Cold War Project — Spartan w. Milan

FV120 Spartan MCT — Heroics & Ros, 1/300 scale

From Wikipedia:

"FV103 Spartan is a tracked armoured personnel carrier of the British Army. It was developed as the APC variant of the Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked) family. The vehicle can carry up to seven personnel, including three crew members. Armed with a single machine gun, it is almost indistinguishable from the FV102 Striker in external appearance. Rather than a general personnel carrier for infantry, the Spartan has been used for moving specialist teams, such as anti-aircraft missile teams. An anti-tank variant of the Spartan has been produced, named FV120 Spartan MCT; this is armed with MILAN anti-tank missiles."

These will also be standing in for FV432 Milan carriers, which I don't have any of (as yet).

Infant Centurions

Centurion Mk.1 — Heroics & Ros, 1/300

I bought these some while ago, for no particular reason except that I like the Centurion.

This is the first production version of the tank, which appeared at the very end of WWII, though it never saw action, and I'm not sure that any even made it over to Germany before the surrender. The Centurion Mark 1 mounted the 17 pounder and a coaxial 20mm Polsten autocannon. It was soon upgraded to the new 20 pounder main gun, and the Polsten replaced with a BESA machine-gun, as the 20mm turned out to be largely pointless.

I'm not sure how old this sculpt from Heroics & Ros is, but they've recently released two new ones of the Centurions Mark V and XIII which, from the photographs I've seen, look as good as models from any manufacturer. I've ordered some, though like these Mark 1s, I have no immediate use for them on the wargames table. I just like Centurions.

Cold War Project — Land Rovers

Here are some light transports for my BAOR force — a bunch of Land Rovers. ½-tonne on the left, ¾-tonne on the right. How much I'll actually use them on the battlefield I don't know, but I guess they'll come in handy for whizzing observer teams and the like about. I'd think Land Rovers might be a bit vulnerable to be operating up the sharp end, but then my teensy-tiny lead men are VERY VERY BRAVE.

As ever, the models are all 1/300 scale, from Heroics & Ros.

Cold War Project — Air Power

Jaguar

These two aircraft complete my air support assets.

Both are 1/300 models from Heroics & Ros. On the left, the Jaguar, and on the right the Tornado.

Regrettably, the Tornado has its wings swept back as it would be in its interceptor role, rather than forward as they would be for ground attack, but never mind.

Note: I'm told by somebody who has actually seen them that Tornados did operate with wings swept back in ground attack. So, that's all right then.

Tornado

Cold War Project — Lynx

Heroics & Ros 1/300 Lynx helicopter

The Gazelle gives me an air recon asset, while this helicopter, the Lynx, provides some ground attack capability in addition.

This model was more involved than the Gazelle, as I had to carve off the moulded-on tail rotor blades so that I could replace them with a clear plastic disc, and I had to tear off the rocket pods and remount them on brass pins because I got them the wrong way around the first time.

Cold War Project — Gazelle

Heroics & Ros 1/300 Gazelle helicopter

This little helicopter is going to give me some air recon capability.

The rotor disc is cut from a piece of blister-pack plastic and fixed in place with a pin stub.

Construction was a bit fiddly, but not too bad. Nowhere near as nightmarish as their WW1 biplanes.

Jigsaw Paint Shaker

 I've been using a cheap $20 jigsaw to shake the bejeezus out of my paints for a while, and it works very well.

Up until now, I've just been clamping the paint bottle to the masking-tape wrapped blade of the jigsaw with a bulldog clip, and that has worked OK, but from time to time I do get a flying paint bottle. Also, it's a bit of a faff getting everything mounted properly.

So, I've made this modification.

The main body of the frame is just a bit of plywood that I've cut out, drilled, and epoxied to the jigsaw blade. I filed down the teeth of the blade for safety's sake. The bottles are held in place by some bits of velcro I had left over from some household job or other; they're just stapled to the plywood frame.

Frame close-up

End view

I can shake two bottles at  a time with this setup, though how the jigsaw will cope with all the extra weight and vibration in the long term I don't know. It cost very little though, so I'm not risking much.

I cut a notch in the cap end of the frame to give the bottle some lateral stability. I don't know how necessary that is, but it can't do any harm.

Cold War Project — FV432

This is the bulk of my APCs finished, though I still have a few Spartans to do.

These are the British FV432, from Heroics & Ros. The two at the very back mount the Swingfire missile system, while all the others are pure APCs.

I accidentally ordered these twice, so I have twice as many as I actually need for the size of force I was intending. Oh, woe is me, to have too many toys.

I just realised that I forgot to paint the exhaust pipes running down the port side. I'll have to get on to that.

Cold War Project — GPMG teams

These are the new Heroics & Ros sculpts of the 1980s British GPMG teams, with the guns on tripods in their sustained-fire mode.

The red beads are a visual aid for my own reference, since my eyesight is no longer what it once was: red means a machine-gun of some kind. I use other colours to indicate other weapon loads. It also gives me the team's facing, since the bead is always at the rear of the base.

Cold War Project — Striker

Here's one of the ATGM configurations of the CVRT, the Striker. They mount five Swingfire missiles in the launcher at the back of the hull top; these are moulded in their firing configuration, which is good, since with the launchers lowered it's a bit difficult to distinguish the Striker from the Spartan APC, especially with eyesight as crappy as mine.

The models are Heroics & Ros 1/300 scale, and they're pretty good. The only real issue I have with them is that there's a fairly large casting channel entering the body of the model right over the rear access door, which is a pity. It would be quite difficult to clean it off properly while keeping the access hatch, and I haven't really bothered; I just cut off the excess as close as I could manage it and left it at that.

Cold War Project — APCs on the way

Here we go on the troop transports. They're FV432 APCs by Heroics & Ros.

There are a couple of Swingfire turrets in amongst them too; I debated leaving those in overall green without any disruptive camo, to differentiate them visually from the APCs, but in the end I gave them their stripes too.

I'm about half-way through painting this lot, and at the moment they're looking to me like a lot of licorice allsorts. Next step is dry-brushing to bring out the highlights, then painting the tracks, and finally a wash to define the shadows.

Cold War Project — Hawker Harrier

If the Chieftain was the archetypal British tank when I was growing up, the Hawker Harrier jump-jet was the archetypal British aeroplane. With its VTOL capability and futuristic lines, it evoked all kinds of "Captain Scarlet" associations in my juvenile mind.

Apparently it was not without its shortcomings, but I knew nothing of them and just thought it was indescribably cool.

This 1/300 model is from Heroics & Ros (as usual), and will hopefully serve to give my ground troops a bit of air support.

To tell the truth, I haven't really examined the air support rules in any detail, so I probably should do that.

Flight Stands for Gaming or Display

Occasionally — not often, but from time to time — my tabletop wargaming involves aircraft. It might be a specifically aerial dogfighting game, or it might be the aerial component of an all-arms game.

The thing about aircraft is that they need to be up in the air, or they just look stupid. So, here's how I make the flight stands for my planes. This specific one is a metal Hawker Harrier jet from Heroics & Ros, but I've used the same system to make stands for 1/144 plastic kits as well.

 The first thing to address is that a model on the end of a stick needs a bit of weight at the base to make it stable, or else it will just keep falling over and probably damaging the model.

The size of the base and the amount of weight required will depend on how long a stand you want, and the size and weight of the model to be perched on top of it. In this case I'm using quite a short stand, but the metal model is fairly heavy.

I create the base by supergluing together a stack of fender washers of decreasing size. In this case, the largest one is 32mm in diameter. You don't need to use much glue at all at this stage, just enough to tack them together: there will be a lot more glue going on later.

The stand is a length of 3mm clear acrylic rod. I prefer this because it's see-through, but a sturdy length of steel wire will also do the job. I've drilled a matching 3mm cavity in the belly of the aeroplane model; this one is a tight enough fit that it can just be pushed on and it will stay, but another option is to use a pair of magnets, one glued to the tip of the stand, and the other to the belly of the plane.

 Once I have my base stack, I flood the levels with liquid superglue and then cover it with baking soda.

The baking soda combines with the superglue and cures it pretty much instantaneously, and leaves a rough plastic-like mass. The excess is just brushed away — if you're cheap, and it's not going to be used for cooking, it can go back into the box for re-use.

 You will probably have to repeat the superglue + baking soda once or twice to get a more or less even covering over the stack of washers and to disguise their edges.

The next step is to get the acrylic stand attached to the base.

You can see here that I've taped the acrylic rod to a piece of folded card. This is to keep it square and vertical in the base while the glue is setting. It's best to make sure that the end of the rod is a few millimetres above the surface of the table; if it protrudes even a fraction of a millimetre below the edge of the support card, it will throw everything out of whack and your stand won't be perfectly vertical.

You need to make sure that the card's base is perfectly straight, and that it's folded with that bottom edge matching exactly — that will ensure that the folded crease is perfectly square to the bottom edge, and it will also be perfectly vertical to the tabletop when the card is stood like this.

I've cut a notch out of the bottom of the card stand — this is to accommodate the base for the next step.

The cavity in the stack of washers is filled with epoxy, and the acrylic rod, taped to its support card, is lowered down into it.

Leave it to set.

The epoxy in this image is coloured that diarrhea brown because there was a little bit of paint left in the silicon cupcake baking thing I use as mixing palettes. It's not necessary to colour it at all.

I had a lot more epoxy mixed up than I really needed, and spread some out over the base.

I poured some basing sand over it while it was setting to provide a bit of texture.

Once the epoxy has set, the stand is basically done.

Now all that remains is to paint and flock the base as you normally would, to match your battle mat or whatever.

Renegade Krome — first outing

Some time ago, I ordered a Badger Sotar 2020-2 airbrush from a US company. That airbrush has disappeared into the mail-service void, and I don't know at this stage if I will ever see it (or my money) again.

Badger Renegade Krome

So, I bit the bullet and bought a Badger Renegade Krome from MightyApe instead. It's the most expensive airbrush I've ever bought, but since it came out of my Shapeways loot, it sort of feels like free, which is good.

Expensive it may be, but it's also hands-down the best airbrush I've ever used, even on the very brief acquaintance I've had with it so far. Which is very brief, since it only arrived this morning.

This model is an old 15mm (1/100) plastic kit from Battlefront, a StuG IIIG. It's one they put out with a beginner's box for one of the editions of Flames of War, and it's not a great model. Though, having said that, it's enormously better than the Sherman that came in that same set, which currently hold the record for the worst plastic tank kit I've ever encountered.

I'd given it a pretty basic paint job before, so I just went over the top of that to try out the lining and dusting capabilities of my new airbrush, and I am more than happy. It handles Vallejo paints, both VMC (thinned) and VMA (straight) very well, and it allows me to get in closer, with less spidering or splattering, than any other airbrush I've used. It lays down a very fine mist coat as well, for broader coverage. It points very intuitively, and the paint goes pretty much exactly where I expect it to, which is a very good thing.

I think this might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Here's the airbrush in its holder, mounted on a block of kwila, a very dense tropical hardwood.

The holder is 3d-printed, and the file is available on Thingiverse at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3137556

Cold War Project — FV432 Mortar Carrier

Thes guys carry the 81mm mortar, a useful piece of kit for rapid-response infantry artillery support. They can be fired from the vehicle, or they can be dismounted and emplaced — there are dismounted mortars and crews available as part of the Infantry Support Weapons set, or you can buy the mortar sprues on their own.

These models are Heroics & Ros 1/300.

Cold War Project — The Heavy Boys

It's been a little while since I did anything on my 1/300 scale BAOR force.

This is the backbone of my armoured component, the Chieftain Mk.IX. They'll be standing in for Chieftains of any mark, because they're all visually very similar in this scale, but if I find I want Challengers I'll get proper models of those.

The models are from Heroics & Ros, as usual.

Grass tufts from false eyelashes

I don't know who came up with this idea, but it is genius and I'm definitely going to try it out.

Have you ever been experienced?

Well, I have.....

I've been sort of keeping an eye on the upcoming Pathfinder 2 FRPG rules. I'm not particularly interested in ever running a Pathfinder campaign; the rules are far too pernicketty and Byzantine for my taste, but I do like to see which ideas are worth nicking.

One that piqued my interest is their new level progression rules. Every level requires a base 1,000 experience points to advance. First to second level? A thousand. Fifteenth to sixteenth level? Still a thousand. If the GM decides they want progress the game faster or slower, they can just adjust that base number up or down, but it still remains the same for every level.

Naturally, this would require considerable judgement by the GM. If that first-level party defeated a Hideous Bugblatter Beast of Thraall, it would be worth a lot more experience to them than to the fifteenth-level party. The number of experience points granted for any given session would be highly situational, and to a certain degree subjective.

I haven't actually seen the PF2 playtest documents (yet) so I don't know what, if any, guidance is given to the prospective GM in this respect. I assume there's some.

Anyway, it's an idea that I rather like.

It would be possible to transfer it to AD&D, but it wouldn't be a seamless transition: the AD&D level progression rates are a bit.... peculiar. Some classes progress much faster than others initially and then slow right down, some get a speed boost at the mid-levels. Pretty much every class has its own particular level progression numbers for any given level. Frankly, it's a bit of a mess. Once upon a time I worked out line graphs to chart the relative advancement rates of all the classes, but where that work is now I have no idea.

To an extent it could be modified for AD&D by giving each class its own base advancement rate to reflect the relative effectiveness of the class: I'd probably set Fighters as the standard, at 1,000xp per level, while Rangers might be 1,100 and Paladins 1,250. Thieves would be faster at, say, 900, while Magic-users and Clerics I'd probably set at about the 1,100 to 1,300 level.

The thing that I like best about this system is that a player will always know, at a glance, how close they are to advancing in level. No more need for XP charts at all.

---

Later....

I started to work out the relative progression speed of the various classes by taking the number of XP required for each to reach level 10 (from OSRIC) and turning it into this bar chart.

The results surprised me quite considerably.

I'd never really taken any notice of this before; I was vaguely aware that Thief progression was quite fast, but I'd always assumed that the Fighter was one of the more average classes in that respect. I was quite wrong.

THE AVERAGE IS 330,000 xp

Druids, Thieves and Illusionists all scamper up the level hierarchy in the blink of an eye compared with pretty much everybody else. Clerics, Fighters, and Paladins trail behind, progressing excruciatingly slowly comparatively.

To be frank, I can't really see why, except maybe to make pretty lame classes like Illusionist attractive to players — but then, Druids are pretty goddam scary, so why would they need to be helped along like that? It can't be because of the characteristic requirements of the class — Paladins are really crippled in that way, yet they advance the slowest of them all. I suspect the relative progression rates were set pretty much at whim.

I think I might just compress everything. Probably quite a bit.

---

Even Later....

I've decided I am definitely going to adopt the "1,000 XP per level" system for all classes, for all levels.

I was going to adjust the amount of xp/level required by class according to the advancement rates shown in the existing XP table, but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why some classes advance at different rates than others. Sometimes remarkably different rates. I can understand the desire of the designers to allow different advancement rates, but there seems to be little consistency to them.

This will mean a little bit of arithmetic to begin with, since we'll need to know what percentage of the XP you need to advance from your present level has already been achieved for each of your classes, to work out how many you've got right now.

It'll also necessitate a change in the "gp for XP" training fees, and I think I'll just set them at a straight 10 gp per XP because it's easy to work out. That will work out considerably cheaper for higher-level characters, but I don't really mind that.

If nothing else, this is going to make it easier for me to assign non-monster-killin' in-game XP rewards. Ten points for Gryffindor, for exceptional pluck!

I think I'll also look at allowing players to spend XP in the same way as Fate Points or Hero Points or whatever you want to call them. I'll have a think about the cost of things like re-rolls and the like; I don't want to make them cripplingly expensive, but neither do I want them to be a trivial cost.

Chinese Plastic People

I bought some tiny plastic people, described as "architectural figures", from China, via AliExpress.

They were advertised as being 1/300 scale, but the standing figures are about 9mm tall, which would make them closer to 1/200.

I intend to use them separate from my vehicles and what-not in any case, so the scale differential is not a huge deal. They'll mostly end up as bases of hapless refugees and the like.

They cost almost nothing; about a buck and a half for a hundred of them. So, I've got 500 potential displaced persons.

Cold War Project — Infantry Basing Method

GPMG group, primed but not yet painted or flocked

This is a Heroics & Ros 1980s British three-man GPMG group, with the gun mounted in its sustained-fire mode on a tripod.

I am mounting all my infantry on steel washers, the size of the washer being dependent on the number of men in the group.

For three-man groups and team weapons, I'm using 22mm washers. For two-man groups 16mm, and for single figures 12.5mm.

Single figures are there pretty much just to allow for casualty removal, but also to represent men with specialist equipment like the Blowpipe AA missile launcher.

The only problem with washers as basing material is the extremely inconvenient hole in the middle. I cover that hole with a piece of 80-90gsm printer paper, torn into an irregular shape to give soft, irregular edges and glued into place with liberal amounts of cyanoacrylate (superglue). The superglue penetrates the fibres of the paper and, when dry, gives you quite a tough, plasticized material, more than strong enough for this purpose. Make sure the cyanoacrylate has soaked the paper directly over the hole as well.

The figures are glued in place, either before or after being painted, again with superglue.

Lots more superglue (liquid, not gel) is flooded all around the figures, and then baking soda is spooned over everything. The baking soda combines with the liquid superglue, curing it almost instantaneously, and results in this rough plastic-like groundwork around all the individual figure bases. This blends the square figure bases in with the communal base, and it means that you don't have to faff about with any other groundwork materials like pumice gel or the like. The excess is just tapped and blown away.

The last stage would be the application of very fine flock — I like coloured MDF powder, which gives you an irregular cover that isn't granular enough to overpower the very tiny figures, but the more convenient ready-made option I use is Woodland Scenics Fine Turf — the Burnt Grass colour seems to me to be the best basic colour — with the very restrained addition of Coarse Turf to represent small bushes.

Cold War Project — Artillery Again

More Heroics & Ros 1/300 scale artillery, this time the big boys. This is the 155mm gun and it's massive Foden tow lorry. The lorry's load comes as a separate piece from the body of the truck, and I'm not sure whether I've got it the right way round or not. I guess if I've got it wrong, I'll just have to live with that shame.

There was really very little point in buying these models, as the chances of guns this size ever actually appearing on the wargames table are pretty remote. But that's never stopped me in the past.

For a change, I haven't painted the crew in DPM uniform, which gives me an opportunity to see how they compare visually with the much more labour-intensive camouflaged figures. It helps that these older sculpts are in such rigid "toy soldier" poses.

Cold War Project — Artillery

These are a pair of British 105mm Light Guns in 1/300 scale, from Heroics & Ros.

I think it unlikely that the crews would be wearing their berets in the field, but that's the way they're modelled. The berets are supposed to be navy blue (which would just look black in this scale), but my navy blue paint went weird and frosty, so I've painted them a lighter blue. I might revisit that some time in the future, but it's not a huge priority.

I've added a bit of scrubby vegetation to break up the flatness a bit, but that's about as far towards a "mini-diorama" as I want to go with basing.

I have a couple of One Tonne Landrovers to pull them around.

I'm not a big fan of bases on vehicles, but because these models have little magnets glued beneath, I can pop them on or off steel bases as need be.

Cold War Project — Infantry

This is the first rifle section for my Heroics & Ros 1/300 1980s BAOR force. I've made an attempt at representing the DPM camouflage uniforms, though with only limited success. I'll do another section in plain green and see if the extra work involved in painting the camo uniforms is warranted in 6mm.

I'll be basing them on steel washers: 22mm, 16mm and 12.5mm, for three, two, and one man groups respectively. The groundwork material is green coloured MDF powder, with some brown-coloured ground-up stuff (maybe kitty litter) in amongst it. Oddly, it is magnetic: I'd guess that the brown is a ferrous oxide of some kind, perhaps.

Cold War Project — Chieftain

These are 1/300 Chieftains from Heroics & Ros. I have seven more left to paint, which will give me three troops of three to field.

The Chieftain has been one of my favourite tanks, ever since I was a kid. I was just a toddler when it first came into service, and it was well established as one of, if not the best MBT in the world by the time I started modeling tanks and things at the age of seven or eight.

There are possibly more detailed models of the Chieftain available in the 6mm scales, but this one from H&R looks pretty good to me, and I'm quite happy with it.

Cold War Project - Abbot

Here's a couple of Heroics & Ros 1/300 scale Abbot 105mm SPGs.

When I've seen the Abbot in photographs, it has always looked like a really big vehicle, but in fact it's really quite small, as becomes clear when you see a human being standing next to it. It's the same basic chassis as the CVR(T) series, I believe.

The model's gun is moulded horizontal, but I've bent these two up into a firing configuration. On the real vehicle, the angle to the turret would be a lot more acute, as the pivot point is further back inside the turret.

---

I've got all the guns, vehicles and aircraft primed now, so that will limit the degree of embarrassment I feel if and when they get on to the table before they're properly painted.

Assuming I don't drag my feet too much, painting the vehicles should go fairly swiftly. The BAOR black/green camo is very simple, and other markings are minimal. Even the aircraft should be a doddle, as the RAF roundels in the modern era have shrunk away almost to nothing.

The infantry will be a lot more labour-intensive though; they're going to need their DPM camo done, and their basing as well, which is always time-consuming.

Cold War Project

Samaritan ambulance and Sultan command vehicle

When I made my order at Heroics & Ros for my BAOR force, I inadvertently did a double-order for my FV432 APCs, and the FV105 Sultan command vehicle.

As it turns out, that's not a tragedy. Better to have too many APCs than too few, and it means that one of the Sultans can be turned into a Samaritan battlefield ambulance.

Magnetizing

As part of the preparation I give to all my 6mm models, I glue small rare-earth magnets to their undersides.

This is for several reasons, but primarily to ease transport and storage: I can keep the models in small steel tins, like old cigarette tins or the like, and they don't rattle around in there and knock all the paint off. The magnets also mean that if I need the vehicles to be based for any reason, I can just  glue a small piece of thin steel sheet to the base and pop the vehicles on or off as required. And finally, it makes handling the models easier when I'm painting them — I use fairly large bolts as painting holders, and the magnetized models just cling to them.

The magnets are attached with 5-minute epoxy. That green stuff in the photograph is a thin silicon rubber baking sheet that I've cut up, with a steel ruler underneath that the magnets are clinging to. I put a blob of glue on the underside of the model and then put it over the magnet; this ensures that the magnet is flush with the very bottom of the model's wheels or tracks.

The magnets are invisible behind tracks, but not so much for wheeled vehicles like these 1 tonne Landrovers. However, when I'm priming, I paint the undersides black, and then on the tabletop the magnets aren't really noticeable unless you really look closely.

I bought the magnets in bulk from China, and they were very cheap. The size I use mostly for 6mm vehicles is 3mm x 1.4mm, but I also have a stash of 3mm x 1mm for very low-slung models.

Uncharted Cold War Waters

Well, maybe not uncharted, as such, but certainly unfamiliar to me.

The appearance of a 1980s Cold War variant for the Battlegroup rules has encouraged me to spend some of my Paypal loot on a BAOR force in 1/300 from Heroics & Ros. The early- to mid-1980s is very slightly later than when I did my own army training (1979-80), but I'm pretty much totally unfamiliar with the equipment of the period. I didn't really take any notice of anything not directly relevant to me as a humble rifleman.

That means that before anything else, I'm going to have to go through all of these plastic bags and see if I can match up the serial numbers with the equipment models. If it was a WWII army from virtually any of the combatants, that would be a doddle, but it's going to be a bit of a grind since I barely know a Lynx from a Sultan from a Ferret. I'm pretty sure I can reliably identify the Chieftain models though, which is a start.

Even though the period I'm looking at is 35 years ago now, it all feels a bit fresh and new to me because I am so ignorant. It's almost like starting wargaming again.

By the way, the new Heroics & Ros infantry sculpts really are superb. It's just a pity my eyesight is so shitty these days.

Some of the new infantry

Later...

This is a 3-man Milan ATGM team, painted up and mounted on a 22mm washer. I have to say, painting DPM camo gear in this scale is a bit tricky.

New on top, old below.

The photo to the right compares the new (top) infantry sculpts with the old (below). The new ones include considerably more detail — I can discern helmet camo, webbing straps, and a recognisable SLR — and they're a bit bigger than the old ones too.

The old sculpts are perfectly fine as gaming tokens though. The figures have the right number of limbs, the weapon load-out is distinguishable, and if you don't care so much about detail, they're a lot more cost-effective.

Bog End

Figures are 15mm WW1 British staff officers from Peter Pig.

This terrain piece is somewhat experimental, inasmuch as I wanted to try out using very cheap (and pretty terrible) 5-minute epoxy resin for the water effects. I wanted something to go at one end of my river pieces (here and here), so they don't necessarily have to go from edge to edge of the table. The water doesn't match those pieces though, so that may not be a goer — I'll just have to see how much the difference scrapes on my nerves when the pieces are actually in play.

The no-name epoxy I used was some I found on a clearance rack at a local hardware chain store, for about three bucks per 50ml syringe. At that price, I figured I wasn't risking much except my time if it didn't work. I mixed it along with about 5-10ml of acetone to thin it, and I added some sepia acrylic ink — far too much, as it turned out — to colour it.

The results are as you see, only partially successful. With the acetone and ink added, it took a lot longer to cure than it said on the label, but that was a good thing as it gave me more working time to nudge it into all the nooks and crannies. In very shallow areas, close up against the flocking, it has greyed out somewhat. I suspect that's because the PVA I used to seal the flock wasn't fully dry, and some of it has migrated into the epoxy. It's not a tragedy for this piece, because it just looks like muddy, swampy muck, but it would have been problematic if I'd needed clear water throughout.

Whether it was because of the additives or not I don't know, but when it cured, this epoxy developed a waxy bloom that had to be wiped off. I was a bit relieved when I found that it could be wiped off.

The epoxy has one advantage over the polyester casting resin I've used, and that is that it doesn't smell, but that's it's only advantage. It is much thicker, and really does need the addition of acetone to make it usable at all, and it creates a pronounced meniscus as it cures. It doesn't create the slight surface ripple that the polyester does, so it doesn't look as convincingly liquid.

Fight the Desert War in a Small Way.....

....was the tagline for a bunch of ancient ads for GHQ 1/285 miniatures that appeared in magazines like Military Modelling in the '70s.

British 2 pounder anti-tank platoon (figures from Heroics & Ros)

I usually play 1940-ish Battle-of-France-ish games in 15mm, using the Battlegroup rules. However, I'd like to play in other theatres from time to time.

Since retooling for a new area of operations in 15mm would be quite expensive, and because I already own a whole lot of 1/300 and 1/285 scale WWII miniatures, both painted and unpainted, it seems sensible to make use of them to fill out the models I need to play these other theatres. If I find I'm becoming particularly attached to one or the other, I can always then start to build larger scale models for it.

The first alternate theatre I'm looking at is North Africa, c.1941. That means Caunter-pattern camouflage, which I can't say I really enjoy painting, but at least it's easier in 6mm than in a larger scale.

Cyclopaedia

The D&D Rules Cyclopaedia is now available again, in soft or hard covers, this time as a Print-On-Demand book. The softcover is about $US25, and the hardcover is about $US30, plus postage and what-not. I'm very tempted to buy a copy, but it would be a frivolous waste of my money since I don't even get any use out of the original copy I have, and postage to NZ would likely double the cost.

I think this was possibly the best version of D&D ever released. It is complete in one volume, so there's just the one book to carry around.

Advancement for characters runs up to 36th level, though no character in any campaign I've ever run or played in has even come close to those exalted heights: my highest-level character ever is Sir Fnord the Pretty Gosh-Darned Neat (some very old character sheets here) at a majestic 13th level, and that's after nearly forty years of (increasingly infrequent) play.

It includes all the critters a DM really needs, though it never hurts to have more up one's sleeve just to mess with those annoying players who have memorized all the standard monsters capabilities and weaknesses. Fortunately, it's pathetically easy to use the multitudinous AD&D/OSRIC bestiaries that have been produced with it; they hardly need massaging at all.

The beauty of this version of the game is that it is an excellent combination of completeness and freedom. It provides the supportive framework that can allow one to go berserk with invention without having to mess with the muscles and bones of the system; it is far less restrictive than AD&D or later versions. However, it is thorough enough to fully support players and DMs who aren't (yet) comfortable enough to diverge far from the beaten path.

Regrettably, I hardly even knew that B/X D&D existed when I first started playing in Palmerston North in '81, and even if I had, I would probably have turned my nose up at it, because we played ADVANCED D&D, not that baby "Basic" stuff. I was an ignorant idiot.