30 March 2008

Andreivian Militia pics

[IMG]http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r3/Richard_Baber/S8001860.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r3/Richard_Baber/S8001859.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r3/Richard_Baber/S8001856.jpg[/IMG]

My minor contribution to Richard`s great effort, a unit a Andreivian Militia - 2 squads with transport (figures by Liberation Miniatures - various 1980s Russians and Balkans militia), the BTR60P is a plastic kit and the BTR152 is a Russian di-cast toy I bought in a Istanbul flea market some 15yrs ago.

Chinook!

At last, some pics of the Corgi diecast Chinook I bought earlier this week.

That is to say, at last I've taken some pics.  Unfortunately, Blogger has failed to upload them three times so far today.

Grrr!


29 March 2008

Now for some progress

Work has been all-consuming for the past few weeks but now I have a week off!  

Pete Jones has reported back with some idea of the forces he can contribute and I think we're about there with figures and vehicles.  So now I'm going to concentrate on buildings!

I picked up a couple of Shellhole Scenics ruined city buildings at the recent Triples show in Sheffield.  I'm now putting together the first parts of down town Tuzkhur.  

I have half a dozen old melamine and cork place mats (the kind you put your plate on when eating your dinner).  They are rectangular and have curved corners and will make perfectly acceptable bases for city blocks.  The mat forms the pavement and a grey or sand coloured sheet underneath can be the roads.  Again, pics when I make some progress.

05 March 2008

Air Mobile!

I popped over to Meadowhall (shopping centre) this lunch time. I wanted to visit the Apple shop to find out why my iMac and my iPod are no longer talking to each other. Turns out (for those who care) it’s because I installed iTunes v7.6 before I switched to OSX v10.5.

While I was there I popped in (like you do) to Modelzone. There I found some Corgi ready made 1/72nd scale helicopters at half price! So I’ve bought an RAF Chinook HC.1 in a 1991 Desert Storm special operations camo scheme. Just the thing for transporting around a certain British unit operating in the Tuzkhur Valley.

Photos to follow when I get the chance.

03 March 2008

Size isn't everything (apparently)

It’s not going to be easy to play-test this scenario given the size of table I’ve been planning on. Everything I’ve read about putting on a convention game says make sure you play test and make sure it’s possible to complete the game in the time available – if in doubt, make the game too brief rather than risk running out of time.

So I’ve done a bit of mathematical modelling. No, really! Dividing up the distance from the US baseline to Tuzkhur (say 20 feet on a 24 feet long table) by the 10 inch per card road move of a fast tracked vehicle in Arc of Fire, we end up with a duration of twenty four turns to get there and back. We can probably double this to allow for the Americans’ need to fight their way through. So we’d need to play twenty four game turns a day, both days, to meet the main NATO objective.

Now Martin Rapier has a rule of thumb that an evening’s game at the club should last no more than 10 turns. Apparently this works whatever rules you’re playing. How much can I get away with adding for an all day convention game?

Shall we take a punt and say 15 turns per day? That should allow time for chatting, drinking and eating, and wandering around the event. In that case we’re looking at 12.5 feet from the US baseline to the town.

Now that really doesn’t seem very far at all, especially if the Americans were able to put the pedal to the metal and whiz through without stopping (which may just be an option in an M1 Abrams.

On the whole, then, I’m tempted to go with a battlefield based on three “standard” tables (for a total length of 18 feet) rather than the four I originally envisaged. Look out for a later posting that muses on why I seem to feel the need to use feet and inches in wargaming when I use metric everywhere else.