Getting involved

I was prattling on last post about my Covenanter so I thought I would share some happy news. I bought it a set of cammo.

I should explain that in WoT this is a fairly major step, not quite meeting the parents but certainly admitting to your mates you have a steady girlfriend territory. The reason is that it involves real ££ money. WoT is in theory free to play, but you can buy some stuff to make your tank a bit better. You can use in game currency earned in battle, or pay ££. I decided to risk the "Wallet Warrior" jibes and spent 55p getting three different cammo schemes for my Covenanter, Winter, Desert, and this fetching two tone green Summer scheme shown. All in all it has very little in game effect - I get spotted 5% less than before, but spending that 55p has signalled that I don't intend to dispose of the Covenanter when I'm done with it, so its a commitment :-)  

Intermission (3) The other drain on my free time, a wargamers thoughts on World of Tanks..............

I play a bit of World of Tanks (WoT).

Well quite a bit to be honest. I'm not very good at games which require fast mouse and keyboard skills, but luckily WoT is usually more about positioning and tactics. I won't go into details about the game itself, there is enough of that around on the net if you dont already know and are interested, other than to say its a first person shooter except instead of a soldier, you get a tank, and you end up playing in 15 a side battles to either kill all your opponents or capture their base - all fairly basic stuff.

Anyway, here is my current "mount", the A13 Mk III Cruiser Mk V Covenanter, here pictured in my garage

In "real life" this was a bit of a dog. It was a rushed development that only saw service as a training vehicle, mainly due to its tendency to overheat at the slightest provocation. As the main theatre of operations at the time was the Western Desert, this was not a good trait.  It also lacked armour and the 2Pdr was already starting to be shown as incapable of threatening the current generation of German tanks such as the PzIII.

The WoT version is rather different, and serves as a good example of why WoT and the "real world" should never be confused :-). In WoT, the Covenanter is something of a pocket sized killing machine. The more observant will have spotted the gun on my Covenanter is not a 2Pdr. WoT allows you to develope your tanks by researching and adding new equipment. This is the research "tree" for the A13 MkIII

As you can see, one option is to mount a 40mm Bofors instead of the 2Pdr. I'm not sure if this was actually possible, and in the real world why would you, but in WoT this gives you a rather nasty ability to put a clip of 4 rounds onto a target in about 2 seconds. Penetration is much less than with the 2 Pdr, and after the first shot accuracy goes out the window, but if you are in close, and shooting at the thinner sides of targets. that doesn't matter too much.  That's the key, and the ability to switch to a better but more expensive APCR round if you run into something a bit too big. That, and the Covenanters reasonable speed and maneuverability allow a patient player to do rather well supporting the team by scouting and killing off light tanks and tank destroyers from the flanks, then using the time honoured tactic of running away if something big arrives.

There is one thing that WoT has helped me understand about real world tanks, and that is the importance of gun depression and getting hull down. As a wargamer I read many times how NATO tanks had an advantage in finding reverse slope positions, and how Soviet tanks were at a disadvantage due to their poor gun depression. I never really understood this, probably because as a wargamer I see flat open ground as, well, flat. In reality there are always bumps and dips in the countryside too small to be represented on maps or games tables, and our hills are well defined - our table goes from flat to 40 degree hill and back again with nothing in between. WoT has showed me just how important that advantage is, so for instance a Centurion can find a firing position where only the gun mantlet is visible to an enemy, where a T55 would have to expose the whole of the hull.

See, computer games do teach you stuff :-)

 Scouting forward

and the sad pathetic wreck when it goes wrong, but I should add I killed a KV1 and an M5 Stuart, plus damaged two more KV1S before they caught me, so a fair exchange :-)

Intermission (2) Pleasant break before Oblivion

The adventures of the 305th Pioneer Battalion are progressing, although I have just got through the formation and their training, plus their occupation duties in some very nice parts of France. Frankly they're on holiday, with only the stand to after the attack on St Nazaire interrupting what is so far a lovely war, but they are aware they will soon be going East. It was an interesting side light to see how the Battalion has started to transit from Static to Active status. Initially they lost a few Officers and NCOs to units allocated to the first assault on Russia, including their CO. There was genuine shock felt when they heard he had been KIA, along with a couple of other transferees. Then when they were starting to train for Russia they received an influx of fitter and more experienced troops and some of the more sedentary officers have been shifted sideways to other Static units. It's an interesting contrast to the British approach, where they tended to keep the Battalions together. Its a bit strange to think of contrasting this phase with what is to come, and that fact they mostly have about 9 months to live. The other thing that has struck me is the change in tone and style in this book compared with the other Jason D Mark book I have, Island of Fire. In comparison, because the subject is just a single unit, Into Oblivion is a more personal book, concentrating on individuals much more.

I also have to explain the other reason for my lack of progress painting etc. My darling wife has made a very reasonable request that her office \ craft room be redecorated. This has however involved moving the current contents out while we paint and re-carpet. The contents of the room are now distributed through the other rooms on the first floor of the Kommissar House, but this means the door to the loft, aka my man-cave, is blocked by a pair of stacked filing boxes about head high. Sadly there is no other way in, so thumbs are twiddling. Hopefully this will be resolved soon, in fact I'm waiting for the carpet layer to arrive as I type, and once the carpet is down I can get everything back in there and normal service may resume. meanwhile I'm reading Into Oblivion and playing a bit too much World of Tanks

There will now be an intermission..........

Because the nice postman has just delivered my copy of "Into Oblivion - Kharkov to Stalingrad : The Story of Pionier-Bataillon 305" by Jason D Mark

This was originally going to be my Christmas prezzie to me but real life got in the way. Basically Mark is the best Western source I've seen so far on Stalingrad, the level of detail is astounding.

Pretty much everything will now be on hold while I try and read this one, and then there will be a furious search for suitable figures to represent them - not even sure if they will be 15mm or 28mm

Trouble with Rubble (5) Done and Dusted

Just about done now. Once the base coat had dried overnight I needed to get them fisished. I'm using cheap craft paint as you sometimes need lots. A quick heavy drybrush with a different shade of grey, in this case Anita's Dove Grey which carries a hint of sand in there, then some fawn\ brown, and lastly a shot of white to pick up edges. I also went around the edges of a couple where the original base coat had missed.

Theyre just about done now. I'll wait for a couple of hours to see if there is anything else to do, but given the original brief and budget I feel pretty pleased with them.

I appreciate I said the budget was £0, but I overran that as I spent £1.99 on some more glue sticks for the hot glue gun. The rest was out of the "big pile of stuff" saved in the loft for just such an occasion. I suppose if I were starting from scratch this would have used less than a tenners worth of "stuff", so I'm pretty happy with the costings.

I've used a similar method to build 15mm ruins for games like Crossfire & PBI. It works well, but you need to remember to leave areas clear inside the bases to allow your figures in, and not to bother with the plastic grill.   As these are primary for DZC this isn't an issue as rubble is impassible to vehicles and infantry. Another thing to remember is most walls in real life tend to be only a brick wide, so anything over 3mm is probably to much for a 10/15mm model.

Trouble with Rubble (4)

As the sun sets I gave them a quick coat of matt grey as a base coat. In the past I used black but painting grey over it was a pain so I am accepting there will be less shadows and just going for the grey.

Next step will be to start adding some other colours - hopefully tomorrow

Trouble with Rubble (3) Doing something

Stage 1 Cutting.

DZC buildings share a common footprint as a multiple of 36mm, so a three block square building is 108mm x 108mm etc. I marked up and cut out the 18 building bases I wanted in a variety of sizes to suit the card buildings I have –  72 x 108, 108x108 72 x 180 and 108 x 180. I used some think mounting board style card – technically it was a card used to make strike placards during my Trade Union days, now long gone. 

UNISON may well not won many disputes, but their placards have provided me with bases for my wargames stuff for the last 20 years J

Once I cut them out I scored the backs to help prevent them curling, and rounded the corners with some clippers – nothing fancy.

Stage 2 Hot Glue Action

I got the trusty hot glue gun out and fired it up.  Side note. Hot glue guns are the invention of Lazy McLazy from Lazytown. They’re bloody useless for anything needing precision and leave strings of glue everywhere. On a job like this however they are a godsend and they’re very cheap to buy from craft stores so if you don’t have one, get one.  I hot glued a selection of lego bricks to the bases, never more than one brick tall and usually only one or two per base. I just want something to give me a bit of height. Then I took some foamcore oddments and cut them up into irregular bits, and glued them to the base, again stacking them but no more than 2 layers high. Third element is some walls. These are made of offcuts from the basing board but with the edges nibbled with a punch thing my Good Lady Wife loaned me about five years ago and forgot about I assume. The punch is supposed to produce little flower shapes but I found it was good for making holes in walls or edging. I made some lengths of wall and glued them on the bases too, and saved the spare punched out bits for later. Lastly, my particular favourite, Granny Grill. Not sure what the actual name is but it is sold in craft shops and is used I believe in embroidery or needlepoint. It is a plastic grill and usually costs a quid or so a sheet. I cut this into irregular sections and this too got hot glued onto the bases.

Stage 3 Budgie Grit

This is sold in most pet shops, basically it is supposed to be used to put at the bottom of the budgie cage.  I mixed some sand and the offcuts from the punch, and any spare scrap of anything really into a tub. Then I got the biggest brush and proceeded to cover the bases and bits with a good coat of PVA EXCEPT the granny grill. The base was then covered in my budgie grit rubble mix and left to dry.

One dried, I will start painting. Meanwhile here is a quick shot of the bases in the sun.

and a close up