A few reinforcements

Today's mail brought in my order from OldGlory15s.com. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the jeep with RCL I'd ordered was actually a pack of 2 jeeps.

Last night, while moving some things, I finally found a missing wargaming box, which included some previously ordered Litko items. So now I have a total of 75 purple hearts, and 10 miniature smoke column markers.

New arrivals and adjustments

Firstly, the Litko custom counters I ordered have arrived and I am very pleased with them. I think they'll do the job I want them to do. Now I just need to get the rest of the troops in so I can start building armies.

I finally decided to just cancel the Warweb orders and order direct from OldGloryMiniatures.com. I've initiated Paypal messages requesting a cancellation and citing the lack of communication. I have, however, decided to adjust my order in the process. I've dropped a couple of items and added a few more to better suit what I think I want for the final armies.

So the newly modified Old Glory order from OldGloryMiniatures.com is (totals of figures/vehicles, not packs):

Middle Eastern Regulars - 50
Middle Eastern Command - 50
African Irregulars - 100
African Irregular Command - 50
African Pickup Crew with HMG - 4
14.5mm ZPU Truck Mount - 4
Modern Pickups - 6
T-55 - 3
BTR-50 APC - 3
BTR-60A APC - 3
CMP 3 Ton Trucks - 6
AEC Armored Car - 3

Most likely, the army troops will get the tanks while the religious movement gets the armored cars, but we'll see.

I'm going to end up with an over-abundance of options for technicals by the end of this due to my random ordering from different sources instead of carefully planning. I've got a Landrover with RCL and a Jeep with RCL that came that way. But I've also got a total of 7 heavy machine gun vehicle mounts, 8 75mm RCLs, 6 ZPU-1 AA guns, 1 ZPU-4 AA gun, a quad 50cal MG mount, a twin-linked Gatling gun mount, a twin-linked auto-cannon mount, and a small rocket launcher mount. Which comes out to 26 possible weapon mounts (not counting the two pre-mounted RCLs), though some of those may end up as ground mounts too. This is partly due to the fact that several of them are multi-packs, particularly the RCLs that sent me too many in a pack and told me to just keep the extra when I reported it.

Lastly, I got an email from TheSceneUK that my order was complete. So hopefully it either shipped then or will ship by tomorrow.

We Get Signal

Today's mail brought the radio tower from Shapeways, extremely carefully packed. I was really impressed with the care taken in the packaging of the piece. So that's one more item arrived.

I also sent inquiry to the contact forms of Warweb and OldGlory15s to see the status on the orders I'd made. OldGlory15s replied to me Wednesday, saying the order was cast that day and would go out the next day, so I should be getting it sometime early next week at the latest. Still not a peep from Warweb.

Litko also emailed me that my order of markers from them was completed, and according to their tracking number it was picked up by the carrier today, so it should be here by the first part of the week as well.

Totalling Up the Purchases (updated 9/14/15)

One of the hazards of buying a little here and there is you can quickly buy more than you need or spend more than you wanted. I'm pretty sure I've ended up doing that already with the AK-47 project. I won't really be sure until I have everything in hand so I can sort it out and figure up points, but I was going through to figure up how many things I'd ordered and thought I'd post the list here in a single post at the same time. Counts are number of figures/vehicles/items, not number of packs.

Old Glory
original order from Warweb cancelled

New Old Glory Order
Middle Eastern Regulars - 50 *
Middle Eastern Command - 50 *
African Irregulars - 100 *
African Irregular Command - 50 *
African Pickup Crew with HMG - 4 *
14.5mm ZPU Truck Mount - 4 *
Modern Pickups - 6 *
T-55 - 3 *
BTR-50 APC - 3 *
BTR-60A APC - 3 *
CMP 3 Ton Trucks - 6 *
AEC Armored Car - 3 *

Old Glory 15s/Battle Honors
ZSU-23-4 Shilka - 1 *
Jeep w/106mm RCL - 2 *

QRF
BTR-40A APC/scout vehicle - 1 *
Ferret Mk 1 armored car - 2 *
Saracen APC - 1 *
Landrover LWB w/Wombat RCL - 1 *

 Peter Pig
Seated Drivers - 6 *
ZPU-4 AA gun - 1 *
ZPU-1 AA gun - 2 *
Gaz Jeep - 1 *
AA Crew - 6 *
75mm RCL - 8*
Dictator character - 1*
Religious Leader character - 1*
BTR-152 - 2 *
Toyota High Suspension - 1 *
Unimog Truck - 2 *
Landrover - 1 *
MG Gunners - 3 *

Rebel Minis
Hostages - 12*
News Crew - 2*
Modern Rioters - 21*
Riot Police - 20*
African Military (berets) - 27*
African Militia - 27*
Modern Police - 22*
Modern Civilians - 21*

Khurasan Miniatures
Galactic Dictator - 1*
Modern Western Civilians (rioters) - 10*

Litko
30x30 bases - 200*
30x40 bases - 25*
40x40 bases - 50*
Wrecked vehicle markers (custom, blue) - 10 *
Wrecked vehicle markers (custom, red) - 10 *
Casualty markers (custom, red) - 30 *
Casualty markers (custom, blue) - 30 *
Pinned Markers - 20 (+10 I already had = 30) *

SnM Stuff
Barbed Wire - 10 meters *

Paper Terrain
15mm Grass Huts - 15 *
Blast markers - 25 *

Nu-Bee
Mi-4 Hip model kit *

Finger and Toe Models
15mm ShantyTown shacks - as many as I feel like printing and assembling*
15mm ShantyTown Shops - as many as I feel like printing and assembling*

The Scene UK
Quad linked 50 cal machine gun - 1 *
Twin linked Gatling gun - 1 *
ML001 (vehicle rocket launcher) - 1 *
Twin linked auto cannon - 1 *

Shapeways
 Transmitter  Pylon - 1 *


Besides all of this, I may or may not use some diecast vehicles I have on hand for the project, once I see what the sizes of the 15mm vehicles are compared to my diecasts.

* - indicates I've already received it. Everything else is waiting to arrive.

More Recent Arrivals

I've recently added to my wargaming library the excellent Wargames Compendium by Henry Hyde. I've read chunks of it, but far from all of it, and found it just as good as I expected. Henry has a love for the hobby that comes through clearly, and a wealth of knowledge available both in his own brain and in his many contacts.

To give me some inspiration in painting up the new troops, I picked up Modern African Wars (2) : Angola and Mozambique 1961-74 (Men-At-Arms Series, 202) from Osprey. I've only really skimmed a bit of the text, since the war itself is not of great interest to me, but may go back later to gain more knowledge and flavor from the conflict. I may later pick up the volumes on the Algerian War and the Indonesian Confrontation from the same series.

Noble Knight carries some of the Rebel Miniatures figures, but not all of the line, and several of them are out of stock, so I ended up ordering part of what I wanted from them and part directly from Rebel Miniatures. Noble Knight also used the wrong photo on their Modern Police, so I thought I was getting Riot Police from them and turned out to be getting regular officers without the riot gear. I picked up a pack each of African Militia and African Military, the mistaken pack of Modern Police, and a pack of Modern Civilians. Today's mail brought the figures direct from Rebel Minis, comprised of 1 pack each of Riot Police, Modern Rioters, Hostages, and News Crew w/Robber. Yesterday's mail brought a tiny order from Khurasan Miniatures as well, comprised of one pack of Modern Civilians (despite the innocuous name, these are running and shouting and provided with bricks and molotovs as optional weapons) and one of "Galactic Dictator and Techno-Ninja." I really only needed the Galactic Dictator, a woman with long flowing hair and a suitably ornate military uniform, complete with frilled epaulettes, medal, and eye patch. I haven't decided what I'll use her for, but when I noticed her, I knew I needed one.

The AK-47 Republic Rules require both armies to be formed of exactly 5 units, but allow for each side to have one optional sixth unit of "Unarmed Militia", which means not so much unarmed as not equipped with military weaponry. They can still have knives, bats, pistols, bricks, molotov cocktails, and other such implements common to violent mobs. Under normal circumstances, this unit is required to always be off-board as a reinforcement unit that dices for arrival. However, I have it in mind to set up a scenario with the rioters as the cult's "Unarmed Militia" and the riot police as the government's "unarmed militia" and start both on the board in a confrontation, with military units of both sides responding to the eruption of violence.

The other arrival in today's mail was a set of bases from Litko Aero. A lot of 30x30, the standard AK-47 base size, and smaller quantites of 40x40 (towed weapons and tanks), and 30x40 (cavalry and possibly trucks, technicals, etc). The 30x40 may end up being superfluous, because I'm no longer sure if the vehicles will fit on them. I'll have to wait and make my decision once the vehicles arrive.

I'm still waiting for arrival of figures and vehicles from Peter Pig, Old Glory (via Warweb and Old Glory 15s), and QRF (via Scale Creep Miniatures); Barbed wire from SnM Stuff; some markers/tokens from Litko; and a set of needle files from Amazon.

A little more progress

A trip over to my Hesse-Engelburg blog will show a little more work done this weekend.