A Brush with High Tech.

 Mate Duncan had a busy week last week having to take a Kubelwagen down to London to take part in a Bollywood movie, so this week I decided to pop up with the excellent Arnhem book which he had lent me. On arriving at his gate I found him standing in a splittermuster camo jacket waiting for a crew who wanted to digitally scan some of his vehicles, so I thought I would stick around for a bit.

The crew of young lads arrived, two from the Netherlands, all masked up and only willing to rub elbows, just don't contact if you are that troubled. Anyway we got talking to the leader, a nice English chap who confirmed the scans are to be used in a video game, I got the gist that it was a WWII sniper game of some kind and they wanted authentic equipment in the game. They had been at another vehicle collector few days before and scanned in a Sherman tank, they have also been to Bovington to get the famous Tiger 131. The good news for me was that I have never seen Duncan's shed looking so clean and spacious as some of the vehicles had been moved out so the scanning crew could work better, this means I at last got a really good look at the 251 halftrack, lovely machine. The whole thing sounds very interesting.

Over the last week I have scratched a couple of those itches which have been bothering me, first up was the additional figures to the Dark Age mercenary warbands, because they were virtually useless on the battlefield as by the time they closed with their enemies the casualties taken beforehand meant they could not take advantage of their superior numbers, hopefully now they can. It will be interesting to see if their performance improves. My second itch was the extra Waffen-SS light machine gun crew needed to ensure the panzergrenadier squads had two LMG's in them, I have more LMG's than the German Army. These guys were also painted in Autumn camouflage, one of the figures I received from Offensive Miniatures had a broken rifle, the firm replaced him so I was left with a guy who seemed to be of no use to me. Wait, I cut the damaged rifle off and turned him into a medic, I really wanted to glue a bag of some kind to one arm but I have nothing which would work in my spares box, but no big deal, he can deal out TLC.

I enjoyed my last War and Conquest game so much I decided to run another, but this time I would simply move the armies around and throw the dice while two friends commanded the troops. Again I would draw maps of the action and send them along with photos where applicable to both players, the guys themselves would just send movement orders etc. when it was their turn. As I had just finished the warbands I went for a Dark Age clash this time, Rob B would be the Saxons and Rob M the Romano-British, an interesting set up as Rob Broom of course wrote the rules while Rob Martin although a veteran wargamer has only played WAC once. I am relying on Rob M's inherent military knowledge to pull him through. The Saxons may have the edge in quality, as was said of my friend Dave Toone once "that he had brought more characters to the game than are in Eastenders", Rob has many Thegns to keep his men in line. The Romano-British have the numbers and have the remnants of Roman organisation to help however they have scrapped the bottom of the barrel for about a third of the army. The game is now afoot and a full report in time.

 

Saxons

        

Romano-British

It is the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of Berlin, eerily before I knew this I came off the fence and decided to build a section of a ruined city for WWII, although it could be Stalingrad or Budapest it was inspired by Berlin and my work on the "Bloody Streets" book. I am researching which buildings and materials to use, I am not sure it will be ready before the year is up but we will see. I have all the figures for battles in the city but still have a couple of vehicles to get, you name it it was in Berlin. Little Wars TV have just put up a recent 6mm game on the battle for the government district and the race by the different Russian commanders to get to the Reichstag first. Sadly for me at least, all the guys were wearing masks and therefore the interaction between the players was lacking. As a wargamer you really need to see that look of despair on the enemy's face when you pull off a Napoleonic masterpiece and turn the tide of the game, although that particular pleasure remains mostly unfulfilled for me.

So, on the way here are some Front Rank figures for another two battalions, one French and one Hanoverian, along with a gun limber, I will pick one of these up now and again so that all my guns will have limbers eventually. I also picked up today some paint and glue to start on some chain-link fences for my industrial complex, I saw these on Andy Duffel's Tiny Hordes blog, I may work on these over the next few days.