Grenadier Minatures Copplestone Wastelander

This is Fon.  He is mute.  By which I mean he cannot speak, not that he is a dyslexic mutie.  He's actually plenty clever, as they say in the arid badlands north of the San Cantor ruins. 

Using that oft repaired data terminal on his back, he read and write in at least eight languages.  He has a good ear for foreign sounds and a fine mind for making those important connections.  As a polyglot mute he is a bit of rare thing.

Fon trades his facility to mediate between folks for water and hot sauce.  He's not too fond of insects and the hot sauce certainly helps when most of the food in the badlands is a little light on quality grox.

Of course, life in harshest inhabited parts of Devos IV is not without risk, as attested by his las gun and large calibre auto pistol. 

Cold War Esoterica

                                     

Now age comes to us all.  Actually it might not, but hopefully it does.  One by-product of this is that my own past is now 'history' as far as some are concerned.  I have had conversations with people about what is best described as 'corporate memory', specifically in the Army as that was our common point of reference.  The army I was in was intended to slow and then hold the USSR's 3rd shock army as it tried to roll across West Germany (the FDR, a separate sovereign state - who knew ?). 

Our skills, drills, equipment and exercises were all designed to that end.  Since I left the army UK plc has fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and changed all of those skills, drills, equipment and exercises to fight different types of wars.  So there are now great efforts underway to find a new modus operandi which once again sees NATO providing mitigation from Russian military expeditionism.  But this isn't a dive into modern politics, come with me back to the days of Chukka Khan, Max Headroom, the Poll Tax riots and Live Aid:

Montgomery's 21st Army Group changed title to the British Army On (the) Rhine (BAOR) before the end of the 1940s.  Roughly 50,000 British soldiers lived and worked in West Germany until very recently.  The draw down began soon after the reunification of the two Germanys and really only finished a few years ago.  The place I was stationed is apparently now and Aldi. 

Anyway, as relations improved, eventually some bright spark somewhere decided in the late 1950s that it would be a good idea if the Bundeswehr were allowed to station a reciprocal Panzer Ableitung in the UK somewhere.  Possibly to create something of an 'air gap' between them and neighbouring British units, the tank ranges at Castlemartin in Pembrokeshire were chosen.  For 35 years a Leopard Regiment was stationed in SW Wales in the same way as I and thousands like me were stationed in the FDR.  

Legoland

Now Legoland has a Starwars hall.  We went with a handy handy nephew in 2013 and had a good look around, good job too as two little girls are not too interested in a film franchise which they are actually too young to appreciate.

So, and if Courtney reads this, I'm sorry man, we didn't even go anywhere near it.

But wandering around, did come across this:

Which is a life sized Iron Man hulk buster suit.  Obviously it qualifies for inclusion in this blog as it is a  Sci Fi model.  Although it doesn't look too impressive in the ifone picture, it really was.

Fortunately, there was this there to illustrate the scale of it:

Anyway, I hope to get back to some decent content soon.  Mostly 'cause I don't have the 600K lego bricks to build one for myself.

Extra bonus Halloween post.

Do you ever get that thing where you suddenly get something that, once it clicks, seems blindingly obvious ?  You give a silent internal "Doh!" and hope that no one else notices your Homer Simpson moment ?

I've just figured out why it's "Zombtober" rather than "Julombie".

Teri and Jezza

 But anyway.  I've bought witches costumes and tacky plastic broomsticks in preparation for my role as Skellington King; shepherding little witches 'round the neighbourhood and still getting them home for bed at normal time (fingers crossed).

Don

 This pumpkin is huge, 2' across. the pattern is supposed to represent glasses, as drawn by No1 daughter, faithfully transposed by yours truely.  Whilst not immediately scarey looking, he's also not someone you'd let in to your house....

Madam Secretary

And displacing the brick of scrutiny, the scarey looking one.  Back to normal in the morning...

Reinforcing 22 Armoured Regt

I'm building a third troop for the ASL tank squadron.  So these are likely to be 430, 431 and (eventually) 432.  The unpainted one you can see is from the bitzbox.  And as a part of the ASL, these two have plasticard vorpanzer.

So other mods to match the existing ASL tanks include the side mounted searchlight and the smoke dischargers mounted on the vorpanzer.

All of the others are configured like the unpainted one, with a supplementary 40 gallon drum on the toolbox. The painted one was obtained when I asked a regular contact if had a Pheaton pattern LRMBT kicking around that I could purchase.  It came with HB sponsons and the usual ugly laser cannon barbette on the front.

I have another Pheaton pattern LRMBT, found on ebay, on its way for the princely sum of £16.  Which is excellent for filling out the ASL formation to three troops, matching the numbers and TO&E of the DKK tank formation.  OCD ?  Me ?  I don't know what you're talking about.

Another major change is that the previous tanks have a plasticard sheet over the hole where the barbette would be and then a 'normal' Chimera front weapon mount (all HBs, obviously) with the back end shaved down for a decent fit.  Since those tanks were done Karitas and I put together the DKK formation and therefore I had a few of the Mars pattern hull weapon mounts left over.

So these babies get them first.  There's another waiting for the last tank to add; after that I may retro fit them to the older ones.  Obtw, there's a stubber armed cupola to go on this one.  Its just camera shy.

As you read this now, the unpainted one is now painted to the same level.  Decals next, then weathering, then dressing with stowage.  But not until No3 is at this stage.

Hope fully, this links back to a previous shot of the other ones.

Pre-publication update: No3 is now here as well, so I'll be able to get on with that soon.

Photography Practice

I went to the Tadcaster Airshow at the weekend with a couple of old friends (they're my age, so they are old friends....) to commemorate the increasingly mundane fact that I have survived another 365 days (I'm not complaining).  The airshow is at the former RAF Church Fenton, which was still (just) a fast jet training flying station when I first climbed into a FV4201.

If you look on the interwebs for it, it's under "Yorkshire Airshow".

Anyway, this is the same camera and same lens as I photograph minis with.  So considering that some of the picts of minis are okish, I'm really quite pleased with this as an exercise in photography.

There was any amount of fast moving cloud scudding about, but it was all much higher than the flying displays.

The displays were all very low, mostly around 200 to 300 meters, at a rough estimate.

The yellow here contrasts nicely, it also shows up better against the clouds where that's what's in the frame; this scheme is for the 'Yellow Jacks' the forerunners of the Red Arrows.  Now you know that, you should be able to identify this aeroplane; I'm anticipating that if you read this blog regularly, the other three are EPLS.

You can see how this would be harder to see at a greater distance, against a pale sky.

These were all taken in the 'sport' setting, so I was able to shoot almost 800 picts in a couple of hours. I'm showing you four.  Actually more than 0.5% are ok; there are some sequences of the Vulcan making passes.  From an easy 400m away, it made the ground shake.  What a kool toy.

Anyway, back to 40K next.

No Dougal,

These ones are very small. Those ones are far away.

Actually, Fr Ted aside, this picture makes the patio look reallllly big.

I've lost !

Not a game, of course. I don't actually play fortykay...

I was looking for some banners I had done, and could not find them. I also appear to have misplaced all of my Hvy Wpn teams. Yeah, all of them. They are not where I thought they ought to be.

So tomorrow night I will scour the garage and see if I can find some missing stuff.

Not 40K

Doubtless if you've cast your eyes over my blog you've seen the picgture of me half way up a climb. Climbing is my non-geeky passion and much prefered by Mrs Zzzzzz. So you might think that the unreasonably heavy snowfall in the UK is a gift to the winter climber. Not so. It is, to paraphrase the rail operators, 'the wrong kind of snow'. Massive powder coverage in the UK winter climbers normal playground has reasulted in an avalanche risk that no-one appears to be willing to entertain. The first time I know of where no-one has ventured into the Northern Corries of Caringorm to climb on a winter's day.


So, we went snow-shoeing instead. Snow shoes are everyday items in some parts of the world; but are esoteric and seldom seen artefacts in our maritime winters. The consequence was stomping through a Scotland that looked more like Canada or Northern Europe than I've ever seen before. Or expect to see again, for that matter.

Daytime temperatures were around minus seventeen in the shade and up to a balmy plus six in the sun. Nothing like continental temperatures, but lower than average. Still, the effects and scenery were breath taking. Even producting half decent images from a mobile phone.
The man dressed as the groom is Robin. The bride, Rachel and he were married on 02 Jan 2010. Robin is primarily a white water paddler, but he is super enthusiastic adventurer; unable to come with us for the w/e 09 to 11 Jan 2010, what follows will probably have him kicking himself. (the blonde lady on the right is Mrs Zzzzzz)

On the Sunday, Wayne (in the red jacket in the nowshoeing picture at the top of this post) found our way to Creag Dubh south of Newtonmore on the recommendation of someone we'd spoken to earlier. Much less snow on the south facing crag and a nice icefall to climb. This picture shows the people who were already on it whilst we geared up and prepared ourselves.

I've not climbed ice like this since 1999 (in Canada, not Scotland). This is Wayne again (in the red jacket in the snow shoeing picture above) on his first ever ice climb. We learned a lot (more ice screws, two ropes, more practice, etc etc ad infinitum) and of course doubtless over the next few weeks, with the benefit of hindsight, it will become more of an acheivement and less of a hardship. I love it, I do.

Back to 40K next time.

Pick a side (or not)

FW Death Spinner. Template weapons for the Eldar !

Ok then, this is obviously going to proceed in an escalation campaign manner. We now have (in the previous two posts) games specifically to advance the story line.

The battle for the Promethium refinary will see if the PLA get the resources they need to take on the Imperial Guard.

There will be a 'running the gauntlet' type senario to see if the Iggies get the resources they need to take on the PLA.

There will be two points for a win, one for a draw and none for a loose. These might well translate into extra strategy points (allowing that side to seize the initative more easily) or apocalypse stategy card thingies (Apocalypse strategic assets ?).

So, scoring the armies wins, draws and defeats seems straight forward enough.