Main Force VC

Back from the wedding, and a good time was had by all!
Managed to snap a quick pic of the 15mm Flashpoint VC that I had photographed with my phone camera previously.
Here they are:

I need to paint up more, there's only these three so far.  I've done them in boots for these, but I'm going to try to paint some "Ho Chi Minh Sandals" on the next batch.

No Update

Sick.
Working.
No Camera.
Check out this inspirational stuff on the AA forum : http://www.ambushalleygames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4095

Plus check out the new 15mm scifi from Blue Moon Manufacturing:
http://www.bluemoonmanufacturing.com/index.php?cat_id=32

Off to die quietly under my desk....

Main Force VC colours

Well, I finally got a couple of hours this weekend to sit down and do some painting.
Below is a VERY blurry picture of the end result of some work on some of my Flashpoint Main Force VC.  All of the cameras have gone north with my wife, so I'm stuck using the very poor camera in my phone until mid Aug.

If you think these look bad, you should see the three that I need to strip back after my initial colour experiment went HORRIBLY wrong.

Really as a reminder for myself when I get to snatch a few more hours to attack more of these, here are the colours I used in the order that I paint them:

Uniform and bush hat: Dark Angel Green with a light drybrus of Camo Green to lighten the tone.

Webbing : Desert Yellow

Packs, boots and Rice Roll : Graveyard Earth (technically I think the roll should be uniform green, but then it won't stand out from the uniform.)

Skin : Bronzed Flesh with heavy Flesh Wash

Weapons : Chaos Black with light Bolygun Metal drybrush.  Snakebite Leather on the butt, stock and grip.

I'm also going to alternate in some figures with a mix of black items (pants or shirt) along with the uniform green.  The look I'm going for is from the illustrations in Gordon Rottman's Viet Cong Fighter (part of the Osprey Warrior series).  This shows the Main Force troops in a mix of the Green uniform and the traditional black peasant garb.

Stick to the Plan

I've come to the realisation that I've broken one of the fundamental rules I set for myself when I started this blog and got back into wargaming.
The rule i set for myself back then was that I had a set scale for given game size. Reinforced platoon or less (skirmish scale) was 15mm, company or larger was 6mm. I've failed to stick to this.
Personally I blame Flashpoint and their excellent 15mm figures. I got caught up on the bandwagon and now have a sizeable amount of 15mm figures for Vietnam. I took the opportunity to undercoat a number this week.
Bottom line is though that I don't have a lot of room at home, and with money tight, I need to stick to the plan.
This probably means some 15mm sell-off later this year, to bring myself back to something manageable, and to fund the expansion of my 6mm Vietnam War models for the Flashpoint rules and TFL's Charlie Don't Surf.
With the month of house guests coming to an end soon, I also hope to get a brush to the undercoated figures, and take some pics of some minor developments.

The Dreaded Lurgy

I've been completely out of action for the last week (complete with overnight hospital stay) with a vomitting bug of some sort.

Hopefully back on my feet and back to work tomorrow...

Just before the bug struck, TFL released their Charlie Don't Surf rules, so I had to pick those up along with the Surf's Up scenario and campaign pack.

Lots of content in these rules, and a foreshadowing of what's coming in the revised 3rd Edition of I Ain't Been Shot Mum later this year. Of course, being me, I just spent money buying scenario packs for the 2nd edition didn't I? Hopefully the differences will be easy enough to convert across...

Eureka 15mm Sci-Fi German Stormtroopers

Eureka have just released new figures for their Sci-Fi German Stormtrooper range.
These look GREAT. I have some of the original infantry in the lead pile.... might need to pick up some more....

Lard Sale!!!

I had a bit of a binge on TooFatLardies stuff again this weekend.
At the moment, they are having a sale with £1.5 off everything in store.
I had already planned to pick up a few bits and pieces over the rest of the year, but now I've been able to grab them in bulk.
First up was Footsteps of the Legions, which is army lists for North Africa and the Meditteranean.  This rounds out my current WWII interests with the earlier purchase of Gotterdamerung and Shadow of the Rising Sun.  To accompany this, I also picked up the recently published Operation Compass scenario pack.  There's loots of good stuff in there.  It is also an interesting deviation from most IABSM games in that much of the campaign was armour and artillery rather than direct infantry actions.  There are a number of more traditional infantry actions based on the Australians at Bardia though, which is one of the primary reasons I purchased it.

Still on the subject of World War II, I also picked up another Robert Avery scenario pack: Fall of the Lion's Gate.  I'm very interested in gaming the Pacific Theatre, hence the purchase of this, as well as the Shadow of the Rising Sun.  I also used a voucher my brother and sister-in-law gave me for my birthday to purchase Paul Ham's book on Kokoda on the weekend.  I was very impressed with Ham's work on Vietnam, so I'm looking forward to reading this as well.

 

I also picked up the Rock the Casbah expansion, which focuses on the Lebanese Civil War.  As it turns out, this expansion is actually for Troops, Weapons and Tactics (TW&T - TFL's skirmish rules).  However there are a number of parallels between TW&T and IABSM - B'Maso! give variations to both for the post-colonial african conflicts.  I'm hoping that the conversion here will be reasonably straight forward (if not directly documented).  Finally I also picked up the 2004 Christmas Special.  Looking at this one, you can see that the Specials have come a long way, in terms of production values, in the last 5-6 years!  I've wanted this one for quite some time as it contains details on how to convert IABSM for the Falklands - a variation known as "We'll Have to Bloody Walk!".  I've always found the Falklands a fascinating conflict, and I'm keen to get it on the table.

Flying Lead

I've been a bit behind on my Meeples and Miniatures podcast listening, so I've put the last few on my ipod as I walked the dog this week.
Last night it was Episode 62 wherein Flying Lead from Ganesha Games was discussed.

I must say I was quite interested. I've never played any of the "Songs of" games, although I've been aware of their existence. The promise of a complete game within an hour or a campaign within an evening is very tempting for my tight schedule. Also I've been looking for something light and simple to lure others to their unsuspecting doom of getting hooked on historical wargaming.

And at $8.53 for the rules, it's very tempting...
Plus it would lead Eltnot to once again accuse me of a lack of focus!!!

I'd definitely recommend listening to the podcast and the opinions therein.

So what do you think? Have you played any of the "Song of" rules? Are they a good solution for a quick, fun night's gaming?
Let me know in the comments.

EDIT:
I just went and bought it.  It's Friday and it cost $8.80.  What more can I say...?

A Little Light Reading

As part of the deal for getting the hallway finished, I took advantage of the ongoing strength of the AU$ vs the pound and picked up some of the fine Too Fat Lardies publications.
Here's what I have waiting for me AFTER the hallway is finished:

Gotterdamerung - Army lists for Late World War 2 in Europe for IABSM
Shadow of the Rising Sun - Army lists for World War 2 in the Pacific for IABSM
Through the Mud and the Blood - Large scale skirmish for World War 1
Triumphant Standards - the InterWar period with Mud and Blood (free with Mud and Blood and covers the fictional 1938 English Civil War amongst other things)



I also picked up the 2009 Christmas and Summer Specials. Included is the picture is my copy of Ambush Valley that I finally got around to binding at the same time.



Through the week I'll be binding some other PDFs that I have. Unfortunately my copy of Force-on-Force will have to wait as it's sealed up in the bedroom with the renovations.

Inspirational 15mm

If you want to see some amazing 15mm, go check out this blog:
http://15mmfun.blogspot.com/
Compare his QRF humvees here.
To mine here.

I mean, they're pretty close... right?...Right?

Man........

Some great ideas there I need to borrow / steal!