Thing a Week 3

Finished off the Vickers Independent just in time for VBCW Kursk, and added the final touches to the Lancaster Armoured Car for a full 3 points.

You cant really see it in this photo but I really went to town with the Devlin Mud. Most of the detail work went into the tracks, with a slightly dodgy orange rust effect which quickly got smothered with mud. I'm pretty happy with it.

I considered covering it in painted slogans, a la Spanish Civil War vehicles, but slogans that look or even sound cool in Spanish (or Russian) seem a little trite to me when written in English.

 I'd like to modify and earlier statement I made about the detail on the Independent. While the detail that's there is good, while looking at reference photos, I noticed some major ones are missing, especially on the tracks. Notably, the drive wheels are just blank circles and the two flat rectangles (see above) are supposed to be cavities - air intakes maybe, also the tracks are rather short on definition.

The completed Lancaster

Thing a Week 2

Here we are, a month later, with my second thing!

At this rate I'll clear the lead pile sometime in 2054...

Where's the rest of my bloody tank?

I'm really quite happy with the second Firefly. I discovered a new way to do the tracks; a drybrush of a metalic mix over Tin Bitz. Unfortunately it got mostly covered by a kind of sloppy mud application... I also found a good colour for the camouflage strips with a mix of Khaki and Iraqi Sand. It's not showing up on the Firefly turret in the picture above, but it and the tracks show up much better below.

Next up, the Alien style Genestealer, another two Cromwells to complete my minimum legal force and as a matter of urgency, the Vickers Independent in VBCW livery.

Copplestone Vickers Independent

An upcoming VBCW game has given me the opportunity to invest in a Copplestone Vickers Independent Heavy Tank. As with the Lancaster armoured car I bought from them the individual pieces are really well cast and detailed, but require a little thought and work to actually fit together.

I decided to use brass rods to secure all the gun barrels and re-purpose the superfluous magnets from a box of Battlefront Cromwells to secure the secondary turrets, which I could see toppling off at the slightest provocation during gameplay.

Overall a pretty solid model.

I dunno... I think it needs more guns...

I'm going to paint it up for VBCW, then weather the sh*t out of it to get some further use out of it in Post-Apocalyptic games.

Bad news for Scavenge, Skirmish, Survive?

The New Scientist reports that a supervolcano eruption may not be as world ending as we might fear.

New research by the University of Oxford suggests that cooling after the last major eruption - that of Toba 75000 years ago - would only be in the region of 1.5°C over a period of  20 to 30 years, although they do agree there might have been a 'short term period of severe cooling.' However, 'more dramatic dramatic dips have occurred without any major impact on humans.'

So apart from the devastating impact it would have on the modern economy it should be more or less business as usual for the human race.

Looks like Scavenge Skirmish Survive might have to go looking for a new Causus Exterminatus (?) to keep up its realistic bent...