A Crazy Thing Happened This Morning

A crazy thing happened this morning: I sat down to put together one of the model kits I've had laying around for a few years now and I just kept building.  Sure there were interruptions and I even had to shuttle my wife around for a few errands bet every time I came back to the kitchen I picked the glue back up and continued to stick stuff to other pieces of stuff.

This almost never happens but I'm glad it did. 

L to R: M4A3, M4 and the Pz. Kpfw K-V2

Both the M4 and M4A3 kits came with options for alternative turrets but the M4A3 came with enough parts to actually build both.   I haven't looked into what the differences between the two are (if any) but it never hurts to have options even if they are purely cosmetic.

I don't have any Bolt Action stats for the KV-2 but it shouldn't be too hard to translate something from Disposable Heroes or Victory Decision.

I've put quite a bit of paint on the Warlord minis and have even built some terrain pieces but haven't managed to take any photos of them, I'll try to get that corrected some time tomorrow.

Up next a Jagdpanther and a pair of Fw190's.

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.

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.

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.

Back to the 28mm Germans and Long Grass

I’m making one last push to get the Black Tree Design 28mm Germans finished this weekend.  So far it looks like I’ll get the full platoon done by Sunday, this post however isn’t about the Germans but more about the bases they’re um based on.

I wanted to put some tufts of long grass on a few of the bases to help break up the flat look the green flock I’m using causes.  I was looking on eBay when I thought I probably should do them myself.  I tried this method a few years ago and it turned out crap.  Back then I blamed the technique for the bad results, unfortunately the current results prove that it was my implementation that needed improving.

I had an old brush laying around that was gunked up with glue and had the right looking bristles for what I wanted.

Cut a small length of around an inch or so.

Fold it in half, this takes practice and the first few lots of bristles shot our of my hand and across the table.

Twist the end nice and tight, dab a small ball of super glue on the end and wait 4-5 seconds.

Then simply put it on the base of the miniature.  I’m just using the cheap superglue you get in packs at $2 and I find I can stick the tuft on the base and in about 10 seconds I can use a toothpick to move the bristles around and they stay where I want them.

Tomorrow once they’re completely dry I’ll use some small scissors or nail clippers to cut them to the lengths I’m after.

One nice effect you can see in the photos at the top of the post is that the superglue makes the base of the bristles go white when it oxidises.  I’ll subdue that somewhat later with a green/yellow ink wash.  For some bases I’ll try putting little dabs of paint on the ends of the bristles to make them look like they’re flowering.

More photos of the Germans themselves once they’re done.

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.

Painting the Pendraken: Day Six (and a few)

I've been slowly working away on the Pendraken minis, and with the long awaited plasticard arriving yesterday I got to work on basing the remainder of the minis.  I should have enough bases left over to cover the extra German stuff, hopefully arriving sometime before Saturday.

Basing the HQ and CO stands proved to take a little longer than I had thought it would.  You're basically building a little diorama so I had to keep my grand ideas in check and keep the base functional and quick to build/paint.

My first attempt at 10mm miniature hacks.  The passenger has had his head removed and replaced with a commander torso (clipped off at the waist and glued to the neck of the passenger).  The radio operator has been removed from his base, he was originally kneeling on the ground, and repositioned to sit on the seat.  You can't really tell from the photos but the radio operator is missing his left leg.  I had clipped it off and was in the process of gluing it on when after dropping it on the floor for the third &%^%$-ing time I decided to just glue him in as is.

My favorite CO stand has two German officers "discussing" which way to go.  I'll model this base as a crossroads with the road sign knocked over or missing.

I'm on the home stretch now with most of the miniatures having varying degrees of paintwork and almost everything based.  I'm hoping to get all painting and basing done by Wednesday night.  This give me Thursday and Friday to put together some cardstock buildings and base up the trees.  Hedgerows may be possible, I'll glue some flock to the dark grey foam I have and see how that comes up.

More photos to come as I get stuff finished.

Some More Pendraken German Infantry

Due to a complete brain fade I left out the MG-34's when I based all my German infantry.  I only picked up on this the other day when going through the few bags of what's left to paint.  Initially I thought I'll just buy a pack or two of miniatures to redo the three stands that I was supposed to put the MG-34's on.  Due to postage costs and the breakdown of the packs it worked out more effective (not necessarily cheaper) to buy a dozen or so packs and get another 12 stands made up.  This should bring the Germans up to 3 full platoons with HQ and support platoons.

I picked up a pack of jeeps for the British CO/HQ stands and some German dispatch riders and motorcycles with side cars for either recce or CO/HQ.

1 x GR1 - Riflemen
1 x GR2 - MP40
2 x GR3 - MG34 (2) x3
1 x GR4 - MG42 (2) x3
1 x GR5 - Pz Shreck (2) x3
1 x GR6 - Pz Faust
1 x GR42 - Riflemen with STG44
1 x GR65 - BMW & Sidecar (3)
1 x GR66 - Dispatch Rider on BMW Motorcycle (5)
1 x GR165 - Late war tunic firing smg
1 x GR177 - mid war panzer grenadiers
1 x GR198 - Rifleman reversible jacket
1 x BR19 - Jeep (2)

Need I say that I'll eventually have to get the same done for the British but for the moment at least I can field a platoon of commandos and maybe a platoon and a half of the Australians.  I know there weren't too many Aussies in slouch hats NW Europe (as far as I can tell there were next to none), they will eventually get based up and used for some Italian campaigns.

Besides I'm thinking of playing the Calais campaign where the British held out against superior numbers of Germans so it shouldn't be a problem in the short term.

Painting the Pendraken: Day Five - Late Edition

Finally got some stands finished.  Don't look at me like that... it does happen... sometimes.

Anyway I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Next up: Shermans, lots and lots of Shermans.