Those First Steps...

Miniatures enthusiasts all have them, those first steps down the hobby path of military miniatures.  For me it started in the late 1960s, but would be the late 1970s before I played a proper wargame or miniatures game. 


"The hobby" in its earliest form came to me during my fifth Christmas by way of Marx Toys' Fort Apache and Viking Castle.  The fort, a vinyl carrying case that folded out into an old west fort filled with cowboys and Indians, and a similar metal castle/carrying case filled with plastic knights and vikings.  There were no rules in those days, and the "good guys" always won.  Unfortunately, the popularity of these toys was short lived, as they had to share time with Toggle Blocks, Billy Blastoff, and Matchbox cars.  A handful of the Knights and Vikings currently reside in my attic, while their former companions were lost in a move in the 1970s.


The following summer, I was given some "old", lightly used, early 1960s G.I. Joes.  These 12 inch tall G.I. Joes were received with less excitement than the Cowboy and Viking sets, but managed to stay with me a lot longer, being one of four staple toys that would prepare me for the future.


While a couple of G.I. Joes and their M1 rifles grew into a squad with heavy weapons and a Jeep with a recoiless rifle, the interest in knights and vikings was rekindled by Marx toys.  Christmas 1971 featured the arrival of the Brave Knights, featuring Sir Stuart the Silver Knight doing battle with Eric the Viking.  A resurgence of interest of the earlier toys  resulted in the smaller plastic Knights and Vikings doing battle a few more times, while G.I. Joe dominated the time not taken up the the Brave Knights. 

Unfortunately, my G.I. Joes were sold off to support my sports card habit in the later 1970s, only a few weapons remain, sharing space with those few knights and vikings in the attic. Eric the Viking suffered a catastrophic structural failure after some years of battle with his arms and legs falling off, but Sir Stuart still protects the realm.

Christmas of '73 brought the last portion, and probably the most important,  to the pre-gaming training program.  A boxed Marx World War II set with Germans and Americans opened up a whole new battlefield.  A battlefield mightily encouraged by films such as Patton, and Battle of the Bulge. 

The Marx playset consisted of US and German troops, M26 tanks and M3 halftracks for the Americans, and Panthers and six-wheeled APCs that looked more like Soviet BTR-152s, than SdKfz 251s for the Germans.  The vehicles were in a smaller scale than the infantry, something close to 1/48th I would guess.  Of all of the military toys, these brought the most intense period of play, and would eventually inspire my first thoughts of rules for playing war.  The rules were incomplete and unrealistic, but were the first hint at a rich future.

My WWII Marx set would grow to over 500 troops, and eventually include die-cast P47s, a plastic Sea Stallion, Saladin armored cars, and an assortment of other similar toys over the next couple of years.  A significant number of Vietnam era infantry would reinforce their WWII counterparts in the war against the Germans.

In addition to these toys, the period spanning the early and mid 1970s would also feature "playing army" with toy guns.  My friends and I would run around the neighborhood shooting each other with various old west and, WWII, and modern era toy guns for hours on end.  Getting shot consisted of falling down in the most dramatic fashion, counting to ten as fast as you could, and rejoining the battle.

Christmas 1973 was also when I was introduced to the names Chamberlain and Ellis with the first of my "tank books".

These two titles would also be accompanied by Beekman's History of the World Wars series book Tanks and Weapons of WWII.  These three books would launch a reading frenzy from the public and school libraries of the books by C.B. Coby and Robert Leckie.  Along with the reading, movies ranging from Kelly's Heroes to Battleground would continue to cultivate my interest, until I would make the jump from children's toys to a proper wargame during the summer of 1976.

Like so many other gamers, Avalon Hill would introduce me to the  hobby of "Wargaming".  A $2.00 purchase at a garage sale would land me a copy of France 1940 and begin a love affair with French armor that has lasted to this day.  About three years later, my friend Mark would introduce me to Heritage's Panzer Troops.  It was designed for use with 15mm metal figs, but we used 1/72nd scale Airfix and other plastics. 

Though I would play other boardgamesfrom Avalon Hill, Yaquinto, and others, and explore role-playing via Dungeons and Dragons and Twilight 2000, before diving completely into miniatures, I knew from my first Panzer Troops game, that miniatures gaming was the path for me.  Or maybe, I just began to recognize that it was the path that I had always followed. 

Back in Action

Actually, I have been for about two weeks now, but have been too busy to post anything.   Anyway, I've been a casting fool, trying to get everyones' vehicle orders out, manage to paint some 15mm French infantry for 1940 in between (ran out of resin for a couple of days), and generally am catching up on everything.  I've even done some work on some new 15mm masters, got about 20 vehicles that I desperately want to finish this year.

It really does feel good to be back, and I promise to have some more interesting posts in the coming days.

28mm Sci-Fi Bunker Complex Revisited (Photo heavy)

This is a re-post of the pics from my 28mm sci-fi bunker complex from my old website.   Over the last couple of weeks, I've been toying with design ideas for my post-apoc terrain, and got some of my bunker bits out, while considering how I might fit them into my PA world.  'veI had a few requests to re-post some of the pics. including one this past week, and figured since I can't do much else right now, that I might as well do so.


The first stage of the bunker complex was built over the Thanksgiving holiday about five years back.  It was originally an objective for my daughter's space orks, with visions of expanding it for all sorts of sci-fi and PA gaming.  The most important aspect was the modular design that would permit adaptation to the needs of various games and settings. 

The basic layout was drawn onto sheet styrene, which would act of the floor for some of the modules, and a base for the foam construction otherwise.  The figures are 28mm Imperial Guard to give a sense of scale.

The walls and roof sections were constructed from blue polystyrene insulation board, with the various strips and sheets of the foam cut on a bandsaw.  The foam shapes were cut to size, glued with artists matte medium, and pinned until dry with straight-pins.

This view shows some of the pins still in place, holding layers on foam strips on the front of one of the smaller gatling laser turrets.

This is a view with foam construction complete, and after a coat of acrylic paste has been painted on to protect the foam a little.

A view of the overall base painted with artist's acrylics.  Below is another shot of the painted base.

Next step was to build the weapons for the turrets and rooftop.

The last four pics are views of the air defense mount for the rooftop.  The gun was scratch-built from styrene sheet, strips, and shapes from Plastruct and Evergreen Plastics.

Above are four views of the gatling lasers for the smaller turrets.  The gun shield was made from a piece of acrylic tube.

Above is a view of one of the main guns for the two double turrets early in the construction.  Unfortunately, I can't find any other pics of these guns after more work was completed.

An overall view with the guns still in process.  In this configuration the model measures roughly 4'x5'.

I also made some obstacles to place around the complex.  Dragons teeth for tracked and wheeled vehicles and the structural thingies to annoy skimmers, grav and hovering vehicles.

The last two shots are of the first stage of construction more or less complete.  The last photo shows the business end of one of the primary double turrets.

A little over a year later, I added the second stage of the bunker complex, which consisted of 29 new pieces.  These included more tunnel sections, entrances,  intersections for the tunnels, and open  fighting positions for the infantry.

The two photos above show second stage construction incorporated with first stage turrets, and a communications tower that I made a year or so prior to the first stage of the bunker complex.

I also added a bunch more obstacles, including some to represent battle damaged obstacles.

All of the new sections from the second stage of construction are shown above.  I also made a few sections with battle damage.  The new modules measure about seven feet in length, when arranged as in the photo above.

The view above shows some the construction detail in the new modules.  Just beyond the two open fighting positions in the foreground is a four-way tunnel intersection.  Covering the front entrance is a free standing bulkhead.  I made a number of these bulkheads to cap unused doorways, and to place in front of entrances to protect them from direct assault.  The fighting position on top of the 4-way module is also a free standing piece.

A view of the battle damaged sections.   There are two types of open position modules, one has a doorway/walkway to the rear, shown in the nearest unit, and the other has a solid wall in back.  I also had to make end caps for the fighting positions.

The last three shots are of the battle damaged sections.  I made bunch of broken concrete debris, but never could settle on how to attach or place them, so they remain loose chunks that my cats just love to bat around.

Even before the second stage was complete, I had already design pieces for the third stage, including corner bastions for the open positions, checkpoints, small blockhouses to cap tunnel sections, smaller watchtowers, and various clutter for the rooftops, including equipment, antennae, smaller air defence guns and missiles,etc.

A fourth stage was to include about a dozen more damaged sections including one of each style of turret, but after I completed the second stage, my daughter's interest in spaceorks started to fade.  So for now, the last two stages exist only as a dozen pages of notes and plans.  Hopefully, as I explore the role that the bunker might play in my post-apoc games, I will find need to complete some portion of the last two stages.

Hope the pics are of some interest or inspiration, if nothing else, I had a lot of fun building it.

Hand on the Mend

When the tendons in my right hand inflated to twice their normal volume  (or more) a few weeks back, I had no idea that I would be sidelined for this long.  Beyond the pain from the injury, the allergic reaction to medication, and the horror that is daytime TV,  I have discovered that not being able to work on my hobby is probably the worst part of all (though trying to tie a shoe lace with one hand is a close second).

Clearly, my miniatures hobby keeps me sane.  Unfortunately, shooting at Nancy Grace on my TV with a battery powered Nerf gun has not (though I have become a decent left handed shot). 

Over the last week, my hand has started to get better.  I'm not sure how long it will take to get back to 100 percent, but I am starting to get some things done.   I've done a touch of casting, and have started shipping orders to those who have been waiting so patiently for their 15mm vehicles.  I've also used some of the time to get a lot a research done for games and 15mm vehicles.

For those who are still waiting for vehicles, they will start arriving shortly, then hopefully we will see some progress on some hobby projects, and maybe even a worthwhile post. 

Thank you to those who have been so kind and so patient over this past month.

Roll Call in 15mm

In November, I got the grand idea of rounding out some infantry units for   my modern armies, so that I could finally play some of the games that I am forever putting off.  Additionally, I figured this would be a good way to come up with some suggestions, when my wife asked about what I might like for Christmas.


November turned into December, the holidays came to pass, rounding out some of my modern armies turned into inventorying all of my moderns, and then my World War II armies as well.  And since the holidays were happening, progress was slow and extremely interrupted.  So here I am 10 weeks later, and my table is covered with 3757 15mm modern and WWII infantry, and I am nowhere near filling out the gaps in my units. And since I have nothing better to offer, here they are, my 15mm minions:

Of the 3757 figs, about 3300 are painted  representing at least 24 different

armies with figs from seven manufacturers.

With Christmas came  figs to fill out a couple of the armies, and as I slowly sorted through my heap, I found a number of WWII figs that I had picked up over the years for this purpose, but then had buried in my heap and forgotten about. 

Over 600 WWII Germans between early and late war.

About 200 Mujahideen for the Soviet-Afghan war.

Forty or so Cuban Advisers for my modern Africa games.

I then started ordering figs to round out more of the armies with Cold War Soviets coming from QRF, and my first order to Rebel Miniatures to fill out my  1990s US Army Company.   Imagine my surprise, when I found that my existing figures were not from Rebel.  And say "Welcome" to my new US army of the 2000s.

The old figs must have been from Flashpoint (I'm guessing their US Army Rangers, painted below), as they are not the Rebel Minis figs (unpainted below) and I'm not aware of any other sources.  Here is a pic comparing a few of the figs:

I had some other Rebel Miniatures figs that I bought at conventions, but had never ordered on-line from them before.  Let me say that service was outstanding.  First the miniatures are fantastic quality, very finely detailed, and even better than the Peter Pig USMC figs, which are probably the best modern figs that I purchased previously.  Comms were great, and the order arrived three days after ordering.  I couldn't ask for more.

Anyway, despite the screw-up, I quite like my new army, though they set on my table, with 3000 others, waiting for a few moments of attention with a paintbrush and flock.  Despite finally getting to put a little time in on my troops today, my backlog will just get worse, as any day now, a hundred more Soviets will be invading my mailbox.

Ghosts of Christmas Games Past

The day after Christmas we traveled to visit my wife's family, which for me includes a visit with an old friend and gamer located nearby the in-laws.  As it turned out, another of the old gang happened to be in town, so we had a mini-reunion of the old game group and couldn't pass up the opportunity to push some lead and throw dice.

Long ago, when I was still in college, and had no money for figs, I was a member of a wonderful group of gamers in Canton, Ohio.  Some number of us got together almost daily, and we must have played something on the order of 250 games per year.  In time, employment would eventually take most of us to the farthest reaches of the empire, and our group was no more.

Though our daily battles and silly antics are a thing of memory, last Monday was a flashback to my golden age of gaming.  Mark, who I hadn't actually seen in seven years or more, showed up at Craig's (some of you may know him as Gaming Models Craig) and we played a pick-up WWII game.  Mark must have taken every 15mm WWII German miniature that Craig owns, and I (not paying too much attention to what Mark was doing) took a US Armored Infantry company a platoon of Shermans and small recon element.

A view of the battlefield thrown together by Craig. 

His table is something like 7'x14' and he uses modular foam terrain.

As we started setting up the game, I realized that I was outnumbered something like 30 to 1, so I added an Easy Eight company and four tank destroyers.  I also had air and artillery support available, so now I was only ridiculously out-numbered.

As we were setting up, we were swallowed by an avalanche of silly jokes and bad puns,. I t was 1983 again. 

Mark set up maybe  150 German vehicles and guns and the associated infantry. There were at least ten Tigers among his hoard.  I entered the table with a jeep and an armored car and proclaimed this land liberated. After a few turns of movement, the American and German lead elements clashed, with a handful of jeeps and light armored vehicles fighting an intense micro-battle on this huge table with many hundreds of miniatures.

My recon successfully absorbing a significant portion of the German ammo supply.

A squad of US infantry trying to move around the German right flank. 

This didn't go quite as planned.

Most of the recon elements mutually annihilated, the heavy stuff begins to advance.

The game developed, with the heavier elements moving into range,  and the E8s got an early edge, though my best tank turned out to be the P47.

The Germans advanced, while my Americans stalled , being halted by a combination of German guns and gamer humor. the early success of the easy eights gave way to the mass of Panzers, Stugs and Tigers.  The Shermans still got the occasional lucky shot, but in the end, I was saved by the bell, as time expired, and we had to end our silly holiday battle.

All in all, it was a wonderful time, gaming, laughing, good food, and most of all, great friends. 

2011 in Review, and Plans for 2012

I don't imagine my ramblings here will be of much interest to anyone but me, but I do find this to be a somewhat motivational process, so I shall indeed continue with this totally unoriginal idea.  If nothing else, I've dug out a few old photos to include that you may not have seen before. 

2011 was sort of a rebirth in the hobby for me.  I bought about ten times as many figs as in 2010, painted a couple hundred more than I bought, and played twice as many games (6, as opposed to 3 in 2010).  Still, when compared to years past, it was just not like the old days.

Some projects saw a lot of progress, like my 15mm moderns, others like Vietnam, and much of my sci-fi interests were stuck in stasis.  I've also considered that I may need to further streamline some of my interests to ever have hope of completing anything ( I purged 12 other periods a few years back).  I'm going to drop a few things to start this year, see how things progress by mid-year, and make some bigger changes if need be.

20mm Vietnam
Riverine terrain- Added palm trees and some foliage pieces.
Village- completed the two Britannia hoochs that I have.
Riverside Bunkers- Completed some research, and might have enough to build from, but no model work completed.

No progress was made on the following, so all of the following are on the slate for 2012:
The Old Church
M113 and M48- Completed, but need re-weathered due to painting mishap
Civilians
Gun truck
Troop Trucks- Purchased
Jeeps
Also for 2012, I'll add to the list:
OV-10 Bronco- Purchased



15mm World War Two
Add decals and weather about 70 US vehicles- No progress in 2011, other than  Decals have been purchased.
For 2012:
US infantry- Fill in a few voids for my armored infantry company, and motorised infantry company.
57mm AT guns- Again to complete the armored infantry company.




15mm Modern Africa (and elsewhere)
15mm Modern Africa and 15mm modern in general is where I made my biggest gains.
T34/85- Completed master and cast and painted a company plus for modern Africa.
BTR152K- Completed last of a company of these early in the year.
M2A2- Completed casting and painted a platoon, with the rest of the company still awaiting paint.
AAV7A1-  Completed master, cast and painted enough for my Marines
ERC-90- Completed master and painted a platoon with the rest of the company awaiting paint.

Also completed:
Added around 50 15mm militia troops.
Mugabia Air defense- Completed SA8, SA9s, and a variety of towed AA guns (57mm, 23mm, 14.5mm)
T-55- Completed a company plus of T-55
PT-76- Completed a platoon of light tanks.
US Marines- Painted a company of Marines
Cuban Advisers- Painted a platoon of "advisers"
VBLs- Painted enough VBLs for a recon company
M1114 Humvees- Finally assembled and painted my own Humvees, around 25 of the various models.
Presidential Guard- Painted the Mugabian Presidential Guard, about 30 figs.
Aircraft Stands- Built my first aircraft stands.
Aircraft- Completed 2x Strikemaster, 2xG91, 2x Mig21,  and a C-47.
Uwanda Air Defense- Completed two M42 Dusters to give Uwanda some defense against against Mugabian aircraft.

For 2012:
Uwanda Helicopters- Are setting on the bench right now to be built.
Airport
Presidential palace
Houses
Barricades
Panhard M3
VLRA


15mm Afghanistan (Soviet-Afgan War)
DRA Infantry- Completed a platoon of Afghan troops to fight along side the Soviets.

For 2012 (still):
Gaz66 - Complete master and cast a bunch of trucks for Soviet convoys and various duties in Afghanistan and Africa. Slightly more than barely started.




28mm Science Fiction
With the exception of my post-apoc terrain, my sci-fi projects were completely ignored in 2011
Post Apocalypse Terrain - I've made great progress on this, but had to put it aside in February, and haven't been able to make any significant progress since.  I'm planning for it to be a winter project, so hopefully, I will make some headway soon.

For 2012:
"Out West Town" - Complete the buildings that I have had half done in the basement for the last two years. Think route 66.

"The Hood" - Based on part of my childhood stomping-grounds, will provide the core of an inner city for contemporary/near future/ post apoc games. Involves completing several buildings already started and adding a few more.

Some of the buildings that I started some time ago for "The Hood". 

All made of sheet styrene.

 Birdman Museum - Complete the birdman museum for the "Out West Town". The museum is inspired by those many roadside tourist trap museums that I saw as a child and will feature artifacts of the ancient "birdmen". Much to the surprise of the town's people, the birdmen will be coming for their holy relics.
Scavenger Village Expansion - Additions to my post apocalypse scavenger village will include a couple ruined  buildings/hovels, debris/junk heaps, and other various detail items for the village.
Contemporary Police Station - Build a police station for "The Hood". It may or may not double as a station for the "Out West" town.

A game set-up using some of the "scavenger village" pieces.

A close-up of one of the modular bunkers/towers. 

The whole thing comes apart allowing the bunkers and towers to

 be use separately as well

Near Future Police station - Build either a new structure or more probably a futuristic addition to the contemporary police station for various near future scenarios.

Zombies - Buy and paint the Cold War Zombies.
Wasp CS Aircraft - Build the "Wasp" close support craft that I designed a couple of years back. It was literally inspired by watching a couple of wasps that were hanging around the back porch a couple of years ago.

Beetle Utility Transport - Build the "Beetle" transport aircraft , a companion to the Wasp, for my Imperial troops. Sort of a sci-fi "Huey".

Imperial APCs - Still need to scratch-build APCs for my "Imperials".


New for 2012 (Because I don't have enough on my plate already):

The Cold War gets Hot:1977-1982
I'm a child of the Cold War, and I guess in a weird way, I miss the stability of the constant threat of nuclear incineration.  As a kid, I was aware of the threat from a fairly young age ( heck, I was 5 years old, when I began considering whether I was going to go to Vietnam or Canada, when I got drafted), but never seriously believed that the adults of the world would do something so stupid as World War III.  Silly me.  Anyway, now that it is all a memory,  I want to play out some the battles that never were. Despite being behind on everything that I wanted to do in 2011, I got a jump start on my Cold War project.  The advantage of this project is that many of my Afghan war and African items can be used in the Cold War era games (Soviet armor and infantry, older US equipment, etc) So here is were it stands and the plans for 2012.
Completed in 2011
M113A1- Master completed, company cast, platoon painted.
US Infantry- Infantry Platoon and some support units painted, missing a few figs, but basically done.

For 2012 (Vehicles involve either making a master and casting them or buying the miniatures):
T62
T72
BMP1
BMP2
M163
M125
M150
M901
M1
M60A1
M60A2
Soviet MR infantry- Round out 2 Soviet MR companies
Soviet Airborne- Round out one Soviet Para company


28mm Colonial Adventure
Some years ago, I had put together a colonial era adventure game (that I simply called "Ponape") set in the Pacific, largely inspired by the movie "Nate and Hayes", greatly expanded, and with a touch of Victorian sci-fi added in.  I ran the game several times at  local HMGS conventions and at Origins once, but got put-off a bit after run-ins with the "not historical enough" crowd.  Some outside circumstances impacted my convention going opportunities about the same time, and the game has been stacked in the corner of my garage for the last 7-8 years.  I almost sold off the stuff a couple of years back.  Anyway, I think I'm going to start sorting through the stuff, give some of it a face lift, and move it from my "never played" games to my rotation of "hardly ever played" games.

An early version of "Ponape" from the native side of the island. showing the

native village, jungle, and town, and Spanish fortress in the background.

A better view of the fortress, with one of the the 28mm scratch-built ships in

the foreground.

Research Project: Kursk.
I've recently taken a particular interest in gaming Kursk in 1/285, and after poking around on TMP and elsewhere, have put together a reading list and list of other resources to go through.  I already have a large portion of the miniatures that I'd need,  so this will primarily be a terrain project if it comes to anything.

France 1940 Terrain Project 1/285:
If Kursk does not materialize, I may go back to one of my long time interests, and build one of the 1940 battlefields that I've wanted to do for so long.  Stonne is a possible target, as are six other locations. The research is done, as are the majority of miniatures.  I actually started this a few years back, ordering a bunch of micro-scale buildings, but they had so many air bubbles, that it was faster to scratch-build my own, than fix the purchased models.  I ended up getting burnt-out on the buildings, and benched the project.

Some of the 1/285 buildings that I made during my first go at a 1940 battlefield.

Summary
Though,  they weren't all on my list at the start of the year, I managed to complete 22 "projects" of varying scope during 2011.  A tremendous increase over the 6 completed in 2010.  Hopefully I can improve further on the trend for 2012.