1st November 1914, off the Coronel

Last week we decided to go for a Naval Thunder scenario (it was a scenario from Station Manned and Ready, indeed... but we recycled it for NT). Usually when we play Naval Thunder, we like to put on table as many ship as we can, both for sake of painting glory and for letting more people to join us. Therefore, we often play Jutland-like battles, lasting 4 or 5 hours and usually with uncertain results (a part a lot of fun!).
With this small scenario, we gave a new deal to our naval warfare. Infact, it involves no more then 4 vassels per side, with the biggest ones being Armoured Cruisers.

Here come a brief description of the events introducing this scenario:
1st November 1914, The German Pacific Squadron under Admiral Von Spee was cruising carrying out commerce raids at the start of the First World War. The British, French and Japanese had squadrons searching for him at the start of the war, reminiscent of the search for the ship bearing his name at the start of the Second World War. The British squadron under Cradock intercepted him off the coast of Chile, and
after a one sided fight, the British Cruisers were annihilated.

as you can read, it was a one side action, with the British best achievement being surviving...
I suggested some victory conditions in order to equilibrate it a little bit. I've arranged a long table (2 mt long, 1,5 wide) with the Royal Navy starting on left side when the Hochseeflotte tries to intercept them from the middle of the table (so, it would roughly be as the RN was bearing westward and the germans came from north side of the table).
The brits would gain a victory point each ship they can bring out of the table from west end, 2 point if they do so with the slow armed merchantman (the Otranto), but they can get 2 victory point if the expose themselves to the more powerful german guns and get to sunk an enemy ship.
From other side, germans will get 1 victory point each british ship they'll sink and 2 points if they sink the Otranto.

With this in mind, let's review the forces on the water:
Royal Navy:
AC HMS Good Hope a decent AC, with 9" guns
AC HMS Monmouth (proxed with AC Warrior) a very light AC, with only 6" and 3" guns on it...
CL Glasgow (proxed with CL Bristol)
AMC Otranto (proxed with CL Aurora) slow and heavy ship, but with a good resistance to hits...

Hochseeflotte
AC Scharnhorst,
AC Gneisenau
CL Leipzig
CL Nürnberg
CL Dresden
CL Emden (as this last cruisers arrived only in the last part of the battle, we omitted it in this scenario)

The game was fun, with a lot of evasive manouvres, smoke curtains layered to cover slow ships, some big bangs from both sides, with the brits which nearly escaped the germans. Nearly. Germans lost 2 small CLs, and an AC, but have sunk almost everything on the table, apart of the merchantman, which was still afloat but, as it had lost almost every ship from his escort, she lowered her colours...

 

the British choose a convoy formation, bearing WSW

a close-up to the convoy, with CL performing an evasive manouver, trying to keep formation with the slow and encoumbered Otranto.

 Germans advance with a double line formation, full speed.

The german, after having succesfully intercept the british ships, but having suffered badly from 9" guns of Good Hope, performed a cleaver screening of the nearly sunk AC on the right. In the meanwhile, the Monmouth keep suffering from two fires on the bridge and a flooding...

 

 Hey, what a good paint job on the Good Hope's sea base here... I'm proud! and it is my favourite ship too!

here below the nasty germans from Werther collection

the Magdeburg is showing some secondary damages on the superstructures...

SS scout platoon

For long time my primary interest in wargaming was into Napoleonic period. Lot of rules, lot of miniatures (mostly plastic 1/72 from various companies)... then I was sucked in Warhammer for a while (just 5 years, nearly not enough for anything but a couple of armies... a lot of fun, by the way, and a very big improve in my painting skills...). After Warhammer I was got in Flames of war. That's eight years ago, and from then, I've collected and painted a lot of platoons (mostly germans), I've had a lot of games (much more fun than WH, indeed), and some tournaments too... I like tournaments, but only when they propose axis vs allies match. I really hate to hear: "Ok, we have both germans... let do it's a drill...!" or worst: " I really like your panzerlehr list. But it's a little bit weak on AT, what do you'll do if you'll meet a Koenigstiger?".
Anyway, I have more shelves devoted to FOW on my cabinets than any other period/scale/system...
I hope to show everything on these pages, but it will take some time.
so, Lets begin with some SS scouts on schwimmwagen, a very nice and charming platoon, but really small to be really useful and, being Fearless Veteran SS, too expensive too!
By the way, they are useful also as Tank-hunters... and this is the role I've depicted them in.

 Schwimmwagen!

 I've tried to match each car crew with a base

 as you can see, I spend a lot of time on bases, as I think they have to be really eye catching at this scale in order to pop out from the tabletop

 It looks like late summer in France...

 ... I've tried to give the impression of a wet morning...

 c'mon yanks, come closer with that bloody M10...

 Ah... what a lovely sunset in t he countryside...

SS in ambush!

 oops, I wasn't aware of that glue blob on the tree... lets paint it on...

Ship of the Line (2)

This week I'm happy to show you some pics of my last 74 gun french ship of the line.
The base model is a 1:1200 74 gun ship from Langton napoleonic range, with masts, and PE ratlines and sails (but I'm not so fond of the latter... maybe I'll spend some consideration on this matter later...).
Painting was done in few hours with (mostly) GW and Vallejo acrilics.
Rigging (that is the most time consuming part of the job, but its also the funnier) was done in 4-5 hours with cotton threadbare. Unfortunately, I've not found a suitable syntetic thread yet, but I'm still looking as cotton thread is quite difficult to work with.
I'm not full satisfied of the resin base paintwork... maybe I'll touch it soon or later...
Enjoy!

As you can see, brass photo etched sails looks good, but its quite difficult to achieve a natural feeling with them... next time I'll try with white metal version of sails.

Yom Kippur (1) - Israeli armoured brigade

As you know (or, if you don't, you should!), I'm going on a quite new project involving the gorgeous 1/285 micro armor models from GHQ: a tabletop refight of 1973 Yom Kippur war on sinai.

I really can't spend enough words on the minis. They are perfect. much more detailed of several 15mm equivalent I've here around.

Crisp, well proportioned, a lot of stunning details. If I really have to point out some cons, I can only regret about the barrels of both guns and mgs. They easily bent and it's difficult to keep them in a straight shape.

But it's a minimal problem against a lot of pros.

Painting these model is a very fun experience. It's a quick and rewarding job. Only decals are extremely annoying. So tiny and fiddling you cannot even spot them against the blue paper they are presented on. And after few second in the water, you have to handle them with care or you'll lose them on your finger.

Anyway, soon after completing these, I've ordered many more models from Magister Militum. I'm definetly IN micro armor syndrome.

here come the models:

a couple of M60A1 (or Magach 6 for IDF) companies in 1:3 scale as per Fistuful of Tows3 rules.

And now some M113 for a mechanized battallion:

enjoy!