Not AWOL

Sorry for the absence. My new career has three shifts: day, evening, overnight, and I've never been a morning person and my kiddos have no clue what "Be Quiet" means, so I work nights. Getting familiar with the ins and outs of the medical field has eaten alot of my time up in the last few months.

That said, I've jumped back on too WP. As mentioned I don't have a lot of time most days, and tend to have my iPhone or iPad in use more than my laptop, so I needed a platform that has an in house app. If everything goes well at work, I have about about two hours of just sitting or walking 50ft doing bed checks, before my shift ends, so this'll give me a chance to keep up. I'll just dual post for a while, then simply stop posting on Blogger. I also follow a multitude of blogs that are on WP and trying to engage in a conversation with them -or spin off a tangent idea from one of theirs- is all but impossible from Blogger.

So thats where things stand right now.
If your on WP, heres the link to the other blog: https://playingawargame.wordpress.com/

Hurry up and Wait

So I had to pause for a bit to job hunt in another state, but now its just waiting on the background check to clear.

Having procured and resized the plans for the C-130 (which I found out after they arrived were for an A model, Doh!), I have handed them off to my dad who has a laser cutter. In spite of our best efforts, the scan I did of the plans was unusable on the cutter. Like, instead of one solid cut per piece, its like a thousand little dots. Sooo... he’s been copying the plans for the frames by hand in a vector graphics program. We’ve been going back and forth with input and slight changes; like not needing the cutouts for controls or fuel lines. While he’s been doing that, I got a jumbo sheet of 1/8 thick plywood from Home Depot, got it cut down to usable pieces. As soon as he gets a work file and starts cutting, ya’ll get to see some WIP shots of stuff going together.

On another tack, I got the 2nd edition book for SAGA and of course, the Viking book. I’ve always loved digging into Vikings and their mythology. They make for fun reading if you get the right book. Wrong book and like all history, its gets mighty boring. I’m not sure what factions to get just yet, but I’m going to have to do a little digging; I plan on getting a figures that can be used in hopefully two factions, so I can start playing with some of the easier factions, then shift to more complicated ones later.

Also on my horizon is a giant box of 28mm miniatures from the Sash and Saber Kickstarter. I already have a stash of Rogers Rangers and French Marines from Cavalcade Wargames, so I’m just adding on to those. I backed at the $200 level, and then added a few packs afterwards. I could have gone nuts and gotten a bit of everything, but I kept it to just building off the miniatures I have. I did add some regulars and light infantry/militia, a unit of Highland Grenadiers, officers for all of them, and also some artillery pieces. I’ll more then enough figures to do skirmishes, but also enough to do larger battles too.

While looking for a work, I also found a game store right in town. So on the rare days I’ll have off, I’ll be trying to duck down to it for a game. I might even take my twins to learn some too.

Getting Down to Business.

A little follow up to Up, up, and away!. I began with looking up the rough dimensions of a C-130H (what the YMC-130s were based off of) to get an idea of what the model's scale would need to be. What I found is a 40.25m wing span, a 11.6 m to top of tail, and a 29.6 m from nose to tail. Not wanting these to be ginormous pieces, I punched the numbers into Excel and extrapolated their dimensions into 20mm (1/80.5), 25mm (1/64), and 28mm (1/58) scales.

So 1/64 is about the middle of the road for sizes, regardless of what size miniatures I'd use. So off to find 1/64 scale aircraft models. Nadda for 1/64. And 1/72 scale models are in the neighborhood of $50 a piece online. Not very economical. So digging through ebay for cheap kits, I found a seller who had plans for RC aircraft, and had C-130 plans in 1/19 scale. I fired off a message to him to see if they were scalable. I got a fairly quick replay yes (I just had to add a note asking for this when I purchased the plans). I'm not able to purchase a model, so I'll build one.

I got this.

Anyway, to get ready, I took an outline of a C-130 and sketched out the changes to get a good idea of how it would look. 

I found some technical drawings on a UK forum and used a few different pages to blend into this. Sadly they were hosted on Photobucket (yuck) and are covered in their watermark. The location and shapes come from those and these photos of the surviving YMC-130 that had been on display at Robins AFB, GA. 

Though it was moved to a New York aerospace museum in 2018. You can read about it at Aviation Geek and C-130Hercules.net.

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Now I just need to wait on the plans to get here... 

Up, up, and away!

A topic I've been noodling for a while, has been scratch building a set of YMC-130s. Whats a YMC-130? Glad you asked. Its a crazy one off design of the venerable C-130, made to land in a soccer (football for my European readers) stadium in Tehran. They were the lynch pin of Operation Credible Sport. Two things put a kink in plan though: one of them crashed -with no casualties- while testing the retro rockets, and Reagan got elected.

Lockheed engineers had decided to strap 30 rockets to each plane, and they would have been used for both landing and then taking off again after the hostages had been rescued. Check out this video of them in action, but forewarned, about a minute and a half in is the video of the crash.

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Holy crap right? As a wargame scenario, the idea is a perfect "What if?". Looking at Google maps, the whole thing looks doable.

A standard field is ~110 yds (330 ft) by 70 yds (210 ft), so two C-130s could fit.

I just need to figure out which scale to build it in.

Whats this?

So I used to have a blog over on WP called Tanith Magna. It was pretty much dedicated to my WH40K Tanith Imperial Guard -I will never call them Astra Militarum- army. I pretty much bought as many sets of Tanith minis (vice individual mini's) from ebay back in 2009 to 2011, as I could get my grubby mitts on. Right afterwards, the cost of those mini's went up too, so I might have had a hand in that. Sorry to anyone looking for them nowadays about the cost!

Seeing as I used to wargame as much as I played RPGs -probably more truth told-, I always thought about having another blog for it to compliment the RPG one. Never really did anything with it because of the WP one. But now that I have time on my hands, I figured no time like the present. So I copy/pasted the blog entries over (with the correct dates).

Adding fuel to this fire is GW putting out Kill Team as a stand alone set from 40K, that uses the same minis for the most part. I picked up the starter, another set of the minis, two Sector sets (so far) -Mechanicus and Wall of Martyrs-, and the Tau starter box (to add more Wall pieces to what I had). The upcoming releases for it are looking awesome. They even released Gaunt's Ghosts and Schaffer's Last Chancers cards (with a purchase of the mini sets) at the Kill Team Open last year. Thankfully people shared the cards online after the fact, because the secondary market is already nasty.

In addition to the Ghosts, I also have the following armies:

Warhammer 40000

• Dark Angels 1st Company "Deathwing" - Literally a full company
• Dark Angels 2nd Company "Ravenwing" - Same
• Dark Angels 5th Company - Same; I've kinda of been a DA fan since 4th Ed
• Bran Red Maws Great Company - Less Wulfen than fluff says and more Thunder Wolves
• Stormtrooper Company -The old Inquisitional ones
• Elysian Droptroopers - The old Forge World ones, with Valkyries (couple are resin too!)

I have assorted 30K marines, Death Guard, Deathwatch, Primaris Marines, Skitarii, Genestealers, and two Knight Titans from the various starters too. I plan on getting my hands on copies of Forgebane and Wake the Dead too, so they'll be around at some point.

Warhammer Fantasy (NOT Age of Sigmar) 

Just alot of Dwarves. Never did like how GW rebooted things, but its their game. I'll probably never get to play them again, but I will finish painting them just because. 

Warmachine/Hordes

• Circle Orboros
• Convergence of Cyriss

Relic Knights

Just a double set of Black Diamond minis. I've never actually gotten around to playing, I just wanted the minis. Their pretty cool anime styled sci-fi troopers.

Flames of War

• Early War German Parachute Pioneers
• Mid War US Paratroopers (in Africa)
• Early/Mid War Finnish Army
• Mid War US Mech Infantry
• Mid/Late German Panzer Division (Mix of Panzers and Panzergrenadiers)
• Mid War LRDG-SAS 
• Mid/Late War 1st Special Service Force
• Some others that escape me atm... Their 15mm scale, who knows what else I might have bought, because their all in a box together.

French and Indian War

• Rogers Rangers
• Mixed British troops
• British allied Indians
• Mixed French troops
• French allied Indians

Yeah I have a bit of plastic crack problem.

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On top of all this I have several actual wargames from Avalon Hill, the Honor Harrington ship game from years back, a wide mix of 1 Ed X-Wing minis, the starter for Star Wars Armada, and Heroes of Black Reach.

Well Thats more than I had intended to type, so I'll call it here. 

Time Flys...

...When you have twin one year old sons (not identical). I have 12 days off for the holidays and putting these all together and starting in on painting them is top of my list of things to do! Stay tuned!

Another 1850 List

1847 w/Stock CO/PL Al'rahem

Company Command Squad, 147 pts (Camo Cloak; Krak Grenades; Medi-pack; Regimental Standard; Vox Caster; Sniper Rifle x1)
Company Commander (Camo Cloak; Bolt Pistol; Power Weapon; Krak Grenades; Melta Bombs)

Veteran Squad, 185 pts (Demolition Charge; Melta Bombs; Vox Caster; Flamer x1; Plasmagun x1; Sniper Rifle x1; Demolitions)
Gunnery Sergeant Harker (Melta Bombs)

Veteran Squad, 160 pts (Camo Cloak; Demolition Charge; Melta Bombs; Snare Mines; Vox Caster; Flamer x1; Plasmagun x1; Sniper Rifle x1; Demolitions; Forward Sentries)
Veteran Sergeant (Camo Cloak; Melta Bombs; Snare Mines)

Veteran Squad, 160 pts (Camo Cloak; Demolition Charge; Melta Bombs; Snare Mines; Vox Caster; Flamer x1; Plasmagun x1; Sniper Rifle x1; Demolitions; Forward Sentries)
Veteran Sergeant (Camo Cloak; Melta Bombs; Snare Mines)

Infantry Platoon, 440 pts
Platoon Command Squad (Krak Grenades; Vox Caster; Heavy Flamer; Plasmagun x1; Sniper Rifle x1)
Al'rahem
Infantry Squad (Krak Grenades; Vox Caster; Flamer x1)
Sergeant (Krak Grenades; Melta Bombs)
Infantry Squad (Krak Grenades; Vox Caster; Flamer x1)
Sergeant (Krak Grenades; Melta Bombs)
Heavy Weapons Squad (Mortar x1; Autocannon x1; Missile Launcher x1)
Special Weapons Squad (Demolition Charge x1; Flamer x1; Sniper Rifle x1)

Infantry Platoon, 370 pts
Platoon Command Squad (Krak Grenades; Vox Caster; Heavy Flamer; Plasmagunx1)
Platoon Commander (Krak Grenades; Melta Bombs)
Infantry Squad (Krak Grenades; Vox Caster; Flamer x1)
Sergeant (Krak Grenades; Melta Bombs)
Infantry Squad (Krak Grenades; Vox Caster; Flamer x1)
Sergeant (Krak Grenades; Melta Bombs)
Heavy Weapons Squad (Mortar x1; Autocannon x1; Missile Launcher x1)
Special Weapons Squad (Demolition Charge x1; Flamer x1; Sniper Rifle x1)

Leman Russ Battle Tank, 195 pts (Lascannon; Heavy Bolter Sponsons x2; Pintle Storm Bolter)

Storm Trooper Squad, 190 pts (Meltagun x1; Plasmagun x1)
Storm Trooper Sergeant