6mm City

Waaay back in this post :  not-city-but-building, I posted pictures of the first of the 6mm buildings I made for ATZ: Mass Hysteria.  Well, I made quite a few and got them out to take pics today. In this first one you can see the building from the first post in the centre right of the pic, and in the centre background is one of the 6mm police bases I've done

This next photo shows the police base a lot closer and 28mm zed-me to give an idea of size

Here we have the city as it is right now; I intend to add a few more buildings

 From a different angle

And a close-up of one of the bigger buildings at the back with the police base on the roof

For those who don't have ATZ:MH, it uses 3" square city blocks, which is the standard I've used above. All the buildings above are free from here: http://www.hawkwargames.com/blogs/downloadable-buildings

They are designed for 10mm games, but I printed the A3 pages on A4 which is about 60% - just right for 6mm

update ...

Hi All, Just letting you know that I am still here.

However, I was made redundant at the end of January and my health has suffered as a result. Consequently, I have neither been blogging or reading those blogs that I follow.

I've had 3 interviews over the last week and am waiting to hear the results, so hopefully things will pick up soon.

I have a bunch of things that I want to post on now, so hopefully the next update will appear a bit sooner that it took this one to arrive!

Building Again ...

For a variety of un-interesting reasons, it's taken me a while to post once more; sorry guys (& any gals that might be there!)

Hobby related stuff that I have been doing recently is creating more buildings from print & build kits that I've got via Wargame Vault.

Having played - & thoroughly enjoyed! - WW2 skirmish most recently, I decided that I wanted to have a ruined village. As a result the first model I put together was Dave's Games' Wrecked House. You can see the first pic of this to the right with Zed-Me in front to show the size. The model assumes that it will be made from card, but I used 5mm foamcore for the walls as card (or 2mm mounting board that I've used previously) simply is not thick enough to seem 'right' with 28mm models. This meant having to cope with the inner walls each being 5mm too long; not a problem, but definitely something to consider if you do the same

 I've also decided (at the moment) not to put half the roof in place (as you can see to the left). The roof is made from 2mm mounting board (basically just 2mm thick card from Hobbycraft), as it 'seems right' for that to be thinner than the walls. The floor is foamcore, but I've put a layer of board under that. I made it larger than the model's "footprint" as I was intending to add scenic bits to it, but I'm not so sure now as that will make it harder to store safely - always a problem ...

Finally - for this build - to the right you can see the staircase as I've made the first* floor removable - not a standard feature of the build. To do this, I had to glue the roof piece in place, but I'm happy with teh result.  I'm going to cut down the board under the model so that it is a rectangle of the model's size (IIRC 6 x 9 inches) and cover the exposed corners of the board with some kind of 'rubble'.

*- I believe those on the wrong side of the pond would call it the second floor

Next are 2 versions of Dave's Games' Ruined Longhouse. This shows the versatility that the 'layers' in Dave's Games' models gives to all their products. Buying one model gives you access to lots of different appearances for your builds. Again, I made the walls from foamcore and and very happy with the result.

Sometimes though, this very versatility can cause problems ... with this build to the right, it wasn't until the final assembly that I realised there was no door! Easily remedied though, by hacking a hole through one of the end walls!

Waaay back in this post: dave-graffam-models-5-low-ruins, I posted about the low ruins I'd made.  I've never really been happy with them due to the wall thickness I mentioned above. So, I've made another couple of them using foamcore instead and they 'feel' much better.  I've used the same options for them, so at first glance they look identical, but have put different internal walls in them.

The internal walls aren't part of the kit as standard, but I just printed some extras walls with 'yellow concrete on both sides and then hacked them about until I was happy with them

This time though I've cut out the windows and doors and they look better for it!

Finally, to the left is a snap of the ground floor of my next build as a tease ... anyone recognise it?

All Wargamers should sign this petition!!

I just stumbled across this on the bleaseworld blog:

"It's not often that wargamers get a bit hot under the collar and organise a petition but with the Royal Mail have introduced some rather ludicrous restrictions on the posting of water-based paint that are not only going to be a pain in the butt for gamers who have little option but to order paint online (even living in a city like Bristol I don't have a decent source for the paint I use) but also adversely impact the livelihoods of small online traders who supply wargamers.

Please read about what the Royal Mail have done, sign the petition and encourage others to do so..."

The original post on Bleaseworld is linked above

The petition itself is here - I encourage all who this will effect to sign it - I have already!

Warfare 13

As promised in the last post, I went to the Warfare convention at the Rivermead Leisure Centre in Reading (for those unfamiliar with it, the town name is pronounced "Redding" not "Reeding"). As ususal, I'd placed a number of pre-orders and fell victim (unsurprisingly!) to 'ooh-shiny!' on the day ...

This pic shows what I arrived with when I got home. You can see I got a copy of "Bolt Action" - something I hadn't intended to get, but I'd been to my brother's recently and he had recommended the game, so I thought I'd give it a try. The figures in the bottom centre are a British unit for the Indian Mutiny from Mutineer Miniatures who had a '5 packs for the price of 4' show offer.

The bag on the left with the blue boxes contains stuff for 2 new projects ... oops!

Last Friday's game

Last Friday evening I went to my local club - Farnborough Wargames Society - and played another game of Platoon, the club's WW2 skirmish rules derived from Peter Pig's PBI2 rules.

I took more pictures this time (as you can see)! The one to the right shows my Germans in a piece of club terrain (in the centre) and one of my Dave Graffam Models' Low Ruins builds in the corner (more about that excellent model is in this post: dave-graffam-models-5-low-ruins).

 To the left you can see Graham's British Para's (with my medic) at the start of the game. The game works on activating (by a d6 roll) the figures in a particular 6" square, the result giving the number of action points available. Casualties and being under fire give penalties, which is why there's a dead para and a rifle -1 marker in the square. The casualty markers do give a good look to the game - IMNSHO of course!

This pic gives a larger view of the centre of the table and as well as 2 of my low ruins, the roofless building is one I 'bashed' from Dave Graffam Models' Village Pub (more on that in this post: dave-graffam-models-1-pub).  The 2 buildings closest to the camera are held by my German section, the 2 by the centre crossroad hold Graham's British Para's and the one at the top has Alec's German section. This is where things started to go very badly indeed for the Brits

Graham's hand is in the pic to the left as well as my section in the centre bottom. In the wood to the right side is part of Neil's section, the rest in the building at the bottom right corner ... despite Neil's section in those 2 places and Graham's in the low ruin to the centre left, as well as the Brit Vickers MMG in the ruin by Graham's arm, the Brits were unable to force my section out of their ruin ...

Here we have a closer view of my section's position; having both buildings allowed them to support each other, as well as leading the Brits to split their fire. I tried to concentrate mine on Graham's section, only putting the occasional suppressing burst into Neil's. The 'pinned marker' (helmet on a rifle) in the left side ruin with Graham's section indicates that their last activation gave a 'Panicked!' result, which is the worst you can get and gives a penalty for their next activation ...

And here we see the buildings that had been occupied by Graham's section after the combined fire of Alec's and my section finally drove them out just before I occupied the ruin ... victory was close!

Victory achieved!! The remnants of the British Paratrooper platoon huddle in the ruin to the right. Strictly speaking I should have shown Neil's section who didn't have a casualty IIRC, but this pic went through the propaganda machine ...

A really fun, enjoyable game and it was great to get some of my figures (I provided the German force - an infantry platoon of 3 eight man sections, plus command and 80mm mortar) as well as some of my buildings on the table.

No game this week as I have my daughter, but I will be at Warfare tomorrow wearing my t-shirt with my blog address on the back - if you see me, say hello!

Finally for this post, last Friday at the club David and Gordon played a game of Too Fat Lardies' Sharp Practice. It was a Napoleonic British Naval landing party trying to destroy a French semaphore station. The table looked splendid:

But the thing that really caught my eye was Gordon's launch:

It looked great! He said he'd had it '30 years' and that it's still available!!  I'm tempted to get one myself, but I couldn't finish it as well as Gordon has ...

Last Friday

I've been meaning to post all week, but haven't got around to it :(

Anyway, last friday at my local club, I was going to play a game of Formula De against my good friend Andy. However, when we arrived (coincidentally at the same time) Graham and Alec invited us to join their game of Platoon, which is a club-written set of 28mm WW2 skirmish rules derived from the Peter Pig company rule set 'PBI2'.

So Andy and I took them up on the offer and thoroughly enjoyed it (well I did and I think Andy did!). I didn't take many photos, but those that I did follow:

In the pic above you can see 2 of the main elements of the game - the square based movement system and the buckets-o-dice combat RASH (Roll A Six to Hit) system.

 An action shot featuring Andy's and Graham's chest ...

Unfortunately the pic above is blurry, but it's trying to show some of Graham's figures.

We had so much fun that we're going to play again tonight! This time I'm taking my own figures and Hexon terrain along, so I'll (hopefully!) have more and better pics to post next time

I've just noticed that my "My Lead Men" page didn't have my WW2 28mm stuff on it, so I've just added it