Spent the last week painting dead peasants, live peasants, dead Marines, caches and hooches for my Vietnam. Also finished all the basing on my ACW and PBI armies. Just the flags to do on the ACW stuff.
Also painted a load of walls and fences plus some rocky outcrop pieces that Peter Pig do. The fences are from Peter Pigs Western range and look nice and rough. I also have done a few fences from Timecast. The walls are 'drystone' types I bought at Alumwell when it WAS Alumwell so that must be 5 or 6 years ago I guess. Its funny that with wargaming, its not just about painting the figures or basing them. For me the game has to look right with all the associated impedimenta (?). So I seem to have spent a lot of time lately getting these bits done. I always seem to buy these bits but never get round to painting them.
I have a couple of M113's to finish for Vietnam and then can look at playing a few games. I have both the old and new versions from Peter Pig. I think the older ones may go towards a UN Peacekeeping force for AK47. I also have a couple of diecast Hueys, but these are prepaints which I wont be touching. Hopefully at Alumwell I will pick up some decal sheets from Skytrex for the M113's to make them look really nice.
On the subject of Veitnam there was a great documentary on BBC4 this week called 'How Vietnam Was Lost'. Told the story of two events that changed the war. One was an ambush just north of Siagon where 60+ US troops were killed having being pressured into searching out the local VC regiment by Westmoreland. The other was one of the first Anti War demos in an American university (cant remember which one) that started peacefully protesting against the universities links with the makers of Napalm. The local police were sent in and all hell broke loose with the police bascially brutalising the students ending up with over 60 in hospital. Both events took place on 17th October 1967. Very thought provoking. Especially the commanding officer of the lead company who looked your typical 'all american jock' type who broke down on camera telling about how his company was dead in the field and that he had being shot 4 times himself. Catch it on iPlayer if you missed it.
Back to wargaming and I have been thinking about making some permanent baseboards for my games. Most of the latest RFCM sets are on either 5x3 or 6x3. The new aK47 is 6x3. PBI is 4x4 and MOCB 6x4. I am thinking that MOCB would work just as well on either 6x3 or 5x3. My PBI will always be played on a cotton sheet marked out into squares (for now anyways). The rest I am thinking I will do one 6x3 board, pretty much as described in Battles in the Age of War using a GW static grass mat with some low level scenic bits on. Not sure about roads and rivers. May scult these on, although it does limit your set up somewhat. Hills are another thing. I currently use S&A scenics scenary which are nice and practical but the plastic bases I use do tend to slide down them too easily. As ever with these projects I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. I may just do a board for demo/participation game purposes which should be easy enough.
My scenarios for Regiment of Foote are coming along nicely. Just need to sort out the problem of having no scanner. I am fairly sure Peter Pig hand draw their maps for their scenarios and then scan the picture into the computer. I love how these look and want to replicate it if I can. I may have to wait until I am back at work and use a scanner there! On the scenarios themselves I am just researching Worcester, all the others are done. Some tinkering to do to ensure they play right under the rules. One minor problem has been to tailor the number of units under each command. Too many and it will be very difficult to maintain any cohesion. I think absolutely no more than 6 units per command. The size of Marston Moor has necessitated 4 generals per side.
More next week. I may have them done by this time next week, but as we are off to Berlin a week today I doubt I will have time to post them up.
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