Of Blood Red Skies and Cruel Seas
Warlord Games is expanding and expanding their range over the last decade. Some into fiction settings, like Gates of Antares, Dr. Who or with the latest Warlords of Erehwon into fantasy. But the main strength of Warlord is with historical games and they stepped out of their vast 28mm range with two new rule sets in 2017 and 2018. We're talking the aerial fights of Blood Red Skies and covering World War 2 with a naval game in Cruel Seas.
As for Blood Red Skies, dogfight games have been around for quite some time. One of the most popular was Wings of War (2004), which paved the way for many other games to follow. Originally introduced by the Italian game studio Nexus and picked up by Fantasy Flight Games for translation and distribution. We even took an attempt on the record of most players playing simultaneously back in 2010 at the Tabletop Test Area of the RolePlayCon in Cologne.
Black Scorpion – Last Patrol Kickstarter
I've been looking for some proper modern combat miniatures in 28mm for ages. Where as other theatres of war like World War 2 have dozends of companies supporting the players with miniatures, even for the smallest factions, Modern Combat in 28mm is rather scarce.
Yes, there are Empress Miniatures, but I prefer the Hicks sculpts they carry, or The Assault Group, but those didn't age that well to be honest. And Black Scorpion used to offer some very appealing modern US Marines, but didn't move them over to the new range they offer in resin. Until late autumn last year.
Black Scorpion did run a brief Last Patrol Kickstarter, and offered the whole range of 3 full squads of 10 including some stretch goals. I was one of only 52 people to participate. The initial delivery time was June 2019, so I expected to wait for quite some time and what shall I say, in early february a small package arrived.
More vehicles for the Chindits and DAK
Added a few new vehicles to the motor pool of the world war 2 projects. The LVT is somewhat of an odd kit, that I really didn't know what to do with it at first, but when I read the Wikipedia article I got an idea. The British used the Landing Vehicle Tracked as well, but if you think about the Buffalo, most think about the use of it during the late war in the Netherlands or in the Pacific, but they were used quite broadly even in North Africa by the US Americans.
So, with this vehicle being used by the British, and being used in the South East Pacific, I thought that could be something for my Chindits. The LVT-1 were used by the British 14th Army in Burma, but the original to use them in an operation against the Japanese on the Burmese coast at the end of 1943 was cancelled and the LVT-1s weren't used in combat.
The derivative of the LVT-4 and LVT(A)-4 were used by the Royal Marines Amphibious in landings in Burma and Malaya. Therefore I went with the LVT-4 Water Buffalo kit.
Tactica 2019 – Part 1
As teasered last week, I went to Tactica in Hamburg! As this was a prolonged weekend in the pearl of the north, my - better said our - trip started on friday late noon.
Tactica 2019 – Part 2
The coverage of Part 1 continues with the prominent guests of Tactica.
The twin brothers Michael and Alan Perry were at the show, sculpting, having a chat with the guests and even added one of the show miniatures. But they weren't alone, they had Aly Morrison (who sculpted the Great War Miniatures range) and Peter Dennis (artists of multiple box artworks, Osprey and Warlord Games published works, and of Peters Paperboys).
Dead Man’s Hand: Banditos – Part 3
My third finished gang member for the Banditos is the planned leader of the gang. The dynamic pose and the aggressiveness the miniature expressed clearly called for that.
The outfit was obviously inspired by Mariachibands and so I let myself be inspired by originals as well. Unfortunately, when I was looking for pictures, I quickly realized that the clothes weren’t far as colourful as I remembered them. Nevertheless, I decided to stay true to the look and tried to give the clean black of the suit a more worn out look, as if it had been worn for a continuously long time. I followed Citadel's app suggestion for "dirty black" again and was quite satisfied with the result.
Preparing the limited & collection section
I have a soft spot for show and con miniatures, exclusives and to some degree limited models. Over the years, I collected quite a few of these of the shows and events I visited. In some cases, like at Salute for example, you can buy remaining stock of older event miniatures at the show, and I often use these chances to complete my collection.
Bolt Action Opel Blitz & Maultier
In late 2017 Warlord Games covered the Opel Blitz / Maultier combi plastic kit for Bolt Action.
The truck is one of the workhorses of the German army, transporting troops, supplies and ammunition were they were needed. The Opel Blitz is the most known of these trucks, other companies like Ford or Daimler supplied their own trucks, in some cases like the DB 701 by Daimler, it was simply the Opel Blitz without the markings built under license.
Where the Opel Blitz was build between 1937 and 1944 and made it to around 70,000 units, the half track variant of the Opel Maultier was released later in 1942/43 and around 20,000 units were built. As these trucks were the standard solution for logistics of all kind, there were multiple variants of them, converted and built for use as ambulance, communication, weapon carriage and even uparmoured ones.
Dead Man’s Hand: Banditos – Part 2
The turn of the year and the usual duties as a father have led to a small break in our Dead Man's Hand article series. Fortunately, since I did not tackle the project on my own, we will again have a Wild Wednesday occasionally. Finn's introduced his first gang member, Hector Villa, some time ago. Now it's time to introduce Tuco. And with this Finn will take over from here on...
With Tuco I went back to the experience I gained with painting Hector’s jeans and painted the poncho in yellow. At first I wanted to apply a light base color layer and tone it down it with a wash, but by mixing in white, it looked nicely faded, so that I used a lighter one than the intended wash. Of course, the pants should look similar raggedy and so I decided to keep them beige. I wanted Tuco to give the impression of a poor helper.
Rubicon Models SdKfz 301a Opel Maultier with Box Body
Based upon the already available Opel Blitz Kit (RM280026), Rubicon published the Maultier variant that replaces the rear wheels with tracks. As with some of their other kits, like the SdKfz 25x, they cover further accessories. For the Blitz and Maultier there is the option to upgrade the cargo bed with the box body "Einheitskoffer".
After the first winter in 1941 on the Eastern Front, the German army high command realised that the trucks weren't capable of handling the weather and terrain conditions. The vehicles often got stuck in the mud and snow. A unit of the Waffen-SS build the tracks of a Bren Carrier under a truck to confront those conditions. After realising the benefits of this modification in 1942, Opel, Ford and Daimler added these variants to their truck production. Depending on by whom the LKW Gleiskette 2t was build, it was called SdKfz 3a (in case it was built by Opel), 3b (Ford V3000 S) or 3c (Daimler L4500). The variant was called Maultier (mule) and further variants were build upon the halftrack vehicles, like the Panzerwerfer or with a 2-cm Flak 38.
Like us on Facebook
Follow me on Instagram
Categories
- events (107)
- fantasy (138)
- General (95)
- historical (287)
- Little Big Adventures (2)
- offtopic (5)
- reviews (172)
- science fiction (146)
- showroom (38)
- work-in-progress (114)
