Room on top

Things have been pretty busy here chez moi, what with the cheese shifting and the giddy social whirl my wife insists on including me in. Nonetheless further progress has been made on my 1926 General Strike project so I thought I’d share a few more piccies of the things that have recently passed across the painting desk. All items shown are Pendraken 10mm - apart from the plane which is Wings of Glory 1:144th scale.

First up is this little fella:

A London bus pressed into service as an improvised troop transport. The advertising signs (which I think help tremendously) come from the Sankey Scenics N gauge railway range.

The same bus from the other side. Old Calabar is a dog food product in case you were wondering. Oh, you weren’t wondering. Okay. The Scottish infantry section seem very annoyed they’ve just missed their bus. Never mind lads there’ll be another along in a minute!

A British Whippet tank of WW1 vintage which remains in service up until the mid 20´s due to defence spending review cutbacks. Britain had declared it would not be involved in any war for at least 10 years and consequently declined to do much in the way of research and development. It boasts several machine guns but only one of them could be fired at any one time.

An Airco DH4 bomber. Introduced in 1917 and Intended to be replaced by the up engined DH9 the DH4 continued to serve as an Army cooperation aircraft until 1930 in some theatres! This one sports a red fuselage band and the designation B1 indicating it is the 1st aircraft in the Birmingham Corporation Air Defence Force.

A Seabrook armoured lorry. Originally used by Royal Navy land units this armoured heavyweight had a very poor cross country performance but fielded a useful 47mm (3pdr) gun. I suspect this one will be supporting my mutinous matelots.

You can stick yer ruddy King Tigers where the sun don’t shine mate! Seriously, who the hell doesn’t love a little Renault FT17. A contemporary of the Whippet (see above) it was exported all around the world and featured a number of different turret styles and armaments. In 1926 Chinese warlord Zhang Zoulin ordered 15 war surplus FT17’s for his Manchurian army. In my counterfactual history one of the ships carrying 3 tanks and 2,000 Lebel rifles is forced to divert into Liverpool due to mechanical failure. Striking dockworkers quickly seized the ship and its cargo and soon added them to the Workers Defence Force arsenal. Later named Faith, Hope and Charity, Faith is shown here after the application of its WDF red ID turret band.

An Earnhardt armoured car. Produced and used by Germany this one was captured by the Italians during WW1. When pressed, Benito Mussolini sent this one as a token of his support for the British Fascists in 1926. Named Carlotta (she’s a whole lotta car!) she’s shown here painted with the OMS / Fascist white turret band.

A motorbike / sidecar combination plus mounted troopers. I intend to use these for recon work and improving a forces overall command and control. I’ve kept them deliberately non faction specific.

And finally. Who’d have thought that these Ohio based rockers would have been so into WW1 British light tanks that they’d name a song after one?!

Take it away boys.

Blue on blue

Just a quick painting progress update this week.

A combination of catching Covid 19 and reduced blogging effort has seen a bit more progress than I’d expected on my interwar General Strike project, so I thought I’d share a few piccies. All minis are 10mm Pendraken.

A squad of British Fascists or “blue shirts” as the Daily Mail would refer to them (in my alternate timeline). Forces on the left soon began to call them “bennys” in mocking reference to their apeing of Benito Mussolini’s black shirts. Secretly armed and uniformed they eventually emerged as the militant wing of the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supply.

Note: The Irish and Spanish fascists of this period had blue shirts. Like all “good” fascists my chaps wear identifying  armbands. White for the OMS overlaid with a black central stripe and an embroidered branch name. (Smethwick in this case). The ice cream salesman hats have a black felt square on the front with a silver empire roaring lion badge. Anti Semitism had yet to rear its ugly head - these early fascists being all about the Empire and the establishment of a corporatist state. Think Scouts with a Lewis gun.

Two 4.5 inch howitzers without obvious factional affiliation (so I can get more use out of them). A very popular weapon that according to Wikipedia even saw early WW2 service.

Two command stands (one per side). They can be either command or they can double up as forward observers at a pinch. Sorry about the Dandelion seed blowing past (left).

Same boys from the back in order to show off the radio’s. These are from Pendrakens WW2 range but radios were actually being used in the mid 20’s army despite being clumsy and unreliable.

Vickers HMG and a mortar team. One per side at the moment, though playing on a 3x3 board I can’t think I’ll need any more than that.

Another squad of matelots - two in total now, for a bit of variety. This bunch have an officer or senior rating amongst them. 

Angry pro government middle class members of the OMS with their white armbands and assorted shotguns. Pretty good at writing letters to the editor of the Times, not so good as it turns out at blue collar work. If only the proles could just do as they’re told. 

I’m currently finishing off two cavalrymen and a motorcycle with sidecar combination for recon work. Next on the blocks will be 12 jock infantry though I’ll need to do a bit of experimentation with painting kilts. Wish someone made a tartan paint, lol. 

I should be onto vehicles within a week or so, and boy have I got some weird and wonderful looking things to assemble and paint up. I think you’ll like them.

Lastly for this post, an unexpected advantage to 10mm figures is their comparability with railway N gauge scenery. Nissan huts in cardboard are just part of a massive range of interesting (and cheap) buildings I’ve got on order. 

Nissan hut. I’ve always thought of them as a WW2 thing but they were first produced in 1916, so entirely applicable to 1926.

Toodleooh for now.

Show and tell

Greetings pop pickers…

I’ve been doubling up on shifts at the dairy for the last few weeks in an attempt to add to the moving house fund. Sadly two 12 hour shifts a week hauling 30 tons of Mozzarella tends to leave me in a semi comatose state. Instead of beavering away each evening, brush in hand, I’m more likely to be found propped up on the sofa, staring blankly at the idiot lantern, while dribble runs down my chin. 

However…

In a few spare hours of relative lucidity, (when I’ve not been in traction) I have managed to make some progress with my British revolution / 1926 General Strike project, so I thought I’d share a few piccies on the blog. 

I’ve long been an admirer of Norms Tigers at Minsk rules and was considering using them for some WW2 hexed terrain stuff when I decided to co opt them for my version of A Very British Civil War instead. 

Set in 1926 rather than 1938, the catalyst for conflict becomes the General Strike rather than the abdication crisis and consequently late First World War figures and vehicles fit the bill nicely. Scale was dictated by figure variety,  availability, and cost, with Pendraken’s excellent First World War and interwar ranges in 10mm providing everything I’m ever going to need. 

The units are all six figure “sections / squads” in a broadly 1:2 ratio with vehicles represented at 1:1. 

Up first are this bunch from the OMS.

In 1925 the British Government had its first confrontation with the Unions when Miners working hours were increased and their wages cut. Realising they were not ready for the threatened industrial action a time limited pay off allowed the Government to make preparations for further trouble. That year an advert in the conservative press called for volunteers to enable the maintenance of essential supplies in the event of nationwide strikes. The Organisation for the Maintenance of Supply was duly born. The almost exclusively white collar middle class volunteers would be expected to drive busses unload ship’s cargo etc and generally fill the gaps left by workers who’d withdrawn their labour. Given the social demographic from which the OMS members were drawn it’s not unsurprising that  some admirers of the newly emerging Italian influenced Fascist movement soon sought to infiltrate it. Though members of organisations like the British Fascisti (see the earlier “not dead just resting post”) were required to formally renounce their membership before joining the OMS several notable figures still ended up in control of OMS regional branches. In my timeline, clashes between striking workers and the OMS cause both sides to quickly, and illegally, arm themselves. The fellows depicted above are OMS civilians sporting their distinctive (and totally made up) white armbands as an identifier.

Then of course there’s the Rozzers.

The dear old British Bobby was often placed in the invidious position of attempting to maintain law and order in a none partisan fashion. Churchill actually wanted to arm both the police and soldiers if called on to guard essential supplies but was overruled on the matter by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. In my timeline both forces were armed when trouble from riotous mobs began to escalate.

The British Governments most reliable strike breakers were expected to be the military. With organisation, manpower and discipline they would be expected to step in if and when things threatened to spiral out of control.

A platoon of regulars, primed for action with the Lewis gun section top left. I plan to give bases armed with that weapon the higher firepower “panzer grenadier” stats from TaM.

During the breakdown of normal law and order the chaps below might well have appeared on either side:

Sailors from HMS Drummond docked in Liverpool. Depending on the scenario they could easily represent Government forces or mutinous matelots put ashore by worried officers. 

In my alternate timeline, escalating violence around the London Docks sees soldiers deployed and orders given to shoot at rioters. Some units refuse to comply with this command and the men involved are duly arrested. Suspecting there might be further instances like this soldiers sailors and airmen begin to desert their posts in droves.

Effectively finding themselves on the run many deserters band together, receiving food and lodging from strike committees in exchange for protection. Later formalised and reorganised as the Workers Defence Force, the chaps below are shown wearing their distinctive red armbands.

A WDF platoon with Lewis gun section on the left. The majority of WDF forces wear greatcoats and caps in the field.

Finally (for the moment) we have the provisional wing of the Revolutionary Workers Collective - small groups of non hierarchical unionised militia tasked with the defence of their parent factory and its immediate surroundings. 

British Small Arms factory comrades from Smallheath in Birmingham readying themselves to give the OMS fascists what for.

I still have a large number of units to paint up, but since they get done surprisingly quickly, I’m hopeful of playing a few games with them in the not too distant future. Units still to come include yeomanry cavalry, forward observers, commanders, motorcycle and side car scouts, mortars, field guns, Vickers MG’s, armoured lorries, London busses, a traction engined steam roller, Mark V tank, Whippet tank, Vickers Mk2 tank, birch gun, AA truck etc etc. 

Originally I’d intended to do a structured campaign but I’m now leaning towards a series of smaller vignette type scenarios that just tell bits of the story in this imaginary clash between the left and right. I suspect it’ll end up as a bit of a mash up between back of beyond and a very British civil war. 

Special thanks must go to Norm for kindly coming up with stats for the main armoured vehicles I’ll be using.

And finally…

Apropos of absolutely nothing here’s a picture of something else I’ve been working on recently while fiddling around with Victorian submarine warfare rules. It’s amazing what you can make from a load of old crap isn’t it?!

The Plongeur…still under construction. 

Toodleooh for now!

And a bottle of rum…

Bugger me an actual game rather than me whining on about how crap I feel. 

I know right.

In my previous post I pitted three bold Captains against each other in a bid to prove who was the bestest pirate in the Indian Ocean. The winner would be whoever came back first from Danger Island with the largest share of buried treasure.

Here are the ships that will be headed to glory or disgrace:

The Mardy Mare whose Captain Black Taff Llewelyn has a fearsome all female crew.

The good ship Spatchcock with its Captain Handsome Jack and his Bosun (who is also his mom) Big Nell.

The Cutty Wren Captained by the insomniac ornithophobe - Richard Tully.

Our game starts as the three ships arrive at Danger Island from conveniently different directions.

Danger Island. The Cutty Wren is in the foreground, the Mardy Mare the top right and the Spatchcock is unhelpfully out of shot on the left. The red arrow indicates the wind direction. Board area is roughly 3ft square, the ships are Peter Pig 1:450 and the tiles and islands are Hexon. Rules are Galleys and Galleons - converted to hexes.

Setting the scene:

Big Nell was not in a great mood. Her son Neville, Captain of the Spatchcock, had got all caught up in some hare brained hunt for gold, and the crew, sensing impending danger, had seemingly now gone off their vittals. Snatching up a tray of week old macaroons and a large plum duff the doughty Bosun made her way up the companion way to the deck with a view to tossing the whole lot overboard.

On the Cutty Wren, Tully’s crew watched anxiously as their Captain took pot shots at a following albatross. “Sail ho!” Cried the look out, just in time to throw off his aim. Tully cursed the occupants of the crows nest and gave up shooting to focus his perspective glass on the horizon. A twin masted brigantine struggling against the wind was ploughing through the swell towards their shared destination…Danger Island!

Brigantine on the horizon. Ship ho!

Broad reaching, several leagues to Starboard, the Mardy Mare sliced like an arrow through the sea. The ship was going fast. Far too fast! Désirée the first mate had the con and it was obvious from the set of her shoulders that she was in a right strop over something Black Taff Llewelyn had said or done earlier, (though he was buggered if he knew what it was exactly). Downcast he watched Danger Island draw closer…we’ll he hoped it was Danger Island anyway. Truth was he’d become lost shortly after leaving port but he’d be damned if he was going to ask any of the vessels they’d passed for directions.

The game:

Turn 1. The Spatchcock fires at the Cutty Wren but the range is long and the shots go wide.

Turn 2. Coming about just in front of the Island the Cutty Wren fires back at the Spatchcock and Tully grunts in satisfaction as his shot strikes home in a vital area. (The Cutty Wren rolled a six which gave them a hit on the hull plus an extra roll on the critical damage table. Given its importance to the Spatchcock’s crew we’ll assume it was the galley that’s been destroyed! Thank goodness Big Nell had gone up on deck eh). Meanwhile, in the lea of the secondary islet the Mardy Mare does a handbrake turn lowers sails and drops anchor in the shallows just off the beach. The vessels shallow draught means there is little chance of grounding and Black Taff, with a sigh of relief, gets to keep his no claims bonus for another day.

Turn 3. The Spatchcock needs it’s full action allowance this turn to attempt to repair some of the damage it had suffered. Water had begun pouring in through a hole in the hull caused by the Cutty Wren’s cannon but disaster is averted when Big Nell plugs the leak with her unwanted plum duff (ooh err missus).  Unaware of the damage he’d caused Tully coasts over the shallows drops anchor and sends a search party ashore to look for the treasure. Still unhelpfully out of camera shot the Mardy Mare’s crew take an age to do their hair and get their make up on before going ashore to search. 

Turn 4. The Cutty Wren search party are first ashore but the snaking dotted line on their vellum treasure map leads to an X in the centre of a cannibal village. After ten minutes all that is left of them are their buckets and spades on the beach. (They had three search attempts this turn needing a 5 or 6 to discover some loot. A roll of 1 means they fall prey to head hunting cannibals. In a freak set of die rolls the first search parties from the other two ships all suffer the same fate this turn and no one finds any treasure).

Turn 5. A second search party sent from the Spatchcock deploys a number of party size sherry trifles to keep the cannibals at bay (true fact - cannibals hate trifle) and as a reward for this cunning stratagem they stumble across a massive chest full of doubloons and such like. Bingo. Hurriedly they head back to the ship. All the Spatchcock crew have to do now is raise anchor and sail off board. Discovering nothing but abandoned buckets and spades and a large collection of (strangely familiar) shrunken heads, the new shore party from the Cutty Wren give up and head back to the beach assailed by shouts of triumph from the Spatchcock crew just around the coast. When they get back to their jolly boat empty handed they find Tully has abandoned them - having sailed off to seize the prize now being loaded onboard the nearby brigantine. The Mardy Mare’s second all girl shore party decides to actually throw a party - on the beach. After consuming way above the legal limit of Babycham the hitherto hostile natives end up showing the girls where the second smaller treasure is buried. Making the international hand signal for “call me” the giggling laydeez re embark with the goods.

Turn 7. The Spatchcock’s brigantine sails mean she makes slow progress in turning to escape with her prize, since the wind has unhelpfully changed direction. The Cutty Wren races up the channel between the two islets with Tully using his brutal trait to get extra action points and a cheeky shot at the retreating vessel. The shot hits but the damage is insufficient to slow his opponent down (we assume the plum duff held!). Meanwhile with no one to impede their progress the Mardy Mare sets off in the opposite direction. With the smaller of the two available treasure troves Black Taff will not be able to win - but coming second will be good enough.

Turn 8. Desperate times mean desperate measures. The Spatchcock limps towards the board edge hindered again by a capricious wind. Tully on the Cutty Wren uses his brutal trait a second time, executing some of his crew for increased efficiency and another damage dice. The extra action points he gets for this allows his speedy pinace to close on the Spatchcock and throw grappling irons aboard. Sadly all of Tully’s brutality would be to no avail. As his desperate men readied themselves to leap across and seize the treasure through force of arms they were met by a hail of stale macaroons that bought the defenders just enough time to cut themselves free and slip away. 

So there we have it. The bestest pirate in the Indian Ocean is officially Handsome Jack, second is Black Taff Llewelyn and last and definitely least is Richard Tully.

Altogether now… (Don’t forget to slap your thigh and twirl your moustache). Huzzah!

Conclusions:

Galleys and Galleons delivered another fun game - and could have seen the win stolen by Tully at the very last minute. In actual fact I used the wrong tactics for the Cutty Wren, she had deadly close range falconettes and better boarding modifiers than the others. In hindsight the pinace would have been better served keeping close to one of the other ships and pouncing on them when they’d found something.

Hey ho.

Toodle ooh for now.

 

Yarrr!

Right ho then, the Wiglaf dark age painting is continuing at my normal glacial pace, ensuring that the two armies will finally be ready when the figure manufacturer in question is no longer in business or the period has been done to death by everyone else. In the interim I’ve decided to resurrect my old East Indies pirate ships for a quick game.

The fluff.

Let’s pop into a very seedy dive in Nanorabas, Indonesia,  where three “gentlemen of the coast” are having a rum fuelled argument about who is the bestest pirate. Unsurprisingly things have become a little bit heated.

To save the “discussion” turning into a hostelry wrecking brawl, the worried tavern keeper suggests the three of them take part in a competition to sort it out.

After a bit of yarring and waving of grog filled tankards the three of them agree. I mean...what could possibly go wrong?

The terms of the competition are simple. The Captain who comes back from Danger Island with the most loot will have “bestest captain on the high seas” bragging rights for 1 whole year.

Allow me to introduce you to them. 

First up is...

Black Taff Llewelyn, aka, the man they couldn’t hang. An unlikely coupling of a beautiful African Nubian princess and a tailors apprentice from Neath (who ran away to sea to avoid some unpleasantness over a shipment of lace - if you need to know) which produced young Taff. He turned out a little different to his pa, (who was 5ft 2 inches tall with a receding chin and a cod eye) ...as you can see.

Taff is Captain of the Mardy Mare and his all female crew are feared throughout the Indian Ocean. Legend has it that they once laid alongside a potential prize and nagged its crew into submission, without a shot being fired.

Sitting opposite to him is an old friend from 1642andallthat.blogspot.com Captain Richard Tully now of the Cutty Wren. Tully has a wooden arm, terrible insomnia and a morbid fear of seagulls. A nasty piece of work, he is greatly feared by his crew, who’d turn on him in a flash if it wasn’t for his four permanently primed pistols and the fact that he never seems to sleep.

Now then who else, ah yes...

Handsome Jack of the good ship Spatchcock.

Obviously, no one calls him Handsome Jack apart from his mother, who also happens to be the ships Bosun. His real name is Neville by the way...

The crew are used to slim pickings on the loot front since Neville’s mom isn’t keen on things that might put her lad in harms way, but there’s always plenty of grub on board which serves to keep the lads happy.

Here are the requisite ship data cards I’ve made to use alongside the Galleys and Galleons rules - converted to hexes. Once printed out I usually fold them in half and laminate them. 

Danger island is actually two small rocky outcrops, the hexes around them being counted as shallows. Once a boarding party has put ashore they may roll 1D6, needing 6, then 5 or 6 and so on until treasure is discovered. Once located the value of the treasure is determined by a further roll. Treasure falls into two categories and is either, “a night on the town and your bus fare home” or “a kings ransom”. There is one large treasure and one small treasure available in total. 

Oh yes, did I mention that the island is infested by cannibals? If a crew searching for treasure rolls a 1 then they’ve been added to the menu.

Since my iPads running out of juice, I’ll post the game itself in a day or so, when I’ve found another 50p to put in the leccy.

Toodle ooh

Not dead, just resting

Had a few problems with the old noggin of late and gaming interest has been virtually zero. In the space of the last four weeks I’ve only managed to produce the twenty four figures shown below - which is about as many as Lee would do in an afternoon I reckon. Lol. 

Penda, centre of right front stand and Raedwald centre of middle left hand stand. Only another 15 stands to go to complete the two armies. Should be done by mid 2025 at this rate.

Being nuts is not easy but as a musical representation of the condition I’ve gone from this…(don’t click on it, it contains cuss words!)

…to this in just three weeks! 

Apart from being full time bonkers I’ve been dabbling in Victorian submarine warfare a bit, (possibly more on that when I’ve finished the models) and looking to using Norm’s Tigers at Minsk rules for my own VBCW project set in a post general strike Britain, circa 1926. (With Pendraken 10mm forces). It’s been interesting researching the pre Mosley fascist groups from the 20´s and how they managed to infiltrate the governments volunteer strike breaking force. This « lady » and her group were certainly new to me.

Rotha Linton-Orman, leader of the British Fascisti…

…when Oswald was still pretending to be a socialist.

I like the published AVBCW thirties stuff a lot, but I’m not keen on some of the more outlandish factions or its general « war’s a bit of a lark » theme. I’ll be pitching it as a straight up communist / fascist struggle I think. Again more on that when the models arrive.

Since I’ve labelled this post as «blether » it’s probably about time I swerved off on a tangent, so here goes.

On a visit last summer one of my grandchildren remarked that the sign for the nearby Preseli hills actually looked like it said the Presley hills. Naturally I’ve been attempting to exploit their naïveté (I’m a very bad Grampa) and I’ve been trying to convince them since that Elvis (who was actually Welsh and not from Memphis) is still alive and scampering around up on the high moorland as a sort of feral character clad only in a rhinestone encrusted loin cloth. I’ve now got pictorial proof that he’s also been secretly canonised… as per this sign on the Pembrokeshire coastal path.

If you squint a bit at the sign you’ll see it’s not a stairway to heaven but a pathway to St Elvis. The truth is out there! Follow the money…erm…and so on. 

On the old blog I documented my very own « operation dynamo » in which the wife and I packed up and moved back from France - for a more certain post Brexit life. I’ve now given it two years in Wales but there’s not a day goes by that I don’t regret the move and so the initial planning has now begun on our version of « Overlord ». 

Even as I type The Current Mrs Broom is busy crocheting a massive net for us to go house hunting in Finistère, Cote d’Amor or Manche. We’ve booked a ferry etc for mid September so we’ll see what happens. Thank God for her Irish roots (and passport). Hopefully at some point next year, or even the one after, I’ll be wading ashore on Gold beach with all our worldly goods. Lol.

Wales eh?!

I’m not saying it’s backward out here…but we’ve still got a Spud U Like. 

Case closed.

Toodle ooh

An itch I keep on having to scratch

No, no not that itch, I’ve got an ointment for that.

I’m referring of course to my continual Dark Age and ECW fixations. 

I’ve owned and built ECW armies in 2, 6, 15, 18 and 28mm over the years, from bendy 6mm pikes to Wofun flats and everything in between. Despite my general (and perhaps unfair) dislike of Warlord Games I’m pretty sure I’ll be elbowing my way to the front of the queue if they ever do the period in their new Epic range. 

The other genre on which I seem fixated is the dark ages in Britain. The number of armies I’ve owned in  this era is smaller but I think it’s fair to say they’ve seen the most action. Eventually, as part of “operation generate more hobby cash” I flogged the last of them on eBay recently and resolved never to go there again. 

Of course within a week of shipping them off I discovered these...

Age of Penda - Wiglaf Miniatures. 18mm. Get ‘em from Northstar.

...and I came all over weak at the knees. 

I posted about them a while back but Northstar have finally begun stocking them and my initial order arrived on Friday. 

Now I hate painting, but these minis are so lovely that I jumped right in and had a go. They’re not up to Lee’s standard of course but I’m fairly pleased with the outcome. 

Penda and a couple of nobles from the leaders pack

Same lads - from the back

Helping to ease me into a painting vibe was this jolly “anarcho folk” tune favourite which I've decided to share, cos I'm good like that. If your feet don't tap - you might want to check you've still got a pulse.

I’ve spared you my recent discovery of the Cherokee Death Cats (best band name ever) since I think it’ll be too rich for your blood (with the possible exception of nundanket and Elenderil) mayhap.

Toodle ooh.