Strange Blogger Behavior

Not sure what happened, but it the past couple of weeks the top item in my blog roll has decided to display the image for that blog across most of the page. This had the lovely benefit of obscuring the pictures and text of my post. I have just spent some time tinkering with the settings and could not figure out why it was doing that. In the end, I had to remove the thumbnails from the blog roll listing. That makes the blogroll text only which is unfortunate but more usable. Anyone else have something like that happen to them? I know Fran saw that on one of my posts which got me looking at the issue.

Anyway, yesterday was a bust. I was too sick to get in a game. Didn't get to paint either. But today is a new day.

Got in a Game Last Night - CY6 Greece

Mark hosted his regular Thursday night game of Check Your Six. He indulged me and we played a Greece 1941 game. I was in command of a flight of three Gloster Gladiators with excellent pilots including Marmaduke Pattle. The Italians were played by Mark with a flight of two Cr42s, Chris (a different one) with a flight of two G50s and Max with a group of three Cr42s.

My flight came in at a higher altitude and spotted the Italians immediately. Pattle and his wingman dove down on Mark's CR42s. The last Gladiator remained at altitude and turned towards the G50s. And this is pretty much where my plan fell apart.

Turn 4 has Pattle with a shot on one of Mark's novice pilots. He scores a hit but Mark was able to save. Turn five has Pattle repeating his shot and jamming his guns. Mark again saves. Pattle next dives out of the way in order to get a chance to unjam his guns. (Actually, he should have just left but the Italians wanted to continue the game.) Turn 6 saw the the Italians land a hit on Pattle's wingman. This resulted in engine damage. The pilot would then dive out of combat and reached safety by turn 10.

Turn 11 saw Pattle land another hit resulting in airframe damage to one of Max's Cr42s. Max climbed and ran for it with this pilot. The same turn saw my other pilot take engine damage. He attempted to dive out of combat but was followed by a G50 and two Cr42s and probably would have been shot down.

Exhaustion overtook me and I had to quit after 13 turns. All in all, it was a great game. You just never know how things are going to play out. With a top ace like Pattle, there should have been multiple kills recorded. But one never knows how things will happen. Great game that was lots of fun.

Painted Miniatures

I finally finished some miniatures. First up is my group of Continentals. I only have six of them so far with an officer.

The second set of miniatures is a mule team for Sharp Practice supports. These are mostly for AWI but might work for the SYW if I ever get to those figures.

The last set is my engineers. Also for SP2 AWI. They are great figures but I really need 8 men and a leader but only have 7 with a leader. They are nice miniatures.

I did paint the remaining 4 figures for my mounted Militia. Also an officer for the mounted militia was painted. Then I have a preacher, a doctor, a dog and a guy and an ox that are plowing a field. The mounted militia is Peter Pig. The leader of the mounted militia is a scout from Peter Pig. The Preacher is from a Peter Pig ECW pack as is the dog. The doctor is a FIW civilian from Blue Moon. Nice tall rotund figure. The oxen and plow is also Blue Moon.

Managed to Get Some Painting Done

I had a partially painted group of Maryland Continentals done that I finished off with an ink wash. The next step is to start basing them. But that is not all. I painted my mule train for Sharp Practice. I have seven mules and a drover. All painted and ink washed. They are ready for basing. Lastly, I also started to paint an engineering team. The figures were purchased from Magister Militum. They are great but there is one figure that is too specifically dressed. He is wearing what appears to be an English Civil War uniform with a helmet. I don't think that I can use that poor fellow. The rest seem OK to use. The team is great. One fellow with a wheelbarrow, a man with a pick, one with a sledgehammer, one carrying a wicker basket of debris, two with shovels and another with a bundle of sticks. Then there is a leader figure that is pointing dramatically. The ECW fellow is holding a stick.

I am working on finishing off the Engineers and then will move on to some more mounted militia to finish off a group.

Hopefully, I can get some pictures before the end of the day.

Building Kharkov Station

I managed to make a breakthrough with the design of Kharkov station. I found a pedestrian walkway that will work well with what I have in mind. I found a HO Scale plastic kit at a local train shop. Great shop by the way. It is around the corner from my house and they had lots of useful bits there.

The plastic kit is a snap together kit. That mostly works. But it will not be stable enough for the gaming table. I bought two of them and put them together. I had to trim part of one walkway to get them to join up. I need to break out the super glue and stabilize the whole thing.

I added a simple banner to one side of the walkway that reads "Welcome to Kharkov Station" or at least that is what Google Translate tells me that is. Who know what it actually says.

Next, I need to figure out how much train track I actually need. The intent is to copy this.

I won't be able to make it as huge as this. The Kharkov station walkways are covered. Mine are not. The intent is to have a section of walkway that spans two double track sections. I have some tile pieces that I intend to use as the medians where the walkways will rest upon. The tracks will be in the grooves between the sections of tile. One of the things in the picture is a covered canopy for waiting passengers to take shelter under in the case of a storm. I am debating on skipping that part.

The second picture above is of the station itself. It is a one story structure with a curved roof. Here is where my Game Craft Miniatures Government Building will step in. I will remove the second story and create a flat roof for the structure. Then using a pringles can, create the curved roof structure. I have some balsa wood blocks that I will make a clock tower with to have on one of the corners. I just hope my building skills are up to the challenge. If I can pull it off, the Government building will become even more versatile and can mimic several buildings with a simple roof change. Well, that is the theory anyway. I will pull the tile out later today and see if I can start laying out what the track sections will look like.

TFL Summer Special

Well, I did something wargames related today. I bought the TFL Summer Special. I am very impressed. It is full of good stuff. I now have such a backlog of things that I want to do, I will never get them done. All of my favorites are in there. Bag the Hun, Chain of Command, IABSM and of Course plenty for the New Sharp Practice.

Speaking of SP, I need to get a game in. I have all of the gear ready, just need to time to give the rules a spin. Hopefully, my health will start improving and I can change all of that.

In the works, I have a nearly finished Pint sized campaign (maybe quart sized is better since there are technically 2 campaigns in it) and a half finished 3rd AWI book. The new book is made specifically for SP2. I should start seeing work take shape on these soon enough.

Been Kinda Quiet Around Here

My apologies for my absence. I have been fighting a bad UC flare and just not had the energy to do anything. I am back to trying to work on my day job some every day. But there is nothing left in the tank for hobby stuff. Doc has me on new meds this week and we will see how this turns out. I hopefully will be back to normal in short order.

Until then, I am still planning on launching my second novel on Amazon on the 15th. I am just doing some last minute clean up on it and hoping to hit publish soon.

Until next time, roll some dice and have fun.