Tuesday 28 May 2024

Nice wings comrade!

 


Another quick Zvezda diversion, a 1/144 LaGG 3, Pre-war colours to match the red leather outfits and the pointy hats with red stars on them. They were hastily scrubbed over with green paint at oubreak of war in 1941. The cowling, air intake, cockpit frame and stabilisers were in red brown undercoat (957 Flat Red), fuselage and wings are silver grey (989 Sky Gey). Elevators in bare metal (997 Silver) and rudder in red (817 Scarlet). I like the flat metal plates on the fuselage to stop the exhausts from setting fire to the pilot.

The LaGG 3 was a bit of a dog, so probably a good job that Lavochkin ditched his co-designers at this point.

Tuesday 14 May 2024

I need more tanks!

 


Well, of course, what I really mean is that I fancy buying some more tanks. In this case, some nice 6mm WW2 tanks. The plan is to have a small OHW hex game using some 6mm troops and my 80mm hexes. To illustrate, this picture shows two old (mid-1980s) Pz IVHs from H&R. I'll be using the OHW scenarios set in mid-1943 Eastern Front. 

The question is, which manufacturer should I go for? An influencing factor is that I have small but reasonable selection of H&R tanks plus a far too large number of old Leicester Micromodels Tiger Is! It would be easy to add to this from H&R again.

There are variations between manufacturers in materials (metal, 3d print), size (6mm vs 1/285), packaging (single models or packs of several), crispness of finish and mould quality. There is also a wide range of prices. A rough survey of prices per vehicle (using the Churchill or proxy as the sample vehicle) shows:

GHQ: £2.26

PSC: 2.00

2d6: £1.20

Baccus: £1.46

BPM: £0.89

Irregular: £0.88

Scotia: £0.85

H&R: £0.75

Phew! As much as I fancy GHQ they are outside my price range. I'm still thinking H&R but I'm open to suggestions.