Carronade Pics and Swag

Today myself, Davey, YD, Paul and Cameron took the trip up to Falkirk for the Carronade Show. As usual it was a big show and seemed very busy.

There were a lot of really cracking displays and games - I took pictures of some but not all of them. There were a lot of very nice games in progress. I stopped to talk to a few people about their games who were both very knowledgeable and very engaging.

Glasgow District Wargames - Spanish Civil war in 28mm using Bolt Action rules. Great looking game.

Glasgow District Wargames - Spanish Civil war in 28mm using Bolt Action rules. Great looking game.

Charlie don't surf - not sure who the group were but I had seen this display at the Stockton show I was at in October and it really is a great display. I'm not sure if there was a game in progress.

More 'Charlie don't surf' - 28mm Vietnam.

Love the surfers....

A very nice ACW game, also in 28mm. I'm not sure the group, but I think it was a Dumfries based club. Using the Fire and Fury rules (I think) it looked pretty fast paced and the guys were very friendly and knowledgeable - even putting up with questions from a non expert like myself.

A great looking table - as I understand it was also historically accurate. The Battle of New Market perhaps?

LRDG attacking a airfield somewhere in the desert - 20mm I think. Not sure of the rule set.

A HUGE table - Waterloo? in 15mm?

Close up of some of the Naps on the Waterloo table

Hougoumont?

There were a lot of really great tables that I didn't take a picture of - apologies to those groups running them, no slight was intended - I just kept forgetting to get my phone out to take pics!

So, onto swag. this year I didn't feel I had come away with as much as I did last year. I did manage to find one single stall that had a very very slim selection of FoW miniatures. The first pack I looked at was a Sherman I and I immediately found another.

So these two Sherman I's help fill in some of the missing spaces on my Armoured Squadron list. Technically, they mean I will be able to field a whole FoW list. However this shows that 144RAC (and armoured brigade units in general) had a Squadron HQ consisting of an ARV and 3 Sherman I's (SHQ, 2IC and a spare). I assume in FoW the 3rd Sherman would be a nuisance (it would muck up the 1IC and 2IC independent rules). So whether I get this final tank or not really comes down more to completeness than having the list for FoW.

Of course you, gentle reader, know that being the fool that I am the final tank being missing will bug the hell out of me... and I will end up buying it.

Next up came a purchase I am really pleased with. At one stall I spotted some Epic 40k and had a look but wasn't going down that particular rabbit hole. I got chatting to the chap and mentioned my interested in Battlefleet Gothic. 'Aha!' says he, and he hands me a load of boxed BFG ships - all very reasonably priced (including some cruisers, SM Strikecruisers, a Battleship and a couple of escorts). Then a chap further along the flea market stall starts shouting that those mini's were reserved, that he was in 'negotiations' for them and that the chap who I was talking to's brother - who was away from the stall. I offered to pay the prices on the boxes there and then, with no negotiation required. The annoying loudmouth continued to loudly protest and in the end the mini's got put back awaiting the brothers return. I checked back later, but no luck.

Anyway, that was a prelude. Thoroughly disappointed and annoyed I was standing near another flea market trader who was putting some nicely painted 28mm WW2 and 15mm Naps out on his table. I asked if he had any WW2 15mm Brits for sale. We got chatting and it looked like I was out of luck again. The I spotted in his bag (still to be put out for display) a box with 'BFG Imperial Fleet' on it! I asked if I could have a look, and while passing it to me the chap said he had another box as well. £40 later and I had both in my possession.

Now, that seems like a lot of money, but:

Specialist Games 'Rogue Trader' Cruiser - not a very common ship with a Ebay retail price of (I think) around £40

4 Cobra Destroyers (Ebay value £25 ish for 4), 2 imperial Cruisers (£20 for 2 on Ebay?), 3 Sword Frigates (£20 ish for 3?) and a Dauntless Light Cruiser (£20 ish on it's own?)

Very nice paint jobs, minimal damage. One cruiser unpainted and needing some lance turrets, and a couple of minor bits of chipped paint and broken aerials.

The fleet assembles!

So my £40 purchase was actually a really good value buy - and provided me with a mini I wanted (the Rogue Trader Cruiser) without having to pay Ebay prices for just one ship.

I've actually now amassed quite a large Imperial fleet for BFG/the Rogue Trader RPG. I'm missing a few ships I would like - mainly the RT Escorts, some transport ships, a Grand Cruiser or two, various uncommon Navy escorts... etc. Basically the dream would be to have models to make a coherent fleet but also allow me to represent most ships on the gaming table if I ever get the players to run a Rogue Trader RPG game. This also explains my recent purchases of Chaos, Ork, Eldar and Space Marine ships...

Other than these ships, I got a book on the 8th Airforce for £1 and literally as I was walking out somehow accidentally bartered someone down from £7 to £2.50 on a complete AD&D 2nd Edition Monsters compendium folder. And I mean complete - and accidentally! Cameron had been looking at it and the lady had asked for first £7 then £5 for it. He declined and we all turned to leave, I apologised and said I only had £2.50 left (I genuinely only had that amount left in my pocket), and the lady said I could have it for that then. What her husband thought about that when he returned, I don't know! Anyway, I paid and had a quick look. Got home and called my GM who I remember had mentioned years ago that his copy was incomplete. I took it round and he seemed very pleased, especially as it had Volume 1, 2 and 3 + the Faerun monsters appendix. All in great condition and in alphabetical order!

So a good show, although quantity wise my swag haul was rather less quantity wise, the quality is superb.

Thanks to Davey and YD for the lift and the company.

Carronade 2014 haul!

With finances being as they are just now, I was limiting myself to what I would spend today. Thankfully, the joys of a decent bring and buy is that you end up with far more for your £££'s.

So, some pictures of the haul. First up, one of my best buys:

Daimler Dingo's I've been looking at for months. Another Sherman Firefly... handy - although I had wanted a Hybrid Firefly it's no biggie. The Sherman V - not really something I need, but I am sure I'll find a use for it.

As you can see, the items were all prices £6.50. But two of them have the prices scored out. The chap was in the process of marking the new price having seen my looking at them and putting them down. What is the new price, says I. £1 each says he!!!! I practically threw the money at him. A saving of £16.50!

Next up - something I've been after for ages. I wanted some Battlefleet Gothic Imperial light cruisers, and someone here has cut down some Imperial ships to make them into Ork ships.

However, I am pretty sure I can strip the paint from these and rescue the hulls. These should make some use able light cruisers (albeit conversions). All these models in one box for £10. Again, I practically threw my money at the stallholder before he could change his mind. I'm only interested in the imperial hulls really, and can probably sell the Chaos stuff in it's current condition for the price I paid for the box.

A selection of tiddlywinks, box of FoW bases, some Warbases large FoW bases and some more turret number decals. The tiddlywinks is a cunning plan - part one is some to mark in Full Thrust when a ship has fired and part two is to use to base my planned individual 15mm figures (to supplement my FoW bases for Battlegroup Overlord). Also in this pic are the above mentioned FoW blisters. Also in the picture are my flight peg toppers from Figures in Comfort which I collected at the show and got a refund on my postage for!

Figures in Comfort were also selling these - a heading/weapon facing template for Full Thrust. Given that I've played two games of this in the last month using a tatty paper version I made 7 years ago I thought a new plastic version would be a good purchase.

In this Full Thrust theme:

3 old style ESU Battleships, two Light Carriers, two Heavy Cruisers (?) and an Escort Cruiser (?) and a pack with two ESU scout ships - as well as a load of fighter bases. For £5. Well spotted on these ones by Paul, who picked them up for me when he saw them and figured I would be interested.

Also in this pic is the template from above and a book on the 3rd Infantry Division from D-Day to the Elbe. This cost me £2.

Last two items:

Some Forged in Battle Loyd Carriers (to be transports for my 4.2" Mortar platoon). And some MiniNatur flower tufts. These are in white and yellow, and will spruce up some of my bases as well as the grass tufts I've been using.

A full comparison of the FoW and FiB Loyd Carriers will follow soon(ish).

A fantastic haul for me and I am really really pleased with some of these buys. The FoW models and BFG models especially.

YD picked up some 10mm WW2 Germans for his Rapid Fire army, some Zulus and British troops for 28mm games and some 15mm Vietnam mini's. Davey was happy with his huge box of 28mm Celts and Roman 28mm kits and Paul copied me in getting grass tufts/flowers and paints. He also got some books showing colour photos of Nap re-enactors in full kit (as opposed to no kit (ooo er)). We were all really pleased with our buys - Thanks to the guys for taking me along for the day.

Carronade (Falkirk) 2014

Today I was allowed out for a few hours to play (!!) and headed off with Paul, Davey and Young David to Carronade. This is one of the (if not the) biggest Wargames shows in Scotland and this year seemed very busy.

I only took a couple of shots of games as I went around. One of the big attractions at Carronade is the 'bring and buy' - and one of the nice things they do here is switch over the tables at the bring and buy every few hours. This means that there are new stalls to look at every so often and your not just looking at the same stuff over and over again.

There was also two large gym halls with traders and demo/participation games, as well as the entry forum area and an upstairs smaller hall with games and one traders stall.

So, some pictures of games:

This was a game titles something like 'Anarchy in Nelsons Square' and had civilian anarchists in the middle with Soviet forces (seen here) and British Army forces (seen below).

Next up was a large scale Napoleonic game of some type. The figures were (I think) 1:56?

Then we have a naval game called 'Channel Dash', with German ships defended by German planes against Swordfish and Blenheim's.

And a 28mm ACW game:

And another (although this might be 20mm?)

Next up - what I got!

Paint Table Saturday #26

This week I spent a bit of time taking paint off old Full Thrust miniatures. Last Saturday I purchased some Fairy Power washing up spray. This stuff is pretty effective at removing paint from both metal and plastic miniatures. I found the best way of removing the paint was to place the mini's in a tub (I used an old butter tub) and spray the foam all over them liberally. I then left the tub for 12 hours, returning to shake it from time to time. After that, I picked the mini's out, rinsed them off and then scrubbed them with a cheap hard bristle toothbrush. I left the build up of gunk in the bottom of the tub and just dropped the next lot of minis in before spraying again.

Rinsing the mini's first was important, as the first batch I worked on I did not rinse and ended up with very dry skin on my hands.  Like, 'I've dipped my hands in PVA and it needs peeled off' style of dryness.

The only paint left on the minis at the end of this process was the paint that had been applied over areas that had been super glued. But that superglue it removable by a modelling knife.

So yeah, a effective method of paint removal that won't kill you with fumes or need specialist disposal.

Anyway, onto this weeks painting. I did manage to apply highlights to the FoW models I have been working on for weeks, and a primer to a FT mini I wanted to mess with. This weekend has mainly been taken up by the EVE Online Fanfest feed. Next weekend will involve a visit to Carronade over in Falkirk.

So that's it for this Saturday. I will point out that I have come to the point of over highlighting on my 15mm stuff, as from tabletop distances it looks good - not so great close up though! Next up will be matt varnish and then decals.