Where did the last few weeks go?

 .....or what's my excuse for not blogging?

To be honest it's because I have been busy on those dratted 'Real Life' things and haven't had a lot of interest to post about.  From a wargaming perspective my early World War Two painting is almost done but my interest in Fistful of T34s sent me down a new rabbit hole looking at what are the best paint colours to use for the various German Camo schemes.  I swear they changed them more frequently than my socks!  I then tried a couple of choices out until I was sort of happy with the look.  More to come on this when I assemble some of the missing kit for late '42 Eastern Front use.

The Real Life (TM still pending) stuff included a long weekend away at the end of May with the Sealed Knot where we did a Seige of Colchester 1648 event.  The SK is to Civil War battles what the Reduced Shakespeare Company is to Richard the Third.  We don't really have the numbers to portray the scale of a major battle, but we try and I enjoy it.  This time out I was doing commentary and after only 30 some years doing guest appearances on the mic, I have been formally added to the commentary team.

The weather having been unseasonably warm after a period of fairly steady rain meant that garden had gone into overdrive.  which in turn means I have been, gulp, gardening.  I know, I did that last year, but that darn green stuff will keep growing.  I have to at least look like I'm trying to keep on top of things.

Last but very much not least, we had family staying with us while they had some heating and water refurb work done on their house over in the next village.  It felt a bit rude to disappear into the man cave while had guests (or so Mrs E told me) so I didn't.  And that M'Lud and members of Jury is my excuse for not blogging.

"Hang on Travellers"

 A line from the great science fiction TV series Firefly.  It's often taken as a clue that Josh Whedon the creator of the series had based the show on the SF RPG Traveller, although he has never directly confirmed this.  A quick dig around on the internet came up with this link Is Joss Whedon's Firefly based on the Traveller RPG he played? - Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange .  The comments strongly suggest it was.  Certainly the mix of weapons and technologies in the show mirrors that available in the game and the stories are the sort of thing that came up in games I played.  Even down to the prior military careers of some of the crew.  You see, in Traveller you rolled up a character who had already had a career, and gained useful skills, before becoming a freelancer, and sometimes they died during character creation,  yes Traveller had some interesting quirks folks (for a given value of interesting).  

I still have my original box set of rules on the shelf behind me as I sit typing this post but haven't played in years as I don't have a group of locals who are interested.  More to the point though for this post are the figures I still have.  These are mostly early Citadel from a range which was, I think, called Spacefarers with a couple of Minifigs and a Ral Partha casting added for variety.  The Citadel sculpts are true 25mm and for their age simply stunning castings, from the talented Perry twins.  The range was launched in 1979 and a full listing appeared in a catalogue in 1980 (it's amazing how erudite you can appear with the help of Google search)!

As nefarious a bunch as any role player could wish for

From left to right Marvin the Paranoid Android manufacturer unknown although as of a couple of years ago the range was still available on line, then two Minifigs followed by seven of the Citadel offerings and finally a lone Ral Partha figure.

I should perhaps have called this post "In the lead pile no one can hear you scream!" as I also found these un and part painted castings lurking in it's depths.

These guys would like the chance to be nefarious if only someone would paint them

A quick trawl through ebay shows prices ranging from £10 or more for an individual figure to £7 for a full set.  I suppose I should at least prime the unpainted chaps to prevent any risk of lead rot, although they have survived in an old OXO cubes presentation tin for 35 years or more so they may be safe.

A foray into Napoleonic's

I have told you before that Napoleonic's are not really my thing.  So of course my most recent gaming outing was a remote Napoleonic game run by Jonathan Freitag.  This was the Battle of Montebello in 1800 part of the campaign that led to Marengo.  It's not that I don't find the period interesting it's more that I don't understand the tactical niceties and can't handle painting the detail of the uniforms to the standard I'd want to achieve.  And yet, I have really enjoyed those games I have played, and so it was this time.  I suppose what I need is to find a set of rules that hit the spot for scale, tactical feel, rules complexity and required figure count.  It's not like I don't have the figures as I inherited some 15mm Minifigs a few years ago (details are here Small but Perfectly Formed: 15mm Napoleonic photos) so all I really need are a set of rules I like.  Shako 2 seemed a decent set but they look to be out of print, the set Jonathan used might be worth a look though.

So on to an after action report?  Sorry that's a bit tricky as I was having fun and neglected to get any screen grabs so you will have to wait for Mr F's write up or for one of my fellow generals to tell all.  The high spots were (in particular order):

• The Austrians overturned the historical result and won quite convincingly
• We poor French players had the most diabolical dice rolling luck
• and, our re-enforcements were delayed until the last possible moment by which time the Austrians were in full control of the objective!

That Bonaparte chappie was not happy with us!  Still it's another game under my belt.

Not quite a tank.....

 .....but certainly a British infantryman's friend.  Yes it's time for a British diminutive tracked vehicle, the Bren Carrier family.  There were two versions of the carrier in the early war years. the Scout Carrier and the Bren Gun Carrier but these merged into the Universal Carrier from 1940  I have struggled to find anything other than the Universal Carrier as a small scale model so it will have to proxy for sit's earlier brethren.  These were the workhorse of the British and Commonwealth forces, acting as mechanised pack mule, rapid MG team deployment system and much much more.  Don't want to carry your pack, sling into a carrier, need more ammo send it forward in a carrier, need AT rifle or MG or mortar support, here it comes in a carrier.

I now have five of these little gems - the Universal Carrier

These little beasts were based upon a pre war tankette chassis and were in production from the late 1930's until as late as 1960.  It's hard to build a World War Two British force without at least a couple of these useful little beasts.  They were not perfect of course, being open topped and lightly armoured but the idea was that troops didn't fight from the carrier but instead dismounted.  Of course that didn't prevent them from being used without dismounting but it wasn't their planned use.

These are GHQ models in 1/285 scale so the casting is oversized in comparison to the German light tanks I have been working on lately, which are 1/300, but  the real things weren't actually that much different in size to a Panzer I.  The Carrier is the same width as the Panzer I at 2.06 metres (6' 9") but is shorter at 3.66 m (12' 0") as against 4.02 m (13' 2") for the Panzer.  Height wise the Panzer is always going to be taller as it has a turret, standing at 1.72 m (5' 8") v 1.52 m (5' 2").

The only drawback I found when painting them is getting in to paint the crew figures other than that they are lovely castings.  Dare I say small but perfectly formed?

More Pathetic Panzers

 My obsession with pitiful Panzers continues.  This time it's the wholly inadequate Panzer I Auf B.  It has everything you want in an early war tank, or rather it doesn't.  Armour you can poke a stick through, weapons only really good against soft skinned targets and a crew of two one to drive the beast and one to do everything else.  On the plus side they had a reputation for reliability and as long as you kept them away from proper grown up tanks they were a useful recce asset and could work as a mobile pill box.

The mighty Panzer 1 Auf B

Still they are quite cute in a strange sort of way and would probably have put the fear of God into the Home Guard if Operation Sealion had actually happened.

The entire Pz1 force, I mean how many do you really need?

Castings are from Heroics & Ros in 1/300th scale so closer to 5mm than 6mm but at 75p per vehicle the price is smaller than average too.

More Panzers rolling off the production line.

Unfortunately they are not the biggest or best Panzers.  However, I have rather a soft spot for early war tanks as you will have noticed from earlier posts.  Not for me the King Tiger or even the Tiger I, no JagdTiger or Maus here.  Instead I present you with the mighty Panzer II Ausf B complete with 20mm autocannon.  All in stunning 1/300th scale from Heroics & Ros.  Apologies if you find the symbol on the air recognition flag offensive, but it's what they actually used.

The mighty (well not that mighty) Panzer II Ausf B.

In case you fear these may lack the required punch to deal with allied armour I have also added Panzer III Ausf Bs to the Panzer Army with a huge 37mm gun.  Yes, quake in your boots British Tank crews, bite your nails in fear you French Char-B jockey's, Germany's almost adequate tank force is upon you!  Plus as an added bonus it will be bolstered by half a dozen Panzer Is whose armaments are without even a 20mm autocannon.  No those bad boys only have a pair of machine guns.

The marginally more mighty Panzer III Ausf B

Actually I do have some Panzer IVs with a short 75mm lurking around, but , come on, who doesn't love a tank with armour so thin that a Boy's AT rifle is a significant threat to it's survival, eh?  It's the joy of gaming 1940 battles for us.

These are all fairly easy to paint compared to the mid and late war schemes.  Spray undercoat in white. Followed by a coat of Vallejo German grey and a dry brush of Ghost Grey.  Pick out the tracks in gun metal and the exhaust in a rust red-brown mix and that's pretty much job done.  Bases are cardstock painted Raw Umber on both sides to prevent warping, add to that a coat of heavy duty woodworking PVA and a sprinkle of fine sand and lastly some patches of fine flock.  I use cheap block paving jointing sand and a mixed up batch of summer meadow and spring grass flock.

In due course I will probably succumb and buy some mid war armour to go along with the handful of stuff I have already.  This will be focussed on mid to late 1942 for the Winter Storm campaign and onwards into '43 so I can have a couple of Tiger Is, After all it can't be real World War Two gaming without eventually adding a Tiger somewhere in the mix.

A Fistful of TOWs - Light

Following on from my aborted set of World War Two rules, I reverted to Fistful of Tows 3 (hereafter FFT3).  Well, I say reverted I didn't go all the way to the full set instead I spotted that Little Wars TV had dusted down the free FFT3 introductory set and retitled it a Fistful of T34s (lets call these FF-T34 going forwards).  This was done with full permission from the rules authors and is really just a repackaging of the existing introductory set from the FFT website.  As a bonus it is free (you know how much I like free don't you)

I had used the modern FFT3 introductory rules before splashing out on the full set and found they give a good game so I expect that the World War 2 set will do the same.  Actually the FF-T34 set doesn't need to drop a huge amount from the main rules as the period is much more straightforward than modern combat.  Artillery rules and airstrike rules are simplified and merged, close combat is removed and terrain is simplified.  Lastly the number of quality levels for troops is reduced.  They hit all the key rule concepts and  have a good feel of the full rules.

I actually read through both the original FFT3 introductory rules and FF-T34 and found a couple of differences.  The rules on tank riders are more complete on the FFT3 set so I added them back into FF-T34s.  I also added back the full range of quality levels.  I only added them back in as I want to try the free rules out in other theatres of World War Two.  But really, FF-T34 doesn't suffer from the lack of that stuff as it is intended for a specific campaign setting from Little Wars TV, called Winter Storm set in December 1942. This is also free from the Little Wars TV website.  The campaign is a linked set of battles based on the 4th Panzer Army drive to relieve Stalingrad.  Spoiler alert it failed! There are videos of the refights on the Little Wars site.

So if like JBM you were wondering if the rules are any good this is a great way to try them out.  Little Wars TV have even provided paper templates with top down views of the vehicles and other troops for the campaign setting and some paper buildings to help with terrain.  So you could try the rules out for a very small expenditure on printer ink and glue!

All of the Little Wars Tv freebies can be found here >Fistful of T34s - Little Wars TV

The original introductory rules are here >FFG-FFT3-Introductory-Rules-Modern-v06.pdf

There used to be data sheets published online by FFT.com with vehicle and infantry data but these seem to have disappeared.

As to how these rules compare to the ones I was working on, they cover pretty much the same things although they are at the one stand is a platoon level.  That said the full rules have an option for playing at a lower level where one vehicle stand is one vehicle and one infantry stand is roughly a section.  Which is around where my rules were sitting.  Other than that they cover weight of fire using a concept of Rate of Fire which has the same effect.  Combat works in a similar way and the spotting and artillery rules are clearer than those I was working with.  Plus as a bonus it was designed as a set of rules for 6mm usage.   All in all I really don't know what made me want to try to reinvent the wheel.