How to eat an elephant.

 

So, I have actually played this game a few times, but I have not played it for at least a decade or more. In my early days of gaming, gaming in 20mm was the natural starting point, it was cheap and readily available. We started with Napoleonic and WWII games with any rules that we could find. At that time it meant Airfix rules, Introduction to Battle gaming and Discovering Wargames. The point of this is to say that while my collection of Napoleonic forces were excised from my collection,  I have continued to collect 20mm WWII stuff since the 1970's.

Now some might think that I would have a fully realized and painted collection, but not so. I have, for the most part, been a casual gamer. Work and life has often got in the way of the hobby (but did not stop me from buying stuff) So right now that semi annual (or bi annual) urge to do some WWII gaming is returning. But even just looking at my collection is demoralizing, so much stuff to work on.

Raventhorpe order has arived and problems with Sgts' Mess

 

Thanks to Liz Truss, there was recently something of a sale on items from the UK, so I quickly cobbled together a few orders from a number of different companies to try and take advantage of the weak pound. I have a fairly big wish list for items from Raventhorpe and the first of the boxes has arrived today containing 21 items.

In this wave we have 7 German cars, 2 Churchill tanks, 2 Shermans, 2 Universal carriers (mortars), 2 M8 HMC, a Humber IV, a Hetzer and a Daimler AC. In the back you can see 2 skoda 152mm guns and out of the picture is a Somua Multiple Mortar vehicle (some assembly required) A good haul to start with, it fills in some gaps. I have at least one more box of stuff that should be arriving soon.

I also have an order in with Grubby tanks, but there seems to be a delay in gathering up the ordered items to ship to me. 

I had also placed an order with Sgts' Mess for a large assortment of bits and bobs, tarps, weapons, limbers and miscellaneous items. Sadly that order went unfulfilled. Shortly after placing the order I realized there was more stuff that I wanted, so, I reached out to them to add more items. No response! Three more emails to them yielded the same lack of reply. In the end I was forced to escalate the problem to Paypal. They too seemed to get no response. In the end I had to get a refund instead of all the cool toys that I wanted, very disappointing. Hopefully the same thing will not happen with Grubby tanks, at least he responds to emails.

WWII progress

 

 The grad clean up has happened! I really need to start taking some before pictures, but rest assured these shelves contained a jumble of crap, incomplete models, scraps left over, bits of scenery etc. As you can see there are now a few empty spaces/shelves, where before it had been a mess.

Making a move on my 20mm WWII collection of unfinished kits

I was wondering if my recent interest in working on my massive collection of unfinished kit builds would translate into action on my 20mm World War two, collection, the answer, apparently is yes.

First up was one of my own personal challenge builds, something that I have put off for many years, for no good reason: the Airfix Buffalo. There is no good reason why I have avoided this kit, it really is no worse than many other kits, and yet, I have started but never finished building one of these models for decades!

What a Tanker second time playing this game.

 This past weekend we were able to play three miniature games and one board game, not bad for the group! Already posted pics of the Chaos in Carpathia game, working on the Pulp Alley game AAR, and here is the third game What a Tanker!

First go at What a Tanker!

Saw this game in action at Hotlead, and thought it looked like it might be fun to play, and you know what it is! It is a game with a lot of random elements to it, so it could be frustrating for some, but I like the chaos, the fact that your best laid plans can be ruined by poor command dice rolls, just when you see the enemy in the open ahead of you, you fail to get the acquire or aim dice that you need or worse everything but the fire die!

Well, remaining unfocused I have now leapt into my WWII collection

Apparently it was time for some reorganization and prep work on my WWII stuff. I have been very gradually moving along my wall of cabinets cleaning up the jumble of 'stuff' in each. First off was my VSF collection, now every nation has it's own shelf, everyone is in proper order waiting to be deployed on the table.

Then a quick stab at my Pulp figures, but more work will be required there...

Then all of a sudden this week I summoned up the strength to work on my WWII collection. Apparently I have a lot of WWII some of it almost presentable!

The basic reorg done, freed up room for more items to be stored once they are completed.

Game day World War II 20 mm

This Saturdays game, a test run of Kampfgruppe Normandy! I have test played it once, recently, looking to try it again, but this time do it right...😀 Made a few mistakes the first time, kind of forgot a chart and some rules, one of the reasons I like to ref other players until we all get the rules down. Trying to maneuver my forces and remember all the rules of a game I have read through once, and never seen played can be a challenge.

A treasure trove found at local hobby shop

Updated Aug 22 with pics of completed kits

Thanks to a fellow gamer letting me know about these I was able to pick up a nice selection of 1/76, 1/72, 20mm models. Never heard of  Eidai before but love the product. They are older kits, with few parts, perfect for the gamer who is tired of building intricate models. All of these have less than 10 parts, many less than 5!

In particular I like the German motorcycle,  the rider and bike are all one piece, just the side car needs to be built. A far cry from the Fujimi kits that required exceptional fine motor skills to build. Having built many a Fujimi bike this was sheer joy to assemble.