First Contact!

Last night I cleaned off my messy table and Patrick and Mikey came over to put my Afghanistan toys through their first game. Since Fighting Season isn't out yet we used the free to download FUBAR rules and their modern Afghanistan notes.

I set up a table, utilising all my finished terrain except the ANP strongpoints.

The lengths of wood demarcate the table edges. I think I need a few more buildings, lots more walls and pot fields. But once the grape huts and fields are done that will fill things in nicely as well. 

Coalition forces, platoon of PPCLI with a section of ANA

Patrick was the ISAF commander with Mikey assisting. I decided to run the Taliban since I was making up the scenario on the spur of the moment and to make it easier to keep some Fog of War. I let Patrick come in from any table edge and his mission was to search the village for a bomb factory. Patrick rolled in mounted from the road entering by the ditch on the lower edge of the picture.

I should have made my dispositions and planted some IEDs before Patrick declared his entry point.  I totally forgot about IEDs until after they were on table, so I left them out. Maybe they failed to go off. But the IED threat did influence Patrick's manoeuvring.

7 platoon rolls up beside the irrigation ditch to avoid possible IED planted roads

Suicide bomber opens the ambush by attacking call sign 31

Taliban team gets lit up by two 25mm chainguns with expected results!

Note recoilless rifle in the orchard. It annoyed call sign 31 a lot and caused some minor damage

Gunfight in the village

ANA finally arrive to outflank the orchard

Mikey dismounts to search the village

LAVs put a lot of fire into orchard 

ANA sweep orchard and take out recoilless rifle team

Taliban try to outflank Canadians

31B and 31C engage a heavy machine gun firing from the far roof top.

Last Taliban teams getting flanked by ANA and chewed up by LAVs

 

31A finally finds the bomb factory they've been on top of all game!

I had one trick left up my sleeve, a second suicide bomber in the bomb factory. But after he failed to activate three times and missed his chance to get in the middle of a fireteam covered in suppression markers, I decided that he had chosen surrender over martyrdom.

Halfway through the game I realised I'd also forgotten about my Taliban sniper, who would've been perfect in the HMG position and the HMG would've been good over the bomb factory building to tighten the kill zone the Canadians rolled into.

Coalition casualties were extremely light. Those 5+ saves for the body armour kept saving Patrick's troops. The ANA lost one man crossing the ditch, but fire from the LAVs got them on to the Taliban positions without taking more hits.

So the takeaway from last night was that the FUBAR rules are pretty fun, I need more terrain and more Taliban (or I could recycle casualties), LAVs put down a lot of fire and the ANA are pretty useful once you can get them activated. So more ANA too. I should introduce some less useful ANP allies in another game!

ERMAGHERD!

The jangling of the telephone broke my slumbers this AM.
It was Pasha Dan on the line.
He was taking his Mrs to a quilt show in nearby St. Mary's and googled hobby stores to find something to do while he waited for her.
Remember back in May I mourned the closure of my childhood hobby shop, McCormick's Hobby Centre? The place that sold me 100s or possibly 1000s of Airfix soldiers?
Well, they didn't close! They just moved closer! Google Maps has them an easy 24 minutes from me now instead of a harried hour into a busy part of London Ontario.
Possibly the best news to be woken up with ever.

Compounding the Compounds and Grappling With Grape Huts Some More!

Lots of progress in the last two weeks.

Put the finishing touches on the four compounds I started. Over the gritty pink glitter paint went a coat of  chocolate brown latex paint. I then used khaki and ivory spray paint to over coat that and try and give some depth, although better control and a lighter touch with the ivory would have been better.

Wooden posts, thatch and doors were then painted. I used brown inks on the posts and thatch. Blue doors seem pretty common in Afghanistan so I did them in a pale blue with blue grey highlight.

To give them the look that these are actually someone's home I added stuff to the court yards. Someone, maybe Mikey or probably Pasha Dan, gave me a sprue of 1/72nd scale accessories; two bicycles and some picks and shovels. To these I added some tires and an oil drum from my bits box and made wood piles and a stack of lumber out of off cuts. I'm thinking these are farmers, and the farms around here have all kinds of clutter, so why should they be different?

I also made a breakthrough with the grape huts yesterday.

I've decided that the one I started is too big. So I tried using some fiber board and drilling pilot holes with my dremel tool and then cutting the vents.

Yeah, that didn't work so great.

But then I had the idea to punch the vents into foam core. I tried a few different ideas and then had success by sharpening the end of a piece of scrape plastic and pre-cutting "I" shaped slits for each vent.

Last night I cut out, cut the vents and assembled two grape huts.

Tonight I started on the thatch roofs by building the rafters to attach the thatch to so that the roofs would be removable. I notched the short ends to take the main beams which are cut from bamboo skewers.

I then cut cross beams and glued them in place with epoxy. I could use PVA or superglue, but the rest of the roof is going to be grass, so I want them strong so they can withstand play.

Now all this activity in the last few weeks has left my gaming table/terrain work bench a bit of a mess!

Pink and Sparkly!

More progress on buildings.

I was thinking about how to texture the walls and remembered these:

Mikey picked up about a dozen jars many years ago for about 50 cents each and gave me a couple. After all this time the paint is still good so I slathered on the pink paint with abandon. It even has glitter in it. But not to worry, after a coating of brown latex you won't be able to tell.

Four buildings assembled and textured. The roof sections are reinforced with popsicle sticks to prevent warping.

I've also done over 100 inches of walls in varying heights including some breached sections. I used more popsicle sticks as bases and by overhanging the ends I could butt sections together to make corners instead of worrying about dedicated corner pieces.

I've used most of the pot of paint. But it goes on thick so I've been able to cover the edges of the foam core without the step of applying caulk or putty first.

Compounds WIP

Stopped thinking and perusing other people's work and started cutting this week.

I'll get a couple more assembled then I'll texture and paint all at once.

I'm stalled on the big grape hut in the background. I think it's too big, but I'm not sure how to make smaller vents. I may switch to wood and use a drill and file to cut the vents.

The buildings with the thatched lean-tos is inspired by one of the Silver Whistle's buildings. I'm not sure if you can see them, but I am trying to build some rock walls under the lean-tos with fish tank gravel.

RESULT!!

Some career advice from my Warrent Officer:

The jobs I interviewed for a few weeks back didn't pan out. They would have paid really well, but the shifts would have made keeping active with cadets challenging.

But earlier in the summer Wierdy-Beardy mentioned a friend who owns a small factory in town and he'd put in a good word for me.

"I'm not looking for anyone right now but maybe in the fall" says the friend.

"Ride out Ottaway (my temp job) for the summer and see how New Form (the friend of Wierdy-Beardy) shapes up  in the fall" says Mrs. Rabbitman wisely.

Weekend before last Wierdy-Beardy says his friend was looking for my resume and couldn't find it. I resubmit and Wierdy-Beardy takes a copy in person to put right in his hand.

So Thursday I had an interview plus another one at a different factory. Friday New Form calls back and can I come in for a second interview on Tuesday?

The second interview was a job offer starting at a few cents shy of what I'd worked up to at Schaeffler before that went sideways, plus it's straight days and weekends for myself.

I start Monday.

Irrigation Ditches

Now that the current stock of troops for my Canadians in the Panjwayi project are done I've been jonesing to get the terrain finished so I can put on a game!

One long section didn't make it into the layout

In the last two weeks I made 13 more sections of pot field, using up all my stocks of fake greenery and I finished the irrigation ditches. After coating the banks with glue and fine sand the sections were spray painted. The water was then painted a dark brown. I noticed some bald sections in the sand which I covered with some tan static grass.

I should add some trees along the ditch banks

A couple of the end cap sections had some cuts in the surface which I covered with tufts. Since the tufts were brown I coloured the tops with Games Workshop "Orc flesh wash" which is green naturally.

I sealed the ends with tape and then poured the Woodland Scenics "Water Effects Resin" the Madpadre gave me. Just to be cautious I gave it 48 hours to cure instead of 24. I then added green Woodland Scenics "coarse turf" in patches along the banks, covering any flaws. Pouring the resin was challenging, trying to get coverage but not let it get deeper than the recommended 1/8th inch thickness.

Inspired by pictures on the Silver Whistle blog and the Too Fat Lardies blog I made six foot bridges from match sticks and coffee stirrers. They are all movable. Painting started with a honey brown which was too bright. I weathered it with dove grey which was too pale. A brown ink wash was applied and then wiped off with a rag to get the final effect. Which was just right.

So now it's grape fields and huts, walls and a few compounds.