Somewhat Old Cold War Commander

 With the new edition of CWC coming put from Pendraken recently, I remembered I hadn't posted a load of photos I took of a CWC Big Game (OK, 9x4 table with 1/300th scale models) that we played last autumn in Brixham after the Brixham Classic.

So, with a bit of time on my hands, here they all are shufled together into a single page 'lite' battle report (the ones here are just a taster)

 See the full set here

Madaxeman.com meets The God's Own Scale Podcast

This week I've made an appearance as a guest on the (increasingly scale-agnostic) Gods Own Scale Podcast, spending about an hour and a half chatting to Sean about all manner of things "madaxeman" and "ancients competition gaming"-related - and great fun it was too.

Sean is an exceedingly amiable host, and in the course of our chat we covered the dim and distant origins of Madaxeman.com (and how cobbled together it actually all is), the back story of how the Madaxeman Podcast came to be, some of my own personal wargaming history, and finally managed a bit of a shallow dive into the hoary old subject of "competition wargaming" - which, given both Sean and Ken "Yarkshire Gamer" Reilly had both put competition gaming into their own "Wargaming Room 101" on Kens last podcast, was kinda interesting to chew over to say the least.

Sean even managed to spring an "I'm Sorry I Think You're An Arse" topic on me at short notice, so that feature can now claim to have been syndicated to another podcast

You can listen to the episode on the Gods Own Scale Podcast on Podbean, or search for it through your regular podcast provider.

The Eclectic Painting Weekend

This weekend has seen a bit of a blitz on the to-do pile, with a load of oddments being finished off, all of which have been falling behind far more exciting projects for quite some time.

The end result is probably one of the most random selection of figures and models ever to have been sprayed with the same tin of Testors Dullcote... and here they are, in absolutely no particular order!

This is the full slab, post matt varnishing.   Yes, those are 28mm garden gnomes...

Possibly the least interesting and impressive thing on the board was this pair of Numidian LH, which have been hanging around for almost a year after not quite being finished at the same time as my Numidian ADLG army. I believe these are Baueda one-piece castings.

Another bit of long-forgotten tidying up, casulaty markers for late C17 FoGR armies. The falling guys are decent, but I went a bit wild on the colours for the prone men!

I had a couple of spare bases for my huge 1/300th refurbishment project lying around, so after a bit of help from Twitter I worked out that these odd tanks were French AA variants of an AMX 13. I don't have too many French tanks but now they do have some AA cover (in a few specific years)

I'd also had this robot lying around, as a keyring toy from Japan. He is now based up and ready to fight alongside my 1/300th SF forces

Another 1/300th refurb is this Iranian F5E fighter. 

Super-clean paint job, as the Iranians F5's don't get to see much action so probably don't get dirty!

These 3 huns are I think Old Glory - I have a handful of bases set up as LH that go with my Roman 28mm army so these may have been the three spares to make up a Medium Cavalry base

In 15mm, a fairly generic chariot with Royal archer from Essex. This brings the total of these types of chariot up to 4 in my collection, which means they can be an allied contingent for any of my proper biblical armies, or the not-quite-Egyptian chariots in a Sea Peoples army. I did the "light blue in dark blue stripe" effect on these that I first did on the Egyptian Spearmen as well

 I might even try and get away with them as Assyrian Light Chariots if I try the non-Sargonid verison of that army sometime.

These are 12 plastic Perry medieval infantry kitbashed together with odd arms and spears from the GB Roman set to give me some proper Medieval Spearmen or (perhaps) Javelinmen, as my other Medieval  28mm Medium Infantry are pretty clearly carrying polearms.

I suspect this may be a Footsore or Crusader from North Star Norman general - he's been done for ages, just awaiting basing, so finally he is now complete.
 

These were the mad bit - some military Gnomes from Brigade Games in the US that I picked up at Cold Wars.

They are the Swiss Gnome of Zurich (throwing Swiss CHeese), a Kaiser Gnome (hurling beer steins as hand grenades) and a Russian Czar Gnome. I was very pleased with the painted beer stein effect I achieved with the German guy - its very impressionistic, but it does sort of work I think.

Totally bonkers, but too hard to resist, these comedy chaps will be leading some of my ADLG armies in the near future!

A couple of mounted Greek officers from the Captains Games range picked up in January to accomany the Museum Z Hoplites if they ever need a separate commander

The "other" light gun that came in the pack of 2 guns and crew from Front Rank along with the heavy gun I used at Roll Call last year - showing how long this has hung on in the pile!

The crew have a shield bearer who I set up protecting the powder box from sparks.

4 dark age LH which I think may be Footsore, not quite finished but they were close enough to varnish at the same time as the rest.

 They are a bit too armoured to be LH to my reckoning, but as there are 4 of them and their horses are way too small to mix with the GB plastics in my Gothic army they are now higher quality LH javelinmen!

And here's the lot again - eclectic to say the least!

Teeny-tiny lazy soldiers... 6mm ultra-moderns

Before the Lockdown there were these things called "Wargaming trade shows", where you could see stuff, talk to the people selling it and then give them actual cash to buy it - imagine that? And all of it was much more friendly that this internet + delivery malarkey we're all playing at now. 

At the penultimate show I went to, PAW back in January, I picked up some modern British Mainforce infantry from Colonel Bills second hand figures display, which I've been meaning to paint up to go with the refurbished middle eastern ultra-moderns that I've been gradually working through over the past few months - and as they are dead easy to do, here they are:

The paler-cammo-painted troops here are half of a British Modern Mechanised Infantry set. If you don't know Mainforce's range, each individual base is a single piece of metal with the men moulded onto it in a prone position.

This concept is one I find is really great, as they don't break or bend like standing soldiers, they are easier to store, and anyway most modern infantry probably spend a lot of time lying down already!

The painting is as easy as you can imagine - spray the whole lot with Bleached Bone first, then ink the lot with a dark wash, let it dry and then 'damp-brush' the infantrymen's bodies.

To finish them off from there I do flesh coloured blobs for hands and faces, and pick out the weapons and boots in fairly bold colours (this time I used dark brown for boots, black guns, and green for the support weapons) and away you go

I painted up the other half of the pack as "enemy", with a darker brown for uniforms and black boots as well - giving them all green helmets too for that ex-soviet militia army look.

A spot of static grass completes the lot.

I glued all of the metal pieces onto magnabase before spraying them - this means they can be magnetized onto a ferrous sheet for safer storage, and adds more depth to each base making them a bit easier to pick up off the table as well

The pack I bought has eighteen infantry bases, five Command, eight Milan anti-tank missiles, seven light mortars, nine GPMGs and two Javelins.

But at this scale they do all kinda just look like blokes lying down with guns and stuff to be honest, so for my purposes splitting the pack in half and creating two sets of troops for opposing sides is absoluely fine.

Splitting the pack gives each side 10+ infantry bases and a load of support weapons

My previous experienmce with these was a few years ago when I probably used the same set to create Brits in DPM cammo for the European theatre. They are also still all online here

1/300th Modern Desert War Brits on eBay

With time at home to sort stuff like this out, I'm now selling on eBay a huge, fully painted, mostly Heroics & Ros 1/300th micro-armour British Gulf War and earlier (or, as it has Challengers AND Chieftains, something that could also be used for Omani's, or even as part of an Iranian armoured force?) battlegroup.

As well as the tanks and APC's there are also a host of options including air support from a Tornado, as well as some fairly retro mid 70's and 80's support vehicles.

eBay Link to auction

This is all just part of an even larger collection which I had when much younger and is now being downsized to more manageable proportions.

The auction ends on April 5th at 8pm BST, the models are almost all Heroics & Ros but there may be a couple of other makes in there as well for some of the vehicle types

The set includes:

• 13 Challengers
• 12 Warrior IFV's 
• 20 Chieftains
• 10 Saracen 6-wheeler APC's
• 8 Saxon 4-wheeler APC's
• 15 Scorpion/Scimitar light tanks 
• 4 Striker (Swingfire?) ATGW variants on the Scorpion chassis
• 3 Ferret recce vehicles 
• 5 Long wheelbase and 5 normal Land Rovers 
• A command set of 2 FV432's and a command vehicle variant 
• 1 Tornado, which is painted with Saudi roundels (so it only needs a couple of blobs of red white and blue to restore to RAF service if you so wish)

This lot would set you back just over £50 in unpainted lead from Heroics and Ros if you wanted to buy them today (tanks are 75p, other vehicles are 65p each according to their website), but these guys are good to go right now straight out of the packet - or with a simple and very quick wash with something from Army Painter and perhaps a drag over with a drybrush they'll really "pop" even more.

The models are packed and ready to be despatched promptly on receipt of payment. I have worked out that I can print postage from Royal Mail online and drop them in a post box at the end of my road as part of my one legally-permitted self-isolating walk of the day, so no worries about any delays in getting them to you either

10% of the final price will go to SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity supportiung ex-service personnel and their families across the UK.

1/300th US Moderns on eBay

The seemingly interminable modern 1/300th recycling/refurbishing project grinds on, this installment being a rather low-tech announcement of the sale of about half of the US armour collection which I've been working through.

They are on eBay now via this link

The set is suitable for Team Yankee (assuming you're playing in a proper scale for moderns!), Cold War Commander, Oil Wars, Modern Spearhead or other similar division/company/batallion level Modern or ultra-modern rules.

The models are all (I believe) Heroics & Ros, and are painted in a rather fetching Gulf War era MERDC 4-colour cammo scheme.

The set includes:

• 16 M1's
• 17 M60A3's 
• 2 M901 ITV TOW
• 27 LAV with 25mm turret
• 10 LAV with 90mm turret
• 1 LAV ITV TOW 
• 1 LAV Command
• 10 LTVP/AAV 
• 6 M2 Bradley 
• 6 Jeeps with TOW 
• 4 Hummers
• 1 M577 command
• 2 Chapparall AA missile
• 1 DIVADS M113-mounted 25mm AA 
• 1 Apache helos
• 2 Cobra helos  

Both helos come with plastic rotor disks - the disks are fairly old and have gone rather grimy and opaque but hey, they are still rotor disks and they're a little hard to find these days.

This lot would set you back around £80 in unpainted lead from Heroics and Ros if you wanted to buy them today (tanks are 75p, other vehicles are 65p each and helos are £3-£3.50 each according to their website), but these guys are good to go right now straight out of the packet - or with a quick wash with something from Army Painter and perhaps a drag over with a drybrush they'll really "pop" even more!

The models are packed and ready to be despatched promptly on receipt of payment. Postage is charged at Royal Mail small parcels cost, no markup for 'packaging' or the like.

10% of the sale fee goes to SSAFA the Forces charity as well.

Heres the link again to the listing