M48 Battle King Refurbishment.

In between purchasing toys and planning my Goose Green game, I have managed to clean up and paint another tank to add to my Haradi forces. I've also painted up some other stuff, but they can wait for another post.

A bright metallic green is perhaps not the best colour for a MBT.

Some of you might remember a previous post about some Battle Kings that my lovely wife bought me. The King Tiger has since found a good home with Archduke Piccolo (click here for his blog), the SPG is getting a few last minute touch ups, the Hawk launcher has been played with, while the M-48 has been repainted!

Less green, more sand.

The view from the other side.

Close up on the tank commander.

I also have added again to my collection of Battle Kings, with the purchase of a rather nice  K-103 Chieftain.  This one is one of the later releases of the toy, as it has a more sensible paint job (the first releases were also in metallic green, and the running gear is all in olive green.  The tank commander is also luckily in one piece, as normally in play worn examples the head is often missing.

Chieftain and Sherman. Both with their factory paint jobs which were greatly improved from the first release of Battle Kings. 

Another view of same. I do like the paint job!

The chieftain came with a encrustation of something resin-like on the front.

The Sherman tank commander figure has been cut level with the  hatch rim.

 The Sherman I acquired back in October last year as part of a large purchase of diecasts (click here for details), but had been since then on the disposals list. Now since it has a paint job similar to the chieftain, I have decided that I can use it for a second, or even third line, Haradi unit. Of course, I may just change my mind again entirely. Still no rush, and better yet, no wrong answer!

Another Parcel from the UK!

Early Saturday morning a package arrived for me, containing my order from Model Hobbies. inside the box was my order of two packets of  "British Infantry of the 1970s" by A Call to Arms (PSR link here), and two packets of the Revell reissue of the Matchbox "Nato Paratroopers" (PSR link here), which now go by the more accurate title of "British Paratroopers (Falklands War)".

A freshly opened parcel full of new toys!

The box art.  The Revell one seems to show a FRS 1 Harrier conducting ground support, with the Paras  engaged in a fire fight -  quite a change from the old box art!

 The Revell figures have been reissued in the same dark green that they have used for a number of their modern sets. I may have to purchase another set of the Revell  "German Armoured Infantry" (PSR link here), so that I can loot it for Milans. All of the CD ToEs that I have give at least one Milan stand in the support company.

I have waited for some time for these to be reissued.

Lots of SLRs!

As has been pointed out over at Small Scale World, the new A Call To Arms figures are actually quite old, having previously  - in a larger form - been produced as Britains soldiers. (See links here, and here for more information)

My collection of the aforementioned figures - no rare ones though!

I was lucky enough to have the first of these purchased for me as a child by Sister Declan, and the rest I have acquired in my normal packrat style over the last ten years. I never acquired any of the marines that were listed in the Britains catalogue at the time as I have never had any cross my path!

Still I figured it was worth while digging them out for a comparison shot with their newer (and smaller) incarnations!

Nice figures regardless of the scale!

Now that these figures have arrived, I can begin the process of making up  the Argentinean army and air force units needed for the Goose Green scenario. Of course, once I have done that i can start making up the forces needed to do some of the other battles...

Of Catapults and God Kings

 Today's post is going to be largely pictures as I am feeling particularly lazy.

A box full of cool toys!

In my last post I mentioned that I had won the Horrible histories competition held over at Small Scale World.  The product review and competition has heaps more information and links about this range, and I would strongly encourage you to check it out.

This afternoon I received a package which contained a great deal of stuff. Awesome stuff. Stuff that lets you hurl rubber pigs about the place.

The Egyptian Starter Set.

The Roman Starter Set.

The back of the Egyptian box.

The back of the Roman box.

The four blind boosters - each one contains a historical hero to add to your  army.

Inside the box was two starter sets - one Roman, and one Egyptian, - and four blind booster packets.

Unwrapping a fiery Iceni Queen.

I got two Boudica figures from the boosters.

An unnamed Highwayman in the third.

And Blackbeard the pirate in the fourth.

The group shot.

Each of the starter sets contains a leader, a catapult, 3 rubber pigs, two soldier figures, two peasant figures,  three action cards and a copy of the rules. Also included was a spare rubber band for the catapult.

Inside the Roman set.

The cards - used in the advanced game.

The Roman cards.

Caesar and his starter force.

The pig hurler catapult. Loads of fun!

The back card of the Egyptian set.

Inside the Egyptian starter set.

The Egyptian cards..

The Egyptian catapult.

Pharaoh and his starter set.

Both sides get this nice  head spike rack and scoring system.

All the figures together!

Once again - Thank you to Hugh from Small Scale World for the competition - I have been having loads of fun firing rubber pigs around the place!

I do intend to play at least one game of the advanced rules, but the sheer joy of shooting stuff with rubber pigs cannot be underrated!

The weekend that was.

Elephant plus milliput  equals logistic element!

I have managed to get a bit of modelling and painting done over the long weekend - so i should be posting some of that over the next few days. I also took part in a large game of Axis and Allies 1940, using both the Pacific and Europe sets. I found that to be quite an interesting experience, but a very time consuming one. I lso had the opportunity to inspect the new Axis and Allies 1914 board game. The pieces are very nice, but I am not sure when I would get time to play it. Hobby time is a valuable commodity and I generally pefer tabletop wargames to board games these days.

I have also made up a pack elephant stand for Harad games. The Elephant is from the Hat reissue of the  Airfix Tarzan set. The figure next to him is from the Mars Mujahideen set.

Currently I am eagerly expecting in the mail a number of items, in particular the Horrible History figures that I won in a competition over at Small Scale World (for details click here). I won one of the runner up prize packs, and will post pictures of them once I get my hands on them.

Recently arrived is this Matchbox Battle Kings K-110 recovery Vehicle my wife bought me.

I also after seeing the reviews, conversions and painted figures of the new British Infantry of the 1970s from A Call To Arms on a number of blogs (see here for the review from Small Scale World, here for some nice Royal Marines from 20th Century Wargames, and here and here for some conversions and Scots Guards from over at Plastic Warriors), I decided to order a couple of packets along with a couple of packets of the reissued Matchbox Paratroopers from an outfit called Model Hobbies in the UK. Once these arrive I will start converting the figures I need to make up my Argentinians for the Goose Green scenario.

It is quite a big beast.

It is of the same truck design as the Battle Kings Tank Transporter .

The business end of the tow truck.

Matchbox produced a number of vehicles that never were throughout their ranges. Some of these were loosely based on prototypes or preproduction concept art. Many of these toys then provided inspiration for UK comic book illustrators, the best know example being that of the Adventure 2000 Raider Command providing inspiration for Judge Dredd's transport through the Cursed Earth (click here for more info)

Vulcan!

The Vulcan bomber has always interested me greatly, and since I am gearing up to run a few Falklands games, I figured the time was right to purchase one - especially since there was a very nice diecast one sitting at one of the local model shops.

I purchased this Adult Collectible from Play Concepts....

 On a more serious note, the staff at Play Concepts are very friendly and helpful and their prices are very good - I have been picking up 1/144 Academy kits for around NZ$6 - NZ$8 a kit! Needless to say, I will be going back as they are very local to me, have great prices, and are very friendly.

Blurry photos are a house specialty!

The die cast is a very hefty model of the Arvo Vulcan Bomber that was to have been the primary for the first Black Buck raid on the Falklands. (For more information on the Vulcan click here, and more information on the Black Buck raids, click here)

A  not-quite-final layer before I got my mitts on the Vulcan!

Under the box lid there still remained a protective plastic cover separating me from my Vulcan! Fortunately, I had the wit and means to deal with this obstacle. Of course under the plastic cover, a sheet of plastic was layered over the model to protect the paintwork.

One last layer!

RAF Vulcans visited New Zealand several times in the 1950s,'60s, and '70s. Footage of the 1956 visit can be seen here. My Father saw one of the Vulcans flying around NZ while he worked as a linesman for the New Zealand Post Office. He was up a telephone pole at the time and said that he got a very good view of the aircraft from up the pole!

One visiting Vulcan had its RAF roundrel replaced with the RNZAF roundrel - which looks rather good on it! More details can be found here, and more pictures can be found here.

Even a 1/144 scale 'Tin Triangle' is quite large!

And it is quite heavy, but then there is a lot of  model aircraft  here!

I thought that I should also do some comparision shots with one of the Pucaras. As you can see, the Vulcan is much bigger!

Two rather different bombers!

The Vulcan is massive!

For those interested, South Atlantic War gives the CA stats for the Vulcan as Punishment 7, Ordnance 21 and a SAM mod. of -1. If only one aircraft is used - such as was historically during the Black Buck raids -, ordnance drops to 5. So even a single Vulcan can ruin your day in CD! Still, better than being on the wrong end of a tactical nuke!

1/144 Shapeway Pucaras

As part of the building up of figures and models needed to run the Goose Green scenario given in both the old CD CPs, and in the Harpoon supplement 'South Atlantic War', I acquired some 1/144 scale Pucaras from Shapeways (More details are given in an earlier post here)

The canopies are glued into place after been cut off the runners.

On the weekend I converted them to being 'in flight' rather than the wheels down version they where supplied as. Once I removed the undercarriage, I then used GW Liquid Green Stuff to bog the resulting gaps. I hadn't used liquid green stuff before, but after this I am very impressed with its performance, and can see myself using it a great deal.

Brushing in the Green Stuff was the easiest bogging job I have ever done!

I decided to give both aircraft the same style of paint scheme, and that I would do one similar to that found on an aircraft from III Brigada Aerea. Apart from the usual Googling for pictures, I also dragged out my copy of the Airplane magazine that featured the Pucara. The article was very interesting, particularly over the claim that Iraq had looked at purchasing some in 1985.

And two Pucaras are now  ready for the table!

 The paint job is very simple and basic, and I don't currently have any transfers for them, but I believe they are now table worthy!

Side view.

The underside of both are painted grey.

All I need now is some ground troops for them to support!

So all that is needed now is to paint up the Argentinian ground forces, and for the 1/144 Corgi  Diecast GR3s to arrive .