Corgi Trucks

Hi,

During Archduke Piccilo and I's recent foray into Operation scale WWII games I needed to dramatically increase my logistics units for the Romanians.  As part of my Early War Desert Italian forces I was quite short on trucks so I went for the cheap version and simply press ganged several toy trucks into the fold.

Here in NZ, the Corgi Cadbury toy trucks are everywhere . I can usually pick up three for $5 so I managed to by around 12 of them about a  year ago. They are not 1/72, slightly larger but I don't mind as they are close enough.

A simply spray paint, wash and dry brush has provided me with a emergency backup if I need a lot of trucks at once.  Two of the eight are below:

After watching a terrain tutor youtube clip, I also thought I would experiment with basing vehicles but by using some old foamboard I had. I did not have 3mm board but thought I would try it anyway and am quite pleased with the results of my simple efforts.

I will add a final highlight to the trucks ( to tidy up a lot of the bad dry brushing) and some Italian unit markings but on the whole I am happy with the results.

Merry Christmas to you all !

Scratchbuilt Fantasy Building

I am currently in the process of repairing my 15mm Hougonmont and Le Haye Sainte which are Pireme Publishing card stock buildings. That shall be another post but it did spark my desire to complete several other projects that have long been on the back burner.


Marksman Gaming posted a tutorial some time ago on how he makes his Tudor Cottages. Seeing as I had nothing to do and wanted to practice\learn myself I decided to give one try. One small project I  have is to build some fantasy\medieval town buildings and my Zvedza fortress, as such I need buildings.

 The only building I have made before is the effort below some 10 years ago, not the prettiest thing I might add. Horrible actually but  I guess by 2037 I should be able to make something half decent.

The frames cut out per the recommendation.

Hey Presto - glue gun action, coffee stirrers. matchsticks and PVA glue later the frame is completed.

 I could knock this together in an evening so I was quite pleased with myself. I do want to make some more and all I had left was to paint it and see what it looked like in the light of day. A few glaring errors and improvements needed (Not sure why I used matchsticks) but cheap, recycled and easy to make. They will suit the purpose I want them for so that is good enough for me !

Of course I did try some other things too such as a 1/72 siege tower. I just needed something and this was better than anything else I had.

Italeri\Esci French Legere and Grenadiers.

So the project to rebuild the Army of Portugal continues !

Below are Esci French infantry painted as Legere (The bases need to be tidied as I have made a few mistakes as per usual).

These two stands are Brigade Solignac and Brigade Montmorand.

Esci Old Guard painted as the combined Grenadiers of Brigade Kellerman. I did these as I have 100 Old Guard Figures that I need to use up, so these will also be made into various Spanish\German units that I will need at some point.

Archduke and I also played an initial game of Operation Uranus , which he has posted about on his blog.

I was in Australia last week where it was hot, on return it was also hot in NZ so I have not painted anything. I find hot evenings not that enjoyable for painting so I tend to do basing and such as at least PVA glue dries very quickly. I shall post about my endeavors at a future time.......

Italeri French for Vimiero

Another side project I have is to re-fight the peninsular war battles solo when I can using Sam Mustafa's Grande Armee rule set. As I have a large quantity of 1/72 Napoleonic figures floating around I decided to use them for this. So far the Army of Portugal is almost complete so I shall make a series of blog posts showing them off.

These were painted in large groups, not really that detailed or accurate and I also played around with some flowers\shrubs I was given.

Below, are some of Kellerman's cavalry

A brigade of Chasseurs (Italeri). Is this the only Chasseur set on the market ?

  The Dragoon Brigade  (Italeri)

So yet another side project !. The last few months have been taken up with sorting out Romanians for Operation Uranus, however now they are complete I am working on the following at my leisure :

• 1/72 Napoleonic Armies (above)
• 15mm Sci Fi (For solo skirmish)
• 28mm Sci Fi (For solo skirmish)
• 1/72 Fantasy armies. (Orcs, Rats, undead, humans, dwarves, Elves and Conan the Barbarian.
• A 1/72 medieval fortress and town.
• Siege Equipment. 
• 1/72 Modern. 

I shall make posts on these in turn...

WW1 Action

The moons have aligned ! School holidays , working late and cancelled events meant that I was able to visit David's to join his ww1 action.  Cambria 1917 I think with massed tanks attacking german trenches .

 I was the RAF and had the pleasure of simply flying where I pleased bombing and strafing. Biggles and Snoopy menaced the German positions at first but Snoopy was shot down so Biggles lost his nerve. We paused at the event below as the tanks made it through the wire and onto he trenches

I hope to make the next evening to see the end of it.

A very slow month for me due to a busy life, work and other interests that do not leave much motivation or time to partake in  painting or modelling. I did have a spurt of activity that I do need to finish off that I will leave for a subsequent blog post. Ideally in one month after a conference and busy work time I can finally get back into painting again.

Though, I have managed to visit Archduke Piccolo's for a few chinwag sessions and last night we played a few games of Memoir44 to wet my appetite. Archduke picked up the main rules at the swap meet and I picked up the Eastern Front expansion pack last week so it was time to have a game (Archduke has played solo).

The first scenario we tried was Hill 307 I recall. I played the Axis and Archduke the Allies and the game was a bit of a blood bath but my German troops did manage to puncture the US lines and seize the objective.  US Air power was not enough to save the position but did a lot of damage on the Panzers.

The next game was the "Gates of Berlin" with Archduke as the Soviets and myself as the Axis Panzer Army.

It was a hard fought and bloody contest. Soviet artillery poured fire onto tanks and I took heavy losses though finally forcing the central Soviet line to fail. A quick Panzer thrust captured the bridge and ended the game thought the Germans were in no state to hold the position or keep fighting.

Below - Panzer Casualties mount as we get close to the soviet lines.

Very entertaining evening of games, tea and coconut slice. Just the little spark needed to prompt me to get the Romanians sorted.

Cheers

General d' Armee playtest

Hi,

Chassuer was hosting Archduke Piccolo for a test game of the new ruleset and he invited me along. I arrived an hour or so into the game and then took command of the French. The wonderful collection and terrain are all Marks and they were a joy to play with.

Below are some sample pictures from the game:

 The Austrians surge forwards

 Upon the Guard Cavalry arriving on the field I then had my usual rush of blood to the head and sent the entire cavalry straight up the guts.

Commanding Cavalry is rather fun when you have lots of them !

The Austrian attack stalled several times but then surged forwards giving the Polish infantry a hiding. At this time the French suffered a daze and could not seem to do anything so I took the risk of investing my command dice 100% into the Cavalry to try to make a difference.

It was a good long game though I found it tiring (I only arrived back home at 1am from Australia that morning) but I felt it went well. The rules were easy to pick up and luckily lacked half the modifiers that the GdB ruleset had that caused me a nightmare at Waterloo.