RFCM

Quote from: Leman (Andy) on October 12, 2020, 07:47:47 AM
I have to be honest Myrm, I didn't understand that last paragraph at all. It seemed very contradictory. Can you please explain further.

Just realised I never replied to this. Sorry have been distracted from gaming by work for too long.

let me try and rephrase that paragraph:
I have considered playing Hammerin' Iron games with more ships on a more open map than the constrained Peter Pig straight river map. However, the variation in games that we can have at my club with my current fleet collection and the strength of games under the core scenario from easy quick setup and into please, plus decent objectives driving play and an elegant subsequent scoring structure tied to those objectives means that most of our players just want to play that and enjoy it enough that a bay mouth fight with say 15 ships hasnt remotely attracted them.

I found the same and the relatively low model count means I have a decent collection with lots of games in them, no need for anyone else at the club to take the plunge just to have a game or two. I can add the odd extra ship here and there and extend my range over time. I currently have 6 laminated fleets for each side and can do mix and match on the day.
Makes for quick setup.

If I can get a decent open hex mat we might play some more freeform scenarios but with the core river game having such a decent set of objectives and scoring a straight fleet toe to toe action has slightly less interest in the players.

Hammerin Iron is my top one and I have a reasonable collection for it

PBI comes second and I use my FoW forces in that so can manage a couple of armies (Hungarian and Soviets) plus clubmates have all sorts to use.

Quote from: Colonel Kilgore on August 16, 2019, 01:59:36 PM
I saw them both too - they did a couple of laps of an old WW2 runway in the West Country - impressive!

Yeah they displayed to the Dambusters march at the Flying Proms (just about to head out to that for this year actually). So which WW2 runway did they dance around - was it RAF St Mawgan or Davistow or somewhere else?

Quote from: Leman on August 16, 2019, 12:44:45 PM
Last  Sunday ago a Lancaster bomber flew over us really low - a magnificent sight.

I got lucky and saw both the BBMF Lancaster and the Canadian one at an airshow a few years back when thhe Canadian one wa touring Europe. One Merlin sounds good enough, four makes you smile and eight together on just two airframes is astounding.

Quote from: Colonel Kilgore on August 16, 2019, 08:00:10 AM
That's amazing that the still fly it, at that age.

It doesnt come out very often, the windspeed has to be less than 3-4knots and she goes up about six feet for the length of the runway.
Not because the aircraft cannot do more but the thing is irreplaceable and so if things did go wrong so much history would be lost.
They have a few others of nearly that age - the Deperdussin and a Blackburn IIRC and they fly more and they also have some replicas made for "Those Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines" that get a lot of airtime and much bigger flights.

Ten years Ive been going to Shuttleworth hoping to see that Bleriot fly and finally manged to see here in the air earlier this year....quite a sight to see an aircraft over a century old (110 this year and still going).

Nice Bleriot!
This is a real one...oldest aircraft still flying in the world! Hopefully its compressed enough to fit....the video wouldnt fit sadly

Oh that is an impressive looking fleet there - and that's just the Union?

When playing FoW at my club we had Battlefront minis, QRF and Peter Pig as the three main suppliers in people's armies. Fundamentally you could tell different vehicle suppliers if they were in the same unit and placed next to each other, infantry missed fully were not really noticeable but some infantry that was all one maker next to others had the same 'I can tell they are different' effect.
None affected gameplay whatsoever and none were so different that they really made people think the aesthetics were off. In fact the biggest differentiator turned out to be paint jobs - one player had two batches of infantry from the same supplier one painted recent to the game and the other a number of years beforehand when his skill level wasn't as high and that was more distracting than mixed supplier figures.....
So yes, Peter Pig figures work great in Flames of War....and stemming from the use of some of those Battlefront armies units in an AK47 game that made me look at PP rules, we discovered (what a surprise) that PBI works very nicely with FoW based armies.....

Thanks - this is the accumulation of I think three different purchase points. An initial load to get me going in the game a couple of years back with rules, mat and starter fleets, then an expansion once I liked the game and models - to give some variety. The last batch in the last couple of months where I did the wrecks, and about another half dozen ships to get more options. I am still short in the 500-750pts range and tinclads so I am trying to work on that next I think (after another project gets done.
Because I bring everything to the table for games at my club I have laminated 6 different fleet lists for each side which between them use all the ships I have in some combination and it gets games down fast.
I do have a bunch of the markers for mines, torpedo boats, subs and damage but didn't include them in the picture because since I did them they have flaked badly and and I am trying to work out how to fix that paint adherence issue. I am struggling a little because the metal fire/smoke markers from the same packs are all fine (and visible perched on a couple of the wrecks in the fleet picture), same with the penny mounted guns you can see for the Army Support Asset and the sheds I use for Depot objectives which were painted at the same time.
The wrecks I mounted on CDs so its rapidly obvious that it is a marker not a live ship and it fills the hex nicely, plus its easy to twirl to line up with active ships moving into the hex and not affect the game or get  mixed up. I am toying with buying more mortar rafts so I have 16 and can make 4 strings of 4 each for the in water objective but that's not necessary. I have a few spare guns from the wrecks that rather than put on the wrecks I plan to paint a second set of Army Support Asset markers....but I just found my textured paint has gone solid and since it appears to be a latexy compound I think that unlike plain acrylic paint I cannot regenerate that with isopropanol.
The only thing I am missing from all this, and so from the Flotilla lists I have put together, is the Large Fort model which I am toying with getting....

So I finally got all my bits painted up for Hammerin Iron, ships, newer ships, some even newer ships, forts and wrecks and objectives etc. So ensuring I took the picture from far enough away to make my paint jobs look half decent....here's the selection.

<< but that it was only expected to raise £10,000>>
Yes, but that's because the auction houses don't really know how to handle this sort of thing if its wargaming (as opposed to collectible toys which is a different market albeit one they are familiar with). They repeat previous mistakes in handling because its the data that they have.
There was a similar auction near Cambridge last year and the lots were horribly constructed - many gamers indicated how and why to the auctioneers and the difference it would make but they went for their large mixed lots selling to dealers and cut out the collectors who couldn't go for the large blocks of unwanted stuff. They did sell everything and they did sell it quickly but they certainly didn't maximise the value by any means - though because they raised a lot more than the projected assessed value (which was way off) they said it had massively successful, thus reinforcing the mindset.

Its much better than leaving a regular model on its side to show wreckage.....which is what I had been doing up until now...

No problem - Id rather see them getting some use than getting discarded as excess!