Raventhorpe Ready to Roll trucks

Finally my Panzer grenadiers have some transport. I decide to go for trucks as I'm planning to do a genzpart battalion for the 21st panzer division in Normandy (with all those interesting french equipment).

After a bit of research I decided to go for the Raventhorpe ready to roll range

http://www.rapid-fire.uk.com/ready_to_roll.htm

I bought a Stoewer car, a Horch car, three Opel blitz and a ford v300. Generally I was impressed

Pros

No assembly required

Cost (cheaper than metal, similar cost to plastic kits)

Already based (I like to base my vehicles)

Cons

They were a bit rough in places, big lumps of resin are not that easy to clean up.

The area between the vehicle and the base is solid which I'm not keen on

I painted them up using magic wash and dry brushing. I really should do the number plates but at the moment I'm hoping to find some water slide transfers to do them, as painting them is a non starter.

With the trucks done I just need to finish the Kampfgruppe HQ and a couple SP 20mm AA guns to finish my first Rapid fire force, hopefully in time to get some games in the new year.

Cheers Jon

Bargain rule sets from Northstar

Well winter is here and rather predictably my painting output has dropped like a stone. For those who don't know my wargames room/ painting area is my garage which is at the bottom of the garden, while I've done it out nicely boarding up all the walls, adding a new floor and installing a heater. This time of year it is still rather cold and unappealing when weighed up against surfing the net or watching telly in a nice warm house. Add in the snow and sub zero temperatures, sick children, the coming of Christmas and work and painting wise the last two and half weeks have produced very little on the hobby front.



Having said that a couple of nights ago I forced myself to go down the garage and paint up my newly arrived Ready to Roll trucks for my SS panzer grenadiers from Chiltern miniatures. They painted up surprisingly quickly so hopeful some pictures will be posted up in the next couple of days.




In the mean time I picked up three sets of Chris peers rules going cheap from North Star
http://www.northstarfigures.com/list.php?spo=1&page=1

First I picked up armies in crisis which is basically a WW2 version of Contemptible Little Armies with a few bolt ons. Not a big fan of CLA mostly because I feel the no moving and firing rule encourages both sides to play too defensively. Mostly there is little advantage to moving into firing range of the enemy who can then fire on you knowing you can 't return fire for a turn. Having said that they're simple and quick and I'm tempted to use them for solo games where I can tinker with the rules without upsetting anyone.




Second I picked up Empire of the Steppes which covers purely the 90 odd years of the great Mongol conquests. Again this appears to be CLA with add bolt ons for period feel. Having said that it looks like it would give a good game and really tries to capture steppe nomad warfare something many ancients rules don't do very well in my opinion. There are also around thirty army lists which are interesting and appear well researched



Last but not least is Advance the Flag ACW rules. These look very interesting, there are some similarities with Chris Peers other rule sets but this set is aimed at Corps level actions so a base of multiple miniatures represents a regiment and four bases a brigade. I'm quite taken with these I bought them thinking I might do something with my Perry plastic ACW miniatures as they are aimed at 28s. I actually think they would look better with 2/6/10mm miniatures though as four 28mm miniatures representing a regiment looks a bit odd to me. Of the three sets I think these are the ones that are most likely to form a new project for 2011.

Cheers Jon