Needed - Somewhere to Land

Now my Airborne platoon, supports and scatter terrain are complete it will soon be time to start the TooFatLardies' pint-sized campaign, 'Kampfgruppe von Luck'.  But while perusing the campaign I noticed that the first scenario is almost entirely made up of wheatfields, and I have none!

So, not wanting to just go with plain cloth and imagine the wheatfields I found some coir matting going cheap on eBay; £6.68 for a 60cm x 40cm section, including p&p.  I bought all they had left and started cutting them up into sections and laying them alongside the scenario road network (the diagonal trail through one field is just to add visual interest, but in the game will be treated like part of the wheatfields.

I have tried to make the sections standard sizes so they can be re-purposed for different field layouts.  I have cut some smaller pieces and clumps that can fill in the sections removed to accommodate troops.  I'm not sure if this will work but I plan to give it a go.

All that now remains is to give them a light spray with a pale sand colour to make them look less obviously like coir matting.  Also, I have a brown acrylic paint pen to retouch the black rubber matting around the edges.

Airborne Scatter - All Things Must End

At times it seemed like I'd never get there, but at long last I've finally completed all the items I acquired for my Airborne platoon, and here's the last of them.

It's all scenic scatter, so not really necessary for the campaign, but I knew if didn't do it now they'd never find their way to the front of the painting queue.

The Airspeed Horsa was of course the biggest drain on my time, and, at times, my enthusiasm, but I'm happy with the finished item.  I must admit that when I bought the kit[1] I had no idea how big the Horsa glider was.  It's as big as a four-engine bomber; I'd imagined something smaller that takes up less space.  It took ages carefully scoring out the control surfaces[2] to separate them from the wings and tail to get that sagged wreck look but I like a modelling challenge now and then, it increases the sense of 'ownership' in the finished product.

My agonising over my poor attempt at invasion stripes was greatly eased when I discovered this photo of the real thing - makes mine look rather good.

The intent was to reduce the footprint of the wreck by having the tail unit separated and one wing torn off by one of Rommel's Asparagus.

Rommelspargel

I don't have an answer as to why there's just this one lonely 'asparagus' that my glider has come a cropper on; in reality they filled entire fields with them. 

The three parts of the glider have all been put on ferro-bases to hold it securely in the magnetised box-file being used for storage ...

... along with the parachute canopies (paracord added using 'invisble' quilting thread courtesy of my better half).

The canopies are from Empress Miniatures, as are most of the supply containers; the unopened ones being intended for use as jump-off points (JOPs).

The out of focus empty basket by the canister in the foreground of the above image will be used to indicate it has been tested for as a Replen[ishment] Point but failed i.e., there are no munitions there.  Open canisters with weapons etc. inside will indicate one that has become a Replen Point.

And finally, as a nod to 'that film', an alternative marker for a failed Replen Point.

 

Notes:

[1.] It's a very old kit and quiet crude compared to current Airfix products; many parts don't even have locating lugs to hold them in place while glued.  Even worse, some of the bits are just wrong e.g. the passengers doors on the real thing slide up inside the glider and don't, as modelled in the kit, swing down with in-built steps. 

[2.] The wings and tail surface were solid one-piece mouldings.

Wargaming Projects - 4 of 4 - The Pending

A Potted History of my Wargaming Projects

Prehistoric; Past; Present; and, Pending

Part 4 - Pending Projects: that have some purchases but are mostly in the lead / plastic mountain or painted in insufficient numbers of a game.  And I'll start with one of my longest running pipe dreams, the Battle of Dara.

25mm Battle of Dara (Hinchliffe)

Back in the distant past of my wargaming days I was heavily influenced by illustrations in some books of historic battles using wargame figures.  The one that always impressed me most was the Battle of Dara in David Chandler's 'The Art of Warfare on Land' - from which the following image was taken.  

For some years now I have slowly accumulated most of the required figures cheaply off eBay, but they are all in the loft awaiting the completion of other ongoing projects - so who knows, mañana?

25mm Roman Britain (Hinchliffe)

Not sure what triggered this on again, off again, project.  Possibly it was fond memories of all the Rosemary Sutcliff books I read as a boy and an idea to do a sort of Pony Wars style game set in the 'Ancients' period, no doubt reinforced by more recent period reading by Simon Scarrow and Adrian Goldsworthy.

Needless to say, Hinchliffe was my go-to manufacturer, and unlike the Dara project above, some of these have actually hit the painting desk over the years but I can't decide whether or not to go gloss with this lot.

And, if get more painted I could also with Sharp Practise, or Lion Rampant (Ancients variant) - perhaps a scenario based on the Eagle of the Ninth?

Circa 1:400 Tudor Naval (Airfix, et al)

Nothing of mine worth showing here, as it consists of a pile of kits in the loft - Airfix Golden Hinds, Revenges, Mayflowers, and similar from a few other manufacturers.  

The 'plan' sees the masts left removeable to show damage as it occurs.  However, the plan frequently changes, and the latest is to use the kits for the contemporary 'First Great Northern War' (1563-70), a.k.a. 'Nordic Seven Years War'.  This war both avoid any in-built prejudices I have about the Armada, etc., and make a rather pretty showing based on this image from that war.

25mm Robin Hood (Hinchliffe)

I have acquired enough of these figures to run a game based on the rules for hidden movement on woods that I use for my 'Breaking of the Fellowship' game (here).  But so far have only painted up a triplet of personalities: Robin, John and Marian.

28mm Three Musketeers (Redoubt)

As I have played a game with these they perhaps shouldn't really be in the Pending post.  

I haven't settled on a set of rules for them, or done anything about the rather large terrain deficit for musketeer adventures.  

1:3000 Napoleonic Naval (Lamming)

This one started when Gallia produced a series of 1:3000 Napoleonic warships which I realised gave one the ability to stage decent sized fleet action on fairly standard wargames tables.  I bought some samples, but found them hard to paint up, and then Gallia folded!  

For a while Square One produced some similar ships but I wasn't as keen on them as the Gallia models because they had cast on ratlines that would make trimming off mast sections more difficult.  Then One Square stopped trading but Lamming produced another similar range, also with cast on ratlines.  But I continued buying a few samples and seeing how well I could paint them.  Not well, was the answer as can be seen below.

But then I found a 'cheat' - the left-hand ship in the above image is not all painted.  What I did was print out a picture of a ship's hull to the right scale, cut it out, and stuck it on.  This, IMO, works very well and so I intended getting it underway at some point.  Unfortunately, as I write this, Martin, who runs Lamming as one-man business, is in hospital and has been for some time - I can only wish him all the best for the future.

28mm Napoleonic 1812 Retreat (Wargames Foundry)

This project was planned as yet another 'Pony Wars' style game with all the players being French seeking to escape from the icy wastes of Russia.

This seemed a good idea as not requiring armies of figures and giving me plenty of opportunity for simple, but fun, conversions to clad the figures in something more suitable for the season.

The Russians, mainly Cossacks, but including others and natural hazards (packs of wolves) would be controlled by the rules.

Even they are not immune to the cold.

Apart from my frustrations with trying to produce convincing snow on the figure bases, I'm not sure why this one ended up more or less permanently on the back-burner.

1:245 ACW Naval (Atlantis)

Yet more unmade kits in the loft.  there's little excuse here as these kits should be pretty quick to do and it only requires two to be able to have a game - I'm considering using 'The Portable Ironclads Wargame' by David Crook.

And I do have a USS Constitution kit to bash into the USS Cumberland, to give the CSS Virginia (ex USS Merrimac) something to aim at while the USS Monitor tries to save it - just like the cover on the rules.

15/20mm Colonial Zulu / Dervish (Peter Pig / Newline)

No pictures of figures here, as this project is intended for pro-painting, so I only have a few sample packs of figures from the two manufacturers listed above.  I have been trying out various painters and am awaiting some samples from one at the time of writing.  When I've tried out the likely candidates I will be able to work out whether I can afford to do it in 15mm or 20mm.   If I go with a Sudan option I will be using 'The Sands of the Sudan' rules, in which Carlo Pagano has resurrected the rules used by Peter Gilder in his Wargames Holiday Centre.

If I go with Zulus, it will be a modified version of Pony Wars.

1/200 / 10mm WW2 Tunisia (Action 200 & Wargames South)

This was inspired by an article "Into the Void with Cork Force" in 'Wargames World' #5 Duncan Macfarlane's short-lived (just 5 issues) sister publication to his 'Wargames Illustrated'.  The scenario is set in Tunisia in 1943 and the game is a bit like Pony Wars, with players being British while their allies (US and French) and enemies (German and Italian) are controlled by the rules.  

1:285 WW2 8th USAAF vs Luftwaffe (Tabletop Flights)

This is a planned resurrection project as I sold off my previous 1:350 collection (see previous post covering this here) and have come to regret that decision.  The project uses a set of rules called "MiG Alley" that were published in Wargames Illustrated #54.  These were set in Korea but are easy enough to modify for different periods - this is a fun game, not a serious simulation.

As the 1:350 planes manufactured by the long since defunct Helmet Miniatures I needed another supplier.  After looking around I plumped for a slightly larger scale (1:285) from Table Top Flights in the States.   

1:600 WW2 Bomber Command vs Nachtjäger (Skytrex)

A long time ago, I read about some aerial rules for nightfighters that I thought would make a very different and interesting quick game.  The Triton range of 1:600 aircraft did pretty much everything needed.  But as ever I didn't do anything but day-dream about it until Triton ceased trading.  Luckily Heroics & Ros now market the range so I bought some at Colours, painted them up, and fitted them with magnets to sit on simple flight stands.

Obviously, at this scale, the German nightfighters don't have any radar antennae, so you'll just have to imagine those.

This game if it ever happens will be a closed game i.e., the nightfighter player won't see the table with British bombers appearing on one edge of a hex-grid and hoping to fly off the other edge without being attacked.  The player can use his radar and will get a plot of any detections on his display allowing him to try and steer to an interception.  To make things more interesting there is likely to be a British Intruder flying around, and every time the German nightfighter uses its radar the Intruder will get a bearing on him and steer to intercept.

If anyone recognises these rules, please let me know what they are as I just can't find anything like that at present, so I'm just making up rules along these basic principles.