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

This gun's for hire...

...even if we're just dancing in the dark?

Misleading blog title much? There was weirdly no power at the club yesterday so my photos were all really dark and most of them didn't really come out so today's blog is going to be mostly text and some very badly brightness corrected images.  

Warmachine Mark IV Beta

Blogger Scotty and I had a couple of games of the revised version of Warmachine. The game mostly came back to us pretty quickly and we didn't have to look up too much - mostly looking up things that we thought might be different.

Jeremiah Kraye had a bad time with Kreoss2 - Kreoss2's feat (with autohit and extra attacks) combined with Knights Exemplar Officers granting Cleave meant all Scotty's infantry just exploded. Also, we both rolled Tough rolls like a boss, but I had lots of "can't be knocked down" jank so mine were just straight better. Scotty and I both couldn't figure out Kraye's new feat and how to best use it so that's an opportunity for another game.

Things that were good:

• Removing things like facing and freestrikes; adding premeasuring and changing things like running were all improved simplifications
• The changes to AOEs, sprays and unit movement & coherency were all well received by us
  
• Command cards did stuff when we remembered we had them
• The new listbuilding app is well designed, easy enough to use (although it's beta-ness is still visible) and while it's effectively mandatory, that's probably okay
• List building was still nice and easy
  

Things that were not good:

• Giving the Protectorate Kreoss2 as a beta caster was a bit savage and me only owning Severius1 as an alternative wasn't much of an alternative in terms of fun games
  
• The long wait for legacy cards means we're not going to leap into stuff quicksmart but we will happily play with our old collections
• We might have more stuff than we can use (Scotty might have too many Steelheads)
  
• The app is a massive battery hog (this may be a temporal problem with our clubroom having no power for the day...)
  

In other matters...

Blogger Pooch and I had a game of Star Wars Legion. I got Agent Kallus out for a run and decided he needed Vader for help.

While I blitzed all the battledroids off the park (bar one...) my Imperial forces were comfortably obliterated by the the Droid Tank, General Grievous and a unit of B2s. The bar one is important because that one droid was the one that took Vader's last wound when Grievous couldn't manage it. 

Lets just say we're not proud of that effort. 

 It was a comfortable win for Pooch holding two of the three objectives and having locked Kallus in combat with Grievous, I had a unit of Shores and my Dewback and while I was going to try and bite the tank to death with the Dewback, Pooch had a working tank and a full unit of B2s and it wasn't going to end well for me! 

Next Time

I've done a big tidy up in my office, found a couple of half finished projects so will be getting into those. I've also got a Dewback to finish, a Boba Fett to paint and a bunch of things I should stop putting off...

Back to the brushes

 Bit of a workbench this week as the painting mood hasn't really struck me but I'm getting some motivation with some plans for club day in a week's time!

More Underworlds

 Despite getting most of the base work done on the Gorechosen of Dromm, I haven't finished them yet:

But they're slowly coming together. I basically have a lot of bone and skin tidyups and then highligts to do. And fixing a lot of the black which was my takeaway from painting Dromm - don't follow GWs paint order. It'll

Scarif Beach Party Round 17

I've added Agent Kallus to the roster of commanders for my Imperials on the Scarif Beach Party as he looks like a really interesting challenge to play with his flaw card and unusual order package. I haven't got a list for him yet but I'm getting there for a game with Blogger Pel at the club next weekend:

He's not quite done since the the water gel isn't quite set (astonished? I'm not. See all previous posts regarding the Scarif Beach Party) but otherwise he was a pretty quick paint given it's mostly black. I've also been working on this giant lizard and he's not done either: 

The base coats are mostly on and I've started getting the armour up to white on the Stormtrooper legs. I still need to do the highlights on the tack, paint the teeth and tongue, and get some more greens onto the skin. The kit is kind of awesome as other than being horrible soft plastic it comes with 2 torsos - one with the goad / flamethrower arms and one with the T-21 and DLT-97 guns. I've decided to build the T21 and the goad arms as I couldn't quite be bothered.

Next Time

I've lined up a game of the new Warmachine Mark IV with Blogger Scotty for club day so keen to let you know how that pans out. Going back to the old days!