Blitzkrieg Commander 2 Arrives

Well after what felt like forever (no thanks to you Eyjafjallajökull) the postman finally delivered Blitzkrieg Commander II.  I haven't had a chance yet to read the rules thoroughly so I can only give some first impressions here.

The first thing that is very apparent is that the production quality here is fantastic.  The cover is nice shiny cardstock that almost resembles plastic.  The pages of the books themselves have a nice sheen and there are full colour photos on almost every page of the rules.  The book weighs in at 140 pages (compared to 120 in the first edition) with the rules taking up 40 or so pages before the book launches into the army lists.  One of the greatest strengths of these rules has been that the rulebook has all the army lists you could need, no supplements required.  Well the second edition has only improved on this, extra army lists have been added and most have been added to.  The German North West Europe list for example have been increased from a page and a half of stats to two and a quarter.

Here's a shot showing the breakdown of book between rules and army lists.

As well as being added to and expanded the army lists themselves have gone though some changes:

• The singular Attack Value has now been replaced with three values: anti tank (AT), anti personnel (AP) and close assault (CA).
• The standard infantry unit has been replaced with the various unit types found in the conflict.  The German north west Europe list has: Heer, Constscripts, Waffen-SS, Hinterjugend, Luftwaffe, Fortress Troops and Volkstrurm.  In addition you now have infantry upgrades such as Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck.
• Artillery now plays a bigger part of the game with a lot more on table units.
• Sadly the sample battlegroup lists have gone, to make room in the book I guess.  But to aid in creating your battleforce, each army list has it's own specific battlegroup selection rules, often citing specific units (eg Max nine Pzklfw III panzer units per 1000 points).

I'll post more once I've had a better read through the rules and preferably had a chance to get them into action on the table.

Cowboys and Panzers

Managed to get in a game of both Blitzkrieg Commander and Gutshot at the club last night.  Mick and I started out with Blitzkrieg Commander and we played a fairly straight forward 1,000pt all out battle, mainly because we wanted to blow the cobwebs off the rules and see how the 10mm stuff fared on the table.

Unfortunately almost all of the photos I took last night turned out rubbish as I'd forgotten to switch the macro mode off and in turn all the long range table shots come out... well rubbish.  We both forgot to bring a green game mat so we had to play using my western one so north west Europe looks a little dry in the photos but the rest of the terrain and the minis (the painted ones at least) looked fantastic on the table.

Blitzkrieg Commander (1st edition) was a blast to play.  It's close enough to Warmaster that I don't have to unlearn any of the rules from that game and the extra WW2 stuff fits into the system nicely.  Sadly the Brits, played by myself didn't start out too well against the Germans who were superbly commanded by Mick.  I handed over command to James in turn two who managed to fare better than I did but was still unable to turn the tide.  Well we've got the main mechanics down now and I feel more comfortable that next time we can manage a bigger game.  The German reinforcements will hopefully have arrived by then and I think I'll have to base the Aussies up for use until I can get some more British.

I was too busy painting WW2 stuff yesterday and forgot to quickly reread the Gutshot rulebook, so play was a little slow to start with but move along quick enough, with most players not needing to refer to the rulebook by the end of the game.  We played the Last Man Standing scenario with two characters apiece.  Each player started in a respective corner of the table and very soon the gunfight, and knife fights, began.

Game play is fast, I like the card activation, and characters seem to take a bit of a beating without being bullet sponges.  The game play feels very Battletech-ish in the way the system handles combat modifiers for movement and damage with progressive negative modifiers to movement and accuracy is also very familiar.  This is not a bad thing though.  The game is simple and play is fast, it would get boring if all you played was shootouts week in week out but scenarios run by a referee are where this game shines.  I think I'll bring this may just become our choice of "quick game at the end of the night".

I'm happy too with the cardstock buildings, they've suffered in storage but I can fix that with a little balsa wood and glue.

Cards:  the card activation for Gutshot works a treat but the rulebook does recommend using name slips in a hat of something similar.  I went with cards and just assigned a number to each character.  This worked but slowed things down a little.  I think I'll get hold of some poker chips we'll use those in future.  A white sticker on one side with the characters name in pencil should do fine.  Also removing dead guys from the deck helps and it quickly got to the point of turning four or five cards before we got to a live fella.

My two characters below, Blackie and Ol' Gray, named after their hats of course.  Ol' Gray managed take take two hits from a revolver, got spat on and cursed at (twice), got stabbed in the back with a bowie knife before being shot for the final time  Blackie didn't last much longer but he did manage to take down the gringo that snuffed out Ol' Gray.

I had a few people asking about where to get miniatures from so I think things look bright for Gutshot.  Now all I need to do is find a Marty and Doc mini, I've got an idea for a "Mad Dog Mcree" scenario.

10mm Trees

My 10mm trees arrived in the mail yesterday and I've finally had a chance to have a look at them.  At first I was a little worried about what I had bought.

My first fear was that like a lot of trees that I've bought from eBay all the branches would be caught up and getting them out of the bag would be a major operation.  Thankfully the trees came out quite easily and I also noticed that there is very little loose flocking in the bag too.  The trees themselves feel quite sturdy and shouldn't mind a little bit of handling.

The plan is to mount these onto MDF like the larger trees I've done, maybe 1" discs with 1-3 trees per disc. 

Here's a few shots with some Warmaster minis and some of my 28mm trees for comparison.  Thinking about it now I should have put a 28mm mini in there for comparison too.

You can see from the above two shots that the trees are simply five or so rings of branches but the look from above, where we should be looking at 10mm trees most of the time, looks quite nice.

I'll see how far I make these go first but after looking at these I'm very tempted to place an order for another pack or two.

10mm Bases

Some of my eBay orders arrived over the last day or two, namely the plasticard and the sheet magnets.

The plasticard looks a lot thicker than the advertised 2mm but upon measuring it is indeed only 2mm thick.  Anyway it's sturdy enough and it's black all the way through so I won't need to paint edges (hooray!)

The magnets are bang on 20mm x 40mm so they fit Warmaster bases perfectly, no trimming required.

They add very little to the depth of the bases and the strength is quite good considering that sheet magnets aren't known for their strength, although the Carrion probably isn't the best test as it's a pretty light model.  Then again I don't need the magnets to stick the minis to my fridge, I just want then to stay still on movement trays and in storage.  Quite pleased with these overall, I may just have to order another pack or two and do all my Warmaster stuff too.

I'm a little tempted to start cutting the plasticard into Warmaster sized bases now so that I'm ready to start as soon as the Pendraken stuff arrives.  Maybe I will for the infantry bases but I should wait and see how the tanks fit first.

Basing the Pendrakens

No I don't have them yet but it's probably not a bad idea to start thinking about this now.  I've pretty much settled on 20mm x 40mm for the bases, I'm sure there will be the odd tank or arty piece that needs a bigger base but the benefit of cutting your own is that you can make the exception where needed.  I'll still try to keep the bases fairly uniform; eg bigger tanks might go onto a 25mm x 40mm and large arty pieces may even push it out to 30mm x 40mm.

The one complicating factor is that I really want to base my miniatures so that I can use them for other rules.  One of the great strengths of any hostorical game is that the miniatures are still relevant regardless of the ruleset, basing pending of course.  The areas where I can see things getting tricky is is with support weapons: MMG, HMG, mortars and such.  I'm thinking that I can base these individually on 20mm square bases and simply put two side by side for Blitzkrieg Commander (BKC).  To make this easier I've bought 200 adhesive magnets:

They are the same size at the bases I'll be using and are 0.6mm thick.  They'll help with storage and will also allow me to make some unit sized movement trays out of paper steel (or something similar).  That's the plan anyway.  They will also help with some of the Warmaster minis which are just a pain to move as a unit (yes I'm looking right at you Carrion).

These are coming from Adelade so they should be here in the next couple days.

Bases and 10mm Terrain

With my Pendraken WW2 minis ordered I needed to source some bases for them.  My first thought was 3mm MDF but on average I'm looking at around $30 plus shipping to get enough bases for both armies (around 105 bases give or take).  To complicate matters even more I haven't actually settled on a size for the bases yet.  I'm currently leaning towards the "Warmaster standard" 20mm x 40mm but I really want to see the miniatures first.  You can always make infantry fit any base but tanks that overhang their bases just look bad.

After the required period of procrastination I ordered some 2mm styrene plasticard from eBay.  Two sheets of 200mm x 227mm should give me around 110 bases at 20mm x 40mm.  Best of all the plastic is black so I shouldn't need to paint edges.

The one aspect of playing Warmaster that annoyed me was that I had little to no terrain in that scale.  Sure we used the old school method of green felt = woods and brown felt = hills but it just didn't look good, not compared the great visual effect of ranks and ranks of 10mm minis all lined up for battle.

It was also difficult to justify the time and money to start creating/buying the terrain in this scale when Warmaster was more of a distraction or side game at the club.  Well with Blitzkrieg Commander on the way and with a few 15mm scale games on the horizon all that is about to change..

While browsing eBay I came across these:

100 N and Z scale trees for $10.76 delivered.  Apparently they're about 1.5" tall and I think they'll fit in well with either Warmaster or Blitzkrieg Commander.  I'll probably go with the same approach that I have for the 28mm stuff, I'll base 4-5 trees to a small base and then place these onto a larger "forest base".

The plasticard is shipped from here in Oz so that should be here within the week but the trees are from Hong Kong so possibly two weeks there.  I just hope that they pack them well, my last lot of trees ended up all squashed in together and it took quite a while to seperate them and straighten them out without damaging them.  Then again for only $10 I really can't expect too much now can I?

Also on the terrain front I've printed out a pile of cardstock buildings that I've scaled down to 10mm.  They're mostly european style with a few fantasy buildings that don't look too fantasy and could be used in other periods.  I'll have a look at putting a few of them together later tonight and post pictures.

Just had a thought: getting all of this stuff is all fine and all but where am I going to put it?  The arch nemesis of all gamers: storage.

Purchase - Even More Pendraken Miniatures

I figured the British will need someone to shoot at so I splashed out (again) and bought some more Pendraken minis before the first lot even shipped.  It's a feel good purchase of sorts, firstly it feels good to buy them but more importantly I now have two opposing armies in the same scale (read that as: a complete game).

I really want to shout out a huge thanks to Dave Pengilley at Pendraken for being so amazingly helpful and an all round wonderful chap.

Anyway onto the shopping list:

The extra, extra bits for the British

1 x BR26 - 75mm Pack Howitzer & Crew (2)

1 x BR55 - Riflemen Slouch Hat

1 x BR56 - Sten Slouch Hat

1 x BR57 - Bren Slouch Hat

1 x BR73 - Churchill crocodile

1 x BR83 - Combat engineers

1 x BR104 - Dorchester command vehicle

1 x BR107 - Commandos mixed weapons

The Germans

BKC11 - BKC Starter German Panzer Battalion (1,985 pts)

1 x GR168 - Command group

1 x GR100 - Sdkfz 253 command vehicle

2 x GR132 - SDKFZ 222 A/c

8 x GR32 - Pz IVG / GR33 - Pz IVH + Armoured Skirts

3 x GR68 - Panther / GR68A - Panther zimmerit (1)  / GR68B - Panther camouflaged (1)

3 x GR84 - Tiger I

BKC12 - BKC Starter German Infantry Battalion (475 pts)

1 x GR10 - Kubelwagon (2)

3 x GR1 - Riflemen / GR2 - MP40 / GR6 - Pz Faust / GR42 - Riflemen with STG44

2 x GR3 - MG34 (2) x3 / GR4 - MG42 (2) x3

2 x GR15 - 8cm GWR34 Motar & Crew x3

1 x GR88 - Sdkfz 251/9 short 75mm

1 x GR58 - Sdkfz 10/4 20mm AA Halftrack

3 x GR12 - Opel Blitz Truck / GR55- Opel Blitz Truck with Canvas Tilt

The German Extra Bits

1 x GR7 - Officers

1 x GR16 - Radio Operators (5)

2 x GR29 - Sdkfz 251/1 Ausf C

1 x GR29A - Camouflaged Sdkfz251/1 Ausf C

1 x GR38 - PAK 40 & Crew (2)

1 x GR70 - Jagdpanther

1 x GR73 - Combat Engineers

1 x GR167 - Sniper

1 x GR190 - Command Trailer

1 x GR191 - Tank Commanders

1 x GR75 - 75mm IG & Crew (2)

1 x GR76 - 120mm Mortar & Crew (2) 

Dave from Pendraken said they usually ship orders within a week and that airmail to Australia (usually) takes 7 days... so with everything going well I should have these here in around a fortnight.

Now I'll really need a *lot* of bases.

Purchase - Pendraken Miniatures

I've just placed an order with Pendraken Miniatures for some of their 10mm WW2 British range and I'm pretty excited.  For a couple reasons really, firstly it's part of a birthday present that I've helped my family buy for me (oh wow how did you know I wanted these).  Secondly it means I can finally play Blitzkrieg Commander and I Ain't Been Shot Mum in a scale that actually works, IABSM works well with 28mm, BKC less so but 10mm is the sweet spot I think.  Initially I thought of 15mm as there's so many amazing minis out there but the price for 15mm vehicles is just too steep and honestly the whole point of playing big WW2 games is to have lots and lots of tanks.  I also considered 1/600 scale too, it's dirt cheap and some of the Osmy range have incredible detail for such small miniatures but the downside is that I couldn't see them working too well with games like IABSM.

So $150 or so later I ordered these.  The point values are for BKC and are from the Pendraken site so I can't vouch for their correctness.  All  I know for certain is that I shouldn't have any trouble fielding a 2,000pt BKC force.

Where multiple product codes are listed after a quantity it means that number of miniatures in total is picked out from across that range of codes, not that many minatures of each code.  Unless stated after the name each entry is one vehicle/gun or ten men.

Without any further delay here's the shopping list:

BKC7 - BKC Starter British armoured battalion (1,285pts)
1 x BR116 - Command group
1 x BR70 - White scout car (1)
1 x BR61 - Humber AC
9 x BR30 - Sherman V (M4A4) 75mm Gun / BR30A - Camouflaged Sherman V (M4A4) 75mm gun / BR34 - Sherman III (M4A2) 75mm Gun
3 x BR33 - Sherman Vc (M4A4) 'Firefly' 17pdr Gun

BKC8 - BKC Starter British armoured infantry battalion (930pts)
1 x BR70 - White scout car (1)
8 x BR7 - Bren Carrier & Crew / BR7A - Camouflaged Bren carrier & crew (2)
8 x BR46 - M3 Halftrack / BR47 - M3 Halftrack + Tilt
1 x BR24 - 6pdr A/T & Crew (2)
3 x BR1 - Riflemen / BR2 - Sten / BR3 - Bren / BR6 - Officers / BR23 - Riflemen Firing
2 x BR4 - Vickers HMG (2) x3
2 x BR9 - 3" Mortar & Crew x3
3 x BR49 - Morris Commercial 3/4 Ton Truck

Some Extra Stuff
2 x BR5 - Piat Team (2) x3
1 x BR18 - Radio Operators (5)
1 x BR28 - 17pdr A/T & Crew (1)
1 x BR51 - Bofors 40mm AA Gun & Crew (2)
1 x BR98 - 'Monty'

So now I need to get a whole mess of bases...

My Next Project... WW2 Africa in 1/600

Before start I want to you to go here and read.  I'm not quite sure how to put into words how excited I am about this so I'll summarise in point form:

• Tanks, lot's of them!
• At this scale terrain is really simple, pipe cleaners actually are tree sized and cotton wool does look like bocage.
• Only $35US +PP for an army, with options.
• More tanks.
• Very easy to paint.
• I already have a mountain of 1/600 decals.
• I'll finally get to play Blitzkreig Commander... with lots and lots of tanks!

I'm very tempted to order a copy of Blitzkreig Commander II right now but I'll show some restraint and wait until I've had a few games of the first edition.  After all stats may have changed a little between editions but the OOB & TOE's won't have changed much.

Anyway I should get back to construction zone in the backyard.  Tonight I'll try to get some photos up of the ever so slowly progressing Wargods stuff.