Blue Max, Red Baron

After watching the classic “The Blue Max” movie – which I can only recommend if you haven’t seen it yet – two things became obvious: I had to add an ace pilot to the German starfighter squadron that I had painted earlier this year and this fighter had to be red, just like the Red Baron’s fighter.

The stout design of Brigade’s Galland Attack Fighter, which somehow reminds me of the fighters of The Great War and its characteristics, made it the obvious choice for this role.

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German Fighters in the Space

Playing a tactical starfighter game has been on my list for a while, so painting a set of them was long overdue. I chose Brigade’s 1/300 starfighters that can be used for Squadron Commander – but I’m sure that dozens of other options are available too. My squadron has six Hornisse Interceptors, four Galland Attack Fighters and four Kondor Strikeboats.

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Summer Haul Report 2020 – aka The Treasure Hunt Goes On

This quarter has been busier than expected, practically I haven’t painted anything but have luckily had very good RPG (Cepheus Light and D&D) and wargame (Stargrunt II) sessions. COVID-19 is still around, so there was no wargame show to report about and the games I played were online, not face to face. But there is something reassuring about buying hobby stuff. This time it wasn’t panic buying like it was in the spring, but a more methodical one.

Let’s start with Patrick Todoroff’s Hardwired rulebook and The Tsim Sha Tsui expansion: these are both short, fifty-page black and white booklets with a bit of background, complete rules, list of equipment and a handful of missions for cybernetically enhanced agents. Sounds familiar? There’s a good reason: Syndicate, the old PC game was one of the inspirations for this game. The subtitle “Cyberpunk espionage and mayhem” refers to a cyberpunk setting, but it’s very adaptable – you can swap the agents with a black ops team, a commando unit, a squad of mercenaries, a recon or a SWAT team and swap the opposing security forces to insurgents, alien bugs, zombies, rogue AI robots, vicious gangs, or your favourite villains.

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