Easter Activities

Some while since the last post... It has been Easter, and little time for blogging - without further ado, here's the Easter in review!

First of all, a closer look at the Bf110c miniatures from Raiden. Though I might well be repeating myself here, it is no secret that Raiden is one of my favourite manufacturers due to their propensity for capturing the feel of an aircraft in 1/300, despite the occasional slight symmetry issue and other, detail-oriented concerns.

Nice lines!

The Bf110c was designed on theoretically sound principles that were learned during the first world war and reaffirmed during the the Spanish civil war - namely that in air superiority combat, maneuverability was subordinate to speed. The more nimble radial-engine biplane fighters of both WW1 and the Spanish civil war could easily out-maneuver more modern designs of both conflicts - though this helped little. The more powerful, modern designs of both conflicts were unable to out-turn the opposition, yet had enough engine power to pick their fights - and this proved a desicive advantage. If the situation was favourable, the faster fighters could "boom-and-zoom," diving down on the opposition, make a high speed attack and then use velocity gained in the dive to climb rapidly out of retaliation range to repeat as required. If the situation was unfavourable, the faster fighters could quite simply avoid combat altogether.

Symmetry issues - at the least to me, it appears like the wings are not quite alike. Never mind, it will never be noticed during a game...

The Bf110c was designed to both have long range and to use superior speed to win air engagements. The only problem was that, like for many other inter-war "fast" designs, aircraft design evolution overtook the 110 before the war broke out. Designs like the Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire pushed the envelope on what was thought possible performance-wise, and heralded a new age of high-speed, single engine monoplane air superiority fighters. During the first year of world war 2, the concept of the "fast" multi-engine bombers and fighters was buried by the merciless evolution of powerful single engine fighters by all air forces.

Though the Hurricane and Spitfire fighters gave the 110s a run for their money over the Channel and England in 1940, I find it interesting to note that the design principle was proven very sound in other theatres where the opposition lacked high-speed fighters. On the eastern front, the 110 proved a fearsome opponent for the slower opposition.

Before and after images. Due to the size of the model no doubt, there are lumps of metal on both engine spinners and the nose, where the air has been allowed to escape the mould. It cleans up well, though I must say it was less than ideal to have this lump right below the finely detailed nose machine guns. Although the poor maneuverability of the 110 may make tailing the more nimble RAF fighters tricky, the four 7.92 mm MGs and two 20 mm cannon should have good effect in fly-by and boom-and-zoom attacks.

At any rate, early war + 20 mm cannon = win...

So, what can be said of the models themselves? Like all the Raiden sculpts I have received, they are fine models indeed. After making an effort to compare the sculpts to photographs of the aircraft, I am satisfied. Except for the less than optimal placement of the metal lump remaining from the casting right below the four nicely made 7.92 mm MGs, there is one other detail that bothers me - the etched lines on the canopy were quite subtle, meaning painting the multi-pane canopy will be a right bitch, pardon my french...

Due to these details, I'd rate this model as a 4 out of 5. A fine model that I am very much looking forward to painting up and gaming with.

As a side note, the Bf110c is a huge aircraft, nearly rivaling the Do17zs for size!

Coming soon to a fjord near you - undercoated Zerstörers ready for painting

Being at my father-in-law's cabin, I had brought only the Bf110cs for udnercoating. Having some available time later that week-end, I sat down with my children's crayons and paper to draw a little something for my office wall. As I have previously said, the Bf110c fascinates me no end. That being said, the nazi regime does not, so I was happy to find a photograph to draw after that had the swastika obscured due to exposure.

By clamping a straight piece of material onto the plywood, one can saw uncannily straight using just a normal hand saw.

 

Finally, I started work on a project that has been lying in my basement for ages - a full size gaming table, which will be required to get the gaming mat fully unfolded. The "table" will consist of a 4-by-8 foot plywood plate, cut in two, stiffened with wood beams and fitted with hinges and latches for stowage. Work was cut short when it started to snow like mad, preventing outdoor carpentry work.

The table will not have legs, instead I will stick on felt pads so it can rest on any smaller table without scratching it. Latches will secure it in a locked, unfolded position. It will likely be unpainted, as I intend to use felt mats whenever gaming on it, though I might paint it for some added durability, in that case in any neutral colour.

And that was that. Well, there was one other matter, though I'll return to that later...

Pipe Dream

Ever since I decided on Bag the Hun as the ruleset I would use for my WW2 aerial wargaming, I have found myself in a real pinch between priorites. There is a finite amount of time and money that I can spend on the hobby, and what little I have is divided between the following priorities (in no particular order):

- Re-working the BtH rules into a format I am more comfortable with
- Generating game aids - cards and quick reference sheets
- Purchasing and painting miniature aircraft
- Purcashing and assemblying game accessories - markers, flight stands, transport cases
- Blogging :)
- Actually getting to play the damn game!

The first point takes time. The second point takes a LOT of time - making cards, sheets and tables is a real time-eater! So far, my work has been done in Windows Paint, Word and Excel, though I recently downloaded a free layout program that is supposed to be quite good and will attempt to learn and use this when I start to re-work the cards. The goal is to introduce colour graphics and icons to make the cards an even better game aid. The tables and QR sheets will also need to be re-done here, to improve readability and layout.

The third point, painting, is one of my favourites, and it is really hard to prioritize time away from this and over to the other points - though I have realised that it helps little to have all the miniatures if I do not have anything to use them for. Fortuneately I have gotten wise, er, I mean old enough to have only one unpainted project (around a aquadron) in the pipeline at any one time, so with my current painting frequence at the least this part does not require a lot of money!

The fourth part, game accessories, is dreary. It reminds me of work :) Assemblying and painting flight stands is hardly creative work, once the initial concept is worked out. Spending money on this part is also quite hard - scenario books and miniatures are far more tempting. Still, this is the old gamer syndrome of having miniatures for hundreds of euros yet crap terrain. Having decided to focus on BtH exclusively for the time being has made this part of the hobby more important however - good game accessories, like the Hotz mat, good markers and flight stands enhance the game experience immeasurably and this is an area that I am investing heavily into at the moment - both in time and money. Yesterday I posted about the new transport boxes for my aircraft, and last night I made - this!

No, it is not a Stinger missile. Why, did you think the U.S. would supply a mountainous country bordering on Russia with advanced surface-to-air missiles? Don't be ridiculous!

This is my transport tube for my gaming mat. The main component is a 1,3 meter piece of 75mm diameter PVC plumbing tube! This was really cheap to get, though it required some cleaning - using soapy water, I stuffed paper towels trough the tube until they came out white. Next, I sealed off the bottom using a circular plug that I cut from leftovers of the kitchen refurbishing, topped with some foam to give the game mat a soft place to rest against. This was attached using a hot glue gun (naturally!), three small screws and a liberal application of duct tape (the other geek adhesive).

The pipe had an unsightly text line with its specifications in red ink running down its length, so I decided to pimp the tube with a continuous label and some chevrons. The legend reads "BAG the HUN" (oh fanboy me), I then decided to just go for it and added the address of this blog in small type underneath. Yes, modesty does not become me...

Once the "decorations" were in place, a 3m cargo strap was attached by using a pair of those metal bands made to squeeze together tubes and pipes. Forgive me, my English fails me here and I cannot even begin to guess what this is called in other languages!

The pipe also has a cap, which is a blind plug for plumbing in matching dimensions. This was sanded to remove sharp edges, and fits quite well without using any sort of latch - though I had to remove the pipe's rubber gasket in order to make it possible to get the cap on and off.

The full-size Hotz game mat measures roughly 180 by 120 cm and is rolled around a wooden stick for support before being stuffed into the tube. This fits almost too snugly - fortuneately, I purchased the largest dimension round stick available (28 mm) and can shave off 7 mm by purchasing a smaller stick, which will make the current mad tight rolling of the game mat less vital.

In hindsight, I might have gone for the next larger pipe dimension to get room to fit two maps at once. That being said, I am very happy with this solution - the mat is now stored in a made-to-fit sturdy and splash-proof tube that will certainly last a lot longer than a similar cardboard one.

The project cost me less than 25 euros, one hour of shopping around in hardware stores and one hour of assembly. That I can live with, even though it means I will likely have to wait 'till the next paycheck to get my next gaming accessory - don't worry, you will see it posted here as soon as I get my hands on it!

Transport solutions

Finally starting to get some steam up again after the one-month hiatus due to refurbishing the kitchen. Got in another game Sunday, and will post about that later when I get time, hopefully this week.

Meanwhile, a short glance at my new transport solution for the aircraft models. Previously, I stored the fighters in a small, sectioned plastic box, though as soon as I got the Dorniers I knew this solution was doomed. With these large, two-engine aircraft, I realised I would need something bigger, more flexible - and cheap!

This is the solution I decided to go with. 13 cm tall storage boxes. 10 euros for two is not bad (in Norway at any rate). The foam is from a car supply chain and originally intended for noise dampening in self made/self assembled speaker setups. 18 euros for five sheets, two sheets requred  per box. Total cost of around 14 euros per finished box is about as cheap as it gets over here.

Marking the foam for cutting. The first layer is made up of leftovers and glued into the bottom of the box. The remaining layers are cut slightly too small to make for easy removal from the box.

Ground floor: RAF Fighters - Spits and Hurries for the Battle of Britain.

First floor: 'Emils' and Norwegian Gladiators.

The box is now less than half full, and I have another one I have not started on yet. Likely, I will be able to fit all the aircraft I plan to buy for the Battle of Britain into these two boxes. That is the good thing. The bad thing is that this makes it painfully obvious how pitifully small my collection is - though it should be bulked out fairly quickly, as the majority of the remaining aircraft will be large two-engine aircraft!

Also, I have purchased the bits required to transport my gaming mat in style. Or, style... Well, more on that later!

Gearing up!

As last week, blog-wise this has been a tranquil week. Behind the scenes, however, a storm is brewing as I am gearing up to have the first go with the revised Bag the Hun 2-rules I have been working on. Since Friday last week (and my last post) not a night has gone by without some time being spent printing, cutting and sleeving game aids - mainly the cards that constitute the aircraft records and damage effects.

Now, with the game aids sorted, I suddenly find myself short of time. Still remaining are:

1. Assemble additional flight stands
2. Prepare bogey markers
3. Prepare tokens and markers, including pipe cleaner smoke trails and matched pairs of tailing markers

For the flight stands, all the material is available and assembly generally goes quickly. The bogey markers I plan to make out of a stack of old, disused poker chips collecting dust in the basement. Not only do they have the right size for the hex map, they are also red and blue and have an indentation in the middle where it would be ideal to attach a circular paper label with identification number and directional arrow. An idea is to label the white chips from the same set with numbers only, allowing them to be placed face down on the individual aircraft record cards - thus eliminating the need for a written record of the bogeys.

Hm, I might need more chips...

For the tokens, I have some gaming bits and pieces from discarded board games that I can label with matching numbers and other effects. Being an occasional pipe smoker, good-quality conical pipe cleaners is also something that is readily at hand. All I have to do now is secure some time to actually get these things ready - and time is getting short. The Luftwaffe are already over the Channel, and Hurricanes scramble from the green fields of Kent...

Before signing off, here is a peek at the cards I have made. Unfortuneately, the cards and other game aids contain rather a lot of gaming information, so I do not want to put them up for download before I have cleared that with the Lardies. Most of the cards assume BtH 2 Lite: BoB will be used, so the text is altered or incomplete compared to regular BtH 2 at any rate.

Regular deck: Fronts are standard printer paper, backs are some old, heavy, gloss photo paper selected to give the cards some substance. Cards are designed using Excel spreadsheet, images are collected using Google image search and decidedly used without permission. As you can see, I much prefer the original "Tally Ho!" and "Achtung Spitfire!" to the current generic bonus formation move card text...

Damage cards. Fronts are regular printing paper, back is 160 g card. Coloured differently to quickly separate them from the regular cards. Printing the fronts separately on inexpensive paper rather than costly card makes it far more affordable to reprint cards when necessary. The "Wing Damage" is a typical simplification made when I revised the BtH 2 rules into the "Lite" variant - the original text is "Aileron or wing damage".

Mulitples of each damage card have been made so that they can be placed with the aircraft record cards below as required.

Aircraft record cards: Although it is quite immodest, I will have to admit to liking these a lot! Each aircraft has a separate card. Identification panel is identical to the section move, fire and leader cards to aid in recognition. All aircraft stats and special rules are listed on the front. The reverse has a line drawing with fire arcs, on these cards straight ahead for the Hurricane, front and rear quarters for the Do17z. The Dornier, being a multi-engine design, also has numbered engine positions with two checkboxes on each to record damaged and destroyed engines. Pilot skill is recorded with a checkbox, and ammunition is also kept track of using boxes. The opportunity to record bogeys by placing a matched chip face down on each card I consider a bonus.

That is all for now. here is hoping the next update is an after action report...!

Delivery from Canada - HOTZ gaming mat

Today's post was originally going to be on something dreary, like the flat, drab colour collection used for my daylight RAF aircraft. Instead, fortune (or the mailman) ensured that it will instead be on something rather exciting - the flat, drab felt mat mailed to me from Canada!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you want this. HOTZ mats - brand of excellence.

HOTZ mats has a friendly if somewhat quirky web page (http://www.hotzmats.com/), and while navigating it and getting the information I needed was easy, it kind of lacks that comforting pat-on-the-back-feel. Both times I have ordered there, I have collected my information from the site, located the correct product and felt confident that I have everything set up right - and yet, just before hitting the purchase-button, I got that "You'd  better be sure about this one, you only have one chance to get it right you know"-feeling. That being said, the order confirmation contained the right product both times (which made me feel a whole lot better).

At the least one U. S. supplier's web site complained bitterly of the delivery problems they had with this manufacturer, that is, Eric Hotz. What they have been experiencing I cannot really say, perhaps Hotz prioritizes direct orders to his website over orders from other stores. In any case, this is my second HOTZ mat, and in both instances ordrering has been painless and delivery quick.

In this particular case, the ordrer was placed November 24th (a Thursday), order confirmation came November 27th (a Sunday!) and delivery was yesterday, December 20th. Considering that the order listed five weeks expected delivery time, that this is (as far as I have gathered) a hand-made product from a one-man operation and that the product has been shipped overseas from Canada to Norway (we're not even in the EU), I cannot be anything but delighted with the way this purchase turned out.

It is huge! The thing makes a mockery of our five-stone dinner table. WIP Do17z placed for scale.

This particular mat is a so-called "full-size" (72 x 42 inches) with the European Fields pattern and a 1.5 inch hex grid, and it looks beautiful. Having gamed on a similar though smaller mat before, I can certainly support Hotz's claim that the grid is very functional yet subtle enough to not interfere with the visual impression. Price, including air mail, came to just below 70 USD. While that is certainly an investment, it is certainly not enough to have me worried. With regards to value for money, it just cannot be beat as far as I am concerned. 70 bucks for (more or less) all the terrain you are ever going to need for the game? Count me in.

All that remains now is to iron it to remove the creases and then find a permanent storage solution. The plan is to get a short, wooden staff - the kind used for curtains - and roll the mat around it, then stuff it into a cloth bag that I will ask my wife (very nicely) to make for me. That should protect it from wrinkles, nicks and abrasion, while at the same time being an easy format to store and transport - particularily if I add a sling to the bag. Some sort of storage will be required at any rate, and I will make certain to post once it is ready.

Well, that certainly is a motivation to finish the quick-reference sheets and other game-aids for BTH2! Christmas coming up fast, so I'll have to see if I cannot manage to squeeze in a visit to a book store and get a hold of some coloured cardboard before the weekend...