Happy Holidays

 So I took Christmas Day off from writing blog posts and honestly, seemed like a good idea. However, in amongst the small mountain of 1:1 scale work that's been going on around my house, I have got a bit of painting time in. 

I've spent a lot of it on prep - the rest of my 15mm Spanish infantry has been ice-block sticked and primed, I've painted the last of the horses on my cavalry (but not the riders yet...) so they're ready to get moving on. I've also built some vehicles and finished up painting another warband for Warhammer Underworlds.

So here's a quick few photos:

Skaeth's Wild Hunt was one of those Underworlds warbands I really wanted to paint and I'm fairly happy with how Skaeth himself has come out. I've based this on the studio scheme but done a few things a little differently to suit how I like to do things.

The first two turrets and hulls of the Battlefront Ostwind / Wirbelwind kit came next. I can't say these were the most fun kits I've ever built - the turrets are a touch fiddlier than I'd like although they're 1000000% better than the old metal 2cm quads and that's for damn skippy. The casts on the crew were also a bit of a letdown - very fuzzy. However, it's great that there's enough in the kit to do both turrets and given I wanted both options for lists for Bulge, I'm stoked to have them. 

Finally, to welcome in 2023, Boba Fett! I really enjoyed painting this and spent longer than I probably normally would working out exactly which colours I wanted everything. Turns out there's a lot of inconsistency between the original movies, the new TV series and the comic illustrations. I basically scrolled through pictures and wound up with a weird mishmash of all of them. Meh.

Next Time

The last of the holiday break WIPs and a bit of a plan for 2023, thinking about what's on the to-do list, what I might start and what I'd like to get finished. 

Finishing touches

 Underworlds

I finished up the Thorns of the Briar Queen:

 They came up really nicely. They were aggressively attacked with GW Ryza Rust on all the chains, which gives them a nice burst of colour and the Briar Queen herself is a great model. I'm glad I could get hold of these and paint them.

They got out for a run against Blogger Scotty's Eyes of the Nine. I also made us play long board which may have been a mistake...

 

 I got slightly vexed by my objective deck (aside from the fact it's too small) and did a bunch of stupid stuff as a result but I did like that Varclav allows for easy movement of Chainrasps and that *eventually* I got my order of operations sorted out.

Meanwhile the Eyes of the Nine looked awesome. Scotty's done a magnificent job on them: 

 

The game was over on turn two after Scotty aggressively committed the warband while I durdled:

As Vortemis was slightly vexed by the Briar Queen's anti-magic chicanery, he promptly ended her existence. In response, the Everhanged sent a scary rope thing and finished off Vortemis. Varclav did for the horrors and a chainrasp (!) did the last of the work - I rolled a lot of crits when I needed to....

And a Panzer III...

I've noticed in games of Flames of late that my opponents have been uncomfortably happy trying to ruin my super cute little SdKFz 250 OP so I've upgraded to a sweet sweet Panzer III (thanks Blogger Scotty!).

Now as I think about it, I wonder if it's more about the Hummels sitting at the back of the board? Maybe? 

Next Time

It's Christmas Day. I might blog. We shall see. 

 

Countdown to Chrysler

 It's a busy time all the way down here at the bottom of the world in the runup to Christmas and not a lot is going on gaming wise. Our end of year event at our club was deferred to the new year as a significant number of our regular players couldn't make it and given it's a memorial event, that's kind of important. 

So with that in mind, I took my Ardennes Assault Panzergrenadiers out for a run against clubmate Chris' Brigade Panzer IV horde. We played Escape: 

It looked really dire for him when my Jagdpanzer IV/70s arrived in turn one but I flubbed my Volkshetzer ambush, only got revenge due to a VERY lucky remount roll and the game rolled on until about turn 5 when three Panzer IVs arrived on the objective and all I needed was the one tank platoon to fail a Last Stand and he didn't. In fact Chris just about passed every single Last Stand test he took which really kept the Brigade troops running. He even braved a mounted assault into my dug in Panzergrenadiers who promptly Panzerfausted like a bunch of bosses and wrecked things. All in all, both of us walked away happy with our lists. I will say that if Battlefront manage to get a box of Ost/Wirbelwinds in before the rescheduled date, I *might* be playing something much worse and even stupider. I might...

I also taught Blogger Tank to play Underworlds which was a really interesting game. He's got a couple of very finesse warbands and in this one he played Ylthari's Guardians against my Magore's Fiends. It went pretty well until it went sideways but I can see how the warband works and I think it might be quite good. This reminded me that I hadn't blogged the finished Gorechosen and that I've been working on another warband too! 

The Gorechosen of Dromm

I've gushed about these models and I won't do it again. Suffice to say they're lovely and I love them. It's also an incredible warband to play as it's SO savage.

The Thorns of the Briar Queen

I found these online and when Blogger Pooch mentioned he had the cards and not the models, I leapt. They're SO lovely and I think will be playable, if hard to win games with. They're nearly done but I'm not going to slog through them in one day! The edge highlights and flowers are going to take time and I'd rather not screw them up!

Next Time

More Shadespire and a Panzer III OP tank that Blogger Scotty dug up for me. It's going to be painting blogs for a while I suspect...

Pooch's November update

Ok. So November is now done too? This is REALLY ridiculous now. But at least this blog is on time?

With one month left to go, how have I gotten on?

1. Paint a platoon of DAK each month

This month we are back to tanks for the DAK, this time the largely unappreciated workhorse of the German Army, the Panzer IV. I say unappreciated for two reasons, the first because it very quickly gets overshadowed by the later marks of tanks (looking at you Herr Tiger!), but also because in Flames of War they are cripplingly expensive in Mid War, especially when you put a long 75mm gun on them.

Which of course, for three of them I have. Because I have always liked the Panzer IV 'special' from the desert battles.

These four tanks represent a Company HQ and a platoon of 3 Panzer IV F2 tanks. 

Company commander Panzer IV F1

Platoon of 3 Panzer IV F2

Next up, back to infantry I think, now that I have managed to get my grubby hands on some more DAK infantry packs!

2. Add something to armies I have already painted

One of the models I have been meaning to add to my Star Wars Legion army is the Spider Droid. It's such a silly design, but oh so wonderful, and so very much in the Star Wars aesthetic.

Plus, it's packing a flamethrower which is just entertaining!

Googly red eyes and a flamethrower nose. What's not to like?

3. Finish up a table of terrain

This month it's back to painting terrain for the Silver Bayonet, first up with the wonderful barn from Battlekiwi, which I built while watching the Black Ferns rugby final...

Done up in the same red tile and moss style as the rest of my buildings

Removable roof, opening doors, all very cool.

And I also finished up this Loonshrine, which I got from somewhere at sometime for reasons. None of which I can remember.

It'll work well as a piece of terrain for goblins to be fighting around for Silver Bayonet, or even Kings of War?

Skulls, a grumpy face and a big bad moon on the top

And more of the same on the other side!

I've got one more building to paint for Silver Bayonet, so aiming to finish that in December to round out the massive amount of progress on that table this year.

4. Play a game a month, that was different to the last month

This month I managed to take the aforementioned Spider Droid out for a spin, taking on McZ's Empire!

The game went poorly (if you are a B1 Battle Droid) but well (if you are the rest of the Separatist force), which is pretty consistent with my experience of playing Droids so far!

Droids!

More Droids!

The Empire!

Playing full size Legion was a good experience, 800 points does provide a lot of things, but not all the things (even for Droids!) The Droid Tank is very good, but the internet had already told me that, repeatedly.

5. Paint a new historical army

December has rolled around, and with it comes the next installment of our end of year Remember December event. 

This time it is Late War, drawn from any of the three Bulge books for Flames of War. I decided to go with my US Paras, and remembered this scene from the Band of Brothers series, where a line of British tankers as a part of Operation Market Garden turned up, then promptly got ambushed....

And so I decided that my Paratroopers needed some British Tank support, in the form of 4 Shermans, two equipped with 17pdrs and all of them equipped with Tulip Rockets!

Four cool as heck Shermans

Side view- I really like the pop of colour that the Tulip rocket provides 

And the front- showing the absurdity that is turret mounted aircraft rockets.....

I'm playing a little fast and loose with the history aspect here- the addition of Tulip Rockets came about later than the Market Garden campaign- but I at least made sure that I got the markings right to represent the Coldstream Guards who used them.

Will they be any good in the game? No clue. They look great in a completely Ork-ish kindof way tho!

ONE MORE MONTH, PROGRESS MUST CONTINUE

Pooch

1:1 Scale Modelling is less fun

SO MUCH LESS FUN. But I have still finished the 251s! OR at least I think I have. They all still need Balkenkreuzes but that's a waiting for everything to dry properly task.

Stummels & Drillings

Drilling go BRRRRR!

 

Stummel go BRRRRR?

I like how both kits have come out. The Stummels are super derpy but they look great and the Drillings are absurd. I tinkered with them a bit to try and figure out if I could aim the gun mount differently but didn't have a lot of joy. But they fit nicely with the rest of the army and my terrible army for Remember December is done.

Next Time

We'll see how they go! And since it's the last club day of the year, I have no idea what you'll get for the rest of 2022 but hey, that's part of the fun!

Charge in, stains out!

Troubleshooters

When we've finished our current RPG run of Lex Arcana Blogger Tank is going to run our RPG crew through a game of Troubleshooters. This RPG runs and plays in the style of a 1960s Franco-Belgian Bande-Desinée - basically imagine an RPG of Tintin and you're somewhere in the ballpark. I'll be playing an officer of the Royal Belgian Customs Service named Ruben. RPG friend T-Boss gave the lads the pick of character models from his version of CMONs Cthulhu - Death May Die and I've got this one: 

It's a simple paint scheme - I'm sort of copying the card art from Death May Die - but my conceit was to gloss varnish the shoes and webbing. Because Ruben is a man who does not turn up to work looking anything other than parade ground ready. Officious? No. Just very good at his job and with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Franco-Belgian border practice.

More December Prep

I've done the first two halftracks, one each of the 15mm Flak and 75mm Stummel: 

They've come up well and as you can see from the photo, fit in pretty well alongside the PSC 251/D that will be transportating my Assault Grenadiers.

l'Art de la Guerre

I broke the Teutons out against Blogger McBeth's Scots, led by MacBeth, because why wouldn't you? I got very lucky with the terrain landing and got a mostly open field with only a gentle hill for McBeth to defend with his armoured, elite heavy spearmen! My Crusaders got very excited as they could head straight down the beach to fight some formed swordsmen:

On my other flank, Norman cavalry attacked the Teutons to get some favourable matchups: 

The lines met and my dice were absolutely appalling. 1s and 2s across the board. In two rounds of combat, 7 of my ten Knight bases were damaged or destroyed outright. Even in combats where I was up 3 to 1... so the game was over really quickly but hey, they looked cool going down in a screaming heap.

Musing on Panzer Buns

So in this post here I reviewed a mid-war Italian Guastatori list in light of the points amendments made by the Bunshop Wargamers that look to rebalance mid-war and I said that Buns didn't change the list. Turns out I was wrong and Guastatori platoons are also 3 points cheaper so now I'm off to thinking about alternatives. 

 Current plans are to either drop in a Lancia da 90 because one 90mm gun is better than no 90mm guns OR possibly drop in a special character that gives me Night Attack when I attack, extra minefields when I defend and better assaults provided he's in the assault. I love the idea of one guaranteed minefield when defending.

 I tested the list yesterday with the Lancia da 90 against Scotty's Hungarians in Probe and only won because Scotty couldn't pass a counter attack roll for love nor money and all my reserves arrived in the same spot from scattered reserves. Huh. 

Next Time

MOAR painting. I've got just under a fortnight to get five more halftracks done!!

The drive to Get-There-City

 It's been a busy few weeks down here as we run up to Christmas and the mood for painting hasn't really struck. But with an appropriate motivation, it's amazing how quickly you can get there.

Finishing up the Scarif Beach Party again...

I spent some time finishing up the bits I powered through in order to get spanked by Pooch's droids.

Agent Kallus is quite a cool model in the end and I like how he's come up, given it's still mostly black. And on the subject of mono-tone things, the Dewback:

Both riders done. I do like the model with the T-21. It's got a kind of cowboy vibe to it, just carrying a longarm at the rest like that. I do really love this model and while I have fought with the green to come up the way I want it, it isn't. It's come up better in the pictures than in real life!

Now there's just two more things to do. I've just started work on the infamous Boba Fett and when IG-88 comes out some time in 2023, I'm going to put together an 'Imperial Super Friends' list with Vader, Boba Fett, Bossk and IG-88 (and nothing but Stormtroopers and Imperial Officer types who you might find on a Star Destroyer) after this scene in Star Wars:

But this time there WILL be disintegrations....!

Remember December Prep

With our annual club Flames of War event (this year themed on the new FoW Bulge lists) coming up in a little under three weeks, I decided on a list. Then I couldn't for love nor money get a box of Battlefront Ostwind / Wirbelwinds. So I decided on another list but that list wants about 20 SdKfz 250s that I don't own and ain't nobody got time for that. 

So I came up with a third option and will be running an FHH Veteran Ardennes Assault Panzergrenadier company. It'll mean painting up a few halftracks in the next couple of weeks but I can manage that. The first job though was to paint a CO & 2iC for the army, so I dug through my bits box and lo!

I've got some triple-15mm AA half tracks and some SdKfz 251s with Stummels inbound alongside a couple of other toys that Blogger McBeth put into a list for....defending with. It's an intriguing proposition so look out for those upcoming too.

Next Time

Club day and whatever that means. Something silly no doubt. Also, look out for WIPs of Boba Fett, another RPG character and the early stages of my RD painting! 

Pooch's October update

 Man, I am really yo-yoing on the timing of these updates. One month is super late, one month is super on time. Is there any rhyme or reason to it?

No. 

Will it change?

Also no.

At least the painting has continued right?

1. Paint a platoon of DAK each month

Winning the prize for the most useless unit in the DAK army in Flames of War.... The Stuka!

It wins that prize because you need to roll to have it arrive, then you need to roll to range in for it's bomb, then you need to roll to hit the things under the template, then have them fail their save, and then passing the 2+ firepower roll.... and all for the princely sum of 9 points.

Still, they are so iconic for the early/mid war Germans, so I couldn't not have some. All in all, I really didn't enjoy painting them. I wanted to do airbrush camo, but me and the airbrush had a big fight resulting in me needing to do the camouflage by hand. Which I don't hate, but isn't quite as good as I was hoping for.

Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeorm

Not sure what will be next month- Probably should be some Panzers, but then I do have some infantry on the way...

2. Add something to armies I have already painted

I failed on the painting something for my Sororitas, so let's quickly breeze into the fact that I finished up a bunch more Shadespire warbands!

Drepur's Wraithkeepers

Storm of Celestus

Hedkrakka's Madmob

Kharga's Reavers

The Grymwatch

Thundrik's Profiteers

So just.... one or two warbands right? And this is still not all of the ones I own!

3. Finish up a table of terrain

Potbelly Miniatures has been at it again, this time printing me up a stunning Baba Yaga's hut, which I am going to use for games of Silver Bayonet (once I finish up preparing the rules for the scenario!)

Hut hut!

Back of Hut Hut

Reconquest Designs Scarecrow for scale (and because I painted him this month too!)

The model is simply a wonderful design and print, so perfect in theme and scale to be a part of the Silver Bayonet game.

4. Play a game a month, that was different to the last month

This month I played a lot of Warhamer Underworlds. Both at the club, at home, pretty much with anyone who would play the game! I really got a good handle on the rules and how to play the game- although I got smashed in many games, it was a real blast! It's for sure going to be a regular game for me from now on.

Storm of Celestus in action

Wollop da Skull fighting a fish elf.....

Pooch Jr running the Storm of Celestus

Four player Warhammer Underworlds!

5. Paint a new historical army

I'm back updating my late war US tanks to fit in with the latest Bulge US book, meaning I got the whitewash back out again, this time completing Stuarts, Jeeps, Priests and a Super Pershing.

So grimy, so good!

A bit of a closer look

MORE TIMELY UPDATES ARE DEMANDED

Pooch