Warlord Illuminati

   Had the great good fortune to play a game or two in John Stallard's games room in his impressive home in the centre of Nottingham, wargaming hub of the world. John is the Managing Director of Warlord Games. On the right is Rick Priestley, who designed Warhammer and Warhammer 40K. Both used to work for some other Games Company in Nottingham, the name of which eludes me.
 

1938: Gladiator

The last great British biplane fighter, immortalised in the defence of Malta in the form of Faith. Hope and Charity. This RAF fighter is a powerful addition to a Civil War Brigade.

Thank you Shaun for my birthday present.

The Karl Marx Landship

A close up of the Pride of the Red Band, the Karl Marx.

The Communist Resistance

It is a well known fact that the communist resistance consisted mainly of pretty girls in white ankle socks.

Battleground Kent

A lot of T34/85s in Kent this summer; just as well with all the Waffen SS roaming around

The Red Band

I have read through the rules for Brigadier '38 and like what I have seen so I have created a battalion to contest control of Kent.

Red Band
A communist volunteer force commanded by the Honourable Percy Threeforpe, late of Cambridge niversity & the Apostles. It consists of three companies: two shock commandos with burp guns and molotov cocktails and a militia company with rifles and shotguns. Fred Snit, a local convenor of the National Union of Nut Threach Checkers, is the political officer and a signaler (telephone engineer) and standard bearer make up te rest of the HQ staff.

Pride of the battalion is an old WWI Museum piece that NUTTC mechanics have got running and rechristened the Karl Marx.

The Red Band is curently allied with the Anglicans against the Black Shorts and the Kent Rural Trained Bands.

Calling Col Corbane

Here is the scale comparison of 1/72 wrecked buildings. On the left is the Airfix Field HQ in a wrecked building, on the right the Italeri model.

The figures from left to right:
28 ml Warlord
Heroic 40K
1/72 Plastic Soldier

Hope this is useful.

1938: Hawker Hart

My loving wife purchased a Corgi Hawker Hart in 20mm for my birthday, and for my1938: A Very British Civil War army. Spodes Blackshorts will need some air support. I am thinking of calling it Eulalie.

The Hart entered service in 1931 as a high performance light bomber. It was faster than the RAF fighter at the time, the Bulldog. This one is in '35 colours of the City of London 600 Squadron.

Muckleburgh Collection: Cold War Sentinels

 A Bloodhound missile and radar array from the Cold War. You may recall seeing these missiles used in Dr Who to destroy a cyberman invasion from space.

Muckleburgh Collection: T34

   A T34/85 from the Muckleburgh Collection, North Norfolk.

   Crude, brutal, efficient, its looks reflect function: a perfectly designed killing machine.

Crusader Flak Tank

I picked up an Altya die cast model of a 1/72 Crusader tank in truly aweful camo very cheap. A quick respray, weathering and kit-bash and 'voila'! A Normandy Flak-Tank. Okay the turret ain't quite right but good enough at this scale.

The tanks were withdrawn after normandy on the grounds that the Germans hadn't any aircraft.

On Display

If you are passing GW at Bluewater, my Ork Baneblade conversion is in the window.

Fortified Ruined House

A ruined house fortified as a strongpoint. Suitable for C20th or modern wargaming. It is based on a 1/72 Airfix kit.

I plastered it with different layers of paint and wash to get a 'churned' appearance. I am quite pleased with the result and can see this place defended by Panzer Grenadiers in my West Front '44 games.

Temple Manor, Stood, Medway

The Manor of Strood was given to the Knights Templer in the 13th C. and they took over the Manor House as an hotel as it stood on the north Bank of the Medway Eastuary near the Rochester crossing. The brickwork was added in the 16th C. It fell into disrepair under the local authority who allowed the manor to be turned into an industrial zone. It was rebuilt in the 40s by the Ministry of Works and saved for the Nation.

RatFight: Eastern Front

Now that Hail Britannia is put to bed I have turned my wargaming attention back to Rat-Fight. Shaun and I tested a purely military rather than pupl scenario using the second draft of the rule system.

It is late summer on the road to Leningrad. The Red Army is launching a series of disorganised assaults to slow down Army Group North. This is one of them. A German infantry platoon supported by a single light tank, a Pz II, is holding a hamlet just behind a river.

A Russian platooon supported by a light tank, a BT5,  crosses the river on an armed reconaissance spurred on by a commissar.

The Soviets are walking into a trap as the Germans have set up mg positions in the woods on the left to give them flanking fire on any attacker.

The Red Army cross behind the tank and come under fire from the PzII. Its 20mm cannon shells bounce of the BT7 which returns fire inflicting minor damage on the panzer that the crew ignore. The Soviet advance section attampts to move out to take cover behind the hill and takes heavy fire crossing the open ground. A number fall.

More Russians fall and few get up. This is turning into a fiasco.

Another burst of 20mm sets fire to something on the BT5 causing the crew to panic and abandon ship. More infantry go down, many of them casualties including the commissar. The segeant left in charge signals a retreat back across the river.

German casualties were miniscule and the Heer is soon pushing on across the river.

The war is not going well.

Summer finally arrives

Hoorah, it's summer finally. This pic was taken yesterday at Fistral Beach, Newquay. I was born in one of the houses on Pentire Headland at the back.

When I was a kid I earned cash in the summer by stacking deckchairs and clearing litter.

Fings Wot I Like: Loctite All Plastic Glue

Loctite sell an all plastic glue kit. The glue is superglue but the interesting part is this stick called Activator. It is misnamed as it is not a superglue activator like, say, Kicker.

What it does is coat polyethylene, or similar, surfaces in a substance to which superglue bonds. It makes assembling 'soft plastic' toy soldiers easy. The stuff dries in 30 seconds.

Highly recommended.

Mars Afghans

Mars are a new company to me from Eastern Europe. Here they have bought up one of the old hitorical 1/72 models from Esci and rejigged them as modern Afghanistans. The clothes can look a little odd in consequence but you get four of these sprues for not much more than a fiver, which is damned good value in anyone's book.

Panzer IV Models

I have just finished three 1/72 models from the Plastic Soldier range. I am really impressed by this range. The models are a perfect compromise between detail and durability. They are more detailed than the Armourfast range but less fiddley than an Airfix. The tracks come in two halves so they are far more detailed than Armourfast but nothing like as fiddley as Tamiya/ Italeri and a lot better looking than the Airfix polyethylene

The tanks can be assembled as anything from an early support tank to a PzIVH with 'skirts' and two commander variants are included (six models!). Superb value at £13 for three.

The pic below shows my complete PzIV collection. The Germans were forever tinkering with their designs, which is why their production stank, so a panzer battalion could have quite a mix of vehicles, especially with the Kampfgruppe system. For example, a PzIV with the short gun was captured in Normandy from an SS unit. The British Army called all long barreled PzIVs and IIIs 'Specials', the Germans called them 'Long'.

The models on the right are Ixo/Altaya diecast in North European camo, then Plastic Warrior and Frontline models in Kursk camo, and Airfix F2s in Kursk Camo behind. On the left are Airfix short-barreled tanks the original Panzer grey.

The final pic is a model size comparison, from left to right:
1: Airfix (plastic) 1/76
2: Frontline (resin) 1/76
3: Plastic Warrior (plastic) 1/72
4: Ixo/Altya (diecast) 1/72

Plastic Zombie Vixens???

This pic is doing the round on the internet. There is no mention of such a set on the WF website but, but, but, be still my aching heart. I hope it's not a spoof.

Kent Bf 109

Came across this lovely model (in 1:32?) of the 'Kent 109' at War & Peace.

The original is show below. It came down in 1940 during the Battle of Britain. What I assume is a full size model (or is it real?) is shown at the bottom.