Lets go shopping

Not done much wargaming recently, but I did help run the WD Display Team (North) participation game at Triples on 4th/5th April. This was Tim Gows 'Sturmstaffel, covering Luftwaffe heavy fighters taking on hordes of B17s in 1944. The game went down well and we had a steady stream of players, at least ninety over the weekend. I also had the opportunity to do some shopping, mainly picking up some extra 20mm WW2 stuff to flesh out my Megablitz forces, but I also got some Old Glory ultra-modern British troops including a pack of WMIK Landrovers.

I found that I had enough unpainted 20mm Germans to put together another infantry division, plus the bulk of the kit required to turn them into a panzer grenadier division if required, so I mainly needed a few extra vehicles and some Corps assets. There were zillions of cheap plastic tanks on the bring and buy so I ended up getting enough Panzer IVs and Panthers to make up two extra late war panzer regiments for my existing panzer divisions, and also got some extra British kit to fill in some gaps, including a rather nice Churchill AVRE. Pride of place was a plastic kit of a 100mm K-18 gun, manufactured by some obscure east european company.

This week has been spent assembling the old junk I've been accumulating for a few years and rummaging through bags of old figures. I converted an ACW artillery limber into a limber for the divisional artillery, assembled some old Frontline trucks, found an FAA bicycle for the Fusilier bicycle recce company and dug out an old Russian 76.2mm gun for the divisional artillery regiment. At Triples I'd picked up an Airfix Pak 40 kit, so I built the gun, along with a Chinese copy of a Hasegawa 8ton halftrack (with no instructions!) to tow it. In the end I decided it was too big and relegated it to Corps artillery duties and found an old Matchbox Sdkfz 11 instead. The Opel truck I plan on converting into a radio truck for Corps HQ, but I haven't done that yet. I also came across an old Jagdpanzer IV in my bits box, a conversion from an Airfix Pz IV I'd done back in the 1970s and decided to refurbish it, as I can use it with 29th Panzergrenadier Div to replace their Nashorn. So after a week of sticking things together, I've got a fair old amount of kit to undercoat and paint.

Phase II will be to do the Corps assets and extra panzer units, but I'll have to assemble the K-18 and do the Opel Radio truck conversion so that can wait a bit. I've also got to build an AA gun to go on the back of a Frontline Flak lorry. Phase III will be the extra British stuff, as along with the tanks and vehicles, I just 'happened' to pick up some more infantry so I'll do another nine infantry battalions to convert 1st Armoured Div into an infantry division, should I require another infantry division.

So, plenty to be getting on with then, and I haven't even started on the modern Brits yet.