15mm Cold War British (1977-82)

This weekend, I found myself with a burst of gamer energy and actually worked on something.  

It seems like a million years ago that I picked up a 15mm platoon of infantry and vehicles for British Cold War forces from Army's Armies.  At some point later, and much to my dismay, I wanted to round out the companies, but found that the figs were no longer available.  

Eventually (maybe 5 years ago?), I ended up picking up some Flames of War infantry and put them on the shelf.  The project became stalled while I waited for his Chieftains and FV 432s to become available again, but I did never found them.

More recently I picked up Chieftains from an Ebay seller from Canada, and intended to buy more, but changes in shipping and the additional cost added by the tariff king pushed that into the range of economically un-justifiable for me.

More recently, I've found other potential sources for the FV432s, and the project became viable again. So here we are.  A company of of 1977-1982 British mechanized infantry based and ready for painting.

I know, it doesn't look like much, but it took all day to sort them out, plus doing some searching (without success) for some earlier figs to replace Milans and whatnot, trying to stretch their active window to the early 1970s. Mostly thinking in terms of BAT, MOBAT, or Vigilant ATGMs. But, no such luck.  Where is QRF, when you need them, lol?

I also found a couple of nice Fox armored cars, maybe Army's (?), and worked on those and some of the Chieftains last night. So progress is being made.

 

Cold War Naval?

 I've been tinkering with the idea of trying some Cold War naval battles, US and Soviet, and have picked up a few ships.  I'm well aware that there are some limits to what can be done, even in 1/2400 scale, but am tempted to try.

I have a few old Superior ships from 1985, and a have always liked the ship models. I have a few more GHQ models still in the packs.

Superior Models clockwise: Kirov, Iowa, CF Adams, 

CF Adams, Long Beach.  Most in need of mast/radar repair.

I'm obviously going to need aircraft, and have yet to decide how exactly I want to handle them. nor have I decided what to do about rules.  I'd like it to be pretty granular, may go homebrew, but am still exploring.

This may be just a passing thing.  And I may just go back to my old hand-drawn counters from the early 1980s.

Rain, Work, and Bronko Nagurskimouse

About a month ago, I went down the basement to find my paint rack knocked over onto my paint table and all of the things in various stages of build and paint on it, and a domino effect of stuff knocked off of shelves, broken bottles on the floor, etc.

Over 400 bottles of paint (why do I have 400 bottles of fricking paint?, Am I batty?), figures, models, tools. Things squished, squashed, and mangled.  My paint water jar that survived with me from the 1970s ... shattered.  A terrible loss. There was gnashing of teeth and cursing of small squeaky furry things.

It appears that a critter got into the basement, a dungeon-like stone construct (the basement, not the critter), built when Rutherford B. Hayes was in office, and unleashed its fury on my paint table (the critter, not Rutherford B. Hayes) upon finding that it could not get out through the window overlooking it (there are toothmarks on the window frame, silly squeaky furry thing).  It looks like it knocked something off a shelf that fell between the wall and the back of the paint rack, pushing the paint rack over in a cataclism, probably terrifying said critter, which ran in Bronko Nagurski-like fashion across other racks and shelves leaving an absolute wake of destruction behind it.  

I picked up most of the stuff on discovery and reorganized the paint rack, sorted through broken bits and miniatures and got about half of the total chaos resorted.  Since that time, I hadn't been back in the basement, because work picked up and I've been working everyday since.

On return to my hobby pit this morning I was greeted by 300 percent humidity, as my dehumidifier had quit working at some point.  

The basement is simply miserable.  We've had rain nearly everyday for what seems like the last three weeks, and it seems that we are only capable of having monsoons these days.  I remember a time when we used to have rain showers, a light rain, no wind or thunder and lightning to speak off, no flash floods, just a gentle wetting of the ground, without drowning everything in site.

In any event, there won't be any hobby activity, probably for the next few weeks as well, due to critters, weather and the fact that this is likely my only free week until late September.  Too many obstacles. 

It seems that when it rains, it pours.😁

Oh, I make me laugh!

By the way, for all you youngsters, and people otherwise, who would have no reason to know;  Bronko Nagurski was a punishing fullback for the Chicago Bears in the 1930s-40s, American football.  I remember seeing his NFL Championship ring at the NFL Hall of Fame in the 1970s, and it was ridiculously huge.  Seriously, it looked like something that was made for Andre the Giant.

Bunkers and Spider Traps Done

I finally managed to get the various north Vietnamese fighting positions done, or at least to a usable state.  The covers for the spider traps keep warping so I may have to redo those, and I'm holding off on covered sections of the trenches.  We will see.

Here are the fighting positions with the slit trenches.  They came out more or less as expected.

Next up are the three bunkers.  No surprises with these.

And lastly are the spider holes with the pesky covers.  I didn't expect the burlap to keep warping, so I may have to go back and put a rigid plastic or wood "plate" on the underside to keep them flat.  I also apparently mismeasured the base of my figures or maybe the router setting slipped on the Dremel attachment, but some of the holes need to be an eight inch deeper to allow the fig to be placed under the cover pre-game with being exposed.  So I may go back and cut a shot in one side of each hole to accommodate the edge of the figure laying on its side.  It will depend on how annoyed I become with them during a game.

Here are a few pics.

At this point, I'm just kind of happy to get them off of the table.  They took longer than expected. Not sure what's next.

 

Bunkers and Spider Traps - Vietnam

 I spent my free time this past weekend, working on defensive positions for the PAVN and Viet Cong in 20mm.  Three different types of positions are under construction.

After cutting the excavated positions with a Dremel. 

The first are three earthen bunkers, these are earth covered positions reinforced with logs or other materials offering the greatest degree of cover.  two of the bunkers have a single firing aperture, and one has two. They do not have external entrances and are designed to be accessed from tunnels. The models are recessed into 6"x6"x1" terrain tiles with a lift off top to allow positioning of figures inside.

The three bunkers with the top portions rough sanded.

This view shows the the underside of the top of the 

bunker next to its base.

The second type of position are spider holes or spider traps.  These are covered or partially covered fighting positions.  depending on the type, covers may be removed to facilitate engaging the enemy. They are made by cutting the positions into foam terrain tiles similar to those described above.  There is no above grade feature other than the cover.

Some of the spider holes; these have two fighting 

positions with a center covered portion.

The third are entrenchments with modular fighting positions. these consist of slit trenches connecting individual or multi-soldier fighting positions dug into the ground and featuring low earthen parapets with with occasional apertures  for fighting.  Some lengths of the trenches will be covered. the fighting positions are cut into 6"x6"x1" tiles as above, while the zig-zagging trenches are cut into 12"x6"x1" tiles.

Later in construction, with parapets in place on the

 trenches.

And with one of the fighting positions with the 

parapet sanded.

Any combination of these could be incorporated into the larger defensive network connected by underground tunnels.

Construction was from various brands of foam insolation board, using artist's matte medium as a glue to affix the raised parapet around the trenches, straight pins holding then in place to dry.  

The bunkers were shaped with a loose hacksaw blade, a surform tool, and curved or angled permagrit sanding files. The surfaces will be sanded further, touched up with one-step spackle, coated with acrylic artists paste, painted and flocked.

With the Surform tool and a PermaGrit file.

I expect that it will take a couple more week-ends to complete this project.

Vietnam Palms Done

 A month of hobby time didn't amount to much, but here are a few pics of the finished palms.

Four square feet on new jungle for the table top.

With PAVN Troops looking for those pesky Americans.

A little Bamboo.

Some individual stands.

Now that these are done, I'm moving on to a modular field fortification system for Vietnamese spider traps and bunkers and whatnot.

Growing Palm Trees in the Basement

Its been a slow process, but I will eventually have a jungle.  I've been working on palms, ferns, and various bits of jungle foliage for all of May and I expect that it will take a couple more weeks to get this round done.

The trees are from Ebay ranging from 2 -8 inches in height, the other foliage is craft store bits that I've been picking up for years.  The ferns are made from individual leaflets from various artificial ferns.

This first pic is from a couple of weeks back.  The bases are irregular pieces of sheet styrene, typically around .06 inch thickness, with the edges beveled with a sanding drum on the Dremel. Pilot holes are drilled for the trees, which were glued in place with a Hot-Melt glue gun.

The next pic is from last night, showing some stands with the base coated in a random earthy yellow.  A few of the trees will be for cleared areas without much ground cover, while most have an assortment of plants covering the jungle floor. 

The ferns are built from individual fronds, usually 7 -10 to create the impression of a fern, and each take a few minutes to build up.

Once construction and base coating is complete, the bases will get a coat of my "jungle mix" flock to finish them off.  At the rate that I'm going, that should be in about two weeks.