Watching the deniers, and the twitchers bathe in the Lake of Hali
30/05/2014
A Turkish HMG I’ve knocked out for one of the players at tomorrow’s Big Game:
I also have a few Rde HMGs, a Turkish Field Gun and a half track A/C to finish off in the next few hours, so I might update this post later today.
And of course the train which I’ll post, its WIP, but good enough to get on the field of battle.
28/05/2014
As well as books films and baiting AGW deniers, I have been doing some painting. My kitchen table is coverred in stuff that must be ready by Saturday AM – or more realistically Friday PM.
I went and got some emulsion to weather the flat bed trucks as they were just going to be weathered wood. The single pot I had from 4Ground, was not going to cover them all so I had some paint mixed for me when I visited Travis Perkins builders merchants. It is way cheaper to get the paint mixed this way than buy individual pots for scenery and other large projects like a train !
Whilst there I was reminded of another excellent pruchase I’d made – the Big Wipes – nominally for DIY and building work these are a canister of cloths that are soaked in some magic formula that pretty much deals with every conceivable spill of any material. Very useful for their intended purpose – DIY – but also immensely useful for clearing up model paint and fillers. The builders used them extensively. They can wipe up stuff even from carpets.
Here’s the first pass at a couple of weathered flat bed trucks. As this is using emulsion, I was worried it would be too thick (like me). No, its fine providing you really go to town on the dry brushing aspect.
The undercarriage is GW Boltgun metal washed with Nuln Oil. I think they look ok for a wargames standard. As stated, I will add ttransfers and so on to other more important pieces of rolloing stock.
Hopefully tomorrow, Turkish & Bolshevik HMGs will be finished off.
27/05/2014
AGW denier, in another cut out and keep moment. Beware those pesky scientists, they want to keep you in a state of panic:
MacRandall
27 May 2014 4:28pm
Recommend 0Researchers found that the term ‘global warming’ resonates far more powerfully, triggering images of ice melt and catastrophe
That’s what science is all about after all: creating panic as the means to engendering legitimacy.
So there you have it folks, as quoted from CiF. Best stop listening to all those scientists. 😉
Must be one reason why I’ve experienced half a dozen power cuts per day for the last 3 days – if BT aren’t trying to deny me access to the interwebnet, then it’s NPower !
He said grumnpily catching up on e-mails and blog posts !
27/05/2014
The recent not re-make sort of prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing ended up in my DVD.
I really liked the John Carpenter film from 1982:
And many years ago I saw the original 1951 version (b/W)
The original short story by John W Campbell JR was entitled “Who goes there ?”, retitled later “The thing from another world“.
Its available in The Antarktos Cycle, part of Chasoisum’s Chthulhu series of books.
So is the prequel/remake any good ?
Yes and No.
It is pretty much a remake in terms of plot of John Carpenter’s film. The discovery of the saucer, and the body. The creeping paranoia and so on. Its set in the Norwegians’ camp before the 1982 film. So far so many jumpers, beards and cute Norwegian dialogue. Some Americans get drafted in – a (female) paleontologist and some helicopter fliers. The inevitable storm coming surfaces like a wet sock in a boot though. Can’t we even have a white out ? And just how many flame throwers does each Antarctic research station pack, and why ?
Neat twists were how the humans spotted the Thing (I won’t spoil it), how the film was a prequel an segued into John Carpenter’s The Thing.
The SFX were ok, but interestingly I don’t think they were as much of a step change from the 1982 stuff ! IT seems they also used animatronics which probably explains why. They are decent enough anyway.
What was missed out on were the scenes inside the alien saucer, that could have been a bigger set piece – allegedly the original plot work included this. Now that would have been interesting !
Similarly, what was/is missing is whther the survivors at the saucer made it to the Soviet base mentioned ! Now that would be an interesting sequel – would both the Amwericans and Norwegians let two separate bases “go dark” without at least bsending an expedition down there, and they’d be sure to use the Soviet base as a stepping off point, cue lots of Cold War tension to add to the paranoia that maybe those Reds just weren;’t human after all …..
27/05/2014
Got a new book that’s just come out:
Its mostly an update of Peter Hopkirk’s “Setting the East Ablaze”. It concentrates on the spies as opposed to the more wargame friendly stuff. The numerous disguises and efforts of the mostly british agents to keep one (or two) steps ahead of the Bolshevik Cheka et al, should give good scenario ideas for “Hunt the spy” type games.
It develops a lot of the threads of a lot of the more central Russian events as opposed to the events in Central Asia, so from that perspective is a bit disappointing. However, for aficionados of the RCW its still a good book.
23/05/2014
Details of the BoB Big Game I am organising are now up including the overall scenario, table dispositions of players and useful resources. The trains and rolling stock shown before should be deployed for the first time.
As inspired by:
One of my favourite films: “Once Upon A Time In The West”.
The door is still open to anyone wanting to take part, its based in Hereford UK.
23/05/2014
Some more rolling stock:
An armoured train.
Coach, and high sided truck.
Flat bed trucks with varying height side pieces.
A flat bed truck would often be put in front of the train so that any sabotage/explosives would destroy it, rather than the main locomotive. The flat beds with higher sides would be used for supplies, horses and troops.
22/05/2014
A musical interlude:
The second encore from the Albert Hall gig by the Sisters of Mercy in 1985:
Why isn’t the last encore included on ‘Wake’, the film of the Royal Albert Hall concert in 1985?
By the time we hit the stage for the last encore, some of the necessary machines had been switched off.
Various film technicians had decided that we’d finished. Andrew had been performing with a couple of cracked ribs, and he had indeed decided to finish, but Lemmy was in the dressing room to convince him that another encore was in order. After a short discussion and a multilateral assessment of all the available pharmaceuticals, the band hit the stage again – but too speedily for the aforementioned technicians.There was some audio-visual material from the last encore, but Polygram “lost it” shortly after the film was edited and released.
Now all I have to do is work out where my Train is going for the BoB scenario on the 31st !
22/05/2014 1 Comment
In the RCW/BoB genre, armoured trains feature a fair amount in the bibliography but rarely on the table. Years ago, I bought the Brigade Games rolling stock (not all of it!) and now I am hosting big BoB games, wanted to roll it out.
So here’s the juicy Armoured train. All 12 inches of it (oo-er).
The resin features such as the rungs were fragile, one broke off when I picked it up.
So taking it to Byakhee Richard’s pining service, a lot was replaced with brass rod.
The three turrets, all armed with artillery guns and HMGs were all magnetised. The wheel bogies also got some attention to cope with some modest curves in the track.
The photos show it on the little S Gauge track I have acquired.
If I thought that wargames suppliers were retrograde in terms of commercial service, then my eyes have been opened by the sheer unwillingness of railway model suppliers to have decent websites, decent catalogues and their sheer unwillingness to actually respond to e-mails and telephone calls in order to sell their wares.
More rolling stock to follow, plus my own painting efforts.
22/05/2014
I’ve not posted anything because my internet and telephone connection has been intermittant or totally absent these last 4 days.
The BT engineer came round, and she sat under my desk for 30 minutes checking the line out, replacing the socket and generally trying to find the fault. The connection came back yesterday (but slow), disappeared in the evening (no telephone dial tone) and is back again today.
Sitting at the computer doing some spreadsheets, I spotted a squirrel race across my front lawn, and hurl itself at the window of my study and bounce off. Then it did it again. As it was a hot day, it had a third attempt, and used the open window section, which is no more than four foot from where I was sitting.
As you can see it didn’t quite make this audacious attempt to break in, and it woke BlackJack up (bottom lefthand side at the bottom of the curtain), who proceeded to chase the squirrel off into the garden.
BlackJack also distracted me last night, when after a community meeting, he brought home another rabbit. This time he got smart, and growled at me when I tried to remove the said new friend from him. Eventually we compromised, and he went outside to eat it.
Now, the Look Squirrel argument, is one often used by climate change deniers to distract normal people with a totally spurious argument, an irrelevant article, or a set of cherry picked data that disagree with the mainstream science. To an extent, this posting is along those lines as I have not posted anything for several days.
Quite by coincidence, I had also pulled out my TV/DVD/Video set up to paint behind it ! So I couldn’t watch anything on TV either. (Couldn’t put the TV back as the gloss paint was still not dry)
That said, my loss of connectivity to the internet, and more importantly to the telephone network was real and disturbing.
We take our connectivity for granted these days in a way that 10-20 years ago would have been unhread of. I felt quite at a loss of what to do. Fortunately, my pets and local wildlife filled the gap in my life. I ended up going to bed earlier, reading a book before turning the light out and doing the sort of stuff we all normally did 20 years ago. Yet that was the norm back then.
What it has meant is that I am painting figures again. There’s no point staring at a slow internet connection, might as well go and do a layer of paint on a squad/HMG unit.
Now the connection and phone are working again, I promptly went out to Richard’s, to collect a lot of stuff he has been pining for me for the BoB game on the 31st. Some eye candy to follow.
The Lost City of Carcosa 