Progress Report - Property Portfolio and Brainstorming

The buildings I ordered from Peter Pig, Timecast and Paperterrain all arrived during the last fortnight. I've had a busy couple of weeks travelling with work which makes it hard to get as much painting and modelling done as I'd like (not to mention blogging) but yesterday afternoon I sat down and had a good session with the Peter Pig and Timecast buildings. I got four finished and another two well on the way. Another couple are undercoated.

I've also undercoated a destroyed Peter Pig T34/85, T55 and Mercedes saloon. These will all eventually become objective markers.

I'm pleased with the building on the left with the 'MPLA' graffiti

I like the rubbish outside the back of the 'shop' on the right

I've also been giving some thought to army lists, and have made some notes to adapt the lists in AK47 Reloaded. After reading 'Winter of 79' I'm unsure if I'll stick to the format of AK 47 as far as army lists and victory conditions goes. The '15 Days to War' scenario generator is a bit superfluous given that one of the aims of 'War for Slow Readers' is to provide a background or framework for scenarios. And because I'm not playing a tournament style game a points system is also not really necessary. That's fine for solo games of course but the people I'm likely to press gang into playing a game are likely to ask 'how do we know whose won?', so I'll have to give some thought to victory conditions and some kind of mechanism to ensure that players don't feel like they've been shafted as far as play balance goes.

I'm on schedule to run a test game or two in a couple of weeks so will probably go for opposing forces that are relatively small and will leave out the asset system. I've had a couple of ideas about possible scenarios - battles don't have to be played out in the chronological order of my imaginary timeline either. There's nothing to stop me fast forwarding a few years to allow a scenario I'm partciularly interested in to be played out. My imaginary version of Operation Savannah is looking good though.

Possible battles include:

• FNLA mercenary cored army tries to capture key crossroads north of Luanda against more numerous but less well trained MPLA
• SADF/FNLA relief column tries to reach SADF Paras against uncoordinated but determined resistance from Cuban special forces and MPLA
• Outnumbered Cubans ambush SADF/FNLA column
• SADF mounts battalion level attack against MPLA forces trying to hold river crossing
• Fighting withdrawal by MPLA as combined FNLA/SADF pile on the pressure

Plenty to think about over the next week or two