Prepping for the Flying Heritage Collection Game Day

As I briefly mentioned in my last post, NHMGS has been invited to run a game day at the Flying Heritage Collection in Everett WA on Saturday, November 16, 2013.

The Flying Heritage Collection primarily focuses on World War II combat aircraft, but it also has some armored vehicles, guns, and V-2 rocket. Be sure to check out the list of items in the collection. There is some interesting stuff there. We will be set up in the Collection’s Hanger 2 and, because of the Collection’s focus on WWII, all the games will be WW II games. Here is a brief list of the planned games (I don’t have information on specific scenarios, but that will give you a reason to show up):

 Morning Session 
- Air battle using the Check Your 6 rules
- Skirmish game using the Fire and Movement rules
- Skirmish game using the Bolt Action rules (I think this will be a Pacific action)
- Coastal forces battle using the Action Stations rules (probably barge busting in the Pacific)

Afternoon Session 
- Air battle using the Check Your 6 rules
- Flames of War battle
- Air battle using Axis and Allies Air rules and pre-painted planes

Additionally, I think that Chris Ewick will be there with his Flames of War Kursk game during both sessions.

Kevin and I will be running the coastal forces battle and I’m getting everything together for that, but no new ships are in the works. 

I’ve also been working on some troops for use with the Bolt Action rules (I might even try to get them in this weekend’s game). Just to be a little different, I decided to do a force of Australian for the Pacific. I currently have around 2 squads, some support weapons, and a tank. The figures are from Brigade Games “Diggers in the Pacific” range and the tank is Company B’s Aussie M3 Stuart. I really like the figures; I think they provide some interesting poses and they have a lot of character.

Some of you might know that I have a real problem painting troops. I’m fine with ships and planes (and even tanks), but painting people just seems to petrify me (as could be noted by all the half-finished figures for my 15mm Age of Sail games). So, painting up a bunch of 28mm figures was a big step forward for me. I did take several photos of the painting progress, but in the end I decided to just post photos of the finished product (I still need to add some flocking or grass to the figure bases).

Here come the Aussies (you can click on the image for a little larger view)

I looked around for some suggestions on how to best paint up the figures and I settled on using the ‘dip method’. I followed the instructions posted by a number of bloggers on the best way to do this and now you can see the end results.

A closer view of the Stuart tank

First squad

Second squad

A supporting Vickers MMG (you can also see the Platoon Commander figure in the front and part of the Characters A pack in back)

The supporting 3" mortar

I’ll eventually have to get some Japanese figures to go up against the Aussies, but for now I’m just happy to have completed the figures.

I will post a recap and photos from the game day sometime next week.