Altitude Bases

Having seen  the photos of the game put on at Salute this year by Arbuthnot's Aeronautical League of Gentlemen  - I was there but somehow missed this game ... pooh :(  - and the telescopic alititude stands they used I've been looking into this myself. I've read somewhere - but damned if I can remember where - that teh person who made them, bought TV digital aerials from a pound shop, getting 2 telescopic ...errr 'bits' in each pack.

Well, I've just been to the cheap shop on Addlestone high street and cleared their shelf of 'Telescopic Pick-Up Tools'. I reckon they are the same as the aerials, but already have a magnet on the end. So at 99p each they might be more expensive but come with a magnet attached! Here is the tool as purchased:

I was a bit concerned at how easy it would be to remove the clip and foam covering, but the clip was easily levered off and onve that was removed, it was obvious that the foam cover was only held in place by the clip and easily slid off.  Disassembled pick-up and partially extended tool:

The tool has six sections, each about 92mm long. I think that I'll probably scratch a line about half-way along each section to give me more altitude bands. When I have an aeronef model on the end, One complete section will look too big, if you know what I mean.

So I now have 17 of these and the next step is to make them into suitable stands for my Aeronef games, and probably for all those 1/300 WW2 aircraft I have sitting in a draw somewhere.

As a reminder, this is now my aeronef models are currently based:

At the moment - this may change once I start experimenting - I intend to put some magnetic sheet on the bottom of the model to adhere to the telescopic stand and create something similar to the hex-base above for the bottom of the stand, although I imagine it will need to be bigger. For the above stand, the name plate is glued on, but for the new stands I'll use magnetic sheet on the nameplate and the base so the names can be changed as needed (I'll only have 16 [maybe 17 stands as I might actually keep one of the tools as is in my toolbox] and more aeronefs than that).

As it progresses I'll post further.

Aeronef by Wessex Games - A Review

Well last time, I put up some pics of my Brigade Models' Aeronefs and was asked for a review of the rules, so here goes. Note that, although I do have a paper copy of the rules, all comments in this review are based on the pdf version that can be downloaded from Wargames Vault.

Description
Aeronef is 18 pages long (including the cover), in colour with plenty of colour photos throughout. Of the 18 pages 4 are background/rationale and 2 - without photos - are the basic rules of the game itself, 3 introduce 'Advanced' rules, such as aeroplanes, poison gas, etc.. 4 scenarios, designers' notes and bibliography make up the balance of the page count.

Aeronef defines ships as being in 5 'classes' (1 the biggest and 5 the smallest) and has hull points, gun dice, bomb dice and speed dependent upon that class. Turning and fire arcs use a hexagon shape - the rules stating that models should be based on hexagonal flying stands to enable this.

Movement is handled by writing orders and then each ship, from slowest to fastest does a half move each and then all complete the second half. A ship can fire once per turn at any point in the move using the common 'roll-a-six-to-hit' handful of dice mechanic. The rationale used by Aeronef that 'all vessels are assumed to be armed with a combination of machine guns and quick firing light artillery'. results in all vessels having the same range, same arcs-of-fire and same modification to dice through those arcs.

The advanced rules introduce airships, bombing, aeroplanes, poison gas, how to modify the standard size designs and taking-off and landing of aeronefs.

Personal Opinion

Aeronef is exactly what it claims to be - a set of simple, fast-play rules, although therein lies the problem for me. They are too simple - the lack of an altitude system, IMHO, reduces the game to a naval wargame with strange ships - and is quite poor for that given the lack of armour and gun variations. That said I like the background material and timeline in the rules.

So I guess to sum up, I will not play them again and am not sure if I'm glad I got them!

Another review can be found here (more positive than mine) on Boardgamegeek and a description of the supplement Aeronef Captain's Handbook is there as well

Aeronef

Well as I said in yesterday brief post, I wanted to take advantage of Brigade Models phase 3 of their annual summer sale. So, logically enough, I had to work out what I wanted to get, which meant checking what I already had, so I took some photos of the models at the same time. First up are group shots:

Austro-Hungarian Squadron

Greek Squadron

Italian Squadron

Russian (unpainted!) Squadron, purchased at Salute

Turkish Squadron (incl unpainted reinforcements from Salute)

As you can see, I'm going for an Adriatic/Aegean/Black Sea theatre of operations. All the models above are from Brigade, and all of them are sold as the nationalities I have used them as except the Greek Squadron. That has a German Koln cruiser that I've modified to be a carrier, 2 modified French Le Brouchet frigates and a modified French Formidabile light cruiser.

Now on to photos of the painted squadrons in more detail along with details of what I have ordered for them

For the Austro-Hungarians, rather than get aeroplanes, I've ordered 4 Lussin class Rocket Patrol Nef as small attack craft to beef them up a bit.



I've not ordered any extras for the Greeks. I've got some more fighters to do and intend to put 1 or 2 onto the flight deck of the HHMS (His Hellenic Majesty's Ship) Helle



The Italian squadron is going to get some aeroplanes in the shape of R-22 Seaplane Fighters, Rosatelli BR-88 Bomber and a Rochefort class Heavy Merchant. The Rochefort I'm going to convert (using Russian Secondary Gun Mounts and US Single Gun turrets) to be a seaplane tender for the aeroplanes. I'm hoping it will look great when done and will post again on it as I make progress.

As you can see the Turks already have the most vessels in my collection and once the war balloons and the new battleship are painted I reckon that will be enough - for now anyway! I do have some unpainted Kindjal fighters but no intent to give them an aerial base at present

 

I have to say that I really, really like these models. I think they are fantastic, full of character and very evocative of the period (as much as they can be given that it's fictitious!). Unfortunately, the rules for which these models are made - Aeronef - are, IMHO, too simplistic. Brigade also sell the Iron Stars rules for Edwardian space combat which I have and I intend to create a hybrid of the two for my own use, which I will post on as I develop them.

Regarding terrain: in the pictures I've used my Hexon stuff from Kallistra which I'm very pleased with. Next steps are to make some 'SprueTowns' as inspired by Steve Blease's blog.

Edited: As a footnote, the Austro-Hungarian and Italian colour schemes are based on Brigade's own schemes, but the Greek I created and the Turkish I changed the main colour. Not sure how to do the Russkies atm. The ship names all come from a copy of Janes' Fighting Ships of WW1.

No post again

Despite my intentions, last night was again a bust as far pictures went :(

Still, as Brigade Models have the latest phase of their summer sale active from today, tonight I'm getting all my Aeronef and Land Ironclad stuff out to determine what I want - and then try and match that with what I can afford :( so I'm going to photograph it while it's out.

Honest!

Post ... or not ...

I was going to put together a post last night, but wound up being spellbound by the rolling footage of fires and rioting on BBC News 24 instead.

It's hard to believe that all this is going on in London. I can remember the riots of '85 and the news that the violence is spreading to other cities in England is ... concerning? frightening? not really sure what the correct word to use is ... I guess worrying is most apt.

Anyway, I hope the police decide to act tonight and bring this all to an end.  I spoke to a colleague at work who lives in Croydon - he said that people who lived on the High Street there were having their front doors kicked and their homes ransacked. I'm glad I don't live in one of these areas and feel immense sympathy for the victims and anger toward the perptrators of this inexcusable violence.

I hope to get some pictures done tonight for a post tomorrow ...

New Arrivals

As you will know if you've read my projects page I placed an order with Peter Pig last Friday (29-Jul). Well when I got home last night it had arrived.

I ordered several packs of 14th Army Brits, a Japanese Infantry platoon (in cap) and some British Home Guard - to use as 'British Union of Fascist' (BUF) troops in a Very British Civil War. They will be opposed by Peter Pig French Resistance figures doubling as a local militia of some sort - need to work on that.

I might also use some of my Plastic Soldier Company 15mm soviets in summer uniform as BUF troops - not sure about that ...

I'll update the projects page today as well. It's ordered by scale at the moment, in just one long list - going to change the order to have categories - historical, fantasy, sci-fi - and then sub categories within it.

Hope to have a bigger update on Monday with piccies of what I do over the weekend. And next week I'm going to have a go at a game of Nuts! so hopefully there will be a new batrep here soon!

How I base my figures

I thought I'd start the new blog with a post about how I do the bases on my figures.  To achieve a uniformity of size I ordinarily use 2p pieces for my 28mm figures, and have just started using 1p pieces for my 15mms. It seems strange (to me anyway!) but I've not found any washers or similar that I can use that are cheaper!

Anyway, gluing the mini's to the coins leaves an unsightly - to me - 'lip' so, many moons ago, I started using DAS modelling clay to hide this. Originally I could only find it in my FLGS but recently, since the FLGS changed hands, I found that you can get it in Rymans the stationers.

DAS modelling clay

So, here is what I do; glue the figures to the coin:

15mm Plastic Soldier Co Russian and QRF Russian

Then I take a piece of the clay and press it down onto the coin to hide the lip and smooth it out using a knife:

As you can see in the above pic, overlapping the edge of the coin is not a problem at this stage - in fact you should slightly overlap it. That way, when the clay has dried (the time it takes can vary depending on the ambient temperature - on a hot day it can be as little as an hour, but I ordinarily leave it overnight) run a knife around the edge of the coin to clean up the edge:

At this point the figure is ready for undercoating ... with these 15's I've been cleaning the flash - and mouldlines for the plastics - at this stage.  I do the process in a 'mass-production' assembly line fashion:

I've also been using the clay to fill in the bottom of slotta-based figures for several years:

I find that this extra weight in the base gives the figure an added stability, as well as making it easier to stick magnetic sheet to the bottom. The figure in the above pic has also had the clay spread on top of the slotta-base to hide the slot and give a bit of texture.