2021 Review and 2022 Preview

With the start of 2022, I'll take an obligatory look back at 2021 and look forward to 2022. 

 

From the hobby standpoint, 2021 was a much better year than 2020. I finished more projects and had more chance to game. 

 

Starting out with the gaming side, in February, we wrapped up a Play by Email Spanish-American War naval campaign I ran using David Manley's Splendid Little War game and the Fire When Ready naval rules. I didn't do a write-up for this, but you can see Kevin's blog for the whole story.

 

In early June, we had our first lawn game. It was an Ironclads game and was a good kick-off to lawn-gaming season.

Collisions and calamity - Ironclad style

This  year's lawn games included: What a Tanker - Western Desert, Narrow Seas (World War II coastal forces), and pre-dreadnought action.

What a Tanker game

Narrow Seas

Fire When Ready

 

I also played in a few games over at Kevin's garage, but I don't have many photos of those. I also played my summer solo campaign and a few other miscellaneous games here and there. Overall, it was a good year for gaming.

 

On the painting side, I started the year by finishing up my 1/6000 scale Italian fleet.

Littorio class battleships

The whole Italian fleet

I joined in a semi-group project to do some Vietnam War figures. Others in the group got their figures from Gringo 40's, while I thought I would go with the figures from Crucible Crush's Black Sun line. Unfortunately for me, the Gringo 40 figures are just a little too big for my troops to fit in with. See the image below, the M-60 gunner in the center is from Gringo 40's, while the (substantially) smaller figures on either side are my Crucible Crush figures.

You can see the Gringo 40's figure is much bigger

The project left me with some good skirmish figures I can use, but not anything for the group gaming. 

 

I did a lot of work on 1/300 scale coastal forces. Almost all are from Warlord Games Cruel Seas line. Overall, I like the miniatures and the addition of crew figures really helps bring the little ships to life. I'm not always happy with choice of ships the company decides to make, but I'm hopeful they will add some more useful ships in the future. 

I also joined in on the full group project on the Mexican-American War. I picked up an Old Glory Army membership and ordered my troops. Once again, I was the oddball of the group since everyone else purchased figures from 1st Corps miniatures. Luckily, Old Glory and 1st Corps infantry (but not the mounted troops) are pretty close in size. So, everything should look fine on the table. I expect we'll get the first games in early in 2022.

That pretty much wraps up 2021. So, how did what I accomplished compare to my plans? Here is the list of things I wrote I wanted to do at the start of the year:

 

- Finish the 1/6000 scale Italian World War 2 fleet pack from Figurehead. DONE

 

- Work on Warlord Games Black Seas sailing ships. NOT DONE

 

- Work on Work on Warlord Games 1/300 coastal forces. MOSTLY DONE

 

- Put together some 15mm tanks for North Africa and play some What a Tanker games. DONE

 

- Work on the many unpainted aircraft I have. NOT DONE

 

Overall, a good year for plans vs. completed projects. 

 

Looking to 2022

So, what's on the list for 2022? In January I'll be running a couple of postponed DANG games. It has been a while since I've had more than a couple people over for an inside game, so this will be a step back to normalcy.

 

As far as projects go, right now I've got one new project that I committed to do. Painting up half the Italian ships from the Battle of Lissa for an Enfilade 2022 project. I was pulled into this project and ended up (semi) volunteering to do half the Italian ironclads. The ships are 1/600 scale from the old Bay Area Yards line. 

 

After and I will work on the following other projects, in no particular order.

 

- Mexican - American War stuff. I want to finish up all my Americans and still have some Dragoons left. I recently ordered a bunch of Mexicans to work on down the road.

 

- Airplanes! I really enjoy air games and I have a lot of unpainted planes. I also have a lot of painted stuff and should work on some scenario ideas to get som eplanes on the table.

 

- Black Seas sailing ships. I have several frigates and brigs that are mostly painted, but still need the final mast assembly and rigging. I also have some unassembled 74s.

 

- Finish up 1/300 coastal forces. I still have some Russians and Germans to finish up. These should be smallish projects, something to pick up between other projects or when I want to do a ship or two.

 

As always, I will remain flexible with my plans and expect there will be some new, bright/shiny game or object that will catch my attention. I always have lots of ideas floating around in my head.

 

I'm hoping to have a few more small indoor games over the next few months. Once the weather turns nice I expect we'll start some lawn gaming. So discussions about what games to play will probably help determine what projects I work on.

 

It looks like Enfilade 2022 will be back on Memorial Day weekend (at the end of May) and I'm hoping to be able to attend this year.

 

Personal Note

Thanks to all of you for reading my blog. I appreciate all the support I get from the gaming community. 

2021 was a tough year for me. In January I was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer (my cancer had spread from my prostate to my lungs and bones). I went through intravenous chemo treatment during the summer. The support from my gaming friends, the gaming community and being able to focus on painting projects really helped get me through the treatment. I'm not cancer-free yet (I'm still undergoing chemo treatment, this time in pill form), but I'm doing much better. Now that my immune system has recovered and I'm vaccinated/boosted, I'm looking forward to getting back out for some public gaming in 2022.

Early December Update

As we roll into early December, I wanted to post a quick update and talk about the return of DANG.

First up, my recent project. After one of our late summer games David Sullivan (of the I Live with Cats blog) brought up the idea of a group project for the Texas Revolution of 1835-36 or the Mexican - American War of 1846-47. He was really wanting to do the Texas Revolution, but the group headed off in the direction of the Mexican - American War and I jumped in too. I expected this to be a slow progress, Winter project. But in a flurry of action, everyone else started making orders to 1st Corps for figures. I had decided to go in a slightly different direction by getting figures from Old Glory (although I did order some American Volunteers from 1st Corps, because Old Glory doesn’t really make them). I decided to get figures for both the Americans and Mexicans, so that I could play games in the future without having to worry about an opponent showing up with an army. We are going to use the Rebels & Patriots rules for the games, so the number of figures needed to field an army isn’t too huge.

A U.S. Sgt leads some troops

Compared to the others in the group, I am a slow painter (you can see many painted figures for the project on David’s blog and Kevin’s American and Mexican blog posts). Being more used to painting ships and planes, I often find people figures more challenging to paint. After man discussions about uniform colors, the purchase of a book with lots of pretty pictures, and such I finally got to work on my Americans (the Mexicans will come later). Here are a few photos of my first couple of infantry units. I’ll be posting more photos as I finish more troops.

A group photo

And from a more overhead angle

Overall, the Old Glory figures work well for the period. The 1st Corps figures are nicer and have more variety of poses. The Old Glory figures are either marching or advancing but have there are different heads, so they don’t all look the same. I do like the sergeants that are included in the Command pack. I think they have good poses and add some character to the units.

Marching poses

Sergeant figures

Flag/Command figures

The figures are turning out okay. I expect the later ones will turn out better as I get the painting down a little more.

The Return of DANG!

For those of you that aren’t familiar with DANG (Dave’s Annual Naval Game), the paragraph at the end of this post has links to older games.

With all the restrictions and uncertainty of COVID I had cancelled last year’s DANG. But with things looked somewhat better this year, I decided to bring it back. However, instead of the large, full-day mini-campaign, this year I will have two smaller (single scenario) games. That allows me to keep the gathering smaller (per recommendations from local Health Departments) and the games a little more manageable.

I did give the players a choice of scenarios (as I normally do with the mini-campaign) and the winning ones are a World War 2 coastal force action in the Black Sea and a hypothetical pre-dreadnought Franco – American battle off Haiti. The games are planned for the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. I’ll post some updates and the game recaps later.

DANG started in 2002. Since I’m doing two games this year, I’m going to say I am getting to DANG XIX (nineteen) and DANG XX (twenty). Here are links to recaps of DANG from before 2010, the 2010 Lepanto game, the 2011 American Civil War river game, the 2012 War of 1812 Lake Ontario game, the 2013 Operation Landcrab game, the 2014 Cogs of War game, 2015 The Shores of Tripoli game, 2016 The Big Stick game, 2017 Seastrike game, 2018 Siege of Charleston game, and 2019 WWI The King's Ships were at Sea game. It is a little surprising that I’ve been able to keep things going for 20 years.

Black Sea Soviets

The next additions for my ongoing Black Sea/Baltic Sea project are some Soviet ships from the Warlord Games Soviet Navy Fleet box set. The box has one Fugas (Project 3, 53, 53-U, and 58) class minesweeper, a pair of Project 1124 Bronekater river gunboats, a pair of MO-4 patrol boats, and eight motor torpedoes boats. I started off with the larger vessels and will finish the MTBs later. 

Soviet Coastal Flotilla

Starting with the big ship in the group - the Fugas class minesweeper. The Fugas class served in the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, and Pacific. There were 15 in the Black Sea, 20 in the Baltic, and 8 in the Pacific. They were used as minesweepers, minelayers, escorts, and to support amphibious operations. So this will be a useful ship for my Black Sea/Baltic Sea games.

Fugas class, starboard side view

The Warlord model comes armed with 100mm gun forward, a 45mm gun aft, and a pair of heavy machine guns on the open bridge wings. This seems to be an early war fit, since more anti-aircraft guns were added later as the threat from enemy aircraft increased. The Warlord kit comes with a resin hull, along with separate metals parts for the bridge are, funnel, life boats, masts, and weapons. The hull was a little bent, but I was able to heat it in warm water and flatten it out. The rest of the pieces went together fairly easily, although it was hard to maintain the shape of the lifeboat davits. For painting I went with a darker gray for the hull and a brick color deck. I wanted the ship to look like it had seen a lot of work with little up-keep. So I did a lot of heavy weathering, but I may have gone a bit 'overboard.'

Fugas class, port side view

Next up the river gunboats, also know as armored gunboats. Warlord refers to these as Pr1125, but I think the gunboats with two turrets are really Project 1124 class. So I'm going with that. The river gunboats mostly provided gunfire support from the larger rivers, but they were also did those tasks in support of amphibious landings in the Black Sea and Baltic Sea.  

Project 1124, port side view

The Project 1124 gunboat was armed with two T-34 turrets (with 76mm guns) and a twin heavy machine gun turret. Warlord also makes a variation of this class with a Katyusha rocket launcher. The models are metal, with the hull and three turrets coming as separate pieces. There is also a mast, but I found it to be pretty flimsy, so I left it off. I don't think it detracts from the overall appearance.

Project 1124, starboard side

Finally, the MO-4 patrol boats. There were around 250 of these boats built during World War II and they served on all fronts. They were designed as submarine chasers, but were used as a jack of all trades. The class lacked armor, making it vulnerable to even small arms fire. In 1943 the class was modified to add armor to protect the engines and bridge, giving it the designation BMO class.

MO-4 patrol boat, starboard side view

The class was armed with two 45mm guns and two heavy machine guns. Later in the war one of the 45mm guns was replaced with a 37mm gun for better anti-aircraft protection. Additionally, there lots of local modifications to the weapons fits, such as adding rocket launchers to support ground attacks. The Warlord model has a resin hull, with the gun mounts and mast as separate pieces. The model goes together well. The only issue I had was fitting the three aft guns into the small space (you can see from the photos that I angled the HMGs instead of having them point out perpendicular from the hull). 

MO-4 from the port side

One thing I've noticed is that the more work on the 1/300 scale ships, the more I find that I like the crew figures. They really do make the ships seem more alive. I only wish the Warlord figures were a little better and had more options. I'm planning to look around at some Heroics and Ros and GHQ 1/300 figures to fill out the ships some in the future.

Crucible Crush Viet Cong

Back in April I posted about the Vietnam U.S. Army figures I got from Crucible Crush. Because I normally like to have forces for both sides of a battle, I ordered the four Viet Cong packs from the same Black Sun range.

 

There was no assembly needed for any of these figure. Although they needed a little more clean-up than the Americans. The figures are stout fellows with good detail, so even I could pick out the details when painting.

 

Like the Americans, most of the figures have packs and other gear. They have a mix of AK-47s, SKS carbines, SMGs, rifles, a RPD light machine gun, and a couple RPGs. I painted most up with the black uniform. The officer figure was done up in Khaki and I gave one other figure Khaki pants.

A group shot of the troops

While painting I had a little trouble getting some shadowing on the black uniforms and some of the faces didn't turn out as well as I hoped. They won't win in painting competitions, but on the game table they will look just fine. Here are some closer look photos.

 

As you can see from the photos, there are several figures that use the same pose but have different hats. That isn't really obvious when looking at the figures on the Crucible Crush website, but was more noticeable when I was painting them up.

 

Now I just need to pick up some jungle type terrain, which I can also use with my WWII Japanese and Australians.

German Marinefährprahm

The Marinefährprahm (MFP) or naval ferry barge, was the largest landing craft operated by Germany's Kriegsmarine during World War II. These vessels were originally developed for the planned invasion of England. But once the invasion was cancelled, they found uses in other areas. MFPs served as transports, minelayers, escorts, and gunboats in the Mediterranean, Baltic and Black Seas as well as the English Channel and Norwegian coastal waters.

German Marinefährprahm (MFP) barges

There were four basic types, A, B, C, and D, with sub-variants for each of those. The size and cargo capacity increased with each type. Around 700 these vessels were completed by the war's end.
Most of the vessels were armed with 20mm and 37mm anti-aircraft guns, and some had a 75mm or 88mm gun. Those that were converted for escort and gunboat duty were more heavily armed with multiple 88mm or 105mm guns and heavier anti-aircraft guns. The Germans referred to these as Artilleriefährprahm (AFP), while Allied sources sometimes refer to this class of vessel as a "Flak Lighter" or "F-lighter." In addition to escort duties, these heavily armed versions were also used for shore bombardments, especially in the Black Sea and Baltic Sea.

MFP and AFP from a different angle

For the next installment in my Black Sea/Baltic Sea project, I put together some German MFPs and an AFP. Like my previous KFK project, these are not very sexy vessels, but they are useful and served everywhere. The MFPs are 3D printed (thanks to David Manley for pointing out the STL files). I decided to go with an unarmed print and then add guns from Warlords Games Cruel Seas Germans. My MFPs are lightly armed with only a twin 20mm on the gun platform. Looking back on it, I probably should have added a couple more weapons here and there. But these are mainly meant to be transports, so they will need an escort.

The lightly armed MFPs

The AFP started out as an Italian F-Lighter that I found cheap online. Since I already had the German weapons pack, I just substituted German guns for the Italian ones (I’m not positive, but I think the hulls for the German and Italian versions are exactly the same). My AFP is armed with 2 88mm guns, 2 quad-20mm guns, a twin 20mm, and a single 20mm. All of which should provide some nice firepower in the games.

The heavier AFP

I painted up all the barges in mid-gray, did some pin-washing to bring out a few details, and added some rust stains for weathering. The MFPs each got a little different color on the aft boat to make them easier to ID during games. 

MFP and AFP size comparison with the KFK (front left) and S-boat (front right)

Convoy run

Overall, I think these turned out fine and will look good on the tabletop. While they are slow (max speed of 10 knots), their shallow draft should make them tough targets for Soviets MTBs and the AFP has the firepower to help protect the group.

A Diverson to Southeast Asia

Earlier this year several people in my local gaming group became enamored with the new line of Vietnam figures from Gringos 40. You can see some of the figures on Kevin's and David's blogs, along with their first battle report. With all the email's and blog posts, I found myself pulled into this diversion. Since this would be a skirmish game, I didn't want to just redo the same figures everyone else was doing. During the back and forth emails, we talked about other manufacturers that could be used with the Gringo 40s figures. I liked the look of the figures from Crucible Crush's Black Sun range. The rules and some of the figures in the range are definitely "Weird Vietnam War" stuff, but the U.S. Army and VC figures looked like they would fit in with the Gringo 40 figures. So, I took the plunge and ordered 3 packs of U.S. Army soldiers. 

 

Once the figures arrived, there was little in the way of clean-up or assembly needed (only 1 figure needed to have an arm glued on and there was little flask or mold lines). I did get  two duplicate figures instead of five different figures in the U.S. Army Rifles set, but I'm okay with that. Here is how the figures painted up. 

Radio operator (with added antenna), command type figure, and kneeling grenadier

The running men. The middle figure is the one that needed the arm glued on and he I added a pack of Marlboro cigarettes to his helmet

Advancing (one of my duplicates), M60 gunner, and firing soldiers

Advancing (the other duplicate), command (this is my favorite figure of the bunch), and a Grunt

Shotgun, high-carry advancing, and standing grenadier

All the figures, except for the shotgun soldier, have rucksacks. So they are out patrolling instead of sitting in a firebase. 

Group shot (although the front guys are a little out of focus)

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. I'm planning on ordering the four VC packs, so I'll have both sides. But I don't expect to get any other figures. But who knows, since I wasn't planning on getting these guys. 

 

I think it will be back to some naval stuff after this. 

Regia Marina

I've been a little slow in working on my projects, due to various reasons, but now I can report some progress on one project. 

Back in January, I had posted that I was working on the World War 2 Italian Fleet in 1/6000 scale. The Figurehead pack come with 77 ships, including all the major Italian warships and 40+ destroyers. 

A Littorio class battleship with an escort

I did a basic paint job on the ships in February, but it took a while to do some detailing and get the recognition stripes done. Part of the detailing involved putting camouflage on the ships, but with the ships being so small, it is pretty hard to see. I looked at several ways to do air recognition stripes (those are the red and white "barber pole" stripes normally on the bow of the ship). It was especially challenging to think about doing the destroyers, most of which were only a millimeter wide. After failing to consistently paint stripes, I finally settled on using a marker to do the stripes. I think they turned out pretty well, even if it felt a little like cheating. 

 

Here are some photos of the completed ships. My camera did have some trouble focusing on small ships with my lighting conditions, but hopefully it gives you a good idea of the final look. The mat in the photos has 2 inch squares, so you can get an idea of the ship size. 

Littorio class battleships

Conte di Cavour and Andrea Doria class battleships

Italian heavy cruisers

A representative group of Italian light cruisers

A few destroyers

The whole fleet

While the photos aren't that great, I think the ships turned out pretty well. I'm planning on mounting the ships on some clear plastic stands. That will give players something to grab when moving the ships and a place for me to put ship names.

 

I'm hoping to get the ships out for some action this summer.