Luftwaffe 1946 Baby Mobile

With a little one on the way I decided to do something a little different. With some 1/72 late WWII / Luftwaffe 1946 model kits unfinished from a fair few years ago (pre-wargaming life) I decide repurposing them into a baby mobile made perfect sense.

Using what I had I only bought Dragon's Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet for its size (to balance the weight of the Messerschmitt P.1101). Below follows the aircraft, a source photograph and its Wikipedia page.

Republic-Ford JB-2 Loon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic-Ford_JB-2

Bachem Ba 349 Natter

It's also worth reading an account of the first (and last) manned flight of the Natter by Lothar Sieber:

https://www.airspacemag.com/airspacemag/world-war-iis-worst-airplane-180973153/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachem_Ba_349

Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fieseler_Fi_103R_Reichenberg

Captured British Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_163_Komet

Messerschmitt P.1101

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_P.1101

And putting them all together:

A few month in, the little one is loving them. The finish on them is a little rough, but I was working with some that were half painted, and or horrible to put together in the flight mode (I'm looking at you P.1101). But I'm very happy with the overall result.

American Civil War Union Skirmishers and Walking Dead Zombies

A quick painting session as I had recently placed a large order with Perry Miniatures, including a box of their plastic Confederate infantry and I hadn't finished their first box set I had bought years ago. In addition to them I also had some of Sash & Sabre's Federal Infantry Skirmish or Firing Line (also bought around 2010) that I started painting a few years ago and then put on the back burner.

The photos below show my typical undercoat technique of raw umber craft paint (over a black spray painted undercoat followed by a ~5/1 highlight dry brush of raw umber/white. Then paint as normal (also with highlights, etc).

A simple job, but I wanted these done. There will be a whole lot of Confederates that they will face (an army for Rebels and Patriots) and some of them can be seen in the background of that photo above.

While I finished painting these, I also completed the Walking Dead zombies I had got from Jack at Christmas.

These will be used for a Flag of Our Zombies game I plan to have in the near future.

Another Season of The Football Game

Another boardgame night last night with Ara, Jack, Liam, Mike and Nic giving The Football Game another run. I think the game works better now with having learnt to have a diverse colour (ideally two of each) and positional (again at least two, though your midfielders can cover shortfalls) squad with plenty in reserve (2-3 players). When its your turn also thinking about a B squad playing to ensure your star players don't get injured (that last lesson I didn't learn as last time we played injuries were almost non-existent).

I think there's a still a high degree of luck so you can’t take it too seriously (Liam nearly won when he took over Nic's team half way through the night so maybe that’s not true). Well done Jack on holding him off and winning the season.

We were discussing how this game could be made into a fun wargame, and by having it set in Nazi-occupied Europe with each player recruiting / managing a cell of resistance fighters competing against each other to fight ze Germans. A bit like ‘Allo ‘Allo. Trading fighters amongst cells and drawing missions with a set colour combinations (instead of the dice) would add some randomness. This would also eliminate the double black dice twice in a row situation that we had in last night's game. Event and injury cards effect the person who’s turn it is.

In addition I also worked out the probability on the dice as it was annoying me that I knew each combination wasn't equally possible. The first die is yellow, yellow, red, red, blue, black and the second die is yellow, red, blue, blue, black, black (I'm not 100% sure on the pairings here, but the spread is right).

While getting a certain colour on at least one of the dice (44.44%) and a double (5.56%) is the same for all four colours, it’s the pairs of colours that aren’t the same. And getting any same colour pair (e.g. black and black) is higher than I thought at 22.22%.

If you’re looking for yellow AND red (or blue AND black) there’s a 11.11% probability, but looking for a pair that aren’t dominate on the same die (e.g. yellow AND blue) gives 13.89% odds. Very slight advantage but with 20 rolls in a 5 player game it could make the difference.

Still love the subtlety in this game and the stress of not peaking too early, but not peaking too late in case you have injuries!