28mm 101st Airborne Decals

I've been busy working on my Fallschirmjager minis and with a little luck and even less sleep I should have most of them finished by the end of the week.  So like all good wargamers I'm already thinking ahead to my next project: the US Airborne.

They're a much simpler model to paint so I'm hoping to get them finished in the first week of the holidays.  While reading some posts on the Warlord forums I noticed a few posts talking about 28mm insignia and rank decals.  I had thought about painting this stuff onto the minis in the past but it's a lot of very fiddly work and my brush skills just aren't up to scratch so I wandered over to Company B and bought a sheet of these for $6.40US including postage.  They can't be much more painful than putting 1.5mm roundels onto 1/600 aircraft... can they?  Well time will tell.

If these go well I think I'll have to grab a sheet each for the Germans and British minis.

Vallejo Paints

I've been trying different paints on and off for a while now and while I love my Tamiya paints they are just a huge pain in the ass to work with.  Great finish, a great range of colours and the price cannot be beat but the actual process of using the paints, the smell and the fact that some colours tend to react violently with others makes them unfun to work with.

The Vallejo range has always been on my radar but I've kept away from them, mainly due to cost but since I needed to get some more paints for the Fallschirmjagers I figured I'd just bite the bullet and get some.  I really like the idea of the dropper type bottle and the fact they mix well with GW stuff is a bonus.  And given the range of GW and Mr Hobby stuff I have I shouldn't need to get much more of the Valleo range until the other stuff runs out or dries up.

So I grabbed the following colours from Gus at Zepnix Wargames based on the following painting reference I found on the Warlord Games website.

German Grey (Vallejo 995): Uncovered helmet
Black (Vallejo 950): Webbing, pistol holster, rifle ammo pouches, boots, bayonet scabbard
German Field Grey (Vallejo 830): Trousers and breadbag
Luftwaffe Uniform blue (Vallejo 816): Luftwaffe tunic, field cap, officer's peaked cap
German Camo Orange Ochre (Vallejo 824): Canteen
Middlestone (Vallejo 882): Panzerfaust
Camouflaged jump smocks and helmet covers (Beige 821, Green 823, Brown 984)
Military Green  (Vallejo 975): Mess tin and gas mask container

Gus even threw in a bottle of the Army Painter strong tone Quick Shade ink which is fantastic for a few reasons: firstly it was free :), secondly my GW inks are running low and thirdly I've heard good things about their ink range and have wanted to try it out.

So I'll probably start painting the Black Tree Fallschirmjager models either tonight or tomorrow night, photos will follow as soon as I have something worth sharing.

Ok since I just couldn't put you through one more boring post without photos I thought I'd share some of the not so blurry photos of the church in action last Saturday night.

I just love my Zuzzy matt, the texture here while not totally appropriate just looks amazing.  The British had the upper hand for a while and managed to force almost half of the German forces to retreat into this this scorched earth garden.

Ok I'm off to undercoat my first squad of minis.

10 Hours and 39 Minutes

I just received an email from em-4 miniatures stating that my order has been shipped, after being placed only 10 hours and 39 minutes earlier today.  This is just amazing service, almost unheard of really.  I'm used to an order sitting in the "processing your order" queue for around a week or two, or longer... yes Black Tree I'm looking at you.

To be honest I buy my dice, tokens and bases from em-4 simply because their prices cannot be beaten, now I can add amazing service to the list.

So many little men!

I ran out of bases over the weekend and did a quick count of everything I have and will be getting on Xmas day and I was a little shocked: I need 206 bases!

The breakdown goes like this:

47 x German infantry (Black Tree, Warlord and other misc)
74 x Fallschirmjagers (Black Tree and Warlord)
84 x US Airborne (Black Tree, Warlord and other misc)
1 x Pulp/WWW2 Characters

Now obviously I won't be painting all these guys at once so I decided to order 100 bases and start working on the Fallschirmjagers.  With what's left over I'll paint up some of the German infantry as Waffen SS troops.

The game went well on the weekend with both Brendan and jame enjoying their first game of Disposable Heroes, or 28mm WW2 for that matter.  I took quite a few photos of the game but they all turned out oretty bad so I won't torture you with them.  The church is coming along nicely and was the focus point of the scenario even if most of the action took place in a ruined house across the street.

Sorry for all of these photo free posts lately I'll try to get some WIP shot of the church up later today or tomorrow.

Terrain: 28mm Ruined Church - Part 1

I've started putting together the ruined church from Dave Graffam Models.  Initially I started building these out of MDF for extra strength but the extra time it took to cut and glue the MDF just sucked all the fun out of building the models.  Foam board is much simpler to put together and coupled with some fast drying white glue the process of putting this together has been very enjoyable.

Foam card makes for a faster build, all this in one evening.

The outer wall goes up first.

The tower starts to take shape.

 

 

 

With a little luck I'll get this finished before my next game tomorrow night, I just can't wait to see it on the table.

I Feel... Kinda Funny

My order from Zepnix arrived on Friday, I know I should be all excited and I am... sort of.  So as not to turn this post into an epic novel here's the rundown in brief:

• Obtained permission to buy my own Xmas gift this year, wooo!
• Made many lists and eventually ordered some Warlord US Paratrooper and Fallschirmjager boxes and blisters.
• Next day I added in a copy of Bolt Action as a "for me now" purchase, to save postage.
• Next day again I added in the order dice, unnecessary but useful and look nice.
• Then I realise I really needed a couple more MG-34 and MG-42 teams for a game next weekend so I added in a Warlord Late War German box set.

The the darnedest thing happened when my wife saw me trying to work out what to take out now and what keep in the box for Xmas.  She "suggested" that I should just wait and leave it all in there for Xmas day... and you know what?  After a day of serious thought I packed everything* back into the box.  No seriously I really did.

I'm suprised and somewhat shocked... is this what "growing up" feels like?

* Well I did keep two blisters of 30mm bases out of the box as I really-really-really need those for next weekend.

AAR - Disposable Heroes

Another game of Disposable Heroes on Saturday night taught me a lot about playing the German.  First thing is that regardless of how good their stats look on paper you do not want to split up your squads.  The fact that each team has it's own MG-34/MG-43 does not make it strong enough once you start taking casualties.  The Russians on the other hand have ruddy huge squads and casualties just don't seem to make any difference, at least initially. 

Now I know there's probably a lot of your thinking "well duh what did you expect" but remember I've come from a predominantly skirmish background where my "army" would consist of maybe 12-15 models.

Anyway on the report, sorry for the blurry photos but they I used my phone and they looked ok on the screen.

Roughly 850pts of my Mid War German Panzergrenadiers came up against Bill and his Russians.  Simple seek and destroy scenario this time.

Germans advance north.

 

HMG's facing off at 100 paces, well actually it was really something like 38".

The Russians were here...

There...

Everywhere.

Yay finally some Germans, sadly these guys didn't last very long.

Hmmm if that building looks so very enticing.

 
Sadly it was haunted by a Russian "ghost squad".  That's only half of them too, it took two turns of combined fire from two squads and a HMG MG-42 to reduce them to that amount.  With reinforcements coming over the hedge there was no way I was getting the Russian out of that building.

 

A german squad takes the small building and garners the attention of a Maximum MG and a couple assault squads.

Three turns later a lone MG-42 gunner holds the best he can by passing every Guts check before the Reds finally passed their Guts check and storm the building, I'll never forget Unknown German Solder #22.

Terrain: 28mm Wooden Fences - Part 3

Just a quick update to show where I'm at with the fences.

Some bases cut out of 3mm MDF.

Glued to the bases and left to dry overnight.

In the morning I had these...

The first coat of paint is done, they need a little work here and there but I'll see how they look on the table tomorrow night before I spend too much more time on them.  I'll leave them to dry tonight and then I'll put a bit of flock and some field grass here and there on the bases tomorrow.

Oh and here's a sneak peak of the next terrain project...

Look... Up in the Sky



It's a bird, it's a plane... no it's paratroopers, lots and lots of paratroopers...

I just placed my Xmas order with Zepnix Wargames.  Sadly these guys and a lot of support units and vehicles will be squirreled away until Xmas morning where I'll have to "pretend" to be excited when I unwrap them...


WW2 + Rick Priestley + Alessio Cavatore + Osprey = AWESOME!!!!

 

I also grabbed a copy of Bolt Action, which I wasn't too interested in until I found out it was written by Rick "Warmaster" Priestley and Alessio Cavatore.  The reviews I've read sounded promising so I thought I'd give it a go.  One of the best aspects of historical wargaming is that you can, for the most part, change your rules without invalidating any of your miniatures. 

I wasn't too pleased about how expensive the action dice were, about $18.00 a set, but hey it's only a once off pain in the wallet.  They do look great and drawing a die out of the bag to see whose unit activates is a very unique twist on the old staple activation cards concept.

It's going to be a hard task to knock Disposable Heroes off it's current throne but then again if anyone can do it I guess it's Mr Preistly and company.

So there'll be no photos or reviews of any of this stuff until some time in the new year, trust me folks no one is more dissapointed than I am :)

The fences have been stuck to their MDF bases and are currently drying beside my as I type this.  I'll get some photos up tomorrow night after I've had a chance to get the bases flocked and maybe a coat of paint.

Terrain: 28mm Wooden Fences - Part 2

I really haven't been able to spend as much time working on the fences as I would have liked over the last couple days but I have made some progress.

I've managed to build six 15cm longs sections and have started working on the posts.  These were a little more fiddly than I initially thought as the balsa wood doesn't offer too much resistance to a sharp hobby knife.  Remember: saftey first kids.


Very fiddly work, but worth it in the end.

Cutting the grooves in the posts allow for a nice realistic fit to the fence.  I could have just glued them to the two horizontals on the frame but it just didn't look finished.



The posts fit rather nicely.

The extra effort is worth it as it "looks right", well to my eyes anyway.



The first finished fence.

Hmm, some trimming required here I think.

A little bit more effort that I had expected for this step but like everything in this hobby "easy" and "cheap" rarely go together.

MDF bases tomorrow night...

Terrain: 28mm Wooden Fences - Part 1

As great as the table looked on the weekend it just needed a little more "something".  Not quite sure what that "something" is but I'm hoping some fences and telephone poles will get it there.

To start the fences I cut some 1.6mm balsa wood into 3cm strips of varying widths.  I intentionally cut them at varying widths and didn't make too much of an effort to cut straight.



Lots and lot of pailings.

I want my fence sections to be roughly 15cm long, I will probably make some shorter 5cm ones at a later time to give a little flexability when laying out terrain.

The frames were glued and left overnight to dry, only this morning did I notice the glue I used was a fast drying one and I could have continued building these last night... oh well.



15cm fence section frames.

With the dry frames it was simply a case of run a bead of glue alling the horizontal frames and start placing the pailings.  Again I wasn't too careful about how I placed the pailings and i think the angled ones and broken pailings add some character.  I had thought about adding bullet holes to the fence but I want to use these for fantasy games.  Maybe I'll make a section or two later with "modern damage".

A fence, now to base and paint them.

I'm going to pick some more balsa wood today to use as fence posts and then to base them on an mdf strip, add sand, flock and paint.

Disposable Heroes

I'm back, no really it's true.  I've even played a game that's not a board game or a card game.  I can't believe that it's been so long since I've posted or played a real life wargame.  Well that's all going to change.

Saturday night I introduced Tyler to his first miniatures wargame, Disposable Heroes.  What had started as a complex scenario based affair ended up being scaled back to an easier to learn just-shoot-everything game.  To keep things moving (you could also read that as I had forgotten most of the rules) I left out the cool toys like armour and guns.  Besides it kept the game down to the simple but important elements of movement, firing and morale.



An overview of the battlefield.

The man cave has become more of a storage area lately so I found it easier to setup in the garage.  I have to admit that the table came up very nice indeed.

A nice shot from the British side of the table. 

 

Germans start on the left and British on the Right.

 

The British ready to go.

Tyler picked up the core of the game pretty quickly and the game started to flow nice and quickly.  British and Germans were dying all over the table... well mainly around this guy:

Why can't the British LMG's work so well?

The bugger kept passing his morale tests and eventually wiped out an entire squad of British.

We were on turn three when we realised that we had been talking for most of the game and it was now 11:30pm.  We called it a draw and finished up for the night :)

I'm really keen to get the miniatures on the table again and I might even make an effort this week to finally finish off building some wooden fences (started them two years ago I think).

Anyway I'm back and reinvigorated so expect to see some more 28mm WW2 action here soon.