Black Powder Zulu!

This arrived in the post a few days ago but, due to work, I haven't had time to sit down and read it through yet. It's supposed to be a Xmas present but I'll have a sneaky flip through this weekend before it gets wrapped up and put under the tree. It looks stunning and is full of historical detail with a minimum of rules specific content, so it'll be useful for other rules as well as for Black Powder, which is handy as I also like the look of Chris Peers' Death in the Dark Continent' rules for this too. 

Knights of the Sky Kitbash [1]

As the WW1 aerial game went so well on Tuesday, I've set up another one for January 2014. This will be a late 1917 scenario and will, hopefully, feature one or two new aircraft from the kit pile. I'm thinking of starting on one this weekend, although I doubt I'll get anywhere near finishing it by the end of next week. I've finally finished the marking, sort of, so the next three or four days are relatively free. 

To make my life even more complicated, this will probably be a Pegasus limited run injection moulded kit, either an Armstrong Whitworth FK8 or a DH5. This will involve a lot of effing and blinding, as I try to cut various flimsy plastic strut lengths to size then attempt to get the whole thing to glue together without collapsing under it's own weight. 

...if it all goes pear shaped, I'll dig out a simple plastic kit and bash something together instead!

WW1 Aerial Multiplayer Game

We had a cracking game of Knights of the Sky this evening, with ten players contesting the skies over the Western Front in the Spring of 1917. The game made use of the club Hexon terrain for the first time and it worked really well, especially with the large number of players and planes involved. There were several new players as well, which injected some new enthusiasm into the game and helped to make it fun for everyone.

In the end it was a bit of a stalemate. I flew a Nieuport 17 whose French pilot, Capitane Crapaud, succeeded in shooting down one enemy Albatros before being forced to return to his airfield with some nasty structural damage. I subsequently returned with an RFC 'Harry Tate' which made a brief but hair raising flight over the frontlines.

Although at one point on fire and suffering some fuselage, wing and tail hits, Lt Twistleton-Twinkle and his rear gunner, Corporal Scrote, did give the Hun a good thrashing in true 'stiff upper lip' fashion. The twin Lewis gun mount and forward firing Vickers on the RE8 gave the Boche a nasty surprise, despite a few inconvenient jams at inopportune moments.

Good stuff!

AK47 Winter Wobbler [9]

A quick update on the AK47 APC's, then it's back to the exam marking. Here are the results of yesterdays brief encounter with a paint brush, although there's not a lot to see. The BTR60's have a nice shiny wash of gunge and I've painted in the stowage and exhausts, ready for the wheels and gun barrels at some point in the next couple of days. I'm planning to finish these by the end of the week at the latest.

Knights of the Sky Xmas Game

Albatros DIII, Roland DII and early Roland CIII

We've set up a WW1 aerial dogfight at the club next week, as the final multiplayer game for the year, at least for me. This is a long standing favourite for those of us who've been around awhile and always pulls in a good crowd. The simple yet elegant rules were written by a member of the club who has moved away but still keeps in touch, so I hope he'll enjoy reading about the game on the club Yahoo group (despite the awful state recent 'improvements' have inflicted on the Yahoo group platform).

'Harry Tate', Sopwith Tripes, Spad VII and Nieuport XVII

Anyway, the game will be a Spring 1917 affair, involving a few of my dusty collection of 1/72nd scale model aircraft. These have been stashed away for far too long, so it's really good to dig them out, blow off the cobwebs and send them off to death or glory. I'd love to build a new model for the game, either a Sopwith Pup or an Abatros CIII from the kit pile, but I just don't have the time. Instead, I'll be flying my nimble Nieuport 17 'pour la patrie' or my streamlined yet hefty Roland DII 'mit Gott fur Konig und Vaterland'.

(apologies for the absence of teutonic umlauts)

AK47 Winter Wobbler [8]

I was up in the loft this evening on the orders of the Ministry of the Interior, in search of annoying Xmas decorations (bah humbug).

As I was wasting time flicking through old copies of wargames magazines and boxes of long forgotten dusty rules, I remembered that I had some Revell 1/100 Mi24 Hind kits stashed in a corner somewhere. A quick rummage located the offending articles, together with a cheapo pre-painted Italeri diecast version that I had completely forgotten about.

I now have two options for the professional helicopter gunship unit in the Superpower Backed army, a rather hefty 'here's one I made earlier' version or two that are lighter but will require some effort to put together. I quite like the idea of a helicopter gunship and wingman combination but the single aircraft diecast option is probably more realistic, given the effort required and the points cost.

Like Wolves on the Fold

I'm half way through the exam marking, so to give me an incentive to get the other half done, I've unshelved my copy of this hardback, which I picked up second hand a while ago. I need a change from the Kindle and a proper old fashioned book seems like a really good idea. I'm sure it will be a very interesting read and well up to the standard of Go Strong into the Desert.

M16 AA Halftrack

After the last Bolt Action game I pondered the need for some mobile fire support to back up the infantry in the absence of a tank or two. I searched high and low for something suitable and eventually turned up this 1/50 scale Corgi M16 AA half track, which should do the job very nicely. It'll need a repaint but, otherwise, is pretty much ready to go. Ouch!

Zulu Dawn?

I did the number crunching on the 10mm Zulu options today and have decided to go for 28mm instead, at least for the moment. It's not that 10mm is more expensive, varying from 18p to 12p per figure, it's more a question of bang for your buck, if you'll excuse the terminology. As finances are a bit tight at the moment, this is a bit of a sticking point.

The various 10mm ranges are very nice, especially the figures from Magister Militum, Steve Barber, Newline Designs and Pendraken, but they don't really have the visual impact of 28mm unless deployed en masse. This tends to cancel out the monetary incentive to a certain degree. There are some lovely figure ranges out there in 10mm but it's just a little too tiddly for the price tag.

As a result, I've ordered a less than full price Warlord Games Zulu Starter Army boxed set from a trader on Ebay, which I'll add to the presents under the Xmas tree this year. I don't know when it'll get unpacked on the workbench but I'm looking at 2014 as 'Africa' year, so it stands a good chance of some attention in the next twelve months.

AK47 Winter Wobbler [7]

I'm really struggling with workload at the moment, so the AK47 stuff has been shoved to one side for the last few days. I have added the basic camouflage to the APC's and technicals, however, although they don't look great at this stage of the painting process. I decided to paint the technicals in the same scheme as the AFV's simply to speed things up.