Swift Review of my 2014

I've read (And enjoyed) quite a few posts on you lot reviewing your 2014 hobby year and thought I'd do a quick one myself so I could take stock of where I'm at right now:

I painted about 2/3's of what I painted last year and attended 1 more tournament.

I looked back at my first post of 2013 and didn't see any real Hobby "resolutions", so I'll just say I did them all. Sorted.

There. That was swift, wasn't it? :)

What have I been doing now? Well, I finally sat and finished up weathering the British desert platoons I'd previously show-cased with their nifty decals slapped on. I'm REALLY happy with how these turned out and feel they are my best work yet at this scale. I'd really appreciate any and all criticisms on how they look too. (Pics are not the best as my phone camera just wouldn't play ball when these were taken...)

The platoon on Reconnaissance in North Africa. 

Platoon Commander, Lieutenant Reginald Temple-Barnes went on after the war to become a successful agent in Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Some closeups of the painted "76" unit marking and weathering.

On this side, the squadron marking looks boss.

Whereas, on this side it looks as though it was painted on by the natives...

Marmon Herrington #1. I wanted my Armoured Cars heavily weathered to look like they'd been out int he field for extended periods of time.

Freehand Squadron and unit markings no so bad on this one.

Marmon Herrington #2. A stowage box on it's right fender to differentiate.

I also added antennas to all three Armoured Cars.

The Squadron looking on the Atlas Mountains in Tunisia after chasing Rommel out of  Libya. 

I added weathering to the Crusaders and Universal Carriers as well, but forgot to take pics and not anywhere close to as extensively scraped up as the above. I'll add pics in on my next post.

I also did some work on the Batloid mode for my Robotech character's Veritech. Arms to come!

And then put together, added gravel and primed in brown these lovely 4Ground 15mm fences that will be smashing additions to both my WW2 and future ACW tables.

Here they are with glue drying, prior to gravel and primer. Good value for money too.

I'm not going to make any real resolutions for 2015. Play more, paint as much as I can and maybe attend one more tournament than last year. O and buy some Comet tanks when Battlefront releases them in the next couple of months!

O bugger...

Somehow I didn't post last week.... >_<

This pledge thing is already failed. Well, kind of - at least I haven't bought any new models since I began this (month 1 of 6 almost seen through!).

I have though been painting. So not so bad really.

What have I painted? Finally got to my 8th Army desert Brits - namely a Honey Stuart and a Recce Armoured Car platoon. Now, I've still got some research to do to make sure I get the markings right (Anyone who has some handy links to sites that detail this will earn my eternal thanks as I've come up horribly short in my own searches.), so they are just sandy and details picked out for stowage, etc. But they are up to a quality I think that I'd be happy to play them in a tournament.

The Honey Stuart was my test piece for this scheme as I only had the one tank. I think in the end I'll mark it up as an Early War version for a future project.

The Armoured Cars are a Daimler 1 command vehicle and two Marmon Herrington iii's. I absolutely love the look of the Marmon Herringtons! So very Mad Max or something. I added some spare Bren guns to the turret to account for their AA guns that my list includes.

After these, I started working on a platoon of Wasp carriers for my Canadians. These things were crazy cool - dinky Universal Carriers with Extra sized fuel tanks welded to the back attached to flame throwers. Flippin' crazy if you ask me, what with these things being about as armoured as my old 1993 Rover Mini Italian Job Special Edition - a rifle shot can pop these things!

Tonight I've got a game lined up versus Densmol (First game in weeks...) - a late war 1850 point Market Garden books only affair with my Canadian Rifles versus a German Fallschirmjäger horde. I'll try to get some pics taken and post up an AAR (That's a batrep for you Warhammer folks. :P )

Now that I've some real progress started on my Flames of War piles, I really should update my painting charts....

A bit of how's your father

Since being a small lad, wonderful RAF WW2 aircraft aside, WW2 armoured cars were always my favourite model kits to put together. Sure, I had a small collection of tanks, but the models that captured my imagination were the Daimlers and Staghounds and Humbers used by the Commonwealth forces during (And after) the war.

Some Staghounds from some Kiwi regiment or other.

Recce units are in my opinion some of the bravest sonuvaguns out there - driving around ahead of the main force to find enemy emplacements and formations in small minimally armoured vehicles, sacrificing heavy armaments and armour for speed and (Most times) maneuverability.

In Flames of War, recce units have some cool and handy abilities to set them apart from other units that allow them to break off from combat, hide in cover better, reveal tricksy enemies to make them easier for your platoons to fire upon, make it harder for enemies to drop ambushes and they also get an extra free movement at the beginning of a game. These rules make for a very versatile and useful unit. Staghounds themselves are pretty well armoured when compared to other AC's and can withstand small-arms and even some smaller caliber gun shots too at a stretch. (The models themselves are almost the size of a Sherman tank to boot!)

A Ford Lynx from the Canadian 12th Manitoba Dragoons. Love all the stowage on this thing!

My latest offering from the painting table is [again] for my Canadian Armoured Company (4CAD), the Armoured Car Platoon. This consists of two Staghound I's and a Ford Lynx (Which looked so similar to the Daimler Dingo, no-one's produced a model to represent them.) with an option to switch out the 'Dingo/Lynx for a 3rd Staghound. I've got just the basic set-up, though I do plan on getting a 3rd Staghound in the future so I have the option to play them armour heavy.

Still have to add weathering and cut down paperclips for the coax machine guns.

From behind, showing stowage (From the Guards Armoured Recce  and Open Fire boxed sets.)

Without a doubt, Battlefront Minis decals are too big for 15mm. But them's all I had so that's what I used.

The oilcans on this one were inspired by a cool pic I found of a real Staghound with exactly the same oilcan stowage on front. I also cut down decals to fit around the stowage here on both the hull and turret.

Next up on the painting table.... I have no idea to be honest. Okay, I do - commissions. Promise. Really.

Sprucing things up

In my efforts to make my models look as good as I can, I've been working on my Canadian armoured cars and Shermans to add both remaining markings and some weathering.

Only pics of the Humbers so far, but you'll see what's been done. The decision to use such a bright "clay" colour was mainly an artsy one - all the better to stand out and be more easily seen from the table. I used a combination of GW's Blackfire Earth textured paint with some Secret Weapon Miniatures wearthering powder on top.

(I'll get pics of the tanks up at a later date.)

I've also been gaming, quite a bit actually including my first Early War Flames of War tournament, a team event where I paired up with Wyn Robertson playing his French forces. We finished 5th out of 9 teams with two wins and a very close 1-2 loss, but considering it was crazy early war, I feel it was a fair result. Early War feels a rather unbalanced setting in this rules set where Soviet tank hordes rule supreme and more dice were thrown about than a game of Warhammer 40K. Not sure I'll be collecting an Early War force anytime soon.

I also hosted Wyn yesterday as he was visiting family in my area to give him a practice Mid War game before he jets off to Philadelphia (Or some such) for this year's Masters tournament. (He's a rather good player, you see.) We played 1485 points and he brought some sort of US Motorised infantry with large infantry platoons in 1/2-tracks supported by 3 Shermans and some 1/2-track mortars.
I put together a list from the latest updated British in Italy .pdf and made a Rifle company with 2 infantry platoons, 6pdr Portee (Mounted on flatbed trucks) AT guns, some 25pdr artillery, HMG and 3" mortar platoons and an armoured car/Universal Carrier Recce combo. I also had some Limited Hurricane air support.
The mission was No Retreat, one where we played long-ways on the table and I was the defender. It was a fun game and a frantic affair with almost all the action occuring on my right flank due to Wyn placing his objective super close to his own table half and far away from my own defensive objective.
Somehow I pulled a win off after Wyn had successive missed platoon morale checks seeing two platoons scarper in one turn and he conceding considering what remained would have swiftly been overwhelmed by my boys. A 4-3 win is nothing to sneeze at against an opponent of Wyn's class and caliber!

This is early game. I got 4 platoons on (One of which - 6pdr AT guns - was in ambush) and 4 off in reserve. My reserves didn't enter into the game until turn 3!!! And I had those damned 1/2tracks stuffed with MG's and all sorts of other nastiness rammed down my throat from turn one.

For those paying attention, my table has also been spruced up a little by the addition of new houses from 4Ground, road pieces by CGR painters and some trees! I have a couple more houses on the way and am currently hunting about for a decent looking river and bridge or two. 

Portees finally arrive on turn 3 and with succulent targets available open fire with 12 dice and..... bail one 1/2-track. *sigh*

Poor Bloody Infantry indeed! These poor sods suffered more .50 Cal and Machine Gun fire than any other platoon I've yet played or played against. Eventually after 3 or 4 turns of this beating they were down to 4 or 5 stands received an assault and scarpered, but I don't blame them. They at least did their job and held up the enemy almost single-handed long enough for reserves to come relieve them.

Believe it or not, this is not spilled ice cream nor yoghurt.

The British 8th Army wipes out the Yank invaders on the objective and pushes them back! In this picture, you'll see on the left three burning Sherman tanks, one of which was taken out by a flank shot by a Piat! My first ever kill by a Piat AT launcher! (I usually fail every firepower test with these.)

Game over man. My reserves are advancing up to add further weight to my retaliation.

Along with the above game, Densmol and I continue our fencing and I saw my 2nd only defeat to his hated Nazis for which I have declared retribution of the highest order in the very near future!

No gouging, no blows below the belt, no more drunken shirtless wargaming from here on in I think.....

Humber Recce Platoon - WIP (Part 2)

These fellows are almost done. I went back on what I declared regarding stowage, they just looked too plain with out any pieces. I still kept it minimal though, not at all like the pictures I've found on the net of similar recce vehicles all laden down with boxes and tarps, etc. I also decided to add some to the universal carrier that I use as Patrol leader to differentiate him from the others.

Carriers seen here with some lovely .50cals to chew up those pesky German 1/2-tracks. The one in the middle has the stowage, tarp on it's flank as seen and oil drum on it's rear. The tarp piece was from the Open Fire Shermans sprues.

 

With Allied stars stuck on top of the Humbers so some Tiffie doesn't think to confuse them with Hun vehicles, all that's left to do on these chaps is to get unit marking decals (Ordered as you read this.) and they are ready to throw into combat. One issue I'm having is which markings would be the correct ones? The 4th Canadian Army have the Humber Armoured Car option on both the Rifles and Armoured lists, yet my research online has not shown the 4th Canadian using Humbers at all during the Holland operations (Training in England prior to D-Day, yes, hence why I've already painted the black square with 47, though that'll be painted over by the time this is posted.), whereas Staghounds seem to be their Armoured Car of choice. So I'm thinking that I'll have to make this from the lot 12th Manitoba Dragoons that weren't Division specific as far as I can tell and so may well have run with the 4th Canadians.
(Feel free to correct me on this as I'd rather get it right.)

 These are going to be the last units I do for my Late War collections for a bit as I've a new project to get on with, my first Mid-War specific list. With the November tournament being Mid-War and the recent release of the updated Mid-War Brits in Italy lists, I've decided to throw together as much stuff as I already own (Keeping things affordable) to make a company for the tourney. So I've made an 8th Army Motored Infantry list. All I've got to get are transport vehicles and I'll have everything I need - not bad for a completely new army. (I will cheat on the carrier patrols though and use the two I've already got painted up, even though they are marked for Guards and Canadian.... To be replaced at a later date.)

This is my list. I think it'll do poorly as British mechanised companies are not lauded at all for their abilities to win, but I aim to try to prove that wrong! :)

 So along with the commissions I am supposed to already be working on, that's a little less than two months to get most of an army painted. I reckon I can do it. :)

Humber Recce Platoon - WIP (Part 1)

Whilst waiting for Total War: Rome2 to install on my PC (Yet to play mind.), I decided in between glasses of wine to slap some paint on my next platoon for my Canadians.

Offering more options for reconnaissance in my lists, the Recce Armoured Car platoon is a fun option to stick in 3 Humber III’s and 2 Humber III LRC’s with option to add up to two Universal Carrier Patrols. So potentially 3 Recce platoons all in one slot – not bad.

I do love my Universal Carriers and find it hard not to hum the Benny Hill theme tune as I move them about on the table, but one of my favourite units in the British/Commonwealth arsenal are the Armoured Cars. They are only marginally better armed than a Carrier, but being wheeled they can hustle way faster about the board, especially on roads. Only poor side of them is that being wheeled means that in any rough terrain slows them to a horrible 4” a turn! (Last tournament I played in, I was stuck on a snow table and my poor 6pdr Portee trucks were next to useless as the whole board was snow! >_< )

So base coat of Russian Uniform Green done on all 5 vehicles. Next up, I’ll take care of the wheels, stowage and other details. I am not all that fond of over-the-top stowage on tanks, feeling that the lines of the tank are lost amongst all the jumble of canvases, etc. So these may seem a little stowage light to most eyes - matter or preference really.

 These were super fast to paint, so I'm hoping I'll have them done and dusted by Sunday. Though a trip to the movies tonight for the new Riddick flick and Game Night with my rpg mates tomorrow night might make that deadline a little tricky to meet. We'll see! (At the very least I'll be painting as I watch my Raiders get creamed by the Colts on Sunday. O dear, a Brit who's into NFL - whatever next?)