Preparing for COW

 Most of my 'hobby time' over the last few days has been spent preparing for the 2012 Conference of Wargamers.  This has involved packing an eclectic mix of items including a number of silly hats and the now notorious inflatable Vulcan.  Last seen a couple of years ago (link) this is now making a comeback in PVO Strany - a game about defending the Soviet Union from nuclear bombers.  The game will also feature my MIG 21s ,radios, silly hats and a fully functional 1960s radar set.  Honestly. 

Pawn to be wild

The last of my recent flurry of 1/144 scale aircraft now.  These Petlyakov Pe-2s are single piece metal castings by True North.  As with their other models (see the recent posts on I-16 and IAR-80) a fair bit of cleaning up was required before painting. 

It took me a long time to include the Pe-2 in my VVS line-up as I had been steeling myself to bodge one up from a Bf-110 so you may imagine my relief when True North rode to the rescue with their model.

 With these recent additions to my Soviet air fleet it must be nearly time for another flypast!

 Though it initially entered service as a dive bomber (such was the fashion in 1940!) but was sussessful in other roles - heavy fighter, recce and night fighter.

 The title of the post?  The Russian nickname for the Pe-2 was Peshka (Pawn).  Sorry about that.

Prolonged preowned panzer perpetuation

A few years ago I acquired from Chris Willey a load of 20mm toys.  These included large numbers which had originated in the collection of Chris Kemp and I have been assimilating these into my own collection and building additional units for Megablitz games. 

This box of ex-CK toys was sorted out at least two years ago and will end up as 9 Panzer Divison, but I've yet to get round to finishing it off.  More photos when I have done so.

Veteran Napoleonics

These elderly chaps were part of the stuff from JR's attic (see many previous posts!).  They are old metal 25s - all single piece castings - of unknown make - possibly Hinton Hunt.  Can anyone help identify them?

I remember first discovering these figures in the late 1970s at the old Dundee club.  At the time they were in a plastic 4-litre ice cream tub full of 25mm Napoleonics.  We youngsters of the club (I did say it was a while ago!) used them in some games alongside our Airfix plastics.  I wonder what became of the other figures.

Even my limited knowledge of the period indicated that this is a Polish Lancer.

The remaining cavalry look like French Hussars (or infantry officers?)

The joker in the deck is this rather lovely 30mm 'Willie' SYW figure.  Happily his paintwork is still in pretty good shape.