftrak panzer grenadiers and a tank battalion with a Tiger company in support. Peter had set up a simple but effective defensive belt. My motorcycle recon unit found the first minefield and I pushed the combat engineers forward to start clearing them. Meanwhile I tried to cover them with artillery and other fire. This failed on several counts. 1) its very hard to kill stands that are in level 2 entrenchments and 2) Throwing 1's and 2's does not call artillery in even if you are German. To cap it all off Peter had been making regular sacrifices to the dice gods over lockdown and my troops died under a hail of 6's. Who knew that 76mm artillery was so damn effective. 

 At this time Russian air support turned up. Now there are things that just go together, Rogers and Astair, peaches and cream and Sturmoviks and Tigers. Or maybe its like pheremones and one just attracts the other. Either way, the attack went in. Fortunately Pauls AA stepped up and drove them off.

I'm happy with how the 3mm aircraft look

While I slowly made inroads into the Russian numbers it wasn't enough and the Panzer Grenadiers broke just after the artillery finally turned up, running off leaving a pile of dead infantry and all the combat engineers.

 And with the AA protection gone (stripped off by Peters artillery) it was round 2 and this tme the Sturmoviks had their 3 pounds of flesh.

Oh well....

Paul was a bit more circumspect in his attack and took his time reducing the Russin infantry before dealing with the minefields. Finally the defenders on his flank were removed and his combat engineers moved forward to find....nothing.

Maybe recon by death does have some uses

With the gap now wide open Pauls troops swept in and started flanking the defenders. I also made ready to move forward on discovering that I too had no mines in front of me on the flank. My combat engineers had been spread out, but not far enough to find the gap. Peters only had 1/2 the number of minefields to cover the front and his poker playing skills were to the fore.

The Germans (well, what was left with them) swept through the gaps and tried to flank the second line of defence. However the Russian reserves turned up with elemenst from a tank corps (with 2 too many KV-1s).

A tank battle erupted at this point and with the Germans having no real space to maneuver it was a straight up slugfest. This was not going well for the Germans, and then the SU-152,s turned up (in front of Paul).

I lost a few more Pz IV's to Peters hot dice run and then we caalled the game as we ran out of time. It was nicely poised but I think that the russians probably had the upper hand with my 3 battalions all having taken a beating and Paul having had 1 battalion broken as well. We had aso not started on reducing the second line of defences. 

An excellent well balanced game. I will ask Peter where the scenario came from.

On other demo game caught my eye, a refight of Trafalgar using langton 1:1200 ships.

Battle about to be joined

Later in the day. The French and Spanish had tried to maneuver but struggled in the light winds.

So a very good day. It was nice to have a good game with a few laughs and also to catch up with a few people I had known in Wellington 15 years ago. I'm also well aware that we are very lucky that we get to meet up like this.