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!