oMAD

You can see the first article now for oMAD on the right menu bar (the WW2 naval thingy) and there´s a new page explaining how to explore the site. You can access it via the links on top of the page (or down below on the navigation bar)

I recently mentioned about the great deal I got on ebay. This got me into WW2 naval wargaming in a cheap and brutal way. I now had rules, ships, counters and even reference books, all in front of me.

Sadly, I knew little about naval combat, or even ships. I had to do my homework and for this I decided to dive in the deep. I opened a Scharnhorst battlecruiser pack. There are two of these ships in the collection I bought, so I read a bit and found there were two of these in the Kriegesmarine. One was the Scharnhorst, the other one was the Gneisenau.

Flipping through the Camo book I see the Scharnhorst had a nice camo scheme. I want to do that, but that would be diving in the deep where the sharks with lasers dwell. So I decided to paint the “simpler” Gneisenau Scharnhorst battlecruiser (say that out loud, and it´s funnier)

I was thinking about paint, cause I´m a painter first, but this GHQ model had to be completely assembled first. The tiny instructions and the strange (for me) naval terms (and in English… I speak freaking Spanish) were intimidating. So I went online for some clues and got a nice idea of how the ship actually looks before building it. Hint, hint, hint.

With these tools I went on to the table to build my first little boat.

Here´s the main part. The deck is one piece, and it has the places where to start gluing everything else.

These are the rest of the parts. There are some spare cranes and guns.

Here´s the catapult with the scout plane. I realized it was good to do this while I´m still on my twenties. Otherwise it would have been painful for the eyes and fingers.

First step was to put the four single 5.9 guns and the four twin 5.9 guns in place. I didn´t know what a 5.9 gun was until now. You can see I am giving the impression of battle on the right side of the ship. (It´s called starboard, you know?)

Next I put the stack and the two big cranes on the hull.

I then put the catapult and little plane on the aft superstructure, and glue that to the hull.

Then the rest is assembled. First I put the two small cranes on the fore superstructure. I also glue one of the 11″ guns to it. Before gluing that to the hull, I put the other two big guns on the hull.

And that´s pretty much it. If you are not careful, you will lose one of the small cranes under a fingernail. Really.

Here you can see the ship in my hand. I could easily crush the entire German fleet. Ok, bad one.

Here´s some more detail.

I then make a base for the ship in 2mm plasticard. I got this basing idea from a site I checked (meaning drooled all over) when I was considering getting into naval wargaming. The site is Agis Neugebauer´s VaS section of his site.

And that´s really it. It´s a nice experience and I learned quite a bit from just building the model. Not 24 hours after assembling it I had this.

And that means I really like this new aspect of the hobby. I might even start to play naval battles.

So, to the various projects on the table, I now add Victory at Sea.

Today arrived from Texas an ebay package I was anxiously awaiting. It´s always a noble act to grab on ebay the failed projects of the fellow wargamer and free him of the weight of having yet another impossible army on the painting table.

This time I got quite some goodies, all from a seller who obviously never got to compromise with the WW2 naval aspect of the hobby. Let´s hope he can finally paint that TYW army or those Battlelore figures now that this ships are off of his back.

The box was carrying these:

Seven GHQ Micronauts packs with Russian and German ships in 1/2400 scale. Detail on these is breathtaking.

Six Panzerschiffe resin ships (Italian and Russian) and three subs.

A painted GHQ Russian battleship.

The Victory at Sea rulebook with countersheets.

A Painter´s Guide to WW2 naval camouflage by Clash of Arms (this alone is $20)

And to make it a deal, about fifty printouts from Signs & Portents with the Russian fleet, some rules and scenarios.

And all this for just $40. Yeah, that´s right. Quite a way to get into WW2 naval wargaming.

I have added the rest of the players in the Bunny Gridiron team and created a new gallery with my 6mm samurai.

This are the first bases I have painted. I suppose a base can be considered a unit, but I haven´t found a samurai ruleset to my tastes yet, so I base them any way I like.

They are yari ashigaru, wielding long spears (yari), based in 40mm square bases. There are eight of them. Every single figure has it´s sashimono on it´s back. Some of them carry the bigger flags.

The colors for the armor and the flags represents Oda Nobunaga´s forces. They would probably never wear such an uniform color scheme. But they are 6mm tall! You need to unify them somehow for easy recognition on the table.

The figures are all Baccus unless otherwise noted. And they are superb. Taking pictures of these guys is just plain difficult.