Andreivian TV Building part 2

The ATV building is complete!

Inspired by the Fernsehturm in Stuttgart, it now has its transmission tower and observation deck.

For those of you wanting some idea of the scale of this edifice, that's a 1/72nd scale BTR-80 parked outside the front door.

And on the top, a Russian Naval Infantry SAM team...

This should certainly be a tactically significant building!

Andreivian Armenian air support

Having decided I won't have time to build a Mi-24 Hind in the two weeks available before Crisis Point III, I went to Antics models in Sheffield to see if they had a suitable, quick-to-build Soviet aircraft kit.

In a stroke of sheer good fortune, I found this ready-made MiG-3:

It's in Romanian Air Force colours, which is a bonus because red, yellow and blue happen to be the colours of the Andreivian-Armenian flag!  I'll need to paint out the Romanian cross and paint in the canopy as it looks a bit daft flying with no pilot.

An even bigger bonus was that the model is lacking an alternative part - one of the lowered undercarriage units.  This didn't bother me but did reduce the price to £6.99; the same as the cheapest aircraft kit in the shop!

What to do with left-over Green Stuff

I always end up having mixed slightly more Green Stuff than I need.  Here's what I do with the excess.

Blob some onto a penny, smooth down the edges and poke a hole in the middle:

Add your terrain-texturing material; in my case brown-tinted tile grout: 

Allow to dry, paint and dry-brush.  Result: bases for flags to mark terrain captured or scenario objectives.

Or you can use spare Green Stuff to attach bits of dry twig to a penny.  Two shown here with the base already textured and painted:

Dry-brush base, glue on clump foliage and voila, 6mm trees:

Finally, with several batches of left-over Green Stuff you can gradually build up this kind of thing, again on a penny:

Paint orange/yellow, glue on cotton wool or paint-dyed interfacing material and you have a 6mm scale explosion marker:

Andreivian TV Building

This weekend saw me finally get round to completing the headquarters of Andreivian TV, seen here with some recently-painted Russian Naval Infantry.

The building will play a significant role in the upcoming Crisis Point III - Battle For Tcherbevan (in which there are still places available for players).

As usual, click to enlarge the pics.

Maurice rules and cards

I was down in London yesterday at a conference and got away in time to pop into Orc's Nest in Covent Garden.  I ended up buying Maurice and the accompanying card deck:

I wasn't going to buy it until I'd tried out the free 'Maurice Lite' version I'd downloaded but in the end I weakened because (a) Wargames Emporium has sold out and is unlikely to get another copy, (b) the 'lite' version doesn't cover irregular troops so I couldn't use my Ottoman Turks, and (c) I'd had two glasses of red wine at lunch.

I'll report back later with a review of the rules.

On the Workbench - a miscellany

I've been a bit quiet here of late as I'm working on something that I want to progress further before the big reveal.  However, last night I got a few things to the point where they just need varnishing and static-grassing.

These Sun Dome militia are my first purpose-made Song of Blades and Heroes warband for Glorantha.

If I remember correctly they are Black Tree Spartans left over from my Sun Domer Nordes of the Things army.  Now I need to work out their SOBH stats.

Meanwhile, this guy is a Foundry Wild West type.  I'm really not into Western gaming but I guess he could have some Pulp usefulness.

Finally, we have these two.  They are an Esci Soviet paratrooper painted as Soviet Naval Infantry and an Orion Chechen.

These were both rather hurriedly painted - I just felt like a break from miniature architecture.  I'm disappointed by the stock on the Naval Infatryman's AK-47.  I filled the original skeleton stock with GW's Liquid Green Stuff but it's contracted significantly.  I'll have to do it again with proper Green Stuff.

Who Spoofed Whom?

I picked up Sean Longden's book T-Force from my local library.  It's an enjoyable book about a little-known (at least to me) composite unit of the British armed forces that, in the final months of WW2 and the first months of the Cold War, led the process of capturing German scientists, research facilities and industrial complexes.

 
I was somewhat amused by one item though.  On page 185 Longden writes:

"At Utrecht the unit detained a Dr Strabismus, scientist who had earned his place on the [Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-committee] list due to his research on perpetual motion.  The doctor was an interesting find since he was last reported as working in Spain in 1944."

So far so unremarkable, you may think.  But I was a great fan of Beachcomber, By The Way a short-lived Radio 4 series based upon the writings of J B Morton.  Morton's Beachcomber column was a feature of the Daily Express from the 1920s and earlier.  In many ways it prefigured the surreal comedy of the Goons and Monty Python and featured a number of recurring characters including an inventor and scientist called Dr Strabismus (whom God preserve) of Utrecht.

Now I've been unable to find evidence for when Dr Strabismus first appeared in the column but I think it's unlikely that Beachcomber took the name from an obscure real-life scientist whose name happened to be the Latin for "squint".  So the question then arises, is Longden spoofing us or has he been taken in?

Personally, I rather like the latter option.  The dying months of World War 2 were a time of chaos when the British Army's natural tendency to keep voluminous paperwork on everything must have been under tremendous strain.  I love the idea of some bored Army officer introducing a beloved fictional character into the records to see how far it got.

Of course, if any of you know differently, I'd love to hear.