Bolt Action Type 97 Chi-Ha tanks assembled

I finished building both Bolt Action Type-97 Chi-Ha WWII Japanese tanks. Both kits had little to no flash on the hull and only one had any amount on the turrets. They went together well and I want to get them primed and painted once the weather allows.

I ended up sculpting the rear facing turret machine gun on both tanks from greenstuff. The regular metal bit would have worked fine but I doubted they would last very long once they were handled a bit. I used a bit of brass wire as the armature for the machine gun and hope it looks good once it is painted.

ColKG

Oop Skeleton Cavalry assembled

I have finished assembling the oop Skeleton Cavalry unit.

  Since the original post I have sculpted all the arms, flocked the bases and added shields

I used a new skeleton shield and a couple chaos warrior shields to add a bit of variety.

I changed the standard bearer's sword from a tomb king blade to a chaos sword. Nothing like an undead chaos champion as my battle standard bearer.

These three will match my original skeleton cavalry.

I didn't have enough armor bits to match but I did add some classic shields.

Waiting for a clear day to get them primed and into the painting queue.

ColKG

Zombie Handgunner unit assembled

I finally finished converting the unit of Zombie Handgunners I plan to use as arquebus armed skeletons in my Oldhammer Undead army.

The finished unit. The majority of the models originally were either broken or missing parts but now are ready for some paint.

I posted this repeating handgunner champion earlier but I have since added a hat for some style.

They maybe suffering from single pose syndrome but different heads and snazzy hats will break them up.

I took one of the mordheim blunderbusses and pinned it to the broken off hand gun. No head swap for him so I will have to zombify him with paint.

The last three are straight up head swaps, some wire and a little greenstuff. I am waiting for a dry day and I will get them primed and in the painting queue.

ColKG

Reaper bones Flesh Golems as proxy Crypt Horrors

I have talked allot about building up 10k points of Undead army for an Oldhammer Fantasy battle. I am really close to hitting the mark. With all the basic troops I have amassed it isn't a big jump to field a regular Vampire Counts army in the 10k point range. One thing my Vampire lack for the current book is a heavy hitting unit and I thought to add a big block of Crypt horrors. At US$47 for three crypt horrors it is going to have to be proxy all the way.

Enter Reaper Bones and their Flesh Golem miniature. Once you put them on a 40mm base I think they are going to work fine as stand in Crypt Horrors. The good part is that the golems can be bought for US$3 or less each. That is the best part went you plan to field a unit of fifteen models.

ColKG

Wip Bolt Action WWII Japanese Type 97 Chi-Ha

I have had this type 97 Chi-HA tank for awhile. I picked it up to add some more armor support for the Japanese/Chinese after earlier facing the king of the Pacific battlefield the M3 Stuart. I set down to clean the flash off of the hull but it was almost clean of any flash. One thing lead to another and I cleaned up the tracks and started gluing on the hatches.

The first track in place waiting for the epoxy to cure.

The kit didn't come with magnet so I added my own. The turret will eventually have a metal rail so I decided to use the magnets to try and keep the rail on as long as possible.

The second track attached. The cannon and machine gun barrels are small and I will probably end up pinning them on just to be safe.

more later
ColKG

Leninade: Join the Party! & Mystery Vacation

Ok kids, I know this is a massive waste of internet space but I got such a kick outta this stuff  I figured they deserved some free advertising.  Available for sale at the Atlanta airport, its Leninade!  With slogans like "Join the Party", "Get Hammered and Sickled" and "A taste worth standing in line" how can you go wrong?  I was so charmed I brought a bottle home with me.

 So why was I in the Atlanta airport?  There's a well known saying in air travel; (no its not "Got time to spare, travel by air" or "its got its ups and downs") "You can't get to hell without changing planes in Atlanta."  While hell was not my destination of choice, here are some shots of my recent vaca; would anybody care to guess where I went? Of course, some of you already know.

The view from the house.

 Sunset approaches.

 After a rain shower, a view up the hill behind the house.

 Blending in with the locals.  Yeah, right.

 Sunset arrives.

 Damn that sun is bright.  Looks like I'm missing some teeth in this shot.  Maybe its the lack of oxygen.

 One of the many waterfalls.

And one last view of yet another sunset.    That roof is the pool house.
There are quite a few more pictures, of course, but somehow subjecting everyone to vacation slides seems obnoxious.  If you guys want to see more, leave a comment.  Otherwise I probably won't post anymore unless I get terribly bored.

Two Books for those who think Germany won the war

Hi Kids,  "Panther vs. Sherman" Required Reading!!!!

 It's come to my attention that many, many, wargamers are under the impression that Germany could not have lost World War Two.  Far too many in fact.  This bizarre belief might be (in my humble opinion) due to the nifty stuff Germany built.  Everything from the Panther and Tiger tanks, Mauser rifles, MG34's & 42's, Bf109's and FW190's,  battleships Bismark and Tirpitz; it all seems to be just so high tech and nifty.  With stuff that nifty how can you lose?  The only advantage the Allies possess seems to be reliability and vast numbers.  Wargames tend to reinforce this notion; after all, how many tactical games feature possible break downs?  The only one I can think of is Squad Leader.  How many of us have taken our Allied tanks to battle only to have them all blown apart (one shot one kill) by the Tiger boys*? I dream of the scenario where the German player pays the points for 4 Tigers and only gets one due to reliability, while the USA player gets 9 out of 10 Shermans.  I once was dragooned into playing an Eastern Front mini game where the Russians were absolutely helpless while the Germans destroyed everything this side of the horizon without breaking a sweat.  When I asked how the British and US tanks did in this game I was told that the rule author left them out cause they were so bad it won't be any fun to play.  (Doesn't that mean the rules are rather inaccurate?)  But on to the book review:
 This first book, "Panther vs. Sherman" by none other than Steve Zaloga, points out that the early Panthers at Kursk had teething problems.  ("Everybody knows that" I hear you mutter.)  The Panther serviceability rate at that battle was 17%!  That's one out of six!!!  By year end it had risen to 33%!!! This book should be required reading for all the Tiger Boys out there.  I showed this book to a Tiger Boy and he said, "It must have been written by some Brit or American who doesn't know crap about tanks."  He's never heard of Steve Zaloga?  Seriously? Possibly the most prolific author regarding tanks for the past 25 years?  Zaloga examines the specific details of both tanks in the specific time period in a very engaging way; including units, intended purpose, and crew quality.  At any rate everyone who plays WW2 ground combat needs to read this book.  It's an Osprey so its easy to find and cheap to buy.  Do yourself a favor and pick it up soon.  I got a real kick out of it, and picked up some real useful knowledge.  Nah, I won't tell ya how it ends. 

Well, I hate to be the one to break it to ya, ( Brace Yourselves!!) but Germany lost World War Two. 

I picked up this second book as a lark.  Although it includes some info about prior wars (Napoleonic, Franco-Prussian, WW1), this book is mostly about the WW2 German High Command; the various generals and field marshals and how they interacted with Hitler. It points out some mistakes made, even early in WW2.  Macksey evaluates them and comes to some startling conclusions.  I was hoping it would have more information about production. And I wish he had gone into more detail regarding the political maneuvering amongst the commanders.  I can tell Macksey was done a lot of research, including interviews with some of the principle characters, but it just doesn't make it into the volume.  I got the impression it could have been 100+ pages longer. It is more of a brief overview of the subject rather than an end-all be-all explosion of the myth.





*Tiger Boy is a derogatory term used to describe a player who always has Tigers and Panthers in his forces.  Always.  Mid War FOW is a great example.  There were what, a dozen or so Tigers in North Africa at the very end of the conflict, so I have to face them 99% of the time?  Of the 1800 examples of Tiger and King Tiger actually built, I have faced each one about 100 times.

Cauldron 2014 RDU Gameday

Hi Kids,  I've been slack!  (Shocking, I know)  I totally forgot to post the pix from the not-so-recent gameday the Raleigh lads set up at the Atomic Comics store in Durham!  Since everything in gaming has to have a code name, this event was dubbed "Cauldron." This was the second gameday this year.  These gamesdays are a recent phenomenon, the idea at this point is to have 3 or 4 every year, depending on how many people are interested.  We had about 15-20 gamers show up for the historical games, there were also a like number of guys doing Infinity, a large group of Magic types, and a few 40K'ers.

The first few shots are of all the different game setups, this one is 20mm Low Level Hell in Vietnam.

This one was a pulp game.

This one was 28mm Pulp archaeology based somewhere in Eygpt.  Indiana Jones returns!

This was a 40mm Indian Wars game.

The lads from Magic outnumbered everyone else combined.  What a shock.

And there was an Infinity Tournament going on that Saturday, too.  I didn't even know there was such a thing in the area.  Guess I should get out more.  Some of the tables looked real cool.  Some of these shots were taken during the games, so don't be surprised to see some figs sneaking around.  I've always liked the figures for Infinity, but have only bought a couple and have never played it. 

 

I like the look of this table!  Not sure what those green walker mechs on the left might be.

I played in Famous Bruce's game of Low Level Hell.  This thing was my chopper.  Yeah, if I had thought of it I'd have been Big Duke 6.  The point of the mission was to rescue some downed pilots.  You can see some VC below my ship.

The choppers buzz around blasting everything in sight except each other.  I really like these games when all the players work together against a common foe, in this case run by Bruce.

Turn one and our scout chopper gets shot down!  Charlie is on the spot!  Bruce said that was the second time the scout had been shot down, the other time was 10 years ago.  Some guys are just lucky I guess.  The gamer got a new chopper and rejoined the game, with blood in his eye this time.

Meanwhile the Indians are getting too close for comfort out west.

And the pulpers are getting their camels out of the free fire zone.

Holy Smokes!  Somebody rubbed the wrong lamp in a big way!

Meanwhile its mission accomplished in Vietnam, a slick picks up the jet pilots.  Now we just have to rescue the helicopter pilots.

 



An F100 Super Saber in the weeds!

The Chuckster gives 'em both barrels!

Infinity in progress!

Whoa!  Who showed up for 15mm WW2?  A German Assault Gun moves through the rubble.

More Infinity in progress.  I really, really like this table.  I can see myself coming up with stuff like this for my Giant Stompy Robot set up.  Project #847.  I'll have to get back to you with the details.  I wish I had more time to eyeball this setup!  And somebody's finally getting some use out of those horrid squeeze bottle paints!

And a final shot of a desert town for Infinity. 

 

It looks like gaming is alive and well in the RDU area of NC.  (Too bad  Winston-Salem has become the black hole of culture, but thems the breaks...)  The RDU lads are trying to figure out if they should continue putting on two full sized cons every year (Spring Fever, Southern Front; attendance in the 150+ range) or do a bunch of these gamedays instead, or a combination of both.  It just depends of who wants to do what.  For the up-to-date skinny just check the TSS ("Triangle Simulation Society") yahoogroup or forum.  If you live somewhat locally, feel free to put in your two cents.  Its about 70 miles from here, and I made the trip!