Five Shades of Grey

After trying to dive bomb a rectangle of paper,  I decided to pull that 1/700 scale LST (which had been abandoned at a Hot Lead Bring and Buy several years ago) back out of my For Sale box and give it a forever home.

No instruction sheet had survived,  but Google images gave me a lot of help in how it went together.

I took advantage of a mild day to spray it light grey. Then it was just more shades of grey to bring out the details. 

At 6 hexes long, it is certainly a Large Slow Target. With all of the AA positions I think I will treat it as a large merchantman but with an Escort ship's AA rating.

Magnetic Mayhem

So, my big order of rare earth magnets arrived on Monday and after dinner I started gluing teenie-tiny magnets to flight stands and bellies of aircraft.

Glue all over my fingertips. Naturally, all of my tweezers are ferrous, so were no help manipulating 3mm x .5mm discs. But I soldiered on and got all of the flight stands and Japanese aircraft done.

Once the glue set I naturally wanted to try things out. There followed a quick reminder of magnetic polarity. I had forgotten to flip the magnets before gluing them to the aircraft!

Frustration. Anger. Harsh words. Went to bed in defeat. 

After 2 sick days I returned to my hobby space and found several flight stands with the correct polarity to match the Japanese, so that I only needed 10 more to mount all of my Japanese aircraft. 

But lesson learned and I made sure to rotate the magnets before gluing them to the bellies of my USN aircraft. 

Now all of my PTO models are done now and ready for a game this weekend!

More for Middle Earth!

The Bag the Hun project is on hold until magnets arrive from Greenstuff World in Spain. I'm not going to paint all that camouflage without a stand to hold on to. 

So a rainy weekend and a chance to hobby got me finishing these warbeasts for Middle Earth. Both are Wizards of the Coast D&D figures in a light plastic, preprimed and ready to paint. I got them at a local toy & game store while Mrs. Rabbitman was perusing their Duplo sets for the grandchildren. 

My Men of the North need a big black bear to help against the goblins. He's not as imposing as the big resin werebear from Vendal, and the relief in the sculpting of his fur is pretty shallow, but at $2.99 the price was right.

Oathmark goblin for comparison 

I also wanted another ent. This one is huge! Making him a 6 strength point Greater Warbeast doesn't seem to do him justice. But we'll see. 

The rock in his hand was an optional piece 

Used flock for the beard

Poor little goblin just keeps having a bad day!

Family group. GW treeman, small one I bought 2nd hand from France, and the big guy.

The bases came with the models,  which was nice value added.

Americans and Japanese Done! (sort of)

"Feeling cute. Idk, might go sink the Akagi later!".

Not quite ready for Pearl Harbor Day, but all of my Japanese and USN aircraft are painted and decaled up. I'm just waiting for my order of magnets to arrive from Greenstuff World in Spain before I can play again, since most of the models popped off their flight stands during the decal application process.

"Just out looking for the American navy, BRB"

Avenger TBF and Wildcat

Loads of planes

You will note that I leveraged the American practice to only put a star on the port wing. I've seen pictures of USN aircraft with stars on both wings, especially early war. I briefly contemplated doing a few flights with dual stars. But I wanted to speed things up and simplify the job at hand where I could.

Dauntless SBDs

Kate torpedo bombers

Bettys. Twin engined, long range torpedo bombers, because why bother with carrier based when you can use islands?

With the Dauntless dive bombers I decided to preemptively remove them so I could repaint the glue damage prior to applying decals on the fuselage.

These are just balanced on the stands for the picture.

I'm pleased to say that I think I got most of the USN stars pretty straight. With the Japanese hinomaru at least one only has to worrry about keeping them even and centered.

By the end of doing almost 6 dozen aircraft I was getting pretty quick. These pointy Q-tips are ideal.

With a sharp knife cut out the decal. With tweezers dip in a dish of water for 5 or 6 seconds. then drop it on a damp sponge. Use the pointy Q-tip to pick the decal off of the backing paper and apply to the model. The round end is useful for pressing the decal flush to the model. Unfortunately you only get about half a dozen applications before the point goes to mush and then you get fuzzies in the way pulling your decal askew.

I jumped the gun a few nights ago and bashed on with the Battle of Britain side of the project, doing some camo and decals on a couple of Spitfires and Hurricanes.

The sharp eyed among you will notice the tail flashes, which are rediculously tiny and hard to get straight. I thought the 1mm fuselage rondels were small enough! I mean, can you see them? I may only bother with tail flashes for flight leaders, or when I'm feeling extra brave and energetic.

I'm very glad that the Japanese and Americans did not utilize tail flashes.

Decals!

An envelope from Miscellaneous Miniatures arrived in Friday's post. Each sheet has rondels in different sizes and enough that you don't feel bad about messing one up.

So I started applying some that night. Practicing with the Japanese first before attempting to get the American stars pointed right way up. Gosh they are fiddly!

I am not bothering with the undersides of the wings. I also resisted the squadron specific sets with call letters. I figured those would be just too hard to keep straight!

But I really like how they make the models suddenly look so much more finished. 

My output after three 1 hour sessions; enough for a decent game. But I find after an hour I need a break. 

As you've noticed several models have come unstuck. But I may as well wait for the magnets to arrive. 

Duck Egg Blues

The last two games have gotten me all excited to bash on with the RAF and Luftwaffe to do some Battle of Britain action. Except RAF aircraft instead of having a blue underside like I expected, are a weird creamy off-white called "duck egg blue."

Only the British would call that colour "blue."

Boom and Zoom Graphics is a useful start for WW2 camouflage, but not too detailed. I've noticed that all the camo squiggles are the same on every aircraft and learned that Hurricanes, Spitfires and Mosquitoes each had distinct patterns. An A and a mirror image B pattern for each airframe. 

While I wait for decals from Miscellaneous Miniatures and magnets from Greenstuff World I've painted the undersides of my RAF and Luftwaffe aircraft, deciding that a mocha shade was close enough to "duck egg blue."

I'm trying not to overthink things. If people can see the bottoms of your aircraft then something is wrong. 

Bigger Blustery Bag the Hun

My first game being so much fun, rather than be sensible and just play the same scenario but maybe let the Japanese get the Top Ace, I decided to go bigger. As you do.

Lots of cards to make

The weather last Sunday turned as suddenly as a crazy ex-girlfriend, so it was a good time to hide inside from the winds and rain and roll some dice. 

Some advice from experienced BtH players on Twitter suggested giving defending fighters a 50% increase over escorting fighters with bombers. 

So I set up two flights of three Dauntless SBDs escorted by a flight of 4 Wildcats. Trying to stop the SBDs from bombing a transport ship (the Boatai Maru) were 2x three plane flights of Zeros. I used the table to roll for pilot quality this time. The Japanese got 5 out of 6 pilots as veterans and 1 regular.  The Americans got a couple of veterans leading the fighter sections and a lot of green pilots. 

For brevity I'm going to use an alphanumeric code to identify the flights and individual aircraft. UB is American Blue flight of 4x Wildcats. UG and UY are American Green and Yellow flights of 3x Dauntless SBDs each. JR and JB are Japanese Red and Blue flights of 3x Zeros each.

JR claims Altitude Advantage and races ahead. UB is divided into 2 sections flanking the SBDs. 

American deployment. Blue die show altitude 

White strip is the target. Yellow disc is position of the sun.

JR begins a swirling dogfight with the pair of Wildcats UB3 and UB4

JB turns to intercept the SBDs 

JB get on tail of UG. UG1 takes engine damage losing altitude 

IJN roll badly on hits and the SBDs roll not that bad for saves. Rear gunner on UG2 about to kill the pilot of JB3

It's a swirling knife fight! Trying get a target...JB3 is killed at his controls and JB1 takes some damage  

 

Dakka dakka dak.... miss!

JR2 banks around to ho head to head with UB4. UB4 shoots first, splashing his 2nd kill!

UG1 is swerving out of control. Rest of UG does their run, their bombs falling short. UY is making its approach. 

UG pulling away. UY gets a good bombing run, putting a hole in the engine room of the Boatai Maru. 

JR1 gets on the tail of UB4 

Combined rear MG fire from a couple of SBDs kills the pilot tormenting UG1 

BANZAI! Dakka dakka dakka! JR1 shoots a wing off UB4 who bails out4

BANZA! Dakka dak... JR1 charges ahead to get the wingman UB3 but guns jam!

JB1 tries to get the American rookie, who flubs his hard bank but flies out of danger

UB3 pulls an Immelman and gets on the tail of the damaged Zero pouring in the fire

UB1 gets a good hit on JB1, shooting away his instrument panel putting him at -2 maneuver 

JR1 damaged can't shake the tailing Wildcat. Fuel line hit! +3 on damage in next round of shooting. 

JB1 is shot out of the sky before he can escape 

Game end

With one bomber damaged (it will probably ditch beside the carrier if they get that far) and one fighter down, but the pilot is hopefully picked up, the Americans will get a few pats on the back in the briefing room from the Air Wing Commander for seriously crippling the Japanese transport. 

A junior officer on the Boatai Maru  witnesses the brave sacrifice of the pilots and pens a sombre haiku

Brave souls in the air

The rising sun knows defeat

In the sea you sleep

(Thanks to D. Montoya from Twitter for composing their epitaph.)

I played this out over three days with a combined time  of about 5 hours.