Getting WaT 15mm tanks in Australia

 Getting WaT 15mm tanks in Australia 

https://toofatlardies.co.uk/product-category/what-a-tanker/

What a Tanker in my area (Canberra Australia) uses 15mm (1/100) miniatures to play this great 'beer and pretzels' level miniatures wargame.

One of my friends asked how to get miniatures, and I am the sort to head off being asked a questions a few times by making a blog post. (Hi Mr C!)

The game only needs a few tanks per side to get going, and on your first game and large team games, you may only need a single tank, easily borrowed from your teacher or game runner. After that, you will naturally want your own collection. 

STORES

http://store.aetherworks.com.au/

Super Biased first pick! Aetherworks are my friends of 20+ years and I have even done bits of work for them. I declare my bias :)   

An easy start point would be the "Fury" boxed set with three US and two germans.  

You can drill down in the store to Miniature/ Flames of War/ country and then pick the miniatures you want. This is a very easy way to get what you want miniature by miniature. They are located in Sydney, so postage is fast. For example, this link should go to the German vehicles. Vehicles this way are about $15 each. 

If you want to start a collection in one box and don't want to paint, you could get the World of Tanks Miniatures game and get four base coated tanks and a whole other rule set for $71. This is a rebrand of Gale Force 9's (GF9) old "Tanks!" game adding in the basecoat painting and bumping the price. Singles are not out yet, but look like they are $22 each. Great if you have no interest in painting, or if you only want to detail the tanks yourself.

https://www.warandpeacegames.com.au/15mm_Plastic_WWII_s/2469.htm

War and Peace stock a few different companies than Aetherworks. they link above goes to 15mm WW2. The bargain of the moment seems to be that they are clearing their GF9 TANKS games miniatures for $7.50 each. Good price! Limited Stock.

https://www.mightyape.com.au/brands/zvezda

Mighty Ape stock Zvezda models. They are inexpensive models, recently endorsed by Jygdrasil. He was very happy with them arriving in a couple of weeks at very, low prices. He put his toe in with s $20 starter order and order #2 at $40 is underway.

https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313&_nkw=15mm+tanks&_sacat=0

Everyone knows ebay. You can watch carefully for bargains @ $5 a pop, or go spend $250 on someones complete pre painted collection of everything you want. Search 15mm tanks or 1/100 tanks

http://www.thecombatcompany.com/categories/miniatures-historical/plastic-soldier-company/15mm-world-war-ii.html

The Combat Company main differentiator here is stocking Plastic Soldier Compoany brand miniatures. They came through ompeteing with Flames of War by offering inexpensive simple pose plastic miniatures. They sell cheap tanks in boxes of five to match the FoW ruleset. 

3D PRINTING

Down at the 15mm level, 3D printing is just fine. If you have a friend with skills in the area, the polite thing to do is for you to make all the tank decisions by picking what you want from https://www.thingiverse.com/ and sending them the links. Then, offer them about $5 per tank for filament and setup labour. I have 6/25 3d printed tanks, and unless you have a good eye you won't be able to spot them from my plastic and metal tanks until you pick them up.

 

Armour for sale - sorry, SOLD

Once again I am acting as an agent for a friend who is getting out of armoured combat. This set is for a smaller man or medium lady. I will do a few physical comparisons to how things fit for me. I am large at 6'2" (190cm) and 125kg, with big hands. The person this was made for is approx 5'6" (168 cm) and approx 65kg, with fine hands.

Left and Right Unstrapped Aircraft Aluminium Gauntlets

Two Identical Strapped Mild Steel Knees

One Small Hands Strapped Leather Shield glove

One Small Hands Strapped Leather Half Gauntlet

One Mild Steel Articulated and strapped shoulder.

One Back and Breast Aluminium Lamellar Plates Corded together and Leather edged.

$550 the lot.

Postage extra, pickup available Canberra or Rowany Festival.

Left and Right Bokolo Unstrapped Aircraft Aluminium Gauntlets

These gauntlets have never been used. In order to get them ready you would need to do a top joint, palm, and thumb strap. This is a simple job that requires minimal leatherwork skill, some straps, and six rivets. A glove that provides padding, or a padding rig must also be procured. Street hockey gloves are the best off the shelf option. 

Size: Smaller mans hand, medium female hand. The picture shows my large hand filling the gauntlet with no padding. 

Bart's Newcomer Gauntlet Warning: In twenty years of fighting, I have only had one minor hand injury using basket hilt and half gauntlet. I don't usually get two weeks of fighting in gauntlets without some form of injury. Gauntlet fighting carries an inherently higher injury risk due to the incredible range of movement, and fine-ness of the hands. If you work with your hands, I suggest never using gauntlets.

---

Two Identical Strapped Mild Steel Knees

Pretty standard non-articulated knees. There is a superlight legs option going around where you buy leather thing boots, get Kydex thigh plates on the chausses, and these knees attached to the thigh boots. If you want that style, these are ready to go. I find they 'dig in' when you are on your knees due to the lower point. Minor quibble.

2nd hand item, has seen mild use.

One Small Hands Strapped Leather Shield glove

One Small Hands Strapped Leather Half Gauntlet

Both of these items are hand cut, sewn and strapped wax hardened leather items that will do their job well. They are lined and ready to go. They are too small for my hands, you must have a finer size hands than my meat axe paws.

2nd hand items, have seen mild use.

One Mild Steel Articulated and Strapped shoulder.

One ONLY - generally used by a sword and shield user on the sword arm, presuming the shield will protect the other shoulder. Standard 'trilobite' style with lacing points and strapping completed. This item is pretty much universal in size, as the lames can be hand bent for all but the hugest and smallest combatants. 

2nd hand item, has seen mild use.

One Back and Breast Aluminium Lamellar Plates Corded together and Leather edged.

This body armour has been assembled using the lamellar lames and paracord available from Duke Gabriel's "Armoured Badger" store. They have further been edged and strapped in suede leather, and this leather has been pop riveted onto the lames. 

This has been sized for a smaller man. For a woman, I believe this would only be supplementary breast protection - other protection would be needed.

2nd hand item, has seen mild use.

---

Newcomers guide

What else would I need? This kit would get you several piece of armour. To finish this as a kit you would need: Helmet and gorget, a gambeson/ jack, elbows and forearms, chausees and thigh plates. To be fully armed and armoured, you would need weapons - so a pole arm or sword and shield.

The quest to be "That Guy"

"That guy" is from a three panel work "The Martyrdom of St. Ursula" by Hans Memling. He is depicted in what appears to be the armour of a mid to low level man at arms. One of my aims as a member of The Company of Saint Christopher is to get my gear ready, so I can be armed and armoured like this man. The picture was painted by an artist who lived at the time, the clothes are cut in the right style, and the complexity and expense is not too great.

Head to toe breakdown:
Helmet: His simple cap helmet will be protective in a basic way, and not too hot. I have no sourced this helmet yet: It will likely be my last piece gathered: I intend to use my current Sallita until this cap has been sourced/ created.

Mail: Dan Oliver has shown they way, and has an inexpensive source of riveted mail. I will get the links presently.

Jack (the cloth jacket) & Jack Chains (the arm armour): I intend to save the ladies of the group that sewing task: It is my intention to purchase from Cap-a-pie.

Poleaxe:  I intend to have a variant of the Wallace collection hammer extended to poleaxe length. Hammer and rear spike, Spear point and butt spike. Four ends, no waiting. It is my hope to craft an SCA poleaxe to as close to the same weight and handling as the metal reproduction item.

Sword and sword belt: I will hand make the belt, and I will talk to Master Owain about the best way to obtain the sword.

Hose & Braies: Here I will talk to the ladies of the group, and get patterned and supplied, likely in exchanged for calligraphic work etc.

Boots: I already have a pair of the boots, and will get another pair.  

Knights, households and longswords, oh my

Knights:
I was asked to join the chivalry in the SCA, and on Easter Sunday I was dubbed a knight with my grandfather's sword. Since then I have prioritized my medieval efforts slightly differently, and made sure my broad attention was on the whole of the Politarchopolis fighting community, and that my narrow focus was on building up the knowledge and combat capacity of my household, and my personal fighting goal was to develop a greater understanding of medeival combat techniques.

Politarchopolis has had a training revolution brought to it by appreciating and appropriating methods from two main sources: Sir Gemini's combat school, and ANU Kendo.  Duke Cornelius (Corny) has been in contact, and has studied the Gemini method. ANU Kendo has a 10 week beginners course, where you wander in clueless, and at the end you are able to throw the basic shots, put on armour, and see if Kendo if for you. These two were melded, and Corny has run beginners course three (?) times now, and one of my aims is to pick up this method well enough to be able to teach it independently next course. We have lots of new blood who have come through the course, and the mid-rankers are all improving in technique and teaching capacity.

Households:
My household has grown since my knighting, and at the fields of gold event later this month, I intend to take squires, and present belts to those who will stay as man-at-arms. Each is equally important to me, for different reasons. Aedwyn had faith in me way back when, and I have faith that she will sort out that getting cash in, and having free time thing enough to find time and fight more. Angus is an accomplished combatant, quite skilled, and needs to work on his temperament, calibration and training. Angus will be key in making sure the next two get authorized and have a good foundation of armoured combat. Urbana and Krieg are both sixteen, and are both learning the Gemini method. They are both high school students, and we are working on getting them armoured and ready to fight, as they have gotten their 'perfect circle' drills down pat, and need armour time to see where they go next. Urbana is academically gifted and a deep thinker, Krieg is charismatic and warm, both are figuring out that teenage thing pretty well. Gunter has a hard path, away from a major fighting community. He will need to find local combatants to train with, and I will be here to answer his questions as best I can. My mystery man-at-arms is suffering most deeply from work-life imbalance: I hope he can find a way through that issue.

Longswords:
I love co-incidences: I love that I can go to an ABS work function, find this guy who works in the ABS, and is an incredible teacher of the study of longsword. I love that we met just as I was knighted and bringing my head up to look around at the broader re-enactment world. I love that we had free alcohol as we figured all this out.

Lucas/ Matt is doing some super cool stuff. HEFT & The Company of Saint Christopher are going great guns. HEFT is a school of medieval combat methodologies studying existing manuals and other modern teachings. The Company is more of a living history group, with a focus being a tournament company around 1450-1500.

I recently had just over two weeks in Tasmania, and I made it to three HEFT lessons. They have a great crew, about 20 participants divided into beginners and advance, all learning and doing drills developed from the medieval manuals. Saint Christopher's had their first outing just after I left: My contribution was in the calligraphy field, and my gain was in finding sources to prepare an improved 15C persona.

Getting ready for my third home town

At the end of this Semester, Adelle will be a qualified engineer, and we will be moving to Wodonga, Victoria, as she will be based at the army base there. This weekend I will heading down to "Border War", an SCA war event there. It's going to be interesting, interacting with gang knowing I will be a local in few months.

I'm also facing finding a new job. I don't think this will be too much of an issue, as there are some major hirers down there, and I have very solid experience.

Finding fellow geeks shouldn't be a problem, I have those skills sorted :)

This is also a shout out - who knows cool people near the area, and cool places/ things to do?

Back from GNW

Back from overly warm brisbane and the lovely Great Northern War. Got half a days biffo in on Friday night before a critical armour failure, then a good days fighting on Saturday. The humidity got me on Sunday, and then my armour was in car going back on Monday...

Bane tagged me in the flame tourney, can't remember who got me in the next round, then my armour exploded in the third round.

In the 'battleships' game I got tagged by Draco. No shame there as he won both the flame tourney and the powerful owl tourney.

Managed to win the speed tourney against about 20 people. I dropped one round to Stephan Glaube, but got him in the final.

Rowany Rush is on big time this year.

Rowany Rush is the phenomenon where you spend the weeks before Rowany Festival running around like a mad thing getting everything ready for the biggest medieval event in the Southern Hemisphere.

Last year was completely on top of it. I was packed a week out, and ready to roll. This year, I am on the biggest rush ever. Armour maintenance is a constant chore - it protects you from trauma by coping the trauma itself, so by it's nature it is constantly getting struck and abused. Armour, like an onion, is all about layers, and my base layer of armour is dead. The base layers are the akerton (fabric jacket) and the chausses (fabric 'chaps') .

My akerton has exploded, with failed seams and disconnected arms from the body of the jacket. My chausses are just tatty. I have a new akerton comingon the weekend. Hooray! Super-Caera has taken up the mantle where no-one else could succeed!

Why does this mean I'm about to be thrown into the rush? Because I now have to re-jig my armour from the ground up, and I have new armour to be fitted for the first time.

In a world where most people wear clothes off the rack, this would not be something people would be too aware of, but most quality sports people know the drill - the customisation of the gear so it moves with you and works like a second skin.

With sport gear it is pure tweaking - you buy the commercial item, and then make minor alterations. Well, with armour everything is handmade, and you are given the equipment in a partially finished state. there are still many hours of getting it ready, and even more if you want to get it moving like a second skin.

I will be given the akerton over the next few days, and then it is on.

List:

Akerton - create lacing points.
Elbows - create gutterss , cover, pad, lace and strap
Knees - create uppers to make them legs, cover, and strap
Leg suspension - old one is too tatty. Create and strap.
Shield - create two round shields. Edge, cover, attach bosess, create handles

Camping gear - Complete shed cleanout and gear assesment.

Packing - will I have to completely clean and clear up the shed. Will I have the van purchased with my Ruddbucks by then? Am I shoveling into the Yaris hatch, or will I have the luxury to be a bit lazier and take the van?

It's only two weeks away, and time is running short.