Figz 2016 - a really short review

A week before Figz I got a cold. On Friday and Saturday I was in bed with a fever. I came this close to cancelling my "Working with foamboard" workshop and going to Figz at all. But I went anyway (after taking a ton of painkillers - I'll be reporting to the doctors office first thing on monday).

As it is, I spent most of my time at the table for the demonstration feeling rather unwell, but making the best of it. In the end, a little over half a dozen people actually spent time with me, asking questions about how to approach this and that kind of scenery, but no one took my offer to have a go at foamboard modelling themselves, sadly, so I had brought quite a few extra bits for nothing. Such is life. I did spend some time however trying out a new cutting method from my regular one, by leaving 5mm openings in the foamboard before glueing the wallsections together so you would have a seamless cut, but I either cut too deep or made the gap too narrow so it ripped when folded over. Since I find just wallpapering a bit of paper over the seam to be just as quick if not quicker I don't see any ups to the method and I will not be trying it again.

What did I make? Well, I had a go at my idea of a (very basic) Necromundan Waste Air Processing unit....though if it spews noxious fumes or actually sends out fresh recycled air is a good questions. Just one A4 sheet of foamboard, a vent from the DIY I had lying around for ages, and some cardboard.

Nothing fancy, just a concrete colum (well, preformed slabs really with a bolted steel shell) and a good LOS blocker in the Underhive. Also a logical exit point for a gang that has Vents added to their territory. I will add bolts to the cardboard, cut out a proper cardboard door and glue that in place, and coat the doorway bunker so it looks more like poured concrete. I'll leave it pretty featureless otherwise. Top will stay bare and flat so I can lay plankways from there to other levels and back again. Still plenty of work to do.

I took 2 short breaks to have a stoll around. The area was split down the middle (entree), to the right were the displays by various painters (and me), to the left were the traders and display games. Modern War, Post Apocalyptisch, WW2, there was something for everyone to look at. All the way in the back was a workshop for making your own trees, very nice. Sadly, no pics from me.

In my first round I traded with people who wanted stuff from me (some books and all of my 28mm Germans), in the second round I visited the 2nd hand kit trader stand who is always good for some nice buys. I picked up the following:

A Roden Pakwagen. Some don't like Roden but I never had much of a problem with them, I have loads in my to be built collection, and this one was missing.

I picked up this one to do as a wreck. But I just realised practically all of it is made out of wood! Still, a wreck is planned and so shall it be.

Whenever I can I pick up this box. This contains a complete latewar Panther G plus optional steel wheels and a Panther F turret. The Panther F turrets I have been collecting for Panzer IV Neu conversions ever since I bought one off Piers now.....8-10 years ago.

For future NATO goes Hot games. Goes well with 1/600 aircraft. Can be buillt waterlined with no effort at all.

For future NATO goes Hot games. Goes well with 1/600 aircraft. Can be buillt waterlined with no effort at all.

Normally I would not buy so many kits in one go, but he had a big pile of them marked "5 euro each"  The Roden or the Hasegawa kit alone go for almost 20 euros in the local hobby shops here, the 1:1250 ships seemed more practical then the 1:600 English cruisers and Destroyers he had laying around and a wreck-base for a fiver is a good wreck if you ask me. I also picked up these:

I picked these up from Wendy's Miniatures. Quite expensive, the small left cabinet is 1 euro, the right cabinet is 3,50 euro. They are made for 28mm scale. I will sand flat the backs and make a few greenstuff copies of them to put inside my ruins, be it the TNT ones or the Mordheim ones, they seem to fit both..

 Sadly, I was not able to put more work in La Maisontaal during the day. It was nice to see so many familiar faces again and the output was pretty good for this small but free show on what was a very hot an sunny day (by Dutch standards, 28 degrees Celcius).

And now I'm really knackered. Goodbye.

Edit: I tried to go to sleep. But a friend wanted my take on Tau, as he wants to restart/do over his Tau, so he asked me to draw my Tau as how I want to/will paint them. Pretty simple (even if it took me 15 minutes).

Why yes, that is the Eastern Empire version of the Tau focussed on City Fight. Don't change a winning idea. As I never plan to go beyond a small Kill Team all of the heavy equipment is not of my concern and lots of little conversions are. Must get back to these chaps soon.

Julius Fučík - WIP 1

The JULIUS FUCIK was rolling ten degrees with a beam sea. It made life hard on the
soldiers, Captain Kherov noted, but they were doing well for landsmen. His own
crewmen were dangling over the sides with sprayguns, painting over the ship’s
Interlighter markings, preparatory to replacing them with the Lykes Lines emblem. The
soldiers were cutting away parts of the superstructure to conform with the silhouette of
the Doctor Lykes, a U.S.-flag Seabee carrier remarkably similar to the Fucik. The Soviet
ship had been built years before in Finland’s Valmet yard from plans purchased in
America. Already the elevator winch area aft had been painted completely black to match
the American line’s house colors, and a black diamond had been painted on both sides of
the superstructure. Gangs of men were changing the shape and colors of the two funnels
with prefabricated parts. The hardest job remaining was the paintwork on the hull. The
Interlighter markings were made of twentyfoot letters. Replacing them called for the use
of canvas templates, and the lettering had to be neat and exact. Worst of all, there was
no way to check the workmanship short of launching a ship’s boat, something he had
neither the time nor the inclination to do.
"How long, Comrade Captain?"
"Four hours at least. The work goes well." Kherov couldn’t hide his concern. Here they
were, mid-Atlantic, far from the usual sea lanes, but there was no telling-
"And if we are spotted by an American aircraft or ship?" General Andreyev asked.
"Then we will find out how effective our damage-control drills have been-and our
mission will be a failure." Kherov ran his hand along the polished teak rail. He’d
commanded this ship for six years, taken her into nearly every port on the North and
South Atlantic. "We’ll get some way on. The ship will ride more easily on a bow sea."

Excerpt from Red Storm Rising (Tom Clancy (1986))

Aris sent me the blueprints for this ship in November 2009, and I ran into it while cleaning my harddrive a few days ago. As I need a merchant for the scenario I'm building forces for, why not the Fučík? I will keep her in her original scheme though, not the cover she used to sail to Iceland. So the Soviet flag will fly on this one....so much for a "neutral" merchant.  ;)

Start is the same as always. Check the blueprints, check the data online in one of the many ships directories, calculate the correct sizes in 1/3000 and note what goes where and what sizes plasticcard are needed. It's not rocket science, believe me. The hardest thing you have to do is shape and sand the correct bow, for the rest the Fučík is one big box with some superstructure, a barge lift and a open stern. She's a big ship, 90mm from bow to stern.

So here is a teaser pic which shows nothing but the bare hull and the first sanded down coat of filler, I'm trying a new one that is quite light and quick drying.  Not as quick as I hoped so I tore a few chips out of it. Oh well, nothing a second coat and some sanding can't fix.

Don't look like much, does it?  :lol:

Fire in the North - Shipwreck Testgame 1: Picket Duty

Had a short test of the Shipwreck rules lastnight (purely on paper so no piccies I'm afraid), put a Dutch Van Speijk class on picket duty, with a Sovremmeny roughly 80 nautical miles out and closing. Weather was bad, fog and rain, so the helos stayed on deck.

First few turns were uneventfull, with the Sov closing on the Van Speijk. Van Speijk then lucked out with a spotting roll and noticed the Sov and went on active radar. She then fired 4 Harpoons at Long range which would arrive in 3 combat turns. But turning her radar on meant that the Sov had an easier time spotting her, and so she did. 2 SSN-22's left the tubes straight away. Uh oh.

With the Harpoons at Medium range the Sov spotted 2 of them and prepared her defences. The VS spotted both SNN-22's and armed her defences as well.

Missiles are now at Short range and the Sov hasn't spotted the other 2 missiles so fires 2 SA-7's at each spotted missile and deploys chaff. 1 of the spotted Harpoons is destroyed, and 1 of the unspotted Harpoons is decoyed by the chaff never to be seen again (well, maybe by a lonely fishing vessel). The VS fires 1 AA mssile at each of the incoming missiles and destroys one, her chaff not fooling the other.

The remaining Harpoons bear down on the Sov but one gets taken out by the 30mm guns. The other one.....misses! <faceplant> The VS takes out the last SSN-22 with her main gun. Great shooting!

VS then launches her remaining 4 Harpoons, and prepares to turn tail after this (out of missiles). The Sov then unloads a full container os SSN-22's, and 4 of them streak across the water towards the VS. Uh oh.

In the next few combat turns the Sov again fails to spot all of the missiles, only spotting 2, but destroying those with SA-7's. Her chaff looks pretty but does nothing, and her 30mm guns just saturate the water with hot lead. Could this be it? 1 mssile misses (....!) and the other one hits. Light damage. Scratch the torpedoes amidships. Aargh!

The VS does what she can, decoys, guns, missiles, the lot but only manages to take out 1 with 3 of them passing through the barrage unscathed. 1 misses but 2 hit. A 1 and 2 means she is destroyed without any question. With the seaconditions as they are what survives of the crew won't have much hope, but the NATO fleet is warned.

The Sov, lightly wounded and smoking, pulls back. It took 6 missiles to take out 1 FF and she has only 2 left meaning she has to turn to port to reload and repair. There will propably be more NATO ships around soon anyway.

Pretty brutal, 7 turns till the end, took less then an hour to resolve it, most of the time was spent reading and rereading if I was doing things right (propably not, but hey). NATO 0 - Soviets 1 (but with a DDG going up against a small FF, could it have gone any other way?)

For my next test I'll put a Zwaardvis submarine on the tail of the wounded Sov that is trying to reach a friendly port. Can she avenge the loss? We'll see.

Fire in the North - The Navies - Starting the Soviet Navy

For this gamebuild, I'll be focusing my efforts on the Soviet Navy as well as a few NATO ships and merchants.

While watching paint dry on the Isuzus (doubt they will be done tomorrow) I updated the paint trial ship for the Soviets, a Sovremenny class Destroyer.

(yes, thats a 1 euro cent coin)

Quite a few updates on the model, the model looked like it had just 4 SSm instead of the 8 seen in pics so used plasticcard to replace them , quite the differerence. Now they actually look like SSN-22 containers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-N-22). Also chopped a bit off the main mast, added radars and some additional mastwork. Also replaced the main guns with a bit of brass (should really be double, but this is the thinnest brass wire I can get) and trimmed the barrels off the 30mm AA guns....just not visible and no need to represent them.

Painting them should not be too hard, a dark shade of grey and 2 tones of brown red for the surface, 1 or 2 details picked out in near white. If I still have a sheet somewhere, I'll number them, as I've stopped adding nametags to the rear. No need for the enemy to see what you got and if I can't remember what I'm sailing I'm fighting the wrong battle (it's not like you will have 50+ ships on the table, for the average game 5-10 is more then enough)

Already put out an order for a few Destroyers, Frigates and landing craft for the Soviets as well as a small British fleet with additional NATO ships for Piers. I might add a few severely converted or even scratch built merchants to the fleet, maybe build another carcarrier, we'll see.