Our Most Recent Battle

Last night Mark and I had another go at fighting in Lebanon. While I will do an after action report it looks like it will be text only as I did not get any good pictures of the battle (Unless I can get some from Mark).

M109 AL

This model (I can not call it a miniature) looks like a house. And as usual Mark did a great job of painting it up. Please Click to see his work.

This house has an armor rating of 0/0 in Rock the Casbah. What gives? Well it is a big box (like a Walmart) with a hull of 1.25" rolled aluminum armor. What gives? Well a M113 has between .47" and 1.5" of similar armor. And as it has a ratting of 0/0 without the TOGA armor I guess I can live with the ratting. I just don't know what Mark is going to say. I may need to put this on my short list to get from PicoArmor.

All images on this post are from Mark's blog.

Merkavas in Battle

Well my three Merkavas are based and painted and looking for a battle. With any luck they will be engaging my PLO/Militia troops this Thursday at Marks. I will have images by Friday and it does not matter to me who wins as I will have troops on both sides.

The way my RPGs fire I would bet heavily on the IDF.

As for the castings, QRF did a good job. There was little to clean up on the bodies and just a small seem line on the turrets. Not a big surprise as there is a lot of detail on the turrets.

Image from QRF.

The Armored Corps Memorial Site and Museum at Latrun (Yad La-Shiryon)

This is on my top ten places to visit, much to the chagrin of my family. Why go to a tropical island when a museum like this is available.  I would go for other reasons like two other of my top ten are in Israel.  

To me the location's history is awe-inspiring. It does not hurt to also have all of those tanks. In general I was always limited to my abilities (or lack of) with Hebrew to explore these web sites. I hope to correct this as I am scheduled to start classes in Hebrew this November.

While I am currently limited I have to say that this official site is very impressive. If all you do is view the videos, I do not think you will be disappointed.

http://www.yadlashiryon.com/

New Releases from PicoArmor

For those interested in running micro armor games for the Bekaa Valley in 1982 will be pleased by the new release of the Magach 6. This very clean miniature looks great with its Blazzer armor.

Before anyone says it, yes these are 1/600 scale miniature (and not the traditional 1/285 or 1/300) and they are small. Yet they have detail not normally seen in the more traditional micro armor scales. They paint up very well and at the price to unit count it is easy to do platoon stands with the required three tanks on the stand. You will also find John Siewenie is a star at costumer service. Shipping rate are also reasonable.

About PicoArmor
PicoArmor is a website dedicated to war gaming at the 1/600 scale. We are offering Oddzial Osmy (O8) miniatures from Lodz, Poland as our leading product. We expect to add our terrain and building line as time goes on. We are also expecting to offer hobby products we find particularly useful at this scale.

Royal Ordnance L7

While it is not as sexy as many of the weapon systems that were introduced in the 1980s, the Royal Ordnance L7 should be considered the gun that won the Cold War and every war involving Israel from 1967 to the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. As I am working on the vehicle specification sheet for Lebanon 1982 it surprised me that every tank used by Israel had this weapon. (less the M51). This weapon dates from the beginning of the Cold War after Britain was able to examine a T54.


Now that I have the gun stats down I have to figure what the load out is. If anyone can shed any light on this please let me know as the choice of rounds is rather long.

Model from the Peter Pig site.

• APDS
• APERS-T ("Anti-personnel-tracer")
• APFSDS
• HE
• HEAT
• HESH
• Smoke-White phosphorus incendiary

Under the Weather

Been under the weather for the last two days without using a computer or the Internet. A very long two days. But I am feeling better as I received on Saturday the replacement machine guns for my Merkavas and three Centurions. The Merkavas are now complete and primed. I did see that I need additional crews. Here comes another order from Peter Pig.

Since this is the third day of the month I guess I should post the monthly goals for the blog. I hope to get in two battles with Mark with at least one involving the Merkavas. Also while I have a couple additions to the weapons list I think I can start on giving them IABSM/TWT stats.

Well back to checking emails. Boy there is a lot of them.