Airfix Pontoon Bridge

When I was young I really wanted one of these but for some reason it never happened (50 new pence did seem quite an unobtainable sum in those days).  In the end we made one out of a strip of hardboard with glued on cardboard sides.  The girders were drawn in by hand.

I know, it sounds like the sort of construction materials that Bluebottle from the Goons would come up with.  Still, we had many happy river crossing battles with it but sadly no images exist, other than in my mind's eye.

Anyway, Airfix has re-released it at a very reasonable price and has even kept the same box art.  You have to hand it to Airfix, they really know their products and the type of nostalgics like me who often buy them (and I did, this time around).

More Armourfast

In between laboriously and slowly re-basing various ACW 20mm plastic armies (see previous posts) I've been putting together a few Armourfast kits.  I have to say they are all pretty simple and look good and are certainly more robust than normal model kits.  Here's a selection of unpainted models.

First up.  The Pz IV G

T34 / 76

Sherman M4A3 75mm

Cromwell

Achilles

Good clean fun.  And one of these days I'll get around to painting them.

ACW Adventures in Basing No.3

I've finally finished basing all of the Union and Confederate 20mm plastics.  It took me a few months of patient plodding but I got there.  They are now all based for Regimental Fire & Fury and/or Black Powder on 30mm x 40mm MDF bases I got from eBay, decorated with coarse shelly sand from my local East Lothian beach, some various bits of landscaping gravel and standard autumn flock.

Here are some of my classic Airfix figures now based up.  Note that I didn't repaint any of them (or give them authentic flags), for reasons of nostalgia mainly (not necessarily laziness).  The front row officer is a converted Airfix French Foreign Legion officer and the standard bearer beside him is a converted Revell ACW figure (I think).

These are Revell figures (made by Accurate now according to the Plastic Soldier Review website) that I converted to Zouaves a while ago...

...and these are some of the Confederates, which I think are Esci.

Just a group photo of about two thirds of the union troops - say cheese!  And finally...

...a poignant little vignette using Esci and Revell figures.  The fence is made from matches.

I've still to base up the artillery and cavalry but at least the infantry are now all done.

Berthier Campaign Manager

I noticed on the TMP forum that a new version of Tony De Lyall's Berthier Campaign Manager has been released, version 7.3.4 no less.  The manager was originally written for the DOS system but is now Windows based.  It is extremely simple to install and use and the attraction for me was and is its use in solo campaigns and games.

It works for solo games because of the order system where units on the map are given orders basically consisting of "move from A to B", which can be through a third waypoint, if you want a particular route taken, rather than just the line of least resistance.  Berthier then works out the most efficient route for that unit to take, based on the unit's movement rates across the various different types of terrain it can pass though (or not, as the case may be).

This creates a certain 'fog of war', because the units will keep going for each campaign move until they reach their destination (which can take quite a few moves if the map is big and/or the movement rates are slow), and so enemy units may not be exactly where you think they are, as their actual position at any one time is worked out by Berthier, not by you.

WW2 Operation Crusader

The above shows a screenshot from a campaign we did a while ago for Operation Crusader in the western desert.  Most of the map is sand but main roads (pink), tracks (khaki) towns (green), ports (purple) and the impassible escarpments (reddish-brown) are shown.  Each terrain type has a different movement value and for towns and ports a resupply value also.

WW1 South China Sea

This map depicts the South China Sea, Indonesia and down to Australia and the idea for this was do some sort of Emden style commerce raider naval campaign (TBC).

There is one thing though, and I've not been cheeky enough to suggest this to Tony De Lyall, and that is it would be very useful to be able to set more than one waypoint for units.  I was thinking this particularly for something like a commerce raiding campaign (or submarine hunting, etc.) where merchant ships or whatever it is you are looking for (or trying to avoid) effectively travel between two or more points (e.g. trading routes) that may take in a number of waypoints so that you really won't know where they are likely to be at any time.

A very good example of a waypoint setting system can be found in the (infinitely more complicated) Operation Flashpoint and ARMA series of computer games which come with an extremely powerful mission editor.

One of the great things you can do with that is set as many waypoints for units as you want (which can be effectively randomly placed if you set it up right) which means that units can appear and go just about anywhere without your intervention.  You can also set a cycle function so that when the last waypoint is reached the unit just goes back to the next (or nearest) one and starts all over again, which is very useful for setting up continuous patrols and other activities that will just keep going until you 'interrupt' them.  Now that really would create fog of war!

Prickly Pears

Hello campers.  I'm not at all sure where the time as gone since I last posted here (in 2011).  It can't all have been expended at work, Christmas, Hogmanay, playing the guitar, Burns Night, beer making, Scottish politics, shame-facedly reviewing last year's un-resolved resolutions and the mistake of purchasing Minecraft?....hmmmm.

Still, I have been making lists, which is always my starting point (even though my subconscious tells me that once the list is made my work here is done), most recently specific lists on what to blog about.

The perennial issue, as all wargamers will know, is uncompleted projects, which some might argue is part of the joy of the hobby; and usually that's what you see here - some sort of progress report on a scheme hit upon many moons ago that has reached a stage of presentability or (more likely) rediscovery.  This is one of them. Cacti for wargaming.

As you can see, I've got cacti.  I've quite a lot of arid terrain which started off as something to put under my 500pt DBM Lydians but which may one day be used for, oh I don't know, Maximilian expedition, The Rules with No Name shootouts, the 1846-48 Mexican War, the western desert, etc.

Being an older project I've no construction photos but then it's pretty simple so I'll just tell you.  The branched Saguaro-type cacti above were made from sections of pipe cleaner bent to shape and them coated in Woodflex filler or similar. I tried making some by dipping the shaped pipe cleaner into thick PVA (wood) glue but that didn't work as well.  The short stumpy one in the foreground (no, not the Colonel) was made from a stubby screw coated in filler and then scored to make it look like a deflated barrel cactus.

A bit more variety here.  The prickly pear were made from little bits of card cut out with a standard hole punch (two at a time!) and then stuck together randomly (Geoff's idea originally).  Each Agave, or whatever they are, was made from a narrow rectangle of paper which I 'pinked' along one side and then rolled up, splaying the pointy ends outwards.

My most recent activity, which is my excuse for posting (see above), was to put some flock on them.

Hasegawa Panther

Following on from my post about the Armourfast Panther, I thought I'd show you one of my favourite models- the 1:72 scale Hasegawa Panther Ausf.G that I made a few years ago.

I like the colour scheme, which is taken form the box art.  Not the best paint job ever but I still like it.  And here is the Armourfast Panther as a comparison.

A fairly good match, I thought, although the latter seems a bit taller overall.

Armourfast Panther

Been a bit busy recently what with that thing, what's it called? oh yeah, work, and all.  However, I did manage to put together one of the Armourfast models that I'd got a few months ago.  This one in fact.

Which comes in a box like this:

Not bad really although lacking a little in detail and missing the hull machine gun for some reason.  At least you get two in the box.

In Praise of WRG

Having finally gone with the flow and ordered a copy of Black Powder (a while back now but, well, if Angus Konstam says it's OK then it must be) but having yet to try them out on the battlefield, I felt the urge to look though some of the rules still on my shelves.

Despite my recent purchase(s), and a backlash in some quarters against slick overproduced wargames rules with nice graphics and must-buy supplements, I fall somewhere in the middle ground.  I'm not so extreme that I want to to back to Charge! or Charles Grant (I still find Don Featherstone useful though) but I do have a soft spot (some would say 'penchant', well they would, wouldn't they?) for the good old WRG rules.  I mean what's wrong with a little complication and precision?  Some examples of the might of WRG from my collection (in historical order):

Ah, the 6th edition.  Anyone one still play it?  I never did - I just include it for reasons of completeness.

George Gush's classic set of rules.  Beats Tercio into a cocked hat.  Probably.

What's not to like?

I should have persevered with this one more that I did....

I bought this after playing Operation Flashpoint and ARMA on the computer.  It's a bit more complicated though.

WRG buffs will note that I've not mentioned DBA, DBM and DBR although these I think are of a later vintage and we've had many a good game with them too.  But, things have moved on and it looks like my line up of favoured rules is shaping up like this:

• Regimental Fire and Fury (and Fire and Fury) - so popular it must be good (the RF&F book is lovely)
• Black Powder - for 18th and early 19th century - ditto.
• WRG 1685-1845 - old habits die hard.... and the turn sequence seems perfectly logical to me...
• Principles of War 2nd edition - never played it but I really like the command system.

As for earlier periods I intend to persevere with DBM (not convinced by FOG) and I've never really tried DBMM.  Even DBR finds favour in this establishment (just for some 1/300 ECW).  So much choice, so little time...

River Boat No.3

I was rummaging through some boxes in my workroom/office recently and found again the other river boat that I'd made.  It's approximately 1:72 scale and I had called it 'Marlene' (written underneath) with the date April 1993.  It needs a wee bit of repair work though (not to mention painting).

It is actually based on an illustration used for the cover of the Penguin Classics edition of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (mine is the 1988 reprint).  The illustration is by someone called F Hens (I couldn't find anything about him on the internet - I'm presuming it's a 'him' - although there were plenty of results about poultry), being a detail of a painting entitled 'The Steamer Stanley', presumably on the Congo or somewhere.

I did try it out with my recent Copplestone Darkest Africa figures (see earlier posts on this blog) but it is a little small.  28mm figures weren't really on my radar when I built it, obviously.  Maybe it's not small though, maybe it's just far away...

Construction techniques were my usual balsa off-cuts for the hull with cardboard superstructure held up with matchsticks.  I remember being rather pleased with the paddle wheel at the back (matchsticks and thin card) as I'd made it match the waterline.

Yet again, another lesson on the importance of knowing one's literature.

ACW Adventures in Basing No.2

It's funny how a small change can upset all the best laid plans of dice and men.  The particular change I am referring to is that one of my team at work (I sort of 'manage' a team of ecologists) left to join another company (allegedly for a 70% uplift, illustrating nicely how little we are paid generally and how in demand marine ecologists are these days) and that has meant that I have been a lot busier than I had planned or wanted to be for the past few months.  But, I shouldn't complain - at least I've still got a job....

Anyway, that explains the lack of posts recently.  However, I have managed to get a little further with the ACW project I'd set myself and have started on basing up Geoff's Confederates.  As you can see they are also Airfix (mainly) but with a little more application of paint than my Union army.

I haven't flocked these ones yet but thought it might be of interest to see what the bases (30x40mm MDF) looked like just covered with the shelly sand I'd been using.  As you can see there is quite a variation in texture and colour with the odd larger shell fragment thrown in.  With the shell fragments (which can be quite pale) I usually paint these to look like wood or other debris.  In addition, I've added some small stones that came from a sample pack that one of my landscape architect colleagues didn't need anymore.