Full Thrust February [5]

A very busy day (again) but I have painted the windows, engines and other details on the Full Thrust Neu Swabian ships. I gave them a drybrush of GW Space Wolves Grey first, which went some way to resolve the wash issue from yesterday. I also, as an after thought, added some red to the engine strakes or exhausts, or whatever they are. I'm not sure I like the end result so may repaint them in light blue tomorrow, when I'll also be adding some simple decals before I spray varnish the lot.

Full Thrust February [4]

I finally got round to some painting today, having been really busy all week with several evenings spent at work or going out. The Full Thrust ships have been wetbrushed in GW Fenris Grey, followed by a drybrush in GW Shadow Grey and GW Fenrisian Grey. I'm not sure it was worth the drybrushing, as the subsequent wash in Future has blended it out. I'll probably give them a further light drybrush in GW Space Wolves Grey tomorrow, once the Future wash has dried properly. I'll then tackle the details including the bridge windows, engines and antenna.

Fighter Pilot

Another Friday after work trip into town and the habitual Oxfam bookshop diversion. The end result, a pristine softback copy of Robin Old's semi autobiography Fighter Pilot, for the princely sum of £2.99. This will be the next book on the reading list, without a shadow of a a doubt. The only American ever to command an RAF squadron and the only USAF pilot to be allowed to grow a handlebar moustache, deserves a place in my ever decreasing reading schedule, and rightly so.

Caveman!

You may not know (or even care), but I'm a bit of a fan of the less than sensible Lost World school of prehistoric, people versus dinosaur, style games. This was the result of a rash purchase of Chris Peers' excellent Saurian Safari rules on Ebay several years ago. This inevitably led on to a series of games at the club in which my hordes of plastic dinosaurs were blasted to bits by various be-whiskered stiff upper lipped Victorian gentlemen including, most notably, the Right Hon. Compton Pauncefoot III Esq. (now sadly eaten).

I digress. Anyway, having set up and played a number of very silly games in the murky jungles of the Jurassic and having founded a Lost World Safari yahoo group, which is still up and running, I have neglected this period for quite a while in pursuit of other intangible things. Today, however, I have purchased a proverbial shot in the arm, in the form of a double download of Caveman! and Eat Hitler!, both of which promise much multiplayer Mesozoic mayhem up at the club.

Ug.

Bag The Hun Campaign Plans

I promised to set up and run some games at the club this year, so I've launched a mini-campaign for Bag The Hun 2 using the Finest Hour campaign supplement as a basis. I've decided to make it a semi-historical campaign, in the loosest sense of the phrase, by basing the set up on No609 West Riding Squadron. This unit was based at nearby Middle Wallop and the satellite airfield at Warmwell, which will give the campaign a local flavour.

I've got four players signed up already, so they will form the initial section and flight commanders, each with the identity of their historical counterparts. It's unlikely that they'll all be on a sortie at any one time so, in between flying for the RAF they will take the role of the Luftwaffe, along with anyone else who happens to drop in for a game. I'll track their progress over a week in August 1940, which will allow me to put on half a dozen games over the year, with at least one a month being the bottom line.

It should be fun but I will need to paint up twelve Raiden Miniatures Spitfire MkI's in the next few weeks, so that I can kick things off after the Easter holidays. In the longer term, I also need to paint up some more Bf109's and some He 111's, to add to the aircraft that I already have in the box. It's not too much of a tall order but I do need to get on with it sooner rather than later.

Tally Ho!

Full Thrust February [3]

I undercoated the NSL fleet this evening, using my ad hoc but very effective spray painting jig which, as you can see, is a highly precision engineered tool, consisting of a couple of bits of offcut with some nails bashed in at random. It actually works really well, with the tiddly magnets on the ships keeping everything in place, even when held upside down to do the obscure bits.

I've also spent a very meagre twenty quid on pdf copies of Action Stations!, Iron and Fire and Blue Steel, Grey Thunder, all of which I have in hardcopy format but now have on the Kindle Fire as well. I'm planning to make naval gaming a bit of a theme this year, having lots of projects in readiness that have yet to see the light of day, including at the top of the list some coastal warfare from WW1 onwards.

I've alsp been thinking about the BTH2 'Finest Hour' Battle of Britain club campaign for April / May, but that's another story.

(Incidentally, I have no idea why the pictures are like this..??)

Bag The Hun Operation Bodenplatte [15]

I didn't have much time today for wargame related things so had to squeeze this into half an hour this evening. As you can see, it's a bit 'ho hum' and not nearly as neat as I hoped for, when I set out to make the Ju88A1 Mistel. In  fact it looks a lot like a blob of greenstuff, spookily enough, which is what it actually is. Anway, I haven't quite abandoned all hope and reckon that a decent undercoat and a splash of paint will hide the aforementioned blob from all but the closest scrutiny. Possibly.

Bag the Hun Operation Bodenplatte [14]

In a moment of inspiration this afternoon, I decided to try to make a Mistel combination for the Operation Bodenplatte project. I have several Museum Miniatures Ju88A4's in the spares box, which have been set aside for North Africa and the Malta, so thought I'd borrow one or two for the purpose. I also have a trio of left over Raiden Miniatures Bf109F4's that I didn't use for the North Africa project, which are perfect as the fighter element of the Ju88 A1 Mistel.

This is the state of progress at the moment, so there's still quite a lot ot do, including the warhead and the additional spars supporting the fighter. I'm hoping to make two versions of the Mistel, one connected and one seperated, so that the fighter can deliver the payload then zoom off in the opposite direction. I'd also like to make a second version with a FW190 as the fighter element, using another Ju88 fuselage or a Raiden Miniatures Ta154 as the Mistel warhead carrier.

That's if I can get this one to work!

Full Thrust February [2]

Here's the bulk of the next FT Neu Swabian League fleet, give or take one or two extra ships. It's looking a bit lightweight at the moment, as I've got to find a suitable way to base the heavier models that I have, including the grounded transport in the picture, before I can finish off the full fleet. I also need to wait until the temperature in the garage rises above bloody freezing, so that I can spray undercoat the ships without fear of disaster.

Goolie Chits

I've been reading this over the last few days, having added a secondhand hardback copy to the bookshelf a while back. It's a very interesting read, covering interwar colonial police actions by the RAF in various far flung corners of the Empire. This has been an interest of mine since childhood, as my grandfather was a Sergeant Pilot on the North West Frontier in the 1930's and told me many hair raising stories about his exploits:

http://jimswargamesworkbench.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/photos-from-frontier.html

http://jimswargamesworkbench.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/more-photos-from-frontier.html

The book is a long out of print but is a fascinating gold mine of potential wargaming scenarios, stretching from the Russian Civil War, via Somaliland, to the North West Frontier and Palestine. If I ever got round to this it would probably be another Back of Beyond effort in 28mm, for which (you guessed it) I have all the figures, vehicles and model kits for a NWF flying column.

I also think it would be very straightforward to set up something in 20mm, perhaps using Tumbling Dice figures and the multitude of plastic aircraft kits that would be suitable for the job. You could even have a crack at the NWF in 10mm with Pendraken figures and Wings of War aircraft, easily re-painted in suitably colonial schemes. It's a thought but that's as far as it will ever get, given my existing mountain of things to do!