On the Workbench: WOTR & WW2 Naval

I made pretty good progress this week towards completing the latest Wars of the Roses batch of figures plus a little dabbling in WW2 naval:

Completed and ready to join the ranks are two units of Shire Longbowmen. 

Also on the WOTR theme, almost finished crossbowmen, handgunners and a unit of Pikemen. All WOTR figures are by Baccus.

And now for something completely different:

Continued -

A Haul of WW2 Ships and Vehicles

During our recent move, my eldest son cleared out his loft and presented me with a couple of ageing boxes. "Look what I found" he exclaimed.

The first box contained a mix of old Heroics & Ros armour and vehicles. I even found an old AA Crusader tank with pins for barrels! That has to be one of their earliest sculpts from the '70's. I had forgotten about these and it must have been about 25 years ago when I gave them to him. At the time I had ditched 1/300 completely for 15mm. In my defence, the micro-scales have come along way since then. 

I am hopeful that some of these, the softskins in particular, will be usable bulking out my existing collection.

The second box contained 1/3000 scale WW2 Navwar and Davco ships for the British, German, Italian, Japanese and French navies. I have begun sorting these out and it would appear most will fit in nicely with my present collection. I have never stripped paint from models so an experiment is underway. I am soaking a German destroyer in slightly diluted Dettol bleach which I shall leave overnight. If all goes according to plan, a scrub with a stiff brush will hopefully remove any stubborn paint. 

On the Workbench: WOTR & WW2

Well having unpacked and got all the furniture in about the right place I have been able to turn my attention once again to wargaming.

A home has been found for my painting desk and now there is no small matter of wargaming space! And on that score things are looking up! A room we had allocated for storage should be surprisingly empty. It will hopefully give me enough space to carry on from where I left off although my Waterloo sized game would be unlikely.

So having the painting desk installed I made some inroads into my lead pile:

Clockwise from top left: the last of my Baccus Wars of the Roses figures primed for the next battle in the Kingmaker campaign; primed H&R SS infantry; prep'd for priming 2D6 WW2 Soviets; very nearly finished WOTR archers; and 8th Army figures in various stages of rebasing to thinner bases.

It could be a week or two yet before I get anything on the tabletop but will hopefully be a continuation of one of my existing projects.

During my down-time I have been perusing some of my WW2 scnenario books - primarily designed for Rapid Fire rules but easily converted to Blitzkrieg Commander IV. One particular action caught my eye set in Normandy 1944. The road system on the scenario map matched the style of the roads on my terrain boards. They have been designed more for larger scales and are slightly sunken into the board. I have intended for some time to do something with these, basically raising the road to ground level and making it more suitable for 6mm. I would use it primarily for WW2 with a tarmacked  or similar surface. I will probably add this game to my 'to do' list which will give me the impetus to do something with this presently redundant terrain.

With regard to the blog, I hope now to provide more regular updates now that the house move is complete, helped of course by the lockdown! 

On The Workbench: Panzer IV F's for Africa Corps

Several years ago I purchased a GHQ Combat Command pack for the Africa Corps of 1941. I had considered selling it along with my clear out of 15mm figures last year having made the decision to switch completely to the new H&R sculpts. However, along came 2D6 Wargaming with their superb models leading to a rethink.

So in between painting Wars of the Roses and rebasing my WW2, I decided to open up the box and paint a few:

These are the 3 Panzer IV F's contained in the pack. There are also 3 Panzer II F's and 3 Panzer III F's along with 3 Sdkfz 222 armoured cars, a couple of Kubelwagens, 4 m/c with sidecars, an 88mm, a 20mm AA gun and various figures. 

These 3 tanks were something of an experimentation. For the first time I primed them grey and went for a slightly darker shade of sand than those previously painted. Overall I am pleased with the result and will probably stick with this shade for the Germans. Anybody who is familiar with GHQ will know how excellent their models are, the only sticking point being the cost (in the UK) and the fact they are sold in packs of 5. Hopefully we will see more from 2D6 which are comparable but in the meantime it looks like I may have to bite the bullet and buy a few more GHQ.

This will be my last blog update prior to moving house which is occurring over the next few days. It does not look as though I will have a dedicated wargames room so I may have to review some of my current projects, possibly placing them on ice for a year or two. At the very least I hope to explore gaming in a small space which is less of an issue with 6mm. 

So I will sign off now and will be back post house move when I hope to post more AAR's being the primary aim of the blog.