Jim's Wargames Workbench

As we spend our Christmas in France every year, we only open our presents when we return home, by family tradition on New Year's Day. This year we decided to open them today, as the middle spring is away tomorrow in Bristol at a party. I was lucky enough to get some cracking wargaming presents this year including some 28mm Japanese MDF buildings from my son, who is keen to have a go at some samurai skirmish games this year, an Airfix Tiger tank kit from the other son, which will be useful for What a Tanker!, and the aforementioned double sided hex cloth for air wargaming from the other half. My daughter bought be a two year re-subscription to Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy, which is brilliant! To round it off, I bought myself in the sales a brand new copy of Thunderbolt Apache Leader, a game I've been after for years having really enjoyed Phantom Leader. All in all, a great haul of very nice presents, topped off with a Christmas brunch cooked by my daughter! 

I posted a query on the Bag the Hun FB group yesterday, to see if anyone is actually actively playing the rules, given the low profile of the system in most if not all Toofatlardies Lard Days, the Lard Mag and the the Lard Forum. The response was interesting and mostly revolved around people having the occasional game but failing to drum up interest at club or event level, which was what I expected. It seems the general consensus is that Lard Days are dominated by Chain of Command or Sharp Practise, as you'd expect. Nothing wrong with that but it is a shame to see good rules go unloved.

One 'tounge in cheek' suggestion that caught my attention was to have an alternative Lard Day dedicated to older or 'vintage' rules including Bag the Hun, Algernon Pulls It Off!, Kiss Me Hardy, Through the Mud and Blood, Triumph of the Will and many more. The premise would be to just focus on these classic rules rather than the more recent Chain of Command et al, so that equally vintage wargaming 'grognards' could enjoy playing older systems and also to encourage new, younger players to have a go. The tentative if less than serious event title might be 'Hipster Lard' which made me chuckle...

...but it's worth some thought?

 

I've discovered a range of superb decals for First and Second World War aircraft in 1/285th - 1/300th scale, from a company called Moorland Scale Model Decals here in the UK. These are resized from individual decal sets in larger scales, so have excellent detail and accuracy. The only downside is that the sheets are not based around specific RFC Squadrons or Jagdstaffel but are for individual pilots, with an emphasis on well-known aces like Billy Bishop or Carl Degelow, for example. I'm thinking of asking Geoff to design some for Jasta 18 but will hang on for the moment and see if Dan Arute at Flight Deck Decals can design a whole sheet of insignia, as he is my 'go to' for decals. They do look fabulous though, and I'm sorely tempted to order the SE5a sheet just for kicks!

https://moorlandscalemodeldecals.co.uk/285th-300th-scale-sets/

This year has been even more of a washout when it comes to painting stuff, once again due to work and illness sapping my time and energy. I did complete the 1/3000th scale heavy units for the Kriegsmarine and Royal Navy early war fleets but not the rest of the British forces which are still waiting to be tackled. I also completed the 1/2400th scale Royal Navy Napoleonic fleet, which I really enjoyed painting albeit stretched out over several months, although I still haven't played any games with them yet.

The Soviet half of the 1/600th scale aircraft for the Continuation War project were finished but not the Finnish contingent, or the 1/300th scale Soviet aircraft either, despite making a good start on the latter. I also built a 1/72nd scale Bristol Scout for Knights of the Sky but had to drop out of the actual game due to illness. A handful of 1/600th USAF aircraft were also finished for MiG Alley. To wrap up an unspectacular year, I painted three test bases of 2mm English Civil War infantry, cavalry and artillery, then ran out of time to do any more before the holidays. I think my report card for 2024 will read 'must do better!' 

After some interesting discussion on the Bag the Hun FB group about an updating and revision of Bag the Hun 2, adding missing things and rewriting some of the more clunky bits, there seems to be some momentum to develop an improved edition. This might not be Bag the Hun 3, which I'd like to see incorporating some of the more recent TFL mechanisms, but more like a 2.5 version, taking the best bits and rejigging or clarifying the stuff that doesn't really work so well. I'm thinking here of the convoluted ground attack and bombing rules, the over complex rules for flak and the air gunner rules which have a few holes, for example. It would also be an opportunity to integrate Bag the MiG within the main rule book and potentially Finest Hour as a campaign system. It's a big project but I'm interested in having a go, perhaps in a year or two when I actual retire! 

The decals were a right pain in the back side but I've finished the F-86A Sabres and F-51 Mustangs for MiG Alley at last. The decals were fiddly and I've realised that the wing roundels are at the wrong angle, but I can fix that another time. I still have more things to add to the MiG Alley line up but, for the moment at least, I'm moving on to other wargaming projects. 

The MiG Alley extras are almost finished, with the painting sorted and the decals ready to be applied tomorrow. The black and white invasion stripes are far from perfect but, at arms length, don't look too bad. I'm happy with the end result but want to wrap these up ready for the game on Tuesday at the club.

A bit more progress on the Sabres and Mustangs yesterday, with everything blocked in apart from the canopies. I have added the invasion stripes to one of the Sabres using a 0.1 black fine line pen, just to see what it looks like, as well as painting the canopy at the same time. The rest will have to wait until next weekend as we are off to sunny West Wales for a short break.

I've been storing my magnet based 1/600th scale aircraft in metal geometry set boxes for years but hadn't thought of customising them until today. Here's two I've souped up for the Bag the Hun Continuation War models, with a quick spray in Halfords primer, a top coat in a suitable shade of blue and green, finished off with a spare decal for identification purposes and a brush coat of gloss varnish, having run out of the spray on variety. The finish isn't perfect but I'm quite pleased with the effect overall, so will probably go and sort out something similar for my other sets of aircraft. 

I'm thinking about playing some solo games of Bag the MiG in 1/600th scale, using my large collection of models that i have for MiG Alley, the homemade double dice frame flight stands I already have and the old first edition of the rules, which I fancy rebooting. What I don't have are a set of cards, until I remembered that there was a decent deck on the old, long gone TFL Yahoo group. Luckily, these were copied over to Groups.IO, so I downloaded them and printed them out. The first sheet can be edited too, so I can use that as a template for more cards when I play different scenarios. 

I was looking for a simple set of Korean War era hex less rules, as an alternative to Bag the MiG, when I remembered MiG Hunters. I downloaded a copy from Wargames Vault ages ago but didn't really do anything with them after a quick flick through, so I'm going to take another look. I really like the idea of moving away from hex based rules but I'm not keen on lots of book keeping, so these might just do the trick. They might even encourage some of the Bag the Hun-aphobes at the club to have a go too.

I took my daughter to an Open Day at Reading University yesterday and we had a hour or so to kill before taking the train back home, so popped into Waterstones for a bit. Unlike most branches of this bookseller, they had a well stocked carousel of Osprey Publishing titles, one of which was this book in the dogfight series which I didn't yet own.

It's an excellent little book and has lots of potential scenarios for Bag the MiG or similar rules, with a breakdown of tactics and manoeuvres accompanied by full colour diagrams. It has inspired me to have a crack at some early war 4th FIW F-86A Sabres, complete with the D-Day style invasion stripes. My existing 1/600th scale Sabres are all the later F-86E version with the yellow bands, so I have a gap in my Bag the MiG and MiG Alley line up that needs to be filled. I already have twelve Tumbling Dice Sabre models in the leadpile, so it won't take long to paint up enough for some early war games. 

I've also decided to have a go at some 1/300th scale F-86A Sabres and MiG-15 fighters, using the Scotia Collectair models, a couple of which I ordered a few weeks ago just to check out. I thought they were really nifty, so have ordered some more to make up matching flights of four, along with some decals from Dan at Flight Deck Decals for the North Korean MiG's and from Scale Specialities for the 4th FIW Sabres.

A bit of a **** day at work, so some retail therapy was needed. This should be a good resource and clearly relevant to the ongoing Bag the Hun Continuation War project, not to mention the Eastern Front as a whole and even the early stages of the Korean War.

The new hex mat I'm getting for Xmas has 1.25" hexes so I'm going to need some bespoke hex bases to use with my 1/600th scale aircraft. These 30mm laser cut hex based are ideal in terms of size but the sides are too small to fit my usual Warbases double dice frames. Instead, I'm going to use dice frames from Pendraken, which are thinner and fit without any overhang. As an experiment I ordered some smaller 5mm dice frames to see what they looked like and, to be honest, I think I prefer them to the 7mm option, which has been my dice size of choice for years. I think 5mm dice look better with 1/600th scale models for starters. What do you reckon?

I've been thinking about Bag the MiG again, after my MiG Alley game yesterday, and have dusted off the rules for another look. I had always intended to use my 1/600th scale models for both Wings at War and Bag the MiG but just never got round to it for some reason. The idea is to use the first edition of Bag the Hun with the additional rules and scenarios from the Bag the MiG supplement, rather than use the slightly more complicated second edition, in an experiment to see if the old version gives a faster, more streamlined game. I used to play with the first edition rules way back when, so I have a well-thumbed copy that I can re-use for Korea rather than the Battle of Britain, which was my initial Bag the Hun focus about twelve years ago. I'm a bit short on spare time at the moment so who knows when I will be able to give it a spin but I'm sure it will be fun when I do!

I did a recycling job a while ago on some flight stands, that I originally made for 1/600th scale modern aircraft using a wire upright permanently glued to the models. These were made for Bag the MiG but I'll now use them for the Khalkin Gol project instead. I switched over to magnet basing for my 1/600th scale planes, so I removed the wires, re-drilled the bases and inserted 40mm panel pins instead. The whole lot were then resprayed with Halfords grey primer and finally given a couple of coats of Halfords Rover Henley Blue. Anyway, I have twenty six of them ready for some playtesting of the Khalkin Gol scenarios when I finally get round to writing them, using my old blue hex cloth until I can afford a nice new Mongolian steppe themed one.