Category Archives: When Imagination Fails

Half way there … again

My miniatures seem to be always half done, i.e. primed or with a base coat, but no camoflage or detailing. Unfortunately, my recent activities haven't been helping with that issue.  I recently primed/sprayed a base coat on the following miniatures:

2 F-104 Starfighters (Viking Forge, I think)
2 A-7 Crusader IIs (Viking Forge)
2 F-4 Phantoms (Collectair)
2 Mig-29 Fulcrums (Luftwaffe)
2 Lynx helicopters (GHQ)
1 A-10 Thunderbolt II (C-in-C rebuild, amazing what crazy glue and spray paint will do)
6 Soviet 160mm mortars (Viking Forge)
5 TPZ Fuchs (C-in-C)
5 M105 Deuce Bulldozers (GHQ)

On the plus side, I was able to build two very cool paper buildings.  More on those and other buildings I am working on later.

Priming and base coats done for a bunch of 1/285th scale miniatures

I finally got around to spray priming/basecoating a bunch of my 1/285th scale Cold War-era miniatures including:

15 Dutch YPR-765 (GHQ)
5 Dutch YPR-765 TOW (GHQ)
6 NATO M106 SP mortars (GHQ)
2 Soviet 2S6 AA (PFC C-in-C)
18 AMX-30 (PFC C-in-C)
11 Chieftains (GHQ)
10 Warrior IFVs (GHQ)
3 Central European apartment buildings (? resin manufacturer)

The British vehicles had already been painted various non-standard paint schemes, so I simply sprayed them with Tamiya Olive Drab 2. The Chieftains and half the Warriors haven't been touched in about 26 years.

The other NATO vehicles were primed in a light gray, then sprayed with Tamiya NATO Green. The 2S6s were primed as the NATO vehicles, then sprayed with Tamiya Olive Drab 2.

The buildings were simply sprayed black. I am getting tired of monopoly houses as my principal residential structures, so I may concentrate on my backlog of buildings before everything else.

Update

I ran a playtest of the star ship rules I have been working on.  It was a faceoff between a Battlestar Galactica fleet and a mixed Earth/ISA/Deisho fleet.  I will post pictures and an update to the rules, now to be called Star Bright, soon.

Additionally, I found a pretty decent sent of free ancient naval rules called Fleet of Battle at Wargames Illustrated.  It uses a card based command/control system that factors in the quality of the crew and commander.  Looks like my triremes moved up on the painting priority list.

FFT NATO (UK) vs Soviet Game from a year ago

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A year ago (cannot quite believe I am saying that) I finished enough of my UK moderns to run a decent sized Fistful of TOWs 2 game.  I have played or run a few Fistful of TOWs games, and it is my favorite rule set for this period, but, for this game, most people had not played the rules.  So it was a learning experience.

The scenario was a simple meeting engagement between two Soviet T80/BMP2 battalions and two companies of Challenger 1s with FV432 and Recon support.  It did not go well for the Soviets and if I run this scenario again, I will increase the size of the Soviet forces.

I created a slide show of the game.  The Flickr set is here.

Finished Deisho Fleet

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I finally finished the Deisho fleet I have been working on for a while.  I created a slide show.  The fleet consists of:

  • 3 Do"Ming"Tao Class Frigates
  • 3 Yen'Ming'Tao Class Frigates
  • 2 Shi'Dong'Tao Class Destroyers
  • 2 Jin'Dong'Tao Class Destroyers
  • 2 Ro'Dong'Tao Class Destroyers
  • 1 Jimg'Gung'Tao class Heavy Cruiser
  • 1 Bao'Gung'Tao Class Heavy Cruiser
  • 1 Yao'Jing'Tao Class Strike Carrier

Unfortunately, the mount hole of one of the destroyers proved to be too small, so I will need to redrill that one. 

Here are the painting notes:

  1. after building them, I spray primed them with a gray primer;
  2. applied a darker gray to them.  See this note;
  3. applied a red mixture to different parts of the ship;
  4. applied my standard Floquil silver wash to the red parts to give them a different look;
  5. painted the gun barrels, missile launchers and hanger with Model Master Gun Metal;
  6. finally painted the inside of the engines in Floquil USSR Underside Blue.

Pictures were taken with the macro feature in direct sunlight, though the picture of the entire fleet might have had the flash on unfortunately.

I have a bunch of other Deisho ships, but those will have to wait their turn in the queue. 

Finally revised my star ship fleet combat rules

I finally revised my star ship fleet combat rules with the comments from the last playtest.  I added a few more changes to the mechanics and a number of additions as well.  Expanded the number of ships for which I have stats, though they will need to be revised as we play with them. 

I also wrote a summary sheet that players can use to keep track of their ships during a game.  Each ship is on a single line which is an idea I got from A Fistful of TOWs.

Here they are:

We will do another play test and then I will release it to a wider set of folks. I plan to keep it to two pages, if at all possible, though I may add one more page with my design notes and motivation.

Suggestions for a name for the game are most welcome.

Third play test of star ship rules

We ran another play test of the star ship rules for fleet sized games we are working on.  It was Deisho vs Whitestars.  The Deisho proved to be more powerful than they should have been, raining missiles and fighters on the Whitestars and losing far too few ships considering their technological level.

I put up the pictures I took of the game.  The Deisho ships haven't been fully detailed yet.

Lots of good feedback on improving the rules.  I'll post them once we have another playtest, but if you want to see them now, email info at whenimaginationfails dot org and I will send you the version with the latest edits when I add them.