BTH2 Channel Dash Game

The BTH2 game went well this evening, although it lacked a bit of something or other. The end result was a hard won but narrow victory for the RAF, which lost two Hurricanes shot down and a third with instrument damage, although the skilled pilot managed a successful landing back at Tangmere along with the other three survivors.

The Lufwaffe bomber force was mauled and ended up with four out of eight Dorniers in the drink. As a result, the RAF achieved their objective of shooting down half the bombers but the Luftwaffe failed in their attempt to save two thirds of their aircraft, while also failing in their secondary objective of destroying half of the RAF fighters....but only just.

I think I need to devise some tokens or markers for the various critical damage effects, as it was difficult to keep track of the things once the action picked up. The smoke markers worked well, though, so I may make some more with thinner pipe cleaners, if I can track some suitable ones down.

I'm taking a break from Bag the Hun for a while but will be back with more games later in the year.

Bag the Hun Channel Dash Cards

I've made a few changes to the scenario that I'll be running tomorrow at the club, so a new set of turn cards had to be sorted out. I've now adopted a very simple approach to this which makes it easy to churn out a whole set of cards without any hassle.

I've bought several boxes of slightly smaller than postcard sized visiting cards when I've been on holiday in France. The required deck of cards are produced in WORD using a basic template, printed in colour on paper, then cut out and stuck on to the standard sized visiting cards.

It's not very sophistcated but it does the job. I have laminated the end result in the past but now just use the cards as they are, which seems to work fine. It's great when you need to knock out a set for a particular game in a short space of time, then subsequently have to modify things when you realise that the scenario needs a bit of tweaking.

Anyway, I'll post some photos of the Channel Dash game tomorrow, when I get back from the club.

Once upon a Time in the West Indies

I was up in the loft this morning to find some camping kit for number one son, so took the opportunity to rummage in the wargames rules box that I have stashed up there. A quick bit of digging turned up an old copy of Pete Berry's Once Upon a Time in the West Indies pirate rules, which are a supplement for the similarly entitled '....West Country' skirmish rules for the English Civil War period.

What I had failed to appreciate and had completely forgotten is that the booklet contains a very simple set of pirate ship rules, which look exactly like the thing I've been looking for. The movement and firing system is based on a dot to dot grid marked out on the playing surface, which is pretty simple but doesn't include the effect of the wind. I would need to convert this to hex based movement and add in rules for wind but the basic idea is quite neat.

I'll add it to the list of potential rules and give it a try, once I've put together and painted a couple of the Peter Pig Pieces of Eight ships. This will happen at some point this year but I'm doing the AK47 army for the next six weeks or so, which means that any other things are on the ever expanding 'to do' list. When I do get round to it, I may well write my own set of rules using a card based turn sequence, hex based movement and lots of 'random events' to make it interesting.

Yo Ho Ho.

Build Your Own Stonehenge?

A bit of a wierd day. I had been volunteered by the Ministry of the Interior to help out with car parking at the local agricultural show, so spent the morning playing at traffic control in a field. It was actually quite good fun, although I'm now very sunburnt. It was all to raise some money for my son's scout troop, so well worth the effort, even if I now glow in the dark.

We also have some French guests staying for the weekend so it was off to Stonehenge in the afternoon for  some touristy sightseeing. It doesn't seem to have changed much since my last visit in 1973, as the concrete soviet style bunker visitor centre thing is still there in all it's post modernist glory. It's a bit embarrassing to be honest but the actual henge bit is still pretty impressive, once you peer over the assembled coach loads of people.

Anyway, to save something from an otherwise unproductive day, I bought a Build Your Own Stonehenge kit from the gift shop. I'm not sure what I'll do with it but it does have potential for Adventures in Jimland and Tusk, although some pre-historical suspension of dis-belief will be a pre-requisite. It's a nice little injection moulded kit, in what could be 6mm or 10mm at a push, so worth the £5.99 that I handed over for it?

Bag the Hun Channel Dash Scramble

I was hoping to have finished eveything for the BTH convoy attack game next Tuesday but real life has been chipping away at my evenings of late, so I'll be running an updated version of my Battle of Britain Channel Dash scenario instead. This was originally written and played using the first edition of the BTH rules, so there are some ammendments and adjustments to make before I can re-run it next week. At least I know that it works, which is a bit of a change!

MDF Scratchbuilt Shanty Town...a cunning plan!

I've been stuck in a very long and dull meeting this evening, so to while away the time I doodled some ideas for a shanty town terrain template for AK47 on the seemingly endless agenda. I've had some thoughts about scratchbuilding a shanty town template or two before, having been inspired by the one that my arch-nemesis Jon built from cereal packets, chewing gun and string a few years ago. I don't know how he does it but he always makes something amazing out of stuff that you'd probably bin.

Genius!

Anyway, I thought about the quick 'off the shelf' option first, using either the excellent resin shacks from The Scene or the newly published paper version from Finger and Toe, both of which popped up on TMP today. However, the otherwise top notch resin ones look a little too post-apoc for my liking, while the paper ones look a little bit too bland. So, it's definately back to the scratchbuilding option, for which I have a very cunning plan...sort of.

I have a pile of old East Riding Miniatures MDF bases that have now been superceded by the far more precise, laser cut version from the same source. These have been languishing in a box for ages but would make an excellent basis for construction of sturdy shanty town shacks, with only a minimal amount of cutting and trimming required. I can glue them together and stick them onto some MDF terrain feature bases, then cover them with corrugated plastic card and other detritus to make the perfect shanty town feature.

Job's a good 'un....

:O)

Operation Suicide

I'm starting reading this on the Kindle HD today, having downloaded a copy while it was reduced in price a couple of weeks ago. I'm feeling in the mood for something cloak and dagger, so this fit the bill perfectly. There are a number of books out on the Cockleshell Heroes at the moment so, if I enjoy reading this one, I can dig deeper into the story.

AK47 Summer Safari [2]

Here are the naked tribal loonies after a three stage Foundry Bay Brown skin shade, followed by some Citadel Knarloc Green and Scorpion Green on the RPG's, with the stocks on the AK47's picked out in Foundry Spearshaft. It's a all a bit messy at the moment but I'll clean things up and add some more layers to the webbing and guns tomorrow, together with a wash of something or other to add a bit of definition. I definately need to sort out the asparagus RPG's for a start.

Catastophic Structural Failure!

At the last Bag the Hun game one of the players suggested that some pipe cleaner fire markers would be a good idea, as he'd seen them used in other games and they looked really neat. I've been looking out for some suitable pipe cleaners for ages, the usual thin ones being pretty useless, so was really pleased to find some over-sized ones in the local art shop yesterday, especially as they came in a dayglo orange colour.

I folded them in half then sprayed them in a black, grey and white colours, followed by an overspray in satin varnish to seal everything in. After that, I cut the pipecleaners in half and trimmed off the ends to make them look less regular. Although the end result is a bit over-scale I think they look OK, so have produced a small box full ready for the game next week.

Lost World Temple Thingy

I found this in the local branch of Petsmart today, while on a bicycle repair mission to Halfords next door. I'd seen it before but when I went to get one they'd sold out. It's rather good as it is and perfect for Saurian Safari, but I may tart it up a bit with a wash and some additional drybrushing. I really should sort out some decent jungle and other terrain for Saurian Safari but this is a good start.