New Period! New Scale!

I blame the Air Cadets and all the sexy pictures of Spitfires in the Squadron offices.

Or maybe some of my Twitter connections.

Or being taken by my dad to watch those classic war aviation movies Battle of Britain, Tora! Tora! Tora! and Midway. 

Whoever is to blame, I've been kicking the tires on some Air wargaming the past couple of years.  

This will be something different, and I hope, quite fun. Building 1940 French or Middle Earth Dwarves would also be enjoyable, but it would be more of the same. 

Tiny airplanes will be something different. 

A Twitter contact made his own vinyl mats, shared his digital designs and then alerted me to a 50% off sale at Vistaprint. So for Cdn$106 (including  tax and shipping) I got two 6×4 mats. One of ocean and one featuring a  coastline, fields and a village. Both have a 1" hex overlay.

Detail of land mat

Of course now that I have a nice sea mat the idea of Beaufighters going after German convoys in the North Sea and Channel has a sudden appeal. While searching options for suitable targets I remembered this kit:

It is a 1:700 scale landing ship (note the tiny LCVP) that was abandoned at a Hot Lead Bring and Buy. I kept it thinking to turn the hull into a 15mm canal barge. Now it will be a target for dive bombers. If it doesn't work for me, my friend Brian does 1:600 scale coastal patrol games.

Although for the Pacific I would definitely go with 1:1200 scale shipping.  Even then a carrier would be 8 inches long! So maybe even 1:2400 scale to do carrier battles in the Pacific. But early days yet. I still need to get some Spitfires and Heinkels sorted.