Pre-Xmas Post

This could be my last post for the year, given how busy the next week will be (despite getting a lot of miniatures-related work done), but we'll see.  I must have been a reasonably good little boy (at least this week), as I had a rather interesting first on Tuesday - four parcels in mail for me.  I'd made some orders since I know I'm unlikely to get much mini-related stuff for Xmas, so I took advantage of a number of sales.

The four parcels were:

• Some new Shapeways items, mainly Star Wars spaceships and fighters, plus some 1/600 Sparrowhawk fighters and JF-17s.
• My GZG Xmas special order, a mix of 6mm sci-fi infantry, 6mm accessories, 15mm accesories, and their Recreational Vehicle (or Research Vehicle, depending on your point of view).  My freebies from Jon included the spacesuited explorers pack, his new explorer on a mule (ATV sort of thing), and some 2/3mm walkers, which I also can use for 6mm.  My winter order, to take advantage of my coupon, will be some spaceships and 15mm infantry, explorers, etc.  Maybe some backup 6mm tanks, so I have more than a platoon of some of them.
• My second (!) order this month from Splintered Light Miniatures.  I had to make the second order since after I placed my first they released a cool new Egyptian undead line, and I wanted to take advantage of their Xmas sale.  I also picked up some of their new Vikings, in particular the character pack, to help with my Cormac Mac Art/Turlogh dub O'Brien projects.  My order earlier this month was mainly to round out my Sons of Horus (Egyptian hawk-men) collection.
• Finally, there was my order from Hydra Miniatures.  I took advantage of their sale to pick up their lovely Valkeeri ladies, their robot queen, and the first range from Matt's new 15mm line, the Akarr (bird-men too).

I'm going to try to be quiet over the holidays, unless some gift cards or hobby cash end up under the tree.  Rebel Minis, GHQ, and Brigade Models UK all have sales going on too...

Happy holidays everyone!

Nice Little Miniatures Wargaming Intro Video

Not by me, by some folks on the west coast:
Miniatures Gaming 101

Let's Walla-Walla Down By The Rubber Trees

Thanks to the movie Meatballs for the title.  This is way late, but here's how I am putting together some rubber trees for rubber plantations in 3mm Vietnam-land.  They'll also work for peach orchards and the like in Terrible Sharp Sword (ACW) and Sharp Practice (Nap) games.

First up is the parts - dollar store (on left) and craft store (on right) mini pom-poms, the cheap dollar store ones are actually better in the long run - easier to paint and some of the colours can be used without any painting.  I also use 13mm pins, inserted through the pom-poms, as in the three examples out of the bag in the pic, and some craft store wood sticks.  I used an awl to poke some holes in the wood sticks, for sticking in the trees later.

As I said, some of the pom-poms didn't need any paint touch ups, but a lot did, so I used some basic green craft paint (Hunter Green) to touch them up.  The pic below isn't the finished pick, but "in progress".  The pom-poms absorb a lot of paint, so it's a bit of a bugger, but it worked in the end.

Below are pics of the trees once I glued them into the craft sticks.  There isn't much depth to the holes, so it took a bit of work, but it came together.  Now I just need to add sand and paint the sticks, and the trunks.

6mm Scenic Frenzy

As you'll recall from my (now-retired) schedule for 2012, I was going to spend August on 6mm terrain and scenics, so here are some belated pictures from that effort. Most of these are still ongoing, and will probably linger on my table for the rest of the year. When I'm bored with prepping figures, I'll spend on time on these.

First up is a massive ruined factory from Gamecraft Miniatures. This is made of acrylic (thin plexiglass), but the roofs, doors, and interior walls and floors are scratchbuilt by me. The interior walls are actually ruined floors from Gamecraft's city ruins line, just turned on their side. I had some spares when I put together the city ruins (no photos of that project yet, it got packed away).

Some 6mm ACW figures for scale:

The kit gives you the option of putting the entrance together with a Soviet star or German swastika, and I went with the latter since my project plans call more for late war fighting at the moment.

I also have been working on the sci-fi outpost buildings available from Angel Barracks, mainly painting them with leftover paint from other paintjobs.  Mostly I'm doing these in metallics, as if they're being built from the scraps of ruined spaceships.  The terrain will be a grey, moon-like finish when done (needs a final drybrushing).  These aren't quite done yet, but I've blocked in most of the bigger panels.

These are some sci-fi Jetson-like urban buildings built from trophy/plaque bases, as someone demonstrated once on The Miniatures Page.  These are 3 of the 5 I did, and have been primed, but the grey was darker than I anticipated, so I need to hand paint them a lighter grey.  The others will be yellow and white.  I need to improve my technique a bit, as too much grain is showing from up close, but I'll live with these ones.

Some JR Miniatures huts, for fantasy and any future ancients or medieval projects in 6mm.

A wall section for my 6mm High Elven city.  A few years ago I picked up some fancy wood trim on sale for cheap at the local craft superstore, and finally found a use for it.  The wall itself is just a strip of balsa, with the blocks scribed in, and the trim glued to the top and later cut.  I have enough for a 36" wide by 12" deep portion of the city (sitting on the table's edge) and a small 8"x6" or so fortress.  The wall sections will be interrupted by towers, also scribed and then capped by some fancy wood bits to look like organic-inspired towers.  Those will be shown once I get them coated with sandable sealer.

Inside the elven city will be a large water fountain, with these statue of an elven hero standing in the middle.  He's actually an old 25mm fantasy figure, making the statue about 25' tall.  As usual, photographing white didn't turn out so well, but he's been painted a winter white and drybrushed with a metallic white to make him look like marble, with a gold staff and sitting on a jade base.

And here's most of what else got started in August.  At the back centre-left is a Simply 6 ruined building; back centre-right is one of those Gamecraft city ruins I mentioned above.  This was the demo one (to see if the matt board warped when primed - it didn't), it still needs to be painted properly.  In front of it is a ruined cathedral, in the process of being primed with black gesso.  Also in the pic are two ruined castles from JR Miniatures, a ruined bridge and farm complex from Simply 6, three Baccus bridges, and some Baccus stone fences (bottom left).

Pic Plentiful

I've now emptied my camera onto the computer, so this is the first of at least 3 posts, all with glorious pictures.  Some I'd forgotten I'd even taken, so you'll get a 3mm rubber tree tutorial out of this eventually. 

First though, I'd like to say Blogger's new editor is really bloody annoying.  I was using the old one as long as possible, but they're making that harder to do.  But I'll persevere. 

This post is less coherent than the follow-ups will be, as it doesn't really have a theme, it's all the oddities.  First up is a re-purposed Blarney castle from a music box I found in a local thrift shop.  It's about 6mm, so I did it up as an evil Warhammer Chaos or Vampire Count lair, with some warpstone showing through the walls and up on top.  Perhaps it was hit by a falling warpstone meteor.

My now 2yo nephew helped paint the green at the base, so I've begun his training.  The glare is from a glossy coat of sealant, I'm dulling it with Dullcote for the table. 

I've previously posted some of the Creatology wooden puzzles that I'm using as cheap terrain, and have finally finished a few.  These are the same building, but converted to different scales, on the left is 28mm, intended for fantasy or the like, and is meant to be a fortified stone house.

On the right is a 15mm stone church, intended for Solomon Kane or other settings.  The cross is a spare bit from one of the other wooden puzzles.  Both were spray painted with a textured paint, then the roofs added and painted later.

I recently took advantage of Black Cat Bases' September sale, and amongst the things I picked up were three planets for space gaming.  This is the one I'm going to do up as an Earth-like planet.  I've just started the land masses, and need to figure out how to give them some life so they don't look like one flat colour.  Once I get the land and oceans done, I intend to paint some cloud cover over everything.

The other two planets will be an ice world, like some of Jupiter's moons, and a Mars-like red planet.  I think I need to order some more planets though, as I have lots more ideas for colour schemes.

Finally, from JR Miniatures, this is a 10mm tower that is slated for use in my Imaro (African fantasy) setting.  I need to do a final drybrush of the roof, but it's otherwise done. 

Next up will be a ton of 6mm terrain and scenics pics.

Pic-less Update

Given the lack of updates here, you'd think I wasn't doing anything, but it's actually been a couple of the most productive months I've had, at least in terms of getting things ready and in some cases painted. It's been so busy, I haven't had time (or room) to get some photos of all that's going on.

If you've been following my schedule for 2012, and its re-jigging, then you'll recall August was to be 6mm terrain month, and a lot got done. So much so, that I decided to bail on the rest of my non-painting schedule for 2012, and concentrate on finishing the 6mm stuff, and prepping ALL of my 6mm figures, across all projects. So that's 6mm WWII, sci-fi, fantasy, and ACW. Along the way, some new (and final) 15mm 18th century India figures are getting done, as well as all my new 15mm sci-fi. If there's time, the rest of my 15mm will get done too, before 2013.

My goal for the abandonment of the plan is to take a big chunk out of my huge backlog of metal, and then spend 2013 only painting. I noted before that despite my plan for 2012, the terrain work was getting all the attention, and my painting table hasn't been used since March. Even the painting I'm doing now has been downstairs at my bigger "building stuff" table. So I want to have nothing really left to do next year BUT paint.

If I get super far ahead of schedule this fall, I'll keep rolling through my aircraft, 28mm pulp and sci-fi projects.

I hope to get some pictures up this week, I've been having fun customizing some of Gamecraft's 6mm buildings and ruins, so they'll probably be first.

RAFM Space 1889 Expansion Campaign on Indiegogo

Well last month it was Kickstarter and the Big Lebowski figures, this month RAFM has started a campaign on Indiegogo (a lot like Kickstarter) to seed an expansion of their Space 1889 line, including some Martian creatures unique to the setting.

Like a sucker, I fell for it! Full details are here.

Here's a photo and some illustrations to get your mojo going:

Where'd that miniature go?

Sometimes I wonder if all the project planning I do is actually any more productive than just throwing darts at a the order form. After my initial trial order for my 2mm India project, I followed up late last year with an order that I thought was filling in the gaps for the project, at least to the point where I'd have a few of everything. I might still be short the numbers I'd need for Panipat or some other large battle, but I'd at least have everything started.

Yet after spending July dutifully cleaning my 2mm and 15mm India figures and putting them back away in sorted boxes, I've spent the last few nights basing everything for 2mm. Except...I'm still missing entire unit types!

I've gone through my ACW, ECW, and fantasy 2mm boxes, and they aren't hiding there (although I did steal some more ABG-6 figures from the fantasy box and all the BG-18s from the 19C China box).

How'd I do that? My sheet of units clearly shows I needed some ABG-3s...but nothing. I'm short BG-2s as well - and I even had the bases for them sitting there for a year, waiting the figures, so how could I have NOT ordered enough of them? I knew I needed some ABG-4 and ABG-8s too...and zip.

The only good thing out of this is at least I did order all the replacement elephants I needed for the fantasy project; I raided it last year for the Hathnal units at Plassey.

Lotta Ins, Lotta Outs - My First Kickstarter Pledge

I've been aware of Kickstarter for a few months, as a way for games and mini companies (amongst others) to get backing support for projects with less (or no) financial risk, while also protecting those who pledge support (aka investors). The model seems to work, but it's only been around for a few years, and gaming only seems to have gotten into it in the last year.

The big Kickstarter story in the gaming world was Steve Jackson Games raising almost $1 million (US) to produce a massive (literally of course) reprint of Ogre. I didn't go for that, as I'm ok with my 1980s Ogre pocket game collection, and to be honest, my old brain was having trouble figuring out the pledges, the "stretches", etc.

However, a recent news item of The Miniatures Page convinced me to get over it. The title "Little Urban Achievers Need Help" was intriguing enough, since I wasn't getting the reference at the time, but upon opening the news item and seeing this illustration, I was in love...So I've pledged at the 3 miniatures level (I don't need the Valkyrie), and since the project has reached its first Stretch level (basically, they know they're turning a profit and can now do more), I'm down for this for another $5:For those not getting the images, or my title reference, they are "inspired by" the classic The Big Lebowski, one of my favourite movies of the 1990s, with great dialogue and performances.

I'm really looking forward to painting these guys, and have already watched the movie in the last couple days to refresh my memory and start thinking about paint schemes.

For gaming, they'd do well for more "adventure" type gaming, say horror or mystery or multiple-teams (meshing with my Blaxploitation detectives, British spies, and Scooby Doo of course!) running around on the table together, facing off against my Copplestone KGB and bikers. Oh and my RAFM Elvises (Elvii) also fit in somewhere. I need to think about it more, it's not something I've really done, I think the .45 Adventure or GASLIGHT rules would be the first to turn to.

Nobody F#$&s with the Jesus...

New 2mm Goodies from Irregular

It's been a good few months for 2mm fans, with Irregular's earlier release of horse and musket columns, and flagless versions of their H&M line troops. Now they've released some cool new terrain bits for us, which I'll be using for some 2mm fantasy and 18C India, and probably in other projects too.

I've liberated this pics from Irregular's page, since their frames won't let me link to them directly. Town (or large castle) walls:

Vauban style town walls and bits:

Modern buildings, although in this case that really means for any time in the 20th century and beyond. Some may even work for the 19th century, if you paint them in suitably Victorian industrial colours.

Expensive Month for Minis Already!

It's only the 4th of July and it's been an expensive month for miniature purchases - everybody seems to have their sales on right now.  So besides some small purchases at Splintered Light and Critical Mass, I just spent about 100 beers on land ironclads and aeronef from Brigade Models UK and 6/15mm  sci-if at Ground Zero Games.  Both still have sales going on, to the 6th for Brigade, the 9th for GZG, so please join me in the madness!

This has put off another order from Irregular for a few months though, unfortunately, and I was just re-jigging my 2mm fantasy project too, switching from Advanced Legendary Battles to Mighty Armies to save on the number of figures needed.  I also have to do some 6mm fantasy round-ups.

My schedule for prep work continues to hold up ok, but I haven't painted in 3 months - I really think 2013 needs to be all about painting...

Pics for TMP

I was in a couple of discussions on TMP over the last few days, and had promised some pictures, so here they are. My big space/bomber bases in progress:


One of my two "Babylonian towers", also known as "wood boxes" in Michael's craft stores - not really much else to go by, they were in the discount wood stuff aisle, with a bunch of birdhouses. Maybe if you take the pic in and wander around, someone will be able to help you find them.

My plan is to put some sort of top on them - maybe a popsicle stick sort of thing, after painting them with textured paint, or scribing (big) bricks on the side.

Grass Huts Progress

Following some advice on the 3mm Yahoo group, I tried using some Polyfilla to create some grass hut-like texture on my Monopoly building village huts, and here are the results:

These are the regular village huts. I have some round huts I did a while ago from wooden plugs and things, but didn't texture - I think I might need to revisit them now, these look pretty good! Hopefully the turn out ok after sanding a bit and painting.

 
Some of the bigger buildings, and the chieftain's hut from the Montagnard village on stilts. In the background are buildings that will be used for cities and towns in Vietnam.


More from the Montagnard village. I just did the roofs, since from my pictures, it doesn't look like the walls were as obviously grassy, so I'll paint those gray-brown to represent flat wooden walls.

However, now I'm hungry, since all that texturing just makes me think of...

15mm Buildings

Here's a pic of some 15mm buildings I've been working on haphazardly over the last few months. The two small ones are little cardboard boxes bought cheaply from a craft store, with some Polyfilla slapped on (with spaces for doors and windows left). I'll be using them for sci-fi, done up in a desert look or something (maybe rock).

The two bigger ones are foamcore lasercut buildings from Gamecraft Miniatures, which are a cheaper way to get buildings on the table. I put some Polyfilla on these too, to roughen the texture.

While officially for the Middle East, I'm using them for my 15mm India project. I still have some resin ones from JR miniatures to clean up and paint, so these are now on hold, so I can paint everything for India all at once.

More Vietnam

A quick photo of my Vietnam NVA dug-out bunkers (WIP), termite mounds, foxholes, and US sandbagged bunkers. The one US bunker (centre-left) has a rader dish on it (from a Shapeways bits pack), and I'll try some pins for regular radio antennae. Clicking on the pic for a close-up is probably the best way to see things.
 

Istanbul Wannabe WIP

Here are some shots of my first VSF (Aeronef) city, something vaguely Ottoman-ish, or at least eastern Mediterranean. This first shot is after the walls, palace, and a few key buildings around the square went up:

The last two are after some more work - turns out I need a lot more sprue cut-offs than I thought to fill it!

Sensodyne Tragedy!

One day after posting about the usefulness of Sensodyne toothpaste caps for 2 and 3mm terrain, I pick up a few tubes on sale, only to find they've changed the cap!  It's still the same shape and dimensions, but the 6 sets of vertical ribbing around the sides are gone, it's completely smooth.  It might now serve as oil tanks for targets for air gaming, but they aren't neo-classical buildings any more. 

Just used 3 of the old ones on New London, better make my supply last!

6mm Dollar Store Finds & 2mm Cities

Here are some more photos of what I've been up to. First we have four scenic pieces I found in the pet supply section of a Dollar store (Pound store for my UK friends):


Most of these will be for 6mm, but I think the bridge/tower combo might be better as 2mm, or could be used for both. The bit under the bridge is kinda dumb, to lay down a river beneath it will mean the river goes up and down a hump. I'm also thinking I should buy a second Aztec temple and spray paint it a sandy colour to use for 10mm Africa. I may even just do it for this one - since I don't have a single Aztec or Aztec-like fantasy culture in my plans! (well, maybe Warhammer's lizardmen)


Based on an idea I saw on The Miniatures Page, I've started putting together some 6mm sci-fi city buildings from cheap trophy stands available from a local craft superstore (Michael's). I've glued the matching pieces together, I just have to sand them, then glue them together as towers. I noticed last night the craft store has different shapes available now, but I'll wait for their next 25% off everything coupon before I buy more.


I'm also working on some 2mm cities to use either as representational scenics for Aeronef (based on CDs) or as edge-of-the-table pieces for Land Ironclads, Kull, Imaro, and my 18th/19th century historical projects. The latter aren't meant to be fought on, rather as the obejctive behind a defender.  I'm basing them on 2 12"x6" flooring tiles, and they're meant to be a bit closer to true 2mm scale than those on the CDs, which will be more like 0.5mm.

For the CD-cities, I'm doing several for my take on Victorian Venus (basically Space 1889's Mars), Ottoman-esque, and a generally European city or two (should work for North America as well). I may do an Aeronef NY, but bigger and on a tile, using my mini Statue of Liberty. For the bigger 2mm cities, I'm doing a bigger version of a Venuvian city, Victorian Mars (Wells' idea of Mars), a general European one, 18th century India, Valusia (Kull), one of the Giant-Kings' cities (also Kull), and an African-esque city (Imaro).

Then as a special project, I'm doing a "New London", aka Sky City, for Aeronef. Here are some early shots of the basics. Each CD is supported on a heavy bolt, glued to the cap of a toothpaste tube (Sensodyne makes great caps for 2mm scenics), which in turn is glued to the centre of the CD. The three CD's were then joined with popsicle/craft sticks underneath, which will be painted as monstrous girders.


One CD will be the industrical area, one the rich/administrative area with parks and the like, and the other the main city. I have anchors planned, as well as bridges, a telegraph line cable, aeronef docking and repair stations, factories, skyscrapers, etc.

In my universe, it will roam the Atlantic, as sort of a floating place of business for the British Empire (also a backup capital, if the Germans/French/Russians/Turks invade England!).  To defend itself, I'll be picking up some British turrets from Brigade this summer.

3mm Vietnam Terrain

I'm not quite sure where the last two months have gone since my last post here, but I have been pretty productive at some 2-3mm terrain-building projects over the last while. I finally have some photos though, so I'm going to spread these out over a few days, starting with some 3mm Vietnam pieces.

Some concertina wire rolls, waiting to be primed, with a demo project of 3 rubber trees, which I'll eventually expand into a whole plantation. Also in the picture, the metal thing on the wood thing, is a 3mm pagoda!

The concertina wire is the same sink scrubber thingy I used way back for my 2mm African village's bush fence. The rubber trees are little pompoms with a small pin inserted, based on some wooden craft sticks. After this trial, I started putting a bit of glue where the pin meets the pompom on the underside of what will eventually be the tree's foliage (basically, where the pin is sticking out). This was to make the whole thing more secure when I attached it to the base. The pagoda is a "finding" from a craft store, in the DIY jewellry section, plus a wooden plug.

In the background are some ex-Monopoly houses and hotels being modified into Vietnamese rectangular huts and city buildings.


These are some foxholes and dirt bunkers for Vietnam. The bunkers are meant more for the VC and NVA, the foxholes for the US. The bunkers will eventually be based and have tree trunks and foliage put around them. All are made of Sculpey. Not pictured, but I made some sandbagged bunkers out of Sculpey too, they aren't pretty, but will do for attacks on US bases. My last Sculpey project was some giant termite mounds, which sometimes factored in as ground cover in Vietnam.


Some Picoarmor ex-Monopoly houses on staples for a Montagnard village. I've since added some texturing to the bases. Oddly enough the pictures I have show the villages to generally be on dusty plains, not water, but that may just be when the photos were taken and the fields were flooded at other times.


These proto-bamboo stands have been taking the longest time, first cutting the bases, then texturing the sides, then sticking in a billion pins.


Another shot of my eventual bamboo forest. Next up are some Dollar store finds and scratchbuilt 2mm city pieces.

2012 Update

This seems like a good time to review how my resolutions are holding up after 3.5 months. For painting, I've gotten as far as: "1) Continue practicing on 25mm figures.
2) Finish the 6mm stuff that's been on my painting table half-started for a stupidly long time (I think I have a friend who'll paint the rest of my 6mm WWII stuff on commission for me)."

The 6mm stuff includes both polishing off what I got commissioned, and the tanks that have been sitting on my table for ages, doing nothing more than serving as a backdrop for pictures of what I was actually painting.

The 25mm figures still lag, partly because of the desire to catch up on the 6mm, partly because it's a real pain doing character figures with different paint schemes all the time. This doesn't bode well for some of my 28mm projects like VSF and pulp skirmishing...

On the other (non-painting) tables, things are a bit better - a lot's been done - but I'm now conceding I'm a month behind. Here's what was planned through April:

"Jan. - Cardboard terrain
Feb. - WWII plane prepping
Mar. - Base texturing (for all the stuff I based in 2010)
Apr. - VN terrain, including hills"

I'm still working on basing, the Vietnam terrain hasn't come out of storage. Part of the reason for the delay was I was working on both modern and WWII plane prepping - I had a lot of moderns come in from Shapeways - and partly because I rushed through cleaning and prepping 6mm microarmour so I could get them off to be painted.

I've also been distracted trying to prep up my Star Trek and Star Wars ships, including priming with gesso. Plus (lots o' excuses today) March is a crazy month for work and play, and I was away for all or parts of five straight weekends, home for one (Mar 31/April 1) then away last weekend again.

So I'll spend April working on bases, then get onto the Vietnam terrain in May (also a crazy month for work).

Hotleaded

Last weekend was the Hotlead convention in Stratford, Ontario, and I made my second pilgramage there and once again had a great time. I stayed at a brother's in Kitchener, about 40 minutes away, and travelled over daily (which problem helps keep me out of trouble). Several other members of my Toronto gaming group were there, particularly Saturday morning, when Glenn and Ron ran the Guilford Courthouse battle again in 6mm using a pending Polemos rule set. I seemed to be the only 3 day attendee from our group though.

Once again I played in all five time slots, and again one objective was to play either rules or periods I was interested in. I wasn't able to get into the Friday night game I had as a first choice (Skopje 1912, using Triumph of the Will rules), but I had a backup game in mind and was glad I did.

That game was Coastal Patrol, found in Too Fat Lardie's Summer 2011 Special, and is a set of rules for WWII coastal actions. This game was the Royal Navy vs. Kriegsmarine, and saw seven of us go at it. When the game started (a night action), we were all on blinds, and only a couple of players knew who their teammates were. I was one of the ones in the dark (figuratively and literally), having to escort a slow as molasses German tanker from one end of the table to the other, with a converted trawler and a well-armed R-Boat to do it.

The game got off to a fast and furious start at the other end of the table, at my end I played peekaboo with what turned out to be a comrade - a U-Boat unable to submerge. After various adventures that didn't involve me, I used my R-Boat to beat down a British Fairmile that had shot up the U-Boat, eventually driving it back off the table. However, as I was doing that a British MTB that I'd thought my comrades at the end of the table had dealt with scooted into the open and launched two torpedoes at the tanker. On my activation I blew him out of the water, but had to wait a turn for those torpedoes to intersect with the tanker...and miss! Each needed an 8 or less to hit on 2d6, and both times the player rolled 9s. That pretty much wrapped up the game as a German victory. The rules were fun and I'm going to have to round up my few 1/600 coastal ships soon.

Saturday morning I played a game of Cold War Commander in 6mm. I was the Poles in a mishmash Warsaw Pact assault on a mishmash of NATO forces. Basically Poles, Russian Naval Infantry and Airborne Assault units vs. US Marines, Danish Home Guard, and Canadians. As the least capable force, I was to be the anvil, but just getting into position left me open to a hammering (my ranges were such that I couldn't fight back with most of my battalion). I did divert the Marines to me, tying up both them and the bulk of the Danes. Unfortunately our other flank bogged down and was stopped by the Canadians, who'd beat us into town.

I struggled coming in relatively cold to the CWC rules, though I do have them and have plans for them in 3mm. Figuring out units/forces, etc. was tough, and my teammates were little Napoleons, which doesn't help.

Saturday afternoon I played in Mike M. and Nick's Poltava 1709 game, using Might of Arms rules. Yes, MoA is an ancients-medieval ruleset, but Mike has made a few tweeks and the rules work well for early gunpowder. I had an easier time with MoA this year, probably because the unit types were fewer, and the situation simpler (straight ahead charge for us Swedes). We were winning, but barely, when on the last turn one of my units fired on Peter the Great's bodyguard and killed him!

Saturday night was a game of I Ain't Been Shot, Mum, which of course is the set of rules I plan on using with my 6mm forces. I commanded a German platoon, with another player controlled a second platoon, and a third player being in overall command and controlling two small SPG/TD units. We were charged with defending the bridge and ford in a Russian village from a Soviet assault, which could come from any table edge. We were up against five Soviet players, who controlled what turned out to be a Soviet infantry company bulked up with a tank platoon.

We set up what we hoped was an all-round defence, only to have the Russians come out right on top of me! I had one squad hidden in the woods, intending to use them as an ambush in one direction, only to have a Soviet platoon charge straight into me. My surprise attack hurt them, but on the next turn they were able to launch a human wave attack on me with two platoons that essentially wiped out two of my squads. I fought back for a while, but took most of the Soviet heat for the first half of the game and eventually succumbed. When all was said and done, the Soviets won a marginal victory - they got the river crossings but didn't have much left.

Sunday morning saw me in a game of the preview version of Maurice, fighting a general SYW battle of Russians vs. Prussians. I was one of two Russian commanders. The rules were fun and convinced me to pre-order them. I'm happy with King of the Battlefield for SYW etc., but I'll be looking to these for WSS gaming; I haven't really found rules that satisfy me for that period. We lost the game, but like I said, it was fun.

I'm sure you're asking if I did any shopping, and while I'm going to try to hide the damage done - yes, some things were bought. RAFM had brought me an order of 15mm sci-fi (their Traveller line) and 28mm Space 1889. I also picked up some more pulp figures from Artizan - French Foreign Legionaires, British detectives, and cossacks. I also picked up an ECW Osprey, a painted 15mm government building that will work for Solomon Kane, pirates, and pretty much any other period.

I also picked up a 1/72 Sherman for my smaller scale WWII gaming, and a pack of wooden fortifications for colonial North America.

Here are some other blogs/photos from the convention:
Friday
Saturday 1
Saturday 2
Sunday
Overview

6mm Revival

Hey, here's a thought, my 6mm WWII project! The project was the first I seriously bought miniatures for a few years ago, when I decided to make this a hobby. I'd had some D&D minis from when I was a kid, and some ancients and medieval stuff in 15mm that I bought on a whim about 15 years ago, but then GHQ caught my eye and now I'm into about 300 projects.

I have some 6mm American stuff done for a while now (see some of my first blog posts), and I've had a batch of American, British, and Russian tanks sitting half-started on my table for a couple of years, but the situation was getting silly with my backlog of microarmour. However, my friend Ron brought out his microarmour to play an east front game with during a lull in a Napoleonics campaign, and they looked pretty good. So I put 2 and 2 together and asked if I could commission him to get my mini's at least started.

I put together my inventory (just WWII for now, I didn't scare him with the moderns or, god forbid, sci-fi) and we worked out a price. On March 4th I handed over the rest of the Russians (not the stuff I'd started - but more on that later). On March 11th I was at his place (back to Napoleonics) and he handed them back!

One week for 74 vehicles? That's 5-10 years at my pace!

Anyway, here are the pics. I still have to make them look field-used with rust, dirt, shading and drybrushing, but they've at least rolled out of the factory.

The whole lot:

Trucks, GAZs, White Scout Cars, T-70s, JS-2s, T-44s, SU-76s, ISU-122s, T-34s (1943).

T-60s, T-44s, AA Halftracks, BA-10 Armoured Cars.

As I prepare to dirty these up, it's given me incentive to get back to the rest of my half-started backlog on the move. Ron's getting my Germans next to start for me.

Of course, the fly in the ointment is that I committed to doing the infantry (so I can base them my way for I Ain't Been Shot Mum). That may still hold my project back till 2100...or guilt me into being more committed.