1/72 Heller Dewoitine D 501 in Chinese colors

        During the Sino-Japanese War the Nationalist Air Force was in a desperate position trying acquire and deploy modern fighter aircraft to do battle with the Japanese. This need for aircraft was complicated by corrupt practices wherein the European "experts" hired as advisors also functioned as salesmen for their own profit. The result was a polyglot collection of often obsolescent aircraft. During this period the Chinese purchased twenty-four Dewoitine D-510Cs in 1938 and established a volunteer squadron of French pilots to fly them. After a short time there were disagreements over the terms of the volunteer's contracts and they were dismissed and the aircraft wee turned over to Chinese pilots. Although most Chinese aircraft were either overall light gray or, later on, overall dark green some were camouflaged in different patterns. One of these had a striking color scheme of small squiggly patches of dark green sprayed over a light gray base, I chose to depict that aircraft here.

       Wikipedia has a good short history (along with a list of the many different aircraft that served in the early years of the conflict)

hand painting the pattern was an exacting experience

Gaming Update, Game at my place 30SEP23 1900hrs

 Just like the title says; there will be a game at my place this Saturday at 7pm.

Shang It!! Parthians go down in flames

       A word from Anton: In an effort to play something other than one of the five or six "super-armies" in the first book I decided (foolishly in retrospect) to roll dice to randomly select the army that I would use. I ended up with the Parthians (army #51 if anyone still has a copy of the old WRG Ancients Army List book #1 lying around).  After The Housemartin told me what force he had chosen I attempted to craft a force to oppose him. The only reliable forces on the Parthian list are Super-Heavy Cataphract Lancers and Light Cavalry Horse Archers, all of the available allies being trash and no infantry worth the trouble. This was a poor choice to oppose an army equipped almost entirely with Two Hand Cut and Thrust weapons but it was what I had to work with. I'm sure that The Housemartin's retelling of the story will not be too rich in gloating, but it was a debacle.

A note from the Housemartin:  Anton is being overly critical of his troops, it did not end well, but along the way dealing with Anton's army was extremely difficult.  It was like trying to smash water with a hammer.  There was a lot of action, but nothing really happened except my troops kept getting slowly shot down.  

 

 

02Hundred Hours game packed up and ready to go

        Among a dozen other things demanding my time I managed to get the terrain laid out and finalized for my game at Pro or Con on Saturday. I then recorded the layout by taking pictures from all four directions (hat-tip to R.U.P. for that idea) and then packed it all up in a nice sturdy box for transportation.

 

a peaceful portion of northern Poland about to erupt into chaos

a view looking north across the table

 

I flirted with the idea of painting all the terrain black and then doing highlights in gray but the minis are painted in color so I wasn't sure how that would look, so things stayed in color 

looking east

 

looking south,

 I confess that I know nothing of Polish farming techniques from the middle 20th century 

so I just went for "postcard bucolic"

 

looking east

Trading Places, more silliness with WRG 6th Edition

 My apologies for the delay in this AAR, I managed to lose my army list and experienced some difficulties rebuilding the thing, for reasons which will be clear shortly.  

So I foolishly allowed Anton to talk me into swapping armies and he ran a Patrician Roman Army and I ran the Arab Conquest.  Anton's army was as follows (foreshadowing of the result Anton was so confident he typed up his army list).   

And Suddenly It Is Convention Season Again, Pro-Or-Con 2023 is September 23rd!

 

photo of the Battlefields 2023 Con 

        I am just getting used to it being Summer and I find Labor Day upon me as well as the beginning of the local convention season. Pro or Con will be run Saturday September 23rd, 2023 at the Livonia Elks Lodge at 31117 Plymouth Roan in Livonia MI. Follow the link to the Tabletop Events registry page and sign up to play or, better yet, run a game. This is a great location with plenty of free parking, an on-site kitchen and bar, loads of nearby restaurants. The convention features a wide variety of games, a friendly atmosphere, and a free bring-and-buy section where you can sell your excess toys and buy someone else's.  This is a great little convention and I always have fun there, make plans to attend!

Crating up the Trench Run for transportation

        Long ago I learned the misery of transporting terrain and minis to a convention only to have them damaged during transit (or by mishandling by players during the game). Over the years I have been progressively increasing the sturdiness of my transportation boxes to the point that I now build self-storing crates for any custom work. The Trench Run model is largely white beaded styrofoam, a desperately insubstantial material to expose to wargamers so I intended to frame it in a plywood crate from the beginning. This was greatly assisted by the fact that I built in on a sheet of 1/4" luan ply with wooden battens underneath for stiffness. All I had to do was add sides and a top.

       I went to Lowe's and bought a sheet of luan plywood, they have a frame-saw there so I saved myself a ton of work and had them cut the sheet into four 2x4 foot rectangles and then cut two of those into 1x4 foot strips. These would provide all the surfaces I needed to completely enclose the model. I grabbed a few sticks of 1"x2"x8' spruce to provide framing.

 

clamps and Titebond made sure that the sides were firmly attached

the styrofoam model will be glued in place after the crate is finished

Test-Run of the Trench Run

        Last Saturday we gave the Death to the Death Star scenario a run-through. The battle above the Death Star was epic with the X-Wings flashing back and forth across the table destroying Laser turrets, comms blocks and infrastructure like wild men and blasting the TIE fighters out of the sky in droves. With the path cleared the Y-Wings began their fateful approach only to encounter Darth Vader and his sidekick. The Y-Wings went down but got close enough to actually fire a photon-torpedo (it just impacted on the surface). In the meantime The battle above had grown tighter and more desperate as more TIE Fighters poured into the area and the X-Wings continued to blaze them into atoms. With the failure of the Y-Wings Luke, Wedge, and Porkins broke loose and dived into the trench to take their run at the unprotected exhaust vent.

 

A frantic furball of elite Alliance pilots and Imperial expendables

Gaming Update, Game at my place this Saturday 9SEP23 7pm

 

       J&R will be running his "Death of the Death Star" playtest for the scenario that he is is taking to Pro or Con. This will give a test-run of the larger combat scenario as well as the trench-run rules.

Star Wars Trench Run, The Dark Side Prevails, UPDATED

 

       Having watched the famous trench run scene a dozen times now I was struck by how very dark it in inside the trench (as it would be, there being no atmosphere to diffuse the light). With that in mind I test painted a couple of smaller sections with a base of flat black paint. In looking at it now it just seems too dark. Thoughts and ideas in the comments section are welcome.

 

 

       So, I asked around and the consensus was to  go with a very dark base coat then shoot white down from above to create the shadow effect. I went ahead and painted the entire model black (again) and patiently (yeah, right) waited for it to dry. Once that had (finally) occurred I grabbed a rattle-can of flat white and gave it a shot. The black paint absorbed the white paint like a sponge. And this is 2xPrimer coat paint! I sat back and sipped a bourbon and thought, then I fell asleep (a common occurrence when I devote time to thinking). By the time I awoke the white paint had dried and I gave it another shot, this actually made a difference, which heartened me greatly. I will give it another go in the morning but it is clear to see that some progress is being made. Now I just have to figure out how to paint the bottom of the trench.

 

 

a couple of shots of Krylon 2x Primer

 

the next morning it got a couple more coats.....it is beginning to really make a difference

 

I couldn't resist a little photo-editing

Death Star Trench Run Model Completed....except for paint, that is....

        I had an hour free this morning so I sat down and finished the build on the Death Star trench. Nothing special about the build, just the usual blueboard and Titebond, with a few little bits of "Woodsies" (available at most good craft stores, these very useful tiny circles and rectangles save a LOT of time when scratchbuilding). Aside from the Woodsies and the bulk styrofoam packing material the whole thing is scratchbuilt. The big question now is to go with all white with gray and black details or  (having re-watched the scene from the movie, which is much darker than I remember) go with a medium gray and use black and white for the details. 

 

a pilots eye view of the trench

 

the right side

 

the left side

 

 

the entire model with the right side laid flat

       In looking at it I think that I need to make the turbo-laser turrets a bit taller, they seem to be getting lost in the sauce. I am sorely tempted to add all sorts of surface detail, but this model is intended for convention use and will see some rough handling and trips in the car so I'm going to hold off for now.

Death Star Trench Run Model; or me and my big, fat mouth!

yeah, something lie that, but tidied up to allow game models to work in the space

        I was leaning on my friends to run a game at Pro Or Con and asked Justice&Rule about his long-posited but never presented Stars Wars "Attack on the Death Star" game. There had been a series of playtests a couple of years back but the project had lain dormant since then (as if I am one to talk, being the King-of-Half-Finished-Projects myself). J&R agreed but on the condition that I build the model of the famed trench with its unguarded exhaust port. A moment's contemplation (all geometric shapes? check, simple black & white palette? check, small size? check) and I agreed. Perhaps I should give things a full-minute's contemplation in the future. Be that as it may I work best with a short deadline and as there is but three slim weeks to Pro Or Con I am on a short leash indeed! So off to the workshop it was.....

Anton has gone DAFT!! A WRG AAR

So Anton came up with a new level of Lunacy to match the Full moon.  After randomly choosing which army book we would use, we each chose the other's army.  That is right, we chose each others armies that we had to fight with.  Anton chose The Patrician Romans for me.  I selected the Arab Conquest Army for him.  And to think we are decades old friends and we did such a thing to each other!   At least we remembered to get a picture at the start.  Neither of us wanted much terrain and basically none of it stuck anyway.  My village (I pretty much always take one) stayed and so did Anton's woods he stuck in the middle of my deployment zone.  Anton BADLY out scouted me 74:13 so I deployed first.