Battery

I found time last night to finish basing my 15mm ACW Confederate artillery. 6 guns/stands should be all I'll ever need at the scale I intend to play seeing as the  2 rules sets my opponent and I intend to play (Regimental Fire and Fury & Longstreet) typically limit a battery to 3 bases and where differing cannon-types are introduced, I’ll just print a label to indicate if the gun is a Parrot, 6 or 12-pounder, etc and affix to the back of their bases for gameplay identification purposes.

1st three guns. Had to have at least one crewman with a red shirt. I saw many paintings that I used as reference online where CSA Artillery crew were loading in red shirts. My Star Trek sensibilities do not think those fellows will go very far though....

These sculpts are by Blue Moon who do a rather good and extensive range for 15mm ACW, were affordable  and were fun to paint to boot. I tried to research Confederate Artillery uniforms online and went with a rather generic scheme as it seemed the simplest to paint over a full unit. Once again, not everyone got a uniform, so civvie clothing features though not as frequently as within my infantry regiments’ sculpts.

2nd three guns. The crew pack had a bunch of people pointing. I don't really think they are a necessary pose outside of officers, being rather obvious otherwise. Regardless, the bases I've arranged look fun enough and I especially like the detail on the right hand gun here of the sergeant's chevrons on the sleeve of his pointing arm.

I based these with only 2 crew members for two reasons:

         a.   The guns come six to a pack. The crew twelve. Do the math. J

         b.  There’s only enough room on these 1.5’x1” bases for two crew!

Regardless I really like how they came out. The bases are a little thicker than my already previewed Cavalry and Generals due to them being kindly donated, but that’s just fine as a few extra millimeters height is hardly an advantage! (And I get to call these Gun Batteries done!)

This is my favourite base of the six. The Officer has his sword drawn and a rather splendid full beard and seems to be pleading with the other crewman to reload the damned cannon already. The crewman in contrast is toting a bucket and I fear, might be a little slow witted.

I also finished up the Snow Leopard. Out of the blue, I got sick of looking at the cat, so after softening the blackspots a little with some dark greys and sprucing up the throat and underbelly with a slight white dry-brush, I did the basing and called it a day. This feline will do for rpg game purposes and in the future, when I make a plan to paint a plain brown mountain lion, I'm sticking to it!

Tomorrow Densmol and I are going to get a game of Flames of War in for Cameron's D-Day online campaign, so expect an AAR posted up with pictures (Promise) by the weekend.

Squeak I tell you, Squeak!

Things have been plodding along in a fair fashion this week on my hobby desk. 

There’s always plenty to be done in my hobby room, but as it stands my required minis for next year’s rpg campaign are almost all painted up. Just waiting on my RedBoxGames Barbarian Hordes Kickstarter lot to arrive (Including 2 more Player Character minis and 9 more zombies) and then there’s terrain pieces to add some flavour to encounters.

But in further readiness, I got these critters out. Giant Rats or Dire Rats depending on which flavour you prefer. They’ll be at least an interesting encounter.

These Singles are by Reaper in their plastic Bones medium. Super cheap and okay for detail considering so. They painted up easily and I really didn’t want to spend too much time getting such disposable vermin painted up so it’s just base colour and wash with a slight highlight here and there. I added simple roman numerals to the backs of their bases (Something I need to do to all my badguy minis) so it’ll be easier to keep track of their health in combats.

My son demanded I paint them with red eyes, though I'm not sure they show up that well in these pictures.

This pile of Timorous Beasties is (I think.) an old Ral Partha Giant Rat Swarm. I like the cartoony sculpts to their faces, the crisp sculpts made painting easier than otherwise. Again, super simple and dirty paint job to patch the single rats. No idea how I’m going to use these, but they look fun and should at least provide some visual fun to the planned encounter.

I think the size of base I used makes them look less... "swarm-ish".....

.....But considering how much use I'll get out of these blighters, I really don't care.

I also got to last minute work the previous evening on this Reaper Bones big cat from their Animal Companions pack. Saw a Snow Leopard on the tv and felt inspired to try to copy their beautiful pelt scheme. So far, it looks like a 9-year-old has painted it, but I’ll see if I can’t change that some and make it look more realistic. Once it’s finished, the druid in my rpg will then have two animal companion choices.

Pink noses. All of them have pink noses when I searched online for images. So damned cute, if these things weren't so deadly.

Basic markings are black dots and circles with a slight darker grey inside. Got the basics down, but they look like some crappy kids toy from Walmart right now...

Then there’s this handy little Treasure pile, again by Reaper in their Bones plastic. It was a quick and dirty paint job, just enough to look enticing enough for my player characters in my rpg to want to fight for it. J

A chest on a pile of Gold, Silver and Copper coins. A lamp and...

Even a huge green gem on a gold necklace....

Also with Cameron’s Firestorm D-Day Flames of War campaignnow started, Densmol is coming over on Wednesday to get our first game in in a while. It’s D-Day boys and girls and the Longest Day is about to begin. (Not that we’ll be playing a beach landing… as I don’t have beach terrain stuff and Densmol has no fortifications. *facepalm*) For our first game and to at least keep with the D-Day theme I’ve started work on a Breaching Group composed of a regular Sherman tank, two Sherman Crab Flail tanks and a pair of Churchill AVsRE tanks & a short platoon consisting of a pair of Churchill Crocodiles. As this pic shows, all but the Sherman Crabs have been Primered and based coated with Vallejo Russian Green (The Crabs are now primered as well and should be base coated in green also by the end of this evening.).

Along with the tanks, I also started basing my ACW Confederate artillery. These should also be finished up this evening and I’ll get another post submitted to show the finished batteries.

AVsRE on the left, regular Sherman in the center and Crocodile & Fuel Trailers on the right. The ACW artillery are along the front, their crew and guns all painted, just needing dirt painted and grass glued on!

My pair of Sherman Crabs prior to primer being sprayed on. These were a pain in the rump to assemble, with no instructions on the Flames of War website! Still, they look great all stuck together. In the background, you can see my in progress ACW infantry regiment on lolly-sticks.

Lastly (!!!), my good pal Stew came over yesterday and we got my first game of Chain of Command (By TooFatLardies) in. It was played in 15mm as that’s what my current terrain collection is made up of with his appropriately based Heer Germans versus my inappropriately based Brits. Sadly no pics were taken as I quite forgot as I was nursing a sorry post Halloween party hangover. I REALLY liked the way this game played though; the rules were easy to pick up and even though I lost due to some awful dice rolling, I really felt like I was on the edge of my seat in a great tactical battle with some great maneuvering by the attacking germans and brave hunkering down by my Tommies. I feel it was perfect for 15mm scale gaming and it’s a game I’d love to play again. I might have to pick up a set of the rules in the near future or at least stick them down on my Xmas list.

If you made it this far, then well done! This post grew out of proportion, but it was fun to show what I’ve been up to of late. Should have the next one up in a couple days or so.