Long ago in a wargames club far, far away....*

*OK, it was June 2019 and 14 miles away.

This week Martin ran a sci-fi game using a selection of Star Wars figures he and John had accumulated.  The players represented rebel factions attempting to clear a section of a planet of Imperial forces.  The players were Jerry, Graham, John, Diego and your humble correspondent.

My own faction consisted of a Hans Solo figure (in black above) with a speeder, a bloke in an orange suit (he'd missed the lecture on camouflage) and of course....

 ... a small droid.

 We all entered from different directions and investigated various locations marked with the green chips.  These could be
1. a leader - usually Darth himself hatching some diabolical plot - who would have to be fought
2. cash or other valuables
3. an ambush - usually storm troopers - who would have to be fought
4. a trap - from which the character would need tor try extricating himself or be helped to do so.
Victory would go to the player who ended the game with the most chips.  Martin's briefing mentioned the need to co-operate - which immediately set us against one another...
Above can be seen me (as Hans Solo) speeding up to check out another chip atop a mountain.  Of course it was a trap...

 ...in the shape of this massing dinosaur type thingie.  Luckily my tiny dustbin-like droid was soon on hand to rescue me.

Darth pops up again (his forth appearance in the game) and is assailed by Diego's wookiee.  Never thought I'd ever have to type that.

 Dustbin droid wonders how the hell to get down off the mountain.

 By now the race was on for the last chip. I got there (just) first and of course it was another bloody ambush.  Hans got stunned by the Imperial Gebirgsjager...

 ...but orange suit man zapped them from a distance and grabbed the chip jest before John's Princess Leia lookalike arrived.  This clinched my victory, as I had six such chips to Diego's five, thus making it a good game.

And so ended an action packed film.  Er, I mean game.  In the silence just before the credits rolled there was a crash from off-camera.  Yes, Dustbin Droid had fallen off the mountain...

1815 Dutch & Belgians

I’ve become involved with another 1/32 Waterloo game. Happily, there is no chance of the figure-painting ‘burnout’ I suffered in the run up to the 2015 lawn game (see here and the subsequent four posts) as due to that game I already have a good number of suitable figures ready for action.  However, despite decent quantities of French, Brits, Prussians - and a few KGL, I had no Dutch or Belgian troops. I knew I had several boxes of the relevant Call to Arms figures in stock, and Lloyd owed me some painting...

I took delivery of the chaps on Wednesday and managed to get them based over the weekend. I think they look pretty good. 

There are three Dutch and one Belgian regiments - the contents of four boxes of ACTA and a few old Timpo Brits. 

The three Dutch regiments. The flags are a bit on the small side but I already had them printed. 

 The Belgians. With Timpo standard and drummer.

A closer look at one of the Dutch regiments. 

Japanese anti-tank gun. Or is it?

My latest bit of bodging resulted in this Japanese AT gun. It’s a sort of combination of the 37mm Type 94 and the 47mm Type 1. The crew are again adapted from the Tamiya infantry set while the gun is actually a Hinchliffe metal 1/76 scale German FH le18 105mm. If you stand about 10 feet away from your screen I think you’ll find it looks pretty good. My own standards being very low, I am very pleased with the ghastly monstrosity!

Danish dart

Alongside the F-100 featured earlier, I refurbished this scruffy F-104 Starfighter.  Again I went for the simple but rather appealing all-over green finish.

The Royal Danish Air Force operated Starfighters from the mid-sixties to mid-eighties.  The attrition rate due to accidents was apparently 23.5%! 

As with the Sabre, the roundels began as WW2 Japanese and the tail flashes were hand painted.