SITREP: Der Untergang

Won these new RH Models' UrbmeltsquT armed civvies in 44 pattern British helmet on eBay (seller's photo). A welcome boost to my Winter of '79 forces.

So much for my optimism back in Feb. Our gaming plans for Feb and March have been put on hold as Heather's been in and out of hospital. In between I've been working long hours at work to make up time off to look after her and I don't see things getting any better till the end of March. Especially with an internal audit in the offing.

Nevertheless, stopped by Homebase on Sunday and whilst there, picked up a 60x90cm 6mm MDF sheet. The idea being to create a double-sided urban, inner city terraced housing themed gaming board with different street layouts.

I also bought some paint for roads and general urban duties. Browsing some model railway forums I found 'chalkboard' and 'velvet' paint recommended for painting roads. When I saw the price of the tins of these I looked for something cheaper and found two tester tins of Crown VINTAGE Matt Emulsion, Film Noir (a dark charcoal for the base colour) and Fade to Grey (a grey suitable for drybrushing the asphalt and general urban greyiness), at £3 something each. Done!

The buildings themselves are going to be simple printed models rather than Metcalfe, which I still find too twee or ScaleScenes, too complicated. The buildings will sit on 'paved' templates to allow a small amount of variation. I'm using masking tape to plan the road system and trying out different combinations to come up with as visually interesting yet tactically challenging road network as possible.  I don't plan to do 'backies', just blocks of terraces, a pub, garage, lockups and a few corner shops. This is because I prefer the idea of running actions along the streets rather than fighting for Jack and Vera's outside privy.

Continuing the urban theme, we've decided on Berlin '45  in 15mm as our 'do-able' big project this year. I'm currently thinking of an Infantry Aces style mini campaign over a 'boys ownly' wargaming weekend in a Call of Duty: World at War meets Downfall maelstrom interspersed with Winter of 79, Falklands, Normandy, RCW and Sci Fi games. And who knows, maybe I can spring some Undertoten action on Maff as well.

old photo of my 15mm Nazi Undertoten when WIP.

Once again, I'm looking at a 60x90cm baseboard for Berlin. Let's keep things in proportion.  To paraphrase Maff, "How many times can you storm the Reichstag?" So, we are looking at an Airfix approach - one of this one of that - a King Tiger here, a Jagdpanzer there, rather than hordes of late war armour clogging the streets. My own Soviets will remain based around T34/85s and M4 76mm 'Emcha' Shermans plus the odd SU thingy rather than the IS-2 and JSUs.

Going through my stuff, I've found almost all the infantry and support weapons I need. Peter Pig Russians in greatcoats, Battlefront Engineer-Sappers and a nice mixed bag of Late War German odds and sods. I have a couple of late war Panzers lurking around unused and unlike our foundered attempt to replay the Falklands in 20mm or even 10mm this time last year, everything is either to hand or readily available and most definitely not reliant on casting schedules.

BTW, the armed civvies in 44 pattern British helmet arrived this morning. Really, really nice minis. Rolf has really captured the look of the netted and scrimmed 44 (MkIV/V) helmet. Recommended.

Cheers
Mark