This week I have mostly been ...

making a model aeroplane.  My Dad worked his entire working career for the Ministry of Defence and one of the things he worked on was the BAC TSR-2, specifically using the prototypes of the cancelled aircraft for weapons testing (one thing they did was place an HE charge on the very tip of the 'plane's nose and see what damage it did when detonated!).

Anyway, it was his 70th birthday in early December last year, and as I wanted to get him something different, I talked to him about it and we decided I'd make him a model of the TSR-2. Suffice to say, it wasn't made in time for his birthday ...

Or Christmas ...

But this week I finally finished it and delivered it to him yesterday - Sunday. Here is a pic of the finished model:

The model on my Dad's windowsill

As you can see from the pic, either I mislaid the canopy, or it wasn't in the model - which I bought on ebay - unfortunately I can't remember ...

Now that's out of the way, more wargaming stuff to follow, hopefully with part 5 of the Burma series next

15mm WW2 Burma; Part 4 Batrep

I finally managed to play a game last Friday evening, at my local club - Farnborough Wargames Society. I had originally intended to play with Two Hour Wargames' War Against Japan supplement for their Nuts! WW2 rules, but for some reason - that I still don't understand! - I just could not bring myself to re-read them in preparation for this game. Having heard nothing but good things about them, I decided to get Too Fat Lardies' I Ain't Been Shot Mum (IABSM) rules as a substitute and, I feel compelled to say, I'm really glad that I did! But more on the rules in Part 5 of this series.

So, the game itself.  As it was our first time using the rules, we went for a simple scenario; I declared, with the full agreement of my opponent, Tim Cull (the ever-reliable newsletter editor for our club) that our game would represent an early 1943 encounter between a force of Japanese attempting to put a road-block behind a Commonwealth force that was on a road off table, and a British force sent to prevent them. Both forces would consist of infantry only, with one platoon entering the table at game start and the other appearing as a 'blind' once the enemy had been spotted.

So, in the photo of the table below; the first Japanese platoon came on table on the top edge between the road and the right hand edge, while the British entered on the bottom edge from the road leftwards: 

Unfortunately, this picture was taken quite a way through the game - the ones I took earlier had the exposure settings that I use at home, which under the strip lights in the community centre, resulted in some god-awful, over exposed useless piccies ... oh well, I'll know better for next time!

Anyway, unknown to me until I arranged the game, Tim has a large force of WW2 Japanese based for Flames of War, but hadn't used them as apparently there is no FoW supplement detailing the Japanese, so he was eager to use them in this game. Here's a close-up of some of them:

The game itself went well for the Japanese and badly for the British ... :(  I could blame IABSM's card based activation and dicing for movement and then claim bad luck on the movement dice, but basically I wasn't aggressive enough. The picture following shows how I didn't seize the centre ground around the village fast enough, allowing Tim's Japanese to get there and establish a firing line and send a section on sweep around my right flank (seen in the patch of jungle at the bottom edge of the table). Consequently, I had my lead section ravaged by fire. It fell back to the edge of the jungle, joining another section there.

Then the Japanese 'blind' platoon was deployed and immediately charged my section that had been on my left flank, completely destroying it. My 'blind' platoon deployed and gave some rough handling to the newly arrived Japanese in revenge, but it had clearly become a holding action for the British, and not a very successful one at that ...

 There are some more pictures though.  This shows a  view from the southern edge of the village and clearly shows the bases I was using to group my singly-based Brits

Another view here; this time my 'blind' platoon just after deployment with the 2nd Japanese platoon firmly in their sights ...

A fun game and thanks to Tim Cull for making it so!

Unimportant

Well I seemed to have rectified my blogger issues by installing IE8, but then made the mistake of clicking the 'try the new interface' link on the blogger dashboard - it said 'your browser is not supported' and that was it!

So I've installed Google Chrome and am using that for blogging now.  I've also set the comments to appear in a pop-up as per the mighty Shelldrake's suggestion - hope it works!

Just about to start writing my batrep from last Friday, so, with a bit of luck, that should appear soon!

Good News ... Bad News ... Good News

Good News: Went to the club last Friday evening, played a game and enjoyed it! Unless you've either suffered from depression, or have a close friend/relative who is a sufferer, I don't think that you can really understand just how much this apparently small thing means. Suffice to say it is a big thing to me, and I am inordinatley proud of it!

Bad News: Forgot my camera today, so no post about the game until tomorrow at the earliest! sorry fellow bloggers

Good News: We used 'Too Fat Lardies' WW2 ruleset "I Ain't Been Shot Mum" which was a great success and we will definitely be playing it again!

IE problems ...

Something seems to have changed with blogger ... I use IE7 and can't seem to scroll on blogs anymore ... ???  I can open a blog from my dashboard, but then it locks and I can't scroll down the post !!

Very odd ... anyway, as you might have guessed, no game last weekend, so no report.  It is scheduled for tonight though, as a head-to-head game using either Flames of War or I ain't Been Shot Mum - I just couldn't seem to get myself to read Nuts! and War Against Japan - no enthusiasm at all :(

So hopefully, a more substantial post some time afte the weekend as I have my daughter for the weekend, which is a GOOD thing!

By the way,Shelldrake sent me the Peter Pig Japanese he had - what a gentleman! - with some genuine aussie bush for me to use too! Photos when I've made something of them

Best Laid Plans and all That ... AGAIN!

Oops!! Muppetry has struck. In this post I told you all how I was unable to stay at the club for a game last Friday evening and had therefore arranged to play this coming Friday instead. Well ... I forgot that this Friday night is my works 'Christmas' do (apparently it's about half the cost if you have it after Christmas instead of before), so I've had to reschedule the game to the 20th now!

Very annoyed with myself, I've decided to play a solo game this coming weekend to get used to the rules I'm going to use - Two-Hour Wargames' War Against Japan supplement to their Nuts! WW2 rules.

I've set up the layout I'm going to use and there follows some atrocious pictures of it - sorry about their quality, but I just couldn't seem to get an unblurry picture and the lighting is terrible. Hopefully at the weekend I'll have a chance to get some pics in natural light which will hopefully be better - at the moment I leave before the sun comes up and get home after its gone down!

15mm WW2 Burma; Part 3 Terrain

And onto part 3 of the Burma series, the terrain I'm going to use.  My intention is to use my hexon 'boards' as the base and onto that I'm going to put patches of different coloured material to represent different 'types of terrain. I bought the boards in their black unflocked incarnation as that was cheaper than buying them ready flocked, but if I were to do it again, I'd certainly get them ready flocked as painting them and flocking them myself has been a real pain.

Anyway, there are 2 additional things that I'm going to use - card grass shacks from paperterrain.com and some jungle 'markers that I've created myself.

Starting with a group shot of the features I've just mentioned, here are all the grass shacks and the jungle markers I've made, shown on the tray that's their home. There are a dozen shacks and just over 50 jungle markers:

Shacks and markers on their storage tray

The grass shacks I got for my Vietnam miniatures which are 10mm figures, so that's the scale I purchased. However, I think they are close enough to use with my 15mm Burma mini's as you can see in the following piccies. Paperterrain are not a print and build supplier as are most card building retailers - in my experience that is.  Instead they print the models onto card and ship them to you. I was worried about them getting folded in transit, but nothing occurred with my delivery. I guess it might depend how well you know your postie though - mine's an old neighbour, so he seems to follow instructions like 'do not bend' (unlike some posties I've had in the past ...)

Anyway, the buildings sold by paperterrain have an exterior shell that can be lifted off to show a 'ruined' version underneath. This first photo shows the smallest grass shack; its lift-off exterior on the base (hiding the ruined version) on the left, the 'ruin' in the centre and the shell without the base on the right

10mm smallest grass shack with 15mm figures

The black edge around the top of the ruin was added by me with a felt tip, to show it had been partially burnt. I like it, but YMMV. In the pack I got there are 6 of the smallest size shacks, 3 mediums:

10mm medium shack with 15mm figures

 and 3 large shacks:

10mm largest shack with 15mm figures

As you can see the shacks had no colouring on the inside of the ruined version (since taking the photos I've painted the inside though) but, they have a bamboo pattern floor, as you can see in this higher angle photo:

Bamboo floor inside shack

I like these models. They were easy enough to assemble and the card they're printed on is not heavy duty, but certainly adequate. I used foamboard inside the bases of the shacks - I can't remember if that was on the instructions or not - as the bases were the right height for it! The only real issue is that where the base section had to be folded the printing wore off, but that was easily touched up with felt-tips and I've had the same problem with buildings I've printed myself - a hazard of the medium I guess.

Onto the jungle 'markers'. These are made from Products for Wargamers' "Jungle Plant 2" and "Jungle Plant 3", although they have been chopped about quite a bit. Here are 3 of them next to 3 of my Brits as a size indicator:

Jungle markers next to Brits

I had hoped that they would be quite effective to symbolise jungle areas on the board.  Here is a close up of 2 of them with one Brit:

However ...  I'm really not sure now ...