H&R Japanese Heavy Weapons

Like the British equivalent, the JR2 - Japanese Heavy Weapons code from Heroics & Ros consists of a Command strip with 3 Mortar strips and 3 MG strips.
Click the images for a more detailed view.

Mortar Strip
2-man light mortar team, 3-man medium mortar team, 4-man infantry gun team (Type 11?)

MG Strip
Prone LMG gunner, 3-man tripod-mounted HMG team, and an AA MG gunner.
I'm not 100% of the actual types here.

Command Strip
Mainly Officer types.

H&R British Heavy Weapons

Next up we have the BR2 - British Heavy Weapons pack from Heroics and Ros.
This consists of a Command strip, plus 3 MG strips and 3 Mortar strips.
Click on the pics below for more detail:

MG Strip
AA Bren Gun, 3-man Vickers team, 2-Man PIAT team and a Boys ATR.

Mortar Strip
2-man Light Mortar, 3-man Medium Mortar, and two engineers

Command Strip
Radio Ops and Officers

More Dark Age Buildings

I had my order come in from The BaggageTrain late last week.
I picked up three different items; their "Saxon port with riverbank" (more on that in another post) as well as some of their "Sub Roman houses" and "Sub Roman Great Hall".

Here is a pic comparing the round Celtic Hut from Timecast, a hut from the Irregular Miniatures Maori Pa scenic pack, and the Sub Roman House from Baggage Train.  I have put the Irregular and Baggage train models on a stack of card to bring the level up to roughly the same as the thick base on the Timecast hut, and included my Romano British Leader for scale reference. Click the image for a closer look.

The Irregular item is smaller, but not unusably so in my book (or perhaps the other two are too big?...)
Here is the Baggage Train Great Hall vs. the same Leader.  It is a monster that will be the centrepiece of a large Village or Hill Fort.

We now return you to more WW2 miniatures...

Sherman and AT guns

In addition to the few bits of German armour, I also needed another platoon of Shermans and some anti-tank guns to bolster my US forces.  I picked up the following from Heroics and Ros.  Click the images for larger versions.

US04 - M4 Sherman

US47 - 37mm AT Gun + Crew

US22 - 57mm AT Gun + Crew

German Self-propelled Artillery + Armour

I picked up a couple of items to be able to have all the models I need to be able to game all the scenarios in the TFL "Anzio : Wildcat to Whale" book.

G059 - Wespe

This is a two-part model with the gun separate from the chassis.

G060 - Hummel

This is a two-part model with the gun separate from the chassis.

G011 - Panzer III N

Turret separate from the tank chassis.

H&R Japanese Infantry

I picked up a pack of Japanese Infantry on the recommendation that they might be useful for VC/NVA.
I'm not sure of their usefulness on that front, but if they don't work out for that, I'll be keeping them for some future WW2 Pacific games.
Overview of the code below.  Click on the pictures for a larger version.

Infantry Strip type 1 - Four of these strips per code

Infantry Strip type 2 - Three of these Strips per code

LMG Strip - Single strip per code

Light Mortar Strip - Two Strips per code

Short Infantry Strip - one per code.  Not sure if this is actually a proper part of the code, or just a malformed version of Infantry Strip type 2.

H&R WW2 British Infantry

Some quick pictures of the Heroics and Ros BR1 - British Infantry.
Five strips in the code, all identical.

 Detailed pictures of the infantry strips, front:

 and back:

I think that these could be used as infantry in bush hats as well, with some creative painting.

Timecast Celtic Village

We briefly interrupt this WW2 interlude with further Dark Age shenanigans.
A couple of days ago I received a shipment from Timecast that included two of their Celtic Villages from Range 25.
The Village consists of 4 size huts and a small granary.
Below you can see my Romano British Elites, lead by their lord, sallying forth to meet the Saxon hordes.

I'm planning on mounting one village on a CD as per the above picture, and the other village will be mixed with some other buildings from Irregular and Baggage Train to form a larger village.

Timecast have some lovely painted pics (that I will be attempting to copy with my models) available here.

We now return you to your scheduled programming...

Heroics & Ros GR3 - German Paratroops

Now back to the promised pics of more World War 2 kit from Heroics & Ros to celebrate the release of "Blenneville or Bust" from TooFatLardies.
Without further ado, I give you GR3 - German Paratroops.

This is another one of those nifty codes that provides a whole heap of supports to the platoon of figures.  To be honest I like having all the various bits and pieces, but at the same time it can be frustrating if there's  not enough of one thing in the pack, or too much of something else.

Let me say upfront here that I know nothing about Fallschirmjager organisation, so for me this is a nice pack that provides a platoon of infantry, plus MGs, mortars, an antitank gun and other bits and pieces.

There are four different types of strip in the code: 

Paratroop Infantry.  3 strips in the code.

Radio Operator, Panzerschreck team, LG40 (?) team and a mortar team.  2 strips in the code.

Some sort of Anti-tank gun and crew.  I suspect Pak 36 with Stielgranate? One of these per code.

 MG Strip.  One of these per code.

MicroDux

Full set of starter armies for Dux Britanniarum, Romano-British on the left and Saxon on the right, in a VHS case (with room to spare!)

Pretty excited to get to this stage.  Most of my wargaming projects don't even get this far!
Now I just need to get them painted....

I'm keeping the spare "Mass" bases in the bottom of the case at the moment, but I think once I base up the livestock and carts for the cattle rustling and convoy ambush scenarios, I'll place them in the middle and put the spare bases on the lid of the box.

Now that I'm at this stage I can start pushing the bases around on the table.  There will probably be a bit of an hiatus on MicroDux posts for a while whilst I get the painting done and familiarise myself with the rules..

While this is happening I'll be continuing to put up photos of a range of recent purchases from H&R, Irregular, Dark Realm, Ground Zero Games and the ex-Adler Dark Star range.

Stay tuned!

Cutting Up Irregular Miniatures Strips

I wanted to have some slingers for the missile troops for my Romano-British army for MicroDux.
To that end, I decided to use the E18 - Barbarian Infantry Slingers from Irregular Miniatures.
As you would have seen in an earlier post, these come mounted on a thick solid strip with 6 figures.

But I wanted single figures to fit in with my MicroDux basing.
The solution was to cut up the strip, but how?  The Irregular figures have a thick base and I'm not getting through that with a pair of pliers....

...Recently I came into possession of a scroll saw.....

Magic!

The trick here is to use the saw to deeply scribe the underside of the strip and then wiggle the figure off to break the last bit.  If you cut all the way through with the saw, you'll send the figure flying.

I used a set of pliers to hold the strip and keep my fingers out of the way.

Just hold the strip against the blade and let it do its work nice and slow, rather than applying pressure to the blade.

I'd also recommend eye protection and probably a face mask as you probably don't want to be breathing in the dust from the alloy.

Dark Ages waiting to be painted

Below is a quick snap I took this morning of the figures waiting to be undercoated.

Straight after taking this I went down stairs to the yard to undercoat them.
As I was reaching around to grab the spray can, a gust of wind caught the box and dumped the figures onto the lawn!

I found most of them, but two Saxon Elite (both of the "Vikings playing golf" poses that I had used) and one British Levy were lost in this fatal accident; they're somewhere in my lawn...

So now I have to base up some replacements.
Bother.

UPDATE:
I was just downstairs (a few hours later) hanging some laundry when I noticed a tiny glint in the lawn.  All 3 figures recovered.  Hurrah!  Lucky I hadn't started making up those new bases yet...

Basing update

Okay, so it's 2am, but I have everything except the British Missile troops based on my small magnetic bases (including champions) and my Big Men on larger round bases..

I have also put together enough steel paper "Shieldwall" bases for my British troops, but I still need to make a further 8 of the "Mass" bases (the blobby ones just behind the sand trays to the right), so that all units can be in a Mass formation on the table at the same time.

I'll also have to work out how I'm going to base the slingers (Brit missile troops)...

Must sleep now...

Steel Paper is a GO!

Last night I had time for a quick play with the steel paper sheet I ordered online.
As you can see from the photo, it also passes the "minis upside down" test, which I'm very happy about.

Plus no more issues with pole alignment!
The non magnetised sheet is more expensive than the magentised,  but in theory I can make a number of steel bases that can then match up against magnetic based figures from a range of periods.
I'm pretty excited about this...

Mail Call

My Steel Paper just turned up in the mail, so I'll be experimenting with that tonight!

I also received a parcel from paperterrain.com; their European and Mediterranean Villages in 6mm.
These look really nice and I'm looking forward to having a go at putting them together.
Really great service from these guys as well.  Really recommended to deal with.

Expect pics of the experimentation and also the further WW2 mini snapshots coming soon....

Scotia Recoiless Rifle with H&R crew

One quick deviation before we jump into some more World War 2 models.
A while back I based up one of the larger (105mm-ish) Scotia Micromodels Recoiless Rifles with some Heroics&Ros WW2 US artillery crew (so sort of on track for the WW2 thing!).  This is again for my Argentine forces for the Falklands Project.

This shows the Scotia model a bit more clearly than some of my earlier shots.  I think they fit together quite well.

Blenneville or Bust

TwoFatLardies just released the latest Robert Avery masterwork, a fictitious campaign for Normandy in 1944. Get it here  in PDF for £9.50

It's going onto my ereader tonight!
In honour of this (and because I'm still waiting on my steel paper!) the next few posts will be some more Heroics & Ros WW2 stuff that I haven't detailed yet.

Heroics & Ros Modern German Support

While I wait for a sample of steel paper to arrive so that I can push ahead with my MicroDux basing, here is a quick post of the contents of the Heroics and Ros M9 Modern German Infantry Support.

There are 8 strips in the code, four each of the following two strips:

Observer, ATGM and crew, Man-pack SAM operator

Heavy Mortar, HMG, AT weapon

These were purchased to provide some support weapons to my Argentines for the somewhat languishing Falklands project.
I WILL get back to that soon (once I get over my Dux Britanniarum diversion)!

Tiny basing progress

I have knocked up three bases, one each for Elite, Warrior and Levy for my Romano British Dux Britanniarum forces, so that I can start to trial some paint schemes on them.
I've never tried to paint anything earlier than about 1939, so this will be interesting....
As you can see from the pics below I'm trialing the use of a grey primer this time around, as I'm worried that my usual black may drown the colour.

One major flaw with the basing as it stands at the moment is the fact that because the bottom sheet is also magnetic. I am having some pole-alignment issues where in certain spots the bottom sheet will repel certain figures rather than attract them.  I need to try to track down some unmagnetised sheet (steel paper or ferro sheet), but this is proving more difficult than I first thought...

tiny little sabot bases

While I've been sampling various ranges for the MicroDux project, I've had this idea for a small magnetic sabot base in my head.  I had ordered some 0.5mm magnetic vinyl on eBay to make them with, and that turned up recently, so last night I ignored the pile of work from my job and sat down to give it a go.
Pictures below are not to my usual standard, as they were some quick phone camera snaps last night to get the general sense.  You can click on them for larger, but equally blurry views.

Basically it's two small rectangles of the magnetic vinyl sheet.  The top one has a bit of card stuck to it using the self-adhesive properties of the vinyl sheet, and has a hole cut out for the figures.  The material cut out from the centre of this piece is used to base the figures.

 Here is it with one figure sitting in the base....

 ....and with a whole group of 6 figures.  I am going to be using this closely packed base to designate units in a shieldwall in my MicroDux games.  A different base with the figures more widely spaced will be used for groups not in a shieldwall.

 I had been worried about how well the figures would stick and whether they would be constantly falling out as the bases got moved.  But as you can see below, they even stay in the base when turned upside down!

Irregular Miniatures for MicroDux - Civilians Range

Final pics from my currently sampling of Irregular's ranges for my MicroDux project.
This time it's a range of their civilian figures that I'm planning on using for various bits and bobs.

CV4 - Druids

CV5 - Classical Civilians
For high class post-roman folks.  I think this is a miscast as the two figures on the right appear to be headless!  I'm going to order a couple more so we'll see how they come out.

CV6 - Barbarian Civilians
For more run-of-the-mill civilians in the Dux world.

CV7 - Dark Age Civilians
I think these may be a little to late in the period to be suitable for this project.

CV8 - Medieval/Renaissance Civilians
Too modern to be suitable here, but nice all the same.

And how do they match up against the H&R?
Comparison of Irregular CV6 (Barbarian Civilians) vs. Heroics&Ros MD4 (Saxon Fyrd)