(First Annual?) Lard Luau

For Father’s Day this year my wife gifted me a “Day of Lard”. We rented the clubhouse in our community and several friends and myself played some Too Fat Lardies games, ate great chow and drank great beer. We then headed to our house for dinner and some late evening What a Tanker.

Overall I think is was a huge success, and there are other smaller regional “Lard Days” being planned. Hopefully others felt the same and we’ll do it again next year.

Here are a few pictures of the “Hell’s Highway” CoC game and Ed B’s excellent AWI Sharp Practice game. Next time we’ll document it better.

 

May Workbench Roundup

With no looming GM deadline until July, I decided to work on whatever struck my fancy this month. Here’s my scatterbrained results.

A Warlord Panhard 178 to replace my existing one from Army Group North. The AGN one has an integrated base that I was never quite pleased with.

A Jump Off Point, Force Morale Trackers and Patrol Markers for my Early War French.

Some plastic canoes from a child’s play set for my FIW Sharp Practice games at Historicon.

An Abomination from the old Carnevale line.

A scratch-built Woodland Indian smoking rack, again for my Historicon games.

Generic hedge gate from Warbases.

I think the small dinosaur is either from Iron Wind or Reaper and the Owlbear is from Otherworld.

Late war German Panzerschreck team from Warlord.

Some late war German NCOs from Victory Force and Warlord.

An early war MG34 team from Warlord.

Medusa from Otherworld, a Celtic Druid from Gorgon Studios and a zombie-thingy from maybe Reaper(?).

Artizan pulp Russians.

A murder of crows from Reaper – my first piece for Legends of the High Seas.

Early War French – Completed

Lately I’ve been trying to finish up my WWII platoons that are in a partially finished state, so I started with some low hanging fruit by completing my Early War French. By “completed” I mean that I have no unpainted French left in the house. I’d like to add in some motorcycles now that they are available, but I digress. Here’s a photo dump.

French Harbor Town – Part IX

So finally I finished up the impetus for this project – the Brigade Games U Boat.

Being a gaming piece first and foremost I wanted it to be easy to store and transport, so decided to not go overboard (see what I did there) with the detail. I made the decision early on to leave it as a three piece affair and to magnetize as many pieces as possible.

The kit came with a single 20mm, the 8.8cm deck gun, two periscopes, an UZO pedestal and the posts for the railing at the aft of the conning tower. Surprisingly missing were the iconic (to me) horseshoe shaped life rings. I was able to find some 1/48th scale ones on Shapeways along with a more detailed UZO and a circular range finder.

Assembly of the guns was pretty straight forward, and I magnetized the bases of these along with the periscopes and the UZO. I then used some solder to create the aft railing. I affixed the life rings but decided to leave off the RF antenna. It was housed in a box and I didn’t want to sacrifice any more real estate in the conning tower as I wanted to cram some based figures in there.

After that it was a matter of firing up the airbrush and giving it a coat of paint. The markings are hand painted and are my interpretation of the U-201 coat of arms and snowmen.

Additionally I scabbed together a couple of gangplanks from basswood strips. The rubber dinghy is from Bandai and the supplies are from the scrap box.

Finally I’ll put the finishing touches on the figures for the orders of battle and gin up a few play aids.

French Harbor Town – Part VIII

We finally had a short break in the weather, so I was able to fire up the airbrush and finish the Opel Blitz and the sea wall. The truck is from Rubicon and built straight from the box.

I created the sea wall by 3D printing the stone cap pieces which I then affixed to lengths of 90 degree angled styrene. I then created the wall by cutting sections of G-scale corrugated sheet and gluing them to the angled pieces. The backside of the plastic sheeting had the shape I wanted for the wall corrugations. The dock cleats are an O-scale model railroading product. I may circle back and airbrush the stonework a bit more if I have enough time.

Up next I’ll start working on the U Boat.