After a short break for lunch, we then visited the estate agent through whom we are buying the flat on behalf of my father-in-law. The vendors have accepted the off we made for the flat, and we managed to sort out what steps we now have to take to purchase it. It was too late in the day to visit a local solicitor to arrange for them to act for us, but we have the name of a highly recommended one whom we shall contact early next week.

As a result of all of the above, I have not had a great deal of time to even think about wargaming. Once thing I did do, however, was to look through and begin sorting my archive of photographs of Swedish Armoured Fighting Vehicles … and as I did so I was struck by an idea.

Years ago I had an imagi-nation called Opeland. It was very similar in many ways to Sweden, and the tanks that I built for its ‘army’ were loosely based on various Swedish tank designs. I have wanted to resurrect this imagi-nation – and its archrival Upsland – for some time, and I named this my ‘Nostalgia’ Project. It has been on the backburner for some time, but today, when looking at the following photograph, I thought that this particular design looked like an amalgam of two other tank designs … a Pzkpfw III hull with a T34/76 turret atop it.

I very quickly used my image manipulation computer programs to add a drawing of a T34/76 turret to that of the hull of a Pzkpfw III … et voila!

I then realised that I had 1:100th-scale models of both a Pzkpfw III and a T34/76 to hand (both are from the range of Axis & Allies Miniatures) and it was a matter of a few seconds work to put the T34/76 turret onto the Pzkpfw hull.

The resulting design is not exactly like its Swedish original … but it is not that different.

Food for thought, I think … especially as Zvezda make very reasonably priced 1:100th-scale models of both the Pzkpfw II and T34/76.

PS. The Swedish tank is a Stridsvagn m/42.

In amongst the large collection of military books on the shelves I found a 1964 copy of DAS KLEINE PANZERBUCH by Dr F M von Senger und Etterlin. Amongst the vehicles featured in the Swedish section were:

• The Strv 74 tank
• The Pvkv 71 self-propelled gun
• The Ikv 103 assault gun

These vehicles are the going to be the designs upon which the AFVs used by Opeland will be based (see my previous blog entry on 13th August 2009), so having both data and – more importantly – scale line drawings is going to be of great help when I finally get this project underway. In the meantime, here are some images of some of the line drawings I will be using:

Armoured Brigades:

• An Armoured Battalion
• Two Motorised Infantry Battalions
• A Motorised Artillery Battalion
• A Motorised Assault Engineer Company
• A Motorised Reconnaissance Battalion
• A Self-propelled Anti-tank Gun Company
• A Self-propelled or Motorised Anti-aircraft Company
• A Brigade HQ Company

Infantry Brigades:

• Three Infantry Battalions
• An Artillery Battalion
• An Assault Engineer Company
• A Motorised or Bicycle Reconnaissance Battalion
• An Anti-tank Gun Company
• An Anti-aircraft Company
• A Brigade HQ Company

I also intend that the Opelandic Army will be supported by an Air Force equipped with Fighters, Fighter-Bombers/Ground Attack Aircraft, Bombers, Reconnaissance Aircraft, and Transport Aircraft, and a Navy that has at least two (or possibly three) frontline Coastal Defence Battleships, Destroyers, and Torpedo Boats.

This may well be a bit over ambitious, but I won’t find out if it is until I start!

This is one of the books that I have been looking at for inspiration for my ‘Nostalgia’ project, and I am slowly coming to the conclusion that the Swedish Army will make an excellent basis for the army of my vaguely Northern European/Baltic States/Eastern European imagi-nation, Opeland.

The reasoning behind this is that the equipment used by the Swedes looks similar to, but not the same as, that used by Germany in the late 1930s and early 1940s. For example, the Stridsvagn m/37 looks similar to the PzKpfw I …

… and the Stridsvagn m/38 is about the same size as a PzKpfw II but is armed with a 37mm gun.

The Stridsvagn m/42 has a 75mm gun, and is about the same size as the later model PzKpfw III.

The Swedes even used the chassis of the Stridsvagn m/42 as the basis of a self-propelled gun, just like the Germans used the chassis of the PzKpfw III as a basis for the StuG III.

If I do use the Swedish Army of the late 1930s and early 1940s as the basis on my Opelandic Army, I will need to acquire quite a few ROCO PzKpfw IIIs and/or StuG IIIs as well as some other bits and pieces.

One of the kits was of the AIRFIX Vickers Light Tank Mk.VI. Whilst unpacking my latest acquisitions, I put the box on my modelling table next to a book about modern armour. The book just happened to be open at the section that covers modern German armour, and I noticed that the German Wiesel 1 airportable armoured vehicle seems to bear a passing resemblance to the Vickers Light Tank Mk.VI.

The Vickers Light Tank Mk.VI.

The Wiesel 1 Airportable Armoured Vehicle.

The Vickers Light Tank is longer (4.04m vs. 3.26m), wider (2.08m vs. 1.8m), higher (2.26m vs. 1.9m), and heavier (5.2 tons vs. 2.8 tons); the Wiesel 1 is faster (85 km/h vs. 54 km/h), has a longer range (300 km vs. 200km), and is better armed (20mm cannon vs. 12.7mm or 15mm machine gun).

Now I know that when Northrop began design work on the B-2 bomber, they were able to draw on earlier designs such as the Northrop XB-35, YB-35 and YB-49. They also looked at the Horten Ho229 jet fighter that is in storage at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. I wonder … did any of the Wiesel 1’s designers at Porsche ever get any inspiration from looking at a picture of a Vickers Light Tank Mk.VI?

We shall probably never know … but it is an interesting question nonetheless.

Firstly – and most importantly – I have renamed it the ‘Nostalgia’ Project for reasons that will become apparent.

Secondly, this project is a product of my age. As I grow older I look back to my earlier wargaming exploits for inspiration … and because they were FUN! That is not to say that my current wargaming is not fun; it is just that, with hindsight, the wargames of my youth have acquired a probably totally unjustified sense of importance in my mind. They now seem to have been epic struggles that lasted for days, whereas the truth is that they probably lasted a couple of hours and had to be packed away in time for the family’s evening meal.

Thirdly, it is a reaction against the seemingly endless progression of new ranges of new figures in a variety of scales – 6mm, 10mm, 12mm, 15mm, 20mm, 28mm … and more! My boyhood wargames were fought with a very restricted range of 20mm/1:87th scale figures and models – almost all came from AIRFIX and ROCO Minitanks, with the occasional Matchbox vehicle thrown in for good measure. The models were basic – and there was not a lot of choice – and the figures were small and the detail was minimal. Oddly enough, this made them easier to paint using what was then the ‘standard’ method of painting – blocks of colour with no shading.

So I am planning to indulge myself by creating a series of 20th century imagi-nations (just like the two I had as a boy: Opeland and Upsland) that will be ‘armed’ by AIRFIX, ROCO, and any other manufacturer of ‘proper’ 20mm/1:87th scale models. They will recruit their ‘armies’ from suitably sized 20mm/1:87th scale figures, and the uniforms will be generic.

Interestingly I know that I am not alone in going down this path. Chris Kemp outlines on his NQM (Not Quite Mechanised) website how he ran a Summer Holiday Toy Soldier Campaign in his youth, and lays down some very helpful rules for doing the same thing now.

Ross Macfarlane has done something similar, and has recently added a battle report to his website With Macduff on the Web.

I am currently acquiring suitable models and figures (including raiding the boxes of models I found in the garden shed), and hope to begin work on this project when my enthusiasm for developing WHEN EMPIRES CLASH! begins to lag somewhat (I find that it is always a good idea to have several projects on the go at the same time just in case).

So the ‘Nostalgia’ project is now officially underway … but don’t expect too much to happen in the near future.