Analogue Painting Challenge - the final tally

As I mentioned a long while back, I decided to participate in the Analogue Painting Challenge for 2015-16.  I set myself a goal of 500 points and wound up producing 675. I am quite proud of this and very much appreciate the kick in the pants it gave me to complete my Space 1889 painting.

Apart form Space 1889 and general VSF, I also managed to fit in some terrain for Chain of Command and a couple of vehicles for grunts.

The images following are a visual record of my production.

Lead

More Lead

Martian and Askari Artillery

Askari and more Artillery

Crocean Heavy Lancers

Hill Martian Lights

Guild Rifles

Hill Martian Light Cavalry

Grave Digger

The Mechanic

Gentleman

Lady in Green

Dapper Gent

Street tough

Not Preston Manning

Gentleman on the move

Anarchist Sniper

Barbed Wire

More Wire

The Black Beaks - Askari mounted

Hover APC Malta Pattern I

Hover APC Malta Pattern II

At times it took some pushing but on the whole, a good experience.  Thanks to Curt for running it.

TOR games survey

Via Trouble at T'mill

Tor games has a war gaming survey up which given their product lines has some VSF and Steampunk connections.  Go give it a look.

Analogue Hobbies - First Entry

As mentioned in a previous post, I entered the Analogue hobbies panting challenge as a way to push me to finish up my various armies.

My first entry is here: From PatG - 25 mm An assortment of VSF Martians (370 points).

Curt has asked for exclusivity on posts so I won't be posting any pictures here until after the competition is over. Please head over and look at some of the great work being done - most far better than mine.

Now in terms of 1889, this means:

•  Askari foot are complete.
• Hill Martian lights are complete.
• Canal Martian lights are complete.
• Lancers are almost complete. I tried printing some pennons but the laser printer ink cracked when I tried to drape them. I at least need to work on representing banner men.
• Artillery is complete.

Next up for the competition are the Hill Martian light cavalry as planned but a last moment of weakness in 2015 means that there are also 8 mounted Askari on the way along with an assortment of wall guns and small cannon. 

Worth sharing - Pushing Tin's Colonial campaign

If you have any interest in colonials (or VSF), go have a look at Pushing Tin - Campaign Anniversary. Stunning game pictures and excellent fluff, it is reminiscent of the Major General's work - but in 6mm. Inspirational.

The Painting Challenge - the lead pile.

Getting ready for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge and this is box one of the lead pile.  The 19 Gashant Martian cavalry mounts on the right are why I felt pretty confident I could hit 500 points.  Yes there are handful of figures with some colour on them. They will be painted up with the rest for consistency but not submitted for points as that would be ungentlemanly.

And the backup box:

As above anything beyond primer will not be submitted for points.  If I get really stuck, there's a whack of 20mm plastics in the man cave for backup.

Adventures in (table) Space - Developing the Space 1889 solo campaign

So a while back, I posted how I was going to wedge Kas'trum into the existing Space 1889 map of Mars. With work quieting down, I have had some more time to develop my thoughts.

Now according to the Soldier's Companion, a unit on foot in good terrain can make one hex or about 10 miles per day. According to canon, from Crocea to the swamps of Gorklimsk is about 200 miles which is far enough to make things interesting for the Imperial side.  However this raised the question of where exactly any given encounter will take place in that hex.

To address this, the first question is how much area does my 4x6ish table represent ? After poking around with some complicated math, I re-read SoC which said that 1 foot on table is one Sky Galleons of Mars hex and Sky Galleons is compatible with Ironclads and Ether Flyers, and I&E says that 1 hex = 1 cable or just over 200 yards. so a 4x6 table is 800x1200 yards or .45 x .68 miles so breaking down the 10 mile campaign hex into 1 mile sub-hexes means I can fit 2 tables per mile with lots of wiggle space.  So now I have an idea of what level of detail I need to provide before setting up each battle.

As a side effect, I got to thinking about scale. I may have missed it but SoC doesn't say much about ground scale. With the information above we can nail it down. 1 foot = 200 yards so the ground scale is 1:600! Our 25 mm figures are comparatively massive. Or are they? The Soldier's companion makes two things clear: the figure scale is 1:10 and infantry should be based on 3/4" washers (or equivalent). How well does this tie in with ground scale? Three quarters of an inch is 37.5 feet on the table. Divide that by 10 to get space per man and we get 3.75 feet, or just about spot on for arms length dressing. In open order that's 7.5 feet per man - again not too bad for open order. These two figures are a reasonable compromise between Napoleonic and modern practice.

However, it breaks down a bit when we start looking at artillery. Your bog standard BL 12 pounder has a range of 6 feet in game which translates into 1200 yards; much less than the actual maximum range of  5,000 yards. That seems to be a large discrepancy but  makes sense in light of direct fire artillery practices of the time and supports the common gamers' desire to get toys on the table.  Besides, who has space for a 25 foot table?  The Lee-Metford range of 32"is fairly close to ground scale (1600 yards vs 1800 yards actual). This means the guns are a little more vulnerable than they should be, but not by much.  Oops made a math error here. 32" on the table translates to 500 yards. This is quite  bit under even the historical 800 yard effective range, but not enough to worry me. As a side effect, it makes the artillery a bit more effective. Interestingly, the rifle musket at 12" is bang on for effective range of a Baker rifle and the 8" range for a smooth bore musket is quite a bit more than the 6" one would expect for a Brown Bess. It looks like the Earthers have been nerfed a little and the Martians buffed.

If a wonky ground scale good is enough for Flames of War it's good enough for Soldier's Companion.

So what does all this mean? Despite initial appearances, the ground scale has been well thought out and is accurate but artillery ranges have necessarily been truncated. Some method must be created to figure out where in a 10 mile campaign hex a given encounter occurs but raises the possibility of flanking movements or actions within a hex and large multi-table battles.

I assure you that I find all this math very interesting and not the least bit boring as I expect some of my readers might.

The Painting Challenge

Maybe I am crazy but I have just put in for the Sixth Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.

At a very modest 500 points, that will take care of all my recent 1889 purchases, force me to finish up my Home Guard / FJ and maybe even get me painting my 20mm WWII.

Wish me luck.

Reinforcements for the forces of Kas'trum

Thanks to the current Federal Election in Canada (If you are Canadian, please go vote) and the resulting overtime, I have been able to make a sizable upgrade to the forces of Kas'trum.

The 2/3 Dragoons will get an upgrade to a full squadron of lance and musket armed gashant heavy cavalry. Num'da's Raiders will also be increased to a full squadron of gasahant light cavalry. The Kas'trum scouts will get a bow armed platoon bringing them to company strength (and allowing them to double as  Boer style mounted infantry / dragoon dismounts in conjunction with the Raiders). The Pier Worm Roaster's Guild has also been on a recruiting drive bringing them up to company strength  -or- perhaps a rival merchant group has also taken up the worm hunting challenge? 

On the artillery side, two pairs of Greek fire projectors will serve as sweepers and a brace of 1841 pattern light howitzers has been acquired along with  the requisite Trucial and Martian crews. These crews will allow artillery on both sides.

Those keeping track will note that the Earthers are seriously outnumbered in all areas, this is by design. To simply get within charge range of magazine rifle armed troops requires an awful lot of open order troops to screen the heavies. The Martian cavalry should encourage the Empire player to pay attention to the flanks (though there is a small unit of Sikh Lancers in the queue).  The artillery will encourage the Earthers to move up and engage rather than be shelled to pieces as well as giving the Empire something to break up any fortified rebel Martian towns. I will also have enough troops for Martian on Martian battles with Earth forces playing only a supporting role - if any role at all. 

With this purchase, my Space 1889 project, at least on the figure side, is as complete as it is likely to be. Any more figures and my table is likely to 1) Look like a FoW armoured battle with wall to wall figures and B) collapse under the weight of lead.

And a picture:

   

The Mighty PzKpfw Neubaufahrzeug V and VI for CoC!

Note: This is a re-post from the Lardie's Forum. I haven't posted here in awhile so I thought I would leverage it I mean share with you. ;)

A large portion of British Home Guard training was focussed on improvised anti-armour tactics. So naturally I needed to pick up some armour for the invading Jerries. To be accurate, this should be a Panzer II, III or IV or perhaps a 38-T or Stug III A at best. But ... none of those really fit into the British propaganda of the period which had fire spitting iron behemoths stomping their way through bucolic English villages (only to be cut down by the local green grocer and postman of course). I wanted something more epic, more menacing.

As it happens Die Waffenkammer does a rather nice resin kit of the Neubaufahrzeug and in Canadian terms at least they are "just up the road" from me so I ordered one (you can too at:  http://www.diewaffenkammer.com/_germany_page_no3.html)  All their stuff is lovely.

This vehicle was designed in the 30s and came in two versions the Rheinmetall designed PzKpfw NbFz V and the Krupp built PzKpfw NbFz VI. The only differences between them was that the two Rheinmetall vehicles had a 75mm L24 and 37mm L45 in the turret in an over under configuration and were made of mild steel, while the three Krupp vehicles had the same armament in a side by side configuration and were made from proper armour plate. Like many designs of the period they had two sub-turrets one each fore and aft. These were modified Panzer I turrets with only 1 MG each. Top speed was 30 Km/h and armour was no thicker than 20mm.  A planned, but never built, variant of the Krupp turret was to have a 105mm low velocity gun for throwing smoke.

The Krupp machines saw propaganda service in Norway, masquerading as heavy tanks. In actual action against the British also in Norway, one was lost when it became bogged down. A Rheinmetall machine was sent to replace it.  As the war progressed after the invasion of Norway, they disappeared into the scrapheap though at least once source says they were used in Russia.

But what does this mean in CoC terms?

Using the latest coculator, and I am very open to corrections, gives:

Rheinmetall PzKpfw NbFz V / Krupp PzKpfw NbFz VI. 
Historical 75mm & 37mm and projected with 105mm & 37mm

Armour: 3 Krupp, 1 Rheinmetall

HE: 6 (10 for projected Krupp 105mm)
AP: 5
Turreted hull and Coax MG
Extra turreted hull  MG
Slow

Support list: 4 (75mm) or 5 (105mm)
Special rules: Only one of two the turret guns or the co-ax mg can be fired using one command initiative. The sub-turrets count as hull mounted MGs. One can fire per command initiative, with the option to also fire by using a separate command dice of 1.  105mm equipped vehicles can fire smoke direct.

Panzer fans will notice that apart from the extra MG turret (and the 105mm variant), these stats are pretty much the same as those for an early model Panzer IV. I suspect this explains why they never went into serious production.

Now since these served as propaganda machines, below is my take on what Herr Goebbels would have liked the allies to think they were:

Neubaufahrzeug Propaganda Panzer - Heavy Tank
Armour: 6
HE: 10
AP: 5
Regular speed
The rest as above
Support list: 6

While the Neubaufahrzeug doesn't add much to the game in pure stats terms, imagine the look on your opponent's face when you say you have bought an entirely historical Panzer VI support for a 1940 battle. ;)

Sources:
German Armoured Rarities 1935-1945 - Michael Sowodny.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neubaufahrzeug
http://www.achtungpanzer.com/leichte-traktor-grosstraktor-i-ii-iii-neubaufahrzeug-pzkpfw-v-vi.htm

Boats for Mars!

Over on Thingiverse Devon Jones has been working on Openforege an extensive range of open source dungeon terrain tiles.  I printed up a bunch last year but realized that I would never have time for RPGs so they went to a new home.

However, earlier this year Mr Jones released a set of rowboats and dinghies which will be perfect for the canals of Mars.  There are a few technical tweaks needed but below is the first set of prints.

I like the small boat especially since it is just different enough to say not of Earth. The larger may well get used as a landing craft by Earther forces or maybe even Oh'ktava'ns Marines.

New Terrain for Space 1889

Just a quick post. Life has been crazy busy since the Spring and is even more so now Canada is in election mode. I was however able to put together a bit of terrain for Space 1889 and Gruntz:

The spiky things are the seed pods of Fuller's Teasel, a roadside weed that used to be used to fluff up wool blankets. Add some card bases a little sand and some flock (dyed tea leaves) an I have a dozen or so spiky Martian bushes for Oh'ktava'an's troops to hide behind.

Space 1889 - This needs to be shared

Over at One Last Wargame- SPACE 1889 Kev from Australia has been working on a little project of his own. Space 1889 in 40mm using figures he has sculpted and cast himself. Very much in the toy soldier mode and not exactly canon, these figures have a charm of their own. I can see Wells himself playing Little wars with these.

Please go take a look!

War Printer

As mentioned in previous posts, I have a RepRap 3d printer that I have been using to print bits for wargaming. It has its own page where I will be putting more in-depth posts on the printing side of it.

Check it out:
War Printer 

Thoughts on Kas'trum and Old School Game Design.

The scenarios in Space 1889, especially those in the core books, have received a lot of criticism for being on rails. Some modern commentators have rightly remarked that players and game masters both are locked into a single story line. For example, if  On Gossamer Wings is played out as written, no matter what the players do to fix Professor Grant's ether flyer, they will always crash - no exceptions and no player input.

So too is much of the rest of the Space 1889 background. When working up possible organizations of my Martian lead pile, I found that the options I wanted to use did not fit into any of the published city states and especially not Oenotria. Instead, I put them in the previously unknown city state of Kas'trum. I wanted to put Kas'trum off to one side of the main British advance preferably in the swamps between Crocea and Gorklimsk. According to known maps, the only way the British can get to those swamps by water is through Crocea with canal routes further north blocked by mountains. Crocea itself is still powerful enough to block any raiding red men coming down the canal and the British are close enough to its walls to make shoe-horning in a decent sized city state difficult.  So what was I going to do? After much hemming and hawing, all I had to do was remember how we used to do things. I'll let Frank Chadwick speak from the designer's notes for the Soldier's Companion rules:

Let me close with a piece of general advice to players and referees alike. Miniatures gaming is a form of entertainment, and these rules are intended to provide you with the means of putting on an entertaining game. It is foolish, then, to let the printed rules stand in the way of your enjoyment. The bulk of this book should serve as testimony to the effort put into making it as complete as it can be, but a set of rules is sterile without an active set of players. If you disagree with anything in these rules, please feel free to modify it to suit your own tastes. Just don't argue about it while the game is being played. During the game, the referee's word is absolute law, above even the printed words of the rules.

So with a plan refreshed by this wisdom Crocea is going to get moved further south, new canals dropped into place and Kas'trum will be put exactly where it needs to be so nothing stands in the way of my enjoyment.  Besides, the Earther maps were likely wrong to begin with.

To no particular scale - but around 3.14159 miles to the hex.

This is entertainment. If you are not re-fighting particular historical battles or you are not playing in a tournament where consistent rules are a necessity, throw out the canon and rewrite the rules until you get the enjoyment out of the hobby that works for you. It's what we did in the old days so there is historical precedent.      

The Forces of Kas'trum for Space 1889 (and Happy Holidays)

In the swamps between the cities of Crocea and Gorklimsk lies the independent town of Kas'trum. Though out of the thick of the current war against the Earthers, Kas'trum provides an important gateway to the High Martian liftwood groves to the north. The exact details of this town are not yet known, but below is a brief report on the military forces thought to be under her control.

I sat down the other day to look over the new acquisitions as well as my existing troops and come up with some reasonable units. Unfortunately, RAFM packs provide figures in multiples of three while the official Soldier's Companion organizations are in multiples of eight. Eight and three don't factor well so it took a bit of thinking to make it all work. Ratings are all conjectural at this point but more or less follow the book.

Canal Marines

Marines simply because I like the blue scheme I used for the originals. A little light with only 15 in the unit rather than the usual 19, these will be pure shooters with rifle muskets or possibly breech loaders. I am thinking Regular V1S or E1S.

The Stalwarts

My conception of  Oh'ktava'an's experimental shield gunner company. One half company each of gunners and cutters, all troops get the +1 defensive bonus for being armoured. This is a defensive rather than offensive unit. Regular V0 or maybe even E0.

Kas'trum Civic Guard

Basic city infantry with the usual smooth bore shooter/cutter split. Irregular T2 or X2

Kas'trum Fencibles

A mix of armoured (+1 defensive bonus) troops  armed with shield guns and choppers in the front half company and a twelve man over strength cutter company in the rear. Another defensive unit Irregular T0 or X0. I might try splitting morale with the front half company getting V0 and the rear T0  or even G0

Kas'trum Volunteers

A mishmash of civic minded militia. Mixed shooters and cutters in the front half company with all cutters in the rear. These boys are enthusiastic but Irregular G1 or at best T1 armed with a few smooth bore muskets.

Pier Worm Roaster's Guild Social Club and Civil Defence Force "The Red Caps". 

Well known for their marksmanship but better known for their drinking, the Red Caps began as an informal gambling league when the Roaster's Guild started taking bets on who could pick off the most marsh slugs - rapacious predators of the pier worm. Marsh slugs have excellent vision making them a tough prey to tackle. The Red Caps bright head gear and garish clothing show in part their contempt for the eagle eyed slug.  Irregular X3S or V3S. Rifled muskets.

Second Troop, Third squadron Crocean Heavy Dragoons

A Gashant unit on loan from the city of Crocea, the 2/3 Dragoons give Kas'trum some mounted support. Regular V0H

Num'da's Raiders

A Hill Martian light cavalry unit hired by Kas'trum to provide long range scouting. Irregular T2

Kas'trum Scouts

Another half band of Hill Martian mercenaries, the Scouts provide reconnaissance and skirmish capability to the city forces. Irregular T2

  

Moeris Lacus Trucial Company "The Prince's Own" 

 A dual purpose unit. As loyal sepoys, The platoons can be split up and assigned to red forces to provide a much needed native scouting capability.  As mutineers, they can be used to give Martian forces a much needed boost to their fire power and morale. Regular X2 (I love these sculpts)

The Rest

Left over figures who will serve as overall field commanders, rebel leaders and other roles as required.

This will give me five possibly six companies with some supporting troops as well - note that the two Martian Whitworth guns are not depicted here. Hopefully, they will be able to take on a British platoon, maybe even two.

In any event they give me much to paint over the holiday period.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all! May your pier worms always be well smoked!

Magic the Gathering Pauper Draft

I last played Magic the Gathering back in the days of Ice Age with just a smattering of Alliances. I traded it all away for Jyhad / V:TES which I considered a more interesting game. Years later, board games are back and with them board game stores. Magic is back in public view and is no longer relegated to tournaments and niche stores.  You can even find cards at the dollar store.
 
A couple of friends wanted to play. Jamie has never stopped but Marc and I haven't picked up cards in years. So rather than buying pre-built decks of the latest release, we held a pauper draft last night with five packs each from  the dollar/pound store.  To do the draft, each player opens a pack, looks through the cards and selects one then passes the remainder to the right. The select and pass continues until all the cards from that pack have been distributed. Each player then opens another pack and the process repeats until all packs have bee distributed.  Basic land is added in as desired to make a fifty card deck.

For the old timers there were more than a few questions about card abilities but in the end we were able to muddle through. I was gratified to see a Legends reprint Cat warriors in my first pack - I could understand this card at least, and looking at the rest chose that as the basis of a green-black deck.  It was not to be since Marc was to my left and was also collecting green and snagged all the good cards.  I had to revert to a Black/White deck with a focus on graveyard recycling and low coloured mana cost critters and spells.   

The games went well with the usual problems of getting the land balance right. Jamie beat me pretty soundly with some new fangled magicky stuff. Marc and I took classical deck design approaches and had a couple of very close games. Two stand out. The first was where Marc had a heavily buffed up Cyclops ready to pound me to smithereens, and I played Eye Gouge sending it screaming to the graveyard. In another game I was hurting but Marc was down to 3. I attacked with a 1/4 which Mark did not block planning to kill me next turn with his creatures and I used a white border Transmutation to flip it to a 4/1 and killed him.  The old cards are still good cards.

It wasn't about winners and losers though, just a bunch of mates having a good time playing games.  I very much enjoyed playing and thought that I would enjoy getting back into it. Then I remembered that Magic is as addictive as crack and that a lead habit is much less problematic and costly than a card habit.

Top level decks in our area run between $250 and $2,000 to assemble, the "legal" cards change yearly if not more frequently and they're just frigging playing cards.

Back to buying lead I think.

But maybe just one more pauper draft.....

More Reinforcements for Mars

A bit of overtime came through from work so it was off to the RAFM site to order up some much needed reinforcements for the forces of mars.  This time around, it was two more legions of Mars and enough Colonial Martian Infantry to bring the existing platoon up to full company strength.

This will give me just under 6 warbands of martian infantry, a troop of heavy canal martian lancers, a troop of hill martian light cavalry, a full warband of high martians in both flying and on foot configuration (or 2 if I don't worry too much about mixing), two Whitworth rifles with Colonial or Martian crew . The colonial company mentioned above can fight either for the Great Red Queen across the ether or switch sides in true Sepoy style and help to throw their oppressive masters off the beloved red planet.  In addition I have a troop or so of Boer War era mounted rifles I plan on doing up as German mercenaries in the service of a Martian prince or as British colonial irregulars.

With all that in place, I might just be able to take on a British rifle company and survive.... maybe if the dice gods are kind just maybe....

Oh'ktava'an will likely be back over the Christmas holidays. While attending to his - uh - ablutions the other day he realized that while shield gunners can press forward against bows and spears, against rifles, they are far better as defensive troops receiving a charge with their scatter guns at close range. He has also received information from Earther sources suggesting that the British ability to use cover is not as good as many Maritian units. Many red units are unable to spot concealed troops until they are well within charge range. 

More to follow and a lot more to paint

Epic - Mad Padre's PBEM Diplomacy Game is over

There have been two games in my life thus far that I can call truly epic. The first was a double blind umpired game of Squad Leader I played back in my 20's. The second was the Diplomacy game set up and run by Michael - The Mad Padre that wound up this week: Diplomacy Game: Peace Breaks Out, We Have Winners.

That's my last army - withering away in the beer halls of Silesia

When Michael put the call out for interested players, I put my name in and drew Germany. I had played before but not since high school so naturally I went on line and read up on the best strategies to follow for this august and important nation.  Two main points came up: 1) you must ally with Austria or you both will die and 2) you have to talk to other players.  Armed with these words of wisdom, I sent a flurry of messages across the map even to Turkey but most importantly to Austria.  All was well at first, then after a couple turns, Austria went silent. Unfortunately the player had to withdraw. Life happens and I bear him or her no ill will but it left me in a bit of a pickle. I had antagonized Italy while I tried to defend a passive Austria, England was leaning hard on the Low Countries and Turkey was pushing hard for Vienna.

In retrospect, an alliance with Italy would have worked out well in the long run - he turned out to be an honourable player and good neighbour to the end. However, faced with no prospect of winning, I decided to focus on in no particular order 1) surviving and 2) making the game interesting for the rest of the players. So rather than keep the persona of a sober and solemn diplomat, I went with the bat-crap crazy but mostly harmless unfortunate street person down at the bus station that everyone leaves alone.

There were numerous conversations with a predatory Uncle England about the high failure rate of Royal Navy compasses. I may have accidentally on purpose misquoted different messages I received before sending them on to other parties and I thought I found an interpretation of the rules that would have allowed for a 3 or 4 way win with me holding the swing vote.  Most regrettably I was utterly wrong about that last bit.

However, the most epic bit of epicness was the all out charge against the forces of compass sabotaging Bolshevism. Figuring I was dead anyway, I headed east putting more pressure on the Czar than he really deserved. And England and France did nothing... So I kept going and they kept doing nothing. In the end I had to turn back and defend Munich and thus survived far, far longer than I had any right to expect.  In the Fall of 1906 mere moments before the outbreak of peace, my last army fell and the Kaiser went into well deserve exile in Canada.

A wonderful game and a wonderful experience.  Many many thanks to Michael and all the other players.

My one regret is now my inbox is regrettably lacking in content.

A CoC Challenge the Results are In!

What a great group of Chain of Command List submissions from the community.  For the official envelope opening see:  The Winners Is

Thanks to all the contributors and to Lardy Rich for a special bonus.

Fort George and the Grand Canadian Steampunk Exposition or Canadian Combat Wheelbarrows!?

This past weekend (11-14 September 2014) I was at Fort George Ontario for the first annual Grand Canadian Steampunk Exposition.  Apart from all the steampunk goodness, a real treat for me was being able to explore the fort and even spend several nights in the barracks.

I took a great many photos and some will certainly show up here in future posts. I did find traces of a little known part of Canadian military history: The Combat Wheelbarrow!

Now wheelbarrows are so generally useful it is to be expected that your standard wheelbarrow will see use by the military such as these cargo variants:

And a better shot of the model on the right. the slats seem to suggest this was used for fodder or other bulk material:

Then there is this model with adjustable sides:

Surely the mortar in front is just part of a general display of equipment under repair in the Artificer's Shop.   But no.  In the depot section of the barracks block, the ingenuity of Canadian (Ok early British Imperial) military thinking is revealed. An example of one of the earliest self-propelled (or should that read squaddie propelled) artillery pieces in North America the Combat Wheelbarrow!:

In loaded and deployed configuration:

Based on information in the display and accompanying markings on the equipment, this was not just an interesting way to pose equipment in the museum but a historical method of moving and deploying light mortars. A great vignette for any modeller or gamer. Forward the First Upper Canadian Barrowmen!

All quiet because there is too much going on.

Between work and life, it has been an extremely busy Summer.  I have started collecting 1/72 WWII for Chain of Command, created a gaming mat for 1889 and begun printing dungeon tiles on warprinter. I also won a PDF of Adventures in the East Mark an Old School Rules fantasy RPG and I even managed to type up a review - for someone else's blog of course. Head over to Tenkar's Tavern and check it out.

Pictures of all this to follow but here's a sample.

Chain of Command Contest - First entry!

Adrian Deacon of Bullets Bandages and Lard has posted the first entry in my Chain of Command Challenge.

It covers 3 kampfgruppe of the 21st Panzer Division in Normandy and contains a tasty selection of French armour and conversions in German service as well a good assortment of light armour.  Nary a Tiger or Panther in sight

Well worth a look.

Chain of Command Contest!

Lardie Rich has been cranking out lists like crazy and still people are asking for more.   So I figured some of those people should pick up the slack and let Rich get on with other things like In the Buff.

It's simple really make a list and post it to the Chain of Command forum or Yahoo group and get a chance at winning stuff. Details here: A CoC Challenge! 

Get posting and Good Luck!

More painting and some conversions

It was hot and humid Canada Day but I managed to get quite a bit of time in the man cave while the missus helped the offspring with their post school year room clean up.

A while back, I unearthed a pack of British colonial infantry. As I have quite a few in redcoats already and some more in the pile destined to be clad in khaki, I decided to do this bunch as ersatz Royal Marine Light Infantry.  They aren't quite right in some details but only those a purist would notice and they are destined for VSF so all historical objections are moot.

RMLI (or close enough to pass on the table)

The other project for the day was a couple of conversions. My fallschirmjäger were a little light in the support department so for my birthday I placed an order with Wargames Foundry for some reinforcements. This created a bit of a quandary. One figure in the  heavy weapons pack gives you a choice between slung MG 34 or Panzerbüchse 39 but not both. I needed the MG 34 for certain platoon organizations but I really, really wanted the ATR for use in early war operations.  I wonder why? My Foundry order was large enough to qualify for an extra pack so with some trepidation I broke out the razor saw and cyanoacrylate.

FJ Supports (and a couple of Martians)

The centre un-primed figure running with the grenade was my sacrifice starting point.  The flanking figures are the result. Pretty good I think and useful for punching holes in any light armour sniffing around the green fields of Eakring.  I didn't quite have the nerve to remove the slung Kar 98 but FJ are supposed to be beefy lads so they can carry both.  The double based figures on the right are a sniper team. The figures are stock. The sniper scope being a section of  1/72 Macross VF-1 Valkyrie landing gear strut from the bits box.

My second band of High Martians got a long awaited dip and I even managed to dye some tea leaves for home made flock. I didn't quite have the nerve to appropriate the food processor to turn a bag of foam chips into ground foam - maybe next time.

A very productive and satisfying day off.

edit: I really do need a camera with decent macro capability.