Just a quick photo dump of a visit to the NAM yesterday with some chaps from the club. I hadn’t been for years and I must say I really liked the new look, a lot lighter and a good flow to the building.
Some cracking exhibits to be seen, a particular favourite is the order from Raglan to the Light Brigade at Balaclava. There was a brilliant room dedicated to the Sherwood Forrester’s Yeomanry from WW2 which was in equal parts informative and moving.
Well worth a trip if you are in town.
Well, I was expecting to have finished off the CoC campaign with Dan by now but obviously that has been shelved for a while, I do have one last report to do but haven’t really been in the mood lately for some reason.
I’ve been trying to get some painting done but had hit a bit of a wall and couldn’t be arsed until the other day when I got stuck in to basing some of my alt-history 6mm ‘Cold War’ kit in an attempt to kickstart something and it did!
After basing some bits up I then started ruminating over a new force – the Ukraine – and have an OOB and TO&E sorted now so pinged off an order to Scotia and will be looking to get that done as soon as they get here. This has led me to get all the 6mm Modern kit out and have a good old sort out and I’ll be cracking on with tarting it all up over the next few weeks, painting up some missing bits and ordering some more. Apart from that there’s the small matter of an epic rebasing job to do as the new basing looks so much better than my old ones and I know I just won’t be able to have both types in the collection, my slight OCD will do my head in! I’m going to be sensible though and its going to be done unit by unit in manageable batches in between painting sessions. It’s really good to have a bit of impetus again, which is probably down to something I’ve just finally figured out.
Since the success of Des’ ‘I Aint Been CoC’d Yet Mum’ rules merging the dice activation of CoC onto IABSM I’ve been thinking about trying the same thing with FFT3 as the lack of command and control friction has always bugged me and I’ve recently started to want to get away from strict IGO-UGO turn sequences. I had a bit of a eureka moment the other week and decided to have a run through today so had a quick playthrough. The basics worked well and I’ve made some tweaks already which I think will work better/well. I’m going to have another go this evening and if it goes alright I’ll be posting them on a separate page on here – I’m quite excited as I think its going to work very well.
Anyway, I hope you are all keeping well and safe and all the best.
Oh, and obviously there’s only one thing you can call a mash-up of ‘A Fistful of TOW’s’ and ‘Chain of Command’ isn’t there….
Well that’s been one of those great big lay-offs hasn’t it. I had a complete bout of cant be arsed at the end of last year and just didn’t have it in me to write anything up which is a shame as I’ve taken part in some great games but sometimes it just hits me. Anyway, I was hoping to start blogging again in the New Year but I’ve been suffering with a bastard of a chest infection which has really put me in a grump and I aint been doing much at all to write about. Admittedly I have also been getting stuck into Football Manager 20 quite a bit during this time too but hopefully things are on the up gaming and health wise now so time to get back on the keyboard.
There’s some good stuff in the offing at the moment so here’s a quick rundown of what to expect in the near future…
I’ve just started a new CoC pint-sized campaign against Dan – ‘Old Hickory’ which sees the plucky lads of ‘Kampfgruppe Fuller’ take on some GI’s, first game was last night and expect a write up in the next couple of days and more to follow in due course. I’ll be also painting a few odds and ends to round out the supports for this and making a couple of models too, halftracks that have been left untouched for a couple of years now for example, as well as a couple of terrain bits.
As well as the above I’m going to be cracking on with painting 6mm Napoleonics and hopefully getting a few more playtests in of my rules as it has been a while since the last one and I’m eager to get back into this as I was enjoying it, however this might have to wait as…
Jonathan and I are putting on a FFT3 game at Joy of 6 this year and I’m responsible for making one of the forces involved. The game will be an alt-history bit of fun ‘updating’ WW2 Western Desert with ‘modern’ kit, readers with good memories might recall me mentioning that I’d oft thought of how cool this would be a long while back so I’m quite excited by it. I’m tackling the Axis forces so Marders, Centauros, VCCs and Leopards in desert schemes for me whilst Mr Ellison is having more fun putting Caunter Camo on Challies and Chieftains!
Apart from all this I’m looking forward to playing more of the IABSM/CoC mash up that Des came up with (and I helped in a small way) called ‘I Aint Been CoC’d Yet Mum!’ that was published in the latest Lardie Magazine. Hopefully we will get a campaign in using these some time this year as they give a cracking game (honestly, if you have the magazine you should really try them out!) and it also means we get to paly with Des’ lovely 15mm kit in the Shed o’war round his!
As well as all this great stuff myself, Des, Daren and Dan are planning on going to the Lardy day in Arnhem in October which we are all very much looking forward to and where we will be giving IABCYM a run out, hopefully using Daren’s fantastic 6mm Oosterbeek terrain and figures. That it will be a proper weekend away with a battlefield tour thrown in for good measure is fantastic too.
Last but not least and keeping things Lardy but not as far flung as Holland, Des and I will also be organising another SLW Lardy day in late October too. We will be posting the date and venue info in the next few days, we are meeting up tonight to go through a few things then will get the message out there and will be looking for people to come along and join in by taking part in or putting games on.
I’ve been suffering from a post birthday fug hence no posts for ages. Nearly completely lost my wargaming mojo too. The worst point was losing my phone with pictures of the next fight in the CoC campaign with Des which made me want to not do the write up as it just didn’t feel right without the images. In bullet point style: the new Zug got mullered after nearly pulling off a draw and as the next fight also resulted in a pasting for my lads I conceded as there was no point carrying on – I just didn’t have enough men to left make a decent fight of it. Anyway it was all very enjoyable and Des and I have been enthused to maybe tinker a bit or come up with our own campaigns, so watch this space?
I’ll be posting a couple of club games up over the next day or so though – one from a couple of weeks ago of a cracking little IABSM action from France 1940 which is motorcycle sidecar-tastic and one from last night when we gave Des’ IABSM and CoC fusion a spin and found it was very good. I also managed to have a first playtest of my Napoleonic rules which also went well but will hold off posting about them until I have another go.
In other news it is Salute this weekend so everyone at the warlords is girding their loins for it and getting ready for two days of hard work and early starts!
Just a quicky to say Happy New Year, I know it is a bit late but I always personally think the new year starts on the 4th as it is my birthday (hitting the half-century today!).
I am going to try and get back in the habit of doing the club night write ups again this year, no real excuse not to and I’ve missed some corkers over the past year. Mine and Des’ CoC Martlet campaign kicks off again on Monday and I can see us rattling through the remainder of it quite quickly over the next few months. Project wise I am planning to update my 6mm Cold War kit and get cracking on my 6mm Napoleonics so that will probably feature as and when bits get done. There are plans for us to take a couple of games up to Joy of 6 in the summer so that will be something to look forward to, will keep you updated as plans firm up. Daren has decided that this years build for him will be a Kursk game so we will probably take that to Colours later in the year (if it doesn’t make it to Jo6) and I’m sure it will be of his usual cracking standard.
Last year was a good one with some fantastic weekends away with the chaps running Martin’s beautiful ‘Sands of Sudan’ game at Vapnartak and the Ally Pally and as always great fun at Colours with Daren’s spiffing ‘hells Highway’ game, not to mention my visit to Jonathan’s in France. To all the gents involved in these shenanigans, many thanks as you all make what is a great hobby into a truly splendid one.
Anyway, I’m off with the Mem to the ‘Peanuts’ exhibition at Somerset House but before I go here’s hoping the dice gods smile on you this year, your brushes never lose their points and you never drink the paint water by mistake!
All the best.
We haven’t got any markers to mark the edges of mortar stonks for our Chain of Command games and recently have been using dice to mark the edges which really just wasn’t doing it for me. As the ‘Operation Martlet’ campaign has just kicked off and I see a lot of barrages happening over the course of it, I decided to try and come up with something to make it look better in the write ups.
So, I grabbed some foam culled from old pan/dish scrubbers (I always keep some handy) and got to work ripping them up into suitable shapes. When you do this for larger ‘scale’ efforts I’ve found that you usually have a flat side so I ended up sticking 2 bits together (with super glue) and then ‘modelling’ them a bit more until you get a suitable shape – I even ended up folding bits and then gluing again or adding small bits that I’d ripped off earlier to add to the shape. The results are then glued onto pennies and once that has dried have at them with some paint. One of things that I like is that where the paint doesn’t take in the foam you get the original yellow colour showing through which adds to the effect somewhat I feel. I’m still mulling over whether to add some bits of ‘dirt’ to the edges using my basing material to show clods of earth flying about and might give one or two another go with some paint but I’m quite happy with them at the moment.
Here’s the results of about an hours work all told – and yes, I stupidly painted the last one a different colour (ran out of glue before making the last one, so did that today and had some German Grey that I needed to use up and didn’t realise just how much darker it was!), but it will do as the ‘ranging shot marker’.
I was reading on the club forum about the closing down of an old model shop that one of the members used to use and it started me thinking about the first place that fed my miniature figure collecting and so I thought I’d get all dewy eyed about it on here.
I used to live in a place called Elm Park in the 70’s and every Saturday my Great Grandad Joe and Great Nanna ‘Nosey’ would look after us while my Mum went round the shops in Romford (they lived opposite the market so very handy). Sometimes this would end up with me receiving the princely sum of 50p as either of them might slip the huge coin into my hand with the rejoinder of “‘Ere’s 10 bob son, don’t tell your Nan/Grandad” (depending on who was doing the gifting!), indeed on very lucky days I’d get double bubble as they both snuck me some cash! So when we got home the first thing I would do was to tear round the corner clutching the fantastically shaped currency tightly in my hand (you daren’t put it in your pocket as the weight would tip you over, I were a small lad back then!!) until I made it to this wondrous place….
Yep. ‘The Hobby Shop’.
The right hand window was full of Matchbox cars and Airfix kits and boxes of ‘soldiers’, the left hand window tools and other DIY kit that a 7 year old just wasn’t interested in (much as the 49 year old still isn’t today!). Once inside the place smelled fantastically of wood shavings as they would cut wood out the back for customers, indeed whenever I smell the same today I automatically think of this place, and the whole of the left side of the shop was a long counter with about a million wooden boxes stuffed with screws and bolts and all manner of uninteresting stuff and behind the counter would be one of the two gents that ran the shop resplendent in their brown coat (obviously worn over a shirt and tie). The chap on duty would get a perfunctory hello as I sped past on the way to the glass counter at the back that held the real wonders. Airfix.
If ‘the man’ was serving a grown up it meant I’d be waiting for ‘ages’ although that gave me more time to decide what to get: the new German Mountain Troops or the 8th Army to fight the Afrika Corp I bought the other week, or one of those Centurion tanks in the white and yellow box like that DUCK thing? Whatever it was, I’d leave happy clutching some new part of my collection and looking forwards to next week when I’d be doing the same again.
P.S. When I started thinking about writing this I did a quick search online for the photo and the truly fantastic news is that the shop it is still there and nothing has changed apparently which has really cheered me up no end. Long may it continue.
Just a quick update as I haven’t been posting again. The main reason for this is that I haven’t played a game since the last time I posted as I missed the last week or two of the club and we are now on our annual August break so nowt to report on game wise.
Apart from falling back down the Rome: Total War 2 hole (using the fantastic Divide et Impera mod), I have been having a Napoleonic splurge. I’ve been painting some 6mm Baccus and have been really enjoying doing it too and have also been developing some rules, cos you have to have a go at least once and the world really does need another set of Napoleonic rules! I’ve been toying around with them for years but now have the basic mechanics set. So, I’ve been sort of busy and will be posting some pics of the tiny fellas as soon as I’ve finished some off and will chuck something up about the rules once I find someone willing to help me test them out!!
I was having a look on Ebay earlier on and I saw that someone is trying to sell H&R Vickers Mk. 3’s for £1 each, unpainted. That’s 35p more than buying them from H&R direct, and the postage is more!
Stroll on!!!!
I forgot to put what I managed to acquire in my last post and as it is like a Wargaming Blog law to do so I shall rectify it straight away!
My major purchase was at Heroics and Ros (as usual), and mainly it was bits and pieces to round out my Alt-History Polish units now that I’ve eventually settled on a TO&E for them. So some Vickers Mk.1’s, Grizzly APC’s, some Fox’s and Ferret/Vigilant for some kitbashing. and some ARV’s and minerollers. I also got a bunch of T-62’s for my Soviet Tank Regiment as I’ve decided to go 3 platoons per company instead of 2 per company as in the rules as it was just bugging me, it’s just too restricting for the Soviet player and not ‘realistic’.
My ‘off list’ purchase with Andy and Ian was some of the new Sisu APC’s and a G.91. Both of which, in keeping with all of their new releases, are cracking little models. They will be soon appearing in a Baltic State’s armed forces pretty soon! Unfortunately I didn’t realise that the new Danish Infantry were available as I’d have had some of those too as I’m a big fan of the new sculpts. Yes they are a bit bigger than the old ones but are belting figures and great to paint and, if we are honest, the older stuff seems like its on its last legs.
I also bought an Austrian Infantry Booster pack from Baccus for some 6mm Napoleonic shenanigans that we have planned for later in the year. Nice figures and look easy to paint up so I’ll be looking forward to doing those sometime soon, and a bargain at 288 figures for £19.80.
Lastly while with Comrade Noakesavitch at the PSC stand he chucked me a box of their new 15mm T-55’s that he picked up as his buy-4-get-fifth-free. Daren has some Team Yankee kit that he picked up a couple of years ago in a raffle at the club and although we have absolutely zero interest in those rules (and even less after Dan and I watched the game being put on at Salute – nice enough models but tanks jammed together in rows and M109’s and Rolands on the table, niet tavaritch) we are looking forward to the release of either ‘I aint been nuked Mum’ or ‘Battlegroup NORTHAG’ rules to get them all on the table. I also got to check out the Armies Army range as well and they are lovely too so worth investing at a later date in some of that kit too.
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