Tag: Naval

Changing the Setting

My naval/amphibious project has had some minor attention recently, with a view to getting things ready for a big multi-player game next year. I have added some more ground troops, including the odd tank and artillery piece, and will aim to post some pics of these soon.

Since painting some fir trees to dress the islands for a northern setting, I’ve been on the hunt for small palm trees to re-locate things in the Pacific when I want to involve the Japanese and American fleets. I tracked down a Chinese (aren’t they all?) manufacturer on eBay and bought 100 30mm palm trees for a few quid. I’d almost forgotten about them until they arrived at the start of this week. They look fine, and I’ve simply painted the trunks a darker brown and based them in 1s, 2s and 3s (as I’ve done with the fir trees). I’m not aiming for full-on jungles, I just want a few trees to create the right look.

So, here are some Germans in the Baltic:

And with a quick switch round, some Japanese in the Pacific:

Bit of a Catch Up

Although there’s been no blog activity for a while, there have at least been some hobby goings on.
Not much was actually getting finished so I wasn’t taking many pics, but there has been some gaming, and progress on a number of projects

The best of the gaming was a weekend in Newcastle with Andy hosting an excellent ACW game using his newly re-based collection and Fire & Fury rules. He’d devised a scenario and set up the terrain too. The game took place in meeting room upstairs at a commercial stables, which added to ambience!

It was an encounter battle which 5 of us played to an entertaining draw. Plenty of flank attacks, charges and counter-charges as the advantage swung back and forth. Plenty of beer was had on the 2 evenings as well, which with the excellent company made it a very good time all-round.

 

 

 

 

I’ve spent some more time evolving my 15mm fantasy dungeon game, which is pretty much sorted and has seen some solo and 2-player games recently. Now I’m just having fun adding the odd monster, character or dungeon feature, plus some background fluff and additional rules that come to mind.

 

 

This year’s Ayton weekend (coming up very soon) calls for Lion Rampant forces from anywhere between 1100-1500, so I’m taking a very early Medetian force from their Normans-in-Italy era. It will be supplemented by Saracen auxiliaries, together making a standard 24 point retinue.

I’ve painted 6 knights (Conquest plastics) and 30 Gripping Beast Arab foot, leaving 2 units left to finish before the end of the month. I’ll try to get the whole force together for a pic soon.

I’ve tried yet another method for making islands for my scratchbuilt naval games, this time it was 6mm blue foam (painted green and gridded to match the sea boards) on thin card (painted sandy for beaches). With the odd building, tree or airfield they should look OK.

Two prototypes:

Maybe they’ll be the start of an overhaul of my islands in general, or I’ll just add them to the pile!

I just need to get back into the routine of updating the blog now, so more soon hopefully!

Simple buildings for the islands

Now I’m back from my hols, I thought I’d follow up the last post with the other naval game scenery I finished in August:

As you can guess, they’re Monopoly buildings. I picked up a cheap set without chimneys from ebay and have decided on basic clusters of 3 houses for settlements and 2 hotels for industrial or military (ie. when placed next to an airfield or harbour) centres.

A quick paint job and I’ve got 4 town and 3 industrial bases, with enough to do the same again if I decide I need them.

I just need a handful of very simple trees now!

New Islands

I’ve been meaning to make some new islands for my scratchbuilt inter-war naval games, and finally got round to it. I like the all-beach surround look so simply used 2 layers of plasticard, one painted sand colour, the other green.

They’re bare at the moment, but the flat template allows me to place on settlements, fortifications, harbours, troops, etc. I’m thinking that the odd palm tree will make them right for the pacific and the odd deciduous or fir tree will transport them to the Med or Baltic. Buildings are on the way and I’m hoping they’ll work OK.

I think I prefer this look to my older islands (below), which are textured, but the new ones are more ‘toy soldier’ and hit the spot a bit more for me nowadays.

Airbase (why they didn’t pick a bigger island is a mystery!):

Next, a test model of the Mark 2 landing craft. This holds a single infantry base. I’d like to have double the capacity but it would mean landing craft the size of transport ships, and although the scales are all over the place by necessity already, I think that would take things a bit far! A couple of old landing ‘barges’ are in the picture too for comparison. These are smaller and more non-descript but don’t carry the troops very well. I’ll probably keep both types for variety, and now just need to knock up a couple of dozen more of the new style from thin card.

 

Then I think there’ll need to be some action, so I must think up a scenario and plan a game or two..