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