September SitRep

Been plugging away at a few things in my off time. Work has picked up and all the fall chores like cleaning up the garage naturally press upon me.

Also Cadets has started up, but Covid and Social Distancing has complicated that, so there's Zoom meetings and virtual lessons on Google Classroom and training schedules put in disarray to take me away from painting.

But I have been bashing away at the Norman cavalry renovation and am within a pip of finishing them! At least the painting. Then all 72 need to be based or rebased. Plus the infantry. Then they can go loot the village and set fire to the church, or something. 

Off with the old shields! 

On with the new!

So many bases!

I have also been cleaning up and priming my 1/600 scale aircraft and trying to research IJN aviation  colour schemes. It seems the Japanese weren't very precise in their colour regulations. Of course very few examples survived the war so it's hard to tell. Plus sitting on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier exposed to sun and salt water weathers the paint considerably.

L-R Me110, He111, Me109

Mosquito, Spitfire, Hurricane 

Taking advantage of the last good evenings. RAF and Luftwaffe getting primed

Avenger, Dauntless, Wildcat, Hellcat 

Teensy weensy landing gear to glue on teenie tiny Vals. So glad I didn't get any Stukas! 

Betty, Kate, Val and Zero 

And just to keep another plate spinning I've read two books on Afghanistan:

Operation Medusa was a good strategic overview. Fraser was certainly highly complimenatry of everyone he worked with during the lead up to and execution of the battle, from allied commanders down to the squaddies in his Close Protection Detail. The chapter headings featured a lot of quotes from "Mother" his Brigade HQ Sergeant who was in Tactical command of his Tac HQ when it rolled out several times a week. More detail about the tactical aspects of C Company's ambush or B Company's push in from the north would have been welcome, but I suppose that is out of the scope of the book. General Fraser's worry about losing access to all the allied air assets before he could conclude the battle and destroy the Taliban shaped some key decisions. He does also point out that TF31s actions on the southern flank as detailed in Lions of Kandahar were pretty key in winning the battle. Still an interesting read. 

Combat Mission Kandahar was also interesting for the soldier's eye view gritty detail. There is information on a few engagements. The chapter covering the Recce Squadron for instance told me that minimum patrol size was 3 vehicles and the sensor operators provided the dismounts as required. I had a third Coyote in the lead pile. A metal and resin kit from S&S Models which I had vague plans to add a sensor mast to, but I decided to just paint it up. A couple of large scale ambushes were also detailed, including one on a large vehicle convoy, and another featuring Canadian advisors and an ANA company. Both  could make for an interesting solo game at least.

Another piece off the lead pile!

Battle of Britain Day!

Hugely appropriate that both my order from Tumbling Dice and the flight bases from Hasslefree arrived today to help me observe Battle of Britain Day. 

Yay!

TBF Avengers and Wildcats

Hurricanes and He111 bombers

For GBP50 I got myself a squadron each of Spitfires, Hurricanes and Me109s, plus a squadron of He111s and a Schwarm (flight of 4 aircraft) of Me110s. For the Pacific theatre I got a squadron each of Zeros and Wildcats, a flight of Hellcats, a flight of Betty medium bombers and some dive and torpedo bombers for each side. I avoided the later Corsairs, since they really dominated and the IJN Air Service had lost most of their good pilots by then.

Gosh they are tiny. The Japanese Val dive bombers have fixed landing gear to glue on too!

I'm trying hard not to make zoom and dakka-dakka! noises.

Targets!

I've been obsessing over suitable targets ... erm, I mean ships for Bag the Hun action. Probably more than aircraft to be honest.

I mean what's the point of Wildcats and Zeros dog fighting over the Pacific if they aren't trying to clear a path for, or stop, divebombers? Said dive bombers need ships to aim for don't they? But after perusing !:600 and 1:1200 scale models I realized that I'd be spending 10x the the amount of money on a few ships than I would on the aircraft the game is supposed to be about!

Then I hit on finding plan views in colour and printing them out on paper. Like this:

With a bit of reszing and cropping out the side views they might work OK. Plus save me a hundred dollars or so. I just need to reload the colour cartridge on my printer.

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.

Discordant CoCs

Last night we tried a remote game of Chain of Command with four players plus Frank the host. Frank has a 4 camera security system set up to view his table and invited players can log in. We then all communicate over the Discord app. 

Two platoons of Canadians vs. two platoons of Germans. It was a bit slow watching Brian and Keith play out the Patrol Phase. But then I got a couple of good activations and was laying down some fire and moving up when my opponent dropped an 80mm mortar barrage on me just as my phone died. I was told later that my platoon took 13 casualties and morale collapsed pretty quickly. 

Bugger.

Frank running around doing the Patrol Phase while we shout directions

Other end of table 

My platoon deploying just before getting pasted 

Third Time Pays For All -More Elf Cavalry!

This second squadron of 6 Elf cavalry are the last of my "Not-Lead" Vendel order!

It took me three attempts to get the shields right. At first I had to strip the paint off and reprime because when I went to do the designs I could see the relief from the failed two trees design from my first squadron which I had just painted over. 

Then I tried a simplified tree, but it looked like rubbish so I quickly wiped those off with a wet rag and retouched the blue base.

So I went with another star, a little bigger and fancier than the first squadron to set them apart. Because these stars also made me think of flowers, I went with white flower tufts (from Shadow's Edge) to help differentiate them.

Finally, to confirm my credentials as a massive Tolkien geek, I have indulged myself and purchased 12 Tolkien themed d6. Even Mrs. Rabbitman thinks they are nice. They will probably roll badly for me though. I'm hoping that the Eye of Mordor or Horse of Rohan are available next time the group that I got them through do a dice purchase.

Not So New Normans

The article that side tracked my plan

I was going to get stuck into some terrain after finishing the Middle Earth figures. Maybe some urban ruins for Eastern Front games. But this article in the recent issue of Wargames Soldiers & Strategy got my attention.  I have always  loved the look of Early Medieval armour; conical helmets, kite shields, chain mail and lots of cavalry charging madly around.

Bit of research 

So this got me looking at my Norman/Crusader/11th century stuff, and then mining the lead pile and book shelves. 

Just a few figures

30 figures later I've discovered a tidy little army, and I'll be knocking some 25 year old pieces of the lead pile off. Mostly Old Glory but a few Foundry and I think some old Minifigs.

And there's some crossbows too

I'm also pondering if it will be worth it to replace the heater shields on some of my already painted figures with more kite shields. I've always preferred kite shields and I think the lance pennons are a tad big to be honest. 

I'm also pondering rebasing them all to conform to my other medieval armies: 4× heavy infantry,  3× archers or 2× cavalry to a base. Too many single figures to move around now. 

Current troops. Nice but room for improvements. 

These additional squadrons will bring my Early Medieval cavalry up to 12× 6 figure units. That should divide nicely into 2 feudal hosts.