Back baybee!!

 So it's been a couple of weeks. Work travel and the inevitable cold that being stuck in an aluminium tube for several hours gets you hasn't left me in much of a mood or with time for hobby things but the show must go on...

Panzerschreck XXIII

It's coming up to that time of year again and Blogger Tank and I will be running out Italians for our doubles army this year. Taking some lessons from Paddy's army at ValleyCon this year, I'm running a decent number of Semovente 75/34s which might just be the sauce. Might being the operative word. I've also made some progress on the air support for this arm - I give you the UFIs - Unidentified Flying Italians: 

This was just too silly not to do. I've still got a bunch of detail work to, at least one more layer of white in particular and I have to find some Regio Aeronautica decals someplace but so far, I'm enjoying how they're coming out. I'm hoping I can rustle up two more for my Germans - they might get a more sensible paint scheme. Maybe.

Mycenaean debut!

I ran out the Mycenaeans against Blogger McBeth's Sicilian Normans and was victorious. Overall, I tried refusing a flank and then unpacking my heavy spear where I wanted it - including several charges into Medium Knight which I thought I should have had a reasonable punt at. Turns out that Furious Charge can get pretty gnarly if you lose acombats on even factors... 

Unpacking. Note boat.

This charge should have gone better than it did...

Some portion of the victory had to do with McBeth's poor combat dice (six of his first 10 combat rolls were 1s) but we also learned that it turns out Light Chariot Impact Elite can go toe-to-toe with Medium Knight and actually come out okay. Throwing them into his Medium Knight after they'd eviscerated my Heavy Spear turned out to be pretty good.

 The MVPs were arguably the Light Chariot Javelin (although I will point again to McB's dice) but they worked surprisingly better than I expected. A general +1 against mounted and Light & Light Medium Infantry generally makes them quite serviceable with the 4UD move as well.

Next Time

More Italians I suspect and I'll probably get to work on some 40K stuff on the deck as I'm keen to play some scaled up but still "for grins" 40K

Post Convention Malaise

 I took a week off after playing ValleyCon last weekend because by the time I got home I was absolutely shattered. I've also barely picked up a brush, but have invested some time and energy into thinking about lessons from the weekend and also how we might reach a point where infantry armies are a think in MW Flames of War again...

Here's a gallery of the armies from the event:  

Simon's Afrika Korps (borrowed from Blogger Scotty)

Octavia's Germans (borrowed from Blogger McBeth)

Blogger McBeth's Americans

Gus' British

Blogger Tank's Death or Glory Boys

Tom's Soviets (the only one!)

Blogger Pelarel's Brits

Chris' Armoured Panzergrenadiers

Steve's Brummbars and lunacy

Richard's Best Army Death or Glory Boys

Bob's British

Graham's Americans

Paddy's Secret Tech Italians

 

Connor's Afrika Korps (borrowed from Blogger Pooch)

TO Scotty's Hungarians

My Italians!

Not sure that's quite all of them but it's most of the armies that played. Clubmate Richard's Best Army winning Death or Glory Boys are really stunning and Blogger Pooch's Afrika Korps, being run by McBeth Jr (who also came in 5th with them!) also looked great.

How did the event go? Not super well TBH. Turns out M14/41s are outclassed against allied armour in MW. Definitely felt like the changes in the last dynamic points update hit my choice of force pretty hard and while M14s have always been the worst of the 'medium' tanks in MW, the much larger numbers of Grants and Shermans (which are definitely usable now and that's a great thing!) meant that my usual ability to simply outnumber my opponents didn't really work out. Also, Grants going to SA 4 at some point (which probably tells you how rarely I've seen Grants on table lately...) made my usual plan to outflank them and just get lucky also didn't really work out!

I lost my first three games against various combinations of Grants / Shermans / Valentines and then rolled through a pair on infantry companies on for the last two games, coming in 10th out of 20. When things worked the way I had played during practice games, it worked fine. But all that medium armour was not something I'd gone up against. Sofia's 4 90mm guns and Paddy's 8 Semovente 75/34s were definitely something I should have made room for.

Given the lesson from the weekend was that Semovente 75/34s were the secret tech, my thanks to Clubmate Richard for the supply, I now have enough to run them when Blogger Tank and I take these Italians out again to Panzerschreck doubles event later in the year. We'll be taking these with one other new addition - air support:

Battlefront sent us some spot prizes - these hilarious objectives. Blogger Tank gave me his so we had a pair and we decided to add those to our Panzerschreck army. I'm *tempted* to see if I can acquire another pair and use them for my Germans. Seems too funny not to TBH. 

Next Time

Painted UFOs and some other hilarity!

Pooch's April- More bugs, but this time Vikings too?

Another month down, and more progress to show for it, and yep, there were more bugs. Because of course I painted more bugs!

1. Paint something bought before 2024

Starting with not bugs. I picked up these Vikings nigh on a year ago, and I'm not even sure what game I was planning to use them for. Regardless, when one of the locals suggested we played some Tribal, I took the opportunity to paint up a warband of Vikings ready to play the game.

The miniatures all come from Gripping Beast, and are finished off with the gorgeous shield decals from Little Big Man Studios. Also coincidentally, you can pick up the rules for Tribal from Potbelly Miniatures!

Warlord and Champion with flag

First batch of Viking Warriors

Second batch of Viking Warriors

Third batch of Vikings, this time some Berzerkers!

I also had a few small pieces of terrain, which will help have a cool looking table for the game too. These are all from Renedra Miniatures

Houses with scattered pots

Many fences!

I've already got a game of Tribal scheduled for May!

2. Paint something bought in 2024

It wouldn't be a month of this blog without me posting some Tyranids, would it?

Another big bug, this time a Malceptor

A big brain to cause big psychic damage!

Little flying bugs- great for capturing objectives!

Showing off the wings!

It's a unit of ten, so this is the other five!

I'd say next month will be something different. But you know it's going to be more bugs...

3. Play a game of 40k each month

I didn't just play one game of 40k this month, I played a whole tournament of it!

I took the Tyranids out to our club's Valleycon competition, playing five games over a weekend, and I had a blast! Visually, the Tyranids looked brilliant, and I got a number of really nice comments about them. In terms of their performance in the games, overall they won 3 lost 2, and the two I lost were really poor match ups for me, but I kept my player morale up, and didn't let them affect my enjoyment over the weekend- which was my goal.

I got far too engrossed with the games to take many photos, so here is just two!

An Ultramarine Repulsor getting eaten by a Psychophage.... pity about the Terminators inside it.... 

Maulerfiend doing mauling. Fiendishly.

I'm really enjoying my 40k resurgence, I might need to find a different style to play for May tho!

4. Play a game of not-40k each month

I FINALLY got my 15mm ADLG Celt army out for a game, taking on a work in progress army of Successors.

The Celts.... did a lot of charging. And got some good dice. Including a very rude set of 6's when attacking with chariots into Elephants, which meant that I came out on top. Having spent so much time on them, it was great to get them out on the table and actually play a game with them. Given the rest of the crew has been really enjoying their ADLG, I feel like many more games are in my future!

Chariots vs Pike. The chariots EXPLODED.

Medium Sword vs Cavalry however was more swingy....

And that's it. I know some of what May will bring (and yes, there will be more Bugs), but I'm sure there will be some suprises in there!

Pooch