Saturday 10 September 2016

Colours 2016

Today I spent a very pleasant day at Colours, the Newbury and Reading Wargame Club's show at Newbury Racecourse. I was there with Simon Stokes and Roger Hutton on the NWS participation game which Simon had put together. The subject was gunboat operations in the Russian Civil War with a British squadron attempting to force its way through a Bolshevik flotilla, likely to be backed up with mines, booms and troops on shore. As with the game at the Naval Wargames Show earlier i  the year Simon was using 1/600 models from PT Dockyard, but this time he was using my "Steamer Wars" rules with the recently published RCW supplement and some additional rules put together for the show. The game ran several times during the day, with honours just about even between the RN and the Bolshies. As well as visitors playing the game we also had a number of old friends and  other popping round for a chat. And indeed, as in previous years the show for me was an opportunity to catch up with chums that I hadn't seen for ages, and it was great to chat with Andrew Finch, Zig and AJ, Tamsin, Simon and many others during the day.





Shoppingwise I picked up a few bits and pieces, an Sdkfz 222 for a conversion into a 221 with a 2.8cm AT gun along with a T70 and M5 tuart from PSC, some 1/600 ACW deck crew from Peter Pig for my gunboat collection, some more aircraft for my Cod War collection from Tumbling Dice (also a very nice US Yangtse river gunboat) and more Victorian forts from Brigade.

Steal of the day was an early swoop on the B&B where I picked up a nice stash of Wings of glory stuff for absolute peanuts -  the haul included a WW2 Rules and Accessories pack, a couple of Spitfires, a brace of He111s, a Warhawk, Fw190, Bf110, Gladiator, a Beaufighter and a WW1 duel pack.



The show itself was fun, there were many lovely games and I took a number of photos, but alas failed to keep tabs on exactly what most of them were, so they are offered here for your enjoyment as is" :)














Monday 5 September 2016

Odds and Ends

Hectic events in "real life" mean I've not had much time for modelling recently, so what I've done has been mostly just "odds and ends". But some focus was generated by a game this last weekend at the Abbey Wood Irregulars where a Cod War game was run using my rules (available on the NWS website) . I spotted some handy markers on Angus Konstam's blog from when he ran the game recently and decided to make my own using sculpted sea bases and those handy drawing pins with round coloured heads. 




I also found the old Nimrod (in 1/700) and Fokker F.27 (in 1/600) that I bought years ago to supplement the game; whilst the played no formal part in the game on Saturday they did look nice!



Also recently finished, three 1/1200 cogs from Outpost Wargame Services. These were painted in the black hull / red sails scheme of Jeanne de Clisson,a  noted French woman pirate who, following the execution of her husband by King Philip, terrorised French shipping in the English Channel for many years.