Upgrading the dice tower - Revised!

As things stand my recently completed dice tower is a little plain. 

It was always my plan that I improve the thing to make it sit a little more comfortably among a range of terrain types. Adding a Neodymium magnet to the front wall has allowed me to attach a couple of temporary fixtures.  

This first one goes down the generic fantasy route:

It's a plastic bit, probably Games Workshop I guess, that's been in the spare bits box for years. It's painted in a dark bronze, dry brushed with brass and then covered in my usual home-made verdigris wash.

Alternatively I can bring the tower into a more historical setting with this little window.

It's made from pieces of thin card and an off-cut of Wills plastic pantile sheet.

And, added since the original post, another generic fantasy option is this:

Another TacWWII marker

I had a play around on Tinkercad yesterday and designed a new marker for TacWWII:

Sized at 75mm x 40mm, these company markers can potentially fill two functions.

Having spent ages advancing infantry companies through the dense forests of Manchuria in a recent game, I thought it would be useful to just have one base to move, specifically when the troops concerned were nowhere near the enemy.

In addition they could act as blinds allowing for limited intelligence as to enemy strength. Each marker carries an identifying letter on the rear.

These letters can be used to identify particular companies on the order of battle sheet. The opposing player will be kept in the dark as to unit type until the company can be detected (though speed of movement may give some clues!)

A Vintage Classic

My mate Mark P bought me a couple of Airfix kits as Christmas presents. This one has just reached completion:

It's the Tank Mk 1 from the Vintage Classics range. It's a 1967 moulding so nearly as old as I am!

The kit comes with a single decal and a painting guide for a vehicle at Fleurs-Courcelette during the Battle of the Somme in September 1916. However, I decided I'd paint mine in an overall grey scheme representing a vehicle prepared for testing at the Lincoln factory earlier in the year.

It's generally not too difficult a kit to build. A little filling and sanding was necessary to hide some of the joins between the armour plates. The biggest problem is attaching the steering trailer to the complex mechanism of springs at the rear of the hull. I think a permanent display base is going to be needed to prevent future breakage.

First Gangs of Rome models

Three weeks ago I took delivery of a box of Wargames Atlantic plastic Citizens of Rome. Having spent a fair chunk of the intervening time gluing and painting I'm now very nearly in a position to get started with the rules. In fact I've painted 19 figures; very nearly one a day.

As I reported previously, the box gives you enough parts to make 30 miniatures with the emphasis on gang members in combat poses.

However I did manage to produce a few figures that will pass for less violence-focussed civilians:

The 80mm sabot base identifies these miniatures as composing a "mob" into which fighters may disappear if things get too hot.

The ducks are some white metal castings that were sitting in my spares box awaiting a useful purpose. the racks of amphorae are 3D prints from Thingiverse.

Another mob base is this shepherd and his flock, obviously more relevant to rural games or to muckier parts of the city.

At the moment I don't really have any Rome-specific terrain so this photoshoot features my Warbases villa standing in as a large town house.

A mixture of homemade and Hovels resin-cast walls provide privacy to the senatorial family who live here. It seems they aren't at home as a number of ne'er-do-wells have penetrated the garden.

Fortunately the Vigiles Urbani are on the way:

I've found scribed Milliput to be the best way of making paved bases. Here we see a couple of vigiles bases, before and after painting. Each base gets a coat of Vallejo Basalt Grey before the individual stones are picked out with Pale Grey.

A Chilean Vampire

I bought the Airfix de Havilland Vampire kit when it was available cheap from Lidl (or was it Aldi?) before Christmas. Unfortunately, though, it comes with only one set of markings; for a Royal New Zealand Air Force aircraft. I'd already built that one so I invested in a set of after-market transfers from Xtradecal, paying significantly more than I did for the kit itself!

I've just finished the model. It represents a Vampire T.11 of Grupo 8, Chilean Air Force at Cerro Moreno airbase, Antofagasta in 1973-74.

I wasn't 100% impressed with the decals. The "NO PASO" (do not walk) markings on the wings are printed with the decal film only covering the lines themselves, not the whole of the area. As such, as soon as they came off the backing paper they collapsed into a ball of red lines that I couldn't untangle. In the end I used the markings from the kit for the trailing edge markings.

It's far from the best model I've made but the colour scheme's unusual and I quite like seeing it in the display cabinet alongside the RNZAF version. 

If I see another copy of the kit I'll grab it. There's a pre-UDI Rhodesian aircraft that's calling to me. It looks very British apart from the African spears on the wing roundels!

Joy of Six report

So Joy of Six is behind us for another year and I have to say I enjoyed it despite Sheffield Hallam University being on sauna setting for the day.

The Cold War Commanders Operation Vijay game was a success, I think, with Andy T and Neil M actually running/playing the game and me chatting to punters. Considering that the detailed scenario and the table set up were pretty much improvised on the day, it all worked out very nicely.

I think the Geek Villain mat worked well

An Indian Canberra flies over the victorious
Indian infantry

Other games included a marvellous Nomad assault on Pavis using the Midgard rules put on by author James Morris and pals:

Great fun to see a 6mm, massed-battle version of an action I've gamed in 28mm at skirmish level.

The MaDGamers of Maidenhead and District did a recreation of Alam Halfa, 1942 using the Rapid Fire Reloaded rules. Interestingly their handout says that they used both Baccus 6mm and Heroics & Ros miniatures in the same game. I can only assume this refers to men rather than vehicles as otherwise the scale differences would have been too noticeable.

Again the printed cloth worked well and the game certainly gave the impression of mostly empty desert.

Adjacent to our table were the Ilkley Irregulars, who put on Waterloo using Bloody Big Battles, something that I myself would like to do one day. In fact I bought a copy of the scenario book from them!

It wasn't the prettiest game at the event but the participants were clearly having a great time. I believe Napoleon was successful this time.

Given the very zoomed-out scale it's not so easy to produce lovely-looking terrain for a Bloody Big Battles game but the COGS group from Chesterfield achieved it with their Mons 1914 set up.

And finally among the Bloody Big Battles offerings was Per Broden's Gravelotte/St Privat, 1870.

This was lovely despite ParcelForce losing Per's dedicated game mat and his having to rebuild the battlefield using a borrowed one! 

Another very attractive game was the Siege of Bastogne by James Mitchell and Brendan Dolan. 

It's far from obvious but the table is actually organised on a square grid to support the rules in use, Eisenhower by Sam Mustafa. Very subtly done!

Total Battle Miniatures put on a small but beautifully formed representation of the 18th century Battle of Lobositz.

I thought the river was particularly nicely done.

Two American Civil War battles were represented. At the smaller scale was the Poe's Field portion of the battle of Chickamauga put on by the Three Shires group.

While the Leeds Wargames Club used Pickett's Charge to portray the Champions Hill battle during the Vicksburg campaign.

There were many other games but I didn't manage a comprehensive photo shoot this time I'm afraid.

I greatly enjoyed the day. Peter Berry tells me numbers were down this year but given that it was one of the hottest days of the year, I'm sure many who might have attended on a whim decided there were better ways to spend their time. Certainly for me a refreshing pint at the nearby Rutland Arms was much needed at the end o the day!

A much delayed debut

As I've reported previously, it's the Joy of Six show this weekend and the Cold War Commanders group are putting on a game. Operation Vijay (or Sample Appreciations of Tactics, the Wargame), represents a slightly fictionalised version of the Indian seizure of Portuguese Goa in the early 1960s.

The game will offer a chance for what I believe is the first serious deployment of some of the oldest models in my collection:

Portuguese EBR armoured cars

At some point in the late 1970s I acquired this book:

Up to then, the only set of wargames rules I'd managed to understand well enough to play with was the same author's Airfix Guide to WW2 Wargaming. 

Keen to try another set of rules I determined to spend some of my limited pocket money on some white metal micro-tanks from Games of Liverpool. Unfortunately, my knowledge of French-manufactured armoured cars was limited and I accidentally purchased EBRs instead of AMLs.

As such, the EBRs never got used other than in a couple of practice sessions to learn the rules. They were based for Cold War Commander and repainted in olive green about two decades ago but Sunday will see them used in a "proper game" for the first time ever. Just goes to show; you never know when your time to shine will arrive!