Centis.

Very little done wargames wise these last few days, Well nothing I can talk about anyway.

So instead of posting nothing I have managed to paint up 3 Centurion tanks in 1/300th scale (or 6mm if you prefer).

These will be going to my Aram Israeli wars collection for cold war commander. In the rules no matter how big your army you can only have a MAXIMUM of 3 of these tanks. So no point in painting many more. I suppose I could paint another 3 as Jordanian Centurions! And that would be just to scare the Israeli player!

In the game it has a range of 100cm and a firepower of 5d6 which for the time period is pretty impressive. More so a it has 6 hits. I knew it was an impressive tank for the time after all in the Korean war not a single one was  knocked out despite one vehicle being hit (mostly by RPGs) over 90 times.

So in the rules I do Like the fact that a maximum of 3 are allowed in any one game. Which considering 3 Centurions would be nearly half your points in a 1000 point game! But we all know players who would want more "super tanks" in a combined arms game than anything else including infantry, artillery, command, recconisence, air support  or everything else put together. Which does not in anyway lead to a balanced game. And that is just because they want to win. Even if you played a 5 or 10 thousand point game you would still only be allowed 3 in the game MAX.

That's my very small post today as I have sickness in the family and my painting/hobby focus is elsewhere.

All the best Clint

Dust clouds

Some of you may remember my desire to do some 1/300th scale Arab Israeli wars as I harken back to my youth. Well I have moved it ever so slightly forward as a Project. Yes I have painted 2 SU 100
Soviet Tank Destroyers used by the Egyptian army in the wars up to and including the 1973 Yom Kippur war. So that is an extra 2 vehicles done.

Also I think I have found the rules I like. Simple enough for big battles yet detailed enough to have a good fun game. The rules in Question being "Cold War Commander." The rules do cover most actions from 1946 to about 2010. But you may have to do some slight research to get balanced forces and NOT use vehicles out of period with other countries. For example some WW2 tanks, APCs and artillery were being used in the Yom Kippur war including German Panzer Mk 4s but the main front line troops were not using them very much at all. Also the famous Russian T34-85 was being used by both Egypt and Israel (Israel captured about 300 from the war of 1967 and they were used but only in desperation as the main Israeli tanks were either British Centurions or US M48 Pattons) and while the rules do give a very good place to start the army lists are very broad in regard to who can have what. But seriously nothing that a little background reading on the Net would not sort out, that is UNLESS you have players who want to always have the best equipment in unlimited numbers..... We have all come across them I am sure.)

 One of the things about the desert is the fact that vehicles moving (Particularly if moving fast) tend to have dust trails following them. I stole this idea shamelessly from BIG LEE LINK and I hope he does not mind me sharing it and does not want to batter me for doing so!

So following Big Lees example I decided to make my own.

This was done in a very few easy steps.

Firstly MDF bases were used, although you could use other types of bases and for bigger scales that is probably the right thing to do. To the MDF bases, some "Woodlands Scenes" Clump foliage was super glues.

Once dried I watered down some PVA white wood glue. (Which is technically a resin ("Resin W" if you want to know) ) I then soaked the clump foliage in the watered down PVA and left it for a couple of weeks. This allowed for thorough drying and... (Yeah it was up the garden shed and I forgot about it!I will confess!)

But Once dry it had a solid texture and not spongy like Clump foliage usually is. So once dry I sprayed the bases with Grey Primer. Other colours are available it was just what I had available. Then I used two Highlights to colour the dust clouds. Starting with the desert floor colour and then adding about 50% white for the second coat.

The grey still shows through and the desert colours tie the dust clouds to the terrain and setting.

Other than drying time (which was long... too long really as I forgot about them) the 15 dust clouds took about 45 minutes from start to finish.

Simply placing one behind a vehicle will tell me if it has mover either this turn or last turn.  Which may alter its chance to hit or be hit when firing occurs.

A simple game addition which will remind me if the vehicle has moved and will look the part in game without distracting from the look of the game.

Thanks for looking today.
I may not post for a couple of days as I am about to start a conversion and I dislike doing work in progress blog posts.

Cheers Clint