Churchill.

Forgot to post this with my Brits. JTFM 1/56 scale Churchill VIII:

Pennsylvania Provincial Officer.

I just finished painting a test model of my Eureka French & Indian War Provincials. I really love these models and it was a long time coming that someone finally covered these troops in 28mm. Excellent sculpts with lots of detail that is crisp and clean and fairly easy to paint. I had to make a few changes to the uniform colors while I was working on this, but I like how he came out. I equipped my officer with a musket. A much more useful weapon than a sword against Indians in the deep forests of the Pennsylvania frontier.

I still need to buy a bunch more of these and I hope Conquest releases their British Regulars soon so I can finally do the F&I in 28mm properly.

Here he is...ready to defend the Pennsylvania frontier against the French and their savage heathen allies.

Hood's Texans.

Here are some painted 28mm Old Glory First Edition ACW Texans I painted. The figs are full of character and have lots of nice details. The molds have seen better days though, and the wear can be seen on the castings. Still, they paint up nice and look good and ragged Reb when ranked up. I tried to paint them in a variety of uniform colors to enhance this ragged look. I know this ragged Reb thing is somewhat overstated to some degree and from what I have read Hood's Texans received new uniforms before heading West with Longstreet, which makes these good for the first part of the war before that. Either way, they are nice figs and I think will look good on the table against my Bluebellies.

Here they are looting Markey Farm on their way through Southern Pennsylvania...



Here's an up close shot:

Some Scenery.

Having started my Civil War project a while back, I found I didn't have any specific scenery to go with it. I had plenty of trees, hills, orchards, stone walls, and other generic type scenery, but I lacked any era appropriate buildings and the types of fences and walls for the period. WWII buildings wouldn't cut it. At the last Cold Wars I picked up a few of the old JR Miniatures 28mm ACW buildings. These would be the start of a Civil War era farm. To go with them I needed some snake rail fences, the ubiquitous fencing found all over America from the 1700s through the 20th century. And I needed a ton of them. From what I have seen of period paintings, photos, and other wargaming projects...these things were everywhere. They lined every road and field you could find. The problem is, I didn't want to pay for any custom built ones or buy the expensive pre-made ones...so I had to find a fast, easy, and decent looking way of doing them myself.

Fortunately, my wife is a good cook.

She was making kebobs a few months back and I found that the bamboo kebob skewers she was using were the perfect size. Plus they were cheap and came in a pack with tons of the things.

To make them, I made a template on a 1" wide strip of Basswood with a mark every 2". Then I laid out the pattern using this grid. After that, it was time to cut what seemed like thousands of 2" pieces. It took a long time, but once done, the fences came together fast by gluing down the rails using the template. My snake rail fences are 3 rails high, which I felt was high enough for my 28mm minis. I plan on next doing some rock and rail fences, but haven't decided how to tackle that yet...

Also, the JR Miniatures buildings are hollow, but the roofs don't come off. That is unless you take a hacksaw to them. Which I did. It was a pain, but now the roofs lift off so I can put minis inside. The interior casting is too rough to build interior details, but it will be ok for my purposes. I don't feel like making or buying 28mm ACW era furniture anyway. That would just be obsessive...

Here are the pics.

I am going to call my generic ACW farm "Markey Farm" after my grandparents family who came here in 1732 and had a farm in the York County area of Pennsylvania.

Markey Farm House:



Markey Barn:



Snake Rail Fences. I need about 100 feet more of these:

Italian Theater '43-'45: The Germans.

Here are my first Crusader German Fallschirmjager for my Italian Theater project. These can be used from Sicily to the end in Italy. By swapping out the MG-34s for MG-42s I can tailor them to specific scenarios and locations. To change them to MG-42s I bought a bunch of Bolt Action Miniatures MG-42s and have swapped out the barrels on some extra MG Gunners to make these. Simple conversion and it gave my Fallschirmjagers some flexibility for this project.

Here they are...

MG-34 Teams:



MG-34 Team Detail. I really wanted to get the camo right, and after some test models, this is what I came up with:



Rifle Team:



Rifle Detail:

Italian Theater '43-'45: The British.

It's been a long time, but I fonally had a chance to snap some pics and show what I have been up to.

When I took stock of my miniatures this year, I realized I didn't have the miniatures I wanted to really do the Italian theater properly. I had sold my old painted Fallschirmjagers and I was not content to use my Late War Brits which were more appropriate for the Late War Western Front than anything Mediterranean. So, after having shelved a box of Crusader Early/Mid War Brits a few years back and picking up the new Crusader Fallschirmjagers last year, it was time to go back to sunny Italy.

So far, I have completed one squad of Brits. Here they are:

Bren Team:




Rifle Team:

A long hot summer and other musings...

It has been entirely too long since I posted anything on my wargaming blog. I intend to rectify that this weekend. Though it has been a ridiculously hot summer with very little gaming or work being done on miniatures or scenery...I did manage to get a few things off the workbench.

Several projects in the works at one time:

WWII Italy: working on a platoon of 28mm Crusader Miniatures Fallschirmjägers and Mid War British. So far, one squad of each platoon completed. I am very happy with the camo on the FJ. I want to revisit my old Continental Hotel scenario with some custom scenery for a potential Wargames Illustrated article down the road and maybe re-run it at another convention.

American Civil War: a few Rebs done, a house and barn from JR Miniatures (I cut the roofs off these suckers with a hacksaw), and some snake rail fences which, while fairly easy to do, made me realize just how many of these damn things I will need...I already blew through a whole bag of my wife's bamboo Kebob sticks.

On the rules front...not much going on. I have been stuck on my 1:1 individual combat system for months now. I am beginning to realize that I just don't like the idea of gaming at that granularity except for certain genres like Pulp or Zombies. I don't think 1:1 action works for modern military combat. I am sure there are lots of perfectly legitimate realism justifications for that kind of system...but that's my mental block right now. Partially it is also because I simply don't know where to stop with content. I wanted to originally stick to 1:1 WWII. Then it became modern combat in general. Then I was considering modeling SWAT actions and CQB and other stuff like that...before I knew it this thing had gotten out of control.

I have begun work on my ACW skirmish set with a little bit of progress. I need to finish some minis and terrain and do some preliminary testing first before I get much further, but I feel that this is a doable project. I'm just not sure when it will fully develop. I want to base the book on one of the tactical manuals of the period, but I find myself with a loss of confidence in my knowledge of a period known for full on hard core pedantry with these kinds of things. If there is something even slightly wrong I will never hear the end of it...even more so than anything I have ever done WWII. Still, I like the title a lot. So there's that.

True to my too many irons in the fire style, I have also started working on a 1:1 Company scale game for WWII. This is something I began thinking about when I started playing games in 15mm and how neat the ground scale looks. It made me go a step further and start looking at doing 1:1 in 6mm scale and how I could distill the DH system into a new kind of game. I came up with a new unit based firepower system and new ways of using morale, training, cover, suppression, and maneuver that combines the playability of regular Disposable Heroes but at a higher level. So far, out of anything else I am working on, this one I am pretty excited about.

Some preliminary testing needs to be done, but I think it will result in a neat, realistic ground scale appealing game that is tactically fun and easy to play. We shall see...

So that's all for now. I need to fire up the camera and take some pics to post. I hope to do that soon.