No game tonight - one had been planned earlier this week but as our Omicron cases grow, it was decided to pull the pin - which was unfortunate but not particularly surprising.
Inspired by last weeks game of Iron Cross, over the weekend I invested in a little extra late war British armour, courtesy of Armourfast. The set of two kits is £7 ($14 NZ) ex UK but were $20 locally. - I decided it was worth paying the extra to get them in three days rather than three weeks!
Purchased on Monday, they duly arrived on Wednesday and the first Firefly was assembled yesterday evening and undercoated today
The rear of each box has VERY simple assembly instructions
A few images of the assembled and under coated Sherman Firefly
With one of the Valiant British infantry figures to give an idea of scale
Thats all for tonight - might post again on Sunday
They look the business Keith. Gone are the days when I'd happily spend a week gluing together sixty or seventy individual components to make a tank which does not look any better, and is far less sturdy, than this type of kit.
ReplyDeleteI know Lawrence - I refer you back to a post about 14 months ago here https://1808534.blogspot.com/2021/01/and-now-for-something-completely.html I mentioned this vehicle to the chaps last week at our game, as it was in my 20mm WWII box - it took me two or three sessions and literally, the tracks and bogeys had about 30-40 components - ON EACH SIDE! Once painted up, the Armourfast version will probably look just as good!
DeleteNeat! What scale are these?
ReplyDeleteThey are 1/72 or 20mm Jon. Just right in my opinion...28mm vehicles are starting to get a bit on the large side I feel.
DeleteVery nice 20mm Tanks Kieth- look forward to seeing them painted up ready for battle. Cheers. KEV.
ReplyDeleteThanks Kev, it shouldn't take too long to finish them off
DeleteThey look very nice
ReplyDeleteCheers Scotty
DeleteGood buy. I have a few of the armourfast models and enjoy them. The track faces are a little basic, but not overwhelmingly so for wargame pieces and I put a bit of mud on mine!
ReplyDeleteI saw a photo the other day of a superbly done Achilles and they had put some small lengths of chopped wire inside the rear of the turret to represent racks of shells and two crew member, which may have been AB models.
Thanks Norm.i too think they are detailed enough for wargaming purposes. I must admit, I do like vehicles to have crews if possible so I am already thinking about how to add some figures to the Achilles!
DeleteNice kits by the look of it and things have moved on markedly since the days of Airfix and the 'rubber' tracks. Zvezda models really set the standard for wargames kits in recent years, but now so many other manufacturers have caught up in terms of quality, range and price.
ReplyDeleteFingers crossed for any Covid restrictions in NZ, but if our experience is anything to go by, I imagine you may enter more lockdown style restrictions:(.
Thanks Steve. I actually have an Airfix Panther in my 20mm collection, put together a couple of years ago, and it still looks OK in my opinion. Re Covid, our Givt has categorically ruled out any more lockdowns but we are having an Omicron surge like they had in Australia at the beginning of the year. I work for a courier company and in the last couple of weeks we have had all sorts of restrictions on what customers can send etc as fifty percent of our sorting staff have been off work due to infection or isolation. Speaking to customers, they are in the same boat and quite a few of my contacts...Distribution Centre manager, GM of Logistics etc, have personally had Omicron or have it right now. I expect it will be like that fie another month or so.
DeleteNice, must be the time of year as I am putting together a late war German force at the moment. Mainly as I have an American force which hasn’t seen enough combat, 15 mm though.
ReplyDeleteThanks Matt. What range are you using for the WWII Germans? We all have large collections of Flames of War and when we played Iron Cross a few years ago, we used the 15mm figures which worked well with these rules too.
DeleteNice little kits Keith…
ReplyDeleteI do like the fact that there are so few parts… If the were push fit they would indeed be perfect 😁
All the best. Aly
The ultimate of course Aly is the pre painted ones! Julian,s Puma, in the previous AAR, for example, is one such. It came with an eight Page "magazine" about the vehicle and cost about ten quid here. He managed to track down quite a few of these mags and several of his 29mm vehicles are of this type, very well painted and very well detailed ....see the radio antenna on the Puma, for example!
DeleteLooking fantastic sir!
ReplyDeleteThank you Michal!
DeleteNot bad at all. Looking forward to the painted versions!
ReplyDeleteCheers Dai, you shouldn't have too long to wait!
DeleteSorry your game got canceled. I know the pain and disappointment.
ReplyDelete28mm tanks always look like such monsters to me as I’m used to my 15mm ones. 😀
Yeah a bit of a bummer Stew although I have been working from home this week so it would have ben a bit of a hike to get to Julian's. compared with my normal post work visit - never mind! I agree re 28mm armour and I think WWII only really works in that scale as a skirmish game, with one or two vehicles per side. If you want to do Kursk or Goodwood, 1/300 is probably the way to go!
DeleteIs that barrel fixed in that position???
ReplyDelete(Also email me if there's any other 1/72 vehicles you were after - possible that I would have something - built as well)
Hi Andrew - OK. thanks. I am trying to avoid going over the top with this - I think I have more or less enough already but after fluking a win over Panthers with standard 75mm guns, I felt the need of some 17lb backup in case Julian fields Tigers or even King Tigers next time!
DeleteAsk him next time to use points though! Chris told me that the game ended up being 3 to 1 points wise in favour of the Germans:)
DeleteNot sure - we definitely had more kit but possibly it was less powerful...however. the dice Gods certainly evened things out!
DeleteToo bad about cancelling, hopefully 2 steps forward to one back. Always liked armorfast for kits, sturdy and enough detail for gaming.
ReplyDeleteCheers Joe - fingers crossed on the gaming front! I agree about Armourfast - just put the second Sherman and first Achilles together and it took me about 30-45 minutes. The first Sherman is painted and I think it looks pretty good - pics soon!
Delete