Thoughts on A Bridge Too Far

My copy of the book A Bridge Too Far by the late Cornelius Ryan. I also own his book The Longest Day but as yet not his final volume on the war.

A flyer contained in the book - probably no longer available judging by the cost of the postage and packing! Nice idea though.

Operation Market Garden has always been of great interest to me and fighting elements of the campaign over the years has given me a huge amount of enjoyment. I have used various sets of rules including Command Decision, WRG, Charles Grant’s Battle, Memoir 44 and a couple of hex and counter boardgames. The only figures I have used thus far have been 6mm Heroics and Ros and that a long time ago, way back in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Whilst sorting through Eric’s collection - I should qualify this by saying that I am sorting through a portion of it! - it suddenly dawned on me that perhaps fighting the campaign was something he planned to do or indeed, perhaps even did so using 20mm kit. He has the following troops ready to use - the 1st British Airborne, the Polish Parachute brigade, an American Airborne regiment, two SS Panzer Divisions, the British Guards Armoured Division and a British infantry Division. He has also collected and organised a German 1944 Fallschirmjager Division (currently unpainted). With the exception of the German paratroops all are painted and ready to use and merely require some minor reorganisation to be more or less table ready.

The entire collection is of course up for disposal but I am thinking that there could be no better way of showcasing it than to actually use it on the tabletop. It would have to be something that could be organised relatively quickly so a detailed hour-by-hour or day-by-day simulation would be out. I am thinking along the lines of something like a series of linked scenarios, Portable Wargame style. The terrain would present a degree of difficulty - mainly as I do not own anything specifically 20mm scale so a dive into my collection of ‘town in a bag’ buildings will be in order. I could probably knock up a bridge or two easily enough - “It is all a question of bridges” - and in many ways the amount of improvisation required to pull this off would be very ‘Eric’ so I would be in good company!

The Portable Market Garden Wargame eh? There could even be a book in that….

Commandoes - Eric Knowles Style

20mm Commandoes manufactured by lord alone knows who by! Any help would be appreciated as I have around 80 odd to dispose of! 

It has been as usual a very busy weekend but I was able at long last to get some ‘moving and shaking’ done in respect of Eric’s 20mm WW2 collection. The bulk of the 1940 collection is now at its new home meaning that I can at last begin to think about the huge amount of kit for 1944. 

I have found a new home for what Eric was using for his planned 14th Army set up - the Chindit column consisted of short wearing Australian infantry with trouser wearing NCOs. The latter was swiftly removed leaving nigh on a hundred agitated Aussies ready for service in the desert along with a similar amount of short wearing Indian infantry. Having sorted these out I then decided to tackle the unpainted 1944 NW Europe British stuff. Aside from a Kangaroo infantry battalion and a reserve formation, together with a four gun battery of 25pdrs with crews (metal) and four Priest SP guns with crews (resin and metal), there was a large box of assorted Commandoes. 

Around 80 figures of these are wearing the Airfix woollen hat whilst around 150 are in the Royal Marine beret and are representative of 40, 41 and 42 Commando. There are also a further 80 odd figures of the type you see represented in the picture above. I have no clue as to the manufacturer of these so if anyone has any idea please let me know.

Eric was very relaxed about mixing different figure manufacturers in his armies, even down to individual units. As I have gone through some of this collection I have even come across the odd plastic 20mm figure used to round out a unit and then of course there are his conversions. Eric was not averse to chopping figures around and I have come across a few examples of where he has changed heads and weaponry - some of these conversions are quite tricky to spot but for the most part can be picked out reasonably easily.

So including all the various Commando support units Eric has amassed around 350 or so figures - let that sink in a moment.

350 Commandoes - this is territory beyond the realm of a usual table top battle unless you have a/ plenty of space, b/ plenty of time and c/plenty of enthusiasm! 

Eric was never short of C above!

Of Warhammer 40K, Space Hulk and Xenos Rampant

“Cleanse and Burn….In the name of the Emperor!”

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…. I was really excited when Games Workshop first launched Warhammer 40K, essentially fantasy in space, and had many great games with a very nice painted collection of metal figures featuring Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Eldar, Orks and even Squats (40K Dwarves for the uninitiated). For the record these were painted for me by the late Mike Bush, a supremely talented figure painter and professional artist and all of this would have been during the mid 1980s. 

When the Aliens inspired game Space Hulk came out, followed by Space Crusade and Advanced Space Crusade and ultimately Epic 40K and Adeptus Titanicus (we have not even gotten to Battlefleet Gothic yet!) my interest in the original game fired off in various directions which certainly served to dissipate my efforts in due course. Space Hulk was always a favourite and so by the time the dust had settled in the early 1990s it was pretty much all I was playing from the 40K universe and even then my enthusiasm had paled substantially.

For me the endless upgrade of units and the increasing choice of models etc - not to mention the cost - kind of put me off the whole thing. It became a chore trying to keep up with it all and so in the end I didn’t bother. I always rather liked the 40K universe background though.

Fast forward to now and things on a Sci Fi front have been making rather unexpected but welcome progress, My acquisition of assorted bits and pieces for Another Glorious Day in the Corps will serve to satisfy my Aliens fixation, even more so now that I have a copy of the Aliens Space Hulk variant found in an early issue of the Ragnarok - the journal of the Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargamers (SFSFW) - courtesy of Steve Blease (many thanks Steve!). This will enable me to play Space Hulk, Aliens style should I want to. 

Enough of the rather rambling background and on to the main course.

That is a whole of models to be going on with. 

Warhammer 40K Leviathan is a rather large box set that contains 72 Citadel models (including some BIG pieces, not just ‘man-sized’ figures), a 392 hardback rules and background book and a deck of cards specific for the rules. There is also a booklet containing assembly instructions for the models (it reminded me of a Lego instruction booklet) and a sheet of decals representing a number of Marine chapters should you wish to use them. There are no dice, templates or measuring devices included - essentially it a large box of figures with a hardback rule book.

The hardback rule book. This really is a thing of beauty. A full background to the 40K universe and its assorted denizens, the main rules and also for Combat Patrol, a surprisingly brief introduction to the “Warhammer 40K Hobby, lots of model pictures and plenty of suitably doom-laden artwork, as befits the “grim darkness of the far future (where) there is only war.”

I looked long and hard at this over the course of a couple of weeks and did a whole pile of research and cost comparisons. Last night, at Wayland Games in Hockley, the home of SEEMS - the South East Essex Military Society, aka my occasional club - I pulled the trigger and bashed the debit card to the tune of £120. On the scale of GW this is a bargain and I was not the only one to think so as whilst last week there were no fewer than a dozen or so copies of this set on display - NOT on the website I might add - yesterday evening saw but four copies remaining. 

The cunning plan - at least part of it….

Why? The reasons are many and varied but what it all boils down to is that I wanted two forces for use with Xenos Rampant. I am happy to use GW figures and background with non GW rules but they are there if I need them. There is sufficient variety of core troops for each force - Marine and Tyrannid - to field a couple of armies for Xenos Rampant - sadly there are not enough figures from Another Glorious Day in the Corps to be able to do this successfully - as well as being able to tackle a Space Hulk or three. There is a certain degree of irony in the fact that I will be using GW figures on the map boards from Another Glorious Day in the Corps to play Space Hulk missions and using Colonial Marines to fight them as well!

Certainly a great way to restock my sprue supply….

Of the figures themselves there is little to say other than that they are simply incredible to look at. There are some that are very ‘GW-ish’ which for me means over the top in terms of  detailing - usually an excess of ornate trappings, cloaks, purity seals and all manner of ‘bling’ - but the main bulk of the collection is, and I use this term carefully, ‘Sci Fi generic normal’. That is the main thing for me, the figures are GW but suit my rather more restrained take on the 40K universe!

True to form I shall be painting the models in anything but ‘official’ colour schemes - for the marines with over a thousand chapters I have pretty much Carte Blanche in this respect - and to be honest, I have always enjoyed painting Sci Fi stuff, albeit not very well!

Previously I had looked long and hard at Adeptus Titanicus but never did anything about it. I think I have missed the boat on this to be honest and the after market for anything for this game is ruinously expensive.

I almost left it too late to get into Aeronautica Imperialis but luckily managed to secure a copy of the base game. Luckily the extra models appear to be relatively plentiful so topping up the collection should not be too painful - it is quite a self contained item in any event.

Of course we have the knew version of Epic 40K to look forward to at some point this year which is something I shall take a look at with my well known open mind and mastery of objectivity….

“In space, no-one can hear you get the debit card out….!”

What on earth are Sprue doing?

Really pleased to have gotten a supply of these - the four ‘flagpoles’ are incredibly useful and have solved one particular building issue….

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….I purchased the first edition of Games Workshop Epic 40K game along with the original version of Adeptus Titanicus. I had a lot of fun with both until it all went very “Games Workshopy” - lots of supplements, add one and increasingly expensive models - and the collections of both were disposed of. True to form, at the time I remember using many of the component parts from both games for a variety of things - the weapons from Adeptus formed the basis of a couple of fleets of starships - but there was one piece in particular that was extremely useful. It is also a piece I have been trying to get a hold of for a number of years. 

The piece in question is a figure base base sprue. The bases for the figures at the time were 20mm square with five circular recesses - aligned like the five on a D6 - to drop the figures into. Also on the sprue were four ‘flagpoles’ used to identify command bases. It was these that I was after, not the bases, just the ‘flagpoles’. If you look closely at the picture above you can see that each of these has what looks like a muzzle brake on one end - this fits into the base - and a flat circular tab on the other. I used loads of these for weapons on a vast array of scratch built star fighters based on a combination of Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica. I have a huge surplus of these as of the four bases on a sprue only one had the hole to affix a flagpole so there were three spare from every sprue.

The spaceships and star fighters have long gone - around thirty odd years long gone - but I always remembered those flagpoles and for something very specific for the American Civil War ship collection.

Spar Torpedoes.

I have tried all manner of things to fashion a spar torpedo mount but nothing I tried seemed to look right and whilst using these ‘flagpoles’ may seem like a cop out they certainly fit is with the aesthetic look of my models. They are, after all, purely representational!

My plan is to fit both of the Atlanta models I have completed and also the C.S.S. Webb. I will also be able to use these for a few other models currently under consideration. I picked up 21 sprues - no bases, just the flagpoles - from a chap on eBay for next to nothing so I will have plenty to use going forwards.

Back to the Grind

The final two games from the recent haul. They look good but are not for me, despite being interested in both wars.

After a busy couple of weeks with work, the medical profession (nothing serious, just the usual battles with officialdom that Laurel has to undertake), some domestic issues and packing, sorting and organising a man cave that is doing a fair impersonation of Steptoe’s Yard - I am at last able to resume digging in to the WW2 collection of Eric Knowles. This means that I shall be once again knee deep in cardboard boxes, bubble wrap and brown tape and needless to say, pictures will be shown on the blog as I work through the collection. There are another couple of boxes to sort through as well.

In the meantime though, the two boardgames pictured above are the last of the recent haul for disposal.

They are priced at £40 for the ACW game and £50 for the AWI tri-pack. If anyone is interested in either or both then drop me a line or a comment. The email is, as ever, roguejedi@btinternet.com

“Get Away From Her, You B***h!”

Once again the box lid….

….and the back. Note the fearsome looking Alien Queen.

The final part of my Aliens adventure arrived this morning, titled as it is from the iconic showdown scene between Riley in her power loader and the Alien Queen. Contained in this expansion are extra double sided game boards, more cards and counters and of course, the last of the figures.

I now have all I need to kick the whole Aliens thing off but first of all the models need assembling. The humans are quite straightforward but the Aliens need a little more work. The tails have been identified as being a bit of a weak point which will need to addressed with some pinning. 

I was pleased to see that the power loader can be assembled with or without the Ripley figure - this is useful as the power loader in the game can be used by any character. Ripley in the driving seat would be more appropriate though.

I have no fears over the assembly of the models but I will need to think about the painting and so some research will be needed and I think you can guess what that might be!

Ultimate Badasses

The customary front of the box shot….

….and the back. Apone doing what he does best - pointing and shouting!

The first of two expansions to Another Glorious Day in the Corps arrived yesterday morning which means that the cast of character models is nearly complete. The set contains 6 models including Apone, Drake, Crowe, Wierzbowski, Dietrich and for some unfathomable reason, the company bad guy, Carter Burke. Also included are the character cards, a deck of cards for equipment etc, more special marine dice and the additional rules which are geared mainly towards character development.

The next arrival will be the “Get away from her you Bitch!” Set which, as mentioned previously, includes Ripley in a power loader, Bishop - whole and in half, Ripley carrying Newt and the Alien Queen.Most importantly it also has a campaign system so that the whole LV 426 experience can be gamed.

The figures are really nice and are instantly recognisable as to who they are. The bases have the character name and feature a piece of metal flooring, appropriate for the colony complex of Hadley’s Hope. I need to think about these as they are a little restrictive in use - how many games would you fight in a colony complex? I may look to use something more generic but will need to thinks about it.

As an aside I have been looking at the models with a view to using them with Xenos Rampant - the Sci Fi Rampant series rules but would certainly need to expand the forces somewhat first.  

“Ready to get it on!”