Movement Point

In Scale: 1/48 Arma Hobby Sea Hurricane Mk IIc (No. 835 Squadron, HMS Nairana, 1944)

June 13, 2026 by Chris Baer

After a brief—ok, fine, two year—hiatus, the In Scale series of scale model builds returns with a 1/48 scale Arma Hobby Hawker Sea Hurricane Mk. IIc, wearing the overall-white livery of NF672/7K, the famous “Nicki” flown by Sub Lt. A.R. Burgham with Fleet Air Arm 835 Squadron off HMS Nairana. Sub Lt. Burgham’s mount is depicted circa mid-June, 1944, shortly before a non-fatal crash into the barriers on its home carrier by a different pilot.

Build Overview

Arma Hobby first released their well-regarded 1/48 Hurricane Mk. IIc in 2023 with an eye towards a future Sea Hurricane boxing thanks to the bottom fuselage behind the wing being a single, swappable piece. Their Sea Hurricane Mk. IIc boxing, released in 2024, provides a 3d-printed replacement for that part with the proper recess for an arrestor hook, also 3d-printed. The kit is notable for extensive riveting, both raised and sunken, on the wings, adding much detail and surface interest.

It’s here I must confess that I am somewhat “mark-agnostic” when it comes to aircraft variants. I respect the economics of the hobby and the fact that manufacturers cannot always create bespoke parts, like the rear fuselage drop-in, to represent the different versions of aircraft using the same basic molds, instead asking modelers to perform modifications of greater or lesser difficulty to more accurately mirror the vehicle type being built. When it’s a simple scribe or fill or deletion, I’ll happily scratch or putty or sand away, but when more extensive surgery is required, I often default to discretion over valor. Such is the case here. I refrained from removing the raised vents on either side of the fuselage below the cockpit, which a real Sea Hurricane Mk. IIc lacks, and left the landing gear bay doors intact, crews having removed a chunk of the lower spat to alleviate the doors catching the arrestor cable before the hook, which was likely a bad thing. Especially since I’d been away from the bench for a bit, I knew my attempts at the fixes would be more distressing than just leaving them be, so to the mark-purists out there, my apologies. We appreciate your knowledge, particularly when we ask desperate forum questions trying to get it right! So I know, strictly, this doesn’t represent an archetypal Mk. IIc Sea Hurricane. If it were an airframe I know well, it might bother me, but to my untrained eye, it looks close enough.

The build was quite straightforward, even with my aforementioned rustiness, as befits Arma Hobby’s growing reputation in the hobby. I found the cockpit to be exceedingly fiddly, with multiple parts coming together in a cage-like structure that then rests on the top of the wing, which, nicely, is composed of two solid spars, preventing any dihedral issues. The cramped pilot’s office on a Hurricane allows very little internal visibility once the fuselage is buttoned up, and assembling the cockpit felt like painting the back of a dresser—you know it’s there, but ain’t nobody ever going to see it.

I had a bit of fuss with the wing assembly, broadly because of my lack of practice at sprue gate removal and proper technique, but nothing that applications of elbow grease and fillers couldn’t rectify (mostly). The fit of the fuselage onto the wing approached a level of wonder, I must say—it’s the most precise alignment I’ve seen to date, with no filler needed at all. Just a beautiful bit of engineering and molding there. The bottom fuselage drop-in required cyanoacrylate to install, not being styrene, but the fit was push-tight, which allowed just a tiny bit of glue (and a bit of filler) to get the job done.

Beyond that, the build itself was a breeze. I was able to seal the fuselage seam flush with just a bit of judicious sanding and cyanoacrylate work, and the parts layout let me leave the vertical tail stabilizer (with its easily breakable antenna mast) off until the end. Fair warning—the raised rivets will catch and unravel cotton buds, particularly the cheap dollar-store type that adorn many a workbench. Use something else to clean/smooth/blend/whatever or be willing to devote significant time to plucking stray strands for the remainder of your build—and bemoaning them in pictures afterwards…

Doctor Who Project: Sylvester McCoy Retrospective

June 5, 2026June 2, 2026 by Chris Baer

Much as William Hartnell bears the mantle, and the burden, of being the First Doctor, Sylvester McCoy wears the title of the Last Doctor. With hindsight, we know that Doctor Who eventually returns, in fits—the one-off “TV Movie” of 1996 featuring Paul McGann’s sole outing as the Eight Doctor—and in starts—the still-ongoing BBC reboot from 2005 onward, with seven (or so) Doctors of its own. But in late 1989, with cancellation confirmed by the time the final episode, “Survival,” airs, McCoy’s Seventh Doctor appears to be the end of our beloved Time Lord’s regeneration.

To be absolutely certain, Doctor Who‘s cancellation has nothing to do with Sylvester McCoy’s affable, energetic, and, as his three seasons wore on, steely presentation of the Gallifreyan miscreant. Drama and politicking behind the scenes at BBC Television Centre drive the decision alongside ratings that suffer worse than normal when the venerable Saturday afternoon show moves into direct competition with Coronation Street, the ITV juggernaut soap opera nearing twelve thousand episodes of Mancunian heartbreak to date. For all the claims from BBC Head of Series Peter Cregeen and others that the show just needs time to regenerate, if you will, to recapture the imagination of the audience through absence, they have in McCoy an actor capable of just such renewal, which even the most die-hard fan would have to admit the series requires by 1989.

One could make the case that Doctor Who has been undergoing “renovations” since John Nathan-Turner takes over as producer in 1980 to start Tom Baker’s Season Eighteen. Ever after, change becomes the watchword for the series, with Nathan-Turner having Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor oversee a herd of youthful companions as opposed to the more restrained counts for the Third and Fourth Doctors, while Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor throws the proverbial toys out of the pram and challenges the audience to accept him (they don’t). In comparison, McCoy seems a return to form, to normalcy, with but one companion at a time and a Seventh Doctor who is eager to please. But all the rejiggering fails to shore up viewing statistics or to convince the suits in charge that the series deserves to continue, and there’s a sense of desperation throughout McCoy’s run, an overarching knowledge that the series hangs on by a thread, having almost been canned prior to Colin Baker’s final season.

Based on the overall strength of McCoy’s twelve stories, all overseen by Nathan-Turner and script editor Andrew Cartmel, there’s little evidence that any change would have sufficed to convince the upper floors of Television Centre that Doctor Who still had life, vibrancy, and strong contemporary relevance. Well, fine, discounting the fact that McCoy’s time on the series starts by having Kate O’Mara dress up as Bonnie Langford…

Triple Action: ASL Action Packs #20, 21, 22 (MMP) Released

May 22, 2026 by Chris Baer

Fresh—well, semi-fresh—from the fine fellows at Multi-Man Publishing, a trio of Action Packs, numbers 20, 21, and 22, for Advanced Squad Leader, everyone’s favorite tactical combat simulation, to fill out the collection. I say “semi-fresh” because two of these three map-and-scenario packs were first unveiled back at ASLOK in October of 2025 some seven months back, but the latest is genuinely hot off the presses this week.

These packs serve a useful function in the ASL ecosystem, adding a drip-feed of new boards—and a veritable torrent of new scenarios—for the system to tide gamers over between the larger boxed module releases. As has been noted, the last thing the system really needs is new counters, but we all still want new product, so Action Packs fit the bill perfectly, filling up the map-and-scenario binders while leaving the Planos untouched, and the three latest offer a range of experiences with something for everyone, even picky gamers like myself. All three feature now-standard, yet still striking, cover artwork by Nicolás Eskubi.

ASL Action Pack #20 wears its pedigree on its sleeve (er, sub-title), “ASL Oktoberfest XXXIX,” not just released at the venerable tournament but produced in cooperation with it, featuring a dozen scenarios, spread across seven double-sided cards, by Pete Shelling, David Lamb, and Matt Zajac, plus a single new mapboard, 98. These actions run the gamut, with no particular theme tying them together. Aside from a smattering of near-obligatory East Front battles we get a few set in the Philippines, one in Burma, one in Luxembourg, and, as is becoming a welcome tradition, a pair of Korean War scenarios by Pete Shelling, including one with UN Forces. He’s doing more to keep Korean War ASL alive than anyone else at present. Most of the cards come in around six-seven turns, with reasonable force sizes, as befits a tournament-centric pack, though there are a few actions that will take either fast play or a very long session in a tourney setting.

Board 98, designed by Tom Repetti and painted by Jean-Marc Palmier (his first for the system?), is a welter of brown, tan, and green, with a dirt road leading over and through wooded hills. Cliffs and a stone bridge over a dry gully add to the fun, and a smattering of crags makes an appearance, because why not? It’s a busy, busy map, sadly only used by three of the scenarios in the pack. In addition to 98, boards 6, 16, 35, 36, 37, 49, 58, 62, 68, 71, 75, 87, 88, 90, 5a, 7a, 8b, and deluxe boards b, c, and i are required, plus a handful of overlays. German, Russian, American, Axis Minor, Japanese, Nationalist and Communist Chinese, UN, and North and South Korean counters come into play across the scenarios.

The other ASLOK Action Pack release, ASL Action Pack #21, takes as its theme “Blitzkrieg to Paris,” a tightly focused compilation of four maps and ten scenarios all by Gary Fortenberry, centered on actions in May, 1940, in the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. The counters needed, commensurately, come in as a very tidy list: German, Allied Minor, and French (plus Partisans). Stretching across six double-sided cards, these actions are anything but tiny—the substantive scenarios draw on many dusty parts of the Plano for counters not frequently seen, always a treat. Perhaps understandably, the Germans take the initiative in all but one of the scenarios, a French counterattack, but the Allies are not without ample tools to resist. For fans of early-war situations, this pack is a must.

Doctor Who Project: Survival

May 2, 2026 by Chris Baer

But this is the end, Doctor.

It is a sad irony, or perhaps even an overt statement of defiance, that Doctor Who‘s final story, by Rona Munro, bears the title “Survival” (Story Production Code 7P). And to what far-flung, interstellar destination, to which era-defining period of temporal change, does the last tale take us? Ah, that would be 1989 Perivale, a small suburban outpost in Ealing, a conurbation of London, home to Ace, who has begun to miss her friends since her abrupt leave-taking prior to the events of “Dragonfire.” After twenty-six seasons of alien landscapes and distant times, the quotidian charm of an unhurried residential street with a lad in a period appropriate rugby shirt tucked into jeans washing a car feels shocking, almost subversive, such that it’s a relief once he vanishes after being hissed at by a barely-adequate animatronic black cat.

Doctor Who often shines brightest when set amongst familiar trappings—from Cybermen marching in front of St. Peter’s Cathedral to Autons bursting forth from shop windows on the high street—the better to highlight the oddities on offer, and “Survival” benefits from its down-to-Earth setting. Ace, again, grounds the story in some sense of reality, and we finally see what happens when a companion returns after so long away. Her friends have almost all disappeared, the old haunts sit abandoned, and her mother, last seen as a baby in “The Curse of Fenric,” filed a missing persons report on her months back. Once a busybody Territorial Army sergeant at the youth center, Paterson (Julian Holloway), remembers her as the “waster” who burned down a creepy mansion (q.v. “Ghost Light“), it’s not hard to see why Ace wasn’t terribly upset about being swept into the future and away from Perivale. The scene seems set for some rumination on the costs of traveling with the Doctor, but instead we learn that Ace is not the only Perivalian to journey through the cosmos without a spaceship, or even a souped-up police box.

Immediately upon arrival, while waiting with rather visible impatience for Ace to find her friends, the Doctor takes an interest in a particular (and certainly quite peculiar) stray black cat, leading him to purchase all manner of cat foods from a corner market (paid for by Ace’s winnings from the fruit machine in her local) with which to entice said feline. Ace, meanwhile, has no trouble finding the cat, picking it up on a nearby playground; when it scampers from her grasp, she finds in its stead a bipedal, humanoid cheetah riding a horse, one of the most surprising “monster” appearances ever on Doctor Who—which, after over a hundred and fifty stories, is saying something. That the concept is a mash-up of Planet of the Apes and, alas, Cats does not detract from the sheer audacity of the presentation; director Alan Wareing, helming his third story, fully embraces the moment and does not shy away from showing the costuming, which holds up reasonably well under close inspection.

After a series of less-than-thrilling near escapes up kiddie slides and through jungle gyms in the playground, the cheetah finally runs Ace down, sending her with a flash to another planet, where she finds several black cats gathered around the dead body of the car washer (Damon Jeffery). When the cheetah on horseback also appears, Ace makes a futile effort to flee, only to be saved by her friends from Perivale, who pull her into a thicket and explain that they have been brought to this place as prey for the cheetahs to hunt down—and eat.

The scene is thus set for an exploration of the titular “survival of the fittest,” as established by Paterson, who bullies his charges in the youth center, all to toughen them up, to eat rather than be eaten. Alongside such duties, he also moonlights as the neighborhood watch, focusing his attention on the Doctor, who has been rather unsuccessful in trapping his own prey but somewhat too successful in irritating the local householders. Just as the Doctor is about to apprehend the black cat, having clambered atop a stone fence to reach it, Paterson grabs him. Another flash translates them to “planet of the Cheetah People,” which the Doctor notes has been scarcely researched since no one lives long enough to learn much. A whole tribe of the cat beasts surrounds them, pushing them towards a tent, where a glib smile welcomes the Doctor like the old acquaintance he is…

Table for One: France ’44 (Victory Games) Review

May 20, 2026April 16, 2026 by Chris Baer

Wargaming boasts a few eternal chestnuts, conflicts and battles that publishers, designers, and, it must be said, gamers, just can’t get enough of: Waterloo, Gettysburg, Stalingrad, the Bulge, and, of course, D-Day. The evergreen popularity of these topics speaks to their role as hinges, moments when fates of empires and nations hang in the balance; one of wargaming’s attractions is the ability to revisit, in decidedly distanced form, the choices and challenges faced by the real-world combatants, to see how history might have unfolded differently or to understand why the cards played out as they did.

It’s a bold step, then, for Victory Games, that subsidiary of Avalon Hill comprised mostly of refugees from the lamented SPI, to have published France ’44, a game on the Allies’ drive to the Rhine in 1944 and 1945, that starts after D-Day and ends before V-E Day. No invasion, no desperate attempt to break out from the beachhead, no fear of being pushed back into the sea, no drive deep into Germany once the Westwall falls. By the time July 1944—when the game starts—rolled around, the end of the war was scripted but not yet written, with plenty of hard miles between the bocage of Normandy and the shores of the Rhine but the destination little in doubt, plenty to build a game around. Still, without that strong hook of D-Day to grab gamers, how does France ’44 hope to compete with the dozens of similar games on the market? By turning the basic “rules” of wargaming on their dusty heads.

Overview

France ’44: The Allied Crusade in Europe
Victory Games, 1986
Designed by Mark Herman

France ’44 arrives in a standard Avalon Hill/Victory Games slipcase box, irritatingly sized at 8 and 3/8″ wide and 11 and 1/2″ long, just a smidge too small for a sheet of Letter-sized paper. (I would love to hear the story of just why AH made their boxes in such non-standard dimensions, with the concomitant shrinking of all the maps and booklets that needed to fit into them.) The cover artwork, by Jim Talbot, evocatively (if improbably) depicts a Sherman blazing away on the move at multiple enemies at once, the commander firing the cupola-mounted machine gun as the main armament looses a round.

The contents are such that the 2″ tall box feels cavernous by contrast: one saddle-stapled, black-and-white printed twenty-page rulebook; one matte map, printed on thick paper, measuring 22″ by 32″; a single, die-cut, back printed countersheet with 130 1/2″ inch counters (essentially a half-countersheet by modern reckoning); two d6; and a plastic counter tray with clear snap-on lid that fits snugly in the bottom of the box. Notably, all player charts and tables fit on the map, so that there are no loose tables. Such an economical format suggests that this might have seen life as a magazine game in Strategy & Tactics had it been submitted to SPI rather than VG, but it was marketed at a price of US$15 at the time. Though, of course, a game’s true worth is measured by more than its weight in paper.

In 2020, Compass Games re-released France ’44 in a “Designer Signature Edition,” a moniker Compass gives to previously published games that are gussied up (and usually super-sized) for a new audience, featuring a mounted map, a mini-map for the congested Normandy area, two countersheets (adding mostly informational markers), various charts and tables, and custom dice for the revised combat system. This review focuses solely on the original 1986 Victory Games release.

Armor units in France ’44 are divisions while infantry units are corps, with HQ units representing Army HQs. The counters, by art director Ted Koller, hew broadly to Victory Games’ simple yet pleasing palette, Allied units in olive green and German units in a greyish-tan. Standard NATO symbology differentiates unit types, and the various nationalities on the Allied side (American, British, French, Canadian, and Polish) are denoted by the color-fill on the unit symbol. Units receive historical Order of Battle denotations, but other than the British 79th Armored Division, which receives bonuses in certain combat situations thanks to its “Funnies,” the designations are for flavor and initial setup only. (Thankfully, VG does not apply differential colors or rules for the laughably “elite” German units that so many wargames insist on calling out as somehow worthy of special attention.)

The counters in my copy show very tight registration with no instances of color bleed or off-printing, and they round nicely with my handy dandy counter corner rounder. The cuts are not uniformly deep, requiring some extra X-Acto work here and there to remove them cleanly from the counter sheet and each other. The dreaded Avalon Hill/Victory Games side nibs—those attachment points to the countersheet that fall on the side of the counter rather than the corners—do make an appearance here, as in another VG game from 1986, James Bond 007 Assault!. Unlike corner nibs, which are easily removed, side nibs defy simple remediation and just look tacky. The side nibs are not consistent, nor indeed do they even appear with any degree of regularity or discernible pattern. One can but nod sagely, acknowledging that the ways of the Monarch-Avalon Printing Company will remain forever inscrutable…

Doctor Who Project: The Curse of Fenric

May 2, 2026April 2, 2026 by Chris Baer

Behold, the end of the war.

For all the historical periods Doctor Who has mined over the course of a quarter century, the series waits until the bitter end to visit the 1940s, World War II in particular, in Ian Briggs’ “The Curse of Fenric” (Story Production Code 7M). Given the number of period dramas (and comedies) the BBC has set in that era, it’s rather surprising that this specific setting lies dormant for so long—the costume closet from Dad’s Army is available to plunder the whole time, after all. Perhaps the relative seriousness of the topic, and the still somewhat fresh memories of the conflict, keep the series at bay, especially in an era of increasing international sales for Doctor Who, and it’s telling that Briggs’ story hews away from the strictly historical to present instead a tale of ancient horror with a distinctly Nordic twist.

The Seventh Doctor and Ace arrive at a secret Royal Navy base in Northumbria, likely around 1943 given clues about the state of the war, right at the same time that several rafts full of Soviet commandos storm the beaches at nearby Maiden’s Point, suggesting that perhaps the base isn’t so secret after all. The Doctor strolls right in, his air of authority such that several guards with rifles simply let him saunter to the office of Dr. Judson (Dinsdale Landen), a cryptographer working on deciphering German naval ciphers using his “Ultima” machine, an analytic proto-computer that can work through “[m]ore than a thousand combinations an hour, with automatic negative checking.” Like the Doctor, the Soviets also seek the scientist, but their sealed orders further include references to the engraved runes found in the crypt of the local parish church, built, as such things occasionally are, on the remains of an old Viking cemetery.

Briggs and returning director Nicholas Mallett deftly build up the tension in the first of four episodes, establishing a wide cast of characters while drip-feeding the development of the titular curse, one laid upon a group of Vikings forced to land on the British coast when “the fingers of death reached out from the waters to reclaim the treasure we have stolen” from far off lands. Their descendants go on to populate this corner of the British Isles, passing the curse down through the generations. The production team uses the various locations (scattered across England from Kent to Dorset) to excellent effect, much as “Delta and the Bannermen” benefits from its copious and lush location shooting. Several scenes shot underwater, looking up at passing boats and swimmers (in an undeniable homage to Jaws), plus excessive use of a fog machine, keeps the audience on edge, waiting for the creature responsible for the grisly deaths of several Soviet soldiers to finally reveal itself.

Dr. Judson and the camp commandant, Commander Millington (Alfred Lynch), share more than a steely desire to defeat the Nazis, the latter so engrossed that he has turned his office into a replica of “the German naval cipher room in Berlin,” giving viewers the initial thought that, shades of “Inferno,” the British are under fascist control in an alternate universe. (And indeed, it’s an exceedingly odd red herring to throw at the audience, a thread that never goes anywhere beyond signaling that Millington takes his job perhaps too seriously and/or is somewhat unhinged.) The two old school chums also harbor a deep-seated fascination with old Viking legends, collaborating in deciphering the runes in the crypt, which, as it turns out, were partially translated by the grandfather of the current vicar, the Rev. Mr. Wainwright (Nicholas Parsons). The ancient carvings tell of the day when “[t]he Wolves of Fenric shall return for their treasure, and then shall the dark evil rule eternally,” all because the Vikings stole a vase from the Far East. Granted, the squat ceramic flask does hold the incorporeal, sentient essence of all evil…