Bag the MiG [6]

A very busy Sunday again with rugby training for both of the younger kids this morning and cleaning the salt-encrusted spray off the new car this afternoon, following a close encounter with a gritting lorry at half past one last night, on the way home from a dinner party. I did, however, get the Foundry Spearpoint drybrushing done on the USAF aircraft this afternoon, which doesn't sound too impressive but will move things a bit closer to the final stretch. The next stage will be an overall wash in GW Nuln Oil, followed by a white basecoat on all the bits that aren't going to be metallic includng the canopies, the fuselage bands and the wingtip tanks

Bag The MiG [5]

Bag The MiG hex and MiG Alley square

B29..no problem

It's still far too cold to stay for long in the garage, so progress on the USAF fighters and fighter bombers has been held up. However, I have been fiddling about with the basing and have decided to adapt the method that I devised for MiG Alley, using mdf bases and panel pins for stands. I haven't yet perfected the system for MiG Alley but I think it will be ideal for Bag The MiG.

It has the big advantage that it doesn't require any mini-magnets, so keeps the cost down to a minimum and avoids all the hassle of gluing tiny magnets to the truncated tops of lightweight plastic hex stands. It also means that I can make a variety of stands for different scenarios, some overall blue ones with 40mm pins for high altitude games and some shorter ones with textured and painted bases for ground pounding missions.

And, on the plus side...we now have a brand new tumble dryer in the garage, so I can avoid freezing to death in the warm radiant waft of rotating underpants...mmmmm.

Panthers and Corsairs

Another two reference works for the Bag the MiG / MiG Alley project, both of which really are excellent, with detailed coverage of missions and some superb colour profiles. I think you can see what I'll be tackling next, once the USAF aircraft have cleared the workbench.

Bag the MiG [4]

If you were wondering why....I really need to paint up some F9F Panthers! There are some stunning decals from Scale Specialities in 1/285th but I guess I'll have to compromise for the 1/600th version. This will be the next installment when I've finished the USAF fighters and fighter bombers this weekend.

Deep Space Full Thrust

I ordered a deep space nebula vinyl gaming mat a few days ago and it arrived yesterday, safely rolled up in a sturdy cardboard tube. It's a full 6' x 3' size mat, as I wanted to use it both for X-Wing and for Full Thrust. So, here's a couple of my Brigade Models Neo-Soviet ships that I painted up years ago, to give an overall impression of the quality of the artwork (with apologies for the crappy black plastic stands). I think the mat looks really good and I'm even thinking of getting a 3' x 3' version for 'beer and pretzel' style games.

Bag the MiG [3]

I cleaned up and magnet-based the replacement Tumbling Dice F86E Sabres this evening and, as I was fiddling around with the very powerful and fiddly, tiddly magnets, I thought I might as well base up some Chinese Tu-2 light bombers and a USAF C-47 Dakota transport as well. 

The Tu-2's were used early in the war and didn't last very long, but they look really cool so I thought I'd add some anyway. I have some Yak-9's to base up as well, which would enable me to include some c1950-51 scenarios as a sideline to the later war focus of the project.

Cold War RM Commando

I've been off work the last couple of days with a nasty bug, so have been a bit down in the dumps, although I'm feeling much better now. To cheer myself up I decided to follow up on an idea that I had many years ago for a skirmish game set in Norway at some point in the 1980's, deep in the deep end of the latter part of the Cold War.

This was originally a 20mm squad level project way back when, using Platoon 20 figures for the Soviets and the Royal Marines. I even painted up a handful of figures but then left home to go to university, so the project never really got off the ground. I still have some badly painted dodgy Spetsnatz knocking around somewhere but have no idea what happened to the rest.

At Warfare last year I spotted the very nice 10mm Falklands British range by Pendraken and thought 'why not?', then promptly forgot to pick up an army pack before I left for home. It's been nagging me since then so I decided today to put things right, ordering a selection of the beret clad figures for a Royal Marine platoon, together with a couple of BV206 Snowcats.

I'm not sure what I'll do for the Soviets but was thinking of using the Argentinian figures as Norwegian local defence forces. The figures will all be individually based for skirmish style games, using No End in Sight or Some Corner of a Foreign Field, both of which would be ideal for this sort of thing. It'll probably never happen but I can always turn it into a Cold War Gone Hot project. It's also cheered me up no end!

Hawker Typhoon - The Combat History

I'm thinking of renaming the blog Jim's Wargames Bookshelf, as all I seem to be doing over recent weeks is adding additional weight to the overloaded library. Anyway, I found this in the wonderful local Oxfam bookshop at the weekend, so have piled it onto the book mountain for some Bag the Hun background reading, if and when I get the time. I'd really like to add some mid-war Typhoons to the collection but will have to find a cheaper alternative to the lovely GHQ models to make it affordable, unless I scale down to 1/600th or up to 1/144th!

Bag The MiG [2]

I undercoated the USAF fighters and fighter bombers today with an overall spray of Humbrol Aluminium, having forgotten that I'd run out of Humbrol Silver. This isn't a major problem, as the end result is perfect as a base for drybrushing in Foundry Spearpoint, followed by an ink wash in something yet to be decided.

I did spot a slight problem with the Tumbling Dice F86 Sabre models, however, which have two different fuselage bands scribed into the surface. They should all be diagonal but four of the twelve models have vertical bands. I have some spares in the box, so will replace the vertical band models with diagonal ones as soon as I can find my stockpile of tiddly magnets.

The four spares won't go to waste as I'll paint them up as black and white striped early war F86A's of the 334th FIS/4th FIW, rather than the later war F86E/F's of the 336th FIS/4th FIW, which will form the bulk of the models in the USAF arsenal, complete with the characteristic yellow-orange identification stripes.

Combat Over Korea

As I'm doing a Bag The MiG / MiG Alley project this month, I thought I'd get some more relevant reading underway with a digital copy of Combat Over Korea. I already have plenty of reference material for the Korean Air War, including loads of colour profiles, photos and after action accounts, so a general overview will be a useful source of inspiration and will help to set the context for scenarios. It has had some good reviews too, so it should be an interesting read.