Watching the deniers, and the twitchers bathe in the Lake of Hali
31/07/2013
The second LKII fitted with an HMG as the Swedes did when they rebuilt these little tanks:
Pinned on Sunday, finished yesterday evening – a bit quicker than the two weeks it took me for the first one !
Next to the first one with its poxy little 37mm cannon.
As you can see there is some light spackle on the first one, not very visible to the naked eye, and probably not bad enough to warrant a re-paint.
30/07/2013
Those little scamps the March Violets have announced some gigs.
Hike on over to here to find the dates…which are subject to, er, updates…
29/07/2013 1 Comment
One of the joys of AVBCW, is the research you do for your local area. For sometime I’d been hunting through my many book cases to find the titular book, finally today I recovered it:
An excellent little book giving a very detailed account of rural life from the turn of the century onwards. And has many period pictures relevant to AVBCW:
It also details the seasonal work forces, such as the hop pickers who came down from B’ham. So this raises another question for AVBCW logistics – how would that have happened ? Would they have come, and if so what politics would have ensued ?
Another interesting excursion for AVBCW into local history. Some of the players might recognise the street scene…
26/07/2013 1 Comment
From today’s spam messages:
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to, except that unfortunately, there is count me out one penny.
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very germinal, and can accord I, it seems washed-up,
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would speak out so!” You engage in not need on cut her, multifarious citizenry strength of purpose simper at this sometimes annex said: “I’m alone kidding!
” Be doing not practice this, it strength of purpose let it go you go bristle the clap hands on! By the above cite a particular, you ignore her, she might say: “I am not
rich, save I’m good!” You looked among her and said: “Good is not fairly, what I need is rich annex inventory.
” Your aim at is not en route to let it go alter difficulties, but the ceaseless against winkle better self
The words are all English…but it’s utter gibberish…its worse than the average AGW denier’s outpourings.
24/07/2013 1 Comment
The Swedish LKII is finished. I tried to use a system similar to the ones painted on the museum pieces that was not the German WW1 Mustard/Red-Brown/Grey but something subtely different.
So I ended up with Foundry Slate Grey, my basing colour brown, and Foundry Moss. Given a brown wash, and then highlighted.
A picture showing the LK II (Copplestone Casstings) which is 1/55th next to Brigade Games Mark V (which is 1/56th), next to First Corps Erhart which is probably 1/48th (?).
23/07/2013
A Very Moderate Swedish War caught my eye recently, with a new range of figures (Shiney stuff) supporting it.
The range so far has: a command unit; four infantry in Sewedish helmets; four infantry in Swedish kepi; four infantry in Sewedish tri-corns (really!). A great start but not enough for a meanignful platoon in the games we fight so I asked the owner if more were on the way, his response was:
He is doing an HMG, a 80mm mortar, another light machine gunner and a guy with a smg. Hopefully they will be released in the early autumn.
So here’s what I bought – a command unit, 2 sections with helmets, and a third with kepis. A few leftovers will be converted to standard bearers and medics shortly. A second LK II tank was also acquired to be fitted with an HMG to beef up the force.
So what can these figures be used for ?
Swedish Volunteers in the RCW: Over 300 Swedes volunteered to help out the Estonians in the RCW (“The Boys from the North” Ed by Lars Ericson). A picture is shown in the Osprey White Armies book where they are wearing Swedish helmets..
Hmm, looks like I can get an Austin in to the army as well with a Polar Bear head !
The Estonians were provided also with equipment from the general Russian armies, the British, and the Germans. So these figures can be integrated with many other units I already have,
The Aland Crisis
The Swedes did almost get involved in the RCW, the Aland islands midway between Sweden, Finland and the Baltics saw combat with Reds, Whites and Germans before the Sewdes intervened.
Altaernate histories
What if the Swedes directly became involved in either the late stages of WW1 or the RCW ? They could have been involved in the Finnish Civil War, the Estonian war of independence, or potentially the latvian war of independence.
The uniforms are also valid up until the 1930’s, as are the tanks (modified LK II) so I could use them in AVBCW…
Moose…Monty Python..stereotypical but still funny.
Monti Python ik den Holie Grailen
Roten nik Akten Di
Wik
Also wik
Also also wik
Wi not trei a holiday in Sweeden this yer ?
See the loveli lakes
The wonderful telephone system
And mani interesting furry animals
Including the majestic moose
A moose once bit my sister…
No realli! She was Karving her initials on the moose with the sharpened end
of an interspace toothbrush given her by Svenge – her brother-in-law – an
Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian movies: “The Hot Hands of an Oslo
Dentist”,”Fillings of Passion”, “The Huge Molars of Horst Nordfink”…
Mynd you, moose bites Kan be pretti nasti…
As for llamas…stay tuned… 🙂
21/07/2013 1 Comment
Ok, as you can see my transport pool is expanding, something others have noticed before:
Mort: Giles, you have too many tanks !
Whilst he was looking at my AVBCW collection of Vickers Medium tanks at a game in Tring. I wasn’t fielding them all they were just in the box
Its an oft repeated joke that more model King Tigers are used in WW2 games than were built during WW2. The same goes for AVBCW and RCW. Especially in 28mm large skirmish games. No mater they are comparatively pathetic, they can dominate a game too easily as in both periods anti-tank weapons were equally rare (and pathetic).
But we all like eye candy.
A German Erhart captured by the Russians – by the use of the Triangle and circle markings, it was being used by the Don Cossacks. This one was also upgunned with a 37mm cannon.
If you click through the links half way down the page, you get to some real obscure photographs I’ve not seen before and are very interesting. A very useful resource site. It correlates well with the the books I have on A/Cs in the RCW.
So in wargaming terms:
Several players at the BoB Big Game I ran, did comment favourably that limiting the A/Cs made for a different but still enjoyable game. You also need to limit the number of field guns, HMGs, and LMGs similarly.
Many of the points above apply also to AVBCW. In or ear the cities and ports you could justify A/Cs, in the country and remote locations start cutting down on the number of vehicles or insist on Heath-Robinson contraptions made by the local blacksmith after one pint too many.
21/07/2013
The Garford Putilov was a home grown Russian armoured car developed in WW1. Quite a bizarre beast, it had forward mounted MGs, and a turret sporting another MG and a cannon on the reare of the vehicle !
Kit by Copplestone Castings. The camouflage pattern is one the Soviets officially adopted from 1925.
Pinned by Byakhee Rich Pinning Services, with a magnet so the turret can be revolved. Transfer decals are by Brigade/Company B.
It ended up being used by several armies in the fall out of WW1, and he RCW including the German Baltic Freikorps.
I find it funny the differece in size of these Germans, look at the ones on the left !
This waspainted for my recent BoB Big Game and I didn’t have time to photograph it (I finished it at about 9pm the previous night. In game terms it waas restricted to the road,reflecting its lack of off-road capability.
20/07/2013
Now I had heard of this before, but had not understood what it was. When I visited Byakhee Rich’s Pinning Service last w/e he showed me his wet palette even before I’d bemoaned the fact this hot weather makes dry brushing and highlighting a nightmare – the paint dries so fast it clags up the fine brushes. A real pain when it comes to finer detail !
First get a small pot and some foam, say like a Foundry blister pack pice of foam. Add water so the foam is soaking wet (mate). Not too much water, just so that the foam is knee deep in the water as it were.
Then cut out some baking parchment and put it on top of the foam, and allow it to soak up the water.
You can then daub some paint onto the now moist parchment and use that for your drybrushing. I tested this out today on the Dark Elf characters, and the LK II.
For the characters it worked great, I used the same puddle of flesh paint for the four figures and it is still wet even now some 10 minutes later (upload time of pictures, plus writing this verbiage). Apparently it can keep the paint wet for several hours and if sealed, even longer.
It worked less well for the LK II as that was block painting onto a fresh surface and so (a) soaked up paint anyway) and (b) needed loads of paint.
A handy tip I’ll be using again.
19/07/2013
This week’s edition of Science has a very interesting editorial on how they manage Risk when it comes to publishing papers in the journal:
HOW MUCH RISK CAN AND SHOULD A JOURNAL TOLERATE IN PUBLISHING PAPERS THAT DESCRIBE novel findings—that is, papers that could have a profoundly positive impact within and out¬side the scientific community if right, but could be broadly harmful by leading investigators in wrong directions if incorrect
In discussion with her colleagues, editor in chief Marcia McNutt found:
We agreed that publishing papers with some such risk is a good thing. Of course, a journal would love for every paper it publishes to turn out to be perfectly correct—but not at the expense of publishing papers that are all perfectly “safe.” Science moves forward by communicating findings that challenge old ideas and force us to test new theories against the evidence. The key is to contain that risk.
So in other words they remain open to “interesting” papers that challenge a consensus, but have a clear approach that blocks the wingnut papers written on toilet paper in green crayon.
She then goes on to comment:
On the other hand, scientific advances that depend on new observations are inherently limited by their availability and quality. We have only one Earth to study, not multiple independent realizations and no “control” planet from which to gain statistical reliability. The initial conditions are lost in time and cannot be determined with any certainty. Astrophysicists and ecologists, for example, face challenges in which the relevant space scales are larger than any laboratory and the time scales exceed human lifetimes. The observations available are not the ideal data set for testing the most pressing questions that need to be answered. The scientists must test hypotheses with the data that they have discovered, not the information that they want to have. And yet the questions that need to be answered are too important to be ignored merely because the definitive experiment cannot be designed.
This is fairly obvious to the majority of people – we only have one Earth, and we are constrained in what data we can, are, and have gathered. The Climate Change Deniers (or AGW if you prefer see here for why they are much the same) however have an oft used meme known as “Impossible Expectations”:
Another characteristic of movements that deny a consensus involves impossible expectations. The tobacco industry perfected this approach in the 1970s, demanding ever-more stringent levels of proof that smoking caused cancer in order to delay government regulation of their products.
So we have to acknowledge we can only work with the data we have got from the only planet Earth we’ve got and resist the deniers Impossible Expectations. However, the Science editorial went on:
…as a brilliant marine geologist once told me, “I refuse to be held responsible for prior interpretations which I have now revised based on newer and more complete information.”
So for example, we now know that whlst the globe is warming on average, not all parts will warm, and not all parts will warm equally. With the collapse of the Arctic sea ice we are seeing disruption to the jet streams that influence the UK’s weather – bringing cold wet summers for the past few years and a scorching few weeks currently. So it is not the simple assumption we’re simply going to get warmer weather and hotter summers in the UK that the climate change deniers squawk about.
The editorial also punctures another denialist meme:
I urge authors and reviewers to work earnestly with the editors at Science to make good decisions in risky matters by examining the evidence with an open, unbiased mind.
…that there is a conspiracy to only publish the approved line. There it is in black and white, they’re willing to publish ground breaking papers that upset the apple cart !
But, one of the key points she also makes is:
The encouragement of risk does not mean that Science wants submissions that are unsubstantiated by data, and clearly we must continue to strive for the highest standards in scientific peer review
And this is where the climate change deniers perpetually fall down. They don’t have the data, or if they do they’ve mis-used it and or misunderstood it. And they don’t do peer review.
All in all, one of the best editorials I have ever read, and well worth reading if you can.
The Lost City of Carcosa 