Countdown for Crisis... Three days to go...

Crisis 2013 is the first convention where I have the pleasure and honour to be involved in preparing a game. Together with our THS club I'll bring and present our Penobscot AWI game on a large table. If you missed my post on our summer event when we played the scenario then have a look here for part 1 or here for part 2. Or have a look at the kind of official coverage of the game. It's available on our club's homepage in English or German.

Anyway I planned to finish a small vignette with the Perrys' excellent interrogation scene for this event and after painting the figures there is a first WIP shot of the scene itself:

Looks a bit like retreat 1812 before painting the ground...

Unfortunately the faces turned up very difficult for me. Most of them aren't perfect but I reached a state which I wasn't able to improve any longer so I'm satisfied more or less. Anyway my plan is to place a piece of broken fence behind the rebel officer and then of course some flock, bushes and grass around the scene after painting the ground.

But let me take this as advice to visit the THS game. We'll have our table at 3b02 in the center part of the front hall.

THS on Crisis 2013

We plan to play a couple of turns between 11.00 am and 01.00 pm and give the croud an idea of the scenario we prepared and the great game it made during our summer event. Nevertheless any participants are welcome who want to try Black Powder or just spent some time with us. And by the way that would be a chance to collect additional entries for my 50K raffle... However I would be pleased to meet the one or the other there.

50.000 Hits Raffle - Part 2

As promised yesterday here comes the second lot of my 50K price draw. It's a rather rare kit of an aircraft which played an important role during some major operations from 1942 to 1945. But more on this later. Firstly here are the rules again:

1. To join the raffle you must be public followers of Monty's Caravan.

2. You place a comment here expressing your whish to participate. That grants you one (1) entry.

3.  You'll receive one (1) bonus entry if you plug this draw on your blog and post a link to your article here. (one promotional post is enough to get bonus entries in lot 1 and 2 if you participate both)

4. You'll receive another bonus entry when you address me at Crisis next weekend and take some minutes for a small chat. Since I'll be there with our THS club it wont be too difficult to catch me. But more details on that later this week. I hope that'll turn out a good chance to meet some of you fellows.

5. Registration is possible until sunday (2nd November) 09.00am  CET.

6. Both draws will be excuted by my personal lucky charm Viktoria under the witnessing eyes of Mrs Monty. There's no right of appeal.

7. The prize draw will be helt at the beginning of next week and the winners will be announced here on Monty's Caravan.

But now for the prize. It's a very nive 1/72 kit which should fit well to 20mm stuff. It represents an airplane which isn't published as kit too often:

2nd Lot: 

Horsa Glider

2nd Lot: An Italeri Horsa kit in 1/72

It's an earlier edition of Italeri's plastic kit for the Horsa Mk. I / Mk. II glider which was used in famous airbourne operations like Operation Tonga, Operation Deadstick or Operation Market Garden. Italeri made this model for D-Day's 50th anniversary but I'm not sure whether this box is really that old. Anyway the model is still in production and recently Warlord Games took it into their shop as scenary for their Pegasusbridge set. But because I switched to Grand Manners 28mm version of the Horsa I would like to raffle the 1/72 version here and now.

50.000 Hits Raffle ! - Part 1

The day before yesterday my humble blog reached its 50.000th hit.

Thanks to all interested readers for your attention and the many encouraging comments !

50.000 hits that's more than one and a half years of Monty's Caravan: 123 posts, 162 followers, 1.130 comments and 50.400 hits. A far better feedback than I imagined when I started this wargaming diary. Actually to keep things ticking over on my workbench...

Since Monty's Caravan was my first step into this Web 2.0 social community new media stuff I'm surprised and delighted alike where in the whole world people are interested in my posts:

14.130 hits from Germany

11.503 from the USA

5.948 from the UK

1.863 from France

1.161 from the Russian Federation

1.023 from Australi

and some around 500 from Poland, Canada, Spain and Italy

As promised some time ago I want to organize a little raffle to celebrate this step with you and give you someting back. There will be two lots. One announced today and the other tomorrow  to make it easier for me to sort out who wants to join which lot.

The rules are as follows:

1. To join the raffle you must be public followers of Monty's Caravan.

2. You place a comment here expressing your whish to participate. That grants you one (1) entry.

3.  You'll receive one (1) bonus entry if you plug this draw on your blog and post a link to your article here.
(one promotional post is enough to get bonus entries in lot 1 and 2 if you participate both)

4. You'll receive another bonus entry when you address me at Crisis next weekend and take some minutes for a small chat. Since I'll be there with our THS club it wont be too difficult to catch me. But more details on that later this week. I hope that'll turn out a good chance to meet some of you fellows.

5. Registration is possible until sunday (2nd November) 09.00am  CET.

6. Both draws will be excuted by my personal lucky charm Viktoria under the witnessing eyes of Mrs Monty. There's no right of appeal.

7. The prize draw will be helt at the beginning of next week and the winners will be announced here on Monty's Caravan.

But now for the prizes. I've selected some kits from my cupboard of unfinished project. Actually absolutely great models but insufficient space at Monty's Caravan to keep them all. So I hope they'll find a good treatment under your craftful hands:

1st Lot: 

Italeri M4 Sherman and Airfix Tank Transporter

1st Lot: Italeri M4 Sherman Tank and Airfix Scammel Tank Transporter

Of course both kits are undamaged and as far as I can judge complete. Decals and construction manuals are included. The kits are 1/76 and 1/72 and should match perfectly for 20mm WWII. Probably most of you know both vehicles very well but anyway here you could find some information:

- M4 Sherman Tank

- Scammel Tank Transporter

So stay tuned for tommorow's post about the 2nd lot and good luck to all participants !

Back to Blogging

For the last two weeks I was I bit outside the bloggosphere. Really I regret that but those days were too busy for me to find any time for blogging and only little time for reading other blogs. After my pink eye was healed up I had to make up for the lost time at work and hobby time diminished. During these precious hours I had to arrange my new laptop, finish nine board tiles for Crisis and paint nine miniatures for the same deadline. Although I was able to take some pictures of some interesting things I wasn't able to prepare them for the blog or write the posts.

But by this weekend a lot of preparation for Crisis will be done and I hope to get arrears executed during the next two week. There will be a shot of my gaming board so far (at least 12 tiles finished yet), a review on Warlord Games Pegasusbridge set, a review of the exibition "Das Vaterland ist frey" (The fatherland is free) in the Upper Silesian State Museum in Ratingen (look here) which covers the German campaign of 1813 (in German called "Befreiungskriege"), hopefully a view onto the last figures for Crisis and maybe some other bits and pieces.

Please excuse when I missed some of your articles on your blogs. I'll try to read some of the older posts during the next days but wont comment all which I read. Anyway thanks to Loki I notices that Michael Awdry from the 28mm Victorian Warfare registered his 300th follower.

Many congrats for the great attention his blog gathers. It's well deserved for the great work he usually presents!

AWI Command Base

Last week I was a bit restricted. A conjunctivitis ("pink eye") afflicted me and so time with full vision was precious. Besides painting miniatures I was busy with preparing my new laptop so there wasn't too much time to do other eye stressing things like reading or commenting blogs. Please excuse me for missing you last weeks efforts. At least I'll try to read the things I missed.

Anyway I finished the first command base I ever produced. It shall represent the brigade command for my highlanders:

My first command base... ever.

Actually it's a combination of an officer, a drummer and an ensign in the uniform of the Black Watch with the regiment's King's Colour which shall serve as kind of pars pro toto for the brigade command. The figures are from the excellent Perry twins and the flag is from GMB Designs. Unfortunately the contact between the officer's sabre and his hand was very week and it broke of while I varnished the figure. So I had to repair it and used flattened piano wire which I hammered and grinded into shape. I had to remodel a part of the hand as well but I think it doesn't stand out too much.

Close-up of the ensign...

... and the drummer...

... and the commanding officer himself.

My next task is to finish a group of British officers interrogation an American POW. Besides that I've got some Gripping Beast plastic Vikings on my workbench and my efforts for "Bloggers for Charity" seem to become concrete. Loki announced to send me a unit of FIW redcoats soon and I'm planning to paint them around christmas.

By the way I recognized that 50.000 hits are coming nearer and I'm thinking about continuing the tradition to organize a raffle now and then. In case I'll find some useful prizes I will...