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.

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!

Seafox!

My latest modelling output is the Matchbox 1/72nd scale Fairey Seafox I bought in Warwick.

There are two schemes included in the kit. I chose to build the one in bare metal; an aircraft of 713 Catapult Flight, HMS Arethusa at Kalafrana, Malta in 1939. 

The kit is not the easiest to build. The thin struts mean that several stages have to be glued up and then left to dry for quite some time. In the end I found myself applying superglue to fix joints that came apart when handling the model to fix later parts.

The decals went on remarkably well for their age. The only problems were with the small stencils on the undersides of the wing trailing edges. These mostly disintegrated but as they aren't visible from most angles I'm not too bothered.

The Seafox was a naval reconnaissance aircraft used for finding enemy ships at sea. It's unlikely I'll be playing WW2 Mediterranean naval combat in 1/72nd scale but I included a magnet in the body of the model just in case I want to deploy it on one of my magnetised flight stands.

There should be rigging wires between the wing struts and a wire aerial between the tail and the mast but for now I think I'm happy with the model as it stands.

I've done a lot of aircraft in bare metal recently; the Vallejo Air Aluminium is fabulous paint. However, I'll be taking a break from it now. Next on the workbench is a camouflaged Vampire T.11 in Chilean Air Force colours using an after-market decal sheet.

Crisis Point 2025 - Saturday Report

The past weekend saw a gathering of wargamers at Dungworth Village Hall near Sheffield for the latest Crisis Point weekend. It turned out to be a classic example of the wargames community pulling together to produce a really enjoyable experience despite the fog of war doing its best to mess things up for us.

At 10:30 on Friday evening we were expecting to have two 20mm scale games set during the 1990s Civil War in Andreivia. I would be running my Arc of Fire scenario Attack in the Northern Hills and Mark Kniveton would be giving us A Hilltop Village, another Andreivian scenario using the Force on Force rules.

By 10:31 Mark had got in touch to report that his grown-up son had been injured in a hit-and-run incident in Barnsley and was in hospital. Obviously Mark would not be able to be with us on Saturday and we were suddenly down a game!

Fortunately a quick exchange of texts with Andy Taylor and Neil McCusker recruited these two fine gentlemen to dust off an idea that had been parked since the the great Covid-Crisis-Point-Cancellation of 2020. They would run a game set in 1760s Andreivia using the Maurice card-driven rules. This was of course a tremendous load off my mind as the event organiser!

I'd been able to set up my game on Friday afternoon so Saturday morning just needed a quick briefing to the players as they arrived followed by re-allocation of players to games to fit the new situation while Andy and Neil set up their game on the table-tennis table I'd originally earmarked for Mark.

My game used two tables. The western one had two Andreivian-Armenian-controlled villages connected by a road zig-zagging up the valley. 

Hamadzaktun (foreground) and Khndzori Arahet (rear), both held by the Armenians

The eastern table represented another valley with one village occupied by the Armenians and another (Melas Gora) under Andreivian Government control.

Menak (left) under Andreivian-Armenian control and
Andreivian Government-held Melas Gora (right) 

The valleys were connected by the Maghali Pass.

This was a terrain piece I threw together out of polystyrene packaging material in the week or so before Crisis Point. I have no plans to keep it as I can't see myself using it again but I wonder if there's some owner-of-a-wargames-venue in, say, Staffordshire who might find a use for it?

With six players of varying levels of familiarity with the rules, I was too busy to do much in the way of documenting events but here are a few pics:

Russian airborne troops supported by a T-80
advance on Hamadzaktun

An Armenian T-55 advances to engage the
Russians

Armenian militia in Khndzori Arahet

Russian grenade launcher team deploys to
cover the advance

An Armenian militia mortar team

An Armenian sharpshooter team deploys into some rough ground

That T-55 again

The battle for Menak between Armenian militia
and Russian Naval Infantry was fierce.

Melas Gora was well defended by Andreivian
Government paratroops

A Russian MiG-27 on a ground-attack
mission. The camouflage is good innit?

By the end of the game the Russians
hadn't managed to destroy either of
the Armenian artillery pieces bombarding 
the International Airport

We had planned that the game could continue into Sunday if we needed it to but in the event we were happy that the Russian attacks had made as much progress as they were going to without significant reinforcement.

The Andreivian Government had three victory points as a result of holding Melas Gora but their hopes that ATV News would get pictures of Russian atrocities were scuppered when the reporters' car was peppered with Russian bullets early in the game. The Russians gained a single victory point for taking Hamadzaktun and might have got another for Menak in another hour or two but they didn't get close to taking out the Armenian artillery. The Armenian guns had continued to fire throughout the game and as a result the Armenian players reached their target of five victory points. I'm therefore calling it a victory for the Andreivian-Armenians.

Elsewhere Andy and Neil had set up their Maurice game. Unfortunately I only got a couple of photos on Saturday.

Forces of the British Honourable Black Sea Company 
advance by columns

Saturday saw the Ottoman Turks and their Andreivian allies defeat the British after a long battle that seemed to provide plenty of entertainment to the players.

With both games finished on Saturday afternoon I had the unusual opportunity of tidying away my toys completely. In previous years I've still been packing away after six pm on the Sunday! We didn't have anyone stopping over in the village so I could have a relaxing evening albeit one spent making sure I could set up another game for Sunday.

Another Andreivian Tale

Andy came over yesterday and we played some Andreivian Arc of Fire. Details on the Andreivian Tales blog here.

On the workbench (March)

Following my last post on "Eking out the supplies" here's an update along with some other productions from March.

First up is a second PVC board off-cut recycled as a paved village base with a 20mm Russian para for scale.

An even smaller piece of the board has provided this little vignette of a cockerel on a dung heap next to a brick wall. The wall is from foam-core with the paper layers removed. The bird was, I suspect, from the old Airfix Wagon Train set; I acquired a number of elements from that set as part of a mixed second-hand lot many years ago.

This latter piece can be used on its own or alongside the previous one.

And here they are serving their intended purpose with one of my old Middle Eastern buildings...

And finally for now, here are some Andreivian road signs identifying the villages (and the routes to the airport) in the game coming up in a couple of weeks' time.

Bases from left-over MDF pieces, signs from cardboard and bits of paperclip! They should help the players remember which houses on the table correspond to which village on their scenario maps.

Eking out the supplies

When I was gainfully employed I had access to an on-site print shop that produced a large amount of public information material printed onto expanded PVC board. I managed to blag several quite large "off-cuts" that were otherwise unwanted and they make great bases for wargaming models. Much easier to work with than MDF.

Now that I'm retired I'm having to eke out the remaining supply. I've even gone as far as recycling the base of one model I decided not to retain.

This first piece is just such. I'd built a 20mm scale French maison on a hill for my Menton 1940 games but I was never entirely happy with it and it look up an enormous amount of storage space so it's been demolished and all but the base went into the bin.

This offcut from the original base will form a generic village base onto which I can place some Middle Eastern buildings, again in 20mm scale.

The edge was already chamfered and I've engraved irregular paving slabs with an old ball-point pen. Some traces of old hot glue and areas of crazy- rather than rectangular paving will add a lived-in look to the thing.

And here's one I made earlier to show what I'm aiming for as the final result.

A small, unbased house should look better on this rather that being plonked straight onto the terrain cloth. While I could have permanently based my Middle Eastern houses, based houses take up more of my valuable storage space. These pieces can just be thrown into an old shoe box with the houses.

Construction (such as it was) used the usual terrain gloop (Quick Drying Polyfilla stained with brown acrylic paint) on the irregular edge with the straight edges kept plain so they can butt up against straight road pieces. 

Speaking of straight road pieces, a couple of long, straight sections of 5mm MDF that came in the packaging of some Ikea furniture seemed too good to throw away so I painted them grey as tarmacked road sections. To link them to my existing glooped-hardboard roads, I created this jointing piece from more of the left-over PVC board.

Crisis Point 2025 - places still available

This year's Crisis Point gaming weekend takes place 12th and 13th April this year at The Old Band Room (aka Dungworth Village Hall), Dungworth, near Sheffield.  This year we have three games all taking place in the 1990s during our fictional Andreivian Civil War.

Battle in the Northern Hills

A multi-player Arc of Fire action that sees the Russian forces moving to destroy Andreivian-Armenian artillery pieces that have been shelling the Russian-occupied Tcherbevan International Airport. Run by Richard Crawley, this game builds on arguments made during a Matrix Game more than a decade ago!

A Hilltop Village

A Force on Force game run by Mark Kniveton. Troops loyal to the Andreivian Government (or at least one faction within it) are attempting to clear an hilltop village of Andreivian-Turk militia. UN Peacekeepers may have something to say about this! Mark's 20mm models are lovely and the game is sure to be visually impressive.

Landing at Mdinar

The 6mm fans among us (Richard Phillips, Andy Taylor and Neil McCusker) will be running a Cold War Commander scenario in which the Russians attempt to reinforce the assets previously landed from the Black Sea Fleet and establish a secure land corridor to supply the airborne troops holding the International Airport. 

If you'd be interested in joining us for what I'm sure will be a splendid weekend's gaming, please contact me by commenting below or by email to crawleystorrs<at>gmail<dot>com

Trying out Templars

At Vapnartak I picked up some figures from a new (to me) manufacturer, Templar Wargames. Looking at their website they seem to make quite a range of 28mm figures but it was a small range of 20mm modern types who caught my eye. Note by the way that, contrary to the labels on the packaging, the website is templarwargames.com and not templarwargames.co.uk.

They make a range of modern British troops. These will allow you to tailor your models to your chosen regiment; you can choose to get troops with helmets, berets, Tam-o-Shanters with hackle or Special Forces with a variety of doubtless unofficial headgear. 

By way of opposition for the British Templar make Islamist and African irregular types. Whilst chatting to the owner I picked up a couple of packs of these to see how they would blend in with my Andreivian collection.

Just off the workbench is this Islamist medium mortar team.

Wearing keffiyehs and salwar kameez, they fit nicely with the Elhiem Al-Qaeda models I use as Arab volunteers fighting alongside the Andreivian Turks.

They aren't as nicely proportioned as, say, AB Miniatures; they're a bit dumpy and the hands are rather cartoonish but they fit nicely with Elhiem or the old Dave Allsop-designed Hotspur minis.

The mortar comes as two castings; the mortar tube and the bipod. These are each cast with half of the base and they slot together very neatly to make a good, solid model. I decided to base them all together on a 40mm MDF circle with some sandbags I'd made previously out of left-over Milliput. 

The castings were reasonable; I just had to do a little cleaning where the mould half alignment was not quite perfect.

I also picked up a pack of Africans. I had wanted some guys with AK-47s but in error I grabbed a pack of eight chaps with RPGs. I've since decided one of them would make an excellent Andreivian militia leader. I quite like the idea of a squad- or even platoon-leader who routinely carries an RPG-7.

As you can see, there's nothing particularly African-looking about this chap. In fact I could see him passing very nicely as some kind of southeast Asian.

The pack contained eight figures; four pairs of duplicated poses. Most of them are more obviously African in appearance:

I think I'll paint this chap up as an African volunteer fighting with the Andreivian Turks. I'll probably use one of each pose and put the rest (when painted) on eBay. I don't want to side-track myself into wargaming Angola, Sierra Leone or Somalia; that would defeat the whole point of inventing Andreivia in the first place!

Weird artillery

I've recently had a period of building models out of the stash for no other reason than I fancied doing so. It's quite therapeutic to just think, "I don't need this for a game but sod it, I'll just build it".

The latest thing to come out of the stash is a couple of 20mm scale "French" guns that were in Akheton Models blister packs. The inverted commas reflect that fact that while the diminutive crew are in Adrian helmets, the guns themselves aren't a very good match for any particular weapons.

The barrels look like those of the famous 75mm Mle1897 but the carriage has wheels that are way too small.

I might declare them to be an Andreivian modification of the French gun and draft them into one of our post-WW1 games.

Christmas scenario

I'll be running an Andreivia 1918 game this Christmas. Here are some figures that will appear. 

You can learn more on the Andreivian Tales blog here.

Attack on the Northern Hills

This is the first-draft outline of a scenario for Arc of Fire that I'm working on for possible use at Crisis Point 2025. It's a slightly redacted version to keep a little of the detail from potential players.

Background

Russian forces have previously occupied Tcherbevan International Airport and are pushing to capture the bridges over the Krupnehr River with a view to moving into the centre of the capital.  However, their base at the airport continues to come under fire from Andreivian-Armenian artillery in the Northern Hills. Russian units are ordered to attack into the hills and destroy the artillery.

Situation

The game takes place on two tables representing hilly areas separated by the impassible Shavi Kedi (or Black Ridge).  Travel between the two tables is possible only across the Maghali Pass.

Both tables represent areas that are largely under Andreivian Armenian control. There are two villages on the western table; Khndzori Arahet and Hamardzaktun. They are connected by a road that forms a key Armenian line of communications and that then runs through the Maghali Pass. 

The eastern table has an old ruined fort (under Armenian control) at the end of Maghali Pass. From the fort another key road leads down to an Armenian village, Menak. In the east is the village of Melas Gora under Andreivian Government control. A road running northeast from this village is a key Government supply route.

Areas shown as plain green on the map above will be broken up by as many steep hills as we can squeeze on - this isn’t countryside that’s going to be dominated by one or two tanks! Steep hills are impassable to vehicles and cannot be used to deploy artillery. 

Deployment

Andreivian-Armenian forces can deploy anywhere on the map (at least X” from the southern edge and Y” from Melas Gora). One artillery piece must be deployed in the central third of each table. The artillery pieces do not need line of sight to the airport - they are firing based on from reports from spotters and intelligence received from Armenian agents in the city (we know this from a previous matrix game).

Andreivian Government forces deploy within Melas Gora. 

Russian forces enter from the southern edge. They can split as they like between the two tables but note that they need to take out both guns. Optional Russian helicopter deployment if enemy leave rear areas unguarded?

Victory Conditions 

Each faction has a victory target of five points.

The Russians gain victory points as follows:

Action	Victory Points
Destroy both Armenian artillery pieces	3
Each village captured	1
Controlling the line of communications between two uncaptured villages	0.5
<redacted>	2

Note that no VP are awarded for destroying only one of the artillery pieces.

The Armenians gain victory points as follows:

Action	Victory Points
Every X artillery rounds fired at the airport	1
Each village/fort* held at the end of the game	1
Cutting the Government’s line of communications to Melas Gora	1

Note * <redacted>.

Note that an Armenian village or the fort gains only 0.5 VP if the line of communications is cut on one or both sides of it.

The Andreivian Government gains victory points as follows:

Action	Victory Points
Melas Gora is held	3
<redacted>	1
<redacted>	1
Menak or the fort brought under Government control	1

Forces

All forces are to be agreed based on what we have/what people want to play with. But see the following…

Andreivian-Armenian Forces

A selection of militia infantry and assorted vehicles.  

Must contain two artillery pieces. 

Must have <redacted>.

(I have one M1938 122mm howitzer)

Andreivian Government Forces

Platoon of Government paratroops and assorted vehicles

Russian Forces

Mostly infantry but may have a couple of tanks. Perhaps two reinforced infantry platoons?

If people are happy to learn the artillery rules (they are fun) the Russians and potentially others could have limited off-table fire support.

(I have a platoon of VDV airborne troops and am working on a similar force of Naval Infantry.)

(I have two T-80s)

Aircraft can be unbalancing in skirmish games but I have a few suitable aircraft models (Andreivian Government A-4 and Mil-24, Armenian Hawker Hunter, and Russian MiG-27) that it’d be fun to use. Perhaps appearing as a result of rolls on a tweaked version of the Random Events Table?

A return to Andreivia?

With Steel Lard out of the way, my thoughts have inevitably returned to Crisis Point in the Spring. I'm tempted to have a theme of Return to Andreivia. This would enable me to run a substantial game of Arc of Fire without having to organise a single, huge game that might have to accommodate somewhere north of 18 players!

Freed to consider something other than Puebla in 1863, the creative pixies that inhabit my brain suddenly stopped drinking themselves into oblivion and got back to work. Within a couple of days I had the complete outline of a multi-player scenario depicting the long-anticipate Russian offensive into Andreivia's Northern Hills.

This in turn tempted me to dig though the boxes of partially-complete and unbuilt stuff for the Cold War period in 20mm scale. The result was a headquarters unit for my reinforced-platoon-sized force of Russian paras.

I picked up a set of the old Atlantic 1/72nd scale Jeeps at a bring-and-buy many years ago. They are very crude, made from soft polythene and not particularly realistic as a representation of the GAZ-69 but they'll do.

This first one has the platoon CO and his driver. I added bit of camouflage to the latter's head. The Atlantic figures are small in stature but bulking up his helmet this way (painting with PVA and then dipping in mixed flock before finally sealing with matt Modpodge) helps him blend in with chunkier white metal models.

I have at least one more Atlantic Jeep that I'll probably model either empty or with just a driver for when the platoon HQ is deployed on foot.

Next we have an AGS-17 automatic grenade-launcher. 

Memory has it that I was gifted this team at an SOTCW event many years ago. I suspect it was originally painted by either Richard Baber or Neil MacDougall. It didn't quite fit in with the rest of my collection as all of the weaponry was painted in Panzer grey and the base had some peculiar bottle-green static grass. 

A bit of research suggested that the body of the AGS-17 should be black (with a brown panel on top), the magazine should be green and the tripod could be green or black. Most pictures of the weapon in service show a little silver colour where the paint is worn away around the tip of the barrel. With these changes the model is much improved. I repainted the crew's AK assault rifles too and dry-brushed yellow to tone down the unrealistic grass.

A couple of hours' work in total and my miniature VDV have some enhanced mobility and firepower! They may see action at Christmas as I want to test the new Arc of Fire activation system.

 

More plane buildage

My kit-building for display has continued to proceed slowly and I've recently completed another two 1/72nd scale jets.

First up is this British Aerospace Hawk in Red Arrows colours by Revell.

This kit is a bit of pig. As well as the instructions being a bit vague in places, following them as written will lead to you gluing on half a dozen parts that make it impossible to then apply the decals!

At one stage I nearly binned it but in the end I decided to get it sufficiently finished to go into the display cabinet at least until I manage to build a better one. I may go for the Airfix version but not until I've had a chance to recover from this one!

Next we have the Armstrong Whitworth Seahawk from Airfix.

This mould dates back to 1959. I've wanted to build one for years, ever since I obtained an ex-lending-library copy of Airfix Magazine Guide 16 - Modelling Jet Fighters. 

The original plan was to improve the kit as per the guide and build it as an Airwork Services Limited target tug; it would look so cool in all black! In the end, however, I couldn't source the necessary markings so I decided to build it as a West German Marine Mk101.

The improvements involved replacing the over-thick undercarriage doors and underwing pylons (the latter requiring moving too), drilling out the cannon ports, adding cartridge ejection chutes, and adding the aerial and radar fairing to the rear fuselage. I also added some scratch-built cockpit detail but you can't see it through the canopy.

The Seahawk was much more enjoyable than the Hawk. If I found another one going cheap I'd certainly buy it with a view to making a Fleet Air Arm example.