Last night was Modelin' Monday.  My desert Tomahawks are almost ready for decals.  I haven't decided whether to do the 112 Squadron sharks' mouths or not, though everyone tells me I should.

Meanwhile, my Anglo-Saxons for SAGA are progressing.  Got a second coat of red on the Warlord and his Hearthguard.

I'm working on a new Anglo-Saxon war band for SAGA.  While I was back in Missouri visiting the folks, my old college pal, Duane Nelson, graciously contributed some warriors to my effort.

I have the warlord with banner bearer, 12 hearth guard, and 16 warriors, ready for primer coat so far.  Next will be the levies — 24 of 'em.  Quite the effort.

I've been working on my 251 models for a while now — I do a little at a sitting as I get time.  The three on the left are a 251d modification I made of a print and build kit from papertigerarmaments.com.

The one on the upper right is the 251c kit straight from the print file with my own modification of open rear doors.  I find my paper AFVs fight just as hard as the plastic and resin ones do.  They have the added advantages of being cheaper yet more durable.

Sometime back I finished my Viking war band for SAGA.  Now I just have to paint some opponents for them...

Buffalo Chips - Part 2

Just a quick update on my F2A Buffalo project.  I finished painting them and brushed on a "dip" of Minwax Polyshades — a mixture of 1 part each black and antique walnut, 2 parts clear, and 4 parts odorless mineral spirits (which actually DOES have a slight but persistent odor).  After they dried for 24 hours, I sprayed them with Testors Dullcote.

Here are some pics of the results (although the photos don't do them justice as far as I'm concerned).  The dip, along with flaws in the twenty year old decals I used, make them look pretty battle-weary.

Until next time, all the best from the Tiger den.

Buffalo Chips

YEESH.  I've waited far too long to post.  Too much to do and too little time to write about it, I suppose.

Well, one of many projects I'm working on is repainting some Axis and Allies:  Angels 20/Bandits High planes.  I have three Finnish Brewsters I'm redoing as U.S. Marine F2A Buffaloes — also four Russian P-40B Tomahawks I'm repainting as British 112 Squadron aircraft complete with shark mouths (but I'll save pics of those for another post).

So, on to the Buffaloes...

First I gave them a base coat of good old Walmart flat white spray paint.

Next, I masked off the underside of each model with some special masking tape (I think it's called Gator Tape, but I don't have it handy to look at the name right now).

Once the masking was done, I sprayed the top of each plane with Testors flat military grey.  When the masks were removed, I had very nice 2-tone U.S. Marine camouflage.

I painted the canopies a light blue and applied some early war U.S. star decals to the wings and fuselages.  I had two sets of decals, but I didn't have enough of either group to finish off all the planes.  So I had to use some from each.   The newer ones had the red dot in the middle of the star, so I just painted over those with flat white craft paint.

The older set was really old — like 20 years old.  When I stuck them in water, some of them started to disintegrate.  It took a lot of fiddling to get them onto the planes in decent fashion.  I was unable to salvage some, so it took a few tries to get the rest of the wings and fuselages covered.  Even then, some of the decals were a little chipped.  I figure they'll add to the "lived in look" of the Marines' trusty old steeds.

I've played several dogfight games over the years, from the old Mustangs and Messerschmitts to Wings of War.  I have to say I like Axis and Allies' implementation best.  They seem to capture the varied capabilities of the aircraft while still inserting an element of chance into the maneuvers.  They're also the first set of rules I've seen that actually comes close to correctly reflecting the fact that, the faster your plane goes, the wider its turn arc is.

Recently, I downloaded a copy of Too Fat Lardies' "Squadron Forward" — a set of campaign rules for aerial combat.  You form your squadron and then fly a bunch of missions with it.  The twist is that each of your pilots has a different personality and different skills.  Your finest pilot may be a rogue, or your squadron commander a coward.  As near as I can tell the bonuses and disadvantages SF lays out will easily fit into the A&A rules.

So, I have a few ideas for campaigns.  The first is "White Tails" — a squadron of P-39s based on New Guinea.  This should be a challenging campaign as the Airacobras were outmatched by the Zeroes and other Japanese fighters they were up against.  P-39s were only $1.25 apiece on Miniaturemarket.com, so I couldn't pass them up.

The other squadron I'd like to campaign with is a British P-40 squadron in North Africa — hence my repainting the Russian P-40Bs.  I've always liked the Desert Campaign, plus I have a big variety of German and Italian fighters for the Tomahawks to go up against.

More later about the Tomahawks...

Spike Wars, Episode 2

Nothing but serious game design work at the Bailey household...