PaK36 sabot bases — WiP Part 1: The Bases

I found a blister of Battlefront's 15mm German PaK36 37mm anti-tank guns in my stash of unbuilt stuff.

 Regrettably, the crew figures supplied with it are mostly dressed in camo smocks and helmet covers, so they're not really suitable for my 1939-40 German army unless I field them as SS — which I am reluctant to do, because frankly the SS were a real pack of bastards. I don't really fancy the idea of commanding a bunch of war criminals, even in make-believe.

However, the issue is not insuperable, since I have a bunch of laser-cut MDF sabot bases I had made a while ago. The idea of using these bases, rather than fixing the crew permanently to the base, is so that I can swap out figures as required, or remove casualties during a game rather than keeping track of them via book-keeping. That means that if I get some early-war Heer crew from someone like Peter Pig, I can swap them in to the existing gun bases. Easy-peasy.

The figures are all glued to 12.5mm (½") steel washers, which fit into the 13mm holes in the bases. The MDF bases themselves are glued to thin card so that the figures don't just fall straight through.

The two holes where the gun itself will go are filled with a couple of plugs left over from the laser cutting; unfortunately I don't have very many of these, I didn't foresee their usefulness when I got the bases cut, and I suppose most of them were just thrown away as scrap.

The card is trimmed flush with the edge of the MDF, and tiny 3mm x 1mm magnets are glued in the cavities. These are what will hold the crew figures in place during a game — they're not completely necessary, but they do add a bit of insurance against scattering figures all over the table with a particularly fumble-fingered move.

On the base on the right, I've squished some figures down over some cling-film over the magnets to ensure that the epoxy isn't higher than the thickness of the magnets, but with the second base (on the left) I didn't find that a necessary step.

The magnets I sourced from China, very cheaply. It cost me about ten dollars for 500 magnets in this size.

Next stage was to mount the guns in place.

I've left the loader figure in place during the gluing to ensure that the position of the guns and the loader figures is compatible.

Part Two
Part Three

Plastic Panzer IV

This is the 1:100 scale (15mm) PzIVf from The Plastic Soldier Company.

They come in a box of five for about twenty quid, so what with postage by the time they get here to New Zealand they work out to about $NZ10.00 per vehicle. That makes them some of the cheapest decent 15mm wargaming models available.

I've added some very basic marking decals I got from Battlefront. They're not intended to represent any particular unit; this is a generic model that will mostly be standing in for a PzIV D.

Apart from the decals and paint, and a lead slug glued inside to add some mass, this is the model as built straight out of the box.

They're very simple to assemble, and the results are a pretty good representation of the original vehicle. I would have liked to have seen the inclusion of a barrel with the aerial deflector included; that's the main visual difference between the Mark IV F and the earlier Mark IV D — that and the fact that in France in 1940 it wouldn't have had the Rommelkette (the turret bin). However, as a generic Panzer IV, it will do me fine.

Now there's just the rest of the box to finish.

And here's another one I prepared earlier.
I had completely forgotten about this one.

SdKfz 231 (15mm)

 This is a 1:100 scale resin and pewter model from Battlefront, from their WWII Flames of War range.

It's the German SdKfz 231 heavy armoured car.

I've had the model hanging about, unbuilt, for a few years now, and I thought it was about time I got it on to the wargames table.

I suspect that, for the 1939-40 period I'm primarily interested in, that the crewman should be wearing the big beret rather than the side-cap, but I shall let that pass since I can't be faffed getting out the Green Stuff to make him a new hat.

Battlegroupies

This just arrived in my letter box.

It's a more granular system than Bolt Action, so no longer is a Panzer III and a Cromwell or a PaK36 and a 2pdr functionally identical, and it includes elements I think are lacking from Bolt Action such as target acquisition and better developed off-table artillery and aircraft rules.

It started with Battlegroup: Kursk back in 2012, which gave you the core rules plus information and special rules to reflect the specific theatre of war (in that case, mid-war German vs. Soviet), but they've since moved to a multi-book model in which the core rules and theatre information such as history, orbats and vehicle/gun stats are in separate volumes. I got the core rules PDF and printed and bound it myself, owing to being a cheapskate.

The hardback rulebooks are about 25 quid each. I got mine from North Star ( http://www.northstarfigures.com/ ) because they do the cheapest postage. Next on the wish-list is Battlegroup Tobruk for that early war desert goodness.

1980s Essex Medieval Heavy Foot Soldier

Here's an old Medieval wargaming miniature from the 1980s, produced by Essex Miniatures.

Essex were among the first to start producing larger scale 28mm miniatures, although they actually advertised them as 25mm. Up until then, 25mm had been the standard, and Essex armies towered over their opponents on the wargames table. Basing systems had been designed for 25mm figures too, so Essex figures tended to be very crowded on bases designed for the smaller scale.

They tended towards rather caricatured, cartoonish features, but I always rather liked them, except for their horses which looked a bit small and spindly underneath their gigantic riders. Eventually they also started producing 15mm miniatures which were excellent as well, and a lot more affordable than larger scale armies.

Stonework Modeling

Obverse

I  wanted to create a stonework texture that I could apply to a card or MDF substrate like wallpaper, to cut down on the amount of work I'd have to do when making 15mm walls and buildings and what-not. I saw a similar thing in a railway modelling shop, but, though flexible, it was quite thick and wouldn't be able to conform to tight curves or corners. I made my own by rolling out a thin layer of modelling wax, only about a millimetre or so thick, on to a piece of hardboard and embossing it. Then I took a one-piece silicon mould of the resulting strip of stonework texture.

The piece in the model shop had a feature I tried to emulate, though not very successfully — interlinking ends, for joining long runs of the material. Mine are too blobby and uneven to link seamlessly; if need be, I'll be better off just modelling the interstices manually. However, in the scale I'm working in (15mm) I doubt that I'll often need more length than I have here.

Reverse

I've experimented with two different casting mediums.

On the left is just PVA glue, with the addition of a bit of colouring, brushed into the mould. It's been backed with medical gauze to give it some strength. It's very flexible, which is good, but the silicon rubber repels it (it's hydrophobic) and so as well as having a patchy coverage, the moulded face is covered in pin-prick bubbles. A heat-set plastisol would probably be a better option, if I can find some in a decent colour, or which I can colour myself.

On the right is an acrylic filler (Selleys Permafill), pressed and smoothed into the mould with a plastic card. Once cured, I've glued a piece of newsprint to the back, again to give it some strength, as the filler on its own has very little mechanical cohesiveness when laid down this thin. It's not nearly as flexible as the PVA, but it will still follow a reasonably tight curve without cracking.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the results so far.

A few hours later...

Test pieces

Here are the first few test pieces along with some Peter Pig infantry.

They'll do fine, I think. The stonework skins are glued either side of a piece of mounting board, except for the curved pieces which are self-supporting (just glued back to back). They're mounted on ice-block sticks.

The PVA skins aren't really all that great though; the multitude of tiny bubbles makes the actual blockwork a bit indistinct. The Permafil skins are better as regards detail, but do need to be sealed with acrylic gesso before painting.

Next day

Making walls is easy enough, though for large-scale production it would be better and more efficient to make a few master walls and mould them complete, rather than assembling them like this. The real reason I made the texture mould was for cladding broad areas.

This little shed is built up from a sample of an architectural modeling card that I got a long time ago. It's firmer than foamcore, but less dense than cardboard or MDF. The sample piece I got was about 2mm thick, as far as I can recall. The black card of the roof is a piece of mounting board.

I used the Permafill texture with newsprint backing for this, and it went on as easy as pie, glued down with PVA. It cuts clean and easy, and it's thin enough not to distort the overall size of the model too severely. The corners are still an issue, but nothing a little filler won't take care of.

Man the Barricades!

Some considerable time ago, I bought a bunch of 15mm Battlefront stuff from the bargain bin. Among them was this this resin barricade set — the truck is a separate piece, and can be replaced with another bit more like the rest of the barricade, or could be if I knew where that other piece was.

The whole lot (except the truck) has been very quickly and simply painted, and then slathered with QuickShade varnish stain. I think it gives quite an acceptable result for terrain pieces like this, but it's going to need a squirt with matte varnish once it's cured.

In the background is another old Battlefront item, an injection-moulded plastic Sherman tank from the Open Fire starter set they released along with Flames of War (3rd Edition I think). I believe their plastic stuff has improved enormously since then, but that Sherman is literally the worst plastic model tank I've ever had the misfortune to put together. You wouldn't believe the amount of carving and body putty required to get it to that state.

Jenny No-Nose

80003: Ellen Stone by Bob Ridolfi

I'm pretty sure this figure must have come from Reaper's first Bones Kickstarter, because they had real trouble with facial features not filling out properly in the mould on a number of the miniatures. This is one such.

In Reaper's catalogue, this is 80003: Ellen Stone, by Bob Ridolfi, but I always call her Jenny No-Nose because, well, she has no nose. Rather than try to fill in her missing features with paint, I've just painted her with a flat rag-doll face with no eyes or nose and just a gash for a mouth. She's a Weird West gun-babe.

Reaper Bat Demon

77261: Bat Demon by Bob Ridolfi

Next up on the Bones-painting production line is this one, 77261: Bat Demon by Bob Ridolfi.

At first I was going to paint him classic devil red, but I went with green in the end to give it a more serpentine look. I don't know why I wanted that; there's nothing very serpentine about the sculpting, but there you are. The heart has its reasons.

The wings and elevated position make this figure a bit more imposing than its stature actually warrants. As far as its body goes, it's just very slightly — if at all — larger than the average Reaper bloke.

Reaper Blood Demon (Babau)

77258: Blood Demon by Bob Ridolfi

Here's another of my vast stash of Reaper Bones figures, now splashed with paint. This is a very quick and unfussy paint job, and not really a very good one, but it will do the job. It took me about half an hour.

It appears in Reaper's inventory as 77258: Blood Demon, but it seems pretty clear that it's based on a D&D minor demon called a Babau that I first saw in the MM2, published in 1983.

Disgruntled Bearer

77141: Townsfolk: Oswald the Overladen by Bobby Jackson

I've painted this figure before — I got two of them in one or other of the Reaper Bones Kickstarters.

Both of them ended up with decidedly unhappy facial expressions, but of the two this is the one that looks the least trustworthy. He really seems to be holding a grudge against his exploitative employers, and no wonder.

Lancia

This is my 3d printed 1:100 scale (15mm) Lancia armoured truck, a WW1 vintage vehicle that served on until the late 1920s.

I've crewed it with WW1 British seated figures from Peter Pig, though I've had to amputate all their legs below the knee to get their heads down below the parapet.

The Lewis guns are another of my 3d printed models; they're probably a little fragile for the rough and tumble of the wargames table, but we shall see.

BF Stormtroopers/Freikorps

These are some 15mm WW1 German stormtroopers I picked up a while ago when Battlefront were having a sale to clear out their WW1 stock.

I'll be using them mainly as Freikorps, since the interwar period is my usual stomping ground rather than the Great War.

The coloured blobs are glass beads that I use to indicate the figure's weapon load, to ease identification for my decrepit old eyes: red for LMG, orange for SMG, pale blue for pistol, purple for portable anti-tank (ATR, PIAT, Panzerfaust etc.). I used to also use white beads for rifles, but since that's the default weapon for the period I thought it was a bit of a waste of time. So now I only indicate anything that's not a bolt-action rifle.

Cruiser A9 — Caunter scheme

I repainted one of my old 1:100 scale (15mm) Battlefront A9 cruiser tanks in the Caunter camouflage pattern that the British used in Greece and North Africa up until the end of 1941.

It's an interesting camouflage scheme, and one which I am quite likely to never, ever paint again unless I can work out some less tedious way of achieving it. I thought I would be able to just mask and airbrush it, but all the surface protrusions made that a nightmare — maybe it would be less troublesome if I could have painted all the components separately and then assembled them. Anyway, for this one I just ended up doing it freehand.

NOTE: this is Battlefront's original sculpt of the A9. They've remastered it since then and added a bit more detail. Nevertheless, I think this old one is a pretty decent representation of the original vehicle.

Target Acquisition and Sneakiness in Bolt Action

Something that irks me slightly about Bolt Action is that there's no real mechanic to reflect battlefield concealment or stalking. If you can draw a line of sight between one model and another, then they can see each other plain as day. Cover helps your troops to avoid being hit when fired at, but it does nothing to impede target acquisition in the first place.

I'd like to propose a couple of house rules:

Target Acquisition:

Before one unit can shoot at another, they first have to acquire the target by passing an Orders Test (though if they fail, they don't suffer the usual consequences of failure, they just fail to see the target).

It would be modified as follows:

• Per Pin marker, (-1)
• Acquiring unit is Down, (-1)
• Concealment (see below)
• Target is Down (-2)
• If the target moved more than 3" within the last turn (+2)
• If the target moved less than 3" (+1)
• If a friendly unit in line of sight of the acquirer shot at the target within the last turn (+1).
• If the target shot at another unit within the last turn (+1)
• If the target shot at the acquiring unit at any time from its current position (+2)

Once a unit has acquired another, they maintain acquisition until either they or the target moves out of line of sight.

Concealment:

A unit in line of sight from another, but not yet acquired, can declare itself to be attempting concealment.

Concealment has no effect except to hinder acquisition by an enemy unit.

Roll 1d3 to determine the penalty to other units' acquisition:

• Inexperienced troops are at -2
• Regular troops are at -1
• Veteran troops at -0.

The roll is further modified as follows:

• If more than 3" from any cover, -2
• If less than 3" from cover, but still in the open, -1
• If touching cover, or if the unit is partially in cover, -0
• If the entire unit is in cover (but still in line of sight), +1
• Small vehicle or gun (e.g Bren carrier, jeep, 6 pdr) -1
• Medium vehicle or gun (e.g. truck, half-track, PaK 40) -2
• Large vehicle or gun (tank, 17 pdr, 88mm) -3.

Regardless of penalties, the minimum score is zero — no matter how incompetent your troops, they're not going to become more obvious by trying to hide.

Infantry and man-packed crew weapons can still move up to 3" while attempting concealment, but it will make it easier for enemies to spot you (see above). Vehicles of any kind must remain stationary to be concealed.

Concealment is lost as soon as the concealed unit opens fire, and may not be regained without moving to a new position at least one Run move away.

A veteran infantry unit, Down, in cover, and concealed is going to be quite hard to spot, but as soon as they open fire they'll lose the benefit of their sneakiness.

Re-Basing the Desert Rats

Figures glued to ½" washers before finishing off the groundwork

These were the very first WWII 15mm figures I ever painted.

I bought them when Flames of War was brand new and exciting, and based them for that system, but I became disenchanted with FoW — partly due to its own shortcomings, but mostly because of the way those shortcomings were being gamed by people who were obsessed with winning rather than having fun. Anyway, I haven't played FoW for many years.

Here they are as I originally based them.

Empty sabot base behind a full one.
Little flocked plugs can be used to disguise empty sockets.

My current practice is to base figures individually on 12.5mm (½") washers, and then to use MDF sabot bases if I should ever need to use them for something like Crossfire or Flames of War or whatever. What I'm playing most regularly these days is Bolt Action, which is not without its own flaws, but then again, what rules are not?

Where the washers fall down for basing is when I'm dealing with individual prone figures. They don't really fit elegantly on a ½" washer, and larger washers extend out too far sideways, not to mention being too large for my MDF sabot sockets. I haven't yet come up with a really satisfying solution to that issue, and I'm currently sidestepping it by avoiding using individual prone figures wherever I can.

Vickers Medium Mk.II* (1:285)

Get it at http://shpws.me/Mv2T

Here's my 1/285 scale model of the Vickers Medium Mk.II*, printed by Shapeways in FUD resin.

It's available as a sprue of five vehicles at http://shpws.me/Mv2T.

Carden-Loyd Carrier (1:285)

Get it at http://shpws.me/Og3u

This is the little Carden-Loyd Medium Machine-Gun Carrier Mk.VI, used by the British army and produced from 1927 to 1935.

This model is 1:285 scale, and therefore very tiny indeed, 3d printed by Shapeways in FED resin. You can get it at as a sprue of twelve vehicles http://shpws.me/Og3u

10-hex Hex Mapping Sheet

This sheet is A4 landscape, 10 hexes from side to side. The hexes are numbered by column and row, so hex 5.7 would be the fifth column, seventh row. It has lined areas on each side for note-taking convenience. There's a cartouche at top for titling your map if you so desire.

I like it better than the older 10-hex hexes I designed because it has complete hexes in the corners, and the numbering makes it easier to key.

As with any hex grid of this sort, you can zoom in on individual hexes just by drawing on another sheet to a larger scale. If your top-level map is 10,000 kilometres from side to side (1,000 kilometres per hex), the next level down would have 100 kilometre hexes, then 10, then 1, then 100 metres per hex, and so on if you want to get really detailed.

Below are links to a couple more, one of 4 hexes side to side, the other of 7. Trying to keep complete hexes in all the corners means you can't really manage an elegant sequence of sizes; four is useable maybe, but I'm not so sure about seven.

4 hexes, side to side

7 hexes, side to side

Making My World A Bit Flatter

My FRPG campaign world has been around for several decades now, and it's gone back and forth between being flat and being a globe.

I like the idea of a disc-world, but I've never been able to come up with a satisfactory way of explaining how a day and night cycle would work.

I found this gif somewhere on the internet that does the job. Though it would have been better if I'd had the concept in mind before I started drawing the maps, because now I'll have to rearrange everything to cater to having the icy frigid regions in the centre and edge rather than top and bottom. It's not a huge deal, fortunately; it just means that north and south become in and out.

So, why bother? Well, why not?

Later...

So, this is the redesign of all of my world that I've mapped so far, as a flat disc. I'm using the 10-hex hex grid I designed a few days ago, with 1000 mile hexes on this map.

I've had to move and rotate the archipelago to get its arctic areas to align with the centre and edge frigid zones, but apart from that it doesn't really affect anything that's happened in any of the campaign to date.

In fact, the whole flat-world thing has very little mechanical impact on anything. It's pretty much just for flavour.

Reaper Blue Wizard

77034: Kieran Tallowmire, Wizard by Bobby Jackson

Here's another wizard from one or other of the Reaper Bones Kickstarters. I've had him sitting on my work-table for ages, and I thought I'd better get him out of the way.

New Stuff From Shapeways

These arrived this morning from Shapeways. I've given them a squirt with a pale grey primer to make it a bit easier to see what's what; the translucent resin is terrible to photograph.

I'm pretty happy with the way they've turned out. They're pretty tiny; the carriers are only about 10mm long, and the Vickers Mediums about 20mm.

1:285 scale Carden-Loyd MG Carrier, still on the sprue (printed in FED resin)
https://www.shapeways.com/product/MS8BTEMAU/carden-loyd-carrier-mkvi-6mm-12up

1:285 scale Vickers Medium Mk.II* (printed in FUD resin)
https://www.shapeways.com/product/G66SP8C2P/vickers-medium-mkii-6mm-5up

Carden-Loyd Carrier (15mm)

https://www.shapeways.com/product/DL58N5Q22/carden-loyd-carrier-mkvi-15mm

I made a 1:100 scale (15mm) version of my little Carden-Loyd MG Carrier.

This was the direct ancestor of the much more famous and numerous Universal Carriers of WWII.

3d Printing Catalogue

Gradually, my catalogue of 15mm 1920s and '30s models increases. There are quite a few more that could be done of course, but there are enough there to equip a reasonably decent army (for the British, at least). And it grows.

It's a pity it's such a niche market, but then again, if it wasn't I would almost certainly never have gotten into designing for 3d printing at all. I really only started because there was virtually nothing available for the period in my chosen scale, and not much more in any other scale for that matter.

I originally planned to use 3d printing only to create masters for traditional moulding for resin and/or metal drop-casting. That never eventuated; there are few of these models that would be suitable for that purpose without some quite substantial redesigning. If I were going to go into producing models on a commercial scale, I'd have to revisit that idea — 3d printing is still too expensive for mass production. At least, it is if you have to use somebody else's services. And it's too slow if you have to settle for just one printer to run your home-based production line (and even one printer is out of my fiscal reach for the foreseeable future).

Tim the Enchanter

77174: Leisynn, Mercenary Mage ($2.49) by Tim Prow

Reaper calls this guy Leisynn. Mercenary Mage.

There are some, however, who call him..... Tim!

H&R Covenanter

B107 Cruiser Mk.IV Covenanter from Heroics & Ros

This is the 1:300 scale Covenanter from Heroics & Ros. It's not a bad little model, though it could do with being hiked up a little over the running gear; the hull looks a little flat.

This is the Covenanter they have at Bovington. You can see that the track guards slope up quite sharply from front and back, creating a considerable gap between them and the tracks.

Thanks to severe overheating issues, this tank never made it into active service but was relegated to training duties only.  There's a possibility that a few were sent out to Egypt, but it's more likely that they were Mk.I Crusaders — the two types are superficially quite similar in appearance.

FOW the 4th

I bought myself a copy of Flames of War 4e, mostly out of curiosity since I haven't played FOW at all since the early days of 2e. I got the 3e freebie mini-book when they released that, but frankly I thought that all they'd done was add a whole lot of pointless bloat without really fixing anything much.

4e is, at first glance, less bloated and more streamlined, and the core rulebook is a lot cheaper than previous editions. But it's not really complete unless you also buy one or both of the 4e army books, which I am loathe to do.

I do like the idea of the Unit Cards for ease of reference, but since my chosen period is 1930-40 I'm going to have to make my own if I want to use them. That's not really a big deal; I have them skillz.

There is still no sort of Overwatch rule, as far as I can see. Still nothing stopping you from running your tanks uninterrupted from cover to cover in front of a massed line of AT guns and turning them to keep your front armour facing any threat at start and end of movement, even if you're moving absolutely flat out.

I still don't think it's one of the better rule sets available for WWII, but meh, I'll play it if there's nothing else.

Centurion

Heroics & Ros B21  Centurion Mk.I

In my most recent order from Heroics & Ros, I included these, on a whim: the Centurion Mk.I of 1945, armed with the 17 pounder and a co-axial 20mm Polsten gun.

I have no immediate use for them, but they, and the large number of Comets I have that I also have little use for, will provide an answer for those guys who like to field imaginary German WWII armies consisting of nothing but King Tigers and Panthers.

I will probably replace their gun barrels with brass or steel pins at some stage. The soft alloy they're cast in is far too bendy for my taste.

Laser-cut roads

A while ago, when I had access to someone with access to a laser cutter, I designed these interlocking road sections and had them cut out of 3mm MDF. There are more of them, but this is all I could be bothered laying out.

The zig-zag tabs at each end of the sections means that they can be flipped end for end to change the direction of a curve and still interlock. The sections are about 50mm wide.

I've bevelled all the edges on my benchtop sander, and eventually they'll be painted and flocked. And that will be a bit tricky, because MDF just loves to warp — I'll have to seal them, both sides, with a spirit-based sealer before I go on to doing the actual decorative paintwork.

Having actually had them made, and tried them out in various experimental layouts, I can say that they work as expected. However, I'm not really sure that the interlocking tabs actually add any useful functionality — they'd probably be just as useful, and a bit quicker to set up and take down, if they just butted up end to end. Also, I'm not sure that there's any real benefit to using MDF over, say, pieces of felt or rubber.

Still, I've got them now.

More H&R Artillery

Heroics & Ros B102 4.5" Howitzer

Here's some more Heroics & Ros 1:300 scale WWII artillery, this time the venerable 4.5" howitzer. It was a British WWI model that served on into the early part of WWII, eventually being completely replaced by the 25 pounder.

I don't have any crew figures for these guns as yet, so I haven't finished off the base-work — the guns are just sitting on "dirt" made from MDF sawdust on 25 x 25mm magnetic strip.