Allez Les Français!

1:1 scale painting has once again derailed my hobbying time over the last week but a few things have gotten done. 

Les Français commencent!

 

 First off, my Officer Colonel Jean-Hippolyte Gavreau de Laframboise and his Junior Officer, Captaine Abelard Beaumanoir, Baron de Laffitte. 

 Next is one of the French Army's foremost, and most mysterious Supernatural Investigators, Lieutenant Jean-Paul Chateaubriand. In his sneaky brown cloak and face wrap, it's only his officer's hat that gives him away.

And finally, we add a Line Infantryman from the French Army's Wurtemburger Regiment, Fusilier Georg Bitterlich, and the unit's Native Scout, Cosaque Zhanteimir Nezdiymynoha.   

So that's five down so far, and I've started on two more infantrymen, one from the Portuguese Legion, and an Engineer. Then I'll get into the cavalry!

Platoon a Month

So I've still got a platoon of greatcoat infantry and my greatcoat mortars to do and I still can't face them (which is alarming given the recent arrival of a new 15mm project....) so I cracked into some Bradleys. 

 

These are two platoons of two M2A2 Bradley Scouts for a Bradley Armoured Cavalry company for Team Yankee. It's a formation that I kind of love where the core is 5 Bradleys and 4 M1A1 Abrams. Is it good? No, not really. do I love it? Yes.  

I've also only got one more Bradley and a pair of Cobras to finally finish all the TY US stuff I think I'm likely to want to do.

Next Time

I'll be taking the Teutonic Order out for another run so we'll see how that goes. I'll also start working on my Platoon a Month for May given that I'll need them for an event in June! It'll be me in another solid round of Turrets are for Chumps in a Flames of War event.

Pooch's April Update

 A much more timely update for April- so timely that it's actually still April!

But more importantly, how did I get on with the painting goals....

1. Paint a platoon of DAK each month

The Afrika Korps production line rolls on, this time with a quintessential unit, the mighty 88! 

These figures are the new plastic models, and are brilliantly designed by Battlefront and have come out really well in the chipped/distressed style that I am working with for my army. 

Not just one, but 4 of the heavy AA/AT guns!

I've used all of the cool gubbins from the sprues on the bases too

Lots of spare shell cases on the sprue- so I used them all!

Next up, not sure. Need to paint some Panzer IIIs for the Panzershrek army, but... I also now own Bison....

2. Add something to armies I have already painted

A simple one for this category this month, two civilians painted for Dracula's America games. They came from a Wargames Foundry ACW civilian pack. Not much more to say, other than I am happy to have more civilians for the game!

"Oi, point your lantern at where I'm pointing...." 

3. Finish up a table of terrain

It's possible that I am becoming mildly obsessed with the amazing buildings from Corvus Games. Because.... I finished two more of them, and I have more on the go for next month.

Two more awesome buildings!

Such cool detailing

And the back has cool little details too!

I don't think I have ever been addicted to buying and painting terrain before, this is weird for me!

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

This month was playing the Victory at Sea ruleset from Warlord Games, using the community led points system. As a ruleset, the game is quite solid- it's certainly a "game of the movie" kindof feel- it stops well short of charts and tables to decide the effectiveness of gunnery, and everything all boils down to rolling d6s, and d10s for criticals.

One of the core issues with the rules as written is in the points- in that they are really off in a number of places, and the response from the designers seems to be "no, they are fine, we did it on purpose". Cue the community stepping in to do some points balancing, which we tested out for the first time in this game. Overall, it made for a much better experience in our opinion.

The game was the US Navy, led by the USS Missouri fighting the IJN, led by an off table Akagi carrier. How did it go? Not so good for the US Navy, in that... pretty much every ship got sunk, and the Japanese were able to achieve all objectives!

The USN Fleet

The IJN fleet

The Mighty Mo underway

And then I mostly got too distracted to take photos, as my ships frantically avoided being struck by Japanese torpedoes! 

The effectiveness of the Japanese torpedoes was on full display in the game- while a number of torpedoes were fired, it was a single torpedo that did no less than 82 points of damage to the Mighty Mo in a single hit, due to escalating critical damage throughout the ship!

A lot of criticals. And actually, more occured shortly after the photo....

I'll certainly play Victory at Sea again this year, I do enjoy the game- even if all my ships get sunk!

I've already got a solid plan for next month too...

5. Paint a new historical army

Well, I said last month that progress would be some Cuirassiers, and maybe some basing. I did one of those two things, in that I painted some Cuirassiers!

Will look so much better when based!

Next up... for something different.... more Cuirassiers, and maybe some basing?

Good... good...

Pooch

Just, like, stuff and things...

Teutons

So Blogger Pooch summed it up when he said "nice to find a game where they're not &^#%" and I agree.

I lost to Blogger McBeth's Scots, but the almost all cavalry list ran really well and I managed to get a couple of favourable matchups which went well. I didn't quite manage to blow through the line in the way that I had hoped though. In the turn I lost (when, for the only time in recorded history McBeth, roller of 6s, rolled the required 1 to pop one of my Generals and break me!) I got McBeth to close on his side so it was an encouraging first run for the list.

Workbench

I rulebooked for Bloggers Tank and Scotty through a couple of games of Silver Bayonet yesterday which got me super enthused to get into painting my French. I decided to start with the Officer and the Junior Officer.

One of the joys of these sorts of games is coming up with good names, so the officer on the left will rejoice under the moniker Colonel Jean-Hippolyte Gavreau de Laframboise and the Junior Officer on the right is Captaine Abelard Beaumanoir, Baron de Laffitte. 

I'm relying pretty heavily on Perry initially for the colour palette but I'm going to have to go digging for some of these models for figuring colours but that's part of the fun! 

Islands

All done. I foolishly got them out of the hot water cupboard and the clear medium started frosting again, so they've gone back into the warm to set as while I expected a week in the cupboard would be enough as I didn't think I'd been quite as heavy handed with it as I did with my Star Wars Legion, but apparently I did so they'll be curing for a bit...

While I probably need to put some whitecaps on some of the surfaces, at this point I really like how these have come out and am definitely looking forward to getting my Regia Marina out to have a wee blat around these.

Next Time

More French and my 'platoon a month' for April. Nothing exciting. :)

In the sea, on the sea and over the sea!

Sea Related Things

We shall begin with a short showcase of things maritime, for my Victory at Sea Regia Marina fleet.

First the first couple of the islands I bought from Battlekiwi: 

I have to rave a little bit about Mod Podge for this. Applied liberally in around 5 coats, most of the print lines on the PLA islands have basically vanished. I've lost a bit of the crispness of some of the more 'reefy' islands but that's kind of okay given the scale and a bit of flock and sand to cover up the rest has done a nice job. The only lesson I will impart is it probably needs a blast with a hair dryer or heat gun or something to pop all the bubbles. If it bubbles, those set pretty hard.

 Secondly, the RM Emanuele Filiberto Duca d'Aosta:

This was an easy ship to paint in the end and has a goodly amount of detail for the white and orange splashes I like on the grey. On the other hand, I had to strip and repaint the stripes as I confidently finished this ship well in advance of this blog and then discovered I'd painted the stripes rising left to right, not right to left like EVERY OTHER SHIP I OWN. 

 Finally, some BA 201 Dive Bombers over the sea. I needed another four stands of planes to fully crew the RM Aquila and given I already have some RM 2001 fighters, some dive bombers seemed like a good call. 

They're painted broadly the same, but different, from my fighters just for my own sanity. I still find the weird asymmetric stands for these things to be odd but I'm used to it now.

French for Silver Bayonet

An order from Perry Miniatures, my first, arrived this week so I've started working on the French for Silver Bayonet. I'm building my crew out of Perry's Retreat from Moscow range as it's suitably characterful for this game. 

Dismounted Cuirassier, Supernatural Investigator, Officer

I'm stuck now waiting on an order of paint for this - Blogger Pooch recommended Vallejo's Prussian Blue as the best base coat so I have ordered some but having some courier-driven chicanery at this point has delayed really getting into these models. 

I have managed to do one model so far, this chap looks suitably like a Cossack, I went off down the Google Image Search rabbit hole and found a great illustration of a Ural Cossack from 1812. I could do this without the necessary blue so I figured I'd crack on. 

He'll be a Native Scout in Silver Bayonet terms as that sort of works for the French in Russia.

Knight

So the core of the build is done and dry fitted, looks like this:

I'm really happy with how it's come together and given how little pose-ability there is in the legs of these models it still looks dynamic enough for me to be happy. The arm is hanging lower than it will when I'm done but I'll have it reaching more forward.

 The current conundrum is whether to paint the pilot and then how to pop the carapace hatch open without it weirdly getting in the way of the rocket launcher.

It's a bit of an evolution of style and design from the original Epic-scale Knight Errant.

Next Time

The Teutons will hopefully get a run in ADLG and the Regia Marina will sail again against the American navy.  I'll be finishing up the rest of the islands before then too.

Pooch's March update

Wait, March is done too? This is getting ridiculous. I don't have a good reason for why it's taken me two weeks to get this post written. Life I guess? Shrug.

Luckily, painting has still managed to carry on!

1. Paint a platoon of DAK each month

This month is one of my favourite vehicles for the Afrika Corps- the Diana!

Marrying up a captured Russian anti-tank gun, with some slabs of armour plate on top of a half tracked prime mover- such fun! In game terms they are fine- they get overshadowed by the Marder, which does the same job better, for a point or so more. Regardless, rule of cool means I bought Diana, not Marders!

Oh so cool!

With crew, and ranging rulers

2. Add something to armies I have already painted

This month it's Adeptus Titanicus, where I have finished the biggest, and smallest models for the game!

First up is the Warbringer, equipped with two massive Plasma Destructors, with magnetised small weapons on it's shoulders. It's the shooty version of the one that McZ finished up a month or so ago!

And along with the Warbringer, I also finished some of the lovely Armigers from Forgeworld. These little cuties are potentially useful in game, especially when I added the two 3d printed ones I finished up at some stage last year.

Such a big stomy titan!

And not so big and stompy!

Next month... not sure!

3. Finish up a table of terrain

More progress on my 28mm Moderns table, this time with buildings from the amazing Corvus Games! We have a local club member who has started into the 3d printing game, who is doing exceptionally good work at it. Combine that with some really high quality designs from Corvus, and you have a recipie for some really really cool terrain for my table.

The two new buildings, plus some locals

A close up of the back of the Corvus Games building

And the oh so cool donut shop!

I also managed to find a mould I had lying around for some Jersey Barriers, so I cast up a set from DAS Clay to add to the table too.

Next up? More from Corvus Games!

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

This month it was a brand new game for me, Altar of Freedom! McB and I got out our shiny new 6mm ACW and refought the second battle of Kernstown.

As a ruleset we both really liked how the game played- there was a lot in it both strategically and tactically, and while units were outright destroyed only rarely, there was a lot of push backs and exploitation moves. 

Union Dismounted Cavalry hold the hill, with infantry in reserve

The Union defensive line on the hill, with the Confederates advancing

The fight on the Union left flank

Definitly a game that we will be playing more of this year. The other important conclusion that we came to was that we would need more 6mm ACW (oh no....)

5. Paint a new historical army

With my 6mm ACW completed (for now), I have moved on to the next new historical army for the year, a 15mm Thirty Years War Catholic army for ADLG-R. I have gone with the lovely Khurasan miniatures, and have set about buying them in small(ish) batches, so that I don't become overfaced and demotivated- learning some lessons from finishing up other Ancient armies! 

Nothing is yet finished, so here is a taster for how we are going- some Dragoons!

Some cuirassiers are up next, and maybe some basing?

Progress is..... acceptable....

Pooch

And I thought last week was bad...

She was a busy week in real-life-land this week so not a lot's been happening hobbywise. Although with Easter coming up, I'm hoping to remediate that and get a bit of building and painting time.

Workbench...

 I've tentatively lined up a game of Victory at Sea with Blogger Pooch at our next club day so I thought I should probably get moving on the Emanuelle Filiberto and my BA201 Dive Bombers.

 

 

Apparently I also forgot to document any of my palette decisions or techniques when I painted the whole fleet last time so it'll be a bit of a process to figure out how to match up with my existing fleet. I'm also mildly nervous about doing candy stripes again...

 

So while I waited for inks to dry and procrastinated about candy stripes, I started a new big build: 

 

This is the core of a Knight Errant for 40K - a project that'll finish up my small 3-vehicle Knight detachment and enable an entertaining knight + Imperial Guard army I want to play. I'm debating building the pilot's cabin, which I kind of want to do, but putting the rocket pod on with the hatch open feels like it might wind up looking a little silly. Anyway, I'll keep building and this model will be a blog feature for the next wee while as it'll be assembled and painted in parts, a valuable lesson learned from building Titans.

... and at least one thing got finished...

 I did my ADLG camp! The excellent print that Blogger Triple T (over here at Potbelly Minatures) did for me came up a treat. The white's a bit rough, which is kind of fine given that it does a good job of matching the rest of the army.

 I 'primed' the tent with Mod Podge which covered up the print lines, especially on the tent roof, and while I lost a bit of the detail, I'm pretty happy with how it came out. I've also started Mod Podge-ing the islands I bought from Battlekiwi in advance of probable boats in a couple of weeks.

...and a game!

I had a game of Late War, 100 point, Flames of War with clubmate BB and his able die-roller, BB-Junior.

BB wanted to try out a US M18 list in an offensive, long table game and in advance of our annual club competition in a couple of months, I wanted to give my Jagdpanzer IV/70 another run with some relatively recently painted Hummels going in for the prior Wespes and dropping two of the four Pumas that had been in the list. 

We played Escape, with the Allies attacking. I left the Jagdpanzer IV/70s and the Pumas off, knowing they would come on the short table edge behind BB's deployment zone.

Soon to be Sherman Crocodiles

BB attacked vigorously up his left flank under cover of smoke, part of his cunning plan running 2 Priest batteries and a 105mm battery. I got no reserves till turn 3...

I ambushed my StuGs in turn 2 in an attempt to remove some M18s (to prepare for the certain arrival of my Jagdpanzers) and that resulted in a couple of turns of us shooting marshmallows at each other and my not dealing with the Sherman Crocs. My Hummels put some serious hurt on his infantry platoon though and even had a crack at some of the M18s.

Underprepared for Flame Tanks

When the Flametanks finally arrived on the objective (when I lost the game the first time but we carried on playing), they slowly set about removing my infantry on the objective alongside my Quad AA guns. The AA and 251s easily prevented the remnant infantry platoon from holding the objective but I also singularly failed to remove enough of the Sherman Crocs due to my over reliance on my Jagdpanzer HQ which eventually cost me the game the second time!

This should have gone better than it did

The Jagdpanzer IV/70s had three turns in the rear of BBs army, including two turns surviving M18 hits to the face and side, and managed to do a sum total of nothing, despite having a good chance at breaking the fairly fragile M18 company. 

In the end, my poor StuG ambush choice and BBs aggressive use of his Sherman Crocs won the day for the Americans although a post-game analysis suggested that had I deployed my StuGs better, BB would have had a much tougher time. He said afterward that having a crack at the company break to save the game (in a turn where every Jagdpanzer shot missed instead) has led him to rewrite the list and I really like where he's gone with it.

 All in all, a delightfully chill game with a mate which I very much enjoyed. 

Next Time

More Knight and the finished boats I'm sure. 

Not the most productive week...

 For some very good reasons! 

I did paint one thing this week which has been sitting around on the painting desk for a while. One M113 FIST for TY / Seven Days to the River Rhine.

 

 

I've rambled before about using Vallejo Model Air colours on these models before and having done AAPV7s and Sergeant Yorks, an M113 was relatively easy by comparison, even with it's slab sides. I picked this up many many moons ago with a view to testing out a digital camouflage scheme that I'd still like to try one day for some 1980s Jordanians but never got around to it. 

I have managed to do a bit of prep this week too and have a few things hitting the primer in the upcoming week too, some of which make lots of sense and a couple were things I just picked up on a whim. 

Having watched the 'Old Bale Eye' episode of Hammer and Bolter this weekend, I'm super keen to get Yarrick done and the not-April-Fools that Squats are coming back to 40K is moderately exciting given that I have two of the four extant Permitted Abhumans in my Guard army already, adding in the other two would be awesome.

Unfathomable

I have also played some games of Unfathomable, a Cthulhu-framed reimagining of Battlestar Galactica. 

 Blogger Pelarel has done an amazing job of painting up the Deep Ones, Mother Hydra and Father Dagon. He's mentioned wanting to find a decent set of figures for the PCs too, which would make this extra cool.

I've lost a bunch of games of BSG over the years, and the first couple I played as a Cylon were completely disastrous! Mechanically, Unfathomable is similar enough that comparisons with BSG are easy. It has the same sort of model where the characters do the things and then have a crisis with a couple of macro games (the make-ship-go track and the make-monsters-away track) but for me I think it's a better game than BSG. There are slightly fewer moving parts in the game but the characters feel a bit more like there's a point to them other than your particular combo of skill cards. 

It seems especially successful for the traitors. It feels slightly easier to hide than BSG and if you are exposed being sent to the Brig doesn't become a massive drama and you've got a lot more chance to interact with the game even when you are exposed. Every time I play this we spend heaps of time putting the hybrids into the Brig or the Sickbay and they keep coming back.

I'm not sure we've won this yet, but we're getting there. This last game we made it through the full travel requirement for the first time and it was the last one that sank the ship. Rude. 

Next Time

I'm hoping to have the Teutons on the park this coming weekend although convincing some of my gamer friends to take on the Knightly Orders might be a bit optimistic...