Hobbycraft January Sale

Winter blues gripped the office today, so I went out at lunchtime for some relief from the gloom and ended up in Hobbycraft.

Airfix ex-JB kits Hardtop Landrover at £3.99; Saracen APC, 1 tonne Landrover and  Bedford Tactical Refueller at £4.79 each. Two Saracens in the bag. Result!

A heads up for FOW gamers. The Omaha Beach, D-Day Airborne, Hammer & Sickle and Villers Bocage books were reduced to just £7.50 each. 

Most surprising of all, proudly diplayed on a promotional end were repo old style boxes of Airfix Romans and Ancient Britains at 99p each! £10 and you have two armies for a bit of old fashioned wargaming!Ah the waft of nostalgia... or is that the steak slice from Greggs the Baker.

Modelzone arrived in Aberdeen just before Christmas, so before heading back to the office I thought I'd stop by to check out the Airfix European Ruined Workshop. The new Airfix buildings have useful photos on the back of the box displaying the model from all angles - in this case the workshop is partially destroyed at the rear - nevertheless it looks suitable for any post industrial revolution setting. But before I was tempted to buy it - I found a Hornby OO scale (fully painted and assembled) Compressor House for just £12.99, reduced from around £21. I couldn't not buy it could I, even if it means cuppasoup for the rest of the week.

The stock photos belie the building's functionality as a workshop on an old farm, in a railway siding or colliery. Or, we could add that Hovels destroyed chimney for a Stoke on Trent pottery or similar. In my case, it's destined to become part of Borchester Council Depot. That Airfix Ruined Workshop would complement it nicely but so too would a modern corrugated shed, a Portakabin or two, pallets, skips and the ubiquitous piles of old road signs and metal scrap one sees.

Cheers
Mark

Phil Barker at The Sharp End

Following a heads up from Rolf Hedges, I took a look at Phil Barker's Modern skirmish rules for asymmetric warfare. You can download a free copy by clicking on this link [The Sharp End].

I've only read through so far and found a lot that I like. I can honestly feel my Catterick days coming back as I thumb through. Which takes me to the excellent School Days, Army Days, etc blog. Don't look at the text - you can go back and read it afterwards - just look at the photos and picture this as a squaddie's private journal of patrolling Borchester and district in Winter of '79.

There was an interesting thread on TMP from Pete Murray who playtested The Sharp End. And Bob Cordery has some photos of a game in action at COW on his interesting Wargaming Miscelleny blog. I passed up The Sharp End when I first heard about it - there being so many Modern rules available, you can spend all your time flitting from one set to another without getting to grips with them and to know them well enough to have an enjoyable game that just reached that effortless state of flow.

I'm glad that I took the time to look over The Sharp End. I can't tell you whether it's good or else yet - it may be we just nick elements for our games. But, it's just piqued my interest and speaks to me direct from the page.

Cheers
Mark

New 70's Cops from Elheim

Matt at Elheim has released a pair of '70's undercover cops COPS04 for £1.38.

They look from the photo to be pretty much nondescript 70's/80's guys with guns so can also be used as undercover SAS, terrorists, freedom fighters, criminals etc.

Cheers
Mark

New Year Workbench

I'm finding myself doing more and more work in the kitchen nowadays instead of the study. Consequently had to take a break over the Christmas holidays as the table was full of festive decorations in true Griswald Family Christmas style.

Back to normal now, I'll be working on some headswops this week - turning a selection of the Eureka troops in Internal Security order into Paras (for Mike) and others into Scots to mix and match as required with the guys in helmets.

I had started on some Glengarry headwops a couple of months back but found the heads on Britannia's WW1 Highland Light Infantry very difficult to remove (no necks). Plus, the heads are also a bit jowly and would need their herculean jaws filed down. Then the current shite at work about the longevity mine and 800 others jobs intervened, so they were put to one side in a box and forgotten.

In the meantime, I picked up some East German Workers Militia from Rolf Hedges. These are really nice figures - perfect for Twighlight 2000, industrial Neo Soviet Sci Fi revolts and similar.

GDR (East German) Workers Milita

Looking closely at the guys in sidecaps last week I thought, hang on! Add a big badge on the side and a couple of ribbons at the back and we have a pretty decent Glengarry. Maybe not 100% accurate but looks good enough to me. [Update].... So I'll be cutting these heads off and placing them on British Squaddie torsos.

Photos of these plus the first of my BW Models reviews later this the week.

Cheers
Mark
 

Pre-Printed Cut and Assemble Villages

Full colour pre-printed educational 'Cut and Assemble' model buildings are a cheap and effective way of getting terrain on your tabletop.

I'm a big fan of these. A wide range of historical building types are available at a third of the price commonly sought by the model railway market.

For Winter of '79, I want to bring to your attention two sets by Dover Publications in particular. Unfortunately both are out of print but can be bought second hand at a reasonable price, if you ignore and step past what some book collectors are trying to charge for 'new' copies. These models are HO scale which is slightly smaller than 1/76th. Don't worry though, it's a positive as the models fall between 20mm and 15mm scales so unless you are a fussy bugger, can be used with both.

The Cut & Assemble Old English Village In Full Colour (Michael Grater & Marc Sewell, 1986) gives you a timeless country village that you could find anywhere in Southern England. It's a bit Miss Marpleish and more suited to VBCW, but I walked through many just like this in 1978 when I did the South Downs Way.

The 48 page set includes a village church, pub, post office and 5 other houses, plus walls and other village paraphanelia to make up the '12 Buildings and Structures'.

I picked up my copy in a book clearance for around £2/$3. Dog-eared at the corners but didn't effect any of the buildings.

To complement the English Village, Dover also published Cut & Assemble an Old Irish Village (Edmund V Gillon Jr, 1991). This has 5 buildings and a renaissance tower. It reminds me of villages on the road to Braemar, so could equally be used in a Scottish setting. Available second-hand for around £7/$10 - bargain.

You could extend both sets with maybe a download and print or Superquick (etc) card country garage, school or maybe some more modern detached houses.

Happy Hunting!

Cheers
Mark
   

Another Free Victorian Terraced House to download

I found a further great free download resource. Mike at Scenerybuilder.com has this great high quality FREE brick terrace to download and print.

Even if you are not interested in Terraced Houses, the last two pages of different high quality traditional and modern windows and doors are worth checking out as they will allow you to ring the changes to this model and improve other paper/card or even your own scratchbuilt model houses.

Mike has also produced two types of brick design on paper to download - just choose the scale you want (4mm for 1/76). I'm really impressed by Mike's efforts. The finish is very professional and I would encourage you to donate a couple of quid via Paypal to say "Thank you" for his efforts and encourage future production.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Cheers
Mark
   

Free Brick Terrace Cottage Downloads

To herald in the New Year, thought I'd share with you these FREE download and print 00 scale brick bruildings designed by Mike Martin. Ideal for Winter of '79, VBCW etc.

Download Here

  

Cheers

Mark