Birthday Games Day

Following the birthday theme we got a few friends together on Saturday and played some games … it took an RFCM theme as I had provided some classic AK-47 kit and Martin from Peter Pig came up and laid on some Hammering Iron (AK-47 and Hammering Iron? Yep … sounds like the old Brixcon formula from the noughties) ..

Games ...

(Hammering Iron)

(classic AK-47)

(DBA V3 Dark Age Britain)

The DBA is for another day and another blog … we got engrossed in a big game of AK-47 sandwiched between ‘show style’ games of Hammering Iron (but the choices and lures were provided) …

The ACW riverine isn’t really 20th century but was an important part of the fez-tivities … 😉 😉 .. so I’m sure you’ll indulge a couple of pictures …

AK-47 Classic … 

We played the most recent version we could remember of the old style rules from our Brixcon days …

(AK-47 Classic … Chris, Graham F and – out of shot – Chris A lined up against Martin and Graham H)

So I had the honour of umpiring the game – Martin (who wrote them) having long forgotten that version … though it all came back to him pretty quickly it has to be said …

(Martin’s T55s take an early battering)

I had laid the kit and boards out for two one-on-one games but we pushed them together for one big game which seemed to work very nicely.  It was a joy to get the old toys out again …

(Nato peacekeepers making a lot of noise)

… indeed Chris A said to me quizzically ‘why don’t we do this more often?’ and we agreed we’d almost forgotten how much fun this game is.

In all the pictures, the figures are Peter Pig, the vehicles a mix of PP, QRF, Skytrex and toy shop renegades …

(Skytrex Pershings and a PP Hummer take out those Panto tanks)

The game itself was a little one-sided … we ran through the political charts and the Nato/colonials got all the best upgrades (thoroughly raiding my larder of tank and A/C extras) while the Panto dictatorship got downgrades to militia (and never got its helicopter on) …

(unarmed militias and biker gang … somewhat elaborate homecrafted conversions from PP’s WWII German motoryclists)

At this point I guess I should own up that we ran short of appropriate goodies for the as we played them as ‘Super Power Backed’ although I had packed them as ‘Colonial Power/Settlers’ with the upgrades for that chart (towed guns bought up the Khyber Pass, Mad Rupert’s mercenary band etc.) … So some things seemed undersupplied, others went unused … Here’s Rupert’s mad boys …

Last box on the right channel costs 14 dice and offers …

‘5,6 Mercenary unit hired to strengthen/build new unit.  Led by Mad Rupert of the Guards, this new unit has 3 professional groups of infantry, 1 Heavy Weapons group (RPG or HMG) and 2 trucks’

(Mad Rupert’s cadre … looks like I slipped an extra base in or maybe I left the choice either HMG or RPG ..) ..

After the games (and a quick tour of duty to the art gallery for me) we retired to an excellent Turkish restaurant (so those Zouaves ended up Pashas after all … ) …

Really enjoyable day, happy birthday again to NQM Chris and great to have knock about of the still excellent AK-47 … (absent friends would have loved it) … cheers all!!

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Triple A Birthday …

All the best to NQM Chris on his birthday.

We popped over for a splendid meal and I took with me 3 15mm Soviet 85mm AA guns which I had liberated at a good price from the B&B table at Colours the other day.   I thought a couple of them would make a good battery at Chris’s chosen scale so gave him a pair which I had assembled up deployed … and I made up one in ‘semi’- transit for my own collection.

(Flames of War 85mm Soviet AA guns ready to paint and finish)

So Chris gets to paint 2 of them for the NQM collection, and I get the other one.

True to my ‘new deal’ I have done mine (can’t paint the lead pile overnight but accept it can’t be added to – so anything bought now gets painted straight away and put into service.   Hopefully stuff can be promoted from reserves too, doubling the virtuous consequences 😉 … ) …

(completed FoW 85mm AA gun with Zvezda Zis-5 truck)

The ‘semi’ notation is because I’ve opted for an incongruous compromise … the gun is secured in transit mode, but I’ve decided to put some crew around it as if it was ready to fire.  I think it’ll look fine on the wargame table even though I suspect you’d never really see one clamped down but with a loader lining up a shell.

I still do like these all metal models and this one goes together OK.   It has the usual inadequate single drawing Battlefront supply in lieu of instructions, but a quick look at some photos of the real thing allows relatively pain free assembly.

So, for the technically minded: I assembled it with ‘Power Flex’ Superglue and mounted it on MDF (with some card shims under the wheels so I could landscape it is without burying the tyres; the gun is undercoated in Humbrol black enamel, dry-brushed in Vallejo acrylic, then blushed with Humbrol and finally dry-brushed.  The crew are mostly enamel with a tinted varnish …

Zaloga tells me that in 1943 brigades of these guns were formed as Tank Destroyer units specially to deal with the new German heavy tanks.   Otherwise they were reserved for air defence.

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OP14 on the Russian Civil War

Op14 is an operational style game of WWI and interwar conflicts by Richard Brooks … it uses a grid (each square representing 2 Kms) and playing card activation/control.

Here are some pictures from this week’s game hosted at Trebian’s shedquarters …

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