Clever Hans (Part 1 - Odds, sods and a Hetzer)

No direction whatsoever with my painting of late. Bit of, “it took my fancy at the time” type shenanigans.

Firstly, I finished up my Bolt Action German Hetzer tank hunter. Probably could have done more, but just wanted it off my paint queue and it at least doesn’t look rubbish. Bit of weathering, bit of mud and snow and it’ll do schwein, it’ll do. (Thus my WW2 German project is officially kicked-off.)

Next up are some of the farm animals I recently picked up from Warbases in the UK. Very affordable and some nice characterful sculpts to add some flavour to my tabletops. I’ll mainly be using these in my Dark Ages and fantasy games. Simple paint jobs and also got a gloss varnishing as well as a flat coat for durability.

Moo.

Moo too.

These geese are having a barney. Clever chap on the right is getting the heck out of the way as he's more about love than hate.

Chap at the back right is officiating this fight - seconds out, round one!

Also got a pair of zombies I call the “Tuppences”. Whilst Mr Tuppence was off out jogging in the neighbourhood, Mrs Tuppence was dutifully playing house and baking cookies. Unfortunately for Mr Tuppence, he was set upon by zombies as he rounded the corner to Foxtrot Avenue, then proceeded to stumble home, turn and bite his wife, causing her to join him in Unlife as well. A love story for sure.

Mr Tuppence has a bit of a derp affliction whilst the good missus seems to be remembering she had baked cookies and yet somehow forgot to place the cookie tray in her outstretched hand prior to "outing and stretching".

Lastly, some crates scatter terrain pieces. Nothing special about these, but they’ll add some interest on the table during games. I also got a sand-bag emplacement finished up, but ran out of Dullcote so will have to wait until next post to show that.

Yeah, these are boring, not even know why I included them here to be honest...

Five Give Up the Booze - a silly business

Those astute enough to follow events around these parts will see that it’s been a little while since my last post. This is because I’ve been on holiday to visit my sister and her family in Trinidad and soak up “Carnival” whilst I was there. I had a bloody lovely time and saw so much feathered lady-flesh that I’ll have good memories (And plenty of pics, of course)for years to come. :)

Since my return my hands have not been exactly idle at my hobby desk. Whilst nothing’s been finshed, I’ve been gluing and slapping paint about different things.

1. In April I’ll be co-demoing some Regimental Fire & Fury ACW with my mate Stewart and so have started painting up the remainder of my outstanding 15mm Confederate infantry for the day. It’ll be a large game, set to take some 5 or 6 hours (I hope my neck can stand up to that sort of punishment…) with 6 players and we two as GM’s. Stewart has a modified scenario to run through and know’s all the details, I think I’ll just be there to supply Reb’s and my pretty self. No pics yet cos who wants to see boring primed minis with blue trousers? More on these later.

2.  Last year I was lucky enough to win a raffle on Facebook that involved the Bolt Action community. The proceeds went to a lovely chap, Damon Andersen so that he could afford a pricey surgery for his young daughter in the US. The prize ended up being a lovely box from Warlord games that included their new “Band of Brothers” starter set, black set of order dice, the Tank Wars supplement and some cool looking german officer with an SMG. Thus far I’ve put together and primed the German Half-track that came with the Starter Set, but also got to start work on the Hetzer tank hunter that I’d purchased almost a year ago. Project Winter Germans is on it’s way!

Half Track is a re-purposed Pioneer 251/D as shown by the storage bins along the sides. I just liked the look with them, than without. Considering adding a canvas cover over a frame for the passenger area seeing as it'll be a Winter theme'd vehicle. The cork is sporting a German Tank commander, he's just primed ready for when I actually have a tank able to stick him in. I'm thinking a Panzer iii or an 8-Rad might be in my future?

The Panzer 38T-Hetzer tank Hunter is my fav German tank. Ugly little bastard that packed a wollop though suffered terribly from unreliable mechanics and thin armour that barely stopped machinegun fire. Add to that Late War fuel shortages and how awfully cramped these things were inside and it was not a very liked machine. But much like ugly dogs, it really appeals to me. Bit shiny in the pic as it's currently drying from a coat of gloss varnish, prior to decals being added and then weathering. The red barrel is to represent that this tank is not that far from the factory floor - they didn't have time to paint it!

3. Spurred on by this jump-start to my painting mojo, I also started looking at other things, #1 were my old 3^rd Edition Blood Bowl Orcs which got scrubbed clean of that old paint job, mold lines removed and glued to new bases. Also after being tempted to jump in on the new Relic Knights Kickstarter project (And consequently reminded by self that I’d not played the original version in almost 2 years, much less painted more than 98% of the Relic Knights minis I already own…) I pulled out Betty and Lug (To be previewed at a later date) and started base colours on those. Sadly, this led me to discover that my much prized old pot of Blazing Orange had completely dried up! And so very sad, I threw that old horse (Brought all the way from the UK no less) into the bin.

That just leaves my Dark Angels Green remaining from my "old" Citadel paint collection. :(

Some more work was done on the Wintery Eastern Front buildings too, but of course, I forgot to take pics. Again, at a later date. 

Forgive me if I haven't commented on your blogs in a while. I'm trying to make my way through all of the posts backlog, but it's taking a while and those bloody things do pile up QUICK! 

In conclusion, I hope to get a new post up by the weekend so if you're so inclined, watch this space!

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!