Big Game News!

Followers of our VBCW Herefordshire big games will be pleased to learn that we're planning another bash - provisionally on Saturday 27th September (subject to change).

With the civil war continuing to rage across the country, shortages abound. In Herefordshire, no faction is immune to the problems of supply as everything from petrol to artillery shells are rationed.

The Royalists and BUF at least have a reasonably secure supply route to Shropshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, but the government, content to keep the county as a buffer zone, is slow to put it's hand in it's pocket.

The Anglican League is forced to rely on a number of meandering, low capacity supply lines incoming from the Forest of Dean up to mid Wales. A significant proportion of supplies are painstakingly carried from ports in the north west, through Nationalist north Wales and down the salient into Monmouthshire. However, with Royalists from Carmarthen establishing outposts as far inland as Brecon, an alternative route must be found.

All eyes are turning from the largely stabilised front in south Herefordshire to the border country in the west, where a railway line loops from Sir Gilbert's Pontrilas to neutral Hay, and thence to Welsh-held Kington and points beyond in Radnorshire. Control of this line would greatly simplify the Anglican's supply route and bypass numerous unsympathetic enclaves in mid Wales.

However between these areas a number of strategic junctions and stations lie either under direct Royalist control, or are jealously guarded by local potentates under the umbrella of the Landowners' Protection Association.

It is clear that all local factions, aided and abetted by numerous interested parties from outside the county, must wrestle for control of the Welsh border parishes and the strategic railway line, before supplies run out...

 

Presenting Miss Bonnie Taylor

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you Miss Bonita 'Bonnie' Taylor; Morale officer for my Welsh Nationalist faction.

Miss Taylor was born in Patagonia to a poor but hard-working family of Welsh settlers. Her father, a Methodist preacher, brought her up with the traditional Welsh songs, stories and poems that his father had taken with him to Argentina, as well as tales of the desperate conditions that compelled him to emigrate.

An imaginative and strong-willed girl, Bonnie quickly identified with the land of her forefathers, performing the traditional songs with gusto. When the cause of Welsh Nationalism became intertwined with the stirrings of civil war in Britain, she stepped up her already lively correspondence with various literary and academic figures among the Welsh diaspora and espoused a free Wales to anyone who would listen.

Desperate to support the cause, Bonnie yearned to do her bit in Wales, but being a mere preacher's daughter, felt unable to do so. This changed when she found herself betrothed to a local rancher, a well-off but rough and uneducated man who had little time for her old songs. At the same time, a trickle of men began to leave the area to fight for the embryonic Welsh Nationalist militias.

Seizing her chance, Bonnie slipped away one night with a group of volunteers and armed with nothing more than her lusty voice and her great-grandmother's cawl recipe, found herself on a steamer bound for Britain.

Some say that any true-blooded Welshman will happily charge into the very teeth of death just for a chance to hear that voice or taste that cawl. Others maintain that dashing into those fiery jaws is a distinctly preferable option!

 

The miniature is a camp follower from a Perry Miniatures camp set, with a hat and shawl of Greenstuff.

We Are The Passengers..

Seeing as my new armoured car from 1st Corps has an open hatch, I decided to chop up some spare miniatures, representing different VBCW factions, to fit in it.

Group shot

A smoking cap wearing Anglican League officer putting on his old mess jacket

A sinister BUF officer with red beret and sword

A flat cap wearing militiaman with rifle

A Blackshort officer with pistol

A Major Bloodnock style Territorial officer

A Francophile Welsh Nationalist reading a map

Thanks 1st Corps! Part 2

So here are the models assembled!

Thankfully, these vehicles came together without any major hassle, despite my ham-fistedness (I've put on one of the truck wheels a bit wonky, which I'll have to re-do at some stage.)

I had to use some tiny blobs of Milliput to help hold the hatches on the armoured car in place, and on the truck, attaching the straps that run from the cab canopy to the grille (not pictured above) made me think a little, but otherwise these blighters were easy to build.

Mike from 1st Corps has kindly answered a couple of points from my previous post:
The figure in tank-top does come with the armoured car.
The truck I've got has the early war wheels. There is a late war set of solid wheels which are made to fit without the need to pin.

Time to slap on some paint...

For the armoured car I went for a pseudo slow dazzle camouflage effect.

To tell you the truth in retrospect I'm not very happy with my paintwork - it certainly doesn't do the model justice in my opinion, but it'll have to do. (I'm rather pleased with the chap poking out of the hatch though - a conversion job from the lead pile with a Greenstuff Major Bloodnock nose!)

I'm much happier with how the truck came out (apart from the wonky wheel).

I experimented with a black undercoat and drybrushed base coat method for the main truck body, and I think it worked rather well. Alas you can't see the figures very well in the photos.

I've left the truck bed canopy removable.

Here are some size comparison pics...

Truck between a Matchbox Crossley and a 1/50 Corgi steam lorry

Armoured car between a Warlord M3 and a converted 1/48 Tamiya car

Going by my experiences so far, I heartily recommend 1st Corps' stuff - the vehicles didn't take much cleaning up and any problems in the construction were down to my own ineptitude. They paint up rather nicely too and Mr. Tank-top now ranks as one of the favourite minis in my collection!

For my next step I've hacked at some more spare figures to fit in the A/C hatch, enabling me to use it for various factions - watch this space...

Thanks 1st Corps!

Those nice chaps at 1st Corps have very kindly given me a couple of vehicles to review.

I hope to get them assembled and painted ASAP, but until then, here's an unboxing (well, un-jiffybagging) post!

First off this nifty WW1 British truck. As you can see the main piece is resin, with separate and therefore detachable resin cab cover and tarpaulin.

The metal bits consist of the wheels, brake/gear levers, the straps that connect the bonnet to the cab cover, and a driver and passenger. I particularly like the latter, who is grimly clutching his rifle while his coat collar is turned up to protect him from the elements.

The only slightly tricky procedure so far has been the drilling of the wheel hubs and axles, as I think pinning the wheels will stand me in greater stead than just glueing them on.

The pieces are very well cast and, writing this mid-clean up, aren't giving me too much trouble with removing flash and such. It seems quite a chunky beast so it'll be interesting to see how it compares size-wise with my 1/48 Tamiya and 1/50 Corgi vehicles.

Next up is this cracking Yeomanry armoured car - designed to represent the numerous privately commissioned armoured cars of the period.

Again the main body is resin, with two resin armoured rear wheels and metal front wheels and hatch covers.

Note that there are four hatches, so plenty of scope for conversion with lots of figures or weapons poking out! The vehicle also has three lamps attached to it, so it could easily be used as some sort of armoured scout vehicle.

Again mid-clean I'm not having any headaches with the filing and snipping and there are no awkward mould lines or the like. As above I'm going to drill and pin the front wheels on.

Perhaps my favourite part of this kit is the figure that accompanied it (I don't know if this is usually part of the purchase) - a chap holding a rifle and nattily dressed in Oxford bags and tank-top.

Stay tuned then folks!

Skater Boy

 

No I'm not about to burst into an Avril Lavigne song, but ignoring Spode’s calls to make the British bicycle the transport of choice, have given one of his chaps a pair of roller skates.

 

 

My VBCW collection has a number of figures I can use as messengers/runners, including horsemen, motorcyclists, cyclists and of course the roller skater from the Musketeer militia range.

 

 

However I didn't have anything that I could specifically use for my Blackshorts, so I looked to the remains of my Perry plastic WW2 8^th Army sprue, added a little greenstuff and some bits for the wheels and voilà!

 

 

 

Scenery or Scatter? It's All Objective

During a mooch around my local Hobbycraft I came across a 1:35 Tamiya jerry can set, which consists of six oil drums, a bunch of jerry cans and some buckets. Although 1:35 is a larger size than whatever scale 28mm is supposed to be, they would do quite nicely for scenery, battlefield scatter or objective markers (or jump-off points if I'm playing Chain of Command).

Using up some spare bases, I put these in varying positions, enlivened with the odd jerry can (maybe not strictly historical, but hey-ho), buckets and a scratch built mop and map (a square of folded-then-unfolded metallic sticky tape, held in place by a large rock, aka a bit of dry Milliput).

After painting them and drybrushing on some wear and tear, I added a few 'decals' (pictures copied off the internet and printed out on sticky labels) and did my usual basing.

I also bought a Tamiya 1:35 brick wall set - useable for large walls at 28mm if you don't look too closely. After glueing some sections together I decided to leave some of the ends open-ended, so that they could be fitted together either as straight sections or corners.

In order to achieve the red brick with light mortar look so common in this neck of the woods,  I undercoated these white and then drybrushed them with Vallejo Amaranth Red. A light slap of quickshade toned them down a bit, followed by some selective drybrushing with Olive Green and Beige Red, on individual bricks for the latter.

I then added my usual basing stuff and a scatter of my greenery mix and, well, they've come out pretty good I reckon!