Thursday 21 February 2013

Wells Club 21st February 2013: Fallout Failure

Hey Internet,

Just got back from my local war games club.

I had a go at using the Fallout PnP Skirmish/Role-play rules to run a small combat game. I'm not going to say much about it, but we wont be playing anything with those rules, ever again!

Too much division and cross referencing for my liking. Many a laugh was had though, at the expense of the rules.

Ah well, there is always next time!

MM.

Sunday 17 February 2013

Cold War Commander Soviets: Part 3


Hey internet,

This is my hundredth post. Go me!

I had rather intended to bash away at my little Cold War Soviet project a bit at a time, but then I went back to work and was tied up for a month. So much for plans. Instead I've spent this weekend getting the whole lot done. 

Bar a pair of ‘Command Bases’ the force is now completed….until I decide that I need more tanks.

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A Platoon of Four T-62s.  
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A BDRM anti-tank Platoon. A Command vehicle and a pair armed with ‘Spandrel’ ATGMs.
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And finally Six Squads of Mechanised Infantry and their APCs.

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Also, the whole lot have magnetic bases, so I can store them in an old tin. 

MM.

Monday 4 February 2013

Cold War Commander Soviets: Part 2

Hey Internets,

I thought that Id pop up a little update on my Cold War Commander stuff showing what I got done today.

I got three BTR-80s painted up. They still need basing and varnishing, but that is only a very small amount of work, so I count them as being done. These are very nice models from Minifigs, and aside from the pain of gluing the 8 wheels on to each one of them, they are lovely little things.

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This, for those that are interested, is my jam jar of Black Ink.

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Why a jam jar, you may ask? Because the pots that the stuff comes in are crap, and the lid exploded, so I needed a nice airtight container to put it in. Its surprisingly handy to use - its real easy to get just the right amount on ink on your brush by rubbing it on the inside of the jar.

I also finished putting together my four T-62s. Minifigs again. They went together without any trouble, and are nice models overall. I'm sure they will look the part after a nice paint job. Lots of fiddly lights and windows for me to paint. Not sure why, but painting the glass effects is proving to be my favourite part of doing these models.

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And here is a picture of everything that Ive done to date;

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So Far...
3 T-10m
3 BTR-80
Total: 6 Units

MM.

Sunday 3 February 2013

Cold War Commander - First Bits

Hey Internet,

Third post tonight. Yeah.

I managed to get the first few bits of my Cold War Commander force finished tonight. My small but incredibly heavy box from 'Minifigs' turned up this-morning and I spent a bit of time this afternoon cutting bases out of plasticard the easy way (grumbles!), cleaning flash off stuff and glueing my fingers to models.

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I did some painting too. A few days ago I got some Japanese 1/144th scale models from Hong Kong. Got them on Ebay cheapy-cheap. For the cost they are very nice in honesty. They are nasty rubbery plastic, but the details are ok, and most importantly no one makes a model of a T-10 in metal.

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I got them based up and sprayed, then game them a good lick of paint. They are a simple four-stage directional drybrush followed by a nice sloshing of black ink from my jam jar of black hat black wash. Not kidding. The ink is good, but the pots they sell it is are craptacular, so when the top shattered, I put the stuff in a jam jar. After that dryed, I just painted the mallet covering and the lights and sights and finished off with a bit of matt varnish to fend off the shinyness of the wash.

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I know they are boring soviet green, but they kind of have to be. I think its quite a nice shade of green - nice and bright - much better than the green I did for my Flames of War Soviets. Bases just need flocking, think I'll go for a darn good scattering of a flock and staic grass mix to make them look at home on the green fields of Europe.

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I also put some stuff together. It was rather a time consuming process, lots of bits with a fair bit of flash, plenty of mold lines to remove and stuff. I also had to cut out the bases. The models are nice after you put a little work into them, very chunky and gratifying. My only issue would be that the road wheels on the BTMRs are separate and as such required the filing down of eight wheels worth of mold lines and flash, before starting the arduous process of attaching them to the hull. Cant help but feel that it would have been better to have cast it as a single piece  but perhaps that just wasn't possible from a production point of view. Not a biggie, just means that it takes a good 45 mins to put each one together.

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The T-62s are very nice models. No problems whatsoever with these, apart from the usual need to hack out the flash between the road-wheels with a scalpel. That's just a problem with most tanks though.

I'll probably have a bash at painting at least one of these two Formations tomorrow. Will post up again when I do.

MM.

Cutting Plasticard

Hey Internet,

For years, I have hated working with plasticard. I do a fair bit of scratch-building, but have always had to use balsa and other materials as I have always found plasticard damned near impossible to work with, in particular, cutting the damned stuff. For years I've hacked away at it with kitchen scissors, making any kind of precision work or clean result all but impossible.

But today, I stumbled upon this;


Needless to say, a minor revolution. I've been score-snapping acrylic for years - why the hell didn't I think to do it for humble plasticard?

Anyway, I feel like a fool for my years of ignorant plastic butchery, but am happy to have learned a new skill. I've already put it to good use, but that is a story for another post.

MM.

Wells Club Game Thursday 31st Jan 2013: Steve's X-Com

Hey Internet,

Had another really fun game at the club the other night.

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Deploying out of our VTOL to investigate the weird alien glowy-things. 

'Oh God I said that out allowed' Steve put on a fun game for us all, using his own rules (that were really rather good) based on the X-Com computer game. I've never played X-Com before, but the other people playing the game who had agreed that the rules really had the 'feel' of the video game.

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Tactical Petter-Pot manoeuvres in action.

Even though I dident know the background, it was a hoot-and-a-half. Our squad of four rookie troopers dropped into town in our VTOL, with the mission to kill as many of the aliens as we could.

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A Shoot-out with some spaceteepaste eaters hiding in cover. 

The game was fun, using a simple but very enjoyable mix of D10 and D6 mechanics that was a real   breath of fresh air after all the overtly intense and complicated wargames that I have been playing recently.

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Everything goes to crap as the big nasty aliens, with their bigger nastier guns, kill everything. 

I did die quite early on, but I didn't mind as it was still fun to watch, and their is a pub directly across from the club.

If at first you don't succeed, drink, drink and drink again...