TYPE 4 HO-RO JAPANESE ASSAULT GUN

I managed to pick this up at MOAB at the bring and buy for a good price. It's use, by the Japanese was limited mainly to the Philippine campaign with a few making an appearance at Okinawa, in all only 12 of these vehicles were ever produced.

This is a plastic 28mm Italica model sold by Warlord games, one good thing abut this kit is that the sprues include the Chi-Ha and Kai Shinhuto turrets, so you may convert this vehicle into a tank.

Instead of gluing the top portion of the vehicle onto the hull, I instead glued two tiny magnets to the rear underside and used the exiting relocating nobs to secure the top portion of the vehicle.

I also glued a thin sheet of metal onto the hull so that the magnets can adhere to. I put together the tank turrets together (with some help with Greenstuff putty and some very small scratch built additions) with the same set up, so now you have a choice to either field two version of the Chi-Ha tank or Assault gun. 

CHEERS JOHN 

CANCON 2025

My contribution to Cancon 2025 was providing a jungle table and European terrain for WAT for Steve McGugian as a game master.

The jungle table is based on action on Tarakan in 1945 with the Australians  battling the Japanese for control of the island. Many weeks prior to the event where put into playtesting with Chris, Steve and myself and we were given permission by Richard Clarke to use a draft of version 2 of Chain of Command.

Steve has been working on putting a campaign for CoC and this was one of the scenarios. 

Unfortunately I fell sick during the event and had to return home so I missed out on a lot, hence very few images and missed out on talking and meeting a lot of people including Richard. 

The jungle table set up at home for playtesting

Steve provided  some great information to the players for the battle.

First contenders battling out for control of Tarakan with Steve supervising.

This is a image of one of Len Tracy's gaming tables. Its a night battle and to give that impression, Len decided to use a dark gaming mat with all the terrain items in a dull greyish black colour. I thought this was very clever and has given me ideas for making a Greyscale  type table for night actions.

CHEERS JOHN 

GERMANIC SLINGERS

Modification were required to transform these Victrix Germanic figures into slingers. Back in 2023 I put together some Baleanic Victrix miniature slingers.  (https://iagsmgm.blogspot.com/2023/04/early-imperial-roman-auxiliary-archers.html) These are sold in a pack with 12 figures, I  used the spare slings to equipped the Germans.

I first cut off the right hand off all the Germanic figure and in one case both hands, I then cut the right arm off the Germanic figure and carved it, to refit into a new position. Next step was to glue the hands with the sling from the Baleanic figures onto the Germanic arms, once dry, I added Green stuff to fill in any gaps.

After priming them with black primer, I noticed I had forgotten to model carry bags for their stones which I accomplished with Green stuff putty. 

CHEERS JOHN

ULTRAMARINES

Just to be clear, I am not moving away from Historical gaming but I have indulged in building an army of Ultramarines thanks to my son purchasing them for me.

Over the years I have been encouraging him to get into the hobby of  building Airfix kits, which interested him, my hope was that he would move onto Historical gaming which was thwart by one of his friends who introduced him into Warhammer 40K. 

He has been teaching me the rules and its been a completely different gaming experience to Historical gaming. I must admit, I am a slow learner but he does help me along with the rules.

It was a bit of a learning curve for me painting up these figures and vehicle. I also didn't want my figures/vehicle to be clean and glossed up as I noted by viewing many images of these troops on the internet. I preferred to dirty them up with some wear and tear on them making them battle harden.

The benefit of this venture was that I was able to spend time with my son encouraging and teaching him how to paint and gaming with him. 

N.B. he just  informed me that a bike squad is on its way in the mail for me.

LIEUTENANT

INFILRATOR SQUAD

SUPPRESSOR SQUAD

ELIMINATORS SQUAD

AGGRESSOR SQUAD

IMPULSOR

CHEERS JOHN