A New Hex Mat

Managed to finally get my new hex mat for Bag the Hun laminated today. It took a bit to find someone who could laminate oversized B0. The laminate is matt finished and looks fantastic on the table. The finish eliminates the shiny reflective surface of most other laminates and also mutes the map image somewhat which helps the miniatures stay the focus of the game.

So to celebrate the new mat Toby and I decided to drag out the miniatures and have a game. Three squadrons of Spitfires vs two schwarms of 'Schmitts escorting two DO-17's. The British needed to down one of the bombers to get a minor victory and both for a outright victory.

The planes starting to group up forced a lot of altitude changes and desperate manoeuvering in order to shake planes of their tail. A lot of the sprogs did rather well this game with only a few failing their manoeuvre rolls.

You can see in the shot below that even up close the mat doesn't get lost in the flash.

The bombers absorbed a lot of gunfire with a lot of minor damage results, eventually though after one of the Dornier's lost a gunner and an injured pilot they decided to bail out. With time running out and the edge of the map getting closer every turn it proved impossible to take out the second bomber when it dived below the fighters altitude. The most intense dogfighting took place in the 5-6 band range with the bombers hovering around 3-4 and eventually snuck down to 2.

In the end the British scored a minor victory taking down one of the bombers. The Germans achieved a tactical victory by accounting for three of the spitfires with another 3-4 in imminent trouble.

I really need to get some different coloured dice to minimise the chance of getting mixed up with the attack dice. All up the game was over in under an hour which is pretty good considering we were pushing around 22 planes. Next time I'd like to try a 3 player game with 30-40 planes and have some bombing runs to give the big guys something to do other than head for the other edge of the mat.

Artizan Wins!

My Artizan cowbows arrived today and they were definatley worth the wait. The casting is nice and sharp with little to no flash. The only complain is a minor one and that's that the bases of some of the minis are quite small, may 10mm around for the smallest. This made it a little tricky to mount them onto washers. I was tempted to drag out some of the 20mm GW round bases but the height of those just looks wrong now that I've switched to washers.

One pleasant surprise is that the miniatures all came in blister packs. This is a rarity amongst Internet based suppliers but it mean that all the miniatures came nice and safe in their original packing.

I'm keen to get some games of Six Gun Sound going this week so I think I'll have to get the paints out and get started on a couple of these.

Giant Monster Rampage

As expected today was pretty busy with gardening and work but I did manage to get the rest of the Black Tree miniatures based. I'll try to get the basing done this week and hit them with the airbrush this weekend.

What little time I have had to play some games has been taken up with a game called Giant Monster Rampage by Radioactive Press.

The system is simple (but not simplistic) and play is nice and quick. An interesting twist is that while it is technically a miniatures game it has been designed around using action figures for the monsters. Funnily enough I started looking on e-bay for some Godzilla toys when it suddenly hit me: kids... toys... TOYROOM!

I'm putting together a simple campaign system so that the kids and I can play a few games and make up a story as we go. I'll take some photos of the games in progress and the kids can make up a story book from it.

I picked up the two expansions Swarms (bugs and so on) and Red Alert (military) so I think I'll place and order for some 10mm Pendraken WW2 minis to help bring down the giant skeletal T-Rex that will be the main monster in our campaign. I'm also playtesting a new game called Power Warriors which is a stand alone product but is compatible with Giant Monster Rampage, this focuses more on your Dragonball-Z, TMNT & Ben-10 type characters.

If you like skirmish games in the Songs of Blades and Heroes style then I think you'll find something to like here. And it's cheap too at $9.55AUD for the core rulebook and $2.99AUD each for the expansions. Best of all is that if you have kids then you've probably already got all the figures you'll need, all pre-painted too :-).

Bada BOOOM!

I've been pretty busy with work latley so I haven't had a chance to do too much with my Black Tree minis. I did manage to put the three guns together and if I can get all the gardening done quickly I may even have time to get the airbrush out and give these a base coat.

Remember to click on the images for a bigger version.

Black Tree Getting Closer

Some more of my Black Tree arrived today, all I'm waiting on now is the Flak38 and the crew for the Pak40. So I can add these to the silver mountain:

• Fallschirmjager Platoon (30)
• Fallschirmjager with MG42s (4)
• Fallschirmjager with MP44s II (4)
• Wehrmacht Officers (2)
• German le IG18 75mm Infantry Support Gun
• 2 x British 6lb Cannon & Crew (1)
• U.S. Para Bazooka Team (2)

*sigh* Three more guns to work out how to build, they really should come with instructions.



Now I really need to get painting.