Oodles

Since my last post there were games played and less painted.

Let's start off with my first game of Saga Dark Ages Skirmish with a couple new gaming pals, Jess and Travis. Originally I had tried to make it to the shop to catch some Bolt Action gaming, but Travis had already packed up by the time I arrived, but luckily Jess had also turned up (To see the Bolt Action game as well) and thankfully had lugged along his Saga stuff too. We played a straight forward three-way-versus with my as Vikings, Travis as Welsh and Jess Anglo-Danes. It was a bloody affair that ended with me winning (Yay!) with only my Warlord and a single berserker remaining! o_0

Anglo-Danes to the top, Welsh to the right and my Vikings splitting between the two. 

On the right I sent my warlord and a unit of hearthguard to disrupt the Welsh Levy and Warriors. It worked with my berserkers running in to mop up.

Casualties amassed quickly especially when I uncharacteristically roll 6's aplenty! Travis had to leave early but his force only had 3 hearthguard left, which I duly used a wierd Viking ability to just "remove", somehow. Maybe Thor threw a lightening bolt at them from stormy skies?

Here lies the vanquished Anglo-Dane Warlord at the foot of aberserker whilst my own Warlord looks on with grim pride.

 Saga was fun and easy to pick up. I am eager to play again and have felt a little energy to paint up some more of my Jomsvikings so I can field my own minis next game. I'm aiming at having a 4-point force minimum fully painted and will expand to 6-points later on. So far I have my Warlord and 3 units of Hearthguard finished.

My hearthguard though, were down a man, so I added this fellow to my longaxes unit.

He's very proud of this burgundy dressing gown that his Mamma knitted him.

Shield in the same yellow/black that I gave the other Hearthguard.

 For my 4th point, my first warriors unit got some additions, so now they are 5 fully painted (Though minus shields as yet as I want to paint those all at the same time to give the unit a better cohesive look.

I like this mini, he stabs toes.

The pelt cloak looks to be from a highland cattle on a previous raid.

This fellow is somewhat more diminutive in stature compared to the other warriors. Must mean he's even meaner. 

Since these pics were taken, I've done some touchups, added slight pink wash to cheeks and knuckles and based them properly.

I was also lucky enough to play a game of Chain of Command in 15mm with my mate Stewart Tuesday evening. I'd gotten my individually based 15mm Brits to an at least usable state painting wise so was excited to not to have to plonk Flames of War based minis for the battle. This kept everything far easier to keep track of during the game.

We played a defensive mission where (After a lucky dice roll) I had to hold back the German advance from one short end of the table and make sure Stew's troops didn't make it to my rear-most deployment marker. I have houses to hunker down in and a pretty good setup to deploy my own troops from after the patrol phase, so felt confident that I could manage to keep him back. Then he rolled for support points, of which I got 1/2 of the dice total. 6 was the result, so I got 3 support points and decided, sod it, I've yet to try a flame thrower in this game. Stew took off table mortar support and something else that I've since forgotten. We both agreed that a tank each on top of this would make for a more interesting affair so he took a plain Panzer IV and I a Sherman V.

The white cotton marks the furthest edge of the mortar bombardment. Almost all of my troops were pinned by it for umpteen phases! >_<

 I thought I'd lose for sure. Stewart rolled amazingly to get phase after phase after phase and the offtable mortar support had 75% of my boys pinned for ages, but all of a sudden his dice rebelled and mine remembered that I had threatened binning for poor performance and so after some tasty Flame Thrower BBQing of one infantry squad and a couple lucky Piat shots at his tank, along with a good mauling of his flanking squad and I had managed to get his overall force morale down to a level that won me the game.

A sideways picture of my brave PBI mowing down a German Heer squad who were trying to run down the flank. They had though, made more saves than any squad ever up until that point. Their death signaled the end of the game with Stewart's morale level bottoming out.

I really like these rules and am happy I got to play again. I think I'll try to pick them up later this year.

Speaking of WW2, I got the ammo carrier for my Soviet LMG team painted up. He's in a pose to show him mid-way through tossing an ammo can to the soontobe painted gunner himself.

Red mittens were sent by his Mum. Aww.

Has a carbine rifle. These guns look great.

Now that I've got a growing painted Soviet WW2 army, it would be remiss of me to not have an Axis force to face against them on the tabletop. With the Easter sale on over at the Warlord Games website offering a very well sculpted resin Hetzer tank for a rather lovely $16 tag. It arrived swiftly from Warlord Games HQ and I was surprised that it was a single resin piece with only metal hatches and gun barrel to assemble and very minimal resin flash to remove. Colour me extremely impressed. It’s now scrubbed with soap and water and glued together ready for primer. Along with this, I picked up both the new Winter German Heer metal squad & HQ packs and SS-Charlemagne metal squad. These will form the backbone of my later War Polish defense force to count as those desperate German defenders who had to stand in the way of the massed Soviet attack after the Vistula-Oder Offensive in early 1945.

Hetzers featured in Europe and on the Eastern Front. I love the look of these things, a lump with a huge gun stuck to the front. The scale is spot on, after I got to see one in person at Duxford Imperial War Museum. (A trip that I'll show pictures from here in a later post.)

Lastly, my long planned and awaited Barbarian setting rpg campaign has begun. We’re now three sessions into the game and I think the players are enjoying my story thus far. It’s the first time I’ve GM’d a story of my own creation in about 10 years and I’m still nervous as all heck that the players are even into it, finding it interesting and/or challenging. Being a wargamer I have all sorts of gaming terrain that has made the table more interesting than our typical “draw on the game mat with a dry erase pen” efforts. Add in the minis I’ve been slapping paint on the past months and the visual appeal is at least winning the players over I think. J I plan to write up a more detailed post on the campaign including how the story's going and so forth up until the time of posting.

The heroes are ambushed in the woods by Goblins and Hobgoblins whilst tracking down a traitor. First proper battle in my new game and I almost killed two of the players cos my dice rolls were stupid good. I need to roll behind a GM screen from now on I think!

Will hopefully have another post up by the weekend as there'll been more painting going on this week. Cheers!