From the Shed: 20mm WW2 AB Brits.

I’ve just finished up these figures from AB (now sold by Euerka in Australia and available in the UK from Fighting 15s).

They are wonderful sculpts; lots of character has been put into the faces. They were fast painted with my usual Vallejo acrylic paints.

I’m not a big collector of WW2 Brits as both Evan and Bill have extensive collections, still it is nice to have a few about here and there.

There is a Bren, a 3″ and a 2″ mortar as well as lots of SMGs. It should add to my modest collection well.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

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Progress Report: 4th quarter 2018 and end of year round up.

In the last three months I have painted 19 28mm figures and 124 20mm figures. I finished 5 1/72ndd scale kits, two 1.144th scale kits and 17 1/3400th scale vehicles. I have also read 36 books.

 

For the year that makes…

123 6mm figures painted,

300 20mm figures painted,

77 28mm figures painted,

51 1/300th vehicles finished,

2 1/144th scale aircraft finished,

12 1/72nd kits wee completed,

I also read 138 books.

 

All in all a pretty good year. Comparable with last year for figures/ kits done but my bext year yet for books.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

From the shed: A selection of kits from Anyscale Models

Anyscale Models are a relatively new resin manufacturer who make kits in either 1/72nd or one 1:56, whilst a lot of the range is geared towards railway modellers there is plenty aim at the wargamer. I put in a small order a bit back and have just got round to finishing them all off.

This pair of FIAT armoured lorries were made by the Italians and then taken into service by the Germans after the 1943 armastice. They are ideal for partisan games in the north of Italy during the last few years of the war. I painted them in acrylics and gave them a heavy weathering with a sponge.

A simple field kitchen, ostensibly British and WW2 will do duty everywhere for  those raid on a base camp style scenarios.

This pipe is meant to be scaled for 1:56/ 28mm wargaming but it is generic enough to be used for either I think. Again painted with a sponge.

I highly recommend looking at Anyscale, a decent range and it is all very competitively priced. I will be certainly ordering from them again soon.

Cheers,

 

Pete.

Mixed fortunes for Tech Noir: Necromunda Campaign games 3, 4 and 5.

I’ve played several games in my Necromunda campaign in quick succession so I have decided to do the write ups in one go.

For the campaigns third game I had to intercept Niall’s gang of Genestealer Cultists who were trying to escort an Imperial agent safely through the underhive.

I did my usual trick of setting up on the high ground to present a firing line of gangers whilst my champions and leader went in on ground level to try and do the damage.

The plan was OK and I had a couple of early success, especially in getting rid of the webgun armed cultist that would have got annoying quickly but overal I found that whilst I wasgetting lots of hits on target I wasreally struggling to convert them into damage.

As a consequence I got quite badly chewed up inthe game and had most of my gang out of action.

My fourth game was a challenge against Marcus and the campaign constant opposition. It would hopefully be an easier game and allow me to regroup before my next campaign fight.

Fighting Fighting genestealer cults again wastough, again I struggled to convert my hits into damage. This is due partly to bad luck and partly to the low power of my guns.

The game saw us trying to defile a relic/ marker belonging to each gang. I played defensively; by trying to make the cultists come to me I was hoping that the high rate of fire I could put out would chew them up.

This didn’t really happen, and after some nasty brushed with the bigger genestealer mutants I cheesed a win by the clock running out on the time we had to play in.

My fith game, and fourth campaign game was against Joe’s Venator (Bounty Hunters) gang. I knew this would be a hard fight as they are a powerful and well equipped gang. This was made harder by the scenario as the game was played in the dark. Line of sighht was limited to 3 inches and 12 inches if you have night vision (as most of mine did). Furthermore isolated figures could be picked of by monsters in the dark

The game was a bit of disaster. My luck was against me and many, many volleys of grenades were thrown in my direction (they could be thrown blind).

Again what hits I did get on targets for the most part failed to convert into any damage.

In the end I voluntarily withdrew from the battlefield… to add insult to injury one of my gangers was captured. My next game will be a rescue mission to try and get him back.

After these games the weaponary for my gangers needs a re-think I’ve got some ideas of what to do plus another box of gangers and some upgrade parts so hopefully next time I should do a bit more damage.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

Hell Cannons: A Pair of improvised mortars.

The tragic long running civil war in Syria has thrown up many examples of improvised military equipment over the years: from home made sniper rifles to converted apcs. Ace models have recently immortalised two such weapons in a plastic kit.

Hell Cannons are the name given to large improvised mortars that have been built by the rebel forces/ Free Syrian Army in the past few years. Consisting of a large metal pipe fixed to a truck axle they fire homemade shell that are mostly made from propane gas canisters. As can be imagined they are not particularly accurate and neither do they have a long range, barely reaching overa mile. A more in-depth  look at them can be found here .

Ace kits are a east European manufacturer of limited run plastic kits that cover a wide variety of subjects that are often not covered by the bigger companies. Given the limitations of their short run production their kits have a repuation of being difficult to build; the finesse and fit of the parts is not up there with the likes of Revell or Dragon. That said the two guns were built over the course of a single evening. I thought it was a nice touch that several examples of the relevant ‘shells’ were included too.

Painting was mostly done with a sponge to get the mottled camo and rust effects and didn’t take long at all.

The first gun is from the Ahrar al- Shmal Brigade nd was seen in the Idlib area in 2013.

The second gun was built and used by the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo in 2017.

I have bought some suitable figures from Elhiem to use as crew but I’ve not painted them yet.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

28mm Rhodesian SAS

Bill of Under Fire Miniatures asked me to paint up some of his recent 28mm Bush War RhSAS for him.

 

I cleaned up the figures and got crking. Painting using my usual technique went OK until I completly over did the highlights and made the figures look far too white and chalky. I was on the verge of stripping them when I remembered that I’d bought a new green wash from Army Painter. I bathed it on and let it dry overnight. Fortunately it did the trick… so much so that I’m really plesed with how this quartet look.

They have been painted in plain green fatigures to represent the sort worn on external operations into Mozambique.

 

I left the base unfinished as per Bill’s request.

You can by the figures here .

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

 

Megagames Round up and next year’s calendar.

Megagames Round- up.

 

Now that is all my megagames done and dusted for the year it is time to take stock I guess. With the games this year so far it means I’ve been to 32 games in total (designed/run 2, played 12 and controlled 18). I really need to play more I think- it is always fun to do so, just a shame that the operational games that I prefer are few and far between these days. I should really try to get to another groups’ game as a player next year….

 

On the subject of next year: Pennine Megagames have announced the calendar for 2019:

23^rd March sees Buccaneer link being run in Sheffield. Set in the War of Spanish Succession it is a prequel to John’s popular game from last year. I hope to reprise my control role from last time as I enjoyed it so much.

On the 18^th May Becky put on Trope High link in Leeds. Think every high school film mashed together… so lot of roleplaying possibilities there at the school where everyone has a secret. I’m very interested to see how this one develops as it is something very different to our previous games and should bring in a different crowd of gamers.

22^nd June will be a chance to refight the whole of WW1 in Cubespiel link from Tom. This will be run in Manchester- I’m looking forward to this one. An ambitious design but with Tom’s background I’m sure it will make for an interesting game.

At the end of the summer, 14^th September, Paul will run Hold the Line ’39 link in Sheffield. Will the Polish mange to stop the German juggernaut this time around? Given how well the full-scale test of the rules worked with Czech mate this is another game that I’m wanting to play in.

Flying, Trading, Misbehaving link is a new game from a new designer Sam inspired by the Firefly universe being run in Manchester 12^th October. This should be a good game for all the SF fans out there. Plenty to do whether you want to roleplay or just fight out space battles or even trading.

Pickles rounds off the year on the 16^th November in Manchester again with Who Will Watch Them link , a negotiation game of super power limitation talks that could well be disrupted by super villains. Given the popularity of the Marvel/ DC franchises this one could go down well too. Superheroes and me don’t get on but Pickles’ design skills mean this will be a good game.

 

For more details see the Pennine Megagames website or look on facebook for us.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.