The Paras Have Landed! And About Time Too!

I have finally finished painting and basing my 20mm Airborne platoon[1], and support units for Chain of Command (CoC).  This has dragged on far longer than I hoped, and as usual the obligatory photo session shows up the faults like nothing else; albeit some are helped out by the poor focus in some of the photos.

So, with no more ado, here they are, in their new magnetised storage box.

The platoon commander and his platoon sergeant ...

... have at their disposal three sections like this one, consisting of a superior junior leader (Sgt), a 3-man Bren team, 5 riflemen, and a corporal with a Sten gun.

They also have a sniper in the platoon (I have painted 2 more as support options).

When it comes to support, they have the option to reorganise one section with two Bren teams, and they can also call on an additional section.  As the platoon lacks any integral anti-armour capability (other than Gammon bombs) I have four PIAT teams they can call on, all slightly different.

There are also three 2" mortar teams in the support pool.

Heavier support can be supplied, courtesy of a 5-man Vickers MMG team ...

... an Airborne 6-pounder anti-tank gun with a junior leader and 5-man crew ...

... a slightly blurry 75mm Pack howitzer, with junior leader and 5-man crew ...

... perhaps called up by their forward observer (FO).

And if I want to get really nasty, I have a 3-man flamethrower team.

Unfortunately, the opposition will also get nasty, with the inevitable consequences, 7 men hors de combat, 1 walking wounded and another being carried in for the medic to treat while two others rummage through supplies looking for more meds.

Finally bringing up the tail, are some bailed-out tankers (that got included in the painting batch).

The Jeep crews are also finished, but their mounts are not, so they will have to await them before they get a photo-shoot.  I also have the discarded parachute canopies, supply containers and wrecked Airspeed Horsa to complete before I can move on to something different.

Notes:

[1.] The vast majority of these figures are by Figures, Armour, Artillery (FAA), now in the States.  A few, such as the Vickers gunners are by Adler, and some figures used the Adler separate heads.

Wargaming Projects - 2 of 4 - The Past

A Potted History of my Wargaming Projects - part 2 of 4

Prehistoric; Past; Present; and, Pending

Part 2 - Past Projects: in no particular order, that were either pending or in play but have since been sold or passed on to others.

Among my late friend's Seleucid army that I inherited (see earlier post here), were a few 25mm Garrison Hoplites.

As I have a 'thing' for old-school gaming and figures, this started me off acquiring more figures that could make up a couple of small forces.  But then the big ECW project[1] came along and I realised these were never going to reach the table so they were sold off on eBay - I still feel some pangs of regret over this - these are just two of the half dozen lots I sold off:

Another Ancients project that bit the dust around this time was my 6mm Seleucid army[2] using Heroics and Ros figures.  This was given to a friend who also had a 6mm ancient army so I do still the get odd game with these figures, so no regrets here.  And these photos are from one of those games, with my ex-figures attacking an Indian fortress ...

... and breaking in!

While I'm not fan of the prevalence of skirmish gaming which seems to be pushing classic battle gaming aside, I have always done some skirmish gaming.  One set I was particularly fond of was this set of Samurai rules.

While I started a few Citadel Samurai for this ... 

... I quickly abandoned them for 25mm Dark Ages[3] figures by Citadel and Essex figures, with Huscarls, Thegns and Fyrd replacing Samurai, Chugen and Ashigaru.  These fell victim to the down-sizing of the last move and disappeared into the abyss that is eBay.

My tinkering with 15mm Thirty Years War (TYW) using Freikorps figures never got beyond a handful of units that were eventually sold to another friend and long-time gaming opponent - so like my 6mm Ancients (above) I still get to play with these now and again.

Another fleeting dalliance with Freikorps was with their 15mm Texan War of Independence range.  This didn't get beyond a dozen Mexican infantry, a few Texican skirmishers and some personality figures.

My 15mm Old Glory Seven Years War (SYW) project, Prussians and Austrians, was an altogether more serious affair.  This was an attempt to branch out into a different period at a time when I didn't have the spare time to paint anything myself.  So, I went with a pro-painter and all went well to start with.  

Unfortunately, after receiving one batch of cavalry I asked for a different shade to be used for horses' hooves in future batches and the painter promptly decided he was not going to paint any more for me.  I tried a couple of other painters but they just didn't match well enough to suit me (did I mention I have incipient OCD?) and the collection was consigned to the loft, only to go in the 2022 down-sizing episode.  All in one big lot together with my SYW OSPREYs.

Another project that fell casualty to my fussiness over painting was my long enduring desire to do Pony Wars in 15mm.  I have been around this buoy several times, but the last and most recent was with Blue Moon's 'War Paint' range and Fernando Enterprise's painting service - see below.

This was the best Fernando said they could do with these (sample) figures, so we called it quits and the Pony Wars project was once again still born.  I have tried other painters since but they have taken one look at the Blue Moon castings and declined to try.  

As you will have gathered, I can be quite fussy when it comes to figure matching, and this extends to the sculpts as well as the painting.  This has kiboshed two attempts to get into the Colonial period with 15mm Zulus, first with Naismith which I painted but then the figures went out of production (OOP) which brought that to a halt.

Then with Old Glory, where the bulk orders didn't match the quality of the initial samples ordered from a pro-painter.

The Colonial period seems to have a jinx on me, as another abandoned project, again when the figure line went OOP, was Ral Partha's 25mm Sudan range, albeit very small 25mm by modern standards.  

It's possible that the American Civil War (ACW) is another jinx.  I was much taken with the sculpting of Mike's Models 15mm ACW range.  Having bought several packs I found, as expected, that they painted up beautifully with a minimum of effort - just blocked in colours and a quick black wash (Tamiya Smoke) which picked up the sculpting really well.  Unfortunately, Mike's was taken over shortly after that and this range seems to have been lost for ever.  I can't find any photos of these, so I'll move on to my naval aspirations.

Naval gaming has always appealed because of the simplicity of the 'terrain' required and after toying with some ancient galleys, passed on to friend, I tried some 1/1200 ACW Naval gaming. Riverine warfare unfortunately demands more terrain than gaming on the high seas, and I found the games didn't do it for me.  So, my small flotilla, including fire rafts, all with removable smoke to signify when alight or with steam up, went in the great clear-out of '22.

My next foray onto the ocean wave was inspired by this delightful book by P Dunn.

And this time it was with 1/1000 Houston's Ships, for a fictional 'colonial contest' naval campaign between forces of a Gallic and Teutonic flavour.  And the curse struck yet again, this manufacturer went 'OOP'.

In parallel, and in the background of these naval calamities, was my desire to get into the age of sail, again stimulated by an old rule set.

With a vague idea of what I wanted the games to look like I had been bought lots of kits, mostly Airfix's HMS, but also HMS Shannon and kits some by others e.g. Heller, Pyro, Lindberg, Glencoe, etc.  

The plan was to modify them as described in this old article from the Airfix Magazine.

This not only proved a lot more difficult than I thought but I was also unhappy with the end result as the tumblehome was all wrong.  Buying all I need before experimenting whether something will work, or not, seems a common point of failure for my 'projects'.  Anyway, these kits have also now been sold on.

A more successful project, was my WW2 Convoy collection, inspired by yet another book, this time more a set of mechanics than rules.

For this I used GHQ 1/2400 for escorts and U-boats, 1/3000 merchant ships from Navwar and 1/1200 aircraft by Skytrex.

This was played on hex sheets, and gave a very interesting game, the tension of not knowing where the U-boats were, trying to locate them, and then drop your depth charges to best effect was a real challenge.  Unfortunately, my opponents only ever wanted to play as U-boat commanders as that was a lot less work, and the game fell into disuse.  Why I let this go in the '22 down-sizing, I don't know as it took up little space and would be good to run at the club I now belong to.

Not conventional naval gaming, but a good segue back to world of figures, was my Hornblower phase.  This really just consisted of acquiring and painting some 15mm Minifigs and in the end went nowhere other than out the door.

This acquisition of figures that I just 'liked' also saw me return to Hinchliffe 25mm Napoleonics with some Peninsular Dragoons and Guerrillas, the latter much modified.

My guerillas did at least get on the table ... 

... for "The 95th Rifles in the Peninsula [sic.] War (1813)" scenario from Don Featherstone's book, Skirmish Wargaming.

But that was not enough to see them safely through '22.

And a couple of odds 'n' ends to finish with.

First a WW2 aerial wargame with 1/350 planes by, the long since defunct, Helmet Miniatures.  This used a set of rules called 'MiG Alley' in an article in Wargames Illustrated issue 54 - this is not the same as the commercial set now available with the same name.  I modified the rules for WW2 and centred the game around the Luftwaffe attempting to stop a formation of B-17s defended by USAAF fighters.   

This game worked well, the B-17s were not player driven and just flew across the table and shot at anything that came near.  The players were either Luftwaffe fighter pilots only concerned with stopping the bombers, or USAAF fighter pilots similarly focused on the bombers getting through.  This meant the game was not just a turning contest between fighters as the USAAF often had to break off as another threat to the bombers appeared. 

These also went in the great down-sizing, and I really regret letting them go.

I have plans to re-do this, but that will have to wait for the last episode in this series of posts.

And finally, my 10mm Kallistra Wildling Army (Game of Thrones) for the fantasy rule variant of DBA, 'Hordes of the Things'.  I completed all the interesting units for this: mammoths, giants, some cavalry; and even Varamyr Sixskins on a Polar Bear with three wolves, and a shadowcat (all by Eureka IIRC).  But I never got round to the warbands of warriors and these have joined a friend's collection but have seen little use since.

I'm sure I haven't covered everything but this is more than enough to illustrate how badly my butterfly has led me down so many dead-ends.

Notes:

[1] These will be featured in the 'Present' part of this series of posts.

[2] Why I keep doing Hellenistic armies is an interesting question as I find pike armies rather a staid gaming experience, but clearly there is some deeper need within me for such.

[3] Or, Early Medieval, as we are now supposed to call it - so mundane!

 

Tales from Topographic Tables(?)

An A.I. Silicone Experiment

Anyone who has seen my last 6mm Napoleonic post (here) will appreciate the problems I have with laying out road networks on topographic terrain, albeit massively simplified topography.  I mean I'm not looking for something as extreme as this watercourse.

Trying to think of alternatives to the card I used in the last game, and having seen other bloggers singing praises of the utility of AI, I thought I'd ask ChatGPT what would work well.  The instructions and responses were very promising as it seemed to know about Hexon terrain tiles, and when told I wanted the material to sag into every nook and cranny like wet tissue paper it did say that nothing would work that well.  

Anyway, after a short series of questions and clarifying instructions, ChatGPT suggested 0.5mm thick silicone sheet and a UK supplier.  This was a material I had not come across before so thought it was worth a quick experiment. 

The supplier turned out very expensive but it turned out I could buy a small amount quite easily on eBay.  

I bought a 0.5mm thick sample (50x50cm) for about a tenner with postage all the way from China - I didn't realise it was coming from China, most sellers were labelled 'from China' mine, "lucas77uk", wasn't and I foolishly trusted the name - D'oh!

When it finally arrived, it clearly had more structural integrity than I was hoping for, but nonetheless cut a couple of strips to try laying over Hexon terrain tiles.  The results can be seen below, with some 6mm Heroics & Ros Napoleonic figures for scale (thick/thin refers to the width of the strip, c. 1"/½"; and, steep/shallow to the Hexon slopes that go up one or two tile depths):

Thick on Steep

Thick on Steep

Thick on Steep

Thin on Steep

Thin on Steep

Thick on Shallow

Thin on Shallow

I then for a like for like, repeated the process with the hills I used in the last game (stiff foam shapes under a felt battle mat).

Thick and Thin strips

Thick

Thick with troops on it

Thin (+ broken leg!)

Thin with troops on it

I reckon it will lay nice and flat on the vinyl flooring I play my 'toy soldier'[1] games on, but then I'm happy with my existing river and road systems for that.

The next option I came across after starting this silicone experiment is cloth printed roads that you cut out from a sheet.  Geek Villain does some, so the next step will be to see what they're printed on and whether the cut edges will show up, and whether he could print them to match Hexon terrain tiles, i.e. every angle is a multiple of 60° and every feature must fit in a hexagon 100mm across flats.

But that's for another day.

Notes:

[1] With Spencer Smith figures and Charge rules.