Thursday 23 October 2014

Airfield Sentries and AA Gun Pits

As I write this my recent purchases of Italian Aircraft (from Heroics and Ros) and yet more Airfield Buildings (From Leven Miniatures) have just arrived in the post. I'm really excited by the sudden injection of new stuff to paint and I'm really eager to get working on them. Fortunately I have just this morning completed another little addition to my airfield defences for my Desert Raiders project, so my desk is clear and I'll be cleaning and priming my new models as soon as I have posted this.

No self respecting base commander would leave his perimeter unguarded and the rules for raids described in the Burning Empires book include the special rule Sentries. I have slightly adapted the rule for my game allowing the sentry models to remain on the table after the alarm is raised, but as previously they cannot take any further part in the game. The reasoning is that their role is purely to raise the alarm and - being unsupported and armed only with light personal weapons - would either flee or hide if they are not surprised and killed by the attackers. 

Sentries
The defender deploys six patrols of sentries in their half of the table during the game set-up. These can be represented with six ordinary infantry stands. They are not taken from the defenders force, and for all intents and purposes are just tokens. Once the alarm is raised they can remain on the table but play no further part in the game.

The attacking player cannot deploy Vehicles or Gun Teams within 16" of a Sentry, and Infantry no closer than 4" of a Sentry. 

Six Sentry stands

I also wanted to provide this airfield with some Anti-Aircraft defences, even if they are only light guns. Unfortunately I can't seem to find anyone that sells the Italian Breda 2cm AA Gun I wanted (I bought a set of Truck Mounted ones for use with my LRDG vehicles but this is a rather expensive way of acquiring four tiny guns!). However I did find that I had some German 20mm Flak Guns that looked very similar to the Italian guns I wanted so I have substituted the models and painted them accordingly. No one will notice the difference unless I do something silly like write about it on my Blog and post it on the Internet!

Four 20mm AA Guns
By the way the Sandbag defences in which I placed the Sentries and AA Guns were bought from Leven Miniatures and are cast integral to the base (the pack also comes with some separate sandbag sections to build your own defences). As usual the casting is very good, even with such finely detailed models. 

3 comments:

  1. in 6mm scale no one will notice the swap for German 2cm flak guns. Close enough is close enough. And in the desert there was so much captured ordinance being used by both sides if anyone gets clever about it say they are Germans Captured by the British and then recaptured!

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  2. They look good enough and nice to see some of the Leven defences painted up

    Ian

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  3. Every time I see you pushing forward on the micro-scale figures it makes me want to do the same. Then I realize that I haven't the time to play with the toys I already own. One of these days though...

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