weird planes, workbench and new releases
Evening all!
Been a while since I last posted up new content thanks to the arrival of this little blighter,
but things are settling and I'm getting the odd opportunity here and there to sit at the hobby desk and crank out a few bits and bobs.
At the beginning of november, Warlord games released the first of the new wave of "hard" plastics, the Hurricanes and the Mosquitos for the Allies and I was super keen to see what the new material was like. thankfully I'd won a box of mosquitos in the BRS tourny at the Warlord open day so I only had to splurge on the Hurricanes and I'd seen both already as "test shots" (pre-production testers) so was aware of the pre-production issues with a few panel lines and such here and there.
As I'm primarily a gamer, none of these offended me greatly but I know it is a major issue for many other folk out there.
Unfortunately, not all the pre-production issues got ironed out with the hurricanes and there is a panel line or two out of place but unless you're a die hard, its not really going to be an issue if you're not looking for it. The most aggravating issue with this release wave has been a cock-up with distribution of the aces for this wave. Wrong cards and pilot disks has marred what would otherwise have been excellent but given that it happened with the Wildcat ace and the withdrawal of the Kate torp bombers immediately on release, it has caused somewhat of a concern about quality control going forwards.
One thing I was really impressed with was the switch to including multiple "variant" cards of planes in the mosquito box (not the hurricane though) to allow you to play slightly different eras or theatres. This was something that was discussed in the open day and I'm glad to see it at least partially implemented in this wave.
The models are crisp, the material itself is far more robust than the boardgame pvc of the core set and only need a tiny bit of cleaning from where the sprue had attached (though they come pre-assembled).My mosquitos just needed a bit more of a push together of the two parts and I dabbed a touch of glue for added resilience given they're gaming pieces primarily.
The two cards are most appreciated and will give far more flexibility should this continue with the FW190/BF110 wave in january. From what i've heard, Spitfire ace Johnson comes with a spitfire mk5 card too which really opens up later campaigns for those with the core set of spitfires.
The workbench has stacked up quite a bit with the lack of throughput thanks to baby number 2, and there's currently some p66 fighters for weathering for my chinese air force and a squadron of A6M2-N "rufe" float plane fighters to complete.
In the actual war, both planes played minor roles as fighters, the Rufes seeing far more usage than the p66 but I've always been a sucker for the weird and wonderful and the underdog!
For the rufes, I'm going to use the beta card for the a6m2 and knock a bit of speed off as per wikipedia's stats and adjust a few points off. They were used in the china campaign, the dutch east indies campaign and also in the aleutian islands campaign and scored a few air to air kills (and got a few aces) but were primarly used in ground attack roles to support naval assets as the floats killed their speed making them vulnerable in dogfights.
The p66 Vultee "Vanguard" was an american built plane orginally destined for sweden but wasn't completed in time before the country fell to the Axis. It was shipped to the brits who weren't fussed on it but had a great need for training planes but were convinced by the yanks to relinquish them and they were given to the chinese air force instead. Huge problems with the crating, shipping and re-assembly in india meant loads were lost to technical issues and the few that did get deployed saw little combat as the chinese airforce didn't sorty much and only reluctantly put their squadrons into the air when the american attaches refused further planes until they used the ones they already had!
They did see combat and got a few kills but many vanguards were destroyed on the ground and a lot were lost in ground accidents. They were well armed for the theatre with a mix of heavy and light machine guns but weren't nimble enough to turn with the zeros so used energy tactics instead.
Once these bad-boys are done and sorted, I've got another project on the go. This time its the pacific theatre. After doing a lot of reading, I kind of got into the Dutch East Indies story and in a very timely release, Ken Natt on the "Ready Room" page had released a beta card for use/testing for my fighter cover!
Although its a widely used plane with lots of variants, he's happy this is near enough that the other variants shouldn't need dedicated cards. I got in touch with Kev from miscminis and he's made me up a custom batch of ML-KNIL roundels as decals too! In the war, the plane aquitted itself very well. The French and Fins racked up a lot of aerial victories with it and the ML-KNIL pilots could keep in the turns with the zeros by lightening the ammo belts in the wings a bit. Inevitably the forces that used it were overwhelmed by the japanese, soviet and german numbers so it found itself on the wrong side of the war but it did really well and the AiM casts are lovely!
I grabbed some p36/hawk75 and b25 models from AiM and did the usual drill and hawk widget technique so painting these up will be my next job!
Been a while since I last posted up new content thanks to the arrival of this little blighter,
At the beginning of november, Warlord games released the first of the new wave of "hard" plastics, the Hurricanes and the Mosquitos for the Allies and I was super keen to see what the new material was like. thankfully I'd won a box of mosquitos in the BRS tourny at the Warlord open day so I only had to splurge on the Hurricanes and I'd seen both already as "test shots" (pre-production testers) so was aware of the pre-production issues with a few panel lines and such here and there.
As I'm primarily a gamer, none of these offended me greatly but I know it is a major issue for many other folk out there.
Unfortunately, not all the pre-production issues got ironed out with the hurricanes and there is a panel line or two out of place but unless you're a die hard, its not really going to be an issue if you're not looking for it. The most aggravating issue with this release wave has been a cock-up with distribution of the aces for this wave. Wrong cards and pilot disks has marred what would otherwise have been excellent but given that it happened with the Wildcat ace and the withdrawal of the Kate torp bombers immediately on release, it has caused somewhat of a concern about quality control going forwards.
One thing I was really impressed with was the switch to including multiple "variant" cards of planes in the mosquito box (not the hurricane though) to allow you to play slightly different eras or theatres. This was something that was discussed in the open day and I'm glad to see it at least partially implemented in this wave.
The models are crisp, the material itself is far more robust than the boardgame pvc of the core set and only need a tiny bit of cleaning from where the sprue had attached (though they come pre-assembled).My mosquitos just needed a bit more of a push together of the two parts and I dabbed a touch of glue for added resilience given they're gaming pieces primarily.
The workbench has stacked up quite a bit with the lack of throughput thanks to baby number 2, and there's currently some p66 fighters for weathering for my chinese air force and a squadron of A6M2-N "rufe" float plane fighters to complete.
For the rufes, I'm going to use the beta card for the a6m2 and knock a bit of speed off as per wikipedia's stats and adjust a few points off. They were used in the china campaign, the dutch east indies campaign and also in the aleutian islands campaign and scored a few air to air kills (and got a few aces) but were primarly used in ground attack roles to support naval assets as the floats killed their speed making them vulnerable in dogfights.
The p66 Vultee "Vanguard" was an american built plane orginally destined for sweden but wasn't completed in time before the country fell to the Axis. It was shipped to the brits who weren't fussed on it but had a great need for training planes but were convinced by the yanks to relinquish them and they were given to the chinese air force instead. Huge problems with the crating, shipping and re-assembly in india meant loads were lost to technical issues and the few that did get deployed saw little combat as the chinese airforce didn't sorty much and only reluctantly put their squadrons into the air when the american attaches refused further planes until they used the ones they already had!
They did see combat and got a few kills but many vanguards were destroyed on the ground and a lot were lost in ground accidents. They were well armed for the theatre with a mix of heavy and light machine guns but weren't nimble enough to turn with the zeros so used energy tactics instead.
 |
| Tupolev SB2's in chinese service for my p66's to escort! |
Although its a widely used plane with lots of variants, he's happy this is near enough that the other variants shouldn't need dedicated cards. I got in touch with Kev from miscminis and he's made me up a custom batch of ML-KNIL roundels as decals too! In the war, the plane aquitted itself very well. The French and Fins racked up a lot of aerial victories with it and the ML-KNIL pilots could keep in the turns with the zeros by lightening the ammo belts in the wings a bit. Inevitably the forces that used it were overwhelmed by the japanese, soviet and german numbers so it found itself on the wrong side of the war but it did really well and the AiM casts are lovely!
Nice to see the Hurricanes. I might pick these up at some point to have a more complete 'Battle of Britain", along with some ME-110s when they become available.
ReplyDelete