Wednesday 25 December 2013

395 - Day 5/14 - New Directions (for better or worse)

Merry Christmas!

Today's been somewhat disrupted. Wonderful yes, but disrupted.

At around midday a sudden lightning strike hit (we're talking simultaneous donner und blitzen here) and blew the village's power supply. The electricity was down only for about half a minute but the phone's been down since, and the internet (the rural, not-technically-broadband version of broadband) hs been ropey ever since.

This combined with insanely variable weather today (our 'White Christmas' was a half-inch layer of hail which lasted hours) to dissuade us from our traditional afternoon walk, and all our timings went for a Burton as a result. The long and the short of it is that I realised quite early that I'd struggle to get meaningful hobby time in today, so I made another Executive Decision:

I've bought myself a 1/100 Zvezda Matilda II.

Just one. This is the box art:
It cost me about three-and-a-half quid including P&P, and it's the first model I've bought in ages.

But it's not for Flames of War.

Oh no - I couldn't do much with a single tank after all (and the 8th Army are on hold until I've earned them with glacial commission work)...this is for a potential (and SMALL) Bolt Action force.

I can't help it. Ages ago, Brian over at the Inner Geek very kindly donated to me a small Early War FoW British boxed set and I've been wondering how best to use it: Bolt Action in 15mm (popular locally) is absolutely perfect!

I've been rather smitten by the BA rules, you see. I know they're flawed and a bit silly in places, but I just love the refreshing structure of it. 28mm scares me though. Not just painting the models but the scenery required too - and it's an expense I simply cannot meet. Whereas with the cheap addition of a Matilda II and Brian's infantry I've got the beginnings of a rather useful little BEF in France 1940 force.

Doomed to valiant filure just how I like it.

Plus I love the look of the Matilda II and it's so rare that I allow myself to treat me to nice things...

So there.

Hobby work done today - even if it's simply by virtue of purchasing a new toy and starting yet another frivolous new idea.

Enjoy the rest of the day,

- Drax.

6 comments:

  1. My orks have a battlewagon built from a Matilda. Curiously, its not much different than it was in WWII, Well armored, lousy gun, slow moving, and the troops like to ride on top of it in lieu of walking.

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  2. I've been eyeing 15mm Bolt Action too....

    Hope the rest of the day went a little smoother for you my friend. :)

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  3. I didn't realise that hoping you would not be washed out to sea would result in you being struck by lightening. Here's wishing you no more weather events !

    Matilda eh ? One of the things I like about FoW is the different equipments; 40K tends to be an Imperial Leman Russ vs a Renegade Leman Russ. I demand more variety !

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  4. I'm curious, do you scale down the ranges, or do you play with the 28mm ranges at 15mm?

    The latter might actually be far more to scale.

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  5. Hi, SandWyrm!

    There are two schools of thought, and I think both are played locally: you can play at scale or halve the scales. As the scales are a necessary abstraction anyway, neither is perfect but I think I'd prefer halving. This has the twin advantages of forcing units to close with each other and keeping pistol and smg ranges sensible...

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  6. SandWyrm, I ought also to point out that some folks simply convert inches to centimetres, but I'm not such a fan of this. Firstly because much as I love metric measurements it feels just plain wrong to use them for wargaming, nd secondly because the ratios are off.

    1inch = 25.4mm (there are roughly two and a half cm per inch) but that doesn't tally withthe diminishing ratio of 28mm going to 15mm (just under half).

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Thanks for taking the time to comment!