Tank riders. Doesn't seam like a great place to take shelter to me, being that other tanks will be shooting at these tanks but what do I know.

Podcast EP3 (parts a & b) are live now: Operation Fustian & The Battle for Primosole Bridge, this should appear in your podcast app if you have subscribed (Search for valhallagames podcast in your app) or you can click on the image below for a web player (for part 1).

Battle for Primosole Bridge reference material can be found here

Episode 3a:
In this episode, the first of a two part history-to-wargame special, we discuss the build up for a key WW2 operation in Sicily, 1943.
Operation Fustian was the British airborne operation to seize and Hold Primosole Bridge, a strategically important gateway to the Catania Plain and vital for the advance of the Allies and the success of the Sicilian campaign.
Facing the British paratroopers were their deadly adversaries; the veteran German airborne troops of the 1st Fallshirmjager Division.....

Episode 3b:
We return- in this, the second installment of a two part history-to wargame special- to Sicily 1943 and the Battle for Primosole Bridge.
This second part continues the story of the bloody fight for the control of the bridge between the British and German paratroopers.
We also discuss some wargaming ideas around this historical action and how you, like us!, can get some ideas to play this as a scenario in your WW2 wargames.

Enjoy, and your feedback is always welcome.

Preparing a model for Operation Fustian planning. Don't know what Operation Fustian was? Watch this space...

Here is the latest installment of my Bolt Action Fallschirmjager. Finished except for basing this is a quick look there were 12 in total. Unlike my current Panzer IV project I'm pretty happy with these guys. How would you like to see a squad of those coming out of the orchard towards you? Thanks Dan for the super secret face paining recipes, I'll do some close ups when I have a chance so you can see the stubble. 

I have something to say about camo and washes at 28mm scale that I have learned along the way. To get the detail on that "comment" on this post and that will subscribe you to further updates on *this post*. That way I can just go on and on about it without generating extra main posts (and notifications) on the web site for others that may not be interested in this specific topic. This takes advantage of the web sites ability to subscribe to the whole site vs. the ability to subscribe just to updates (comments really) on a single blog post. And keeps all the updates and comments together.

I hope you like them, miniatures from Warlord Games and Artizan Designs (the chunky ones).

 Friday Photo - the Fallschirmjager bear as discussed in a recent podcast episode. I'm taking this to my next tournament! If anyone knows the story behind this photo we would be keen to hear it.

Work in progress on the latest batch of vehicles

As far as I can see there is no comprehensive Miniature Assembly guides/Construction diagrams storage for Bolt Action on the warlord games site. There is this page: http://www.warlordgames.com/category/assembly-diagrams/ but its very limited. As I find/purchase/locate the guides I will upload them here for everyone. You can also access the downloads link from the site menu.

If anyone has some or wants to scan some and send them to me they can do so at rex@this_sites_domain_name.net (PDF preferred but Ill take anything)

In the meantime if anyone has a guide to putting together the Kubelwagen please let me know. (sad face)

The downloads:

https://www.valhallagames.net/index.php/downloads/category/2-assembly-guides

 

Friday photo (yes i'm late)

28mm Panzer IV's ready for base coat, I love my airbrush!

 Time to get back into D&D? (note because I don't want to break the internet due to posting too much this, and not all posts won't (shouldn't) get emailed out)

 Bolt action Campaign: The Western Desert first look in this flip though video. Spoiler alert there is lots of sand and everything is yellow, start repainting those tanks now!

  Click on the image below to see it at full size, it's quite large and might take a while to load...

...once the image has loaded in a new window or tab you should be able to zoom or pinch to zoom to see the detail. I'm experimenting to see what can be achieved depth of field wise. Depth of field is what is in focus in the photo, not always the entire image front to back will be in focus, and with miniatures sometimes not very much at all!

It's not bad!, I'm pretty happy (for a test shot) its the best table shot I have ever taken, below are some samples at 100% taken from the photo in the link above (not a zoomed in separate photo). As you can see its "soft" at both ends but it's better than most photos I have seen of boards in terms of full-depth-focus. I can also do better just need to move things around a bit in the wargaming room. Also bear in mind that this photo is *longways* on the table so what you are seeing is a full 6' table "mostly" in focus front to back.

Bolt action artillery observer rules flowchart coming soon (as soon as I work out how it actually works…!!!!)
 

First game on the new table... half finished the game and put the lid on for another day. Magic!
 

Wargaming table - prologue

Wargaming is a bad idea, there go I said it. It's expensive it takes limitless amounts of time and additionally it takes a lot of space perhaps a lot more than anybody else in the house might need for most other hobby's.

So I've been at war with my family about the availability of space to set up even a temporary table. Partly because as you know regardless of how temporary the table is meant to be a game that inevitably doesn't get finished turns temporary into extended and then into permanent then people (ok, mostly me) start dumping stuff there then before you know it you don't have a temporary wargaming table you have an altar to the god of household clutter sitting in your lounge room.

So this is a cause of frustration in our household and it's a barrier to actually getting any wargaming done because inevitably at 7 at night after I finished the days chores and the thought of getting out my temporary table and all my miniatures which is nicely stored away doesn't seem as appealing as it once did even perhaps at 10:30 a.m. earlier that day. So I've decided to take steps and create a semi-permanent wargaming table in the garage.

Now luckily I have a garage that is big enough to accommodate that, however it too had a huge altar in the middle of the floor to the god of household clutter so over the period of a few evenings I managed to chip that away to the point where it was just a dozen things that I didn't know what to do with

Then I purchased an 8 x 4 sheet of ply and began to look at options for a semi-permanent wargaming table I say semi-permanent because I don't have enough space to have it permanently stay in one spot. Even though I have a generous allocation of garage space (won't stop me moaning for more though) I still need to move it around so I can get other garage things done so I've decided to make some sort of a trolley on Wheels that the wargaming table will sit on. This allows me to push it round the garage as required. Added to that I live in a country where it gets up to 43 degrees in the summer time so during those months there won't be any wargaming happening at all in the garage and I will be able to bring the board inside if I get a game.

I have toyed with the idea of having a winch lift mechanism that winches the board up to the ceiling so that it is out of the way for normal everyday usage I'm holding that idea over to phase 37c of my plan for world domination.

My next challenge is that I share the garage with the cat. The cat sleeps there and creates havoc in there at night time while I'm not there to yell at it so my table needs some sort of a covering to prevent the cat from pushing things off onto the ground which apparently is a source of great enjoyment for the beast. Additionally being a garage it is dusty and I don't want all my miniatures filled up with dust so the cover will double as a dust cover.

You can track my progress here on the blog previous info here and here. (and here)

 Wargaming table (with protective anti-cat cover) part 2 - supporting structure for the anti-cat/dust cover assembled. Only nail-guned my finger once and it didn't even hit the bone so a good lunchtimes work!

Wargaming table (with protective anti-cat cover) part 1  (see slide show)
 

Weathering, that wonderful mythical art of making a small plastic tanks and other vehicles look real with chipping, dirt, dust, mud, and damage. It's a new world for me as all my vehicles are either unpainted (so far) or look like they just rolled off the factory floor.

To this end I have been watching https://www.youtube.com/user/Panzermeister36/videos and working out what is appropriate for highly detailed "models" and what's still reasonable for nice looking "wargaming" pieces. For example in one of the videos under the link above he talks about an oil painting technique and demonstrates it, it looks very, very nice but then goes on to say that it took 5 hours (for one part of weathering on one tank), that's not for me... (it was VERY nice though!).

Anyway, to that end I have purchased the following oil paint set from Officeworks (Australia) for AU$25, most of the colors won't be useful but there should be enough in the very small tubes to do a few vehicles even with only using the ones that are suitable. I will start to get stuck in in the coming week, wish me luck.

Late war Fallschirmjäger, the next batch work in progress photos.