Back on the WW2 fast boat thing for a start to 2026! Sometime in mid-2025 over on Bluesky I ran across Thomas Brandsetter’s early draft Torpedoes & Tides system and he was kind enough to send send us the draft rules privately. We only got one game of the system done in 2025 and didn’t really have any playtest notes to send back to Thomas, but I really like the system he’s written, a very clean adaptation of Ganesha Games’ existing Galleys & Galleons rules.
All this inspired me to dust off some long-neglected things and start a couple of new ones. The last full size 1/1200 coastal module I did, back in December 2023, saw me speculating about “maybe a coastal gun battery” and it’s been back of mind ever since, so I got started on that, a simple clifftop battery somewhere along the coast of Occupied Europe inspired by some of the simpler batteries – just two open gun pits and a small cluster of supporting bunkers.
This shoreline piece isn’t designed to pair up with my existing coastline pieces, it’s a standalone corner bit. The gun pits are built up out of sheet styrene, the various bunker roofs are scrap styrene, the cliff is pink styrofoam insulation, and the whole thing is based on my usual 1mm styrene card. The two back sides of the triangular piece are about 4″ long.
While I was cutting styrene bases I pulled out the Brigade Models Harbour Walls I’ve had in the Pile of Opportunity since sometime in 2020 and set up a pair of simple harbour walls sticking out to sea, as seen many places along the European coasts. Absolutely nothing fancy, just 1mm styrene and the cast metal Brigade walls. Still in progress, the walls need more paint and the sea will get gloss varnish and waves. The smaller piece with the right-angle breakwater is about 6″ x 3″ and the larger multi-angle harbour is about 7″ x 4″.
There’s also various other things going on, including a whole new batch of ships a friend 3d printed in resin for me over a year ago that I’ve finally primed, but more on those when there’s progress to show off!