Me 262s The Last Stand - seemed like a good idea at the time

I'm trying to make the current 30 day lockdown a little bit more productive by painting 30 "engines" worth of Blood Red Skies planes. So far I have completed 8 Bf109F, 6 Il2 Sturmovics, and now 7 Me262s.

The 109Fs are 3d printed from RoC-Works stl files - beautiful models and I painted them as 3/JG27 in North Africa, including Hans Jochim Marsaille as the Ace. I has a bit of a problem as i decided to try and use a clay wash. These are popular on The Ready Room - lots of praise for Florry washes. I had a similar clay wash and decided to give it a try. Basically you apply a generous coat of the clay wash, let it dry then clean the model with a damp cloth or cotton bud. This should remove the wash except in the panel lines. In theory. In my case this was not a success - I just got a muddy model (doh). In the end I cleaned up the models and went for the tried and trusted Agrax \ Soft-tone pin wash. I like the Bf109F. It is probably the best and most balanced 109 in BRS, before the added weight starts to impact performance.  Decals from Misc Minis.

The Sturmoviks are 3d printed from the Plane Printer patreon. I subscribed for £6 a month. So far it has been well worth my investment as he has produced a fair few models I will be printing in due course.  I decided to try and paint the squadron in whitewashed winter camouflage. This seemed a good idea at the time. In the end it got a bit complicated as I decided to do them all as individuals rather than all the same scheme, reasoning that the whitewash would wear off differently in each case. The whitewash was a bit challenging but after using a fair amount of sponging I was happy enough with the result. These are the early single seat versions which I confidently expect to suffer just as much as the real world versions did from rear attacks.  Decals from the spares box.

Which brings me to the Me262s. Something about doing the Sturmoviks as individuals must have stuck in my mind, because when it came to the 262s I thought I would give it another go. This isn't as strange as it seems as when I was looking through the various on-line sources it became clear that there was little consistency in colour schemes. This was partly due to the rapidly changing war situation, but mostly because the supply of paint was getting erratic as the war moved into it's final stages. The scheme that most caught my fancy was a real "End of Days" one - aircraft were delivered to units and flown in combat with no camo at all. You know it wont end well when your planes are delivered without paint! In the end I painted up seven different camo styles ALL of which were used at one time or another by 3/JG7. They look a bit strange to my usually more bureaucratic mind but they will be fine I'm sure. Models by Warlord - and I have to say they were a pleasure to paint, decals Misc Minis and the spares box.

OK the more BRS aware will know that seven Me262s is a big "chunk" of points in the game. In fact if you are playing the current recommended restrictions on tournaments you can have (and indeed must have) only four of them, all with rubbish pilots. I have seven because I bought a Squadron and an Ace set, and before I had did the maths properly had ordered a foam transport tray from Just Lasered to hold them all, so I was committed (Doh!)

So that brings my total up to 28 "engines" with a fortnight or so to go. No idea what will be next, but I have plenty to choose from.

Cheers!     

The 3d Print Gods favour me - for now - my Thuribles are Cleansed!

I've mentioned before how hit and miss my adventures in 3d printing have been. Recently I've experienced more miss than hit, with holes and miss prints happening with alarming regularity. Consulting the experts on various support groups (Cults?) it was divined that I was having an LCD failure. I was mortified - partly because it sounded serious (it is) and partly because the cure sounded both complicated and expensive. Happily it wasn't (phew).

I ordered a new LCD screen which cost less than £25. Before fitting I watched a couple of Youtube videos and took a deep breath, then launched into it. It was simple but not exactly easy, but it was completed in under an hour. 

I've levelled the machine, levelled the bed, chanted the relevant incantations and "Praise the Machine God" it is running perfectly. Phew!

What this experience has taught me while searching for advice and videos is that there is a large number of after market upgrade kits that you can apply to a printer to make your machine more efficient. You can replace the print plate holder to make levelling easier, or the single rail with a twin which will make printing smoother for instance. I think I will have a dabble over Christmas with some upgrades - the Gods willing.

Have I changed my mind about the impact home 3d printing will have on gaming companies? Not really. The process is still fussy, messy and far from guaranteed at the moment. On the other hand the technology will mature at an increasing rate - the new mono LCD printers are faster and more capable and I suspect these will be a step change in capability. 

Anyway here are my rather beautiful Fairy Swordfish fresh off the printer yesterday. These models are from the RoC-Works stable and were trouble free to print. I think these models show the potential of 3d printing. No other process could make a one piece model at this scale, and the idea of trying to assemble a traditional model biplane in this scale six times would just be too much to consider. 

Next off the printer hopefully will be some early single seat Sturmoviks from the Plane Printer Patreon. I joined this subscription service and for a couple of quid a month they provide some nice STL files. So far I've not printed anything from them, and of course they don't come "pre supported" as the RoC-Works models do, introducing another level of uncertainty into the process. Time to start the chanting again!

Links

Planeprinter        

RoC-Works

Historical players - We should take 40K (a bit) more seriously!

Seriously! 

As a fully paid up member of the Historical Wargaming Master Race I am guilty on occasion of looking down my fine aquiline nose at the 40K crowd milling around below. Ok there are a lot of them, and tbh they can be a bit fragrant, but their games are "made up" and lack none of the authority and validation "our" games have, because we have HISTORY!! How can they compete with the vast span, scope depth and detail that historical games have? Space Pixies (or whatever) didn't exist. Winged Hussars, Persian Immortals, The Imperial Guard*, these all existed, Space Marines, not so much.

Except......................

40k does have a lot of background material. Since release in 1987 they have regularly updated rules and background, plus hundreds of Codex (army lists) novels and whatever. There is an awful lot of "stuff" built up over 33 years. I built a Dutch Marine force for Chain of Command and they fought for less than 6 days so there is probably more available info on Space Wolves than Dutch Marines. What I think I'm saying is there is now a depth of "lore" and info in 40K that probably outweighs the available info on something like Persian Immortals. OK the 40K info gets "retconned" regularly, but historical interpretation also changes - who remembers the Immortal figures from the 1980s with the viola shields and domed hats? 

OK - it's not the same. But then again we should maybe recognise some 40k players spend a lot of time researching their armies just like the historical players do. There is more that connects us than sets us apart.

  *Napoleon's, not the made up ones 

Defining Advantage in Blood Red Skies

One of the regular questions that comes up in Blood Red Skies is "what is Advantage?"

If you don't play this may seem a bit cryptic, so I'll do a quick explanation. At the core of Blood Red Skies is the Advantage system. Planes have one of three states, Advantaged, Neutral, or Disadvantaged. Your status changes due to your own and enemy actions. 

Advantage status is EVERYTHING in BRS. It decides initiative, and also who can shoot at what - you can only target a plane at a lower Advantage level, and can only be shot down if you are disadvantaged. 

Status is indicated by the tilting model stands - tilted back - climbing, for Advantaged, nose down - diving, for Disadvantaged. 

Advantage in some ways replaces the concept of altitude. OK in a game about air warfare not specifically representing altitude may seem a bit strange, but in BRS it works very well. Gone are the tall stands that are impossible to move and topple over at the slightest touch, or counters and dials and all that, instead replaced by a simple three status system. The problem is of course that when we use terms like "Advantage level" and "climbing for Advantage" (a Pilot choice in BRS) and we point the nose of the model up, we tend to reinforce the idea that Advantage = Altitude. And it doesn't. Not always anyway.

Actually the best way to explain Advantage is to use the other end of the Advantage curve - Disadvantage. Disadvantage is the thing that gets you shot down. It can be anything that allows that. Energy state, speed, lack of awareness, and yes, sometimes altitude. 

There is a famous incident during the Battle of Britain that helps illustrate "Advantage" in action. On 15th September 1940 Ginger Lacey in a Hurricane of of 501 Squadron ran into a group of 12 Me109s. Lacey is an Ace, flying below them on a reciprocal course, however he is unseen, so Advantaged. The 109s are Neutral. Lacey has the initiative and "burns Advantage" with a climbing half loop to attack them from behind. Both are now Neutral (and that would normally prevent Lacey shooting) however he is now tailing the target which drops it to Disadvantaged and he shoots it down. He proceeded to claim a second before disengaging into some nearby clouds.

James Harry "Ginger" Lacey, the Ace we should of got instead of Bader in BRS!

The other point to make is Advantage is situational and can change as the game turn flows. You can start Advantaged, fly into a cloud (becoming Neutral) then come out the other side and climb for Advantage - back to Advantaged. Later you can be subject to an enemy Outmanoeuvre and become Neutral, or worse get tailed and become Disadvantaged - and vulnerable, all in one turn. It is this constant changing status that helps make BRS such a fun and fluid game that feels like a dogfight not a battle between sailing ships in 2 dimensions.

Cheers

Walking less trodden paths in Blood Red Skies 2 - the most useful bit of kit is.................

One of these

This is a Hawk "Widget". 

It's a small clear plastic connector designed for use with Hawk Wargames Dropzone Commander \ Dropfleet Commander games. You can glue one of these to your spaceship model and it will then slip snugly over the "flying" base giving a convenient method of attaching the spaceship to the base that can be easily removed for storage etc. Having spent several decades fighting with models that keep getting detached from their bases I can say it is a work of sheer genius. The real beauty is that by pure coincidence the triangular post on a BRS base also perfectly fits the socket on a Hawk Widget. The result is that you can use ANY third party model, drill a hole and attach a widget, and it will fit a BRS Advantage base. Suddenly one of the issues with third party models - that they don't fit the BRS bases, has gone! I've also heard of people who are struggling with Warlord metal models fitting them too, just to improve how they sit on the base. 

I would love to claim credit for this discovery, but it was Paul Davison who as far as I know first suggested it. Well done mate!

Fitting widgets isn't that difficult either. Rather than go into it in depth I would refer you to this blog post here by Chris Jarrett (hi Chris!)  https://spitsandschmitts.blogspot.com/2019/02/converting-3rd-party-planes-to-brs.html who explains the process with panache.

So how do you get them? Easy - bug your FLGS or send for them direct from TT Combat who now control the Dropzone line. There are 64 in a blister and they cost £8 here - TT Combat - that should keep you going for a fair few squadrons.

So now when you are looking to build a BRS Squadron from a minor nation and Warlord don't do the model, but someone else does, you can quickly convert them to fit BRS bases. 

Cheers!

Walking the less trodden paths in Blood Red Skies - Romania

I have to admit it, one of the reasons I love BRS is the attitude of the players. I mentioned before how when we started to make beta stats available I was expecting a flood of requests for some of the high profile late war super fighters such as the Ta152 or Tempest, but instead the community wanted .......sigh...... Brewster Buffalo. 

There is also a hard core of players who are not really interested in yet another Spitfire or 109 Squadron, but like to look further afield. It is easy to forget that World War Two was a World War involving many different nations, not just the big five, and also that the war was truly global. Many nations fought in the air in WW2 that (probably) will never get a mainstream release from Warlord, but maybe deserve some mention. This week I was invited to have a game against such an opponent by one of our local gamers Rob Hymer (Happy Birthday btw Rob!). Rob is a new BRS player and has a soft spot for the Romanian air force. 

I was vaguely aware of the Romanian air force in WW2, but I wouldn't want to say anything without at least doing some googling. Rob knows quite a bit more ! and wanted to try out his planes so I was happy to run a 4 v 4 game with my Soviet Yak 1s against his IAR 81s.

It was a fun game which the Soviets won eventually because I have much more experience than Rob in BRS, and also got lucky, but I hope he had a good game and I'm sure he will be back for another match up.

It also rekindled a nagging desire to go a bit out of the mainstream for my next BRS project. BRS does lend itself well to toe - dipping as you only really need 6 fighters and 3 bombers and you are good to go. Not sure what, but I suspect something like Hungarian or Dutch or maybe something out East?  

So without further ado here are some pics of the game, and also some of Robs other Romanian planes which I think shows just why getting out of the mainstream can be so interesting. Rob got his models from Shapeways as there are very few other sources at the moment - Cheers!    

And a couple of shots of some of Robs other planes - including a Plz11 

Err how many Gladiators is too many*? Blood Red Skies and the magic of 3d printing

I recently mentioned my first forays into the arcane art that is 3d printing here 3d-printing-world-turned-upside-down.html

and did a bit of an interview with Rich Carlisle about his new project RoCWorks here roc-works-is-taking-off-interview-with.html

So this is a sort of follow up to both of those as when RoC-Works started to put their .stl files on sale I decided to take the plunge and bought the Gloucester Gladiator.

I had a couple of failed prints, then shamefaced I read the instructions that helpfully came with the files, reset and levelled my print bed, and I'm now turning out Gladiators faster than the original factory! Moral of the story RTFM!

I think the key is the files come with the supports already in place, at a suitable print angle and tested on a Elegoo Mars (which is close enough to my Photon to make no difference). I can easily get three on a build plate. 

The prints are clean and well detailed, and although there is a lot of supporting material on the Gladiator, they clean up quickly and easily.

The file cost £11.25 (introductory price) and includes a licence to print for own use only - you can't sell them or give them away, but to be honest at that price it's an amazing deal, even factoring in the cost of resin and running the printer, so if a mate wants some I will tell him to buy the .stl and I will happily run some off for him.  

In fact it was so painless that I picked up the D520 file too. I thought I had zero interest in the French, however I'm now bugging Rich to do a Ms406! 

So this is all ok if you are a 3d printer owner, but what about the rest of us? RocWorks are making the physical models available for preorder now and are planning to ship on 17th August. Prices are more than the print your own, but still very competitive.  printed-resin-models-catalogue NB the prices are for multiple models not just singles!

I understand there are more models in the pipeline, and if so I will be running the printer for some time to come.

Musing time now, but with RoCWorks taking the hassle and strain out of the 3d printing process I suspect this business model may well start to gather some momentum. 

* Technically the answer is 8 if you are playing to the Air Strike force building rules......