Zvezda Maus (1:100)

This battle station is now the ultimate power in the universe!

A bunch of Zvezda stuff arrived for me from PSC today, and among them is this model of the ludicrously huge Maus super-heavy tank. The original vehicle was never painted in this three-colour splinter scheme as far as I'm aware, but then it also never made it into production, so I don't feel bound by historical precedent when it comes to paint schemes.

I've read rumours of one of them getting into combat against the Soviets in Germany in 1945, but I don't know how much credence to put in such stories. The Soviets certainly did capture one; I think it's now at Kubinka.

I have very little gaming use for the Maus, since it only existed at the opposite end of World War II that I'm mainly interested in, but I have a nostalgic affection for it from back when I first started wargaming as a kid. It was the first tank I ever tried (unsuccessfully) to scratch-build.

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Bones III — the Beginninging

My Bones III Kickstarter fulfillment arrived a couple of days ago, and I've been happily sorting through them. I've engaged in all three Reaper kickstarters so far, but I doubt that I'll do another — it's not that they're not a good deal, but there's always a very, very long wait for them to arrive, and they've all been very heavy on the character figures, of which I really do have an ample supply. I mainly want the monsters, and it's simpler just to buy them individually when they eventually appear in the shop.

I chose this one to start the painting with, mainly because it would be very quick and easy to do, and in fact it only took about twenty minutes. It probably would have taken longer if I'd actually removed any of the mould lines, which I kind of forgot about in my enthusiasm.

I don't know what its SKU is; I couldn't find it with a (fairly brief) search on the Reaper site.

Reaper Harpy

I thought it had been too long since I painted a fantasy figure, so I reached into my Big Bag O' Monsters and this was the one that came out.

It's Reaper's 77041 Harpy by Julie Guthrie. As usual for me these days, it's one of their plastic Bones miniatures, and if you want one it will cost you the princely sum of about three of those Yankee dollars.

Censored!
(for linking to sites
that
FEAR THE BOOB)

PanzerJäger 1 conversion

 Here's my conversion of the Minairons 1:100 (15mm) Panzer 1A into a PanzerJäger 1 47mm SPAT. The whole superstructure is a single 3d-printed unit; all I had to do was cut through the existing upper hull to create a cavity, a simple task as the Minairons plastic is quite soft.

There's no crew as yet. I have some Peter Pig German artillerymen on the way, which I hope will do the job.

The fighting compartment and gun conversion piece is available for sale at http://shpws.me/OMkj.

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I've created a sprue of three of this model and uploaded it to Shapeways.

It can be bought at http://shpws.me/OPHQ for only a little more than the cost of a single piece, since most of the cost of most prints (in the sizes I'm working in) consists mostly of Shapeways' handling fees rather than the print resin itself.

New 3d-printed stuff

 I just received my latest order from Shapeways, which is always a little bit exciting to me because you never quite know how your digital designs will really look in the flesh.




To the right is a 1:100 (15mm) WWII German 105mm howitzer. This is the first model I've printed as a kit, for later assembly (you can see it in its unassembled, unprimed form at the bottom of the picture).

There are two reasons for that:

1. To save on space in the printer, which also saves money when printing.
2. To get a cleaner print. Diagonal surfaces tend to show visible stepping from the print layers, and if everything can be laid out horizontally or vertically, those printing artifacts can be minimized.

I haven't made this model available for sale, mainly because it would still be cheaper for people to buy cast metal and/or resin models. However, it's a successful experiment for me, and it means I have a couple of field guns to put on the table.

 This one is the Carden-Loyd Machine-Gun Carrier of the 1930s, printed in FUD resin, again in 1:100 scale.

It looks rather speckly in this photo; that's because I've given it a dusting of pale grey over black primer, so that you can see what's going on. The raw resin is translucent, and virtually impossible to photograph effectively.

It's available at http://shpws.me/OkRX

 Here's the British Medium C "Hornet" in 1:100 scale, a WW1 tank design that didn't quite make it into production in time for the fighting.

This one is printed in WSF nylon, so its surfaces are rougher than the FUD resin examples. The detail is still quite adequate for use on the game table though.

This one is available at http://shpws.me/OHlc

Here's a bit of a novelty item, the British experimental Grand Panjandrum in 1:100 scale, printed in WSF.

This thing was developed for D-Day as a remote-controlled demolitions device, but it proved to be farcically (and dangerously) uncontrollable and never made it into production. However, it appears as a "what-if" weapon on the Bolt Action Operation Sealion supplement. so I made it for that.

You can get it at http://shpws.me/OzSb

 Here's the piece I've most been looking forward to getting. It's a fighting compartment and gun module for a PanzerJäger 1, designed to fit on to the Minairons 1:100 scale plastic Panzer 1 model.

That Minairons model is actually of the Panzer 1A, and as far as I know, the PzJg 1 was only ever mounted on the Panzer 1B chassis, but frankly they don't look different enough to me to worry about, and I know of nobody who makes a plastic Pz1B.

It's printed in FUD resin, and I haven't bothered to make it available at all in WSF because of WSF's rough surface texture, and because the printing tolerances are too fine for that material.

You can get it at http://shpws.me/OMkj

The view into the fighting compartment,
showing the gun breech and radio

Here it is sitting in place on the Minairons kit body
(still on the sprue). It does need a tiny bit of sanding
at the back to sit perfectly, but I'm pretty happy with it.

More Bones (because I didn't have enough)

 Arrived at long, long, looooooooong last, my Reaper Bones Kickstarter III. It's been so long since I paid for this that I'd pretty much forgotten all about it until I got the shipping notice about three weeks ago.

It took that long to get from Sydney to Christchurch. For the geographically challenged, that's NOT VERY BLOODY FAR. However, it appears that the reason it took so long is because it was kicked along the road all the way.

The only expansion set I went for this time is this one, shown above — the Mythos set. It looks pretty useful, though its thunder has been stolen somewhat by the release of games like Cthulhu Wars in the interim, which includes a bajillion creepy Lovecraftian critter miniatures and what-not that are just as good in quality.

Nevertheless, the Investigators, and especially the pack camel (which is really good, I could do with about a dozen of them) will be very handy figures that I expect will get a lot of use; they'd suit any number of Steampunk/Call of Cthulhu/Pulp Action sorts of games. I'm sure I can find a use for Shub-Niggurath as well. And I still have Cthulhu himself hanging around somewhere, from way back in the first Kickstarter days.

The composition of the resin they've used for Bones figures appears to have changed. There's the colour, for a start — they're not all just bright blinding white. The miniatures feel a bit stiffer and slicker too. Bones has always been pretty good at resolving detail (apart from some notable early exceptions), but this formula seems, at first sight at least, to be better than the old one.

Zvezda 1:200 Bristol Blenheim Mk.IV

This is the 1/200 scale Bristol Blenheim Mk.IV from Zvezda, and the last addition to my early WWII air forces for a while.

Regrettably, Zvezda are more concerned with making their models fit a standard box size than with maintaining a constant scale, so this model is considerably smaller than its companion Fairey Battle, when in fact it should be just a little bit larger — about another 5-10 mm wingspan. It's an annoyance, but I can live with it since its function is to be a gaming marker. Still, I'd have preferred it if it was in 1/144 scale, like all the other aircraft.

I haven't included a bottom view, as it's just overall black without any markings at all, standard livery for RAF day bombers in 1939-40.

Front starboard quarter

Rear port quarter

Top view

Zvezda 1:144 Messerschmitt BF109F

Another addition to my 15mm WWII German forces is this Messerschmitt BF109F by Zvezda.

The mottling along the sides of the fuselage was very problematic. I tried airbrushing it, but I've never really got the knack of doing very fine-line airbrushing on non-absorbent surfaces; I inevitably get horrible spidery blobs everywhere. So this one has just been done with a brush by building up several layers of very thin, translucent paint. I'm not that enthralled with the end result, but it's better than my attempts at airbrushing.

The BF109F is a little too late for my preferred period, which is 1939-40, but it will serve the purpose on the tabletop, which is to say "I am a German single-seat fighter plane".

front quarter

rear quarter

top

bottom — you can see the bolt
that I use to attach the plane
to my magnetic flight stands.

Zvezda 1:144 Fairey Battle

Top view

This is Zvezda's 1/144 scale kit of the RAF's Fairey Battle, one of the most promising light bomber designs of the mid-1930s, but which proved to be woefully inadequate in the skies over France in 1940. They were suffering as much as 50% casualties on any given sortie, and they were immediately withdrawn from front-line service after the Battle of France and relegated to duties as a trainer or engine test-bed.

Port side

I haven't bothered showing the underneath view, as it's just all black without any markings or anything — the standard RAF livery for day bombers of the time.

Zvezda 1:144 Hurricane

This will be some air support for my poor beleaguered 15mm 1940 BEF. Not that they're ever likely to see much of it, but that's life in 1940 France.

It's a 1:144 scale snap-together model from Zvezda. It goes together very easily, but the decals are not all that could be hoped for — they're a little thick, though they do adhere well, but the biggest problem is that they're printed out of register, as is blindingly obvious in the yellow ring of the fuselage roundel. Also, for some reason I can't really fathom, the fuselage roundel and serial letters are all printed as separate transfers, so they have to be assembled in situ. Thanks to my ham-fistedness, that means that inevitably they're all wonky.

I've painted it in the black and white livery adopted by the RAF in the beginning of the war to ease ground-to-air identification. It was a pretty terrible idea, and didn't last very long. It didn't seem to affect friendly fire from the ground at all, while making it much, much easier for the Germans to see them.

Rear quarter

Front quarter

Top

Bottom

Maus

When I was a child, I wargamed as a child. But now that I am a man, I put away childish things.

Except for the Maus, because FUCK YEAH!

I bought this mainly out of nostalgia, because the Maus was the first tank I ever tried to scratch-build when I was wargaming with my friend Wayne in his Dad's garage. We played entirely infantry-free games consisting of nothing but the biggest, meanest tanks we could find, and using rules that had been type-written and then (badly) reproduced in a little booklet — I don't even remember the name of the game, but it was pretty clunky.


I doubt that I'll ever have a tabletop use for a Maus, but it will be nice to have one around. And besides, it only cost about ten bucks, so why not?

PanzerJäger 1 conversion

My frustrated attempts at getting a PanzerJäger 1 in 15mm scale has led me to desperate straits, so much so that I've started designing a fighting compartment and gun conversion kit to be 3d printed, to go on a Minairons Panzer 1 model.

Building it in Blender is pretty straightforward, but I'm hampered by the fact that I don't have a 3d printer of my own, so I'm having to gamble that my measurements are right. Getting beta models printed and shipped by Shapeways is a lengthy business.

Here's the FUD material render from Shapeways;

The module is available for sale at http://shpws.me/OMk3, but it should be noted that I haven't yet been able to print it to check for fit on the Minairons kit.

Genericars

I designed a sprue of generic 1930s British cars in 6mm (1:300 – 1:285) scale.

They're not meant to represent any specific make or model, but rather to have the look of common civilian vehicles of the period.

They're available in FUD/FXD resin on Shapeways at http://shpws.me/OLD1

These ones are basically the same car, but a convertible version, and with the spare wheel moved around on to the back.

They've available at http://shpws.me/OLDo

Here's another conversion of my basic car model. This time it's a sprue of small delivery trucks.

They'd have been painted with the store name and logo on the sides, which will be something of a challenge in this scale.

These ones are available at http://shpws.me/OLNc

Splendor Jewels

I bought myself a cheap copy of the game Splendor from China. It only cost about ten bucks, but that's partly because the jewel and gold tokens are die-cut cardboard, rather than the fancy-schmancy weighted poker-chip style things to be found in the sixty dollar version. Apart from that, and having smaller "noble" tiles, it's identical to the high-priced version.

However, since I like fancy-schmancy trappings as much as the next man, I replaced the cardboard counters with these acrylic jewels and plastic goldish coins.

Fancy! And also schmancy!

Battlegroup Battle Rating Chits

The chits un-punched and un-encapsulated

I made myself a set of Battlegroup Battle Rating chits using some 25mm coin cases that I bought from China for a few cents each. I think they'll work pretty well, and I have enough spare cases that I can make any theatre-specific chits I might need.

The discs are cut out using a cheap 25mm circle punch from Warehouse Stationery (in NZ).

The cases' internal diameter is actually 27mm, so the card discs do rattle about a bit in them, but that doesn't really matter too much. Im leaving the cases to shut with a pressure fit; I doubt that they're likely to come apart under normal handling, but if they do a drop of glue will take care of them.

There's a PDF of the layout at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7m9IvmLVUOLZDBjNDdMNV92UDQ/view?usp=sharing

FotR tokens

2017-07-19: PDF updated with a page of the replacement special chits for Fall of the Reich

The reference lines are designed for the specific punch I used, so you may have to experiment a bit to see how they'll work with your own punch. There are a bunch of spare unmarked chits you can do that with.

Some of the chits, both punched and encapsulated

For convenience of use and storage, I made a bag for the chits to rattle around in. It's made of some scrap canvas I had lying around, and it sits flat and open so that the chits are easily accessible during a game, while being deep enough that you're still picking blind unless you actually make an effort to peek.

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