Heavy Hitter

I didn't think my shiny new Canadian troops would need heavy armour.
I didn't actually think I would find any for them.
Then I started prowling eBay looking for a Bison APC or suitable aircraft....

...and found this:

Oh my, look at all the tiny pieces!

Of course back when we launched into WW2 I had advocated 15mm, because I said "I didn't want to assemble model kits."

But in my defense,  no one makes a Leopard 2A6 in resin or metal in any scale. Necessity being a mother, and all that.

Work Bench Update

It's a beautiful autumn Thanksgiving holiday weekend here at Rabbit HQ. So in between some fall errands and chores I'm getting a few hobby projects moved along.

5 boxes of PSC Allied armour ready to go!

I've been slowly assembling a Canadian tank squadron (a full 20 tanks) for my friend Don for over a year now. I put a push on to finish the HQ troop this week so I can get them primed before it freezes outside. The Churchills have been marking time, waiting on the Shermans for a while now. I figured if I get any allied armour painted up I should work on them all. Once primed I can work on them over the winter and hand off Don's squadron to him at Hotlead.

The hulls are all taped down to the boards I use to hold figures while I spray prime them. I'm taking a lesson learned from painting my own PSC Shermans. The turret rings are masked with round stickers and I have tacked the turrets on to nails with some superglue. So hopefully the turrets will be able to rotate once I've done painting them!

Churchill command figure in Sherman turret

I also used a couple of crew commanders from the Churchill box to be his Squadron commander and 2i/c. I like how you can shift the arms to give a bit of variety in the pose.

15mm Mahdists

Still slowly poking along at the Mahdists, and as you can see the Norman church hasn't found a home or paint yet.

Part of the reason I want to clear some things off is this arrived this week:

New project. New scale. I'm so weak.

I ordered three fire teams of Elheim's Modern Canadians and enough Taliban to keep them (and me busy) until he expands the range with enough to build a complete platoon. I also got a news crew, a pack of ANP and some civilians.

Fresh out of the bag!

Council Fires

With a bit of trial and adventure I made it to another small convention yesterday as Council Fires made another attempt at rebirth. This convention used to be a staple in the autumn for many years, then it's organizer stopped doing it. A decent attempt to resurrect it was made two years ago and then there was a year off. This year's effort was pretty modest, another Legion hall and minimal pre-show promotion or advertising.

Unfortunately I had to work the night before, getting home at 0500 to shower and get some sleep before Martin was banging on the door at 0700 to load the van with stock. Then it was back to bed, planning to get up around 1100 and see how I felt about driving to the show, but Wierdy-Beardy called at 0930. Quick breakfast and he picked me up at 1000 to make the 45 minute-hourish drive to Cambridge.

"Do you know where we're going?" I ask in all innocence.
"I have a vague idea" he says.

Now Cambridge is composed of three smaller villages (Hespler, Galt and Preston) that all grew together, so there are in fact THREE Legion halls. Plus my driver was remembering the venue from two years ago, which was in fact the Newfoundland Club.

Turns out we drove within a couple of blocks of the venue when we first arrived in town, but had to circumnavigate all of Cambridge for an hour visiting the other two Legion halls first.

But we did eventually arrive around 1300 hours to find about half a dozen very nice miniatures games in full swing. Some X-Wing, a 28mm WW2 using Chain of Command, a big 28mm Napoleonic battle (Shako II), a couple of 20mm Vietnam games of the Battle of Ia Drang Valley (LZ X-Ray and the Lost Platoon) put on by RAFM using their Charlie Company rules and some 10 or maybe 15mm SF armour. A VSF game using In Her Majesties Name was being set up. I started taking pictures and my battery died. There are more pictures of the IHMN game over on the Lead Adventure Forum here. Unfortunately the penguin in the pith helmet (sounds like a Professor Elemental song doesn't it?) eluded photography.

Council Fires

LZ X-ray

Some big Napoleonic game

Victorian SF

While Wierdy-Beardy played in a second 28mm Napoleonic game, I spent all my afternoon talking with folks and got this sweet deal from the Crossed Swords multi-convention long going out of business sale. A nice, if somewhat shopworn, 28mm resin Norman church for only $10.00!

New addition to my Medieval village

I'm confident the previous attempt to paint it will be easy to cover up.

Being more centrally located Council Fires drew a slightly bigger crowd than KEGSCON. Martin was pleased with the sales.

The Last Rabbit Standing

Well 2014 has not been a good year for the Warren.

Gordie, one of our males, hopped off to the Big Warren in the Sky the other night after being sick for a while. Gordie was probably the most socialized bunny; he didn't really like being picked up and petted, but he put up with it. Like all the bunnies he preferred getting his human attention/ear scratchies while safely on the ground. He'd been having problems for a while, so I guess it's for the best. Of course most of the pictures are from when they were small, before we separated them into separate cages and moved them all downstairs.

Hanging out with Mom, around 3 or 4 months old

Hoping for treats

Exploring a box stuffed with hay

Here is a home movie my daughter made while learning some digital video stuff.



So now it's just Biggles, the last of the litter. He's always been the most aloof, but he's mellowed with age and I think he may start feeling a bit lonely without his annoying brother about. We had to keep them separate or they'd fight. Even after neutering and age, they still kept their distance.

The Warren is certainly more open after I removed the extra cages.

A lot of room for one bunny now!

There used to be four cages, stacked two high in the corners. When they were younger having the cages as pictured above would have been an invitation to jump up and over and escape. Plus the boys tried to attack each other through the bars, so having them up off the ground was necessary. Biggles however prefers to keep lower to the ground and under cover. Jumping up on top of things just makes you a target for predators after all.

A bag of hay is going to last a lot longer now.

NO NEW PERIODS! NO NEW SCALES! Wait never mind.... Ultra Modern Canadians

I had recently been tempted by a discount offer at Peter Pig and was pondering their 15mm modern US Marines as proxies for modern Canadian troops. Conferring with friends in the Reserves, they aren't quite right, but 'close enough'... but then I had another tea and a think and remembered that no one makes a LAV III in 15mm, so really why bother?

Then Dan said "Why not 1/72nd scale?" and indeed, why not? While at KEGSCON I'd gotten talking with some of the other attendees and one of them mentioned Elheim Figures, so I got poking about their site and discovered their WIP page on The Guild Forum. I was promptly directed to these:

One pack so far for sale, but Elheim hopes to have more ready by Christmas and has 6 in total planned if they gain some traction (i.e. sales).

I also was directed to S &S Models and found this:

A LAV III Kodiak, God help me.

Being a totally new period, it's not like I would get any benefit from being able to use pre-existing figures or terrain (OK some of my North West Frontier stuff could have been re-purposed but not very much). So why not 1/72nd scale? Big enough for the figures to be interesting, small enough for the vehicles to be cost effective. Die cast civilian vehicles are cheap and aircraft kits are easy enough to find.

So if folks are going to be nice enough to make dedicated modern Canadian figures, I think it is my patriotic duty to support them.

Rabbitman's Grand Day Out

Yesterday was supposed to be a day of training seminars for our 5th year cadets. But Detachment kindly scheduled something else that day, so our plans got bumped. This meant I was now free to go to KEGSCON. This is a one day gaming convention held in the Chatham Legion hall, hosted by the Kent-Essex Gaming Society (KEGS), a pretty active bunch of splendid chaps who I think are scattered from London to Windsor.

This is KEGSCON's second year, and they're still trying to get some traction. It was a two hour trek for Wierdy-Beardy and I from Stratford, so Pasha Dan and the Mad Padre had an even longer drive. But four fellows came from Toronto and put on a spiffing game, of which I shall speak more anon.

So that's what the wall looks like

Friday, Mrs. Rabbitman and I packed up the store.

Warlord horse and musket and Perry shelf pretty empty

Wracking my brains to try and predict what would sell, what would be a waste of space, and what we should bring anyway just so folks know we have it. Fortunately Martin's van is pretty roomy.

PSC shelf picked clean too

Martin was coming with his van to take everything down Friday night and set up bright and early. He would run the booth and I could spell him for breaks (which he never needed) but otherwise I was off to have fun.

And fun was had.

Mikey and I arrived around 10, so the morning games had started. But the Wings of War guy didn't have players, so we jumped right in, flying an assortment of biplanes to try and shoot down a pair of Gotha bombers.

This was my first time trying the popular WW1 air game. I quite enjoyed myself. A lot of the technical detail is nicely buried in the unique maneuver decks for each aircraft. Saves a lot of fussing with tracking airspeeds and such.

Don't you just love the WW1 camo patterns?

Of course shooting down the lumbering brutes wasn't as easy as you'd think. Flying into some German 'Archie' and catching fire didn't help either. Both bombers got off the table edge, although one only had ONE damage point left!

Then after some more schmoozing with people and lunch (beer, burger and chips), I got into a game of FUBAR set in Afghanistan run by four young fellows from Toronto showing the colours for The Most Glorious Order of the Magpie (formerly known as the Toronto Historical Gaming Society). A team of US Spec Ops fellows have to search a village and rescue two downed pilots.

Lovely 28mm Empress figures

Very nice Miniature Building Authority buildings

Entering the village

Technical shows up

Getting bogged down

Things going pear shaped. We've got two operators down in the garage, trying to rescue the 2nd pilot. Another fireteam is rushing up to rescue all three.

Terry Taliban tries to outflank us

Can we lay more smoke? Trying to get out of Dodge.

Mission accomplished!

Fun game with lots of tense decisions, some spectacularly bad die rolling (fortunately it was on both sides!) and beautiful toys. Those Spec Ops guys may have some great game stats but when somebody goes down, well now you're seriously handicapped. I'm starting to like FUBAR.

Next I joined the guys in some X-Wing. The Mad Padre let me take over one of his Y-Wings. I hadn't played this popular game yet either, so it was fun to get a taste of it. The Padre and I shot down the big shuttle, but I got blown up by it's escort and the Padre bugged out with only one damage point left!

Pig Wars

I didn't get many pictures of the other games though. There was also some Flames of War and a very pretty Dux Britanniarum game.

28mm Bolt Action

After dinner (most of us had the fish and chips special and we all sat around a big game table to eat together) it was a massive, silly, last man standing wild west shoot out.

Keith and Jason put all of their Wild West buildings and terrain out. Everyone got a figure and the mayhem began. Alliances were formed and as quickly betrayed. I took a lot of wounds very quickly which resulted in me spending most of the game bleeding in a house. When I finally staggered forth I had a misfire and killed myself off with a bullet in the leg!

Betrayal!

I did take some shots of the interiors of the lovely 4Ground Dead Man's Hand buildings with some furniture in them.

I mentioned the furniture to the players around me. "Was that a shameless plug?" "It was a plug," I replied. "There was nothing shameless about it."

That's me with all the wound markers by my base.

So after all that, Mikey and I staggered home in a rainstorm, trying to rehydrate and fend off the too much gabbing, too much laughing, too much having fun and eating bad food headaches that always get me at these things. Martin and Stephen had already packed up the store and left, so I got home to a pile of totes in the living room.

Mrs. Rabbitman and I are spending our Sunday morning having a lot of tea and taking stock, putting everything back on the shelves and seeing what sold and what didn't. For a small crowd, sales were actually not that bad.

Dark of the Sun

Pasha Dan wanted to test run his game for the local one day game show next weekend called KEGSCON.
Pasha Dan does not do normal gaming periods. If it's off the beaten track, set some place few have heard of and requires him to painstakingly convert a mass of figures, vehicles and buildings to make it look even close enough, then Dan will probably want to game it. If he does WW2, then he's doing Yugoslavian Partisans. If he does Vietnam, then it's French troops versus Viet Minh. If he's doing ancients then it's an army of Palmyrans or a skirmish set on the Empire's remote and neglected southern frontier. His 1930s Pulp adventures set in Manchuria and Central Asia are always a big hit at Hotlead. I think his Russo-Finnish Winter War stuff is probably the most mainstream project he's done.
So last night's game was based on the 1968 movie Dark of the Sun, starring Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux, Jim Brown and Peter Carsten.

I'm going to let the pictures tell the story. The red and blue chips that you see in some shots are to show groups and leaders who haven't activated yet.

L-R Cpl Katiki, Sgt Ruffo (Jim Brown), Capt Heinlein (Peter Carsten) and Capt Curry (Rod Taylor) loads of conversion work, how else you going to get a DAK figure with an American "grease gun"?

L-R Yvette Mimieux and the unremembered Mining Director with all the diamonds (a couple of Rafm Call of Chthulu adventurers)

Katangan Gens d'Armes; Warlord Commandos, US Rangers, some green stuff and FNs from The Assault Group.

One of the Simbas; Zulu warrior, an FN and goodness knows what.

The game begins with the train pulled up to Port Reprieve station. Capt Curry is in the mining company office with the Director and Yvette Mimieux, trying to get the safe opened to retrieve the $50,000 in diamonds. Capt Heinlein and the two NCOs deploy the rest of the Katangan Gens d'Armes to cover the flight to the train with lots of firepower.

Pasha Dan (R) explains the scenario, Wierdy-Beardy fresh from supervising a Scout activity on the left 

Gens d'Armes deploy

European residents run for train

More Europeans running for train, note mix of Pulp and VSF figures. Many are waving pistols, but they have no combat ability in the game.

The Simba leadership. Chap with all the feathers is their commander.

Heinlein takes a half section to the Mining Offices to cover Curry's withdrawal

Simbas capture their first Europeans

More Simbas come out on the left!

Simba Commander flanks Heinlein and two Gens d'Armes go down!

Sgt. Ruffo in the rail station provides covering fire for the fleeing Europeans

Heinlein and his two men provide cover while Curry and the Mining execs make a break for it.

.30 cals on the train lay down more suppressive fire

View from train

Fighting in Port Reprieve

Overview. Curry and other Europeans in the middle running for train. Simbas swarming through town.

Simba Commander takes a bullet. Simbas can't roll off enough suppression and try to surrender. Heinlein is ex-SS, so he does what SS do....

Simbas flank the train

Curry (red beret) and Mining execs are on train. Heinlein and his two Gens d'Armes bringing up the rear. I think the Missionary by the yellow car actually managed to make it to the train.

Two mobs of Simbas come out of jungle to try and cut the rail line.

Simbas in road by RR station are getting cut down but still have control of the Europeans they were chasing. Sgt. Ruffo and his men jump for the now moving train. Heinlein is the last to get aboard. The two Europeans in the middle of the road kept rolling crap for their movement and never made it.

Simbas on the train! Taking a lot of very close range .30 cal and FN fire

Train pulling out guns blazing.

End game, train ready to power through the Simbas blazing away with everything.

Except for the Mining Execs (Yvette Mimieux and Nameless Guy) and one Missionary, none of the European residents of Port Reprieve escaped the massacre. But Curry did get the diamonds out for his employers and only lost three men doing it. The Simbas lost a lot of warriors, but I think they're OK with that and they killed many of the hated white oppressors.
Good fun had by all. Dan's rules are a mash-up of FUBAR and something else. He keeps his convention game rules really simple to speed things along.