Such snow, many winter, much pew.

 Nuts!?

Our end of year event will be 85-point Late War Battle of the Bulge so Tank and I thought we'd try out our first list choice with Tank running Bastogne Paras and me running my Volksgrenadiers. Tank attacked and I maneuvered and we wound up playing the v4 version of Cauldron, Killing Ground. 

Game Start

85 points didn't tax Tank's fitting in his deployment zone and it also didn't give me the kind of army that I could completely wrap around his:

I left my Brigade Panthers and Brigade StuGs off table and cunningly kept an Assault Volks Platoon in ambush to counter any attempts at a cheeky redeploy by the Para platoons.

Turn 1:

Tank advanced aggressively and took the centre of the board with a view to shifting his attack left or right depending on how my turn one went. One of his Para platoons took the church in towards my left and his Pershings taunted my 75s and his M18s (which you can see in the top of the picture below) went off to stop my Volks Rifle platoon getting into the side of his army.

In my turn one, I got reserves and lo! Brigade Panthers appeared and fired...successfully! You can see them at the bottom of the photo above, but the image below makes me much happier.

The Brigade Panthers brewed up a single Pershing that foolishly parked on the crossroads. The black smudge in the background is the smokey plume! Plus this photo just reminds me how happy I am with how these have come out!

Turn 2: 

Tank's turn two was fairly uneventful. He pushed the M18s forward (failing their second blitz of the game) to .50 into my Volks Rifle platoon, the Paras pushed further forward and the Pershings repositioned to deal with the Brigade Panthers. The M18s fire was delutory, the Paras plinked away to little effect and the four shots from the Pershings came up 1, 2, 2, 2.

He started my turn two with "if you get Reserves and they come on over there, maybe we should reset" and he may have been right. Because I did. And they did. 

This photo was just before the end of my Turn 2 after the reserve StuGs shot up a couple of M18s and then I waded into the last two with the Volks Rifle Platoon (!) and used three Panzerfausts and two Panzerschrecks to casually remove the last two using Siegfried Moldenhauer's 6 point command add on...

We possibly should have called the game there but the rest of my turn two had been decidedly not gone as well. The Panthers missed, the artillery all missed and while I managed to launch a solid assault into a damaged Para platoon, they absolutely minced me in response. The photo below shows you the four stands of remaining Paras who chewed up my ambushing assault platoon!

Turn 3:

This is the last photo I took, at the start of Turn 3:

Tank had a cunning plan. The remnant of the first Para Platoon moved toward my base edge and threatened both my 81mm Mortars AND the objective. The second Para Platoon moved across to try and finish off my Volks Rifle Platoon and give my StuGs something to think about. Then it went sideways. One of the Pershings refused to cross through the wood (on a 2+) and Tank missed every shot he took which, which you're shooting at Aggressive troops, is a real feel bad moment.

I threw my StuGs down back towards the mortars realising I might be in a bit of trouble. The second Volks Assault platoon slipped past the flank of the stationary Pershing, reading themselves to get into the rear of the Paras. Then my dice came right again and the StuGs pinned (luckily) the Paras threatening the mortars and two Panzerfausts from the Volks Assault when through the side of the Pershing.

At the start of Tank's turn 4, the remaining Pershing failed it's Last Man test (even with Dick's reroll) and the small Para platoon failed to unpin. At that point, with the big paras about to get hammer and anviled and Tank not really having a chance to pull the game out of the bag, we called it.

Lessons?

This was a good mission for me to defend. Tank's small but very good army was still badly outnumbered and honestly, assault rifles make up for a lot when there's infantry crossing open ground! I got *really* lucky with my reserves and Tank also didn't have a chance to redeploy because of where they turned up.    

I like the idea of the Volksgrenadiers as a counterpunch kind of army so the idea of attacking or maneuvering with them as a mission selection stance seems very sensible. I also learned (mostly from the second game) that if I'm paying out 6 points for Siegfried Moldenhauer, I need to be getting the most out of that! 

Again?

I played a second game defending in No Retreat against Blogger Scotty's Hungarians. It was a deliberate choice to see how I'd go in this mission. I also left my 10-point HQ off the board in my 60/40 because it's 10 (!) freaking points. That was an error. Scotty rolled over me pretty quickly as once my platoons pinned, I stopped doing anything meaningful.

More lessons were learned. Volksgrenadiers should not dig in and defend. 

And from the pile: 

Three random 28mm models: 

A succubus from Malifaux, my old PP Hordes Druid and the last Space Marine for my Deathwatch that only got made because I found that sweet Dark Angels torso in my bits box! The Succubus seems like it could be an odd PC in DnD as a Tiefling Rogue (but because whip, must be Henry Jones Jr styles) and the Druid is an old favourite model of mine.

Next Time

The third Jagdpanther is ready to go so that's exciting and I'm going to clear a bunch more stuff out of the pile, he says, with a degree of optimism... 

We're Going to Need a Bigger Gun

So I took on a bit of a challenge this week to maybe kinda sorta clear out something I added to the pile and do all the other things that go in the pile with it so it's a German armoured vehicle kinda week.

 Finishing up my Volksgrenadiers

First job was the Brigade Panthers, which are another new BF plastic kit.

These are great kits, they go together like a dream and frankly, the bits left over off the sprues is insane. I have more track links than I'll ever need! I've only ever owned and used Panthers once before in the dim dark past so these ones don't have a lot to live up to.

Secondly were the Brigade StuGs. These came from my original 653 Schwere Panzerjager Abteilung from v.AA (Ages Ago) and used to be StuHs. Mercifully, I still had a set of StuG barrels in my bits box so they got replaced, a few bits of chipped resin got puttied, a quick tidyup of the paint and here we are.

Given my Summer StuGs are the old unique resin kits from the dim dark past, these ones got a few bits added to the back decks just to make them look a bit more colourful. Also, the Tamiya weathering powder on these ones came out super well - it looks patchy and streaky, exactly the kind of vibe I was looking for supporting my snowy/springy infantry!

Bigger Guns

The joy that comes out of the new Panther box is that is also makes Jagdpanthers.

So I made Jagdpanthers, Blogger Scotty has offered me a third, which means JAGDPANTHER COMPANY. Will it be good? Certainly not. Will I play the bejeebus out of it? Absolutely.

And since I was painting nine other German vehicles, and the middle, zimmeritted, Tiger was in the pile, it got done too. I have this idea that there's a Storm Grenadier army with three Tigers in it and I only had two. So now I have three. Woo!

And then?

This little gem came out of the pile too:

Ever since the v3 KG Graebner list, I've wanted to paint and play KG Graebner and where to start with a list that's so demented I couldn't get it to work? The man himself. This isn't BFs original KG Graebner, but a convenient Humber scout car that I found in a box of Blogger Scotty's so figured that was somewhere to begin. KG Graebner will, I suspect, fall out of a bunch of other plans which, when I've completed, will mean buying a couple of 231s and I'll be done.

Also, I flocked all my painted but unbased Renaissance Spanish:

Just because I could. No idea how I ploughed through this much stuff. One day off work minding tradies shouldn't be this productive?! Oh, yeah, I know. Umpteen days of almost uninterrupted rain. That'll do it.

Next Time

It's club day. I'll be taking my Volksgrenadiers out for a run so we'll see how that goes and now that I've done a bunch of Flames stuff, I think a return to some 28mm and some Renaissance painting for a bit will be in order.

Batteria Fantasma è Fantasma!

 Running out the Paras

I got the tidied up Italian Paras out for a run (it turned out to be three) with Scotty. I only took photos of our second game, Escape, which we both thought was a bit odd and it wasn't until after the game that we realised Scotty had the right idea in his deployment (having his HMGs and Nimrods protecting the rear of his 100mm guns from the Paras who would come on from reserve) but we didn't take it to it's logical conclusion then. This was a good learning game but wasn't the close contest our two other games were. It was annoyingly the only one I took photos of. 

The Italian pursuit arrives

Turn one was fairly uneventful other than a janky 100mm barrage killing one of Scotty's guns, one HMG and one Nimrod and my mortar bombardment pinning Scotty's platoon in the centre. He attacked up my left and rolled his Marders right up the guts as effective MG carriers! This photo was the start of turn two when I rolled two reserves...

Cavalry prepare to charge

On his left Scotty's cavalry prepared to launch a charge into this objective. Spoilers. It did not go well. 

R35 ambush!

 Turn two was where it all went sideways as my reserves arrived, both R35s and 47mm ambushes appeared - both were completely useless but the arrival of the reserves meant Scotty's aggressive push on the objective was already in jeopardy!

Tiger prepares to back up....

This was the last photo I took but we called the game shortly after this. The Semoventes landed a clean hit on the Tiger and destroyed it and while Scotty was getting ready to send his infantry into mine, the R35s were right on his tail and 14 stands of defending Paras are more than a match for 10 stands of attacking Hungarians!  We talked afterwards about how setting up a screen to hold my reserves would have been a really solid plan and was definitely the way to win this mission!

We also played Spearpoint and Probe (love getting three games in in a day!)  and they were both very interesting games. I won the Spearpoint game by breaking Scotty's core infantry formation (and singlularly failing to deal with the Tiger). We spent a lot of time dissecting the deployment map and realised that it was a very cool mission and one we'd be keen to play again. Scotty won the Probe with a very well executed assault on my objectives when my much less well executed assault on his failed. I also learned just how bad the R35s are in assault trying to stop him. It did not go well. 

Thoughts? 

I like the list. It really wants to defend, which we've been talking a lot about recently and this is the first time I've run up a list where I don't expressly hate the idea of the defending. It feels like it wants to be a counterpunch type list where the decent quality of the troops holds on long enough to get the Semovente 90s in from Reserve, deal with the scary and then send in the remnant Paras to look to win the game. Also, having the 47mms in ambush ALWAYS makes an 11 point AT gun platoon 100% worth having.

Does it have some faults? Oh, yes. R35s are dreadful, just dreadful. Hopelessly outclassed against even the most basic of mid-war tanks and tactical 6" makes real aggression with them somewhat challenging. I realised that the points I spent on some Command Cards were unnecessary and I'll swap those out for a platoon of AB41s and an OP because two templates is awesome but having to always self spot got super annoying super fast. Semovente 90s are definitely a finesse weapon (as much as the 90mm is a blunt instrument otherwise) with a tactical of 4" and being Aggressive they're not as easy to deliver as you think they should be. 

It'll be a challenge but one I'm keen to keep trying with!

De-piling

A few more things out of the pile this week which will go into both the Silver Bayonet pile and / or the DnD DMs collection.

This is more ghosts than one would hope one would need for a game of Silver Bayonet but here we are. Best to be prepared right? They'll do good service as useful DnD models too. 

 This next one is a cleanup and repaint. In a Pathfinder (I think) campaign many moons ago, I wanted to play a Druid (the miniature for which is in the pile) with a pet and one of the options for pet included a dinosaur. It seemed like it might actually be a good party addition as they could be a bit chompy where an elderly druid was unlikely to be. As it turned out, the DM didn't want me having a dinosaur so again, here we are. It's a little model I picked up donkeys ago and I've just given it a bit of a wash / drybrush with the rough original colouring to make it a bit more poppy. 

Next Time

Many things from the pile. There's a bunch of stuff in the started but not done pile so I'm going to crack into that!

Of tree trolls and bears- a Silver Bayonet Narrative #3

 More narrative Silver Bayonet? Don't mind if I do....

'Did you know I fought a werebear once?'

The children had been nagging him all day for another story. It seemed that rather than having the desired effect of scaring them so much that they never wanted to talk to him again, it only made them more curious, more inquisitive and if anything, more irritating.

And so it was that he was once again entertaining the children, their parents uninterested in the level of disruption the children's intrusion and incessant questions were having on his wellbeing.

'And it was bigger than that one too' he added, pointing to the leering bear's head trophy, mounted to the wall. 'Stop bouncing on the chair, sit down, and I'll tell you about it....

With the White Lady's return, we had once again become a part of the great war against the Harvestman.

At the insistence of the Lady, we were out in the trackless Polish forests, searching for a shrine of ancient power that held some form of key to defeating our enemies. 

Days had passed since us entering the forests, and the men were growing restless. It was then that we found the first Russian- I recognised what remained of his blood soaked uniform from the soldiers I had fought beside at the Leipzig. His torso had been crushed, and by all counts his body had started to be reclaimed by the tree he slumped against. After an examination, Doctor Landa could offer no keener insight than Gunter, who simply offered "Must have been big".

We pressed on, deeper into the woods. It wasn't more than an hour before we found the second corpse, just as maimed as the first, and also seeming to be being dragged into a nearby tree. This seemed to brook no response from the White Lady, beyond an excited tone in her voice as she announced "we are getting close"...

Suddenly, the woods thinned out to reveal an old cobbled road and buildings, long given over to the forest. 

It was Jager Mott who spotted the Russians first, the light of their burning torches giving their positions away. 

"Quickly, the fools mean to destroy the shrine. They cannot be allowed to succeed, not before I learn what there is to be learned from it, Move now Captain, get there first"

I quickly relayed the White Lady's words to the men, and they spread out, taking cover behind the trees. I head the steady crack of Mott's rifle, followed by a howl of pain from ahead of us. 

As I advanced, I got the first clear view of the shrine. A tall, gnarled tree with an altar next to it, stained red with blood. Around it at regular intervals were tall trees, their trunks rising high into the sky. 

The shrine and altar

Gunter was the first to reach the shrine, grabbing a piece of paper to take down a rubbing of the symbols etched into the bark of the tree.

He yelled in suprise as the earth next to the tree rose up, revealing a hulking brute that pushed Gunter away from the shrine.

"Tree troll" Gunter said with a grunt, and set to laying about it with his axe. All thoughts of the shrine lost in the swirling melee as troll and pioneer fought to lay the other low.

Tree troll vs Pioneer!

The bout didn't last long, with an expert swing of his axe, Gunter neatly decapitated the troll, it's head dropping at his feet, it's body still standing, before falling what felt like an eternity later. 

It had seemed like time had slowed as I watched Gunter fight the tree troll, and once it fell I was acutely aware of the musket fire from my men being returned by the Russians ahead of us. The White Lady had by this time also reached the shrine, taking her own notes of the symbols carved into the wood.

Advancing upon the shrine

A burly Russian carrying a flaming torch was running towards the shrine, his arsonist intent clear. Soldat Duval stepped forth to intercept him, running him through with his bayonet before the torch could touch the shrine. 

Duval's victory was short lived, he stepped back in alarm as the earth moved beneath him, stirred into life by the fallen torch. A great arm rose up from the earth to grab Duval, and as the rest of the Tree Troll appeared it tossed him some twenty feet to crash into a far away tree.

Poor Soldat Duval never even knew what hit him....

As we fought the second Tree Troll, the Russians had taken this opportunity to advance on our position, firing indiscriminately on us and the troll.

It was then that I saw a most hideous sight. I spotted a man, shaggy and unkept, with a great beard and fire red eyes. His mouth moved as he pronounced an incantation, and I watched as his skin moved, shifted and grew. A howl of pain reverberated from his throat, morphing into a roar of sheer rage as the man grew to a giant bear some ten foot tall.

The roar of the Werebear! 

The Werebear locked eyes with me. The red eyes bore no resemblance to the human in who's shape it had once been. With a roar, the bear loped forward, directly towards me, heedless of the musketry unleashed upon it. Soldat Oberhauser was the first in it's path, the Werebear raked it's claws across him as it barged past, knocking him aside and breaking his arm in the process.

I fired both of my pistols, one after the other, hoping that the silver shot that the White Lady had given me would prove as effective against a Werebear as they had against a werewolf in my youth.

"Wait, a werewolf? You haven't told us about a werewolf" the eldest of the children interrupted.

What do you mean what werewolf? Haven't I told you that one already? Hmmm, another time perhaps, be thankful you are getting this story before asking for another"

The Werebear rose above me, it's claws still dripping with Oberhauser's blood. My pistols spent, I drew my rapier, hoping that my superior speed might be enough.

"Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh"- Werebear

I know it doesn't look it right now children, but your uncle was once a faster man and my sword was once a weapon feared by all those who opposed me.

The bear lunged, it's claws raking my side. I still carry the scars of it's fury to this day, despite the ministrations of Doctor Landa and the magicks of the White Lady.

But in lunging as it did, the bear left itself open and vulnerable to a counter thrust deep into it's heart. And so quick as a flash, I drove the blade deep into the giant praying that I struck something vital, enough to stall the beast's rage. 

Our combat was interrupted by yet another Tree Troll emerging from the ground next to us- the Werebear reared onto it's hind legs, me and my little sword forgotten compared to a much bigger and better challenger.

Now children, many foolish and brave men will tell you that there is dishonour in running away from such a bout. But let me tell you this, as soon as the White Lady said that she had collected all she needed, I was the first to yell for the retreat.

Dishonour holds no place when fighting beasts such as these, your only hope is to honour the living for whom you protect by defeating them. And on that day, learning what we could from the shrine was a great step forward towards the ultimate defeat of the Harvestmen....

Notes

This mission was the scenario found in Wargames Soldiers in Strategy, with the Tree Troll representing the Guardian Beast. It's an immensely fun scenario, especially when the Guardian Beast kept popping up in exactly the right tree to be a complete and utter nuisance for me! It was also the debut of Tank's Russians, including the fearsome Werebear, a foe Captain Leichhardt is sure to come up against once again.....

Pooch

The Semovente Vita!

Our group's really enjoying Flames of War at the moment (as it is wont to do after events) and so I spent this week being entirely distracted from the plans to reduce the pile of projects by, albeit briefly, creating a new project!

I mentioned in my last blog that Blogger Pel had shipped me theMid-War Italian Paratrooper cards and so I've rustled up a bit of a list and will be giving them a run against Scotty's new Mid-War Hungarians at our next club day. Recently Blogger McBeth was looking through the results of previous events and I worked out that this army was built for a Panzerschreck around 10 years ago. It shows! 

 But I decided that I should get it up to snuff for this game with Scotty which meant giving the vehicles a bit of an overhaul, inserting some flamethrowers into the Para platoons and tidying up the basing so it's not as dark and grim and this week, I have managed to achieve all those things!

BURNY!

I went through my bits box and found two (yep. Two.) Italian flamethowers and, wait for it, SEVEN German ones. I started filing down and reshaping the helmets till Blogger Pooch said "why not head swap?" and that was a genius idea and I thank him for it. So two of the flamethrowers have the soft parachute helmet and one the more conventional Italian armoured helmet but they've fitted in really well and, more to the point, it's meant I don't have to take apart my second desert Engineer squad to make this happen.

Hopelessly Outclassed

These lovely little assault guns are gone from version 4 of Flames of War but a 'community' card exists for them and so I decided they're coming back to support my Paras. Ditto for the hopelessly outclassed Renault R.35s which I love. IIRC there weren't any Semovente 47s in Sicily, but I figure if I'm a) rocking a demented army of demented and b) with this absurd colour palette, I'm doing it.

BIG GUN IS BIG

And finally, the piece de resistance, the Semovente 90s! These are the most redonkulous assault guns / tank destroyers ever invented. With Mid-War Monsters returning to Flames of War, these now fit in a 'Wildcard' slot for any army in Mid-War Italian army. I've looked at running Fucilieri in Sicily as an army but, TBH, it's a horde and I don't love horde armies on a good day. 

Next Time

I'll write up a proper game report of my game with Scotty and I'll be doing some more stuff off the pile with my painting time this week. 

Pooch's July update

Well, that's July done, and a timely update to boot. So, I’ve got 5 months to go, but how did my progress go compared to the painting goals?

1. Paint a platoon of DAK each month

My last unit for the 140 point Mid War doubles competition is now completed, and it's a platoon of sneaky sneaky 221 and 222 armoured cars. They were finished in my usual style using the airbrush, chipping medium and oil wash.

I painted up both the MG and the 2.8cm ATR turret, just in case I wanted to swap them out.

The whole platoon of four armoured cars

The 2cm turret vs the 2.8cm ATR turret

Overall, I'm really happy with them, and the force is coming together really nicely. I still have a bunch to paint to round out the year- more than a platoon a month worth to be sure!

2. Add something to armies I have already painted

First up this month, is something for my sub-goal of painting Adeptus Sororitas, a unit of Celestian Sacresancts. I painted them disassembled, so they really only came together as finished on the last day of the month, despite me painting their heads on the first day of the month! 

5 Sacresancts with Halberds. Because Halberd.

I do so love my worn gold recipie

But also this month I managed to finish up something that has been slowly coming together for the past three months- a second Warlord Titan for the Legio Asotrum!

Looking menacing as heck in blue and yellow....

And did I mention the weapons are magnetised?

I still have one more titan to paint- not sure if that will be a next month job however!

3. Finish up a table of terrain

So. Corvus Games do amazing buildings right? So when I spotted that they had a three story theatre, I couldn't help myself and bought it. It was a mammoth paint over the last couple of months, using a combination of airbrush and brush. It's been staring at me, mocking me for failing to finish it for that whole time, and I made sure to knock the b*stard off this month!

And it is oh so big (that's what she said)

Posters were found on the internet, printed and stuck on. Just adds to the feel!

Far less glamourously, I finished up a small altar for my Silver Bayonet table too. Which took me... 15 minutes to paint? Compared to 2 and a half months for the theatre. Time is stupid.

Creepy tree now has a creepy altar. It's only right.

Next up... well I do have another Corvus building sitting downstairs ready to paint, so maybe that?

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

As you will have read in McZ's recap, this month had the Panzershrek competition held up in Palmerston North. Scotty and I headed north, bringing with us a (questionably) mighty force of Panzer IIIs and IVs.

It looked good at least!

The games were really interesting- the Panzer III was better than I think we both expected, but was frequently outmatched by what we faced (I'm looking at you M3 Lee with a long 75mm!). We ended the tournament with 2 wins, 1 loss and 2 draws, and overall enjoyed the games because let's be honest, doubles is a great experience when you are co-generalling with a great person!

Crusaders vs 221/222 armoured cars. Amazingly, the Armoured Cars actually killed one (before they were slaughtered)

Don't let the infantry fool you- this was done by an ambush by Marders!

Formidable defensive position on one side of the table....

And this was the equally formidable defensive position on the other side of the table!

A mad dash of Panzer IIIs to run over some Finns- those three tanks were knocked out by direct fire from 105mm artillery. And were all my CO at the time. I was beginning to get the sense it was personal...

Finnish ski troops in the desert. Because that's how gaming goes sometimes.

Did we enjoy the tournament? Absolutely. Will we be back next year? Absolutely.

Do I know what I will play next month? Absolutely not!

5. Paint a new historical army

I managed to force myself into knocking off the first component of my ADLG-R Thirty Years War later German Catholic army. I decided to buy the army from Khurasan in a few groups, mainly so that I didn't overwhelm myself into unmotivation by having yet more unpainted figures sitting next to me!

The first group is made up of 4 bases of Cuirassiers, 3 bases of Dragoons, 1 base of Schutzen, a medium cannon and my army camp. The camp was made from a couple of spare dragoons, and a reliquary from my bits box.

Here it is, in all 81 points of it's glory!

4 bases of Cuirassiers. Blackened armour doesn't like photos

Three bases of dragoons

A medium cannon, and a base of Schutzen

A reliquary being guarded by some Dragoons

So that is all of the Renaissance I own now painted, suppose I had better prep the next order, right?

FLAMES OF WAR FOLLOWED BY FLAMES OF WAR IS STRETCHING THE RULES...

Pooch