Some Heroics & Ros for the Cold War

I seem to have lost my building and painting mojo over the last month, but I've been doing a ton of research and ordering figs for my 6mm Cold War project.  Th latest order to be received was from Heroics & Ros, and I thought I'd share some photos of the items, since there are not a lot on the H&R site.  So here we go...

H&R West German Spz12-3 APC and Spz 11-2 Recce Vehicle.  

Decent models of each for my 1960s-1970s Germans.

H&R Soviet ASU-57  Airmobile assault gun.  

Looks better in person, the photo doesn't do it justice

H&R Soviet SA-4 Ganeff  Surface to air missile.  

The missiles need a little cleaning up, but again, not a bad model.

H&R Soviet Flat Face Radar.  

The truck is very basic, the face of the radar dishes are nicely detailed, the backs are just smooth.

H&R M24 Soviet VDV Paratroops pack.  These are the newer infantry castings, as are all of those pictured in this post.  Each pack of the basic infantry included 10 strips with 5 different poses.

H&R M24 Soviet VDV close-up.

H&R M25 Soviet VDV Support.  

Again, the newer castings, all very nice, and with great variety of poses, weapons, and equipment.

M25 Soviet VDV Support. Close-up.

H&R M28 Soviet Infantry, again the pack includes 10 strips of 5 poses.

H&R M28 Soviet Infantry close-up

H&R M25 Soviet Infantry Support

H&R M25 Soviet Infantry Support close-up.

H&R M40 French 1980s Infantry

H&R M40 French Infantry close-up

H&R M41 French Infantry Support.

H&R M41 French Infantry Support close-up.

You can order the individual strips of figures, as well, as, the packs of 50.  The newer sculpts are a touch larger and a little more crisp than the old castings.  On the Soviets, the VDV have berets, rather than helmets.  I also ordered a bunch of individual strips of infantry. 

I placed my order about two days after H&R started taking orders again, after their move, and despite their being swamped, they still got the order to me in just about four weeks.  I've already got my next order planned.

6mm European (WWII) Buildings Now Available

I've finally gotten the my 6mm, 1/285 scale European buildings listed for sale on my site.  They are a collection of models based on actual buildings from France and Belgium during Hitler's invasion in 1940. 

There are 11 different models, one and two story structures, and like all of my models, they are resin castings and come unpainted.  The smallest, a stone shed measures about 5/8 of an inch square and just over a half inch tall.  The largest house is just over 1 1/4 inches tall by an inch deep, and not quite 1 1/2inches  tall.

Here are some pics of some painted buildings, raw resin, and with a with a Panther and Char B1-bis from C in C miniatures.

With C in C's 1/285 scale Panther and Char B1-bis for a bit of scale.

6mm African and Middle Eastern Buildings on My Site

Well, it has taken a lot longer than intended, but I finally have listed my 6mm (1/285) African and Middle eastern buildings on my site at Irishserb's Miniatures.  I still haven't painted a full set of them for myself, but here are pics of the first couple of buildings:







The WWII European buildings will be added as soon as possible.

Ugh, What a Weekend!

So this was to be my weekend to free time to catch up on my 6mm building work, and get my selling page live.

But, earlier this week, my wife's cell phone stopped taking a charge.  After tinkering with it, a bunch of different chargers and two visits to the nearest store, it was declared defective! But, no problem, it is covered under warranty, and a new phone will be send to us next day.

New phone arrives as planned, but another interruption delays the data transfer from the old phone to the new phone until Saturday.  Over the last two days, it took over 9 hours, four different Apple associates, one severe storm, and one power failure (not part of the 9 hours), before successful transfer the data. Oh Lord, I'm glad that is (almost) done.  

So, I tried to relax a little by painting some of my 6mm West German Cold War armor.  It was going pretty good until I got to the point of clear-coating the second batch of 22 tanks and tank destroyers.

I grabbed my can of clear coat, shook it up, sprayed a test spray on a piece of cardboard, and all was good.  I set the can down for a second, adjusted the position of one of the tanks, grabbed the can and sprayed.  I was quite surprised when the weathered green German tanks started to turn gray.  

 I had picked up the new can of primer, which was setting next to the can of clear-coat.  It has new artwork and a new nozzle that looks just like my cans of clear-coat (and different from the last batch of primer cans that I used up yesterday).

So that kind of stole what little joy might have been left in the weekend.

At least the cell phone is working.  

Back to work on 6mm buildings tomorrow.

The Burden of Abandoned Projects

Over the last few months, I made some effort to reduce the clutter in my gaming spaces (I'm really jammed for storage space), with some success.  I threw out a bunch of stuff (clearing out maybe 10-12 cubic feet of stuff), condensed some more, but still ponder what to do with the endless goodies associated with abandoned and on-hold projects.

As I filtered through boxes of stuff, I experienced a bit of a nostalgia trip.  Seeing Dwarves, Teddy's Rough Riders, old D&D figures, rocky ruins, and endless unfinished or unused items that brought back memories of hopes, dreams, and projects unrealized.  Unfortunately, they mostly seem to be things that I can't possibly live without.

So now that I've completed a sort of first run at reducing my heap, I must try to figure out which items will never reach or return to the table, and talk myself into discarding them, such that my gaming space will better serve those that will.


28mm Fantasy
Fantasy gaming is the only "core" period (period or genre that I wanted to game in, at the time that I discovered gaming),  that I have not continuously pursued.  It saw life during my D&D years, re-manifested during a flirtation with Warhammer, which left me with a Dwarf army that never saw the battlefield (nobody else painted their figs).  And surfaced again, when my daughter took an interest in orcs, which faded after a few of games.

One of the trays of mostly GW dwarves, 

70 percent of them have never seen the table top.

I've sort of inherited my daughter's orcs, maybe 80 of them painted, which are also of the GW version.  I actually preferred the old 25mm Ral Partha orcs and goblins, and still imagine what an army of them might look like, but not sure that I could make them work on the same table top as my big GW dwarves, which I quite like.

There is a space-taking dwarf ruin and a couple of craggy outcroppings for the orcs taking up a good part of a shelf, and then a dozen pages of plans for the a grand dwarf stronghold, largely based on my original impressions from reading The Hobbit.

An unfinished ruin, roughly a cubic foot of shelf 

space occupied for 20 years.

Elsewhere in the basement, lurk more than a hundred Tom Meyer Elves; one is painted, a few others have some paint.  They are beautiful figs, that sadly, I could not find on his site the last time I looked. In my heap gaming plans and notes, I also have design sketches for a viney, lusciously green, fairy-tale forest and village in which they would live, if I ever got around to finishing them.

A small batch of elves, these still on a painting tray 

from ... good lord, 15 years ago?

There are other bits as well; trolls, ogres, unicorns, and hippogriffs, a couple of dragons, including my old Grenadier beast hovering above his hoard of gold from those long lost D&D days.  I don't know that any of them will ever see the table again, but I can't yet part with them, as I still feel the adventure of the fantasy world in which they might battle.  In my mind, or maybe more in my heart, the dwarven forges glow, a slight breeze ruffles the leaves in the elven forest, and orcs and goblins cast a ominous shadow from the nearby hills.


28mm Celts
Maybe 150 of them sit peacefully in boxes, as their Roman enemies moved far out of state several years ago with one of my old gaming buddies.  I probably should sell them, but they were a lot of work (even if not that well done), and it feels like selling a piece of my soul, not to mention that they would be a real pain to wrap and package for shipment.  I guess that I could use some in my fantasy world, if that ever comes to anything (though I always kind of imagined more of a Romano-British thing for my fantasy humans.  Oh, I really need to buy some figs, they would be so cool when done...).


28mm Colonial Adventure
Some years ago, I created what I referred to as "Ponape" a game of Victorian piracy and adventure set in the Pacific and East Asia.  It featured light role playing of factions of colonial troops or figures set in the late Victorian era, chasing various tasks such as gun running, slave trading, piracy,  politicking and militarizing in various settings.  Most of the military figs are Boxer Rebellionish, with much of the civilian portion having an old west flavor.

We played a number of great games at conventions and at home, when my old gaming group was still together.  There were even gamers creating factions to bring to the convention games that I ran.  It was all very positive, until I got some negative feedback about the games being too show-boaty and/or not historical enough for the mostly historical oriented conventions in which I ran them.  Foolishly, I allowed myself to be put-off by a few protesters, and with the melting away of my game group, I stopped running the games.  It is probably the most dynamic thing that I ever did with respect to gaming, and now sets in boxes in the basement, and on shelves in the garage, taking up at least 150 cubic feet of space. 

I simply can't get rid of it.  I tried to a few years ago, but couldn't do it.  Another piece of my soul is invested in that game.  Besides, many of the figs have another use (see below).


28mm Boxer Rebellion
The Boxer Rebellion is my favorite colonial era historical subject; I once had over 1600 painted figs in 15mm, all originally inspired by a game run at Fal-Con at Bowling Green State university back around 1983 by Black Forest hobbies from Dayton, Ohio.

The game was my introduction to the conflict, and I was completely taken with it, slowly building up forces over the next 8 years before I could run a game of my own.  Once I could field the game, I struggled to get anyone from my gaming group to play.   One memorable game was eventually played, but my frustration about the games diminished my enthusiasm to run them, and most of the figs ended up being sold off.

With the advent of Ponape, I realized that much of my interest in the Boxer uprising really centered around the potential historical adventure, rather than the more traditional wargames wargames.   For the last 15 years, I've envisioned eventually playing a series of historical adventure scenarios set in China, during the boxer uprising, elaborately modeled in 28mm.

So now, along with the Ponape figures (painted and otherwise), there set many Boxer figures, untouched, waiting to rise up in adventure on the tabletop.  But I don't have the gaming group that these games scream for, and won't any time soon.  So they all conspire to take up more shelf space.


28mm Near Future/ Alien Invasion/Sci-Fi/Cops-n-Robbers/Post-Apoc

While these may look like separate things on the table (the post-apocalypse part has already manifested), they are all inter-related, with significant overlaps in terrain, buildings, figures, and rules.  Think Hollywood "B" movie.  Aliens land/crash near a route 66 town, maybe other aliens land to combat them, local law enforcement and the National Guard try to maintain order, locals get involved, time travelers happen upon the scene, the local scientist tries to work a deal with them, then MiB, KGB sleeper cells, drug cartels, a scout troop, some good old boys out for a hunt, hip-hop bands, and you name it get involved and chaos insues.  Or, it can take place on an alien planet with human colonists facing the local fauna, alien army, or whatever my madness can throw at them.  Or maybe it simply is the alien invasion of an advanced planet with two sci-fi armies battling it out.  Or,...you get the idea.

The problem is that "the game" is tremendously broad in scope, and despite having some terrain and over 400 figs painted and at least 400 more waiting, I am nowhere near fielding most of the game.  It is actually one of my primary interests, but I know that I  need to shrink the scope considerably, if I am ever going to get it on the table.

A couple buildings for the alien invasion nearly semi-done (for 12 years or more), 

and the blown up police station for an eastern US post-apoc town,

 setting since 2012?   There are a dozen more matching 

buildings for each game, sitting in boxes in various states of completion. 

Other Stuff
Scratch-building supplies take up a tremendous footprint.  Foam, plastic sheet and stock, boxes of parts and doo-dads, paint (I think I'm under 400 bottle and tubes now), putties, flock, boxes (like 12 cubic feet) of 8-14 inch tall Virginia pines that I happened into, boxes of artificial plants, 200 model kits, etc. all taking up space.

There are others periods and genres of figs as well; pre-dreadnoughts, WWII and Cold War naval, 1/300 air etc. but they don't take up so much space, so aren't so much of a concern right now.  Some of the unfinished projects, such as Swedish micro-armor, 15mm WWII Poles, and prehistoric peoples, got started as interest flowed, and then ebbed, within my old gaming group.  Others projects were purely me jumping in, then jumping elsewhere.  Each of the projects mentioned up above will tie up a tremendous storage footprint, and in some cases years of work.  My house isn't growing in size, and I may not live forever.  So something has to go (before I do).

Previously, I let go of periods and projects that I wasn't as passionately invested in, but now, I need to give up some things that are much closer to my gaming soul. 

I'm so conflicted.

Star Fleet Campaign: The Remaining battles of Turn 7

Over three weeks straddling the holidays, we played the remaining battles of turn seven (July, Year 168) in our SFB campaign.  Here are overviews of the battles, and the situation at the end of the strategic turn:

Not the best map, but it will allow you to locate the battles on the F&E map.

With respect to the following summaries, the D7 and D6 are Klingon heavy cruisers like those in the original Star Trek TV series, and F5 is a frigate class ship, much smaller and weaker than a D7, the E4 and E3 are even smaller escorts.  And a Kzinti police corvette is like a police whistle with warp engines.

_____

THE BATTLES

In hex 1105, a small Klingon fleet battered the planet's ground defense base, and fighter squadron.  The Klingon forces consisted of a D6 flagship, 6x F5s and variants including a CVL, 2x E4, and a E3.  

Kzinti fighters hopelessly defending the planet, while the Klingons 

begin the pounding from the right.

The Klingons ships suffered only mild shield damage, and no ships were lost.  The combined Klingon firepower simply overwhelmed the meager defenses in a straight on bull rush attack lasting only a turn.  The lack of Kzinti defenses are a consequence of the Kzinti massed ship gamble that resulted in the tremendous Kzinti losses described a couple of battles back in Collateral Damage

_____

A  Klingon battle station at hex 1205 was destroyed in an almost identical situation as that of hex 1405 (described in a previous post).  the Klingon force consisted of 10 ships featuring 7x D6/D7 classed cruiser variants, a couple of F5s and an E4, while the base was defended by its fighters and two Kzinti police corvettes.  No ships were lost in the battle, with the Kzinti corvettes disengaging prior to the base actually being destroyed.

_____

A smaller Klingon fleet attacked the Kzinti battle station in hex 1004.  This Klingon force consisted of only 8 ships; 1x D7, 2x D6, 5x F5 variants, and a E4 escort.  The base was again defended by its fighters, a pair of police corvettes, and a mine field.

The Kzinti base is in the center with the police corvettes and a shuttle, 

surrounded by a double ring of mines (represented by all sorts of goofy counters)

and the two groups of fighters located outside the mines.

By this point, the Kzinti had started to develop better tactics with respect to defending their nearly abandoned bases.  The Klingon formation attacked much the same as the other, slightly larger and notably heavier, fleets had done.

The Klingons attacked with an E4 front and center, F5s on its flanks,

and an F5 and D6/7 paired a couple hexes behind each leading ship.

As the Klingons advanced, the Kzinti let loose their typical volley of drones (missiles), which demanded a larger portion of the Klingons firepower to destroy with the generally smaller ships.  Klingon drones and fighters were launched (an F5 CVL was present), dedicated to sparring with their Kzinti opposites.

This left the Klingon ships with taking on the base, but as fate would have it, captor mines did notable damage to the leading escorts, eliminating their shields, and each took some damage from either drones or the base.  During the exchange, only about a quarter of the Klingon disruptors hit, and when combined with mostly phaser 2s, very little damage was done to the base.

As the battle developed, the Klingons had lost some firepower from the lead ships, and were on the losing end of the fighter exchange.  This meant that Kzinti firepower would remain almost the same in the next turn, but have greater destructive force at closer range.  

The Klingons would need at least two more volleys of fire to destroy the base, and would likely lose 4-6 ships during that exchange; a expense not worthy of the destruction of a single base.  So the Klingons withdrew, Kzinti base intact.  The Kzinti had their first victory against the Klingon onslaught.

_____

On the Kzinti side of the Lyran border, our first fleet action with miniatures occurred.  A small, but noteworthy Kzinti force consisting of an CV and a CV-Tug (a palletized conversion of a cargo tug, functionally making it a heavy carrier), encountered a formidable Lyran fleet.  

The Kzinti carriers with fighters deployed, and drones (counters) launched.

The Lyran fleet was composed of 1x BC, 1x CC, 3x CA, 2x CW, 1x CL, 1x Battle-Tug, 1x DD, and 1x Scout.  The Kzinti were at an obvious disadvantage, but decided to see what trouble they might cause their little cousins from across the border.

As the two forces closed with the Lyrans expending notable resources to deal with Kzinti fighters and drones, the Lyrans were forced to fire at greater range than they would have liked, opting not to face a barrage of short ranged fighter fire.  The result was that they significantly damaged the CV-Tug, and destroyed most of the fighters, keeping them beyond the fighter's useful phaser range.

 

The Lyran fleet closing with the Kzinti.

After firing, the Lyrans broke to their right, intending to loop around, recharge weapons and finish off the CVT, but they never got the chance.  As the turn ended with the Lyrans in the middle of their loop, the Kzinti disengaged, losing most of their remaining fighters, but stealing victory from the frustrated Lyrans.

____

The last battle consisted of a huge , if anti-climactic, fleet action between the Lyrans and Hydrans at the other end of Lyran space.

Hydran and Lyran forces finally met at hex 0711.

A huge Hydran force of roughly 45 ships had invaded Lyran space, heading towards the planetary system in hex 0711.  It took three turns before the Lyrans could pool enough forces to consider taking a stand against the Hydran force.

The meat of the Hydran fleet consisted of 2x CV-Tugs, 3x Command Cruisers, and 15 Heavy cruisers, escorted by 25 smaller vessels of assorted types. In addition to the 24 fighters carried by the CVTs, many of the Hydran ships carry their own escorting fighters, resulting in more than 70 fighters deployed in this battle.  

The Lyran combined force, fielded roughly 33 vessels, but only 1 was a heavy cruiser or better, 21 were destroyers or smaller, and of course, the Lyrans don't use fighters (except in planetary defense).  Lyran forces were 1xCC, 3x CW, 6x CL, 1x DW, 1x DD, 7x FF, 9x Pol-Corv, 1x Scout, and 4x Q-ships (weaponized freighters making them almost comparable to a frigate.

The Lyrans are in the forground: the two lead rows,

in the distance are double stacked fighters.

The Lyran hope was that the Hydran force could be separated during battle, allowing the Lyrans to fight a more balanced battle against a portion of the Hydran fleet.  This did not happen and two thirds of the way into the first turn the Hydran fighters had closed enough to start causing significant damage to Lyran ships.  The 12 Lyran fighters fired drones which never reached a target, and the Lyran ships were largely tasked with engaging Hydran fighters.

The fighters, with a little long range Hellbore support from a few ships, destroyed a pair of Lyran frigates and a light cruiser, and caused a little damage to a few other frigates and police corvettes.  At this point, all of the Lyran ships that hadn't yet fired targeted a single Hydran cruiser, but couldn't even breach its front shield. 

The Lyrans broke formation as the first turn ended, and disengaged from battle, surrendering the planet to to the little blue guys.

The Lyrans only lost the three ships (well, and a planetary system), while the Hydrans lost around 24 fighters, which can be replaced by their accompanying freighters full of replacement fighters.

_____

THE BIG PICTURE

The Klingon advance into Kzinti space is going well, despite the temporary setback at the one battle station (the new fleet commander will fix that, I'm sure).  The situation looks bad for the Kzinti, and without some Federation help soon, the Kzinti empire could disappear altogether.

The Lyrans had an odd turn.  They gained a minor advantage in Kzinti space, but lost the battle tactically, destroying no ships, despite having an tremendous advantage in ships and firepower.  At the other end, despite losing three ships against the huge invading Hydran fleet, they gained insight into the tactics of the Hydrans, and to how effective their weapons are (Despite all of my years playing the game, you can count my experiences with the Hydrans on one hand, so it was a needed learning experience).

in another strategic turn, the Lyrans will have a more formidable force in position to counter the Hydran advance (who must advance to link up with the Kzinti 15 battlecruisers that are otherwise cut off, by turn 9), and both of us are eager to see how that battle turns out, as it likely will have tremendous impact on the future and significance of both empires in the remainder of the campaign.

Our next battle is planned to take place in three weeks.  

Slow Progress on 6mm Infantry and Buildings

Free time has been scarce lately, as changes in the day job have coincided with additional duty on the home-front.  I've been squeezing in every minute that I can, trying to make progress on my various 6mm buildings; casting, packaging, creating instruction sheets, photographing, etc.  

My own projects have suffered, though I do occasionally spend a little time attending to one thing or another.  My 6mm Mugabian infantry are finally flocked and in their storage box.  Initially I painted the bases the wrong color, had to re-do them, and then ended up with too much green in the flock.  Oh well, at least they are functional.  

Mugabian infantry (H&R modern Russians)

I also managed to figure out what I needed to round out their Uwandan counterparts, having settled on the Scotia South African figures to represent them.  With any luck, I'll have those ready for the battlefield in about a month (or at least by June).



Last weekend, I managed to build-up kits of the 6mm African homes with courtyards.  There are four different kits, but buildings can be mixed and matched as desired to make a variety of configurations.  Each kit will come with three of four different buildings, a gate,  and styrene parts to make awnings, awning posts, and walls.  Each will come with a small instruction sheet, with a scale template/plan view of the building/courtyard arrangement, and brief instructions or notes.  

Example of one of the kits

Unfortunately, the parts are quite small (i.e., fiddly), will require some accurate cutting (awning posts), so some amount of modeling skill will be required to complete them.  I tried to find ways around this, but just can't make them as detailed as I want, and keep them simple and affordable. 

Here are the built-up kits with a couple GHQ models, a Centurion and a Saracen for scale.

I will mount mine of base's made of styrene sheet, which is not included in the kits, but they were designed to be free standing and do not require bases.

Another thing that I've manage to do, is update my old 6mm Middle Eastern building models, making them solid models with doors and a few other details added.  these are all based on buildings from the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli conflicts.  There are ten different buildings, with  six of them available as battle damaged structures in addition to undamaged versions.  Here are a few of those:

The models were intentionally kept simple, so that I could add small details, such as awnings, or bits of exterior relief, to create some variety with a small number of models.

Maybe some day, I'll paint one of them.