Author Archives: kgsmyth55

A good day to travel to Pensacola

To say I’ve hit a gaming dry spot is a gross understatement. Yes, I’ve been painting and planning, but I haven’t played a legit miniatures game since DANG at the end of December.

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Tennessee and Tuscaloosa slowly make their way around Santa Rosa Island, while Nashville speeds past them on its way to reengage Fort Pickens. All ships in sight-Tennessee, Tuscaloosa, Nashville, Stonewall and North Carolina (Scorpion) are Thoroughbred models.  The Fort is Bay Area Yards’ Fort Jackson.

But today I packed up a pile of my !/600 ACW ships, my big star fort, headed north to pick up Dave Schueler and made our way to The Panzer Depot to meet David Sullivan and try out my Pensacola game.  In order to do that, of course, I had to survive some ridiculous Puget Sound traffic, but the less said the better.

The plan was to walk through my Pensacola scenario.  I knew it was likely just the three of us to do the walk through, so I took on the game master’s role of running the fort, while the Dave’s took on the role of running the Confederate fleet.  This was strictly a play test, and I had some specific goals in mind.

  1. Could the hundreds of guns mounted in Fort Pickens be homogenized down to a few simple die rolls per turn.
  2. Could the Confederate ships mount a destructive attack on the fort?
  3. Was the game interesting enough to hold players’ attention for four hours of game play?

At the same time, I omitted a couple of important pieces of the scenario.  There basically was no Union player.  They get to run some Union naval pieces they’ll get to choose from. They were not available today in order to keep things simple.

David took the Bahama Squadron including the ironclad sloops Stonewall and North Carolina, as well as the Nashville from Mobile. Dave took the remainder of the Mobile squadron, including the rams Tennessee II and Tuscaloosa, as well as the wooden gunboats Morgan, Gaines, and Selma. Their mission was to inflict sufficient damage to Fort Pickens to force it’s surrender at the end of the scenario.

First, a confession about Ironclads.  It’s a set of rules that I dearly love.  I’m certain I’ve played those rules more than any other I’ve ever owned.  But they are very much a product of their time: complicated tables, a series of die rolls for each and every gun fired and hit scored. In 1979 that is what people wanted.  But they are an impediment today.  Though I have played many different sets of ACW naval rules, I still believe Ironclads gives the best feel of the period.  I’ve run games using these rules at conventions before, and players have enjoyed them.  My goal was to take the rules, do some slight modifications, and make them just a little more playable for a convention setting, retaining every bit of the historical feel the rules impart.

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A bit wider view of the table as Selma travels around the bar at the harbor’s entrance and Morgan sits silently, most of her crew dead after a boiler explosion. Selma is a Bay model. The Morgan is Thoroughbred Figures.

One of the things I did to simplify the fire from Fort Pickens was divide the fort into five faces.  The Confederates would have to inflict critical damage to three of the five faces to force its surrender.  The fort, with literally hundreds of guns, would return fire.  I kept it simple by requiring a simple die roll by each ship in the target face’s arc of fire.  The highest die roll would be the target for the fort that turn.  If ships tied for the highest die roll, there would be multiple targets.  After targets were identified, each one would suffer a six sided die roll that determined the number of hits, 1-4 per turn.  then there was a simple die roll for each hit on a table divided for ironclads and wooden ships. The die roll spelled out the damage.

The job of the Confederates was simple: pummel the fort.  They would play the game with the goal of inflicting as much damage as possible. When the game was over, damage would be assessed, and morale losses taken by the fort caused by loss of armor, guns, crew, fires or magazine explosions and comparing it to a modified morale level would determine if the fort surrendered or not.

We played the game for about two hours.  David and Dave are Ironclads veterans and knew quite well what they were trying to do.  We decided immediately to scrap order writing.  It would prevent collisions entering the constricted ship canal and perhaps remove an element of humor for the game master, but it was one step we could get rid of and keep players concentrated on their goals.

With that, the first move was taken and the fort was pounded. The North Carolina, with it’s turreted British naval guns was by far the most dangerous, doing huge amounts of armor damage, while the Mobile squadron with its slower ironclad rams and narrower fields of fire had difficulty getting lined up.

But the fort dished out its own volume of fire.  After each turn the Confederate ships in each face’s field of fire would roll a six sided die. The high roll would be the target for the fort that turn.  It became a bit of a comedy to see who would be the lucky recipient of the fort’s attention.  One turn Dave rolled four sixes for his five ships.   They all took damage.  As you can imagine, hits on the ironclads were largely ineffective.  Lots of minor armor hits and no-effects, but occasionally they’d get whacked pretty good.  The Stonewall took a fairly painful waterline critical penetration that resulted in flotation damage and speed loss, but that was an outlier.  Nashville and North Carolina both took minor steering hits, but both resumed their mission of destruction against the fort.

Much different story on the wooden vessels.  The Morgan was hit repeatedly, and eventually suffered a critical boiler explosion that virtually disabled the ship.  The other wooden vessels, Selma and Gaines, took less damage but were finding a way to exit the area at the end of the game. All suffered serious armor damage, though they were still fighting their guns.

As I explained, we played about two hours of game time.  Figure that at the convention we might have as much as three and a quarter hours given set-up and teaching noobs the rules. They would also likely be less efficient at running the Confederate ships-but maybe I’m wrong. By the end the Fort was in serious trouble.  It’s total morale value was reduced from 24 points to 8.  There was little reason to believe they wouldn’t polish off Fort Pickens, so we called it. We also talked it through.  We all agreed the fort would be in better shape with Union defenders.  I shared my ideas for those defenders, but honestly I think I’m going to put together two or three packages for the Union players to choose from, which will each include a couple of ships and additional shore defenses.

All in all, I considered the playtest a success:

  1. The fort gunfire was very smooth.  Eliminated the too hit rolls for hundreds of guns per turn and just went with hits.  Fort gunfire maybe took five minutes each turn. I will be adding an additional penetration damage to the Ironclads column, but otherwise I’m happy.
  2. The Confederates showed they could definitely do damage to the fort.  If they had more gun hits, the game would have been over.  I need to take a look at the effect of cumulative crew losses. We already agreed the loss of five guns in a fort face would reduce the number of hits inflicted by the fort by one.  Maybe the same with crew losses.
  3. Was the game interesting enough.  Well, if it was just the Confederates pounding the fort into submission, I think it would be a snooze, though maybe it would be enough for some players early Sunday morning. But adding a another shore battery and Union ships to the fort’s defenses would give the Confederate player plenty to do.

It leaves me with a little more tweaking to do but not much.

 

 

 

Miss Rock and looking ahead

It’s March 5th and we’re about 12 weeks out from Enfilade. It’s a tremendously busy time for me at school.  We just finished a newspaper deadline, the yearbook is on perpetual deadline, and all that means extra nights at Emerald Ridge. I don’t object.  I really don’t.  I love my job and I love my students.  Add to that a state convention to get ready for and a national convention in six weeks in Los Angeles, and there is just tons of stuff to do.

Unfortunately, that means little time for painting or playing games.  It is what it is and there is just no point in complaining–but to say I haven’t considered what retirement might mean would be a lie.

But I have been able to pick up my brushes a bit and make some progress.  I finished the Miss Rock hydroplane sponsored by KISW radio in 1983.  I loved the color scheme and gave it a try.  Nothing terribly tricky, just black and white with Vallejo Vermillion and Deep Yellow accents. It puts my picklefork flotilla at four with two left to paint for the convention.  They will be the identical hulls: 1973 Pay ‘N Pak and the 1976 Atlas Van Lines.  The hulls are a one and only, as Atlas picked up the Pak “Winged Wonder” as the latter began experimenting with new designs.

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Miss Rock joins the other three boats.  They will race as a separate event at Enfilade in May.

I really am hoping to pick up some additional boats from Shawn.  I’d like another ten or so–a lot of the cab forward boats so I can do the legendary “Blue Blaster” of 1981 as well as other boats of similar design.  Would like a few more of the classic shovel nose hulls too.

Looking ahead

Will probably be trying the MSD 1/300 Swordfish for the Channel Dash scenario.  Dave, ordered a pair and they definitely look more manageable than the Ros/Heroics planes.  I hate to be a quitter on miniatures, but the Heroics planes are not good.  Building any biplane is hard in 1/300–the planes are small.  But these are super difficult.  I’m also going to order a couple of the MSD PB4Y-2 Privateers.  These are navy patrol bombers based on late war the B-24. They are just nasty both as patrol bombers and defensively, absolutely bristling with guns. It also gives me a chance to try out MSD, who started out with the Luft46 range of planes.

En Garde

I picked up the Osprey En Garde! rules.  I had been waiting for them to come out and overlooked the fact they were actually released in November.  Based on the sucessful Ronin rules, these Renaissance era rules combine skirmish combat with the tactical flavor of the period.  Aztecs, Scottish Border reivers, Three Musketeers are the focus of the rules.  THREE MUSKETEERS!!!  Count me in.  My completed 40mm figures are sitting in the garage waiting to play a game.  Unfortunately, I may have to add a few figures to them to really do much.  Not many figures per side, but I’m thinking a few pikemen and command figures may be called for to make a Huguenot command.

Next week I get together with a couple of Dave’s to try out our Ironclads scenario at the Panzer Depot in Redmond.  I doubt we’ll be able to play through the entire scenario, looking instead to see how the fort fire works and whether the Confederate ships can do enough damage to Fort Pickens.  I’ll also be trying to make sure the game doesn’t bog down too terribly.

Less is More.

Since my last post I completed exactly one miniature, the Miss Rock.  I did make some progress on the Riders of Rohan, but not close to finishing them.  Hoping to wrap them up this week. No new figure purchases + 1 hydroplane puts me at +25 for the year.

Music to paint by

Best of Cream

When I was 13 I bought a copy of Best of Cream.  Yes it was an anthology by the British supergroup. I think I heard two songs on the record before buying: “Sunshine of Your Love,” and “White Room.”  I bought it instead of repaying a friend for an order he made to the Soldier Shop in New York.  I was terrible.

Ultimately, it was a great record I really enjoyed listening to.  Unfortunately it was a record that was relatively unknown by a lot of my peers.  I was in the eighth grade and I brought the album to school and nobody had ever heard of Cream.  I was suddenly the cool kid listening to something nobody else had.  I think that lasted for twenty minutes before I returned to being the nerdy kid who built plastic models and played Avalon Hill games.

I usually avoid “Best of” collections like the plague. I believe you learn much more about a band by listening to all of their music without just cherry picking the best.  Unfortunately, being able to buy individual MP3’s have made us lazier or less mature listeners. Alas, I have no other Cream albums, but some day I’ll have all of them: Fresh Cream, Disraeli Gears, Wheels of Fire, Good-bye.  But with “I Feel Free,” “Crossroads,” “The Tales of Brave Ulysses,” “Badge” and other great songs to go with those previously mentioned, this is a very good filler. The cover is cool too.

Henry V’s Navy: Review

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This is one of the naval history books I snagged a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, and I confess a certain degree of initial disappointment at the book’s slim profile.  There are only 157 pages of text.  But my initial sorrow was quickly set aside once I began reading.

Ian Friel’s study of King Harry’s fleet focuses on the Royal Navy, those ships built, purchased, or captured for the king. Like many historians of this period, Friel struggles a bit to share what can be known and what must be surmised based on the evidence.

But what Friel is able to share is extremely valuable to understanding the importance of controlling the sea lanes to projecting  English power into France during the Hundred Years War

Friel does a great job of helping the reader understand, creating a common language to use when discussing the naval war between England and France in the early 15th century.  He limits his discussion largely to the Royal Navy, the king’s navy, or those ships purchased, built or captured and a part of Henry’s fleet as opposed to the many vessels and crews, privately owned, “arrested” and put into service as fighting vessels or transports for the king’s army.  He also carefully explains the classes of ships: great ships or carracks, ships such as cogs, and then oared vessels, barges and ballingers that all had important roles in King Henry’s navy. Friel goes on to explain further amount typical crews and likely armament for many ships.

Only after the reader has reached an understanding of Henry’s Navy, does Friel attempt to report the important naval combats accompanying the invasion of 1415 that led to the siege of Harfleur, and subsequently the battle at Agincourt.  He also recounts the Normandy campaign of 1417, the Battle of La Chef De Caux, off the Seine estuary.  Friel emphasizes the importance of the navy in its seakeeping role-ensuring the sea lanes were free of French ships, and just as importantly those belonging to their allies, the Castilians and Genoese. Finally, he includes the role of the navy in the siege of Rouen.

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end.  The navy, a costly arm of royal power went in to decline as ships could not be maintained, rotted and simply sank in port. In most respects the story of Henry V’s navy is a mirror of the Hundred Years War, enjoying great success, but always costing more than England can afford, and silenced when resources became scarce.

My chief revelation from Henry V’s Navy is the important role oared vessels played in the royal fleet. Though these vessels were small with relatively small numbers of armed men, they played an important role in scouting and seakeeping. I had always believed oared vessels to chiefly a feature of Castilian and Genoese fleets, but clearly I was mistaken.  Gonna need to add some oared vessels to my cog fleets.

This is a very enjoyable, highly accessible book, and if you have an interest in the Hundred Years War and hope to understand the important naval aspect of Henry V’s campaigns, it is well worth your time and money.

What’s on my painting table. 

Well, this is pitiful.  I haven’t finished anything recently.  I’ve been stuck at school a lot.  But I did start working on the Miss Rock KISW hydroplane from 1983.Nearly done, need a bit more yellow trim on the numerals, some touch-up and varnishing. A simple color scheme, but I really like it.

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I’ve made slight progress on my Riders of Rohan, but it is something.  The riders are now mounted on their horses, and I’ve made some progress on the two bowmen.

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Music to paint by

I’ve written about my love of Blue Oyster Cult.  I went to see them for the second time at the Emerald Queen Casino on Saturday night with some friends from work.  I wrote a review of the show here.  BOC comes to EQC fairly regularly, and I can’t recommend their show highly enough.  Though Eric Bloom and Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser are the sole remaining original members, the band is incredibly talented, and play with passion and professionalism.  Bloom is a great frontman, and Buck is simply the greatest guitarist I’ve ever seen.  The tickets are cheap for a show these days (we paid $25 for view seats), and even though a concert at the Emerald Queen is liking watching a show in a large high school gym, it was still wonderful.

 

This Bud’s for me

Though my interest in hydroplane racing  waned by the time I became an adult in the mid-1970’s, Seafair was still an important annual event. By 1975, I moved to California and back and been away from the Northwest racing scene.  When I returned, many of the boats of my youth were long gone–no more Miss Bardahl, the Gale boats were gone, and so was my interest in following the sport.  I lived in the Bay area for five years and my interests were the Giants and A’s, the 49ers and Raiders, and that team that played basketball in the Seattle Center Coliseum–those Sonic guys.

Even so, as Seafair approached each summer, I’d catch the buzz and find a boat to root for.  One boat I never rooted for was Bernie Little’s Miss Budweiser. By the mid 1970’s the Budweiser had gone from something of a joke in the mid 60’s, a regular finisher, but not a winner, and developed into a powerhouse. Little’s gold, and later red hydros went on to dominate the sport for decades, though there would be intervals when a new team seemed to surprise him with a new design or new technology.

I hated the Budweiser team.  They were like Tom Landry’s Dallas Cowboys and George Steinbrenner’s New York Yankees.  They had money, they could build the fastest boats and hire the best drivers, and I hated them for it. Between 1969-2004, a period of 35 years, the Budweiser team won 16 Gold Cups and dominated the APBA high points standing, winning 24 times.

1973 was a big year for the beer boat. Purchased from the the Pay and Pak team, it featured the picklefork hull design, though it had not yet placed the driving compartment in front of the engine, “cab forward,” and it retained the traditional fighter plane tail. It continued with its striking, but familiar color scheme of gold, white and red.  Though it was fast, and was driven by the extremely talented Dean Chenoweth, it would barely lose the APBA high points championship to the radically re-designed Pay n Pak boat, “the Winged Wonder.”

One of Shawn McEvoy’s designs simply is that 1973 Budweiser boat.  Because my knowledge of the 1970-81 period is so limited I’ve had to do a lot of searches for usable boat paint schemes, but when I finally spied the 1973 Bud, it was clear I had to do it whether I like it or not.  And let’s face it, from an aesthetic standpoint, what’s not to like? The gold decking together with the white canopy and engine compartment, together with red and white striping make a striking contrast.

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1973 Miss Budweiser is painted Vallejo Old Gold, Vallejo Foundation White, and Vallejo Flat Red

I painted the boat hull Vallejo Old Gold.  The regular gold color was simply too bright, and this is the correct shade.  I also used Vallejo Flat Red for the striping, though I used the somewhat browner Skorne Red by Formula P3 for the red A in the Anheuser Busch logo. I got a bit adventuresome outlining the numbers and lettering on the boat hull.  Always a challenge, but I felt it needed the contrast.

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The washer is about quarter sized.  Just to give you an idea of what I’m working with.

I’ve identified the other boats I’m going to do for Enfilade.  They will be Miss Pay n’Pak 1974, Miss Atlas Van Lines 1976, and The KISW radio boat, Miss Rock 1983.  I’m not sure how quickly I’ll get them done, but they are needed for Enfilade, so time’s a wastin’

On my painting table.

Those same six Rohan cavalrymen are staring at me from my painting table.  The horses are done, but I haven’t progressed much since I last posted about them.  I’m hoping to have them finished by my next post.

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The horsies are done. I just need to get my act together and finish the riders.

Music to paint by

I collect album covers by Hipgnosis, the graphic arts company featuring the photographic art of Storm Torgerson and Aubrey Powell.  They did tons of interesting covers for Led Zeppelin, 10 CC, The Alan Parsons Project, Pink Floyd and a host of less well-known bands.

Pilgrimage

I picked up a few records cheap by Wishbone Ash, a British rock band featuring many Hipgnosis covers.  I finally got around to listening to Pilgrimage, their 1971 second album.  It was a fascinating record.  Reviewed as progressive rock, I’m not sure I quite agree. It’s more blues-based guitar rock, with a very avant garde feel.

The first song, “Vas Dis” opens with an intensely picked guitar, strong rhythm lines, and a vocal track that basically sings scat.The album is dotted with interesting instrumental pieces.  Really great stuff. Very progressive, with jazz overtones. I have a couple more albums by Wishbone Ash and really need to give them a listen.

 

Skytrex ships

Skytrex is gone forever. I don’t know if you could call them venerable, but it seems to me that twenty five years ago I was looking at their paper catalog and scratching my head trying to figure out how to order from them.  A British company, Skytrex carried this wonderful wealth of different miniatures–WW I planes in 1/144th scale, 1/300 scale planes, WW II and modern coastal vessels. And 1/200 scale armor and infantry–sounds weird now, but in the days before 15mm armor became universal, it was the bridge between micro-armor and 20mm. The real problem was ordering.  In those days I had to make an international phone call in the morning before I left for work, which invariably cost as much as what I was ordering.  Ah, the days before the internet and online shopping. Editors note: This is not correct!! In fact Skytrex does exist, though many of their ranges have been sold off elsewhere, including the WWII coastal line. The modern coastal vessels are still available.

A couple of years ago Skytrex went away and their coastal miniatures were acquired by ROS/Heroics.  Since their breakup from Navwar, I’ve ordered from ROS a few times.  I needed stuff for the St. Nazaire project.  I’ve always found it to be a bit more of an adventure than I would like. I always get my order, eventually, but a four week wait or longer is not unusual.

During this long weekend I focused my attention on getting my small remaining bunch of ship miniatures finished, including the German Type 24 torpedo boat I’ll need for the Channel Dash scenario at Enfilade.

Let’s start with the Siebel ferries.  Pretty simple miniature.  Painted overall in Vallejo Neutral Gray, deck finished in Ceramcoat gray-brown, a quick dry brushing with Vallejo Light Sea Grey and washed black.  Honestly there wasn’t a lot to the models, and not a lot to the actual catamaran ferry/assault craft. The heavily armed escort version of the model is a nice twist.  I like having the addition to my pile of WWII coastal miniatures.  Something different.

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Next on the list is the HMS Vixen, a V and W class destroyer.  Weighing in at 1,100 tons, this large class of 69 destroyers was authorized and built during World War I and served throughout the Second World War. I bought, assembled and primed this miniature a few years ago, while Skytrex was still Skytrex. I decided on something different.  I usually avoid painting camouflage patterns, but opted for the Western Approaches scheme.  It combines white, a light, pastel green and an even lighter blue. No problem, eh?  Unfortunately, the, blue, Vallejo Pale Blue, came out much darker, or at least scaled out much darker than it seems.  But I’ll be damned if I’ll repaint.  When looking at the side view of camouflaged ships I’m always at a loss about the decking and what that looked like.  I gave a deck tan in the obvious spaces, and everything else is Vallejo Neutral Gray–one of my favorite go-to colors.

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Finally, I ordered the Type 24 torpedo boat from ROS/Heroics in November. Assembly was pretty easy, it was just the question of what to do with the paint scheme.  I had one of those internet moments, scrolling through the web looking for color side views of the Type 24/Elbling Class and thought I found something interesting with a bow wake camouflage and red gun turrets. I closed the page and never found it again.  Sigh.  In any case, I painted my torpedo boat in Vallejo Light Sea Grey and gave it the bow wake marking as best I could remember.  I’m actually pretty happy with it.

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So I’ve added these six ships to my collection of coastal vessels, giving me about sixty all in all. The vast majority of my ships are the excellent resin miniatures by David Gregory at PT Dockyard, but there are a handful of the Skytrex metal models in there too.

On my painting table

I’m in the middle of my next batch of Dragon Rampant figures.  These are old Mithril Riders of Rohan from the early 90’s.  Probably worth a lot more unpainted than painted, but I need a batch of collectible miniatures like a hole in the head. The horses are okay, but simplistic; it’s the riders that are pretty interesting.  I’m calling them Riders of the Westfold, with Erkenbrand as their leader figure.

Less is more

The six ships adds +6 to my totals for the year.  No new purchases keeps me headed in the right direction.  +25 for 2016.

Music to paint to

Zephyr

One of my better $1 finds last year was Going Back to Colorado by Zephyr. This 1971 LP by a band you’ve probably never heard of will not blow you away.  It is an album better for its component parks than a complete whole.  When I was much younger I would see lots of albums by Tommy Bolin.  Lots.  And I had no idea who this was.  Was he related to that T-Rex guy? No, he was a wunderkind guitarist who died uselessly of a drug overdose at age 25 in 1976.  Together with vocalist Candy Givens, Zephyr offered a couple albums worth of sort of bluesy rock.  I’d characterize Givens as an Anne Wilson-lite kind of singer.  The heart is there but the instrument isn’t.  Most of the ten songs on the album show Bolin as a support to Givens, but on “See My People Come Together,” Bolin is freed–and fully unlimbered he is pure fire. Not a great record, but interesting, and for a buck . . . any time.

 

 

Bostons and the Irish cops

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I’m having a great painting month.  And with a four day weekend approaching (for this teacher, at any rate,) and nothing much planned, I’m looking forward to a great painting weekend.

First on my completion pile is the C in C Boston bombers.  These are American built bombers built by Douglas.  Primarily light bombers or attack planes and given the designation A-20A, many were flown by the Brits as Boston II’s.  I chose to paint them in a North Africa/Mediterranean scheme.  They are my entire British RAF representatives for this theater.  Maybe I need more. It will encourage me to paint my GHQ Hurricane II’s I’ve had sitting around for decades.

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The miniatures are by C in C. The minis have lines that are really clean and I like that.  However, they are bit short of detail.  Overall nice, but lacking a little bit, or the scribing so light for the control surfaces I simply painted out the detail The camouflage is Vallejo Desert Yellow as a base, with Vallejo Military green.  I dry brushed over the whole business with white to lighten up the colors a bit and then black washed the lot. The undersurface is painted with Vallejo Light Grey.  The paint scheme is out of the book Flying Colours.

I’ll probably add two more at a future time so I have four planes to work with.  That’s the minimum.

I’ve also completed nine of the Musketeer/Footsore Royal Irish Constabulary figures. These are figures I really enjoyed painting, probably because they are really easy.  With their dark green 20th century uniforms, there isn’t a whole lot to them.  I used Vallejo Military Green as the base color and did my best to highlight them, but they are still pretty dark. I painted their cartridge belts black, which may be a no-no, but I have no photos to refer to for this equipment, and all other belting was black and the Auxies most definitely wore black cartridge belts.

What’s on my painting table?

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From the RIC to WWII at sea.  I’ve assembled and primed four of the Skytrex-now ROS/Heroics-Siebel ferries.  I had a couple I purchased during our St. Nazaire prep last year. I added a two more in December. They’ll go with my 1/600 coastal collection.  They served in the Mediterranean, the Baltic and the Channel coasts.  A unique catamaran vessel they were designed for the invasion of Britain in 1940.  They were designed as amphibious landing craft, and could carry about 100 tons of cargo, including trucks and tanks.  Experimentation with propulsion systems included truck engines and aircraft engines. All were armed at least with light AA weapons, and some were armed with multiple 88mm guns.

After that, it’s on to a couple of much larger vessels, the German Wolf class torpedo boat we’ll use in the Channel Dash scenario. The second vessel is a British V & W class destroyer.  I’ve decided to do the Wolf in light gray with a white bow wave camo.  The British destroyer I’m going to color up a bit in a Western Approaches color scheme which includes a white hull and markings in pastel green and light blue gray.  No point in tedium.

After the ships it will be on to do the first unit of Rohirrim for Dragon Rampant.  These will all be Mithril miniatures I bought during the early 1990’s, so needless to say they’ve been waiting around for a paint job for a while. Then it will be hydroplanes and assembling some Crosley tenders for my Irish project. I have one model by Sloppy Jalopy and two more by Company B miniatures.  I’ll cross my fingers and trust to luck.

Less is more

I did make one purchase.  I picked up a pair of Passaic class monitors from Thoroughbred.  Just wanted to fill out what I have. This will give me three monitors from a class of ten. I won’t need any more.  I suspect another order in the not too distant future-probably a Canonicus class monitor and the Civilian Purchased Screw steamer variant of the always useful Yankee Gunboat model.  Any variety of steamer I can put my hands on is a bonus.

That makes me a +11-2 for this time, and a + 19 for the year.

And a quick plug

I’ve been buying 1/600 scale ACW ships from Throughbred Figures since they issued the Albemarle almost 25 years ago.  I’ve always loved owner/designer Toby Barrett’s work. It is of high quality, sturdy and for an all metal miniature, very fairly priced.  Now Toby has added superb customer service.  I ordered my monitors on Monday and they were in my mailbox today (Friday.) For the record, Virginia Beach, the home of Thoroughbred Figures, is about as far as one can be from beautiful Puyallup Washington, and remain in the continental United States.  Check it out here.

Pages afloat

Normally I would be sharing some awesome music with you.  Unfortunately my listening habits have been detoured by my decision to binge watch The X-Files.  Sick? A waste of time? Absolutely, and I’m enjoying every minute of it. But for the next post, I promise I’ll share a review of Zephyr, by the band of the same name.  Haven’t heard of them?  Well, you will soon.

However, I have bought a few books recently, all of them related to naval warfare in a couple of different periods. Note:  I have read none of them yet, but two are relatively new, and worth knowing about.

51j13gnZ0mL._SX342_BO1,204,203,200_Henry V’s Navy: The Sea Road to Agincourt and Conquest 1413-1422 .  by Ian Friel To suggest that books about the Hundred Years War at sea are as rare as hen’s teeth may be giving too much credit to the hens. The only other book-length study I’m aware of is 2011’s Edward III and The War at Sea, 13227-1377 and is pretty much worth a king’s ransom (and somehow I missed it when it came out, sniff.)  I determined not to be shut out when this book became available on February 1, and promptly ordered a copy.  The small volume was not over-priced, and I’m hoping to read it soon. Henry V was a noted shipbuilder and vastly increased the size of the fleet that virtuallydisappeared during the reign of Richard II.

51CezmtWcJL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_The Civil War at Sea by Craig Symonds.  Symonds’ name may ring a bell.  He’s a prolific writer, best known for his military atlases, but he’s written about many military topics, including the naval aspects of the Civil War.  He tackles this massive topic thematically rather than chronologically, focusing on the changing nature of ships and armament, the blockade, commerce raiding, war on the rivers, the attack on ports (using Charleston as an example) and the success of the Union naval strategy. The book has only 170 pages of text, so it tends not to get hung up on detail, so if that is your desire this may not be the book for you.  But as a thematic interpretation of the Civil War on the water, it could do the trick.

61yXPXIuvrL._SY454_BO1,204,203,200_The Confederate Steam Navy by Donald Canney.  I have only ordered this book and haven’t received it yet.  But I have been angling for a copy since it was released on December 9th.  Canney’s book on the Confederate Navy is supposed to mirror his brilliant two volume study of the The Old Steam Navy that went out of print in the ’90’s.  These are books I constantly consult and I believe the new book will be just as useful.  So much of what is written about the Confederate Navy is conjectural while Canney’s work always seems to be anything but.  It covers all types of vessels from the ironclad rams to blockade runners, and as with his previous work, will be crammed with illustrations and photos, some not previously published.  I’m excited.  Hoping it arrives from Amazon today.

 

Orcs!!!

I’ve finished painting my band of orcs.  There is a great variety to them because they are by three different manufacturers.  The tallish looking ones are by Mithril Miniatures.  The short squatty guys are Ral Partha.  The biggest and two smallest are by Alternative Armies. I like ’em.  It’s a nice variety-as manufactured creatures should be.

The twelve figure unit didn’t take long, just a few days.  To insure a mix I went with three different Vallejo colors as the basis for their flesh–khaki, khaki-grey and stone gray.  I painted their accoutrements a variety of grays and browns and washed the lot brown.  Made sure to paint on something resembling a face and even managed some eyes.  Pretty basic, but I wanted to insure some variety.

This is the first unit for my orc Dragon Rampant armies.  Ideally I’d like to have a total of eight, or enough for two retinues (or whatever the clot of units is called for the fantasy game.)  They were fun, and they’ve been awaiting paint for about 25 years.

And on my painting table . . .

I’ve mapped out a plan for February, which gets an extra day because of leap year. Here’s what I’ll be doing this month:

  1. The two Boston bombers are next on my list, and I’m already making good progress on them.  Wish I had a couple more.
  2. Nine Musketeer/Footsore Royal Irish Constabulary figures for the Irish Civil War.  They were the British cops who were well-armed, but not as nasty as the Black and Tans and Auxies, who were often veterans brutalized by their experiences in France.
  3. Six 1/600 scale ships.  This includes a German Wolf class torpedo boat and a British V and W class destroyer, as well as four German Siebel ferries–motorized catamarans used to transport stuff around the Adriatic.
  4. Six Mithril Rohan horse.  They’ve been knocking around my unpainted pile for decades and its time to get them done.
  5. if I can get all these finished with time remaining for the end of the month, I’ll turn my attention to the four hydroplanes that need painting.  That would be as much as 39 figures painted by the end of the month, including the orcs.

Less is more

No new figure purchases.  I hope that’s something I’ll repeat with regularity throughout the year.

Painting the dozen greenskins gives me a total of +10 for 2016.  Love to see the pluses.

Music to Paint By

Deep Purple is best remembered as a guitar heavy rock band from the 1970’s.  Though not as well known as Led Zeppelin, like that band they had a death dealing guitarist in Ritchie Blackmore, and later they had an awesome vocalist in Ian Gillian.

But in 1968 they released their second album, The Book of Taliesyn.  It’ an odd album that is desperately trying to find its place among the many bands exporting music from England.  With the fiery, “Listen,Learn, Read On,” I was reminded of Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and other bands producing uniquely British psychedelia.  But other songs are more puzzling.  The purple bunch cover Neil Diamond’s “Kentucky Woman,” The Beatles “We Can Work it Out” and Ike and Tina Turner’s “River Deep Mountain High.” The remaining songs are an odd mix of guitar rock and  folk influenced songs.  This is a band still searching for an identity they will find later.

Book of Taliesyn

Very uneven stuff.  But it has such a cool cover!!!!

Musketeer/Footsore Irish Republican Army

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14 IRA gunmen by Musket Miniatures, now Footsore Miniatures.

Being of Irish heritage-my much missed grandfather was from Cork-the Irish Rebellion and Civil War 1916-22 is of great interest to me.  A few years ago I bought figures from Musketeer Miniatures for this period, a British company, who had an American distributor in the U.S. Unfortunately Musketeer changed hands last year and is now part of Footsore miniatures.

They weren’t my first figures for the Irish conflict.  The Australian company, Cannon Fodder also got a start on the period with a group of very nice IRA gunman, a very nice Auxiliary figure and a British soldier.  Unfortunately they didn’t get very far with the range before Cannon Fodder became Blaze Away miniatures.  Sadly, Blaze Away is now gone and so are 20th century figures from the Cannon Fodder line.  Pity.

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A little tighter view of the Lewis gun, left, with his loader.  There is a nice variety of figures in the range and the figures themselves are pretty good. A little bit of breakage, however, and some mold mark issues as well.

I’ve decided to focus on my collection of figures for this period as one of my painting projects for 2016 and yesterday I finished my collection of IRA gunmen–14 in all.  When I bought my Musketeer figures I was very excited about them.  I’m a bit less so now.  Let’s be clear, they are still nicely proportioned, historically correct, and dressed in a variety of period attire, but they have some production issues that make them a bit less than I’d like.  First, they have very breakable gun barrels. At about two bucks a figure, the last thing I want is to get figures that aren’t usable because their gun barrels are broken. Some also had unfortunate mold marks.  Well-detailed pewter figures are hard to clean, and I found these with just a little too much flash in hard-to-get-to places for my liking.  If I was rating them, they’d get maybe a 7 of 10.  Good, but not brilliant. Cleaner than your average Old Glory figure, but not as good as the average Perry figure.

Nothing fancy to paint these guys.  They are a combination of Vallejo and Ceramcoat colors. I did make sure to do some highlighting before washing them with Vallejo black and brown wash.

What’s on my painting table

I’ll be taking on my first Dragon Rampant unit.  I have twelve orcs from a variety of manufactures, including Mithril, Ral Partha, and Alternative Armies.  They work together size wise, plus, as we learned in Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring, orcs are manufactured in a variety of colors and sizes, so–no problem.

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Watch out!! My first Dragon Rampant unit is on the painting table.  It’s a mixture of Ral Partha, Mithril and Alternative Armies figures.  It’s actually a pretty nice mix.

I’ve also dredged up a pair of C in C Boston II’s from my aging airplane stash.  I’m still assembling them, which is not always an easy feat.  They’ll be completed in a camo for the British in the Mediterranean.

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The very nice C-in-C Boston II’s.  I like forward to painting these in British colors for the Mediterranean.

Looking way down the road my next Irish Civil War unit will be the green-clad Royal Irish Constabulary figures by Musketeer–there are seven of them.

Less is More

I’ve given up the idea of tracking each of my purchases and painting on a running basis, but I have come to embrace the idea that finishing figures is a good thing, and completing more than I purchase is also good.  So I’ll try to keep a running total right here in Less is More. Just in general, I’m not buying new stuff–well sort of.  I did buy some planes for the Channel Dash as well as additional jets for a future Cuban Missile Crisis project. I also have some stuff from ROS coming, some day in my lifetime, that I’ll figure into this initial entry.  The goal is to finish the year with more painted figures than purchases, way more.

Purchases

  • From 1-94 Enterprises  28 airplanes
  • From ROS  6 airplanes 2 Siebel ferries

Painted

  • 20 airplanes
  • 14 Irish Republican army figures

Net

34 figures painted (January) – 36 purchased (December) = net of -2 figures.  Still a week to go in the month and no additional purchases planned.  I fully expect this will be the only time I register a negative number.

Music to Paint By

When I graduated from college in 1978, one really popular album was the debut by Van Halen.  It was like nothing I’d ever heard before.  One of the songs Eddie and the boys covered was a Kinks song “All Day and All of the Night.”  They destroyed it with Van Halen’s smoking guitar and David Lee Roth’s incendiary vocals. And one of the things it did was to inspire the Kinks and their lead guitarist Dave Davies, Ray’s brother, on to some flaming guitar heights of his own. Listen to their 1980 live album, One for the Road, and you’ll know what I mean.

Dave Davies

Most importantly, it encouraged Dave, the less well-known Davies brother, but a fine guitarist, to go out on his own.  His first solo effort is AFL1-3603. This is a good record.  All the songs are written by Davies.  He also plays almost all of the instruments. Most of the tunes feature some heavy-handed guitar work. From the opening song, “Where Do You Come From,” there is no mistake you’re listening to a rock and roll record.  But there are other songs, that are also quite good, notably “Visionary Journey” and “Imaginations Real.”

Don’t get me wrong, though this is guitar focused, it is not a record of aimless solo guitar-noodling.  Rather, it’s a product of its time, the guitar is loud, it’s very raw, but supports the song structure without wandering about by way of the third moon of Saturn only to return to what’s important three minutes later. C’mon, it was released in 1980, we’re done with that shit.

I guess my overall verdict is AFL1-3603 is solid, with consistently good songs and good performances.  It won’t remind you of Lola vs. Powerman and the Money-Go-Round, or really not much of the Kinks catalog at all.  But it’s a good record, with a very cool cover, and a worthwhile addition to your colleciton

Dragon Rampant-Yes!!

Dragon-Rampant-Mock-Up

On December 22nd, Osprey Publishing released the latest of their rules sets, Dragon Rampant.  Built on their, in my view, very successful  and very fun Lion Rampant, this is a set of fantasy rules that keep things quick and simple.

Dragon Rampant is intended to be relatively economical.  Every army will likely have 4-6 units.  They will likely have at their core some 12 figure units of infantry slime, with some six figure units of knights, or elites, or monstrous nasties, maybe even some 1-3 model units of something or another really unpleasant–trolls, ogres, giants, wizards, dragons would fit the bill.  The game allows magic.  Author Daniel Mersey has made allowances for players to experiment with all kinds of unpleasantness.  I love it.

Unfortunately, new rules often mean more purchases-something I’ve pretty fastidiously avoided the last nine months.  It doesn’t mean I haven’t bought anything, I have–ships and planes for Pensacola and the Channel Dash–but no figures to speak of. That’s especially true of fantasy figures.  I try to keep my historical minis to no more than two bucks a throw, more for mounted troops. But fantasy figures are often five bucks a pop or more. And it’s not like I don’t have tons of figures laying around waiting to be painted.

So I’ve turned over every loose rock I have to locate anything that might serve to make a couple of fantasy armies, and tonight I struck paydirt. More about this in a moment.

I’ve decided on a couple of different armies.  The first is a Rohan army.  I love the Rohirrim.  I did long before there were Peter Jackson movies.  I’ve always wanted to do the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in 15mm, and some day I may still do that. I have many of the figures–they just need paint.

But I also have a ton of Rohan figures I bought when Games Workshop was putting out their Lord of the Rings range. I have plastic cavalry and infantry and some metal leaders–a Theoden, Eomer, Eowyn and standard bearer who can form a unit of heroes. But wait, that’s not all folks.  In rummaging through the deepest darkness of my boxes o’lead I also rant across enough old Mithril Rohan figures to build a unit of mounted.  So here is what I think I can do:

  • Rohan heroes (Elite riders)–1 X 4 figures
  • Riders of Rohan (heavy riders–4 X 6 figures Games Workshop, 1 X 6 figures Mithril Miniatures
  • Men of the Westfold (heavy foot)–2 X 12 figures Games Workshop

Of course, every fantasy army needs something truly fantastic, so I will also add a 1 X 6 unit of Eureka centaurs.  I’m not quite sure if they qualify as some sort of cavalry or if they are a unit of warbeasts.  We’ll see.

So I was able to construct an army of Rohirrim of troops I already have. But I want them to have somebody to face.  My first choice is, of course, orcs. But as much as possible I want to minimize the cost. Remember, fantasy figures are spendy, the centaurs are five dollars each.  I have some orcs from the GW LOTR range, but not enough to do a lot with.  I can make one unit of Uruk-Hai pikemen–that’s cool. I also uncovered some Mithril and Ral Partha orcs, enough to make a unit of nasty looking bastards.  I remembered that once upon a time I bought a whole bunch of Alternative Armies orcs and various other nasties, and these went missing for the longest time.  But no more!! Tonight I found them.  There are orcs, some warg riders and even some orc chariots of doom.  Enough nasties to field against the Rohirrim.  If I get desperate, I’ve even dismantled the old HeroQuest game I used to play with my sons twenty years ago and run off with the plastic figures, including goblins, orcs and various other bad guys.  Yes, I have stooped that low. I still don’t know quite what I have or how I’ll organize them.

The difference between beginning Lion Rampant and beginning Dragon Rampant is that my armies for the Hundred Years War were already painted–enough so that I could field seven retinues of English and French. Unfortunately, exactly none of my fantasy figures are painted. So it will be a while until I can actually play, but I’m game.  Anything I can do to usefully employ some figures I’ve just got gathering dust is a good thing.  So Dragon Rampant will be a big project for 2016.

I’ll be sure to share as the project gets rolling.

And now, my little air force

I put the finishing touches on this little bunch of planes for the Channel Dash.  It’s 16-six Spitfires, six Beaufort bombers, and four Whirlwinds. Together with the Betty bombers, that’s twenty planes and a good way to start the new year.

The Raiden planes were all purchased for the Enfilade project, but the Bettys were all quite old, so it’s nice to take the occasion to get some old stuff done too.

Just as a general review, the Raiden planes were the nicest 1/300 miniatures I’ve ever painted.  The Beaufort in particular, one of the newest Raiden planes, was incredibly well detailed, solid, really a pleasure to work with. I highly recommend them.

I also want to offer props to I-94 for their improved British decals.  As I stated in my previous post, working with decals can be hard.  Some of my friends, commenting on my post, have suggested it is too hard. I-94 replaced their BR-100 decal sheet with two new sheets, BR-107 and BR-111.  I believe I put on something like 144 separate decals from the BR-111 sheet.  I liked so many things about them, but the three biggest are: 1) the color is vastly superior to previous sheets, 2) these sheets offered a wide variation of roundels and tail flashes not previously available, 3) they were extremely easy to use, sliding off their transfer sheets within seconds. Just really good stuff, and highly recommended.

I’m done painting planes for the time being. But I really enjoyed doing them. I don’t know that I’ve ever been so happy painting anything as when I finished these planes for the Channel Dash + Bettys.

I reorganized all my painted planes to better care for them and I’ve included pictures.  Basically my planes fall into a few categories:

  1. Taiwan vs. Peoples Liberation Air Force.  50 jet aircraft for a hypothetical conflict between Taiwan and China in 1995. Includes a few American planes in case of intervention.
  2. Cuban Missile Crisis–I put together a project I ran at Enfilade back in the ’90’s.  Look for the current 25 planes to get much larger in the next year as I take another stab with much better miniatures. Many of the American planes are now available from Raiden–my current crop are from the old, disappeared and not lamented Skytrex range. Also some long forgotten SDD miniatures, including a pair of British F-4K Phantoms and Buccaneers before the RN fleet carriers went away.
  3. Fleet Air Arm–40 planes, all Scotia miniatures.  Most I painted for an Enfilade game I hosted in 2001.  They were painted with Polly S paints, that sadly I can no longer get. So when I thought needed some more Fairey Barracudas for our Tirpitz attack, I went with a different camo scheme.
  4. Channel Dash–I’ve written ad nauseum about these planes already.  This box has 25 planes including five Scotia Lancaster bombers with Grand Slam bombs, just in case the Tirpitz is lurking nearby.
  5. The Rising Sun–I have a pile of various Japanese planes.  No real rhyme or reason.  Some A6M2 and A6M5 Zeroes, Nell and Betty bombers, early war Claudes, Franks a Nick and a host of other young men just begging for something to do.  33 planes
  6. WWII Americans–another box of random planes, but lots of them.  A PBY Catalina, a B-25, B-26, B-17, a navy PB4Y-1 Privateer, perfect for one off suicide missions.  Australian P-40K’s, AVG P-40C’s, a bunch of P-39’s, a couple of A-20G’s.  F4F’s and F6F’s and Avengers in navy blue.  But my favorite are the Devastators in pre war colors (just because they were fun to paint. And shouldn’t that be the point?) 25 planes in all.

I have lots more to paint.  Tons of Spanish Civil War planes-lots of Navwar/ROS planes I’m not sure will ever get painted.  More WWII, including some Germans–you might have noticed the lack thereof in my collection.  More jets, more American WWII planes.

I broke one of my own rules and actually counted my painted planes.  It comes out to about 210.  I don’t often spend tons of time painting airplanes, but given how much I enjoy it, I should spend more time working on them.

What’s Next?

Today I’ll put my planes away and return to work on 14 IRA gunmen from my Irish Civil War project. They are kind of dragging along and I want to finish them and tuck them away because there are other things that are making me itchy:

  • I should soon have a small order from ROS/Heroics with my Swordfish torpedo bombers and a pair of Siebel ferries. The Swordfish go with the Channel Dash project, I will have four Siebel ferries to finish, together with a 1/600 V and W destroyer and a German torpedo boat that is needed for the ship attack portion of Channel Dash.
  • I’ve been bitten by the Dragon Rampant bug.  My next post will be a fairly lengthy overview of my thoughts and plans for this project.

Music to Paint To

There’s not a ton of music to come to America from Australia and achieve a lot of commercial success.  ACDC for sure, Colin Hay’s excellent Men at Work for a short time, The Little River Band for your pop music fix.  But one band that is sadly overlooked is The Divinyls.  Really the Divinyls was just a twosome, vocalist Chrissy Amphlett and guitarist Mark McEntee who surrounded themselves with a rotating crew of backing musicians.  You might remember them from MTV (when MTV did music videos) and their 1991 naughty hit song “I Touch Myself.” Amphlett’s unique vocal performance and her utterly sensual stage performances, together with McEntee’s New Wave inspired guitar style produced some solid pop music.

What a Life!

I’ve always really liked their music style, and listened to some of their stuff on YouTube and MP3’s.  So when I ran across a $7 copy of 1985’s What a Life!, I grabbed it.  There are some solid songs there, with “Pleasure and Pain” about BDSM, and public apathy about protecting missing young girls in Australia in “Good Die Young.” The music throughout is mid-80’s New Wave influenced pop.  McEntee’s guitarwork is solid and never overdone, always lending a bit of an edge to Amphlett’s memorable vocals. It was a wise. buy.

I’ll almost certainly pick up a copy of the Divinyl’s first record from 1983, Desperate.  I know where it can be had for a fair price.  Unfortunately, their best record, The Divinyls, with their MTV hit, is really hard to get on vinyl because by 1991 the industry was making its way to CD’s and was never pressed as an LP in the U.S. That means a foreign purchase with all the expense of shipping. Ick.

Just as a side note, as I was researching a bit for this writing I learned that Amphlett died in 2013 of breast cancer after fighting for years against multiple sclerosis. She was 53.  Good die young.