Game and Painting Projects for the next few months…

During lockdown I’ve had a bit of a think about what I want to work on as I’ve got loads of half- finished projects lying around. So I wrote a list…

… and found it was a bit longer than anticipated. Still it should keep me focussed and get the backlog of unpainted bits cleared quicker than I have been doing. This is what I either have on order or have in the shed in varying levels of pre paint preparation. One of my new drives is to get forces in both 6mm and 20mm so I can do a campaign where games can be run at different levels, I started doing this with printing out the two different sized watch towers. I’ll start with my Cold War forces first before moving back to Vietnam then World War Two and before.

6mm:

Helicopters and Rules: During a bout of insomnia I wrote some helicopter rules for gunships versus tanks in the cold war. I’ve a few helicopters and suitable ground targets to paint up so I can begin testing the rules.

Cold War US: Got enough to do several 5core: Brigade Commander battalions of Cold War Americans with M60 tanks and M113 APCs.

Early Cold War Brits and Soviets: As I have these in 20mm I’ve got a few useful bits spare that I can make a start with in 6mm.

African: This will be based around the later 80s battles with the SADF 61 Mechanized Battalion.

Afghanistan: So much of my Soviet stuff will cross over here that it should be fairly easy to pull some extra Taliban stuff together. Will look at basing for both 5core: Company Commander and Hind and Seek as the 6mm infantry is so cheap. Vehicles will be good for both.

Riverine stuff: Based on a magazine article I read and my interest in Colombian military history from playing Andean Abyss I’m considering getting a few bits for 1990s South American brown Water Navy games.

20mm:

Winter Brits: I’ve wanted some Brits for ages and as several of my gaming friends already have Summer infantry, I went for a platoon’s worth in the winter issue windproofs for the very end of the war. I may even do some in all white too. Some Brit vehicles in winter whitewash could look good too. I’ll also do some Bren Carriers for them as they always strike me as a quintessential British WW2 vehicle.

Winter War Finns and Soviets: I’ve had some bits of winter Finns lying about the shed for ages, but I finally ordered enough for a game and some Soviets to oppose them. There is a Skirmish Campaigns scenario book available, so I’ll concentrate on building forces to play through those games.

Crossfire/ Megablitz based WW2: Having played a bit of Crossfire at the historicals club I decided that it was time I got my own suitable based forces for the game. To keep things flexible, I’ll arrange things so that I’ll be able to use them in other games such as Megablitz. I dug out some old plastic figures and made up a Soviet and Hungarian force- they just need painting now.

Boer War: A random buy of a box of rather nice plastic figures started this project. I think I’ve got some Boers in the shed too that I can add in.

Cold War US: I’ve already got the vehicles done so I’ve got a platoon of infantry based and undercoated to go with by two scale Cold War project.

IDF vehicles: I’ve got the infantry done and I’ve found some nice 3d files so this will be a job for the printer. Be a big cost saving printing these out given the price of Israeli Army vehicles these days.

28mm:

Necromunda: Apart from the lovely new Van Saar models that have been released that I’ll be getting for my main gang I’ll just concentrate on getting the Goliath, Delaque and extras I’ve had in the shed for ages painted.

40k: Finish Death Guard Army, continue Chaos Space Marines (I have some Alpha Legion on the painting tray at the moment), Start Ad Mech force I need some opposition, right? Will start with a Kill Team sized force then expand out from there.

Cyberpunk: As a child of the later 80s/ early 90s Cyberpunk was my favourite science fiction sub- genre and now the new TTRPG is out I’ll revisit this. Also, there are some nice new skirmish games out there for table- top battles. Any scenery needed will be 3d- printed, I think.

Zone Alpha: I’ve been really quite taken with this little ruleset. It is the sort of narrative driven skirmish wargaming that I enjoy so much as well as having a great aesthetic too. I’ve got a few bits for this in both 28mm as well as lots suitable in 20mm. The Copplestone Future War partisans are next on the painting table so watch out for those soon.

My small-scale air war and naval haven’t made this list as they are all pretty much done. So really this represents less what I’ll be playing and more what I’ll be painting. Given that games are relatively few and far between painting is what I tend to do most of at the moment. As much as I’ll try to keep to this list there will doubtless be something shiny to distract me- which these days is mostly finding an interesting file to print….

Cheers,

Pete.

From the Shed: Nurgle Daemon Prince

This is going to be the leader and centrepiece for my army- I really enjoyed painting him up and went to town with the washes and detailing. I imagined him as a Chaos Marine who has achieved his aim of becoming a Chaos Champion, rather than ending up as a Chaos Spawn, as seen in the previous post. Those 40k fans of a certain vintage will remember the Chaos campaigns you could run from the Realms of Chaos books. I alwasys fancied that sort of narrative driven skirmish campaign. I guess Necromunda fulfills that need now but I may yet go back to the old Rogue Trader ideas.

Cheers,

Pete.

From the Shed: Death Guard Characters

I’ve been using lockdown to get my Nurgle army painted, getting very close to it being finished now.

Over the next few days I’ll put up a series of posts showing what I’ve added to it…

First up some Character models:

Felthius, Typhus and a Lord of Contagion.

Tallyman, Malignant Plaguecaster, Plague Surgeon and Foul Blightspawn.

Some of these I’ll be able to use in Kill Team too which should be fun.

Cheers,

Pete.

Collections: Why Military History?

This week, I want to talk about the discipline of military history: what it is, why it is important and how I see my own place within it. This is going to be a bit of an unusual collections post as it is less about the past itself and more about how we study the […]

Collections: Why Military History?

As someone who has just started their own journey to being an academic I found this to be an excellent piece and worth sharing.

Cheers,

Pete.

From the Shed: East German Watch Towers (B- Turm)

Beobachtungsturm were a type of watchtower used by the East Germans. I found a file of them on thingiverse and thought it would be a great addition to my Cold War games.

As you can see I did 2 of them of different sizes. The nice thing about 3d printing is this fllexibility- a 1/144 scaled original was printed out at half size and twice size, for 6mm and 20mm respectively.

Here they are unpainted and untextured. They were both given coats of Mr. Surfacer as an undercoat.

Now to write 2 scenarios to featuring them….

Cheers,

Pete.

From the shed: Vietnam Navy SEALs.

I’ve added a few bits to my Vietnam collection- specifically some sneaky special ops types with these Navy SEALs from SHQ only 2 packs are available but you get a good mix of weaponry. I goot two of each but painted the second pack with blue trousers to represent the denims they wore. /in hindsight I should have shaved off the thigh pockets on those figures but nevermind that now.

To give them some mobility I got the a LSSC (Light SEAL Support Craft) from Hobby Den. Introduced in 1968 it could covertly a SEAL team whilst offerring a bit of fire support too. I added a couple of small arms from Sgts Mess to an interest to the interior.

Vietnam saw the birth of the Navy SEALs coming as the did out of the Underwater Demolition Teams, I’m sure I can come up with some sneaky demolition and ambush style games for these new additions to my collection. The Black Ops ruleset should work really well. Just have to wait until I can get a game with them now.

Cheers,

Pete.

From the Shed: 6mm sized WW1 tank.

I wanted something to test out my printer- to see how small it would go….

I had a look about thingiverse and found a pack of WW1 vehicles scaled for 1:200th. I hada look at the files and they vehicles were all modelled fairly robustly so I figured they could be shrunk further; so in my slicing software I scaled a Mk IV male down to 1:285th. I wouldn’t try shrinking down a more detailed, larger file as the finer detail would just fail to print.

I ended up with this:

After a quick coat of paint I got it to look like this:

Given how well it has turned out I’m now considering printing out many more for a ‘Plan 1919’ game to explore Great War armoured action, as envisiged by JFC Fuller, that could have occurred had Imperial Germany not collapsed and the war continued. Something to think on….

Cheers,

Pete.

Blogiversary

9 years ago today I put up my first post on this blog.

I didn’t think then that I’d manage to keep the blog going this long.

I’d like to take this chance to thank all my readers out there. It has been great making friends and corresponding with you all.

Here is to the next 9 years. I’ll have to think of something special to do for my 10th anniversary though.

Take care out there everyone- we are living in strange times.

Cheers,

Pete.

From the Shed: Zombie Shark.

For my sins I’m a big horror film fan, especially the sleazy 70s/80s exploitation ones; I’m also old enough to remember the bad old days when Britain’s films were heavily censored…

… accordingly, when I saw this model I had to get it. It reminded me of one of my favourite Zombie films and would be perfect for an oft talked about campaign I want to run.

Zombie Flesh Eaters aka Zombi 2 (Lucio Fulci, 1979) was to serve as a sequel of sorts to the Night of the Living Dead. It was quite notorious in its day for its gore and became added to the “Video Nasties” list in the early 80s in the UK.

In one scene a topless woman is shown preparing for and then undertaking a scuba dive… so far so typical of that sort of film… sure enough a shark is shown approaching closer and closer to the woman. Seeing it she feels to find and underwater Zombie shuffling along the seabed. The shark and Zombie then have a massive underwater fight allowing the woman to escape….

So how does this fit into a wargames campaign? Well, Evan and I have long planneda Zombie Survivors type campaign wher we ewach run rival groups of survivors holed up somewhere trying to make it through the apocalypse. His group was to live aboard a large boat that he has made, mine in a prison… So I mashed the film together with the campaign idea and figured that the Zombies can go in the water and fight the aquatic life so perhaps the shark became a Zombieshark and I could use it to menace Evan’s survivors on their boat.

Well that was the excuse for buying the model and I’m sticking to it.

The model is a Reaper Bones one; they do a few more large fish ones that I may well get to go along with this one, I’m sure I could work those into the campaign too.

Cheers,

Pete.