Pre-Dreadnought Summer Project INWARD 2022

I've decided that my next project after the Strength and Honour Parthians are finished, will be the Italian and French (and then British) 1/2400th pre-dreadnoughts, which are all based and undercoated ready to be painted. The aim will be to have two fleets ready for International Naval Wargaming Day in August, with some practise games having been played beforehand using the Broadside and Salvo fast play rules. The ultimate goal will be to replicate my extensive fleets of 1/2400th French and British Victorian ironclads, so that I can run a 'What If?' campaign set in the 1890's to parallel the games I've played set in the 1870's. I'm really looking forward to it! 

Red Rocketeers Rampant!

 

The bonus scenario for the Khalkhin Gol supplement, Red Star Rampant, is now finished and is available from the Bag the Hun FB group if you'd like to download a free copy. I haven't play tested it yet but it should work fine, give or take some tweaking of the rocket rules, as they may be too effective or a damp squib, depending on how it work in action. I'll run a playtest as soon as I have the time, then make any adjustments needed in retrospect. Tally Ho! or possibly Banzai!

AK47 Republic Facebook Group?

 

After years not being on Facebook, I took the plunge in 2021 and signed up, primarily due to the demise of the old Yahoo groups and their widespread migration to the platform, as well as the existence of new groups that I have an interest or involvement in. However, I'm now thinking of setting up a group myself, not for Bag the Hun as that's already up and running but for AK47 Republic, which I have been unable to find as an existing FB group. 

This would be for both the 'classic' rules and also the subsequent Reloaded version, with space for photos, game reports, modelling tips and house rules, as well as spin off variants for other settings. It would hopefully complement the RFCM Forum, where much of this sort of thing can be found, but reaching out to a wider audience of AK47 enthusiasts in the way that FB seems to be able to do. 

Good idea? Bad idea? What do you think? I'd be really interested to know. Thanks.

Khalkhin Gol Bonus Scenario: Red Rocketeers

 

One of the scenarios that I didn't include in my Bag the Hun Red Star Rampant article for last year's Lard Mag involved the first combat use of RS-82 air to air rockets by the Soviets on 20th August 1939, when five rocket equipped I-16 elite pilots led by Captain N.Zvonarev launched a successful attack against a formation of Ki-27 fighters that were escorting Ki-21 bombers on a raid over the Khalkhin Gol front lines: Jim's Wargames Workbench: Rockets! (jimswargamesworkbench.blogspot.com)

I decided not to write this one up at the time, as it involved too many aircraft, but I'm going to scale it back to represent the attack by Zvonarev's rocket flight, supported by a zveno or two of I-16's, leaving the rest of the Soviet fighters out of the equation. I'll also scale back the Japanese fighter numbers to make the scenario manageable and leave out the Ki-21's bombers, as they didn't play a role in this part of the action and just flew on past. I'll have a crack at this over the next couple of days, then post it on the Bag the Hun FB group and on the TFL forum as a bonus scenario. 

Bath Tubs and Clanky Tanks

Thanks to a tip off from Graham and Neil, I have now ordered a couple of 15mm models from Syborg 3D Printing for the SCW project, both of which are fairly unusual and of limited use but are good additions nonetheless. The first is a Constructora Field improvised armoured car that I can use with my anarchist unit as an optional extra, as an alternative to the more expensive Peter Pig model and alongside some home made, scratch built improvised armoured trucks. 

The second is a favourite WW1 tank that I also have in 28mm for my Back of Beyond Bolshevik army, a Schneider CA1, a very small number of which were used by the Republicans at the start of the war in Madrid. I haven't found a cheap 15mm version of one before, so I'm chuffed to add one to the line up, even if it's a 3D printed model which I'm not keen on. I'll use this one as ad hoc armoured support for the anarchists again, if only so I can paint it up with lots of slogans and perhaps a flag?

Tiznao or Never

 

I've been trying to find some 15mm and/or 1/100 scale models of improvised armoured vehicles for my For Whom The Dice Rolls Spanish Civil War project but without much luck. There used to be some available from, both Stronghold Miniatures and QRF but both of these options are no longer available. Peter Pig have a handful of various armoured cars and trucks but they are resin and have thick cast on bases, which I'd have to remove to make them look half decent, while they're also not cheap at about a fiver a pop, not including postage. 

I think the only option will be to do some scratch building with plastic card, lego blocks and other bits and bobs, to create some generic armoured 'tiznao' for my Anarchist militia. I don't think it would be too difficult but they might not be exactly like the actual vehicles, although I suspect only the purists and rivet counters would notice? I have found this site, which includes several larger scale card models to download, some of which might re-scale to 1/100 with a bit of work, with another possibility being to use them as templates for my own plastic card construction efforts:

Landships II

Holiday Fun and Games

I'm on holiday at the moment so there's nothing happening on the workbench. Instead, I'm playtesting the latest edition of Night Fighter Command, which is almost ready for publication as a free set of solo air wargaming rules. The first sortie after action report is up on my other blog, with more to follow:

Tea and a Wad Wargaming: Night Fighter Command Update: Sortie 1

I'll also be playing some more solo games, including Corvette Command, the convoy escort precursor to the night fighter system, as well as Bismarck Solitaire, a roll and write game of naval operations in 1941. I've even brought along a couple of favourites of mine, Aquitaine, a Society of Ancients game set in the Hundred Years War that I used to play years ago, along with Battle Ravens, which is great fun.

It's all happening over on the other blog:

Tea and a Wad Wargaming

Strength and Honour Army Scratch Building Solutions

I was looking for some terrain templates for Strength and Honour today when I found this set of small laser cut templates, which are designed for casualty bases, objectives and the like, or as Warbases calls then 'McGuffin' bases. As they are all relatively small I was wondering if I could use them as warband blobs, glued down to 120mm x 60mm bases then skimmed with green stuff or milliput, the top surface and edge then being scribed to represent figures. I've seen mdf squares being used this way for Republican and Imperial Roman legions, so I think it's worth a try for Dacians or Ancient British.  If it doesn't work, I can always use them as they are intended anyway, so it's a win win situation. 

Lasercast Starter Armies

 

I'm looking to create a Dacian or Ancient British army after I finish my Parthians but I'm not very keen on the Antonine Miniatures warband sets, as they don't look very realistic unless you use lots of green stuff to fill in the gaps between the castings. This leaves me with two options, either to scratch build an army which is quite an interesting idea, or to source one from overseas, specifically from Lasercast in Australia, which makes fantastic laser cut ply units that you just pop out and paint. I really like their stuff and it's not too expensive until you factor in postage and the dreaded customs duty, the latter being the thing that kills off the whole idea. I've been stung too many times before by the added duty, which can double the cost of an imported parcel, so it's going to have to be the DIY option I think, using either FIMO or green stuff to create some warband hordes, backed up by some cavalry and chariots from Antonine Miniatures. At least it will be cheap!

AK47 Interwar Banana Republics

I got very bored on the ferry journey yesterday so ended up jotting down some random thoughts about an AK47 based set of rules for interwar Banana Republic games. The inspiration for this came from my long forgotten ideas for an AK47 German Revolution mash up, which got as far as two army lists for the Freikorps and Spartakists that are available on the RFCM forum, if you are interested. That and some background reading that I've done on the Peru-Ecuador war of 1941, the Chaco War of 1932-35 and the various Central American 'Banana Wars' of the 1920's and 1930's, amongst other vaguely relevant things. 

The idea is simply to adapt the rules as they stand to an 'imaginations' interwar setting, with new army lists and flow charts to include a right wing Dictatorship, a Nationalist Government, a left wing Peasants and Workers movement and possibly an Interventionist army (US Marines anyone?), all based on the existing stuff in the AK47 rules but with a South American twist. The other changes would mainly involve adapting the technology deployed, for example, swapping RPG's for AT rifles, obsolete WW1 tanks for 'old' tanks, adding improvised armoured cars, mounted troops and so on.

These changes wouldn't be extensive but the army lists and flow charts would require quite a bit of rewriting to add some 'banana republic' flavour to the game, with some new rules also added for special events, artillery bombardment, cavalry and even trains. The armies would be fun to assemble using Peter Pig figures of course, with plenty to choose from in the WW1, WW2, Spanish Civil War and Mexican Revolution ranges, with suitable vehicles also available from QRF and Zvezda, not to mention the 3D printing option. It would also work well in 10mm, as there are lots of useful things in the Pendraken range.

I think this would be lots of fun but it's only an idea at this stage and I have no plans to go beyond some basic rules scribbling at the moment.