My Latest

All,

I apologize for the delay, there's been two issues:

1) I've been pretty damn busy with work and family stuff, so not a lot of time for wargaming stuff.  Which is not to say I haven't been doing anything, but that leads to number two.

2) I've been getting lots of 'grunt' work done.  Lots of cleaning up, assembling, prepping, priming, painting, basing, etc...  It's not that I don't feel like playing, I do; hell, I always feel like playing.  But I don't always feel like painting, etc..., and what I've learned is that when I am in the mood for that stuff I need to maximize it, and that's what I've been doing.

The only problem is that I'm too much a butterfly, can't keep my eye on the ball, so I didn't finish anything.  Rather, I simply made some progress on several different projects...

First up is stuff for the upcoming rules, "5Core Brigade Commander," which I'm doing with multi-based units in 6mm, mostly GHQ, but some CinC as well.

And here they are, the first two completed bases.  Each base is a company, so a tank company of T-72s and a mechanized company of BMP-2s and infantry.  These are for my 'green' WarPac side.  I have an equal sized-force in khaki, then NATO green and khaki to do.

Another view.

 And one more.  I think they look pretty good, if I do say so myself.

'Khaki' WarPac forces that I recently purchased on Ebay.  Got them cleaned up, put on sticks, primed, and painted, need to give them a wash and base them up.

Top right is new 'green' WarPac, while everything on the bottom is NATO.  The dark green is old stuff, the OD (bottom right) is new stuff from my recent Ebay purchase.  Those are Chieftains and M-60s.

I took most of my old 'green' WarPac and put them on bases.  With the new stuff, I've got about 45 stands (3 vehicles each) of 'green' tanks and about 40 stands (3 vehicles each) of 'green' APCs, plus arty, air defense, engineers, recon, etc...  Then I've got a matching force in khaki.  Then I've got NATO stuff.

I think, due to my lack of planning, I may have gone a bit too far...  I am really not sure what I'm going to do with all this stuff, as I've got way more than I need for Brigade Commander.

My old 'khaki' WarPac, which I also put on bases.

Another problem is that I haven't really done anything with infantry for all this stuff yet.  Though I do have 8 million US and NVA infantry based on pennies...

And I did a bunch of work with my WWII 20mm stuff.  I had four boxes of 20mm (I guess they're really 25mm) Valiant infantry: US, Brit, Germans, and Germans in Normandy.  Previously I had painted up a handful of test figures, but not much else,  So busted each set out, cut'em out, slapped them together, put'em on sticks, and primed them.  The US got khaki, the Brits got PSC British Khaki (pretty expensive, but worked really well), and the Germans got PSC German uniform, which is, in my opinion, kind of a strange gray-green color (very expensive, and didn't cover very well.  As a matter of fact, I sprayed a stick and saw it didn't cover, so I actually primed them khaki - like the US - then sprayed them again with German uniform.  I got them inside and dried, and noticed it still didn't cover very well, so I had to take them back outside and spray them again!).

The US troops, which are, in my opinion, the weakest of the sets.  I like the figures, but some of them look a bit dwarfish with big helmets, and I'm really aggravated with the fact you only get four BARs, and a couple of the poses are a little goofy.

I thought the Brits are really good looking figs, pretty easy to put together (Valiants are plastic and you have to glue them together, with lots, probably too many, different options).  I'm aggravated that I only got four Bren guns, which is the same number of Vickers, which seems a bit odd (come to think of it, the US had four BARs and four M1919s)...  I could have had a couple more Brens, but it would have been at the expense of the PIATs, of which I have four.

I didn't really want or need so many Germans, but Valiant has two different sets and I guess I couldn't help but buy one of each...  Only four MG42s on tripod (the Normandy set has this goofy-ass pose of an MG15 on a tree-stump, which I hate, especially the fact there are four of them), four 80mm mortars, and four 120mm mortars.  Bunch of panzerschrecks, panzerfausts, and MG42s.

A quick example of some Germans to show:

1) the strange German uniform color.  Does that look right to you guys?

2) assembly issues.  These are plastic guys with plenty of parts.  I didn't pick a good example as these guys all have the same weapon, but that's not the case with a lot of figures.  Here you can see all four guys of one pose, with four different heads.  They all come with the same head, so you have to cut off the head, pull the new one off the sprue, then glue it on.  No big deal I'm sure for a lot of you guys, but I'm pretty much a 10mm guy, so I'm used to simply pulling off a little flash with my knife, then grinding the base flat (on the bottom), and I'm ready to put them on sticks and prime.  Putting these guys (four boxes!) together was quite an undertaking for me.

So, I have plenty of work to do still, but I've got a long weekend coming up and I've resolved to knock out the final four fights of my Polish campaign, so stay tuned.

V/R,
Jack