Upgrading and defending your base is an important part of Battle Pirates.

I’ve never been much of a video gamer.  I haven’t owned a video console since the very first Atari, and I didn’t much get into the games my kids were playing on their Nintendos or PlayStations.  There are no Wii’s in my house.  I do have a few computer games, but for the most part I play them rarely.  I knew if I got into a video game it would take me off my miniature wargaming track.

Unfortunately, I’ve been hooked.  As you probably know Facebook proudly announces its free video games online, and since August I’ve been playing BattlePirates.  Though my furor and enthusiasm have been slowly drawing down as I improve my standing in the BattlePirates world, it was so easy to give more time to the game than I should.  First, I love the type of game.  It’s about resource gathering by a variety of different means and balancing production.  A lot of my favorite board games require this, so it was easy to get sucked in.  One can gather resources by “mining” resource points, by attacking the evil Draconian central powers.

The sea screen. My base is pictured (SpecialK.) The various ships and operations hubs pictured provide risk-filled opportunities to gather resources.

There’s also a combat angle, which I usually find myself at a disadvantage. Every player has a base to defend, as well as means to defend it. Unfortunately, you’re also at the mercy of the 1.2 million players on the web, some of whom want to take what you have.  Fortunately one can only be attacked by players within five levels of you, higher and lower.  So one’s potential enemies are limited. Until you reach level 40 and then anybody can whack you around.  I crossed the level 40 threshold about a month ago and I’ve been visited by more powerful players several times.  Thankfully I built my base well, and I’ve only been really hammered, with the loss of a fair number of resources, once.

In any case, I cop to the argument that Battle Pirates and games like them are a major time sucker.  It’s true. To be fair, however, I’m not the only miniatures gamer I see in the Battle Pirates world.  Bill Vanderpool also has an active account and continues to climb the levels.  The best part of playing, however, is that my son Casey plays.  He’s a great gamer, and is fun to compare notes with.  I’ve learned stuff from him and he’s shared stuff with me.  I probably talk to him on the phone about the game three or so times a week.  That’s time on the phone with him I probably wouldn’t have taken without the game.

However, I’m finding it less of an obsession and am making more time to blog and paint.  My Maryland gunners are nearly finished and I just received the guns for them, so that’s a unit I’ll finish soon.  I’ve also prepped and primed some pavisiers for the Hundred Years War.  They’ll be Paris militia and have some pretty cool markings on their shields, so I’m hot to go.

It’s been a while since my last post, and I apologize.  I’m not sure I have a very good reason.  Maybe it’s because of the demise of my old blog.  There were lots of cool things I could do with it I don’t feel I can do here. I’m fiddling with a couple of the widgets that aren’t quite as handy as those on blogger.  Maybe that will help.

Another problem I’m facing is that for some reason I don’t feel quite as comfortable in the hobby as I have for the past 40 years.  I don’t think it’s necessary a problem with the hobby as it is with me.  I still love to paint, but gaming has become a bit more problematic. There are many serious issues brewing in the family that have taken my time-my aging mother-in-law, some work issues, even some kid issues-that divert me elsewhere. It’s sad, but I guess I shouldn’t keep me from telling about what I’ve got going on.

So, in recognition of this, my New Years resolution is to post at least once per week.  This is post number one.

I have painted some planes over the Christmas holiday.

First, I finished the Lancasters and Tonys I mentioned in my December 10th post.  They both posed some interesting problems, but honestly they were a pleasure to paint.  And that’s good because I have another hundred or so lying around that need finishing.

The Lancasters posed some special problems painting.  The first was that straight line I whined about in my previous post.  However, in my earlier incarnation as an airplane painter I acquired some goodies to help me, and I still had a roll of masking tape, the modeler’s variety, that allowed me to get a straight black line separating the upper wings and fuselage from the lower.  It turned out pretty well all things considered.  Another problem I had were the Tallboy bombs glued to the bottom of the plane.  It was in the very place the peg needed to be drilled in order to properly distribute the weight of the plane.  In the end, I was able to carefully drill the hole in the right spot without popping the bomb off the plane.  Just gotta take your time.  Another problem with the big bomber was its very size.  The Lancaster was a really big plane for WWII and the miniature in 1/300 is broad and weighty.  balancing things to paint the underside-few details that needed special attention thankfully-but things always seemed to be shifting and slithering away from the paint brush.  Last, but not least (and not complete) the darkness of the plane, while great for avoiding night fighters at night, don’t show off the decals at all.  I put large roundels on the wings, but the roundels and lettering that should go on the fuselage are, at this moment, absent because they would be invisible.  I’m not talented enough to actually paint the little boogers on by hand, so I’m still searching for an answer.

Nice to have these large miniatures painted, but they did pose some unique problems.

The Tonys were more fun to paint than I thought they’d be.  This popular Japanese Army fighter served through most of the war chiefly as an interceptor.  The all silver fellows were easy to paint and are members of an air-ramming group that defended Tokyo against B-29s.  The mottled versions are based on an illustration in Flying Colors.  They were a little tricky to manage, but honestly with planes so small it’s only important to get the general idea of the green on silver.

The last pictures I want to share are of the Shapeways racers I’ve gotten.  I’ve received eight and painted two.  The two I’ve finished are the Keith Ryder planes San Francisco and Bumblebee. I’m only sharing a picture of Bumblebee. Working with the miniatures can be maddening.  The planes are well cast, but the wings are quite thin and strong.  However, the castings are rough, as in bumpy/not smooth.  I did take some sandpaper to them with little discernible effect, and I was afraid to drag out the sander on my Dremel tool lest they melt the surfaces.  So, I’m doing the best I can.  The next two to be painted will be the Wedell–Williams racers with their fiddly struts, etc.

For the time being, however, I’ve gone back to my 28mm figures. I’m in the middle of some 28mm Maryland militia artillery for the War of 1812.  I’ve got some guns on order for them, so I’ll five fabulous sections of artillery for Bladensburg.  I’m also preparing some pavisiers from the HYW for priming.  These will be my first new units for the new year.

Though the rough texture of the resin miniature was problematic, it painted up well enough to be interesting.

This is the time of year when I begin to make serious plans for Enfilade, our big gaming event over Memorial Day.  It’s been a really strange autumn heading into winter.  School has demanded much more of time this year.  Since we acquired the amazing Rusty dog, I’ve been a lot more reluctant to spend my nightly hour and a half or so in my den painting; he just needs more of my attention. These both add up to: I haven’t painted much lately.  No I haven’t stopped.  I could never give that up, but I haven’t accomplished much either.  This relates to Enfilade because it means I need to be fairly realistic in my planning.

One event I’ll run is Golden Age Air Racing.  Yes, it’s the same event I run at the Museum of Flight, but it will be a game with the new Shapeways 1/144th miniatures I’ve glommed on to .  I now have eight of the Shapeways racers awaiting painting, plus the one from Reviresco.  The game is fun, and will keep people busy. I think I can actually run eight planes easily with the smaller miniatures, so it should be fun.

I’ll also drag my hydroplane miniatures out and run a Thunderboats! event.  This may attract some of the same players as the air racing event, but maybe not.  I have three boats left to paint.  I think I’ll just have a bit of fun with them and paint up a Mariners boat, a ERHS Jaguars (my school) boat, and a something else fun.

The third and last game I’ll commit to at this point is an air miniatures game Daveshoe and I have discussed for some time.  We’re going to go with the Tungsten raids on the Tirpitz in 1944.  These were air attacks by the Fleet Air Arm on the German battleship in its Norwegian anchorage.  The Brits will have Barracuda bombers and a mix of American-made carrier fighters to take on the big ship’s air defenses.  Dave is building the ship model.  I have all the fighters painted, but still need to do up the Barracudas.  Just received the Scotia ‘cudas from I-94 miniatures in Michigan yesterday, so I have everything I need.

I confess I’m enjoying painting some airplanes at the present time.  I finished five of the nine Tonys I started working on a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve made more progress on the Lancasters this week.  I’ll try to get up more pictures this weekend.

The rest of my time leading up to the convention I’ll probably focus on painting up more figures for the Bladensburg scenario.  I have some Maryland militia artillery started on my painting table.  I also have a couple of bags of un-uniformed militia that I’m going to turn into the two remaining militia units I need for Stansbury’s brigade.  Then I’ll need to give more attention to the British. Anything I can do to avoid all those Victrix figures.

A look at the first group of five Tonys. They’re natural metal with red tails. They’ll also have white boxes for their red hinomorus on wings and fuselage

Well, I’m back on the painting trail. Last week was an exhausting melange of school related activities that kept me at work for 15 hours a day most of the week.  Thus I didn’t have the time or energy for much work.

On my painting table are five Avro Lancaster bombers and nine Kawasaki Ki-61 (Tony) fighters.   I probably have about 150 1/300 scale planes painted.  Lots are modern aircraft, but many are WWII planes as well.  I don’t remember them being quite so challenging as these guys seem to be.  Maybe I’m just getting old.

The Lancasters pose two major obstacles.  The first is that they’re just big.  With their five inch wingspan and similar fuselage length, there’s just a lot of coverage that has to happen.  The second and actually more challenging problem is their color scheme.  Though they have a fairly simple earth and green camouflage, the rest of the plane is simply painted black.  But that means a straight black line must be painted down the entire fuselage.  Straight. line. Along the way, one must avoid the wing and stabilizer and line things up properly for a straight . . . line. I don’t think I can even see straight at my age.

A not particularly clear side view of the Lancasters. They do show the horizontal black line down the fuselage.

This top Lancaster view shows the camouflage pattern for the five bombers. Vallejo Bronze Green over Vallejo Dark Earth.

The Tony fighters are different.  They mostly appeared on the front lines in natural metal and were field-camouflaged.  Most have very carefully applied small green camouflage.  Others have the paint obviously smeared on to the plane with– I dunno palm fronds or something.  This poses a problem, because the camouflage is just plane difficult for a miniature so small.  I’m going to take four of them and do the best I can.  The other five will be Japanese home defense, capable of playing with Scott Abbott’s awesome fleet of B-29’s.  They’ll be part of the ramming squadron the Japanese air corps developed for dealing with LeMay’s bomber fleet.

These are little bitty planes.  The Lancasters are Scotia/Collectair, with some nice detail.  I’m hoping I can pull them off okay, but mostly I’m concerned with the straight lines. The Tonys are C in C with even more and finer detail. It just seems so much hard to do justice to than it used to be.

I received notice in my Gmail box that my Shapeways order had been shipped.  I totally forgot until I arrived at home today and found a wee box sitting on my front porch.  We’re on deadline this week so it’s going to be difficult to get much painting done.  I snatched it up and took it back to school with me and promised to look at the planes inside later.

Well I’ve had a chance to paw through them.  I looked at some of the smaller entries first.  I ordered the two different versions of the Keith Rider San Francisco.  One has much longer wings than the other.  I suspect the longer winged version was probably used for distance racing, while the shorter winged version was for pylon racing. The miniatures are simple and nice, but in need of a two bladed propellor.  I’ll have to see what I can do.  They are well cast in white resin with sufficient detail to make the very simple aluminum monoplanes interesting.

Keith Rider’s San Francisco blazed the way for a series of very lightweight racers with a simple monoplane design.

Another plane I received was the Howard “Mike.”  This is another pretty small low wing monoplane with fixed landing gear.  Again, it could definitely be enhanced with a prop.  I’ll have to see what I can make. Unfortunately, this came with some battle damage.  The very fragile undercarriage was damaged on one side.  I think it can be repaired with a little Zap, but that was disconcerting.  To be fair these landing gear have very light struts, but I still expect them arrive intact.

Howard’s Mike was an extremely successful design of the middle 30’s, sweeping the National Air Races in 1934.

Next up was a Wedell Williams 44 from the 1932 air races.  This is a much larger monoplane with much more substantial wheel spats.  Again, it’s a beautiful miniature with gorgeous lines sprouting off an enormous engine.  There were three of these present in the 1932 National Air Races, and I’m likely going to paint it as Wedell’s own plane.

There were three modell 44’s that appeared at the 1932 National Air Races. I’ll paint this version for my collection.

Finally, I also ordered and received a Gee Bee Z that won the 1931 Thompson Trophy.  Short and stubby, but not to the steroid dimensions that appeared in the later Gee Bee R’s, the Z is my favorite air racer.  The miniature is quite faithful to the racer, demolished in a 1931 crash.

Replica of the Gee Bee Z at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

I’ve received five of the 13 air racer miniatures designed by Arctic Skunk.  In addition to that I have the Reviresco TravelAir Mystery ship.  There were four of these planes produced.  I’ve decided to paint mine the colors of the Texaco 13 air racer.

Texaco 13 was purchased from Travelair. It mostly participated in distance races. Other model R racers had two sets of wings. Short ones for pylon racing, longer wings for distances.

I’m in the middle of reading Donald Shomette’s wonderful book on the Chesapeake campaign that resulted in the burning of Washington D.C. and the bombardment of Fort McHenry in 1812, Flotilla. Though nominally it’s the tale of Commodore Joshua Barney’s gunboat flotilla on the Patuxent River, it’s really a story about the ease with which the British, with their incredible naval superiority were able to threaten, terrorize and dominate the eastern and western shores of Maryland and Virginia in 1813 and 1814.

The chief instrument of their effective campaign was the Royal Marines.  Because I am in charge of assembling forces for the 1814 battle of Bladensburg, I’ll need plenty of Marines for the battle.  There were four different units of Royal Marines at the battle, including some light infantry, as well as the Colonial Marines.  The Colonial Marines was a unit composed of freed slaves.  Though only about one in three escaped or liberated slaves were eligible for service, those who did don the uniform were quite effective at looting, burning, serving as guides, and, when rarely necessary, fighting off the local militias.  In all, some 20 stands, or eighty figures are necessary to complete all the Royal Marines at Bladensburg.

I’ve completed seven stands of Old Glory Royal Marines.  I like the figures.  They aren’t perfect, but certainly adequate.  There are some nice variations, they are well proportioned and you certainly can’t beat the price.  I painted up four stands of Marine light infantry and stuck them on half bases so they could be in extended order. I’m pretty pleased with the outcome.  The other three stands are painted as the Colonial Marines.  They’re black, with a white officer.

In addition to the Old Glory figures, I have eight stands of Marines I received from Doug Hamm.  I painted them long ago, and I am considering a repaint.  The base color I use for my redcoats in both War of 1812 and the American Revolution is Vallejo Vermillion.  It’s a shade darker than scarlet, but in the same color family.  These look to be either Hinchcliffe or Connoisseur.  They have that tall, lanky Peter Gilder look to them.  Nice figures but single poses. They are my 2nd Battalion Royal Marines, part of the 3rd brigade at Bladensburg.

I don’t know exactly what figures these are, though they seem very Peter Gilder-like. I suspect they are Connoisseur figures.