Giving Spectre: Operations a try
Depending on how you count, giving this game a try is years in the making. I've stumbled across Spectre Operations in 2016, when I saw the booth on Salute in London, and covered their miniature range in review the same year. But the rules or setting really caught my eye, on Crisis a year later, in 2017, when I saw the gaming table build by Ivan / ThreadHeadz on Lead Adventure and recognised it at the show.
Giving Black Ops a try
This is a brief battle report, that has been hiding in the draft section for more than two years, covering Black Ops.
The wargames series by Osprey covers small, compact rule sets. Usually around 12 GBP and 64 pages thick. Among them you'll find rule sets like the popular post-apocalyptic Gaslands or historical and fantasy systems like Lion / Dragon Rampant. But today we want to take a look into Black Ops. Between the holidays of 2018 and 2019, we used the spare time for a game of Black Ops. I've seen it at Crisis a few years back in 2015, was written by Guy Bowers. Not an unfamiliar name in wargaming, as he's working for Karwansaray Publishers on Wargaming Soldier & Strategy.
February 2021 review
February is over and I'm still waiting for the arrival of my UK packages ... because it is still post-brexit chaos.
Modern Combat – Humvees, Tanks and Marines
The chassis are ready, a convoy of 3 to 4 almost identical looking vehicles would be okay, but as these will be put to use in smaller games and skirmishes, I didn't want to use clones, so I bought some Black Dog resin upgrades a while back.
Casting quality is pretty wild, some parts are just broken or not fully casted. Black Dog threw some of them in there multiple times, probably to make up for that lack of quaulity. The instructions are only available for the IDF kit and even there a bit vague.
Modern Combat – Assembling the HUMVEE Convoy
Some things take up less space once they are assembled, so while sorting out items I came across the Humvee kits by Tamiya in 1/48th scale, and those would be a lot smaller when built. And it was a welcome diversion from sorting, taking pictures and dropping off parcels at the post office.
Tamiya doesn't call them HUMVEE but a more generic name, simply an 4x4 utility vehicle. I have a total of four boxes of these, three of the regular US Modern 4x4 Utility Vehicle and a fourth one as the Cargo Variant.
Modern Combat – Modern Tanks M1A2 Abrams
As I had quite a good impression of the Tamiya kits in the past, and the 1:48 scale vehicles fit well with larger 28-32mm models, I added to the 1:48 Tamiya HUMVEEs and Black Scorpion's Last Patrol a M1A2 Abrams.
The kit is usually priced around 26-30 EUR and casted in sand yellow plastic. The kit is spread across multiple sprues, giving Tamiya the opportunity to use them in different sets / variants. In addition to the decal sheet, there is an a lead bar to up the weight of the tank.
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.
New Modern Combat car pool
5 years ago I stocked upon some die cast cars in 1:43 at Toysrus, most modern cars for Zombie settings. As mentioned in the Modern Combat article on the humvee, I'm looking for some cars that would work with some border patrols or the era of the Gulf War up to Operation Enduring Freedom. So for that I was looking for older and more exotic cars, that wouldn't be found in western europe.
I ordered a bunch of cars at the Italian model car shop, CarModel. After roughly a week a solidly wrapped package arrived, they meant it really good with the bubble wrap.
Modern Combat Black Dog 1:48 Upgrades
From Czechia with ... some kind of love. To pimp the Tamiya Humvees that I bought last month, I got myself two boxes of Black Dog conversion kits. The Iraq War Accessoires Set (T48034) and IDF Uparmoured Humvee (T48058).
I visited the black dog page a couple of times in the past, as they have some very extensive conversions and upgrade kits for world war 2 vehicles in 1:35 and 1:48. And I like to take those as ideas or inspiration to upgrade my Bolt Action (28mm / 1:56) kits. And to be honest, that was the main reason, why I spend that much money on these kits. Kinda like paying for the inspiration, as the upgrade sets are rather boldly priced with 14,50 EUR and 27 EUR for the two kits and that's without shipping.
Modern Combat Tamiya 1:48 Humvee
After watching Sicario 2 - Day of the Soldado and enjoying that amazing Behind the Border scene with the HUMVEEs and mexican police, modern combat came strongly back to my head.
All pictures shown above were taken from promotional material and are copyright 2018 of Sony Pictures / Lionsgate / StudioCanal.
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