A bit of history: Junta

 A comment on Junta the Pendraken forums a couple of days ago sent me on a hunt in "Der Room" (I really need to clean up in there)

A well used game. I'm storing it poorly for Luke

Those readers of a certain age will remember the board game Junta with varying levels of fondness depending on how their games went. The broad description is that each player plays a faction in a banana republic and the aim of the game is to have the most Pesos in your Swiss bank account when the country colapses. Along the way there's elections, vote buying, assasinations and coups (starting with the ceremonial shelling of the presidential palace by the navy). Every group has storys to tell of particularly spectacularly events that etched themselves in memory. But this post is not about those. Well, not yet...

Back in the day when I was money poor and time rich (as you tend to be when you are young, and I do wonder if I would prefer to go back to this) I decided that the gamebaord was too small and fiddly and came up with a "slightly" bonkers plan to build a bigger version on a 3' square mat. The card counters had to go and so were replaced with something a bit more visually suitable. I decided to move the period back from the present day to the late 1930's. A purchase was made from the Peter Pig 15mm Spanish civil war ranges and a start was made.

There are 3 army brigades in the game, each of 6 units. I decided to do 3 stands with moels and then 3 blanks to stack. So from left to right we have a Cv33 tanket (nothing else quite says 2nd rate nation like this, cheap, cheerful and useless), Infantry and the General and the classic French 75mm. 

The airforce only gets airstrikes and a lone unit of paratroops. I-16's seemed to fit the bill.

The palace guard also only get 2 stands but nice white uniforms.

Likewise the Navy gets a gunboat and some Marines. I knocked up a cartoon-like baby protected cruiser from the 19th century out of balsa and plasticard.

The police stands are a bit smaller (I can't remember why) and are just guys in berets.

I then started adapting some of the units to fit into my theme. One of the cards gives the coup faction a helicopter gunship. I decided to swap this out for an armoured car. Depending on which side you are looking at the allegiance is flexible.

"Viva El Presidente!"

"Viva La Revolution!"

I also brought a start of peasants for the various protesters/rabble stands but never got round to painting them up. I even got some drunkards to represent the international press.

I also have a crack at a couple of buildings.

Again I never really got the rest done. all from card.

Ok, so far all this is pretty standard and not really much of a stretch modeling wise. However you will all remember that each position had a card to remind you who you were that particular turn, and all these cards had a cartoon charcter drawn on them. Back in the days before 3D printes and STL files we just had to use our hands and our wits (well I had one of the 2). Out with the Fimo themoset clay....

El Presidente

The Generals

Secret Police, Air force and Navy

The full set

From the internet came an 8th faction to play for more players, The Minister of War.

No idea where I got the inspiration for him from

The Minister of war also gets to control the International intervention forces. In this case the Germans/nationalists.

Stukas, Panzer I's and another armoured car (they came in packs of 2 and I wasn't wasting it).

So there you have it. A slightly mad project from a man with too much time on his hands. I do sometimes miss those days......

Finishing touches

 Another couple of evenings at the work bench and the 4 houses are finally finished, only 21 months after they arrived in my mailbox. Adding the foliage is the last step. To tie the 4 buildings together as a group I've used white for the edging stonework, and terracotta for the rooves and plant pots. The plant colours should probably be varied but again sticking with one ties everything together. I contemplated replacing the flat roof with a corregated tile one but in the end decided that it was more practical to just leave then as is.

Possibly a bit twee but I'm not overly worried.

So, I'm now trying hard not to buy another set of these buildings as I'm making a solid attempt to clear out the modeling pile (oh and theres the whole trying not to spend more money thing. This is balanced by ttCombat putting these in the "last chance to buy" list)

Revolving benches

 Another month, another project across the painting bench. After a while painting 6 and 10mm figures lost its lustre and the siren song of 28mm VSF again lured me to my doom. It was back to the ttCombat Streets of Venice models that I purchased 2 years ago. Again these are really nice models and quite cheap for what they are. 

 

As usual I've tried to tart them up a bit. I've always liked old style oil paintings of building covered in plants, and it gives me a chance to use colours I wouldn't normally touch

A Necessary Evil

 The annual Pendraken painting competition is on and I've decided the throw my hat in the ring. I've been held up by a dead video card (and its very hard to find a replacement for an 11 year old video card) but finally solved that yesterday. The other issue is that due to the Pendraken forums antique code (and apparently the "new" version is a step up on the old, which truelyterrifies me as to what it used to be like) the pictures have to be hosted somewhere else on the net. This leaves my blog since I don't do social media.

My choice for this year are twofold. First up is a singkle stand, my 15th century Ottoman artillery, which I think are a bit different from the standard Ottoman bombards. The Ottomans would have captured a fair bit of western kit and would have had no problems using it.

My other entry is my Knights of St John army.

Now I get to step back in time and upload these onto the forum using something remarkably similar to old style HTML.

DBA storage

 After the last post I did a bit more thinking about storage and transport solutions. This revolved around a few things like size, metal trays, shape etc. I'd point out at this point thats its quite challenging (with my skills) to make a wooden box thats square and with a door etc that works. So I went back to the style I've developed over the years. Clever plans levelled by lazyness. The tray footprint I came up with was 18cm by 19cm. 18cm wide is a no brainer as its 3 base widths wide. The depth was a bit more challenging and requires a bit of thought. a depth of 18cm is 6 foot stands with no space or 4 cavalry stands with 2cm spare. Extend to 19cm and its 6 foot stands with 1cm spare or 4 cavalry stands now with space for a foot stand as well.

It fits the Ottomans. Theres enough space for an optional stand of Serbian knights if I ever do one.

The knights of St John are a bit easier as theres not as many cavalry stands.

There are several pluses. I have a stockpile of 3mm MDF in my office at work which has been pre-cut to provide shelving for a set of shelves. Fortunately its probably spare as I have not seen it used in 10 years. The second one is that it took me 5 minutes to cut the wood up for 2 trays on the sawbench and another 5 to glue them together.

Sunday night

Since the weekend has been miserable here with the tail end of a tropical cyclone sweaping over the country, I've been inside for a couple of days. while I've mostly been reading theres still been a bit of modeling done.

The HS-129's finally got their trip across the painting bench. Not overly common but thats never stopped a wargamer modeling them (or anything else uncommon). The model is just the standard version but I had to do one of the ones with a PAK-40, which must have been an "interesting" experience firing it from an underpowered aircraft (its the lead one but not overly visible set against a black background)

 I also finished the base for my second P47 unit. 

This completes my current needs for WW2 air support. It feels odd, given that my selected period is 1944-45 that I have as many stands for the germans as I do for everyone else.

 I've also been looking at my DBA armies in terms of how I'm going to store them. Its an interesting mental exercise as you have to think in trems of how they will store, how you transport them (car, backpack etc), where they will be packed together or individually. I've started out by lining them up and also calculating how many linear cm each army takes up. After that its a bit of a juggling act with depths and heights etc. I've come up with a couple of options, including one while typing this.

My current plan is to come up with a standard size which makes life far eaiser cutting the bits out prior to assembly.

mumble weekly update

Another haphazardly timed update. Theres been a few trays across the painting table but little has stuck for more than a couple of days. The one that has stooped is been the slow moving 3mm Spearhead replacement air support project. Just looking at the bench I'm really not sure why I have so many helicopters....

I based up some of the larger Russian toys, and my god they are huge. Heres a Mi-6 Hook next to a couple of Hind D's. The Mi-26 Halo is larger.

I've done a bit of work on some of the bases. The RAF got a bit of a tart up first. Western Europe back roads are simple to make look interesting.

I also did some of the German and Russian eastern front bases, but its very hard to make the eastern europe steppe look interesting (and no I'm not doing snow....yet). Maybe some dead targets might improve things.

As something a bit different I've painted up The Saab Drakens for my future Danes.

Looking like something out of the Thunderbirds, I'm still not sure how the designers managed to convince the Swedish money men to give them the cash to make them.