Some random air support

By the time the recent Joy of Six show came around I really fancied painting some 1/300th scale aircraft just for the hell of it. 

Fortunately friend of the blog Richard Phillips sells the Scotia Micromodels range at shows and attends  Joy of Six so after a rummage through his drawers (Ooh er Matron!) I came away with a selection of early Cold War British jets.

First up is this English Electric Canberra. The Luftwaffe acquired a small number. They were officially used as target tugs (hence the bright colour scheme) but there is some evidence that they were in fact used for photographic and electronic surveillance of Warsaw Pact military operations across the Inner German Border.

Fellow Cold War Commander Andy T has a model of one of these aircraft in an all-over orange scheme so I decided to go with the part-orange scheme seen here.

The crosses on the wings (one upper and one lower) were from my spares box. They are probably over 40 years old but they went on fine with a little decal fix and softening solution. The remaining markings are hand painted or applied with a Staedler waterproof pen.

Next up is a DeHavilland Vampire in Indian Airforce colours.

Obviously a much simpler, and quicker, paint scheme; just all-over Vallejo Air Aluminium.

The Vampire seems to have variants with and without little winglets outboard of the tail. Their absence on this model pushed me to depict an aircraft in Indian markings.

Finally we have a Royal Swedish Air Force DeHavilland Venom.

I do like this model in its grey and green scheme (I used Vallejo Pale Grey and Reflective Green over a Middle Sea Grey base coat). 

The Venom is noticeably larger than the Vampire and while it should be a little bigger I think Scotia have overdone it. Never mind though; in these colour schemes they're unlikely to see action over the same table at the same time!

So that was fun. Has it scratched that itch for a while or has it just reminded me of how much fun painting 1/300th scale planes can be? We'll see over the next few months!

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!

Indian summer

This year's Cold War Commanders' game for the Joy of Six convention in Sheffield depicts a somewhat tweaked version of Operation Vijay, the Indian annexation of Portuguese India in 1961.

The game was inspired by an Indian Army training manual Sample Appreciations of Tactics by Major H W Kulkarni of The Maratha Light Infantry. I had originally hoped to persuade the guys to run the game using the TacWWII rules but on mature reflection it will be more of a visual spectacle on a 6'x4' table using Cold War Commander 2 rather than the 3'x'2' space that the former would have needed.

Sample Appreciations of Tactics sets out half a dozen situations in which the student is required to create a written appreciation of the situation along with proposed orders to the force (usually as reinforced battalion) under his command. Effectively, in wargames terms, it's a book of six scenarios along with a demonstration of the correct way to format a plan to fight the resulting battles.

As we'll need some suitable models for the game, I've been busy with the 3D printer:

These Indian Shermans are my approximation to M4A3E4s. These were VVSS Shermans with the standard 75mm turret but up-gunned to carry a variety of 76mm weapons. In this case I was aiming to represent the US 76mm tank gun. They didn't have muzzle brakes but the threaded attachment site was still present. A spot of gunmetal on the tip of the barrel represents this. They are painted in Vallejo US Dark Green to represent the jungle green used on Indian tanks at the time.

Although Kulkarni's book envisages the opposition forces being equipped along Indian Army lines, we thought it would be more interesting to imagine a scaled-up version of the fighting around Goa in 1961. As such we need some Portuguese forces to fight. Andy Taylor is providing them (mostly; my French EBR armoured cars will be joining in) but I've 3D printed an F86 Sabre to support them.

I've done some display information for the game and a suitably colonial-looking church for Goa's Christian community is printing as we speak. Now I just need to remind myself how the rules work!

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

Joy of Six 2024

On Sunday morning I got up early to drive down to Sheffield Hallam University's city centre campus for the annual Joy of Six event.

Unfortunately Richard Phillips was unable to join us thanks to an automotive failure so the terrain needs of the game we met by Andy Taylor, Neil McCusker and myself. Although I'd have preferred to have Richard's Mat-o-War as our base cloth we managed OK with a couple of Games Workshop battlemats.

Neil moves Soviet airborne troops towards
the Phase 1 target

The game depicted the events at Stary Boleslav which, in our alternative timeline, was the site of a Soviet airborne attack to seize a bridge over a major river.

Looking towards Stary Boleslav from the east

We played the game in four phases:

1. Soviet pathfinder troops take out an anti-aircraft battery outside the city,
2. A Soviet airborne brigade lands and moves to capture the bridge,
3. Czechoslovak troops counterattack from the west,
4. Soviet ground troops attempt to fight through to the bridge from the east.

Stary Boleslav with the AA site in the background 

The game went OK in its little periods of action but we spent most of the day talking to people about the models, the alternative history, and the rules. Unfortunately, being so busy, I forget to take any pictures of the progressive destruction of the city. 

I also failed to take pictures of many of the other games but here are the few I did capture starting with the Battle of Guarda by the Legion of Blokes:

Then there was an interesting-looking ancients game using Matrix Game mechanisms:

Charles Rowntree put together this fabulous Omaha Beach game using a set of rules called All Hell Let Loose: 

Right next-door to us was the battle of Soissons, 1918 by Robert Dunlop. WW1 Spearhead I think:

Also near our table was this game using rules called Sabre Squadron:

Finally for the games I got any pics of there was Per Brodén and Nick Dorrell's lovely Great Northern War offering:

Purchases at Joy of Six were few and far between but I'll get back to you about them in a few days.

My City of Ruins

This Sunday sees the Cold War Commanders putting on a game at Joy of Six in Sheffield. We're once more going with the Prague Summer 1948 setting, this time depicting the Soviet airborne assault on the city of Stary Boleslav.

We want people visiting the table more than once to see progress throughout the day so we'll be playing out the action in multiple phases. The terrain is the most visually obvious part of a 6mm game so our terrain will change as the day goes on. 

Among the changes during the day will be a gradual increase in the number of damaged buildings. This means having intact and damaged versions of the same urban modules. I had a couple but I've completed a few more in the last day or so.

These farm buildings have been part of my collection for years. They have been rebased multiple times. I've long forgotten who they were sold by. The colour schemes don't quite match but that's not too much of an issue as they'll never be seen together on the day.

These buildings are typical of many Eastern European cites, Riga in particular. The blue-grey intact building is by Stephen Oates of The Baggage Train. I have two each of the two variations Stephen sells. For a bit of variety I designed and 3D printed the yellow (it's actually pale green; a peculiarity of the lighting) to accompany the Baggage Train models.

The two damaged buildings are based on the same print, one completed and then hacked about a bit and the other part printed and then covered with a variety of texturing material to form a pile of rubble.

The factory complex is largely 3D printed; only the boundary walls are made from cardboard. In the case of the ruined version I chopped cardboard into brick-shaped pieces and stuck them down with Modpodge before painting more over the top to seal them in place.

I actually have a 3D print file somewhere for a damaged version of the chimney but in this case our ruined one is built up from parts of a failed print and the same rubble mix as above.

The ruined and intact versions of the factory buildings are 3D files downloaded from Thingiverse.

If you're going to Joy of Six, please do stop by and say hello.