Saturday, August 27, 2011

Dave's Airborne

Dave is in the process of building a 1944-45 US Airborne battalion, based for CD3

MMG platoon

One of the rifle companies, the stand on the right represents an ammo porter platoon

Mostly figures from the very good Revell set

Weapons company, including anti-tank and mortar platoons

As usual painted to Dave's very high standards

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Chieftains

This kit, though a welcome addition, had some serious flaws. Several parts would not line up no matter how hard I tried, and a couple of parts were so badly warped as to be unusable, notably the smoke launchers

Still. it will do for gaming and I now have two of them. I modelled this one unbuttoned as I may convert it to a command vehicle if I can find a suitable crew figure

The under-strength company

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Airfix Meteor

A very tidy kitset for it's age, zero flash and well engineered

Everything was undercoated on the sprue. I didn't have any of the box colours, so had to settle for as close as I could get with what I had

Even detailed the pilot on sprue, which was a first for me

The yellow wing flashes will get another going over as I'm going to buy some brighter colours for the odd time like this

As with most of my aircraft, modelled undercarriage down

Pilot detail

Should get a good run out of this, from about mid 44 through into the 1960s

A couple of the decals came from another kit as the original ones had faded in places


The support crew; this is about all they did the entire weekend

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Arrived

Just had to share this with you all. I have been after one of these for a long time, and with only me and the dogs home this weekend you might just see it completed soon.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

T34s

Recently, more or less, completed. PSC, not as nice as the PzIVs but certainly quite good all the same

First option, T34/41. Each vehicle got a slightly different paint job to the others

Option two, T34/85. The gun is perhaps a little bigger than I expected

Great wargames models, simple and quick to assemble, and very robust

This one got a medium black wash

I used the lighter of the two Vellejo Russian Greens for these ones but don't think I'll use it much on vehicles again, maybe infantry though

Decals from the spares bag. Including my old Airfix ones I now have almost half a battalion of T34s.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Later war Panzers

These are very good wargaming kits. They are well engineered, have only 24 parts, and you get a couple of different options

The completion of these gives me two companies of PzIVs in my collection now; one early-mid, the other mid-late

Decals from the spares collection

The company command platoon got one of my last two Preiser figures as the ones that come with the kits are, to my mind, a little chunky

Took a while to finish them owing to a fairly heavy work load at present.... and because we started playing the Tomb Raider series on our PS1 all over again... :)

Reasonable uniformity, I'm happy with them. These are excellent kits and great value for money.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

The Davey Collection 4

Only a couple of things on the go just now, but as usual nothing fully complete. So for your enjoyment a few guns from the talents of Gerard Davey

I think these are based for the rules Rapid Fire, though three crew figures on a gun is fine for CD also

Crew figures are SHQ?

Airfix classic

Nice to see the limber modelled with its field piece

Think this one is scratch built

The mad modeller's work station

Monday, August 8, 2011

Great War 4.5s

Great little models these, well overdue in plastic

Have been trawling E-Bay looking for a Gloster Meteor, and in so doing have been amazed by the amount of supposedly "Pro-painted" things there are to choose from, which to me begs the question... says who? Is this a recent thing or have I just been missing something? The prices seem absurd given the quality of work I see everyday on the Blogs of others, and yet none of those I frequently draw inspiration from claim to be "Pro" anything. Would certainly be interested to hear your thoughts.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Europe 1952

An Anglo-Soviet encounter game set in 1952. The reds (Paul) fielded three tank companies and four infantry battalions, The British (Me) two and three respectively. The Communists also enjoyed air superiority, though Brits had air-landing capability. All units started the game on cards and the actual models were not placed on the table until they were spotted by enemy forces - both sides had a number of dummy cards, which confused things further

The British corner

Early Russian moves, they turned out to be recon units

British units on the extreme right of their front

This large bridge was about the halfway point

About turn four. Early clashes on the outskirts of a village on the British left flank.

Far left, about the same time. The Russian side had more formed roadways than the British, so they move a lot faster

A couple of turns later. Both sides deployed their air units, the Soviets a Mig15 and Il-10, the British their helicopters, which fortunately avoided the jets

A good move for the Brits, two companies of infantry take a control of the village and bridge directly behind the main Soviet force

Completely ignoring the enemy to their rear the Russian begin to take hold of the village outskirts. This picture shows the fighting around the British RHQ anti-tank gun position, which had already claimed one IS2

Turn 7 and the fighting had moved further into the village. Several British units had suffered major casualties, and the position was only held thanks to the arrival of some engineers. Next to the IS2 is a very nervous regimental commander

More British infantry. This unit secured the end of the bridge at the midway point, the Soviet right flank was now hemmed on three sides but the game didn't go long enough for this advantage to be realised

British right, the Comets destroy a T34/85 platoons and send another two towards the rear with broken morale; sounds good but the British had lost two Centurions the turn before

The Centurions

Midway point late in the game

This tank company basically drove from one end of the board to the other, saw no action and was not spotted. It was a powerful unit the ended up well behind British lines

British units behind the Soviet right flank with no-one to fight

Survivors of the Chieftain company retreating

Extra river crossing point created the British bridging engineer unit, in the event neither used nor needed

A good game that may have got interesting for both sides had it gone longer. It basically ended up a draw with both players claiming solid table advantage but in scattered or isolated areas.