Post Captain with Stew

No hobby progress for this week past. I did add a splash of flesh colour to a handful of Winter Grenadiers, but that was it. Instead, I watched Black Panther with my son (Really fun) and played video games (The death of all hobby forward progress.... dun dun dun....).

Post Captain is an Age of Sail rules set (Stew did a smashing review on them over at his blog) for 1700's era-ish naval battles. It's involved, but not so convoluted in specific teeny rules that there's a lack of flow in how the game plays.

Stew got to came over with his gorgeous tall ships and we played a fun game of British (Me) versus the French (Stew), with two ships to control each. This was my 2nd time playing the game and after the first turn we pretty much had a good flow for each turn.

Here's some pics of the game in lieu of me boring you with a detailed (As detailed as this addled memory could provide) run down. In the end, the French 3rd rate  (Smaller ship) took a relatively minor beating and struck the white flag early on, which was unlucky for Stew. Then after that, it was a small matter of pounding the remaining French 1st Rate into submission.

As history would show us, Britannia rules the waves! (This time.)

Set up, with the Brits at the bottom. Each pair being lead by their smaller 3rd Rate vessel.

Close up of my brave navy.

My 1st Rate, the Royal Sovereign. That rigging! 

And 3rd Rate, the Spencer. Stew did a bloody lovely job putting together and painting these beauties.

Always start off the game with long range shots. Just cos. 

Then whilst you reload, get closer cos those long range shots are typically misses.

Closer range and the French 3rd Rate calls it quits after some rather mild damage taken. Not one to stereotype, I'll do it anyway - bit typical really.

After the previous pic was taken, Stew somehow managed to ram his 1st Rate into his own 3rd Rate. (???) They drifted a bit together until he was able to cut his 1st Rate adrift and carry on the fight. Sadly, the dice were not with him and even at close range his broadside didn't do very much against my smaller 3rd Rate ship.

The surrendered French 3rd Rate is left to await capture as a prize and the British 3rd and 1st Rate vessels hunt down the damaged French 1st Rate. 

It was only a matter of time before the remaining French ship threw their hands up under the pummeling of two British ships of the line. Another prize for Admiral Dai!

Clever Hans (Part 6 - SS Squad complete, more Winter scenery and Market Garden!?)

Here's the squad in an action scene next to the cabin that I also painted up this weekend. 

The last two troopers from my Winter SS squad were finished up this long weekend - the ammo carrier for my previously previewed LMG bloke and a cheeky crouching SMG trooper. Now they just need their Half-track painted up to cart them about the battlefield! Once again, I went with Oak Leaf camo that I think turned out okay on their uniforms and Pea Dot on their rolled up thingies strapped to their back. I really like Warlord metal minis, they've got some really good sculptors making lovely dynamic poses and full of character.

I swear these pics weren't out of focus when I reviewed them last night. O well. >_<

I've since started on my Heer Grenadiers squad and the platoon medic. Far less camo on these chaps, so they should paint up for more swiftly. Hope to have a post up on those later this week.

Next up is a small cabin by Charliefoxtrot Models. Cute little mdf kit that was exceedingly simple to build. I kept the paint scheme simple as well as the snow effects. I wish I could add Icicles (To all my Winter houses infact), but they'd not be very convenient for gaming purposes. 

Saturday saw myself and the good Densmol head over to the Ogres Den LGS in Orangevale for a Market Garden event organised by Travis Heitt. Not a tournament, but 5 or 6 tables all set up to represent the airdrop of Allied paras and the bridges that had to be held at all costs until the armoured units of the XXX Corps could reinforce their positions. Densmol and I teamed up as the German defenders on the Hells Highway table where we were to cause as much damage to the XXX Corps convoy and do our best to prevent them from moving off our end of the table and on to the first bridge. The game was exceedingly fun, though we both consistently rolled abysmal dice (14 Panzerfausts, a Pak40 and a Stug fired and missed or failed to damage) and failed to kill any of the British tanks on our table and the whole column just ran on through to the next table and the 1st bridge. 

Luckily our forces were able to withdraw once the situation got untenable and then move on as reinforcements on the next table. Not that they did much more there either! In the end, XXX Corps managed to hoss on through another two tables before they were stalled and finally started taking damage to their armour. A good day of gaming, regardless of how ineffectual Densmol and mine forces ended up being.

Our initial table. The British preliminary bombardments pinned all of our deployed units into complete uselessness. This allowed the Brit column to pretty much move up at full road speed and MG the crap out of everything with little to no ability to respond. Rubbish.

Two Pak40's, set up with great lines of sight down Hell's Highway. Shame only one was able to get a (missed) shot off all game before both were Machinegunned to death.

My StuG arrived from reserve, surely this tank hunting beast can pierce the flimsy side armour of those arrogant British!? Nope. Another miss.

British Recce Jeeps speed off the table to help the paras attacking the 1st bridge quickly followed by a Sherman. (In Sicily camo I think?) 

Fearing nothing that the German defenders were throwing at them, the Allied column presses on.

Game over man. Not a single casualty on the Brit side. A lot of dead and burning germans in return. 

The next table and we try to reinforce Craig's beleaguered Fallschirmjagers defending this bridge. Densmol did manage to brew up two jeeps, but my own forces were just a miserable as they were on the last table and only managed to gun down some of the Brit paras.  

British armour press on to try to reach the next bridge! (Which they did. :/)

Targets aplenty if only my StuG would come on from reserve. Which it wouldn't. After this 2nd game, we had to leave.

 Lastly, a kind gift arrived in the mail from a papanurgle forum mate in the UK to help fill out my daemons ranks so I can have enough ready to be able to play a game of Warhammer 40k with 8th Edition. Some 2000-and-something Pestigor beastmen that will be counts-as Plaguebearers and some beautiful 1st release Nurglings, enough to make 3 bases (Meaning I'll be able to plop down 6 total.). Some of my fav Nurgle models here - can't wait to get painting on these. (After, of course, I finish my Germans!)

This coming weekend will also see my good friend Stew (Check out his blog!) coming over for some Age of Sail action. Not sure what rules we'll be  playing, but be sure to see a little write-up on the game thereafter. 

Clever Hans (Part 5 - SS triple threat and some random scatter terrain)

Last weekend was a somber affair. The previous Thursday, my mother-in-law finally succumbed to the cancer in her poor system so the whole household was in an understandable funk. Mom picked a good time to pop her clogs though as it was President's Day on monday, so we all had a long weekend to get ourselves back out of the miserables and get back to work/school.

Staying at home for so long also allowed me to distract myself from feeling down and get some more painting done on my Winter Germans.

These three fellows are more members of my planned 7-man SS-Grenadiers squad, two of which allowed me to practice some more on "scary" german camo schemes, in this case Autumn Oak Leaf Pattern, which was not nearly so labour-intenstive as the Pea Dot camo I previewed in my last post.

On the left, this bloke is about to let fly with a carefully placed Panzerfaust Anti-tank shot. As well as a standard feldgrau jacket, he is sporting some Oak Leaf camo trousers. Centermost is the squad's Machine Gun support specialist who is a bit more canny where "Winter camo" is concerned and so has a white-washes helmet and some snazzy white trousers. His jacket is in Oak Leaf camo. Last fellow to the right has some Pea Dot trousers and a greatcoat, also sporting a whitewashed helmet. This Winter's fashions for you.

Obligatory SS bums.

And a group shot of the infantry that've been painted for this force thus far. Not a bad looking turnout I think.

The title mentions some scatter terrain, and who ever wrote that wasn't lying. I also randomly picked up a plastic Dumpster (By Reaper Miniatures) for my modern zombie survival project and painted it the ugliest green I own, which is close enough to the actual Dark Green that I see them painted up as in real life. The lid is designed to be able to be opened, but I glued it down. No need to risk zombies climbing inside when I'm not looking.

You'll also see to the right of the above pic that there's some sort of blurry sandbag+crates wall that I was also working on. Thought the pic was fine, but I guess it's completely out of focus. O well.

Still two SS troopers to go, watch for an update on those. Also this weekend I am playing in a Market Garden huge game that I'm pretty excited for, so hopefully I'll remember to take some pics of how that went and post them here.

Cheers.

Clever Hans (Part 4 - SS nutter, Spiders and more Winter terrain - Done!)

Past couple days allowed me to do lots of work, especially as my son announced that he had re-found his painting mojo! Never one to dillydally when father&son painting ops are on the menu, we have gotten down to quite a bit of work.

First off, to join Squad Sergeant Schmidt (shown in my last post), here is Schütze Dresler. Realised that the main reason I'd been avoiding these germans was due to having to work on their tricky camo patterns! Well, no more. Dresler here is sporting a pair of nifty SS issued Pea Dot camo trousers. Think i got the pattern and colours right. Regardless, he'll do for gaming. 

This sculpt originally seemed like it would have been fun to paint up, but his face! Stupid bulging eyes in a poorly defined face was a nightmare to finish up and in the end i just suffered the eyes as is after 4 attempts to try to lessen the bulging effect. 

 

As well as him, i also finished up the counterpart ruin to the one shown in my last post.  Just a quick base, wash and quick drybrush highlight  then snow effects added. Lighting is a bit pants, but you get the idea.

I also added snow to my deciduous trees. Just a few brown leaves to add here and there and they'll be ready for varnishing and can be called game worthy!

Did someone mention spiders? Yeah, those three are done and ready to be thrown at adventurers in my rpg sessions. Just simple layers of washes with a wee purple highlight on legs joints to make them stand out more.

Wait, "who were those fellows also on the paint desk, behind the ruin?" Glad you asked. These are the remainder of my SS squad in various stages of paint that I'm currently working on. 

More on these chaps next post. 

Cheers. 

Winter Wonderland (Part 2 - Ruined Workshop)

Been a quiet week on the hobby front, but I got a bit done.

This is the first part of my Warlord Games’ Ruined Farmhouse kit. I made it into some sort of shed or workshop – well, the remains of one long abandoned.

In this pic, squad sergeant Schmidt points out that my horrible lighting on my painting desk is making my white's on this piece far too bright!

The kit has some nice details and is mostly modular though I find that there aren’t very many “good” configurations available, so it looks much like most every other version of this kit I think. Also has some pretty ugly mold lines that were tough to remove to the point that I left them completely alone on the main house part of these ruins. The plastic that these models are cast in is not very conducive to mold-line clean up, much like that nasty Restic crap. Regardless, I think it came out okay and should provide some nice hard cover for my Winter board setup.

Another view of the ruined Workshop. But who's that cheeky partially painted fellow peeking out? Check back soon and he'll get his own post.