And................. Done!!!

Well, thats that lot done, not too bad really, a wargame assembled and painted in a fortnight. Ok close-ups would show the (rather poor) quality of painting, but that piccy shows them pretty much as you'd see them on-table, so for me, thats good enough for Government work.

Have I played it while painting this lot up, hell yeah, I've played about a dozen games so far, plays really fast, the rules just work without being over the top with detail. I think it says enough about the rules that of the dozen I've played (all on easy mode) I've only won 4. This game has A LOT of re-playability.

What do I think could improve this game? I've been pondering, 1:600 isnt really my scale, I think I'd like to re-do it in 1:300, again not really my scale but the aircraft at least are a big chunky handful. More aircraft stats so it can spread into other conflicts, more scenarios, 6 at 3 difficulty settings is a bit on the stingy side.

Aside from that I can honestly say that I've had more games (and fun) in the last fortnight than, well at any time in the past, so all in all, money well spent.

Just for Slorm

Slorm asked how I was mounting my AWACS planes so here's how I did it

Step 1, using one of the predrilled bases as a guide, drill a 1mm hole through one of the non-drilled bases

Step 2, cut a 2" length of 1mm wire, I use some florists wire that I bought years ago, about 100 feet for £1.50

Step 3, glue the wire into the base

Step 4, trim the wire so that there's about 1" left above the base

Step 5, pick your plane and locate the tiny mounting hole in it

Step 6, enlage that hole to 1mm, a couple of mm deep is more than enough

Step 7, a spot of superglue on the wire and push gently into the hole

Step 8, wave your favourite paintbrush in its general direction and your good to go.

repeat 31 more times. Warning the metal on these is very hard so take care when drilling, and get lots of little blobs of blue-tac ready for mounting those missile dice.

Unboxing AWACS

Oh, deep joy, the postie just chapped the door with a parcel for me,

thats an awful lotta stamps, never mind the stamps he says, lets look at whats inside.

well, fairly obviously the game box and a wee present from the designer, a medal for all us pre-orderers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yadda, yadda, yadda, enough yakking whats inside the game box?

This lot, a (very) thin rule book, double sided counter sheet, quick reference sheet for all the toys in the game, bag of bases, bag of dice and the necessary bag of toys.

the bag of toys tipped out

and sorted out, so whats there?

5 M1A1 tanks for teh US
5 Scud Launchers
10 T72s
10 AA tanky things
6 Mig 21s
4 Mig 29s
6 Mirages
6 F16s
4 F15s
4 A10s
2 F117s

62 models in all, should keep me busy mounting and painting for quite a while, I started on 5 aircraft for one of the scenarios and a couple of things hit me right away, one is that 32 of the bases come pre-drilled, sorry but that was a blunder, the holes are just too damn big, somewhere between 1.5 and 2mm. Way too big for a 1:600 aircraft, so I'm drillling the vehicle bases with 1mm holes. Second thing was that the metal is way harder than anything I've encountered before. I'll probably do another post when I've got summat painted and had them on the table.

While I'm waiting

Just thought that as I'm waiting for the Polish biplane to cross Europe with AWACS, I'd do something with my skaven warband for Songs of Blades and Heroes. So here they are, Warpmaster Queek and his squeaking minions.

Just FYI, these guys are literally on a hiding for nothing, the scores on the doors are, Played 2 : Lost 2 : Casulties caused  0, they really are rubbish, but I do like the look of them.

And its April

Ok just a heads up, its another new month and another new project,

try going here to find out what the fuss is about http://assaultpublishing.com/ it's not officially released yet but I've got mine as a pre-order. The official release date is the 10th of April but I'm assured that I'll have mine long before that. Why am I so interested in this thing? It's the only ruleset I know of that was written from the ground up as a solo play set, from piccies and snippets on the forum it looks like a real winner.

March's not so secret project

A couple of weeks ago I happened to glance up from painting my umpteenth 10mm legionary and spotted a box sitting on my shelf marked Bag the Hun aircraft. Like a fool I opened it and I was lost again, I also found a load of related PDFs on my old PC and I started reading them. Here's the result.

Bag the Mig!!!!!! A few North Korean Mig 15s  ambushing French Mysteres. Bag the Mig is the supplement for Bag the Hun to cover the North Korean war. Just to get up in the mood, Mexican Dave and I had a Battle of Britain bash with a flight of 4 Hurricanes scrambling to intercept a flight of 4 109s scuttling their way back to France. Lets just say that it was a memorable battle for Dave, and everyone else in the hall, he WON!!!!!!!!! Shot down 3 of the 109s for the loss of only 2 of his Hurricanes, I think that's got him sold on the ruleset.

I also read the Fox 2 supplement, basicly thats the "Missile Age" version and I'm not entirely happy with it so I've bought C21 Airwar to have a look at, at first glance, it looks a lot more detailed and hence probably wont allow the use of as many planes per player.

In short, look forward to piccies of lots more (badly painted) planes in the coming months.

AWI completed

as the title says

both armies done apart from adding half a dozen flags, then let the colonist rebels beware. "The British are coming, the British are coming!!"