Training Day

Sunday the 20th saw my 37th birthday come about and in fine form Densmol was on hand to play a couple games in celebration. Unfortunately my suggestion that he stop by was last minute, so he was forced to have to play some of my British Commonwealth mini's instead of his preferred filthy Hun!

We managed to get in two games and decided some easy quick lists were in order so I swiftly drummed up two armoured lists from the Market Garden source book, one 4th Canadian Armoured, the other British Armoured Recce. Each list was rather similar in composition in that there were HQ of two tanks, two platoons of 4 tanks each, an infantry platoon, a Universal Carrier Platoon and Typhoon Air Power. The only main difference is that the Canadians sported Shermans/Fireflys and the Guards Cromwells/Challengers
Being Canadians on Brit, we decided these were per-cursor war-games between the two forces in preparation for the actual Market Garden operation.



The first game I took the Guards and we played some defensive mission where I rolled low and got to be defender with only half my platoons on deck. Which was the story of the evening and the death of any hopes I had to pull a win out. The second game we switched it up and I took over the Canadians and once again had to deal with damned reserves and I was sorely beaten a second time. (It didn't help that the dice were not cooperating whilst Densmol's dice were loving his foul Gerry-loving taint!)

Just an example of how Densmol's rolls were happening. Git.

Per usual, I'll not go into too much detail (Especially as the cheap beer was flowing all too freely  the night and details are sketchy.) so here are pics I took during the evening with a little commentary.

Game 1 and my Cromwells are lined up next door to Densmol's Shermans who handily hide behind my new 4Ground houses. Trying to get through open ground to that objective in the top left of the picture was hell, even with 16" movement!

Densmol's view with ALL of his bloody army on the table. The objective on the right was the one I decided was best to head for as his infantry were bound to camp on the one closest to them.

Densmol's Air thoroughly raped my poor tanks who hid shivering in the cover of this hotel.

Needing a 6 to shoot my well placed Challenger, Densmol promptly does just that = one dead Challenger.

Not looking good for the Guards Armoured Recce.

The Guards Universal Carriers made a mad dash to hide behind the ruins and paid the price for their cheekiness.

This standoff should have gone another way.... but my dice said.... "No".

Anyone who says Air is too unpredictable to include in lists should have been in my garage to see otherwise. Ouch.

Game 2 saw me taking the reins of the 4CAD - (Not as many pics as along with my tactical decisions, the beer was running low in the fridge and large in our guts.)

Game 2's set up. Defending objectives is not what Shermans do best.....

Densmol's Cromwells were massed and ready to wipe my Shermans off the table. They followed through on this threat with impunity.

No more pics as I think I lost on turn two or some rubbishness. It seems Densmol's getting lots better at this game. I need to turn up my tactics to 11!

On other news, my birthday also had me traveling into the mountains to go enjoy the American national pass-time of shooting guns for no good reason. I am all for this as it makes me feel more manly. Sadly, when we arrived at our out-of-the-way destination in the California wilderness, we found all the side roads to the fun shooting spots closed due to the pesky Wildfires that plagued the area earlier this Summer. It was heart breaking to see so much life blackened and turned to ash, but still, the view was breathtaking and after a lovely beer and salad (Got to balance things in my old age) I quickly forgot about the dead and crispy trees and animals.

Lastly, my plans to go to the last NorCal tourney of the season fell through and so my Mid War urges have seen my attentions go in another direction. So ignore or forget that previous post about me putting together a British Motorised list - Instead I leave you with this teaser of the 1st buy for my new Mid War (And potentially Late War if I can make the right purchases.) list from the Eastern Front.

And as a hint, it's most certainly NOT Germans.

Ada 1 (Part 2 - Finished)

Here she is and isn't she wonderful ladies and gentleman?

Ada is kitted out in the latest Eisenkern Tactical Combat Reactive Armour, with a home brewed D-52904 Urban Warfare Camouflage skin.

She also sports the experimental Kleig Industries Teilchen Emmiter Mk7, a long rifle suited to sniping duties. It's power output can punch a hole through the most stubborn Shadokesh armour and pin-point accuracy leave opposing forces leaderless with a single well placed shot.

Let's hear it for Ada 1!!!

I've never been very good at camouflage schemes, so this was my first try at something I felt was a little more realistic than the contemporary schemes for urban warfare. I started off with a medium grey, then brushed random stripes of a sand colour spiraling all up to the right. The sand colour got a thinner line of a light sand colour on it's upper edge, I then coated the whole mini in a black wash. Next I lightly sponged on white and then Dark blue-grey over the stripes to break it up and stuck another wash on top. A few highlights here and there and some definition to the recesses and this is how she turned out.

I ended up not going for an over the top glow effect on the gun. Seeing as she's a sniper and all, it didn't make sense that she'd be giving herself away with light effects, right? So a subtle green that I think looks rather cool.

Also, I wanted to add some grey weather powders to affect the concrete dust I imagined would be thrown up by her walking about a blasted urban environment, but then realised I forgot to purchase some when last I was at my LGS. D'oh! Something for later I guess. I'm currently putting together 3 fire teams of regular Eisenkern Stormtroopers to add to her platoon and am planning to put paint to a metal Kreigsmarine from Dreamforge Game's original Kickstarter that I think will act as this Ada's spotter.

In other news, the Mid-War Flames of War tournament was on Saturday. Three grueling rounds which left my poor carcass thoroughly knackered. But I had a fantastic time and had a real chance at placing had my dice not done their usual and betrayed me during my last game. (I was apparently tied for 3rd after the 2nd game...) I ended with  a win a draw and a loss - not bad, 10 points in total. Encouraging considering my rubbish performances in prior tournaments! :)

O and here's a little pic of me in my finished costume for the Father's Day Run which I somehow managed to complete in around 39 minutes. Not bad for a fat old drunk.

Painted things and another Tournament

Greetings from the far off land of allergies and drought.

What's painted to date, not including the Heavy Mortar Squad pictured way below.

Last weekend was a 2000 point Tracks and Turrets tournament at the local Gaming con, ConQuestSac. I took a list from the Market Garden source book, British 11th Armoured - 1ic & 2ic Shermans, 3 platoons of 2 Shermans/2 Fireflys, full platoon of M10 17pdrs, a Sherman ARV and Limited Air Support.

Over all, I had a really fun day, though only won one of my three games. Here's a swift round up.

Round One had me up against Brad and a bloody horrible list with 6 Konigstigers and some AA vehicles that didn't come into play. Of course there were delayed and scattered reserves (No roll for reserves until turn 3 and on a random place on my table edge!!!) involved, so only half our forces were able to start on the table, the other half being rolled for later on. Seeing as he only had two platoons, he stuck his 1ic & 2ic Konigstigers and his platoon of.... 4 more Konigstigers (KT for short.), leaving his AA guns in reserve. I chose to place two of the Sherman platoons down and kept the third and the M10 platoon in reserve. If you haven't already guessed or are clueless as to what this situation is, I started the game facing 1800 of Brad's 2000 with only 850 points worth of my own. Trouble from the start.
He camped his 1ic and 2ic on his objective and had his platoon in position to move toward the objective in my deployment zone. I figured I'd only have a chance at all versus his 40" range and armour 15 front tanks, if I ignored the platoon of KT's and rush my whole starting force (10 tin can Shermans and fireflys) at his defended objective, hoping that come turn 3, I'd be lucky enough to have taken his objective and roll for one single platoon to come contest versus his KT platoon. Funnily enough, my rush of wee tanks rushed through and killed off his 1ic and 2ic and holding the objective. Unfortunately, what happened next was a fine example of Piss Poor Planning/Preparation on my part and I totally shot my self in the foot, losing the game.
I rolled on turn three to get a reserve platoon and lucky day of all luck days I got one! So i grab my M10's with their big Tiger killing guns hoping to shoot his big cats off the objective and look to see where they deploy. Okay, 1-2 was rolled, so my bottom left corner, not perfect, but hopefully I can maneuver well enough to get the job done. Here's where it went wrong - neither of us could figure out just how big the deployment zone was and saw mistakenly 8" from the corner. So sadly, I couldn't get close enough to the objective to contest and I was only able to kill two KT's, losing the game. Deal was, reserves actually come in on 16" from the corner..... *facepalm* O well, lesson learned. So this was a sad 1-6. (O and my planes did bugger all through the game.... You'll see a pattern here.)

Round Two was a fateful showdown versus my Flames of War mentor, Eric Riha (Often mentioned on the wwpd.net podcast.) and his American Patton list. This game was over before it started. My dice were abysmal and Patton's Spearhead moves (Everything in his line of sight get's a pre-1st turn move, like a recce team = shenanigans) had Eric's tank platoons in my grill almost turn one. By the time I was able to roll for reserves (Again on turn 3 - damn you delayed reserves!!!!), I had already lost enough in my army and was forced to have to roll (And fail) a Company Morale test and the game was done. Another 1-6, but at least this time it was both against a far superior player than I and not due to my own lack of preparation.

Round Three saw me going in tied for last place in the rankings. Seriously?! *sighs* I was to face a very fun chap called Joe, who gave me my first taste of Russian Heavy armour. (Thirteen IS-2's I think.) Funny thing is, This was my first and only game all day where I got to be the attacker, so (finally) I got to start with ALL of my platoons on the pitch! Hoo-rah!
The 1st turn saw me move all of my Shermans and M10's in and line up in wheat fields so that I got to take 10 17pdr (AT15) shots at his ugly Soviet armour. Now, odds are that this should have taken out at least 4 of the 7 tanks camped on his objective, but per the rest of the tourney, Lady Luck had other ideas. Boom and bang went all those lovely armour cracking guns and when the smoke cleared..... I'd managed to bail just one. That's it. Conceivably I could have won the game in my turn one, o well. The rest of the game though did see my fortunes turn around somewhat for the better though and using the far better maneuverability of my own tanks versus his slow heavies, I managed to both keep his reserves at bay and keep the objective for a 4-3 win.

All in all, the tourney was super fun, if frustrating and I got to watch a lot of super cool games with a LOT of wonderfully painted heavy armour forces after my own 1st and 2nd games finished so abruptly. :) I did learn though, that armoured companies are not my thing - much prefer to play my Poor Bloody Infantry! Next tourney I plan to attend is in June, a Mid War affair and I think I'll be bringing some Kiwis from the Italy lists. Lots and lots of stuff to bog Nazi armour down with.

This is my Hawker Typhoon, fully painted with markings and all. I'm too cheap to buy decals tho, so I freehanded the markings instead. The "F" is taken from the Battlefront "How to Paint a Typhoon" webpage, the DE... well, are my initials. :)

All of my Shermans are painted now. Just need to add weathering and markings, but for tabletop play, they are good enough.


 

Since my original tournament in February, I've managed to get my good mate Densmol interested in Flames of War. He's a big Nazi Tigers fan and so has amassed an impressive collection of heavy Nazi armour in a short amount of time. He went to the above written about tourney as well (His 1st) and almost took the 1st prize! It's good to finally have a mate who's into miniature gaming and that is as enthusiastic as I am, and also who's up for playing on a regular basis too.
We got a game in last night where he played his same list he took to the tournament versus a Canadian infantry company I hastily put together - 2000 points. I won, though it was touch and go for a bit there. Here's some pics:

My boys camped the Nazi objective on the hill early on. Stupid Sherman's hid in the woods bottom right almost the whole game....
 

On the other end of the table, Otto Carius and his best pal burnt to a cinder as my M10's, Infantry and WASP carriers advanced on the other Nazi objective. Please note the scary Elefant heavy assault guns! o_0

Right before I managed to contest his objective right side of the pic and rush my WASPS to camp my own in the mid right for the win.

This game gave me the opportunity to bring out and show off my completely finished 6pdr platoon;

and my newly touched up and rebased Heavy Mortar platoon, that were a horror when I bought them off of Ebay and now look decent enough for tabletop I think.

I'll close out with a few pics with different views of the Typhoon and latest painted Shermans. Cheers if you kept reading this far down! :)

*"Where's the 40K stuff gone?!" I hear you ask? Well, I've not forgotten, nor abandoned my other projects, merely set them aside to get myself enough painted Brits so I can play multiple lists in Flames of War. Watch this space though as I can feel the Grim Dark creative juices a-flowing!*

The Pay's Alright (Part 1 - 1st Platoon Command WIP)

***WARNING - LONG POST AHEAD!!!***

Burnout krept up on me like an evil little virus and so that's why you've seen little of my hobby exploits here of late.

But I've managed to motivate myself some to get a few things done; read on if you dare......

After seeing Victoria Lamb's awesome squad deals (And shamefully putting in an order for one as well - don't tell the wife), Guard fever has struck once more and I've been slowly painting up the remaining members of the Command Squad for the 1st Platoon.
Here in painting progress are the Squad Standard Bearer, Weapons Specialists, and Voxman in various stages of painting. It's nice to get back in the saddle again with this project as there's still an enormous amount to get done, but I think in the end it'll be more than worth it, as once arrayed together, this army will be at least interesting to look at to say the least. No arms as yet and since this pic was taken I've highlighted the armours some. Am thinking that I'll not spend so much time on these so I can get through them a little quicker.

I've also been making enquiries around multiple manufacturers regarding purchasing some appropriately beefy wheels for my 4 Chimera counts-as, so 16 wheels total. So far though I've not had much luck aside from Secret Weapon Miniatures who've quoted a whopping $45! I'm not so sure my budget can handle that kind of pricing just for wheels when part of the reason I was making my own vehicles was to cut costs. I've been half tempted to look into attempting to sculpt up some of my own and push molding the rest, but I've seen people's attempts at this kind of production and it only seems to look at all good on smaller scale stuff like emblems, etc. I've also filled in all the windows and viewing ports on the vehicles with white glue (which worked out just loverly) and started fixing Multi-lasers to their turrets and random left-over-from-other-projects Heavy Flamers to their hulls. All they'll need from here is some cheeky stowage (And the aforementioned wheels) and they'll be ready for paint! No pics though as there's really little to see from the last time I showcased them.
My Flames of War stuff has suffered the most from this recent bout of burn. I think putting so much effort into that one infantry platoon really snuffed my desire to work on anything, especially 15mm uniforms.... But, I've started on my Universal Carrier patrol. Only 3 and only primed thus far. (The bases have been painted since I originally wrote this.) After playing some and getting some good advice, I've also taken a PIAT wielding trooper and shaved away his base and bent him at the waist so he can sit in one of them. This is so I won't have to buy a whole pack of PIAT Carriers - turns out that it's rather handy to have a sneaky anti-tank option in this recce unit incase the inevitable armour appears.

I also got in my second game of Flames of War against my mate Sam and his Heavy Nazi armour where once again my dice betrayed me horribly, only this time right from the very beginning of the game. No seriously, it was utter toss. I surrendered around turn 4 after it seemed that I couldn't hit anything or even roll more than a 2 on almost every occassion. I think that if I weren't laughing so hard at the irony, I'd have been quite angry. One thing I will say, I need more anti-tank units (Have already ordered a platoon of 6 pdr guns) - if what I've heard from the rumours are anything to go by, then I'll be fast buying up some Archer tank hunters when the new Market Garden book is released next year.

Here's some pics of the game, apologies for the quality, my phone camera is old and well, old.



Nazi armoured column advance down the left flank to assault the brave Tommies dug in on the objective in the trees.



After losing some half-tracks to shots from my ambushing Shermans, the Nazis assault into the woods and force my troops to withdraw.

Meanwhile on the right flank my Crocodiles are facing off against a nasty Panther platoon that had just taken out the aforementioned Sherman platoon.

Even after unloading shot after shot and spewing fire, my dice failed my miserably every time and so the panthers just had to face the terror of my smoke shots instead to try to mitigate damage. :(

A second infantry platoon runs on from reserve to try to help out the beleaguered boys in the woods.

Sadly, they arrive just in time to see 'said boys run over by Tigers and then find themselves machin-gunned to pieces by halftracks.

Lastly, apologies if I have not offered Christmas warm wishes on your blogs, there were so many festive posts that I just got overwhelmed and well, felt that it'd be easier to just offer my belated well wishes here instead. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and a safe time with your respective families. Me and my wee family had a lovely time.

I'm the devilishly handsome fellow in the red by the way. ;)

My cat on the other hand, did not see the humour in the season.