Osmanlı Havaalini Kuvvetleri completed...

Here are some photos of the Ottoman Airship Force completed for Aeronef Over The Aegean (the photoshoot was done today and came out well). I am very pleased with the final look and may be to buy an Abdul Aziz class aerostat battleship at some stage to complete the fleet...

Turgut Reis class cruiser

Muin-I-Zaffer class aerostat cruiser

Assari Shaevket class aerostat destroyer

Yarhisar class fast torpedo aerostat

Keyk class Patrol aerostat

War balloon

Kindjal class aeroplane

Sprue Town - complete...

After watching Doctor Zhivago (during which, in an ad break, I'd undercoated Sprue Town), I decided to see whether I could slap some paint on it so it looked vaguely Aegean (after a quick Google of Turkish Aegean village...). With the judicious use of a fan heater to speed drying along it's now finished. I have resisted the temptation to paint doors, city gates etc as this is only supposed to be a bit of representational terrain not a scale model.

It did occur to me that this use of sprue could work for seaside buildings for Man O'War etc, as well as numerous native dwellings on Earth, Mars and maybe even underwater. SWMBO is impressed as it didn't actually cost anything other than a bit of paint and glue...

Sprue Town - work in progress

With the Ottomans finished I was about to take the photos and realised I didn't have an appropriate target for the Syren to bomb! Inspired by the efforts of Eli on I See Lead People I decided to knock something up out of balsa, but had a Eureka! moment when I realised that I had tons of sprue that could be used (this is pretty much Space Marine sprue and some Mantic Elves). The only commercial item is the clump of trees from Irregular that I already had sat around and didn't have the time to make some from putty.

If I had more time I would have done things slightly different, such as a more natural looking mound in the centre instead of a slottabase, but given the minimal effort required I'm pleased with it and hope to slap some paint on it this afternoon.

Ottomans - work in progress...

Just thought I'd grab the last bit of natural light and take a quick photo of the Ottoman Fleet as they stand at present. Had a good day yesterday painting wise and broke the back of them, with some detailing today. Need to glue the magnets on but that'll have to wait 'till this evening. Also need to come up with a good way of basing the aeroplanes...

Update: I've reloaded the photo. Now if you click on it, it enlarges. No idea why it didn't do that earlier...

Osmanlı Havaalini Kuvvetleri

Having mislaid my Ottoman aeronef fleet, scratchbuilt by David Crook, I had to place an emergency order into Brigade to have some appropriate models for Aeronef Over the Aegean.

Despite the Brigade workshop being buried under several feet of snow, Tony came up trumps and the Turkish element of the AOTA pack Brigade are releasing arrived this morning.

After a flurry of lunchtime activity the models have all been tidied up, stuck together as required and have had a good undercoat. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to crack on with painting the models. I'm not 100% keen on the Brigade Turkish paint scheme so will be coming up with my own for the Osmanlı Havaalini Kuvvetleri (Ottoman Airship Force).

In my research for historic aerial and naval paint schemes of the Ottoman Empire I did come across this excellent website, Turkey in the First World War, well worth a look at, especially the pre-1914 pages.

The Most Influential Set of Rules of the Millenium...

Over the years I've been a bit of a rules magpie, buying sets that I never play, looking for ideas and the holy grail of sets. This week two new sets arrived at snow covered Blease Towers; Warlord's Black Powder and Black Hat's Martian Empires.

What both have in common is the obvious influence of Warmaster, probably one of the best sets of wargames rules ever written and sadly allowed to sit in a dusty corner by Games Workshop who continue to champion mechanisms in their core games that went out with the Ark.

However, Warmaster's influence is such that it transcends this mistreatment and also periods, Blitzkrieg Commander et al all have it at heart, Black Powder unsurprisingly does (as it was written by Rick Priestly) but so does Martian Empires.

Black Powder is the latest in the search for the holy grail of

a playable set of Napoleonic wargames rules and something I can use with the ACW stuff I bought from Perry's. I haven't had a chance to read them yet (I keep getting distracted by the pretty pictures), but so far so good and the mechanisms I am familiar with from Warmaster are here so they should not be too hard to pick up...

Martian Empires was an impulse buy as I have no real wish to do 15/18mm VSF but I read an interesting report on the Warlords of Mars blog that that resulted in me sending off an order to Black Hat who currently have them at a reduced price. The rules show definite Warmaster influences in the issuing of orders etc but this is what attracted me to them. Production is good, full colour but copied rather than printed by the look of it. The photos are nicely inspiring, I don't like the idea of VSF hover tanks (and have discounted the models to date) but a bit of conversion could add some wheels or tracks underneath... I did start a small 10mm VSF force for Land Ironclads on Mars and as the base sizes are the same (Warmaster size!!) I might use the figures for both. My only bug bear is the inclusion of the Prussian army in 1880 in the game, surely they should be called Germans by then!

Painting is currently in that mid way "I don't like it" phase on the Mantic Elves, hopefully the dip will work some miracles because at the moment they look bloody awful...

Priceless Tomes

As is often the way when looking for one thing you come across another long lost and forgotten. In my case the happy rediscovery was my copy of Charles Grant's and Stuart Asquith's Scenarios For All Ages. A follow up to Grant's equally excellent Scenarios For Wargames, the book contains 52 different scenarios most of which can be adapted to any period.

Like most 'golden age' wargames books the emphasis is on creating objective driven scenario based games rather than meaningless balanced points contests, indeed many of the scenarios included are unbalanced but that doesn't mean they are one sided.

I'd forgotten what a gold mine of ideas this book was and if you haven't got a copy of either then click on the link(s) above and get a copy off Amazon - 24p for a challenging game and one a week for a whole year is a bargain that any wargamer can't ignore...

Paint It... Gold!

Aside from the Kv-5's, my other wargaming present from Santa was a box of the plastic Mantic Elves which I must say are jolly wonderful. The detail on them is great and I really like the slender 'Tom Meier' look Mantic have adopted. I haven't done any comparisons with other company miniatures yet but I am hopeful they will pass muster as suitable for LOTR games, if not they may become Melniboneans...

I've built up one unit of spear and found them quite easy to make up. The nice thing is you can plug parts in place before gluing when you are happy with the positioning. Due to a plethora of other projects I have decided to go "speedy dip" with the miniatures (well, paint the dip on them) given the relative success of previous experiments. The basic scheme is I've decided on is quite shiny; a basic gold armour with red shields, which I hope will look really cool after the dip settles in all the detail. Unfortunately GW Shining Gold is a bitch to paint on as a basecoat so this isn't going as quickly as I'd hoped. I think I will look at investing in a gold aerosol for future units, but I have six drying at present and am hoping to finish the remaining twelve tonight.