1/1200 IJNS Shinano continued ...

Did you know that the Shinano was a "pink lady" as her deck was a "sea shade of pink". As I quote from the model build on modelingmadness:

"...the flight deck of the Shinano was a very un-military shade of pink!  (The box art from the old Tamiya 1/700 scale model actually depicts this.)  According to Lynn Lucious Moore's “Shinano: The Jinx Carrier” (US Naval Institute Proceedings, February, 1953) the steel flight deck was covered with, “...a thin, shock-absorbent latex-sawdust...” composition.  The origin of the wood is unclear, but Japanese red cedar (sugi) or Japanese red pine (akamatsu), both common in Japan, would account for the pinkish color noted by observers.  The deck would have undoubtedly have been camouflaged before she entered service, but it had not yet been done when Shinano was sunk on her way to final fitting out.  The improbable color is well attested by several eyewitnesses, both former crewmen and civilian workers."

Pink, as I have been told by a former merchant seaman of many years, is also probably the most effective paint camouflage you can use at sea (true/false? please discuss). Whether it is as effective when painted all over your flight deck I know not. Note: My "pink" was Games Workshop Tanned Flesh, again chosen just to use it up. At least the Japanese seemed to have moved away from advertising their carriers with large "Rising Sun" roundels perfect for adjusting the US dive-bombers bomb run as per Midway. A plane in the hanger gets a little bit of painting attention (see below):

The plane is painted white, with a black engine cowling, grey windscreen/glass and then the tricky Japanese roundel (well it certainly is in 1/1200) applied in red and then its jagged curves are touched up and smoothed out by careful application of white.

Then the many pieces of the "layered back bit of her hull" are assembled and her flight deck is put on and the little carrier group (see below) is painted as per their comrade down in the hanger. The IJNS Yamato now appears for a bit of mutual moral support, after all it is 1944 and US planes are everywhere!

Looking quite cool but there is still quite a bit of painting still to be done.

The IJNS Yamato begs for some more paint (see above). Her turn has come ;)

IJN Shipyards: IJNS Yamato and IJNS Shinano (1/1200)

The recent eBay purchase of the Revell IJNS Shinano kit comes under the glue and black undercoat, the ever faithful Tamiya XF-1 Black (see below):

The only complication with the Shinano (in contrast to her sister hull on the Yamato) is, by virtue of her aircraft carrier conversion, her "rear" is stacked into many (three to be exact) layers that have to be painted then glued together thanks to their relative inaccessibility to a paint brush at a later stage. 

Top and bottom assembled on the Shinano (see above). All that is needed is a base coat of dark grey. I am using up a pot of Games Workshop's Foundation Adeptus BattleGrey at the moment (just to use it up). To be fair it has a nice thick coverage.

The IJNS Yamato being in the vicinity of the matt black starts getting a bit of an undercoat too! Steady progress, though not at breakneck speed ;)

20mm WWII Blog - Check this guy out!

ww20mm.blogspot.com

Spotted it hanging off Al's site Blog list, his WW2 stuff just "blew me away"!
I've certainly started following him!

Great Wargaming WebSite (Edinburgh War Games Club)

Spent an hour plus enjoying this site:

http://www.edinburghwargames.com/index.htm

Originally found it Googling for ECW DBR amendments

The ECW Siege of Oxford "What if" they had fought?

Ignoring the defensive potential of the hamlet the Parliamentarians now deploy in a traditional line-of-battle to face their Royalist foes. The ranks of the more numerous Parliamentarian infantry serve to fill the plain with foot!  

To get a feel for the difficulties faced by the Parliamentarian cavalry a quick "battle bathtub" was set up (see below). The Parliamentarian horse was the inferior "shot firing type", supplemented by a stand of Dragoons against the "impact" knights of the Royalist Army. However there was so much extra Parliamentarian infantry the Parliamentarian cavalry got some extra support that way. This "foote" support was promptly dismissed out of hand by the over-confident Royalists who piled in. Pity as the stand of dead knights stood testament to their "shot" potential and Royalist stupidity, in particular when combined with the Parliamentarian shooting cavalry. The Parliamentarian cavalry went down fighting loosing 4-1 (three cavalry stands and a dragoon, to the one "unlucky" stand of Royalist knights") in a very one-sided melee, giving 4-5 turns before they would be in a position to come back into the rear of the Parliamentarian infantry. This said there was a touch-and-go moment for the Royalist general.
 
Note: This is a very, very, very none ECW thing as they would be off looting the baggage rather than worrying about their lowly foot comrades. There must be something in small print of DBR other than a round spending PiP's in reorganisation, fragmented or not the Royalist cavalry rallies far, far to quickly?    

On the other flank the cavalry matched up 4 Parliament to 5 Royalist, but this was soon turned to  4-4 as a Royalists stand of knights were shot out of their saddles as they strayed too close to a Parliamentarian Regiment of Foote that aggressively angled themselves at them (see below). Here the cavalry battle never got going before we called time. 

This left the Parliamentarian Centre advancing but not contacting (note the tables being turned here) the defensively set Royalist infantry. The canny (and correct Royalist) tactic was naturally to hang back until the Royalist cavalry had broken their Parliamentarian counterparts. The bloody hand-to-hand melee contact was not made during the time we had, but the Parliamentarians were stripped of their supporting light guns by good Royalist dice, though this would not have stopped them eventually going in (see below).

It should be noted that the temptation to support the Parliamentarian Cavalry wings with full regiments of shot should be avoided as it depletes the mass of infantry in the middle. In fact a single element of Pike and four units Shot makes an effective infantry unit/block which the Royalist horse would find hard to break. The full force of Parliamentarian infantry minus the ten elements supporting the Parliamentarian cavalry wings should eventually swamp the Royalist foot however the DBR rule set seems devoid of accurately simulating the Royalist "off to the races" when the Royalist cavalry 'inevitably' defeat the 1643 Parliamentarian cavalry. Again are the learned and devote rules lawyers of the Royalist camp missing an important DBR ECW amendment here? A Google search beckons ;)

If not I suggest a better set of ECW specific rules!

A walk on the ECW wildside

I managed to stretch my legs away from the painting table the other night and visited my Redcar (North East of UK) wargame group. A collection of like minded individuals who haven't yet grown up. This was the first time I had attended the current English Civil War (ECW) campaign. As a nominated Parliamentarian I was pleased to see that the siege of Oxford was still in progress, Parliament having already seen off one Royalist attempt to lift the siege I was an avid spectator at the Royalist second relief attempt. The Parliamentarians deployed and defended a hamlet on the approaches to Oxford (see below).   

The Royalist army deployed and to the consternation of the Parliamentarian C-in-C it was not the "cavalry heavy" force he had expected for his defensive battle plan, but an infantry heavy force. Even more worryingly was the sight of the large cannon that the Royalists had thoughtfully brought along. The Parliamentarians shuddered as they could see a long investment under cannon fire ahead. The Parliamentarian Pike troops were least of all  encouraged at this prospect due to their vulnerability to cannon ball. The Royalists are shown deployed (see below).  

Immediately the Parliamentarians took on a negative defensive mindset and elected an unforced "tactical withdrawal" of their left wing of horse (admittedly stand-for-stand inferior to the Royalist troops of this period under DBR rules) and infantry behind and into the Hamlet (see below). To the interested spectator one could not wonder if this flight was somewhat premature. 

Not to look such a gift horse in the mouth the Royalist right flank boldly advanced (see below) against empty space.

It was clear by this point the Parliamentarian Centre was floundering as the Royalist surprise weapon of doom, the large cannon (with admittedly good dice), was tearing holes in the Parliamentarian Pike, forcing Shot units to "screen off" the fire. These Shot units although harder to hit suffered casualties too and the Parliamentarian high command was flung into disarray for a counter measure (see below, as viewed from the Royalist lines).

The Royalist pounding was remorseless and the Parliamentarian Regiments of Foote were reduced to ragged bunches of desperate survivors and a remnant of their former glory  (see below).

Enough was enough, the Parliamentarian C-in-C conceded a minor defeat and the Siege of Oxford (1643) was lifted (see below). Not really a game more of a superior Royalist strategy that meant it was a "win" even before the first shot was fired due to the Parliamentarian "self-pinned" defensive mind-set and dispositions.

Clearly the Royalists had won this game of "Paper-Scissors-Stone" but I pondered the "What if?". Could it have been different if the Parliamentarians had formed up in line of battle and fought it out in a slug-fest? Parliamentarians were certainly superior in infantry fire power (having a 1:1 "Shot to Pike ratio" as opposed to the Royalist 1:2 ratio), admittedly the Royalists had the advantage over the Parliamentarian early war "glass cavalry flanks" but could they have given a better game of it and contested the battle better?

Given that the hour was still early I asked players to "rack the balls" to see how the alternative would have least played out to see if the Parliamentarian Generals mind-set was at all as justified as they claimed it to be.

1/1200 IJN Yamato

At last the IJN Yamato gets some of the TLC it deserves:

It slipped together beautifully and is patiently awaiting its black undercoat:

Can you count the flak batteries? Can you see those massive eighteen inch main armament guns, stacked in three triple turrets? It was the biggest floating thing of WWII! Isn't it crazy that its huge mass was effectively redundant by the time it commissioned!

Sunk by US Pacific Fleet air power without even getting in range of its enemy in 1945.