Zaggy Games

My old home town is pretty obscure and out of the way, apart from the Ginsters pasty factory, which is it's only claim to fame. Ooh arr. However, it does have a games shop believe it or not, located at the bottom of town in a sideroom of the newsagents.

It's called Zaggy Games, being next to Zaggy Lane, which seems as good a reason as any. It's the yellow building on the left hand side of the street in the photo above. There's a decent range of role-playing and board games, some of the ubiquitous 4OK and even some Bolt Action stuff for sale.

I bought some more models for X-Wing including a TiE advanced, an A-Wing and a Y-Wing, to round off my collection. I also had a nice chat with the owner who used to work in the RPG industry for WotC, hence the existence of his shop in the middle of nowhere.

If you're passing through, drop in and have a look.

Air War C21 Flashpoint Baltic?

The news today included a topical article on the potential for a Russian move against Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia at some point in the not too distant future. This set me off on one of the usual 'what if' wanderings, with AirWar C21 in mind.

I've been looking for an interesting modern or ultra-modern setting for this for ages but haven't had much luck, aside from the Alto Cenepa war and the Israeli -Syrian clash over the Bekaa valley. So, the current tension in the Baltic States ticks lots of boxes.

There is at present a NATO Baltic Air Policing mission which operates from bases in Poland, Estonia and Lithuania, with NATO states providing air cover on a rotational basis. The Italian air force is currently on duty with four Eurofighter Typhoons.

The potential for a small number but a wide variety of fighter types, drawn from a range of NATO participants, is one really cool aspect. There are the expected F16's flown by the Dutch, Polish, Belgians and Portuguese amongst others, but lots of other interesting variations as well.

The Italians and British use the aforementioned Eurofighter Typhoon, while the Czechs deploy the Saab Gripen and the Poles the MiG29 Fulcrum. On top of that, the Canadians have CF-18 Hornets while the French have Rafales and Mirage 2000's. The US have also deployed F15's from the UK, as and when required.

As you can see, there's lots of variety here and an escalation of the current situation could easily draw in several of the NATO contingents against a Russian threat to the region, not to mention the Scandinavians with their Falcons and Gripen.

It wouldn't be difficult to work out a series of linked scenarios for this, perhaps initiated by an interception 'gone wrong', which might make a 'not at all predetermined' Russian response much less questionable, at least from Mr Putin's point of view.

It wouldn't be the first time.

Anyway, as far as wargaming goes, the obvious choice would be 1/600 scale using the Oddzial Osmy range of modern aircraft, which includes all of the above and the Su27 for the Russians. I would use Tumbling Dice planes but there are some important missing types, so the O8 approach would seem to be the better option.

Again, this is all pie in the sky but I think it could be a lot of fun!

The Sword and the Sketchbook

I spotted a paperback copy of this in Trago Mills yesterday for £5 so snapped it up. It's fully illustrated with contemporary sketches by the likes of Melton Prior and covers most of the colonial campaigns of the Victorian era, from the first Afghan War to the Boer War. 

The sketches are very atmospheric and full of detail, with a splash of stiff upper lipped derring-do, as you'd expect. I've seen many of them before in other books but it's great to have them all here in one comprehensive volume. It also cost a third of the cover price, so well worth it.

It reminds me that I really should finish the last stages of my Dervish army for PITS and paint up an opposing British patrol for them to ambush, somewhere deep in the Sudan. This project has been mothballed for far too long, so it really should be dusted off and finished this year.

Panzer Campaigns

I've been playing through the free introductory version of this old school turn based game today, after I decided to try it out on the Kindle. It's pretty simple in terms of graphics and gameplay but I've enjoyed it a lot, as it definitely has the feel of a boardgame crossed with an old fashioned PC strategy game. I've had a bad defeat, a narrow draw and a minor victory so far, so I'm going in the right direction! If I get any better I may well buy one of the follow-up games in the series?

A Duel of Aces but Algernon Pulls it Off!

We're down in Cornwall at my dad's for a few days. He's a keen collector of second hand things and found this old hardback in a local charity shop, so bought it for me as he thought it might be interesting. This has indeed been the case and I've set off on yet another 'what if?' train of thought!

It's really well illustrated with photographs and has a text in both German and English. There's loads of photos that I haven't seen before and some fascinating information on the early years of the German operations over the Western, Eastern and Turkish fronts.

It got me thinking of both Duel of Aces and the now defunct Algernon Pulls it off! rules, with the various articles for them that have appeared in TFL Specials over the years. I suppose I could try both of them out in either 1/300 or 1/600, especially as Tumbling Dice have produced some new early war aircraft recently.

Why not 1/44th? I guess it's the obvious choice, given the excellent Wings of Glory and/or Wings of War pre-painted planes that are available, but cost wise it makes less sense than the smaller scales. I like the models and the fact that they're ready to use out of the box but they're not cheap!

The same goes for 1/72nd but for reasons of time consumption in kit construction, even though I already have a decent early war collection of Eindeckers, DH2' s and Nieuport 11's. These have been used several times for early war club games of our house rules Knights of the Sky.

It's all just a thought at the moment but it is the 100th anniversary of the 1915 Fokker Scourge later this year, so a little aerial jousting over the trenches would be very in keeping with the times. I also really fancy the Algenon Flies East option, which includes half a dozen or so scenarios for the Russian Civil War.

http://toofatlardies.co.uk/Algy.html

http://freespace.virgin.net/candc.russell/pageDuelOfAces.htm

Tally ho!

Silent Death

I put an Ebay offer in on a set of the old Silent Death space fighter combat rules today and ended up with the rules and unpunched counters for a tenner, which isn't too bad. I have a stash of the EM4 plastic space fighters that were originally designed for the Silent Death box set, so I can replace the cardboard counters with proper models for no extra expense.

I've read some good things about the rules and, even thought they're very old I'm hoping that they'll be fun and get the boys back into gaming, especially as they'll be able to paint up their own fighter units using the plastic models. The EM4 fighters were originally bought for the kids at Colours a couple of years ago, so it's a good result all round.

Bag the MiG [7]

It's been very slow progress with the Bag the MiG project this week but I did get the GW Nuln Oil wash done a couple of days ago, which is better than nothing. The planes now need a light drybrush of silver to brighten them up a bit before I undercoat the non-metallic bits in matt white. I'll probably take the USAF planes to Cornwall over half term to get this done along with the yellow, red and blue colours for the canopies, ID stripes and fuselage bands. I may even get the black-lining and decals done too?

F86 Sabre v MiG 15

The holiday reading list continues to grow with this Osprey Duel title added to the digital pile. I thought I already had it in the old-fashioned print version but a check of the bookshelves revealed that I didn't, so I downloaded a copy instead. The Duel series is a bit of a gimmick but actually they're pretty good, this one included, with plenty of factual detail and some excellent artwork.

CY6 Jet Age

A chap at the club mentioned these rules the other day and I thought I'd take a second look. I've played the WW2 version of CY6 a few times and, although it was impressive in terms of depth and detail, I always thought it lacked the tactical aspect and randomness that you get with BTH2. I also can't stand charts and tables, let alone loads of ratio calculations! It's buckets of dice and card based turn mechanisms for me..mumble, mumble, bah humbug.

Anyway, I've sent off for a copy of the Jet Age rules to see what they're like and to give them a try out once I've got the Korean War planes sorted. I think they'd be good for a couple of planes a side rather than massed dogfights over the Yalu, so will be focussing on just that. I've always fancied doing a Cold War Goes Hot style game or the Falklands War (which is featured as a mini-campaign in the rulebook), so these might just be the rules to go for..

...and if not, I can always fall back on AirWar:C21!

Wargames Bloggers Quarterly Vol 1 Issue 3

The latest edition of Wargame Bloggers Quarterly is now out and very good it is too. I was pleased to see that it doesn't focus solely on 28mm eye candy, although what there is is well worth looking at especially the WW1 Verdun game featured on the front cover. The accompanying article by Sidney Roundwood is also very well written in a fictional narrative style, which really adds to the atmosphere of the pictures. I'm thinking of submitting an article on painting 1/285th scale aircraft, as this would fit well with the remit of the journal and would give me an excuse to do some more painting. Good stuff!