Now all that is left is the towers

     In a burst of creative energy I completed the rest of the panels that represent the ruins of Remagen, now all I have to do is figure out how to get the two massive towers and a railway onto the remaining 2'x2' panel. Needless to say there will be a cartoonish amount of compression going here.

 

along the way the park and the "not an intersection" panels got a coat of gray paint

the loony road net was inspired by my trip to Boston;

the city where you can see where you want to be but none of the roads will get you there

 

the pile of blue rubble in the corner is where the towers will stand 

suitably grim, 

but how do I compress it without losing that absurd sense of massive Teutonic power

The Damage Continues to Spread..

     So I had a couple of hours to myself this afternoon. Football had entered a phase that leaves me cold and no hockey on that I cared to watch so I found myself in the workshop once more. I need to complete five more panels to go with the test panel so there was nothing for it but to get stuck in. I framed up two more 2'x2' panels and got to work, first was a park with a small hill in the middle the other panel was a non-intersection. These are intended for use with What a Tanker rules and from past experience long lanes of fire tend to lead to static games of sniping. To avoid this I'm doing my best to break up the roadway with obstructions that shorten line of sight and allow lots of maneuver

 

knowledge is power (aided by gravity)

I'm sure that the verbose Sir Charles Oman 

had no idea how helpful he would be to my terrain projects 

Sometimes a new coat of paint can't make everything look better

     Having finished the build on the test panel last night I got up early and put a coat of dark gray housepaint over the whole thing. After a couple pof hours of drying-time I then gave the interior of the buildings a good spray with Krylon Primer Matte Black followed by a lighter spray of Gray Primer followed with a dusting of Matte White Primer. After allowing this to dry I think that might just be enough to make this good to go for a game......just five more panels to go!

 

"mistint gray", I wonder if that is a real color?

it has been a bit since I did any ruins,

 I should have held off on the kitty litter until after painting,

it soaked up an amazing amount of paint

I Ruined It!....a little re-think

      Well, that is a bit of a lie; it implies that there was a "think" going into this project. There is nothing like hands-on to bring things into focus. So I took a deep breath and did the most unlikely thing, I stopped in mid-stride and decided to build one 2x2 foot panel rather than going whole hog  and ending up in the wrong place. Having learned the hard way with the Castillo project I decided to use a wafer-board base and attach a frame around the underside before I started adding buildings (there were a few scary moments while I was nailing the completed Castillo model to the frames)

 

with the frame drying I began to try out different looks, 

 my first thought was to run the roads at a 45 degree angle

Madness moving at break-neck speed!

      I have to confess, few things get my wargaming blood up more than a new, over-the-top, terrain project. I have been throttling back since the Castillo because my space is finite (ample, but there is a limit to everything). However, when the proprietor of the local brick-and-mortar suggested that he needed some interesting terrain to haul around to wargaming conventions to promote his blend of What A Tanker and the Chibi Tanks that have flooded the modelling scene lately I couldn't resist the chance to build something big, silly and scheduled to leave my house just after completion. They were planning on hosting a game reflecting the US seizure of the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen near the end of WW2 and needed a battered town and the German end of the bridge.....how could I resist?

 

 so there I was, with my trusty Proxxon Hot Wire cutter and a pile of blueboard.........

how many of my crazy stories start like that?

Trying to keep up the pace....

     I might have over-done it on New Years Day, but I'm going to try to keep up the pace as long as I can manage. Today I completed the ME-109e that I had assembled on the 1st. I had forgotten how much longer aircraft take to paint. This wasn't helped by my refusal to buy special Luftwaffe colors for this one-off project which resulted in my hand-mixing all of the colors. All the same, the Airfix kit is a delight to build and very well detailed with good decals. I built it with the gear up and trimmed off the props (I resisted the urge to put a thin sheet of clear plastic on as spinning blades) then stuck a bit of steel to the bottom to give my magnetic aircraft flight base a thing to hold onto. No IPMS show stopper here but a decent looking model all the same.

 

again I'm left to wonder why they bothered with camouflage 

when the aircraft is covered with huge markings and has yellow wingtips

Hitting the Ground Running

    Having looked backward in my last post I have decided to look only forward with this one. To start the year off right I spent most of New Year's day in the workshop and got a couple of things dome and a few more started. Having a hard deadline of 12JAN19 (Spartacon) really put a fire under me to complete some of these tasks so I can't claim an entirely altruistic motivation. Truth be told all of these little projects are to support games that I am running there. I'm signed up for another convention in February and a further one in March; hopefully I can maintain this level of productivity!

 

templates for my WW2 tank game; artillery, strafing-run, dive-bomber

these support mission come in three levels of intensity so the templates reflect that;

mounting board and acrylic paints did the trick

Battle of Almanza 1707-2007 reenactment video

 I just wish I knew enough Spanish to understand what they are shouting for orders

      I found this interesting, particularly for the example of firing by rank and how very open the formation was when executing it.  Almanza was the battle in eastern Spain that pretty much doomed the cause of the Hapsburg pretender to the throne. The uniforms are interesting, I wish I had seen this earlier on; I would certainly have wanted that purple and red unit (seen in the background of the above picture) in my collection!

Airfix HS 123 in 1/72 scale

     I have added a second game at Spartacon this year, I will be running a big 1/72 scale armor game set in southern Russia in the summer of 1942. In reviewing my stock of German ground support aircraft I found that I was rather short-handed. To remedy this I dug deep into the "this was once an important project" pile and recovered an MPC copy of the redoubtable 1970 vintage Airfix Henschel HS 123. I had three of these kits but had never opened the box (confession time, they have been in that project pile since 1984, yes, upwards of thirty years) so could only guess what the model looked like or how well it had been molded. Having built a few of MPC's other products in the past I was prepared to be disappointed.....

     To my surprise and delight it was perfectly molded and cleanly cast, with excellent surface detail and superb fit. It took less than twenty minutes to build the model and just over an hour to paint it. The only unimpressive feature was the decals which were rather thick. If I had a bottle of Solvaset around this would have been less of a problem. Anyway, I now have a nice little addition to my German airforce and have added an airplane to yearly out put.

 

the model was dream to put together, only small seams at the wing-root

Now I'm in Trouble

The main thing stopping me from building the new Cruel Seas models was the fact that the models are big enough for the crew to be visible but they don't come with them, that and I would have to paint them........

     Then I saw this:

     And they come pre-painted........

Year In Review, late Addition Update

 

I got roped into running another game at Spartacon and needed to add some air support

      No, I'm not trying to bring you the highlights of a year in the hobby in one simple post. I am just looking back at what I have managed to get completed over the course of the last year. I promised myself that I wouldn't buy more figures than I managed to paint, in this I have been largely successful as my purchases have been minimal.

      Unfortunately so has my figure output.

      One of the advantages of blogging is that it forms a record of painted figures and purchased figures. In looking back over the years worth of posts I see that I have managed to complete 84 mounted figures, 82 foot figures, two tanks and seven large terrain pieces or models. Not a particularly stunning output. I added a 1/72 Henschel HS 123 just today (20DEC18)

 

of all the things I made this year this is the one I like the best

it worked out as planned and got me motivated to build the rest of my Dark Ages stuff

 

these are the ones I am least pleased with; I look at them and wonder what I was thinking?

wrong period, wrong scale......as gaming toys they are OK but I don't game ACW!

Of Course I Fell For It!

 

free stuff that isn't really free, OK, I'm a sucker

      You have to hand it to Warlord, they are pretty good at marketing. They bring out Cruel Seas, a new rule-set and the attached models and then they give away just enough of the models to get your attention. I mean, I was going to buy the magazine anyways but then I noticed that you get a choice of the British MTBs OR the German E-boats. Obvious answer; buy both copies! So I did, Warlord wins big time but from my point of view I got $36.00US worth of product for $18.00US of cost and I can give the spare magazine to one of my wargaming buddies. The real question now is; Was it worth it?