The long Overdue update post!

Hello Internet land,
Sorry once again for the delay in posting, in all honesty I've had a spike in back pain from the bike accident, which has affected me more than I had realised. Until the beginning of this week, when the physiotherapist gave me a new stretch which as taken all the pain away - this week I've really been feeling more like my old self again!

I've got half of the Gen-Con review finished, I hope to have the rest this weekend. I'm also off to Essen in two weeks, so will have more gaming goodness for you then.

Good news and bad news on the hobby front really, I've had to cancel my Warfare Reading ticket, as an important gliding exercise has been re-arranged to the Sunday - I'll have a chance to visit and report on the Saturday none the less.

However, I'm busy preparing for the Breakthrough Assault Mid-War Oner Dayer next Saturday!

Here's the list (Not looking forward to Easy Army going away, have been saving lists as PDF's like crazy!)

Its the Xmas Matilda list!

Remember this picture last Xmas?

Well, I've had to do something about the Pledge and the pile of un-built models (The pledge currently stands at -780 figures.... oops!).

Having read too many Commando comics about the desert war, I wanted to have a mid war Brit army, and fell in love with the stout Matilda.

Yup, they still print them. And they're still awesome/wizard!

I must admit that I'm rather rusty at FoW, so not holding much hope other than having a fun day playing - although the BTA one dayers seem to attract players of the same mindset. The lack of HE, and only one machine gun means I'm actually scared of Infantry companies! The 25 pounders might make up for this, however I really should take the Hurricane with bombs to deal with dug in infantry, but the Cannon equipped one is so much cooler! Still, those guns should give tigers something to worry about.
Some universal carriers to lift GtG, and an infantry platoon to sit on objectives and we're at 1650 rather quickly.

With some BF ones for CiC and the CS variants

The Zvesda Matilda is a great model for the price, you just need to be extra careful of the barrels - lucky the one I snapped I was able to replace with the CS barrel.

The rest of the list - although the Pegasus aren't included, as there is no bridge.... :-)

 The support platoons were all bought second hand from the Guildford Games Club (Cheers Rob!), but have been mostly painted in European colours, so a quick repaint is in order. I'm aiming to get these all done over the weekend, so no more last minute painting required. I'm torn with applying the (much debated) Canter pattern, or just sticking with a flat desert base colour, with airbrush weathering - which with the Doms Decals I have kicking around should actually pop ok by themselves.

I'll post updates on these soon.

The flying front is taking a little longer, as I've got some more exams to pass, I've already managed my first Solo on the Super Cub however:

While I prepare for the remaining exams, I was treated to a go at the controls of a £70 Million Golfstream biz-jet last weekend:

On approach...

Flying selfie!

Although I must admit, we didn't actually leave the ground!

It moves and everything!

We (my gliding squadron and I) were invited by an ex-squadron member to test out their latest kit, a £50 million flightsim - yes, its 'only' £20 million cheaper than the real aircraft, but you can do things that you can't in a real one, like control the weather, or spawn multiple conflicting aircraft at the push of a button, and the reduced running costs make these sims in high demand.

The instructors station - he's about to set the left engine on fire....

The motion is extremely realistic, and as you can see from the first post, the visuals are phenomenal, with great depth effect - you really don't feel like you're looking at a screen. Also, the sound is amazing - hearing hail hitting the roof of the cockpit really immerses you in the situation.
The sim runs at close to £5,000 an hour for the courses, and as a lot of commercial flying is about procedures, so they have special class rooms set up to teach you the systems:

Its not an inception machine, but a touchscreen computer for running checklists

One of the classrooms

A flightsim with no control stick - that stick on the left doesn't move, and is just a fancy mouse!

The air planes auto pilot is amazingly good, and the multiscreen displays can be set to display whatever information you request - the stick on the picture above is fixed, its just a fancy mouse that sits to the side of the cockpits. As nice as all the bells and whistles are, I still prefer my Piper Super Cub.

Back to the world of Hobby, and the Mars Attacks Boardgame has landed - It's a lot of fun, more on that soon!

Ack Ack Ack!

I also treated myself to a KR Case for my Wings of War/Glory airplanes, that thing swallowed models!

From this...

To this!

I'll review the carry bag I bought with it soon as well.

One last item, I've pledged on another kickstarter, but only because its something (in my eyes) truly special: SHARKTIPEDE

Hes. So. AWESOME

Really looking forward to this, going to proxy it into a 40k army, I've gone for the unpainted one of course.

Well, that's a super long blog for you, little and often from now on!

Glad to be back, thanks for reading!

Fez