The end of 2021 is nigh....

So. Here we are at the end of another year. A few painting highlights for the year included getting my Spectrus Kill Team done for slowgrow; indulging in the nostalgia of Necromunda Redemptionists; and completing my last (hopefully) experience of white armour in the Scarif Beach Party as well as getting my Victory at Sea Italians done which I don't seem to have a coherent photo. 

Gaming wise, running out the Elefants out at Panzerschreck in July was great; playing Stargrave was excellent; and our first (stupid lockdowns ruining fun) 40K Slowgrow Narrative was a hoot. 

All things considered, not a bad year.

Random 28mm models

The next of the DnD models going into a wizgang is this fighter. I picked this one out as a bit of a random collection of metals. The shield is a great collection of metal, brass, bronze and silver. I kind of like it.

I can't remember where I acquired this model or what I thought I was going to do with it so I thought I'd just add it to my DnD-style Frostgrave Wizgang. 

Byzantines

I decided I'd give some of the new toys a crack to test matching them up with the old paintwork and base a few of them to get moving on that process. First off, the Greek Fire Team. It's a sweet little set with the ammo carrier, gunner and lighter. There was a fourth model in the kit but it didn't fit and was a bit generic.

Secondly, the only base of Menavlatoi has been done. This was an exercise in remembering how I did the quilted armour in the early days. Turns out it was as lazy as it looks. It's a pretty sweet base and another HI 2HW in the list won't go astray.

I also gave my existing light horse a bit of a tidy up, painting over all the superglue frosting from the many re-glues back into saddles and reattached the bows. I repainted the flesh as what I was doing back in the 2010s when I painted these the first time were not great.

And that's got me in good stead to do the second 2 bases as well. I still haven't finished the Normans though....

2022

Well, 600-odd days into March 2020 and I'm busy working out what I'm going to do for the rest of March 2020.

Flames of War

Blogger Pooch and I are going to do a "platoon a month" to work our way through our respective backlogs of 15mm Germans. I've got half a dozen greatcoat platoons to do and hoping that, by the time I've done those, the German Bulge book will be out and I'll be able to find a few more to do! Otherwise I might just finally get onto my Puma Company.

ADLG

A bunch of us have also gotten excited about ADLG Renaissance in 15mm so that'll make an appearance in 2022 and I'm pondering a second ADLG army now that Fireforge have released Almughavars so a Catalan Company might be in the offing as well.

Others

There's some new Regia Marina ships out for Victory at Sea so I'll grab a couple of them and some new planes as well. I've got some 40K and Necromunda backlog to get through and the giant pile of random 28mm models to do is still there. I'll hopefully grind through some of that over the break. 

Next Time?

The first 'platoon a month' will be underway and probably more Byzantines. A bunch of the nerds will be getting together for some New Year games and hopefully I'll snap a few fun pics there. 

Penultimate Blog of 2021

I'll save the 2021 reflections and 2022 plans for next week... 

Hummels! 

 The Hummels are finally done. 

The biggest challenge was finding enough Balkenkreuz transfers to do them and dealing with the fact one of them decided to break coming off the paper. I spent quite a bit of time hiding it under foliage!! I'm pleased to have these done in advance of a plan to advance my FoW army progress in 2022.

Getting these done was mostly a result of me restarting a playthrough of Factorio, which for me seems to still involves a little bit of letting the game run so gluing things to other things while it's running is helpful!

Generals! 

 I decided that I should test what I wanted to do with my Byzantine basing, trying to make it more colourful than the way they looked when I used them for IMPETVS. It's also helped me discover just how bad a paint job I did on these models. There are mistakes everywhere and even some raw metal - I must have done a particularly rubbish job of the priming!!

Using Gamers Grass Wildflowers has been on the list of things to try for a while and I really like the way it's come out. I've also decided to use heaps more green than I usually do and that's definitely helped as well.

 And on a random note...

...I'm currently enjoying the audiobooks of Spike Milligan's World War II memoir, read by Milligan himself. His off-beam humour is even more delightful in his own voice (and impressions of his unit-mates) and the occasional stifled laugh at his own cleverness makes it even better to listen to. It remains one of my favourite recollections of the war - both the absurd humour of it alongside both the absolute and deeply personal tragedy of any conflict.  

Next Time

Depends a bit on how what happens this week with Christmas on Saturday. I've made good progress on a couple of my limited palette models so might aim to finish those off and do some more work on the Byzantines after how pleased I am with the result of the basing on the generals.

Happy Holidays to you all!

I killed an armoured car with a machine gun...

...I LOVE EARLY WAR!

 As our club ran it's fifth Remember December event in honour of our departed friend Nick, it was back around to Early War Flames of War for some "I can't roll a firepower check for love nor money" hilarity that is 2cm guns.

Game 1: Regan, Grenadiers, Fighting Withdrawal 

Regan bought an army retrofitted to Early War and against an army like mine that can be a rough handling. He'd bought a goodly number of 2cm guns and an 88 but some PaK 36s would have rounded out the list and taxed me almost as much as those HMGs did...

 

 

The objective on my left was well protected by minefields and Grenadiers so I decided to put the Panzer IIIs there to bait out the 88 and pitch everything else up the centre and on my right. The 88 chose not to take the bait (and why would it?!) and instead appeared out of shot at the top of this picture.

 

At the top of this photo, you can see my victorious 8-rads, who had just successfully MGed Regan's one 88 whose ambush had popped a single Panzer II. What followed was two turns of 2cm cannons shooting each other for a sum total of not a great deal. It was all very silly.

This is about turn 4 after Regan's Grenadier platoon had assaulted my 8-rads, killed one and the other ran away and prompltly failed his last man standing test.

This last image is shortly before the end of the game.  In the top left are 4 SdKfz 10/4s that gave me more trouble than they should have. They just wouldn't die or run away. The Panzer IIIs presaged their performance in the next game by being utterly useless.

The tank platoon on the left assaulted the HMGs and just went ah, sod it and took the defensive fire from the 10/4. They saved a bunch of hits from the one 2cm AA gun that could have been a problem and bailed out to HMG fire instead. Moments later, the platoon on the left rolled in and finished the job. 

It was a tough ask for Regan's army but he defended well and I think proved that HMGs in EW are genuinely a force to be reckoned with.

Game 2: Russell, Stuarts, Free for All

This was a game where I needed my Panzer IIIs to do some heavy lifting. They did not.  Stuarts are a tough ask for Panzer IIs in EW, even if they're trained, as there's a lot of work to get on the flanks and try and get the best chance of knocking them out. I think I did a good job of that and this game was a real back and forth until the last turn where it really could have gone either way.

 

 

Turn 2. Stationary Panzer IIIEs shoot Stuarts and bail one. YEEP. Mercifully Russell's return fire wasn't much better so this flank showed promise. Sort of.

 

 

I attacked Russell's right hand objective with some cunning and got some good flank shots on Stuarts. Vexingly, I couldn't seem to knock out more than one at a time despite throwing a lot of 2cm fire at them. This is where I planned to win the game - overwhelm these three Stuarts and hope my right flank kept Russell's main force occupied.

 

At this point, my Panzer IIIs had fled the field, much to my chagrin, but I still had some good flank shots on Stuarts. On this flank by this point, I was fighting a holding action. I just needed to hold out while my other Panzer platoon, 8-rads and the 2iC took the less well defended objective. If you can see Russell's dice in the background, that's 5 shots on 4s for one hit. Which bailed a Panzer II!

This was my last really good shot at the objective and, honestly, it came down to that Stuart sitting on the objective passing his Last Stand test. If he hadn't, I had three Panzer IIs to remove three Marmon Herringtons and Russell was a turn away from my objective. 

As it was, he didn't fail the last stand, I failed to kill the last Stuart as well and this was where we wound up:

 

 

This is right before Russell's amazing final turn - he destroyed almost every vehicle I had left on the park but honestly, it wasn't a game I didn't feel like I didn't have a chance in. I think I played it as well as I could have and honestly, I think if my Panzer III dice hadn't been so lackluster, I would have been threatening both objectives. As Russell described it, we were either side of the knife edge for most of the game.

Game 3: Tony, Czech Panzer Company, Spearpoint

In game three, I played a Panzer 38(t) army in Spearpoint, one of the updated missions from the new FoW mission pack. Once we'd unpicked the delployment map and the goal of the mission, we got underway in the most restrained way possible. 

The first couple of turns of this game were really non-events. I didn't pop my ambush and Tony waited until he had reserves before really having a crack at the front objective while also throwing a sneaky 38(t) platoon up one flank out of sight of my armour.  Here's turn 3. Those infantry on the left are on Tony's deployment zone:

This photo is the state of play at turn 4 where my Panzer IIIs and some reserve Panzer IIs saw off the flanking force:

And then turn 6 where my reserve 8-rads and 2iC failed to see off either of the 38(t) HQ tanks OR any of Tony's Panzer  IIs. On the top right you can see my Panzer IIIs who made a mad dash to an objective just out of frame at the top of the table.

Tony pulled the 38(t)s in the middle back to try and shoot me off the objective and his Panzer IIs and 38(t) HQ ruined my reserve Panzer IIs such that he had a pretty straight run at the objective. His shots on my Panzer IIIs bailed one, leaving us with a most absurd sequence of "remount required. If failed, last man required. If passed, I win. If failed, Tony wins" moments.

It was one of those games where the result doesn't really reflect the game either. If Tony had managed to shoot me off the objective then the game was his as I had a Panzer IIC and 2 Panzer Is holding the front objective and I think Tony's 38(t) HQ and 4 Panzer IIs would have rolled over those easily.

This game makes me want to give 38(t)s a try in EW. Whenever BF gets around to redoing EW for V4 properly, I will be in.

Next Time

The Hummels are done, pending adding foliage so they'll be in the gun for next week. I've got the final highlights on my Normans for my Byzantine army as well so will get those finished and maybe even based as a chance to try out my new basing ideas. 

A little effort moves the plans forward

 So my productivity plan started off well. I managed to find some time before work and of an evening occasionally to move something along. I decided that Hummels were probably the easiest, being single coloured and slab sided!

So I got their base coats, washes and most of the top coats done, but I've got to find some more Balkenkreuz transfers and finish off the crew before putting on the foilage and calling them done. I'd hoped to have them finished but no such luck! This week though!

But I did do a thing and added one more model to my limited palette series. This Rouge was (unexpectedly) done entirely in greys, other than a bit of skin and leather. The photo angle is weird but it was the best angle to show off the colours.

 

 I'm really pleased with how the grey highlights came out, even on the very dark grey cloak and really enjoyed mucking around finding grey highlights for other greys! Now I just have to decide which one to do next!

Next Time

Closing club day of the year and it's Early War Flames time. Looking forward to rolling out the terrible tanks and seeing how they go. I'll also be finishing up the Hummels this week and trying to do at least one more of my limited palette set.  

Pooch's November update

Well, November is done now too, leaving just the one month left to finish the year. How is progress you might ask, well....

1. Finish a table of terrain

Another month of no progress on this one, I really need to pull finger and get it done!

2. Play a game a month

This month was a solo game, to try out the new Silver Bayonet rules from Joseph McCullough. It played really well, and felt like the core system from Frostgrave and Stargrave has been refined to a great place. I'm definitly going to be painting more for it, and will be encouraging the other nerds to give it a go.

In the scenario, the Prussians were surrounded by some wolves and werewolves, and needed to find some clues and escape. 

The starting disposition of the Prussians

I’m sure this infantryman got away fine….

3. Finish a 1,500 point 40k army

This one made a bit more progress too, with a Hospitallier done for the Sisters...

“I’m not sure your insurance covers this…..”

A better view of the injured sister

And two Inquisitors with their retinue sorted as well. Some of the retinue came from my Krieg army, some were freshly painted things I had planned to use in my Krieg army!

An Inquisitor in Terminator armour, converted from Voldus, and Corteaz

Gunslinger, medic, Ad Mech, servo skull and a Cadian meltagunner!

4. Finish an army that I have part started

Nothing new on this front, I've got a bunch of things that I need to do, but didn't finish them off.

5. Buy, build and play a new game

I wanted to get all of the Celts done this month, but I just totally ran out of steam, and got well sick of them. There are 15 infantry, and 8 Cavalry left to go....

A little bit of painting, and a whole lot of basing…..

Into the last month, still a fair bit on the 'to do' pile!

Pooch

Thinking on productivity

Inspired, after a fashion, by Tim at Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog and his Warhammer Underworlds stocktake, I started reflecting on the relatively unproductive last few months of hobby time. I've noticed that I've struggled with the weekly pace of getting something finished on the weeks between club days and that's compounded by some really good games recently that I haven't taken any pics of and don't remember well enough to blog properly. 

So I've been staring at the mess that is my workbench and at the associated miscellany of stuff that's sitting here waiting to be done and I've decided I should catalogue it and get focussed on getting some of it done before 2022. So what's left on the list of things I'd *like* to make progress on before I go back to work after the New Year? 

• Finish up painting and basing my Byzantines
• Paint Hummels
• Paint the 25 various 28mm models (some DnD, 40K, Necromunda and miscellaneous steampunk) 
• Finish building my OP Leman Russ for 40K

In a lot of these cases, I'd be happy to bring them up past just being primed. That'd be a good start and then finding the mood to finish them off would be good. 

But I did do a thing!!

Jagdpanzer IV/70s

In the interests of finishing things that are almost done, I decided to have a crack at the dotting for the ambush camo. 

Here's a WIP when I hadn't done the dots on the Middlestone layer:

I really, genuinely almost stopped here. I kind of like how this looks. But I figured it would be right to press on with it and the finished platoon looks like this:

The toothpick method for dotting was pretty solid and aside from having to do a couple of very careful touchups with the brush where I really goofed, it wasn't too bad. Am I super happy with the result, no. Is it not bad for the first time I've ever done it and would I consider painting an entire army of Hetzers like this? Yes.

Next Time

It's gotta be something off that list right? I should really finish my Normans for my Byzantine army as they're mostly just waiting for highlights. So lets say I'll do that.  

Working on my Byzantines

 Having rebased the generals last week, it's finally time to push on with the rest of the Byzantines. 

I've started the hard part now - trying to paint the last models to match the style of my original army. I've started with the two bases of Normans from the list as they're a little less complex and with less like the rest of the army.

 

I've still got a shield to add to one of the knights and some socks and things to add to the horses but I wanted to get them this far partly for this blog and partly to remember how much of a challenge of LBM transfers are. But man the finish is worth it. And the rimmed Norman shields do a nice job helping size them.

I've also done the horses for my light horse (because I hate painting 28mm horses but I can remember how I did them originally) and mounted up the archers to start painting them. While I do those, I'll do the Menavlatoi as they're in the same sort of uniform. 

 

I've also remounted some spare javelinmen into an MI base as well as I had four LI bases and the list only allows two, so an MI base didn't seem like it would hurt. Getting their javelins reattached made quite a mess of the paintwork although this problem isn't unique in this army at the mo.

Next Time

I'm hoping to get up to my friendly LGS some time before Christmas to acquire supplies for the break which will let me do the rest of the basing. In the meantime, I've got some Hummels to do, so they'll probably get started alongside the last of the Byzantines. 

Noodling along

 I played most of a game of Victory at Sea yesterday with Blogger Tank, when the Regia Marina and the Kriegsmarine had some wargames in what looks very much like the Pacific... 

Moments before the Vittorio Veneto launched a full broadside into the Admiral Scheer

This time I got to land both MAS and MS boats (oh my!) and launch a lot of destroyer-based torpedoes. I also got U-boated (is that a verb?) and that went less well. The Tirpitz is a beast of a ship and I shot a lot of torpedos into her and really struggled to get past the torpedo belt.

I also got my Jagdpanzer IV/70s out against Blogger Pel's Desert Rats. He's working hard to make them work in LW and I reckon he's cracked it. We played Scouts Out, a mission that neither of us has played and looked, on the face of it like it would be over super quick.

Jagdpanzer IV/70s in ambush

I expose not just the Jagdpanzer CO's flank but also it's rear armour!!

Totally wrong about that - we ran the game through to 7 turns in the end and had Pel not taken an opportunistic shot on the flank of my CO Jagdpanzer by moving his two PIAT-armed carriers away from the objective and that allowed my 250 OP and most of a platoon of Panzergrenadiers to give his Para platoon what for and win the game. Had he not, he would have taken the other flank with his Stuarts who were definitely giving me hell, having taken out my Wespe battery and the two SdKfz 7/2s left holding the objective weren't going to hold it! 

The Jadgpanzer IV/70s aren't quite done yet, but they're coming along. Pel suggested using a cocktail stick or something similar to make the ambush camo dots and I rather like that idea so will be trying to knock them off this week. I was pretty happy to get all the basecoats and details on to get them to be table-ready! 

Workbenchy things

I've finished the last of the prep for the new Byzantines, epoxying in the last of the lances and spears that needed to be reattached or attached and getting them ready for primer so they'll be hitting the paint table soon. I'd really like to get the basing of the whole army done in one hit so that'll be a fun job coming up. I'm enjoying ADLG and it's nice level of complexity so I'm currently on the hunt for another army. In the meantime, I've rebased my generals: 

Crusaders

Finally done! :) 

 

Now I need a parts order from the UK to get here and I'll be able to finish up an OP Leman Russ I'm working on and should have a new and interesting small Guard army to try out. 

Next Time

I've got some 15mm Hummels on the workbench for my 15mm Flames of War Germans and the massive basing job on the Byzantines. Having played a game of Victory at Sea with Tank's sweet islands, that's got me encouraged to do mine, I just have to finish sanding down the some of the PLA and maybe find some filler primer. 

Doodads and new things!

 Late and not a lot going on. Necessary holidays are necessary, and for once I didn't have time to pre-publish something...

 New Toys

A parcel from Gripping Beast arrived with new toys for many of the nerds. I have started working on mine and doing the things that are slightly more interesting than the challenge of matching my existing light horse. 

First, some Menavlatoi to sit alongside my Skutatoi:

 I really like how these models look - the short, thick-hafted spears and the cool posing on the models will make for a neat additional HI, 2HW base.

Second, the base I'm most looking forward to doing, a Greek Fire Syphon:

 Is it good? Almost certainly not. Does it look cool? Oh yes. 

Progress

 The army has been polyfilla-ed ready for basing, but I probably won't do the basing until after I've painted the new things.

 

You'll see in this picture new doodads from genius Olivier at Battlekiwi. I asked him about making some and he pointed out that he already had one for 15mm scale that he could rescale for 28mm.

Very happy. Very. 

Next Time

I'll be rebasing my generals for ADLG with new bases from Battlekiwi as well and getting stuck into painting those. Oh, and finally finishing those Crusaders. He says. Again.

Pooch's October update

And with that, October is done too! 

I finished up a big painting commission this month, which burned me out a bit on things for myself. But that said, I still made a bunch of progress on things, most notably continuing to paint  a lot of Celts for my ADLG army! 

1. Finish a table of terrain

I have the pieces I need for this started. And have managed to fail miserably about doing anything at all about it. Maybe next month, or maybe December. I just need to do it.....

2. Play a game a month

But wait, there is more Victory at Sea! This time a Cruiser battle between the USN and the IJN. 

USN Cruisers, sailing around a South Pacific island

The first of many USN Cruisers to go down in flames.....

Cruisers vs Cruisers was interesting- the Japanese torpedoes were absolutely lethal, accounting for all of the USN ships sunk. The counter point was that the USN gunnery was far better- but that was really just down to my dice deciding to be incredibly reliable! 

I continue to really enjoy the game, and will likely end up playing more in November too!

3. Finish a 1,500 point 40k army

This month I finished up two vehicles for my Sisters army.

It wasn't intentional, but the posing is very horror movie-esque......

The first a Rhino....

I don't love painting white vehicles

Mostly happy with it however!

The second a Penitent Engine

Because heavy flamers and giant saw blades are necessary.

Next up.... more Sisters of some sort, I have some airbrushed and ready to go, and some I want to assemble and paint. So.... some of that I'm sure!

4. Finish armies that I have part started

My Afrika Corps army expanded from their initial Panzer IIIs, to now include Panzer IIs, and some 8-rad armoured cars! This means that I now have a legal list for Remember December, but I have far more tanks to work through.... not sure what will be next!

The airbrushing on these was a bit more annoying than on the Panzer IIIs, I think beginner's luck was at play when I did my first batch!

Two 8-rad armoured cars

Spot the replacement wheel....

Zvezda Panzer IIs looking cool

The whole army so far!

5. Buy, build and play a new game

More Celts painted, still more to go.... 

How many of them do you ask?

Many.

How many? 119 Infantry, 8 Cavalry so far!

Aiming to finish them all next month!

Two months to go.... better get cracking!