New Rules and Decals

The rulebook and play sheet

The back cover. Apologies for the reflective glare but in my defence the cover is really glossy!

It is always a pleasure having things dropping through the letterbox that are not bills or other officialdom! So it was this morning that I had two items arrive - a copy of  Des Darkin’s new ACW rules and a sheet of decals for my planned repaint of the four Wildcat fighters into Fleet Air Arm Martlets. 

The rules are not what I would usually look at - there is more detail than I tend to look at these days - but I was rather intrigued by some of the mechanics used, along with the focus on command decisions and the inherent friction therein. I have only had a cursory look through and so cannot go into much detail - I will do in a later post - but first impressions are very positive. Plenty of full colour inspirational eye candy is present - largely wasted on me it must be said - but I have an alternative cunning plan as to how I would use the rules. I shall be looking to use my block armies rather than figures. Heresy I know but hey ho, what the hell and all that!

The rules can be purchased from www.shedowargames.co.uk  and they are well supported with videos etc as well as dedicated Facebook group. As mentioned, I shall post a more detailed review in due course.

Enough for four aircraft so I will need to be careful applying these! Luckily these are pretty straightforward looking (famous last words?).

The decals were produced by Sieben Schwaben Spiele in deepest Bavaria. Again, there is also a Facebook group where it is possible to see other examples of the range of decals they produce. The sheet you see was originally sized at 1:200th but a quick request via messenger secured a rescaled version at 1:100th, for use with my Axis and Allies Angels 20 collection, specifically the aforementioned Wildcats/Martlets. The sheet cost eight euros with two euros for shipping which I thought was pretty reasonable.

Although they are designed for 888 squadron Fleet Air Arm, the style of numerals is suitable for other squadrons as well. I shall have a look and see what I can come up with. Repainting the Wildcat into a Fleet Air Arm scheme should be easy enough, even for me, so I shall look forward to tackling this in due course.

All in all then, a pretty good start to the week and I also have a few other bits and pieces en route.