Jeeves and Wooster. (VBCW)

One of the great joys of VBCW is that you can let your imagination loose. So with that in mind Matt did ask me to paint these two figures as Jeeves and Wooster from the PD Woodhouse series of novels (And the Fry and Laurie TV series of course!). Needless to say Bertie Wooster is the one in yellow socks! I have tried to keep the colours as close to the TV series as the figures would allow. Bertie usually wears a grey suit in town and tweed when in the country, Jeeves clothing does not change!

One has to wonder what kind of shenanigans Mr Wooster will get involved in and what Jeeves will be able to extract him from. Will there be an "Unwanted love interest?" Some woman being engaged to the young sir. (IT seems to happen a lot!) Maybe Madeline "the stars are God's daisy chains" Bassett, or Stephanie "Stiffy" Byng, or Lady Florence Craye or Daphne Dolores Morehead or from the TV series Honoria Glossop a slightly more formidable female (and perhaps my favourite!) Or just maybe there will be a new one. But whatever happens we all know that Jeeves with a Lewis gun will overcome any obslical in the last scene!

A thoughouly enjoyable pair to paint and I shall have to get a few female characters just to provide a plot. And Maybe a "Gussy" Fink-Nottle as well just to make the plot thicker!

Thanks for looking today. Next post on Tuesday. Have a good weekend and see you soon, (I hope) Cheers Clint

More Viet Minh

Yes some more 20mm SHQ Viet Minh for my Vietnam collection. It was a repaint and re base exercise on some old and much loved lead. So No new lead painted so far this week. But there should be some on Sunday.

Firstly an RPG team, 1 to fire the RPG and 2 to fetch ammo up and out of hiding. This gives me a couple of Rocket propelled grenade teams in all and should give the US troops a reason not to go blundering about in armoured personnel carriers. But knowing what most players are like this really will not stop them at all. (They will be more worried about mines!)

  Then there is a .30 Cal Browning machinegun I do not have a lot of "heavy" weapons for my local force/militia Viet Minh this being my only medium machinegun but placed in the right locations this should be quite effective indeed. Again 2 extra figures for bringing up ammunition and if need be defending the gun. They are both armed with older and less effective weapons (an AR7 Survival rifle and an M3 "Grease Gun") as befits local forces who have been active for some time and may not always have access to the latest and most powerful weapons.

Lastly 5 standard Viet Minh armed with Ak's and bolt action rifles which will fit in with the other figures in my force. Every army needs more rank and file than specialists so I am happy to get them finished and ready for the table-top.

A special mention should go out to "Smiffy" one of Posties rejects for two reasons. Firstly he has been playing a few games and as with many projects that has inspired me somewhat. And secondly I have been after "Body Count" The tabletop games rules for about a year and he has not only passed them on to me but also passed me a copy of "Buckle for your dust" rules as well. For which I am very grateful.

There are more figure I want for this conflict, but other than Viet Minh mortars and some wildlife I think I am ready. So I would expect an AAR before the end of the year.

"Born to be wild"

Yes I have Steppenwolf in my head as I type this. So today we have a 1930's "Quadbike". A 4 wheeled jalopy with a small engine and a large machinegun. I am not sure what Matt plans for it, other than finishing of my troops of course! But I hope he will just use it as a machinegun as I do not need the agro of an extra vehicle to contend with as it nips across the board.

It is a 28mm sculpt and I think specifically for a VBCW as I have never seen one in any book or heard about one in any part of history. And that is one of the exciting thing about a Very British Civil War. If we anted historical accuracy we could always do one of the real wars of the period! And there were a few that were interesting as well. Not just the Spanish Civil War.

Painted for Matt the rider has a blue armband with cross for his Anglican league forces. There will be more coming by the weekend. (you are warned!) There should be a gun shield as well, but I have lost that for now, but I expect to have that found and finished in short order. I am sure when I do it will enhance the model a little. The model does come as a kit of parts and the lack of instructions did allow me to get it wrong a few times but overall it did go together easily. I just wish I knew where Matt got it from as there would be a web site where I could just check a few details.


A bit of a kooky addition to his force, which reminds me I will need to get my own force finished very soon as we are planning a game in 10 days.

Well thanks for looking. Have a great day as I am sure you deserve one and with luck more to show on Friday as I plan to finish a few more Viet Mihn either today or tomorrow as I have been inspired by another Reject and want to get them all finished off. I also want to re-write my Spanish Civil War homebrew rules.

So until next time take care and have fun.

Battletach try out.

Well yesterday at the club we played Battletech. I have not played the rules for 20 + Years and the other guys had not played them at all.  That being the case we kept it very simple with just a medium mech each. Relfie had a "Hunchback, I had a "Witworth", Ian an "Enforcer" and Kev a "Trebuchet|". For any one who knows Battletech well I had a 40 ton mech as I knew the rules and the others all had 50 ton mechs.

SO Kev and Relfie were against Ian and myself.  2 mecha a side and no clever scenarios just a get in and kill the opponents. Ian and myself set up to ttarget Kevin and leave the Hunchback alown as it only had short range weapons. (9 Hexes max).  And generally speaking the game went a little like this.



We try to shoot at Kevs trebuchet. But I miss with my LRMs but Ian makes a hit. This chips away some armour but nothing to worry about. Kev fires back at Ian and again scores hits but again just chipping away at armour.










 The next few turns sees me in the witworth running hot and firing all weapons and missing everything. Ian scores his with the LRM 10 rack but rolls very low for the number of missiles. In the game he manages to roll 2 2's and 4 3's on 2d6! I swear I did not touch his dice!Kev starts heating up and only launches missiles back, mostly at Ian's Enforcer! So I take very little damage and am able to steer clear of too many problems and manage to cool down. Kev finds the water and his heat sinks start to act more efficiently.














Relfie keeps closing the distance and finally lets rip with his AC20. This chews up Ians Mech quite badly, but he's still in the fight. The enforcer looses all the armour on one location and takes a hit to his autocannon 10. Ian gats a luck shot on the Trebuchet and causes a critical on the engine. This Gives Kev 5 extra heat each turn.Which in turn means that the "treb" starts running hot and from now on suffers 1 less movement point and a penalty on shooting.




Ian and myself try to put distance between the Hunchback and use only LRMs. This does not work all that well for me and I get hit and it penertrates the armour and scores a critical on my gyros. So jumping and running become MUCH more likely to result in me falling down. Kev and Relfie team up on Ian and back him into some harsh terrain. Which makes it much harder to get away from the hunchback. Ian fights on. We both target Kevs Trebuchet as much as possible and Kev gets 2 more crits against him, a second engine hit (now +10 heat a turn) and I hit a gyro of his and he decides not to run or jump from now on.

 The game ends with Ian loosing an arm (with the autocannon) and having all his torso shot out be repeated attacks. I in return stay at long range and launch LRMs as much as possible.  This finally has it's effect and I get another crit on Kevs engine and with 3 engine hits his mech is no longer functional.

Tis just leaves me an Relfie to fight it out. The bad news for me is that I am now low on missiles and can't run or jump without risking falling So the lumbering Hunchback will eventually "Muller" me! so I concede the game.

The good points: The game still plays well and has lots to recommend it. The new players picked the rules up quickly and understood the mechanics and hit numbers within 40 min for start of play and I am sure could very easily play again with little or no help. They said the rules were very instinctive.

The Bad points: Well for me it was all about the rose coloured glasses and while I did enjoy the game it was not the same as back in the day (25+ yrs ago!)

Thanks for reading today. The game was quite balanced and worked very well as a set of rules, it's just that you cannot beat nostalgia so after the game I was feeling a little underwhelmed!

All the best Clint