Weird World War I: Part 6

Now, as promised, photographic evidence of the latest Land Dreadnoughts to terrorise the Earth: introducing the 'Devastators', and their diminutive cousins, the 'intermediate' class of dreadnoughts!

Below we see a pair of the unfeasible self-propelled guns that are part of the arsenal of Austro-Hungary, in a camouflage scheme designed by Vienna's pre-eminent botanist, guaranteed to defeat the compound eyes of any invading Martian! (For which, read.....I went a bit mad with the paint-job.........oh well.)

They are teamed with their ammunition carriers with shell loading cranes, ensuring a never ending supply of crater-makers. (Unfortunately, I couldn't find the brass etched mesh I wanted to use for these, and had to go with simple plasti-card and wire; that's the problem with never throwing anything away - you can't find it when you need it.)

Obviously basing is yet to be done, I'm not sure yet if they should go on the same base, as it will be very large, although I suppose these behemoths probably wouldn't move around too much during a game.

The Navwar Karl-Gerat is absolutely ideal for this sort of conversion, it already looks the part, just some length added to the barrel and you have a super-weapon beyond all imagining; how much does it weigh.....who knows? What calibre......what do you fancy,

280mm.......380mm.....whatever you like!

Next up, something stirs in the hinterland of Anatolia, surely a Mark IV Tank? Yet it looks as if it is about to destroy that whole farm up ahead under its whirling tracks, and what is that on top?

Yes, you guessed it, we have the intermediate class Ottoman Land Dreadnought, complete with armoured observation turret in national stereotypical colour and form! O.K., I went a bit mad with the colour scheme here as well, but it's easily remedied if I feel differently in a couple of weeks (phew....what was I thinking?) Afterall, what self respecting servant of Attaturk would be seen without a Fez?

These represent a poor man's solution to matching the likes of Great Britain's HMLD Indefatigable seen in a previous post, and will certainly have no trouble dealing with standard AFVs or artillery. Navwar's Mk I 'Mother' does double duty here with a couple of additions from the bits box, again an easy conversion to do.

Talking of conversions, what about building from scratch, (In a sort of Dr Frankenstein, cannabilistic way...) well I had to go to Tsarist Russia for inspiration here, and have completed the production model of the 'Tsar Tank' or Neoptyr by Lebedenko, which has been given the armoured turntable of a decommissioned battleship in order to mount the world's first turnable turret on an AFV, shame it only mounts 47mm pop guns. Obviously the enemy will be frozen in terror at the ridiculous contraption as it approaches, and run for their lives!

Certainly, I had a lot of fun putting these chaps together, and they help to underline the world wide nature of the conflict of 'Weird' WWI; I think next I'll be looking at some of the Alien forces, making use of the 2mm Sci-Fi on offer from Irregular, that's if I don't get distracted by thinking about what the Japanese, Italians, or even the Americans might field!

Weird World War I: Part 5

O.K. - I'm bringing out the Land Dreadnought Big Guns - literally! Emboldened by the rail gun seen in a previous post, I'm having a go at converting some 6mm minis into a class of 'Devastators', weapons capable of taking out a land Dreadnought at one blow, if only from the enormous H.E. and cratering effect of one of their shells.

This is obviously a way for the less technologically capable or budget-starved nations, who are unable to produce the real thing themselves, to employ existing weapons, whether Naval or siege guns, to deadly effect. Once motorized, these weapons can avoid the pitfalls of being stuck in fixed defences, moving from site to site, evading detection, whilst stalking their prey.

I use the term stalk here, advisedly, of course, given that they will weigh hundreds of tons!

I started with a ready-made devastator of unfeasible proportions that actually existed, the German 'Karl Gerat' tracked mortar of WWII vintage. This holds the title of the largest Self-propelled Gun ever made, topping out at 124 tons, and mounting a 60cm or 24" gun capable of firing 1 round every 10 minutes!

This doesn't need much doing to it to give it a 'Weird WWI' look, but I had been admiring the newly released land train models from Brigade recently, and realised that a weapon of this size would need equally large ammunition which it could not effectively carry by itself, so I decided to add on a transport vehicle in convoy to form a truly enormous weapons system. Navwar's G075, and GWG6 A7V Uberlandwagen pair up below, the latter forming the rear transport section:

Mocking up an idea of the two together, (forgive the blue-tac!) we have a carrier which will have an added ammunition lift and some oversized shells on board. These I found rolling around in a desk drawer at work, not sure if they are some sort of pen nib or electrical connector, but they fit the bill as giant, heavy duty shells. I'm going to add some semblance of connector and loading gear, probably from some brass etched mesh I've got left over from an old project.

The whole, of course, will base up at a whopping 80x40mm, so definitely not for the faint hearted!

Next up, I've invested in a pair of Navwar's GWB19 Mk I Tank 'Mother' - this will form the basis of a sort of intermediate Land Dreadnought, as if an existing armoured vehicle had been super-sized in order to compete with the amphibious monsters of the Great Powers. I think the addition of a top turret should add more than a flavour of the AFV seen in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as the plaything of the Ottoman Governor, so this will definitely serve as the front-line machine of the Turks. As you can see, this will base up at 40x40mm, so should scale well alongside existing minis.

Finally we have the work-in-progress photos of the production model of the Lebedenko Tank from Tsarist Russia. Based on the bonkers concept of the giant bicycle-wheeled behemoth seen here: (Scroll down to the bottom of the page)

http://strangevehicles.greyfalcon.us/KRUPP%20KUGELPANZER.htm

This version has done away with the wheels that were so vulnerable to artillery fire with something armoured and is seen below for comparison against the Grand Char de Rupture La Normandie:

It has been cannibalised from the rear wheels of the aforementioned 'Mother', the carriage of a 15mm Zulu-War era light field gun, and other various plastic and metal bits and bobs: observant readers will notice a miniature hex nut, some steel pins, and parts of a Royal British Legion Remembrance Day poppy (Never throw anything away!).

Will this weapon be any more successful than the original? We shall see....in any event, I think these new entries prove that the Global arms race has begun in earnest!

Photos of painted examples to follow as soon as they're ready.

First Post

Welcome to the first posting of my new blog; a few words by way of introduction:

Some may already know through posts I've made elsewhere on the 'net, that I concentrate on the smaller end of the 'scale', specifically all things 2mm to 10mm. I'm certainly no pro-painter, if anything, I favour what might be called a 'quick and dirty' paintjob, and like a lot of people, find that I end up concentrating far more time on the research, collecting and sorting out than I ever get to spend on gaming. 

I also like to do projects that are somewhat unconventional (at least to my mind), and so try to cover the less popular eras, or more obscure conflicts.

(Feel free to click on a picture for a larger view...)

This blog will form a backdrop for the various projects that I'm currently working on, and will be of interest to anyone who might be contemplating putting together wargaming armies that will neither break the budget, nor take over the house with their storage!

I'm hoping this format will enable me to catalogue my interests, explain my approach to each project, and help me to organise and prioritise that nemesis of all wargamer/collectors; an ever-growing mountain of lead....

Appearing amongst a cast of thousands should be some of the following:

1/3000th Naval: a project to create pre-dreadnought navies at the time of the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, tentatively titled "55 days at Sea", using Navwar miniatures.

1/450th, using Peter Pig's Pieces of Eight range of ships: Pirates! 

(I think that always requires an exclamation mark....Yar!...Avast there!...see, told you) Putting together a small fleet of privateers for fun.

In 6mm, 1/300th, the culmination of many years of collecting what was my main interest and and scale of choice: Microarmour, mainly from Navwar/Heroics and Ros, and now increasingly from the excellent Ian Armstrong Miniatures: the Desert and Mediterranean Theatre, from the Italian Invasion of Egypt in 1940 up to and including Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily in 1943. (Haven't found the energy to cross the straits at Messina yet...)

Also in 6mm, using Irregular Miniatures, the Northwest Frontier, specifically the Tirah Campaign of 1897.

Lastly in 6mm, again with Irregular Miniatures, an experiment in creating 'Not' Dr Who armies, starting with Daleks, and moving on to U.N.I.T troops and Sontarans, depending on how many lookalike minis I can find.

In 10mm, I have a large and probably over-ambitious idea to create armies for what I call the 'Era of Conquest', namely from the battle of Civitate in 1053 to the last knockings of the First Crusade in 1126 or so. 

This involves figures by Irregular, Pendraken, Magister Militum and Kallistra, and has been quite a challenge not only in the sense that I need Saxons, Danes, Normans, Early Crusaders, Komnenan Byzantines, Fatimids, Saljuqs, Syrians, etc, etc, but in sourcing figures that scale well together, given the differences amongst the manufacturers, in order to cover the various troop types.

Finally, also in 10mm, we have the 'Conquest of Morrocco', a chance to use Pendraken's Foreign Legion figures, with various types kidnapped from the Franco-Prussian and Afghan ranges as Sharifans, Chasseurs d'Afrique, and Tirailleurs Algeriens etc.

This is not to mention of course, a whole raft of ideas for the 'one true scale', namely 2mm, including 'Weird' World War 1, a riff on Brigade Models/Wessex Games' Land Ironclads, as well as Sci-Fi armies, with some 'Ogre' style input from some 6mm miniatures.

 I'm sure all of these and more will get some screen time, so feel free to drop by and have a look, or even leave a comment, if anything catches your eye.

Cheers, SteelonSand.