Flying Stand Experiment

First I'd like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

As I stated in my earlier post Red Air, I've decided to use magnets for mounting my aircraft. This has left me with a couple of problems. 1.) What to do with all my plastic Warhammer flying stands, I have a lot of them and don't want them to go to waste. 2.) Metal magnets are damn expensive! So I've decided to do some experiments with the following.

Magnetic Tape, much cheaper than the metal magnets.

 The problem with my Warhammer flying stands was solved easily by attaching 6/32 Lock nut to the top, as seen below.

I prefer the metal tops as opposed to another magnet. One, it saves me from having to buy two magnets and two, I don't have to worry which end of the magnet is positive and which is negative.

Now for the magnetic tape. I decided to test it out using one of my larger aircraft, a SM.79 medium bomber.

A nice thing about the magnetic tape is that it has it's own adhesive.

 The end result actually works fairly well. The bond isn't as strong as a metal magnet but it's serviceable for what I want to do.

I've spending my time painting more buildings for Megablitz. When I bought my village buildings I also got the RAF airfield set and I have started to make a number of airfields. Also recently Morning Star had a sale on their Dysiopian Wars stuff and I managed to get the Industrial terrain set at 40% off or about $14. I don't really play DW, but the buildings are about the right size for Megablitz.

After I get done with my Megablitz painting I'm planning to do some more Modern 6mm miniatures, but I don't know where to start Europe or Angola?

Red Steel-The 1st Mechanized Corps for Megablitz

I managed to do some painting this week and started on my newest Megablitz unit the Russian 1st Mechanized Corps. This will be the unit as it was organized in 1941 so it's going to be huge. I got most of it done last week. Here are some of the pictures.

 First we have  the 1st tank division with the 1st Recon Battalion, the 1st and 2nd Tank Regiments, 1st Motor Rifle Regiment, and 1st Howitzer Regiment.



All these miniatures except the gun crew where GHQ.

 The second unit in the Corps is the 3rd Tank division with the 3rd Recon battalion, 5th and 6th Tank regiments, 3rd Motor Rifle regiment, and 3rd Howitzer Regiment.

This unit is a mix of GHQ and H&R.

 The last combat unit in the Corps is the 163rd Mechanized Division with the 117th Recon battalion, 25th Tank regiment, 529th and 729th Motor rifle regiments, and the 241st Howitzer Regiment.

This unit is mostly H&R, with only the tank, gun, and tractor being GHQ.

Now the Corps support units this includes the Corps HQ, Combined engineer battalions, the 5th Motorcycle regiment, and the truck battalion.

Finally we have the new unit all together in it's new photo box.

And to think, this unit isn't finished yet.

As stated in the picture above the unit isn't quit finished yet. At first I was going to have each of the tank regiments represented by one tank model like in most Russian units. However, because of the size of this units tank forces, I've since decide to add two extra tanks to each tank division. One model for every 2 battalions. Mechanized division's tank regiment will remain the same having only 3 battalions.  I also need to add an armored car to the motorcycle regiment. Eventually this is what the unit will look like in Megablitz terms

1st Mechanized Corps
HQ 1st MC                      Car                           1
Engineer Battalions         Engineer/Truck        3, EP 3
5th Motorcycle Rgt         Motorcycle               r
                                        Motorcycle               r
                                        Motorcycle               r
                                        BA-32                      1R
Truck Battalion              Trucks                      Capacity 4

1st Tank Division
1st Recon Bn                   BA-32                      1R
1st Tank Regiment          T-28                         4
                                        BT-7                         3
2nd Tank Regiment        OT-26                       4
                                        BT-7                         3
1st Motor Rifle Rgt        Infanty/Truck            5
1st Howitzer Regiment  152mm Howitzer      2, 15km
                                       Tractor                      LOG 2

3rd Tank Division
3rd Recon Bn                 BA-32                      1R
5th Tank Regiment        T-28                          4
                                       BT-7                         3
6th Tank Regiment        T-26                          3
                                       BT-7                         3
3rd Howitzer regiment  152mm Howitzer      2, 15km
                                      Tractor                      LOG 2

163rd Mechanized Division
117th Recon Battalion  BA-FAI                    R
25th Tank Regiment     BT-7                         5
529th Motor Rifle Rgt  Infantry/Truck          5
729th Motor Rifle Rgt  Infantry/Truck          5
241st Motor How Rgt   122mm Howitzer     2, 19km
                                      Tractor                     LOG 2

As you can see it's going to be one big unit. On the other hand I might dump the recon battalions leaving only the motorcycle regiment for recon duty. I hoping to do some more painting this weekend and through Christmas. We'll see.

Towns, Villages, and Dumps

I'm continuing to build up for my next Megablitz game. One of the things that was sourly missing from the first game were some good built up areas. So I recently ordered some buildings from Picoarmor. These buildings are 1/900 scale or 2mm.

First up we have the towns. These are 2km by 2km in Megablitz scale and I can combined them to make larger cities, as seen here.

Next up we have the villages. These are 1.5km by 1.5km and act as small villages unless combined with other building stands.

Unlike regular Megablitz BUA, these villages would by themselves would not require a LOG point to attack. They could however give a single stand a defense bonus.

Finally I needed some supply dumps for game I'm working on so I made way more than I needed.

Just some various size boxes on stands.

That's what I've finished so far. My new infantry came in. Being after my birthday I decided to splurge and get some GHQ Russians. This will allow me to finish the last Russian units I need. I also got Pico's RAF airfield set so I'll be making some airfields too.