Tiger 131 and how it steered me to Chain of Command

 The 1/32nd scale Bolt Action force project has finally been grounded.

    Actually, it got put on indefinite hold some time ago because I felt that Bolt Action was becoming less interesting as a ruleset. I am an honest-to-goodness military historian (I gots papers and and letters after my name and ever'thing) and like my historically-based wargames to allow a reasonable facsimile of actual forces. With Bolt Action, you get small platoon-sized infantry units slogging it out on a small area (good), supported by on-table super-heavy artillery and heavy tanks and tank destroyers (not good). The Warhammer 40K roots show themselves in a rather inelegant and undiginified manner. If I want to play a fantasy/sci-fi wargame then there are plenty of other rulesets to choose from.

    The final straw (for me) was the 'Tiger Terror' rule which assumed that all on-table opponents would be terrified by the appearance of German tanks. I assume that the authors had decided to go with the inaccurate stories of Allied tank crews retreating rather than face the Tiger, but these stories were hugely exaggerated and largely down to hyperbolic reporting. Both the Soviet and Allied armies captured and destroyed Tigers within months of the tank's first limited introduction in September 1942 (Tiger 131 at Bovington, incidentally, was probably captured in Spring of 1943), so the tanks and their capabilities and weaknesses were not unknown by any means. In any case, the Allies in particular were already used to being outgunned by German armour and modifying their tactics accordingly.

    So, goodbye to Bolt Action and hello to Chain of Command. Faithful old Rapid Fire, of course, never left me.

    Anyhow, enough of this rant, I have figures to paint.

More Projects. I can't die young, I need more time!

My new projects are painting up the old Airfix 1/32 Waterloo plastics (I always loved those when I was young, and they stand the test of time), and to paint up a few lances of Battletech mechs. 

    The Airfix figures are likely to go on Ebay as the original plan was paint-and-sell to bring in some pocket money, as well as a plausible excuse to paint up the figures when they are too large for wargaming and not really display-case models. Of course, I will probably keep a few back as display figures because the inner collector demands such things.

    The Battletech mechs are something of a departure (or possibly lost love) for me. I played the game back in the 1980s/early 90s and enjoyed it, particularly the tabletop RPG version where you played as an individual mechwarrior. The PC versions of the genre (including the Harebrained/{Paradox game) have rekindled that old and forgotted spark and I bought the tabletop boxed set with the intention of running a tabletop RPG (using GURPS - my favourite RPG system), and moving to the Catalyst tabletop wargame when necessary. 

    I now have the plastic mechs from the game plus a boxful of light mechs to paint up and base (I'm going for clear acrylic hex bases this time). That should keep me out of trouble. I have have only managed one mech to date - the Jenner: 

I had to modify the legs to bring it to life, but not all of the awaiting Jenners will benefit from the conversion.

    All this and the continuing slog to paint up the many thousands of fantasy RPG figures waiting to be brought to life. No, that's not an exaggeration - I have many boxes of the things accumulated over decades of being unable to say 'no'. Oh, and also the 20mm WW2 forces waiting for attention.

 Better photos of the Mercedes. It probably took longer to sort out the photography than it did to build and paint the model! Still, that experience (theoretically) won't need to be repeated now that I believe I have the secret.

 My build of the classic (aka. 'awkward to build') Airfix 1904 Mercedes. Many deformed parts, poor fitment and vague locators, combined with clumsy detail. Lovely.

I updated the lights, the driver's arms, and the front grill, and added a couple of resin dogs. And yes, 'white' tyres are accurate for the period.