Cold War Swedish and Russian

To be able to run some games during the Whiskey on the rocks incident in 1981 i needed some Swedish and Russian troops to fight it out. For the Russians it was the elite of the elite that I wanted to depict, the Spetsnaz and for the Swedes the best we could send in, Kustjägarna (Marines).

My knowledge regarding Russian cold war troops are limited so I went for some generic minis with Russian weapon from the Gripping Beast MoFo range, as well did I decide to use some of their British minis from the same range for the Swedes, not an exact match but close enought for me.

Here you have some pictures of the painted minis.

Making a Whiskey on the rocks

I thought I should share some pictures of how I built my Whiskey-class submarine for my WSS-83 article. The Russian submarine U-137 got stuck on a rock in a Swedish military zone on the 27 october 1981 an event that turned in to a very tense situation...

It all was solved in a peacefull manner after about 10 days of intense diplomatic comunication and military show-off from both sides. The Article in WSS-83 and the 4 scenarios take a "what if" view of the situation and let the situation escalate in to a small scale fight using the Osprey Black Ops rules. WSS have published one of the 4 scenarios online so you can find it here.

Anyway below you can find some pictures of how i build me my Submarinefor the games, It is absolutely not a scale model but more "inspired by" to be able to play on and also work on the gaming table.

The Whiskey-Class submarines was built form an German WW2 design, the Type-XXI U-boat, so my first aim was to get a plastic-kit to use but as I didn´t find any that worked in scale and cost I desided to build me one.

I wont give step by step instruction, but I hope most are shown in the pictures. The size of the my submarien are about 50cm by 5cm, and I wanted to be able to fit 2 minis on round 25mm bases in the tower. As you can see I also used a bunch of bits from my old 40K bitbox. Ill give you more pictures from our game in a later post.

Odin's Ravens - A MYTHICAL RACE GAME FOR 2 PLAYERS

At Salute I got my hands on a little 2 player game from Osprey with a nordic connection, Odin´s Ravens by Thorsten Gimmler and illustrated by the very talented Swedish illustrator Johan Egerkrans.

From the box:

Every morning Odin sends his ravens, Huginn and Muninn, across the world to bring back news of what life is like on Earth. Naturally, after thousands of years, they've gotten a little competitive… 
Race through the landscape in opposite directions to be the first to return to Odin. Focus on speed, or enlist the help of the trickster god Loki to create shortcuts and hinder your opponent. Can you be certain Loki's changes won't help your opponent instead? There's only one way to find out! This revised edition of Thorsten Gimmler's award-winning game has been completely redesigned, with new rules and a beautiful new art style inspired by Norse mythology. 

2 Players Playing
Time: 20-30 minutes
Ages 8+

Odin's Ravens have turned in to a new family favourite, both my wife and the children love the game, and my Son that are 6 years can play it without any problem. I can absolutely recoment it, give good games and stunning illustrations.

The Swedish illustrator Johan Egerkrans have done a very good work on the game illustration for Odin's Ravens. He have lately done other jobbs for Osprey, like the cover art for the "Black Ops" wargaming rules.

I really like his work on this Odins Raven´s as well as his other work, top of the list are the book "Nordiska Väsen" that is a a bestiary about scandinavian folkloric beings and have so fare sold about 34.000 copies here in Sweden. The book have only been published in Swedeish as far as I know...sorry.

Here are some more pictures from the Nordiska Väsen book and at the bottom one of my favourite pictured by Johan, from a childrens book.

Sharp Practice and the Finish war 1808

A couple of days ago I got my copy of Sharp practice 2 from Too Fat Lardies. I have really high expectations of these rules as I very much like the Dux Britanniarum rules.

The production value of the book are exellent,120 pages full colour in a softback book. I also opted for the clasic activation card deck of 40 cards in a nice little card box. All very well presented and layouted with lots of images and rule examples, unfortunate some of the miniature pictures was a bit dull in the colour,

Seems like they have tried to streamline the rules very much, so they will be easy to learn and you will be able to memorize the basics quick. They haven´t even included a QRS, something that I really miss. Even if the rules are easy to remember some tables could have been handy in a QRS, but that might come later as a download.

I will tell more about how I think the rules work when I have had a couple of games under my belt. The setting will me Napoleonic with a focus on a re-start of my Finnish War 1808 project.

I even picked up 2 boxes of Warlords new and exellent looking French Hussars in my Salute haul. I will convert the Frenshies in to Russian Hussars.

I was talking a bit about my intention to convert them in to Russians with Guy, editor at Wargames Soldier and Strategy, that also working on Napoleonic Russians. Seems like he was caught by the ideea as he even posted a tutorial of how to convert the horses in to Russian Hussar horses at the WSS blog, thanks Guy, made my work easier:)

Painted some Vikings

While I was building my longhouse I also painted me a few more Viking Heros, "Ragnar" to the left are a mini from Brother Vinni, "Lagertha" are a mini from Hasslefree and the 2 Vikings in the back are from Gripping Beast.