Vladimir Trunkov

Based on a recommendation from the Lead Adventure Forum, I've been keeping an eye out for die cast cars from the Pixar Cars films, as the models are pretty close to 1/55 in scale, and are thus well-suited to my 28mm figures.  Many of the vehicles are race cars, or obviously American (so unlikely to be encountered in Central or South Asia!), or are otherwise unsuitable.  However, I just scored a great one here with Vladimir Trunkov.

My first impression of Vladimir was that he had the smooth lines and elegant styling of a Lada, but a quick visit to the Cars wiki revealed that he is actually based on a Zhaporozhets.  I'd never heard of Zaporozhets before, but my wife assured me that these vehicles are renowned throughout Russia for their fine looks and mechanical reliability.

The Cars cars come with a sort of mouth moulded on to the front of the vehicle, so I used some modelling putty to fashion a radiator grill over top.  The rest of the conversion is just the painting.

Afghan Border Police

Whenever the ANP are mentioned, there is a tendency to add in a description of just what a rotten group they tend to be:

• The ANP recruits are not just conscripts, but conscripts that lack the ability to dodge service in a better part of government or to simply desert and return home. 
• ANP are corrupt and shake down local villagers for food and money, which is closely tied to the tendency for ANP not to get paid, as the higher ranks withhold pay or divert it to their own use. 
• Many (most?) ANP recruits are illiterate, so enforcing laws or rules becomes arbitrary and irregular since they are not following a specific written set of laws. 
• ANP members tend to be sent to serve in a different part of the country than their home district.  This creates a concern as often the ANP members won't even speak the language of the district where they are serving:  they end up being as alien to the local population as the international ISAF or OEF forces. 

Corruption within the ANP ends up reflecting poorly on the Government of Afghanistan as the ANP is the most visible element of government presence.  A corrupt police force reinforces a negative perception of the government, which provides the Taliban with moral force which a less corrupt police force could negate.  Just look at the discussions in Canada and the USA about police powers (for example, police tactics at G20 in Toronto or Black Lives Matter), and then magnify that by putting the police in the middle of the Afghan insurgency.  If people can't trust the cops, can they trust the government?  And in turn, bad cops just provide the insurgency with greater moral authority.

At any rate, my first AGF recruits turned out to be ANP.  Since I've finished them, the insurgency has received many more recruits, and I realized I needed a few more AGF types to give the poor ANP a chance.  So in my latest order to Eureka, I added in another dozen ANP with helmets, and to further distinguish them I decided to paint them as Afghan Border Police.  The Border Police are a slight variation on the ANP.  They tend to be recruited more on a tribal basis and serve in their home districts.  They are bound to each other by ties of kinship and are familiar with the border areas that they patrol. 

They also wear camouflage that looks a bit like the chocolate chip pattern used by US forces in the First Gulf War, so I had a chance to paint something a little different!

A group shot

RPG troopers

With their ANP comrades in arms

And finally, the combined AGF to date!

Trumpeter Salute 2016

A funny thing happened this weekend.  I'd been waiting for months for the annual Trumpeter Salute wargame convention.  I knew I couldn't attend the whole weekend, so I had determined some time ago that I'd only go for the Saturday morning session.  I got up in the morning, headed out the door to the Bonsor Community Centre, paid my fee and explored the hall.  I visited the vendors, purchased far too many packs from Bob Murch of Pulp Figures (considering that I haven't painted everything that I got from him last year!), had a short chat with Brian and Bruce with whom I used to game in Victoria and looked at the setups for the upcoming games.  These all showed the great care, love and attention that the GMs had put into getting them ready for the convention:

Giant stompy robot game:

Air racing game:

Cameron's WWII in Normandy game:

Age of Reason battle:

MiGs vs Tomcats

Foreign Legion vs Arabs:

Time Travellers trying to escape Tattooine:

Battle of Cannae:

WWI balloon busting:

Formula Dé:

And WWII naval battle:

But after spending a half hour wandering the con, all I really wanted to do on a lovely spring morning was spend time with the people I love most in the whole world.

So I did.

Christopher Lee

It's been close to a year since the rather amazing English actor, Christopher Lee died.  He had a busy life before getting into acting, with time spent enigmatically during the Second World War as an intelligence officer and possibly in the Special Operations Executive as well (although he declined to discuss his role there - it could have been quite mundane, but he seemed to enjoy hinting at "things of which one must not speak").

He is of course best known for his acting roles.  He was quite involved with Hammer Film Studios, where he was well known for playing Count Dracula and other villainous characters.  He was acting almost to his death, with a resurgence of popularity in the 2000s with high-profile roles such as Saruman in the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy, Sith lord Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequels and Flay in the Ghormengast mini-series.

However for me there are three roles from the 1970s that define Christopher Lee:  the Bond villain Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun, Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man and the subject here, le comte de Rochefort in the Richard Lester films The Three Musketeers  and The Four Musketeers.   I'd been meaning to get a copy of this model for many years, and with my most recent order from Eureka Miniatures I have finally done so.  Lee's role in the film was fantastic, his interplay with both d'Artagnan and the Cardinal was fantastic.  He was (I believe) the first actor to play Rochefort with an eye patch, but since Lee's villain was so great, the eyepatch has become almost de riguer for the character ever since.

Unfortunately the sword broke in transit and I've not figured out a replacement yet!

I'm aware of several other miniature versions of Christopher Lee.  There were several versions of his Saruman character done for the Games Workshop LotR Strategy Battle Game (I even had a couple of them in the ancient past, but they went to Ebay just before my move to NZ - still kicking myself for that decision).  Shortly after his passing, Warlord Games made a WWII version of Flying Officer Christopher Lee as well.  I'm sure there are many other characters as well - no doubt several vampire models are inspired by his take on Count Dracula!

Argyll in Aden

Nowruz mubarak and happy first day of Spring!

As I mentioned in my last post, Nic Robson from Eureka Miniatures dropped a free sample into my last order, this Argyll and Sutherland Highlander from the 1967 British action in Aden (aka Yemen), just before that country gained its independence from British rule.   The campaign has been lurking around the edge of my consciousness for a number of years, as it is arguably the last time that a Highland regiment went into action to the sound of its pipes and drums.

The CO of the A&SH, LtCol "Mad Mitch" Mitchell was tasked with retaking a district of Aden City known as The Crater.  The story goes that he formed up the regiment and marched them straight into the Crater with the P&D leading the way.  Mad Mitch had things organized so that when the P&D switched from the regimental march to the regimental charge, the Jocks would break formation and take down any suspicious characters.  The regiment managed to occupy the Crater with no casualties.

I might be interested in getting a full set of these folks if Eureka manages to produce a piper for the command set (which I've hinted to Nic, so let's see...).  This Jock is lucky enough to carry the next best thing, the lovely GPMG!  Getting the dicing on the glengarry at this scale is not much fun.

New toys!

With impeccable good timing, Nic Robson saw to it that my latest shipment of toys from Eureka should arrive just a couple of days after I finished the last of the modern Afghan stuff (the rocket launcher, of course).  So this weekend I get to clean and assemble and prime for painting these latest goodies!

I and been ordering from Eureka Miniatures USA up until now.  However in recent months the Canadian dollar has taken a nose dive compared with the US$, effectively adding 25% to 30% to my cost to order miniatures.  Fortunately, CAD$ and Australian $ have stayed very close to par with each other, which means that the slightly higher cost of shipping from Oz is offset by not paying a penalty on the exchange!!


Here is the haul:

and some closeups

Nic even dropped in this lovely gentleman, as if to tempt me to move on to the Barren Rocks of Aden where Mad Mitch's Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders were involved in some of the last colonial actions in the British Empire!

If I had a rocket launcher...

Probably not quite what Bruce was singing about here...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9HFjErMMlA

One last piece finished.  I saved this one, set it aside even, as it is both a somewhat more complex model as well as one I'm not going to have much use for in my games.  I planning on playing close range skirmish games, so chances are the minimum range for this ex-Soviet (or possibly Chinese) rocket launcher will be bigger than the board!  Still, it might be a good objective (stop the insurgents from rocketing whatever target they've selected).

The model is from Eureka Miniatures, and comes with lots of lovely extras, like three ammunition cases, a couple of Kalishnikov rifles and some spare rockets.  I had some random thoughts of using the extra bits for other models, but then decided to use everything on a single base.