Vietnamese People's Air Force Museum - Madaxeman.com on Tour

Having accidentally found myself in Hanoi with a spare morning, a trip to a military museum was required. Originally intending to go to the supposedly disappointing Vietnam War Museum, my driver ended up dropping me off instead at the Vietnamese Peoples Air Force Museum.

This place doesn't appear all that prominently in the normal guidebooks but as you will see is still pretty good, especially for a wargamer!

(yes, it does appear to be an "88"..!)

The museum has a large static park containing and (admittedly) limited range of aircraft and AA guns as used by the Vietnamese Air Force during the Vietnam war and immediately afterwards in some other conflicts (which don't really seem to get much of a look-in).

You can walk around the grounds and climb all over the kit if you wish, so its very much a hands-on experience.

It was a fairly decent and bright day without being overly sunny, so I managed to get a good number of pretty clear photos using my iPhone camera, all of which are now on Madaxeman.com

They are a-gaggin' and a-drippin'....the Welsh get lush for some 25mm ADLG action

Almost 2 years after the majority of the figures were bought in a bring and buy, finally a full fat 25mm mostly Old Glory Dark Ages army from the Celtic fringes of Britain makes its way onto the table in the guise of the Welsh.

Inspired by tales of derring do and the discovery of some daffodil-simulating grass tufts on eBay, this mountain-dwelling army takes on all comers from the far ends of the earth to the naughty neighbours across Offa's Dyke and the Irish Sea in 5 spectacular full colour match reports with big, big, big soldiers on display throughout.

The man, the legend, the Knight of the Realm Sir Tom Jones gives the judgement for the home team and of course, Medieval Hannibal is there for the insight and analysis at the end as well.

It's massive. It's Lush. Its Welsh through to the bone. And there are plenty of "double-L's" in there too for good measure.

Pour yourself a pint of Brains, settle in for the evening (because as Sir Tom would say, "it's cold outside") and enjoy the spectacle in these 5 widescreen brand new reports.

Saga V2 - a short and hairy summary of the changes from V1

The new version of Saga (V2) is getting great early reviews at CLWC, with a cleaner and simpler set of mechanics that appear at first glance to be less susceptible to being "gamed" than V1.

The club have cobbled together a summary of the key changes we have found so far which you can download from the CLWC club page

Hopefully it's of use and encourages you to have a punt on this new (and we already think, "better") edition of a great and very popular ruleset.

This is a totally unofficial summary of the changes between versions, so let me know if you spot any errors! 

Terrain time !

With Roll Call and Patras both coming up in the next couple of weeks, a man's mind turns to what things are possible to do on a wet Bank Holiday Monday with 2mm mdf, some builders sand, glue and a tin of Rustin's Wood Dye (sometimes known as "Wood Stain" .. presumably if the marketing department don't get to it first).

And.... the answer is a 25mm ADLG area of brushy ground, and a 15mm ADLG marsh.

Very simple construction indeed - the base is simply 2mm MDF sheet, cut square and then the corners trimmed off to make it a tad irregular.   The whole thing is then sprayed dark green (a cammo green spray from Halfords wouldyabelieveit!)

Wood glue is then smeared on where you want the "land" to be, spread about with a knackered brush and then builders sand is poured on top. Leave it to dry for a little while, and then stain the sand areas by roughly painting on Rustins Wood Stain (or similar).

Once that had dried thoroughly (and in a well ventilated place as it kinda stinks), gloss varnish the "green" bits of murky water, and add some grass and grass tufts to the thing to set it all off.

I'm sure there are cleverer ways of doing this, but I'm quite happy with this as the fruits of my own rather half-hearted labours...

A larger area of "brushy ground" is basically the same idea but the base colour here is just the natural colour of the 2mm MDF (no spray), and the whole thing has been painted in Wood Stain, left to dry and then gently drybrushed. 

If you paint it, the wood stain doesn't really sink in - I have however done "lighter" spray version of these in the past, such as for the baseplate to the Samurai Village.

While I was in a terrain-making mood, I also rebased some of my collection of palm trees onto larger, multiple bases.

This has become my go-to technique for trees, having given up on single-based ones as hey fall over  - although I may be over-egging it a little to describe putting 2-3 trees on one base as a "technique"(?).

These are palm tree cake decorations - they have the twin advantages of being cheap, and very flexible so they won't break if you drop them or squish them in a tin for transit.