Semper Fidelis

Just a short post this week since there's not a lot I have to say! I said I'd paint a Marine platoon so I did. The blog works!

Command and Mortar team

Anti-tank weapons - Dragons on the left and SMAWs on the right

A selection of the NINE! stands of Marine M16/LAW teams

M60s

The transport for this platoon, the ultimate bathtubs (the AAVP7s), are winging their way from the UK along with a new Crucible Guard Trancer that I am going to put to use filling a gap in the 40K range that I'd quite like to use.

They were really nice to paint - well detailed and the camo painting guide in the back of Stripes was excellent. Painting 15mm infantry was a challenge since I've not done in it a while but they look pretty good. I might put an extra highlight on some of it. Not sure. Good enough for the mo at any rate. I might even do a second one and run Marine rifles with LAV support in TY.

Next time: 
A battle report I think. I have a couple of projects to finish for my mid-war Italians and, as I've booked in a game at our next club meeting with Pelarel, I should get them done so I can use them!

Air field Alpha.

Team Yankee has been another project and another scale. Taking TY on in 6mm has meant we all have armies to start with and its now all the fun stuff we can buy :) I love making terrain and I was inspired by some packing rubber a club member had brought along for guys to use. So I created the following. I have a 3 main buildings from Game Craft Miniatures. The warehouse, the terminal and the latest arrival, the hanger. The hanger is actually a 6mm building - it is indeed monstrous. I don't know how it will fit in to a full able - but I like it in this display. Inside the hanger I have parked an Intruder, a Viking and a Hawkeye. On the tarmac (at the ready) are 2 F4 Phantoms and 2 Cobras. My TY US stuff is based on 1980's Marines (even though they weren't in Germany at the tie) but hey - its all "what if" anyway. I also had a Chinook arrive this week, and although its not finished I thought I would add it in too. There are also a few 6mm cars in the carpark and the light towers. The fencing is a mish mash of what I have in my 6mm fencing box. So now we are ready for action.

Until next time - chur!

So musings, very pictures, such magpie

It's a bit of a mixed bag this time around - a few pictures of some projects and some few thoughts on the general state of things-magpie.

First off, I've painted a BA army. Well most of one. This is the first test basing for the army. I'm pretty happy with how they've come up.

BA American Command Troops

Panzerschreck 2016 is in a couple of weeks and this year Tank and I will be taking tanks, tanks and more tanks. Tank's done some really nice Stuart I 'Honeys' to zoom around my mostly much slower captured Italian M13/40s.

My half of the McZ / Tank pairing for Panzerschreck 2016

My attempts at Caunter Camouflage. Hard. Very hard. 

And I'm finishing up the last of the support for my 6mm TY army. The helicopters are done and I'm just painting the Frogfoots (Frogfeet?) at the moment. 

And then this happened. How many Hind Ds does one man need? Six, apparently. 

And how is the state of things-magpie? Well, I've played my first games of Warmachine Mark III and I think it's fair to say that overall, it's good. Better than Mark II? Different certainly. The core of the game has had a fairly significant overhaul (there are better summaries out there than I will ever give you) but the changes to the Focus mechanics certainly feel to me like they've opened up a whole bunch of play possibilities for me at least (look at me avoiding the words design space!) I found some ways to run some interesting combinations of big, stompy robots in Mark II but looking at Mark III, this is going to be the norm not the exception and that, in and of itself, is an improvement.

Inside my own faction of choice (the Protectorate of Menoth), I am generally pretty happy with the way things have panned out. While I freely admit to being puzzled by some of the choices made by Privateer Press (the "rebalancing" (and yes, the inverted commas there are, I think, somewhat legit) of Exemplar Bastions and Exemplar Cinerators is completely inexplicable), for the most part the changes to the game engine have made the faction more entertaining to play and the changes to most of the troop and support choices mean that every list I make doesn't immediately dial in a shed ton of support from the get go. Reckoners will no longer be my go-to warjack (although they remain very effective) and instead I'll be looking to the combined arms forces that I prefer anyway.

To put all of this in some context (at least for the Warmachine readers) - I dropped Thyra and Amon into three games at the last club meeting. In all three of them my casters were on half way and in the last one, Thyra was most of the way to my opponents deployment zone. In Mark II, if I'd tried getting that far up the board with either of those two, I'd have lost. Now admittedly, I did lose Amon to assaulting Trenchers but he was over half way and I ain't got no issue with that. It was good to see Trenchers on the table too!

In closing, I'm pretty sure the Vigilant giving cover is absolute jank. Especially with a journeyman warcaster who has Fortify. That's Warmachine though.

I've also been enjoying essentially building scale model kits again. I've so far managed a Warlord / Italieri M8 and an M20 and am most of the way through a Rubicon Sherman kit. I think a quick review of these two kits is in order, since I'm in writing mode. I'll put some photos up when they're done (mostly I need to order some crew - too many years of playing Flames of War means I have to have a dude in the turret if at all possible!)

The Warlord / Italieri M8/M20 kit is really nice. Easy to assemble, looks great and paints up well. I would have liked some crew for the two crew compartments. I'll be picking up some aftermarket crew from Company B in the not too distant future. I liked how easy it was to put together and the level of detail is exceptional for what is designed to be a gaming kit. I'd love a slightly more cunning design to allow a straight swap of the deck plate and turret so one kit would do both vehicles, but as it was, the kit is so affordable that I simply bought two. There's very little not to love about this kit. I would recommend avoiding the 3 part decal for the rear engine deck unless you are some kind of masochist.

As for the Rubicon M4A3 Sherman kit, well, it's great. I'm not quite done with it yet, but it looks great too. It's got a nice level of detail and plenty of room to customise the kit once I add some stowage. The entire hull assembly was done in less than 20 minutes and it's pretty solid, not the empty box of a lot of plastic scale kits.  The turret assembly would be equally quick if you decided to just build one of the three variants available in the box and this is where I get really, really ticked off with this kit. If Rubicon included a second turret ring and a second commanders hatch, anyone who's had a bit of experience with modelling could assemble all three variants in the box. Even someone with little to no experience (who would otherwise love this kit) could build the 76mm variant and either the 75mm or 105mm. But as it is, I have had to cut a new turret base and ring from plasticard for the 76mm turret and am currently mucking around with greenstuff and plasticard to build a second commanders hatch. I know I'll be super happy with the result - to get all three Sherman variants that might want to use will be cool - but it could have been a thousand times simpler.

The projects have been quietly being ticked off. I'll probably not get to the Farrow this year for Hordes, as I suspect I'll be more interested in playing with my Protectorate and acquiring the small number of models I want for my third Frostgrave Wizgang is proving to be harder than I would like. But the Teutons are done, the 6mm Russians are done, the Elves are done, the Panzerschreck army is done and the BA army (that I was genuinely not going to buy when I wrote at New Year) is mostly finished - awaiting the purchase of a Chaffee and a Hellcat (oh, and maybe a Long Tom). I've even done a fair whack of a BA table as well.

Anyway, the rest of the BA Americans won't base themselves so signing off!

Pooch's Painting- May

Ok, so this is super late, and I am not even going to try and make up an excuse.

Instead, I will distract you with pretty pictures, like...

These ones of additions to my Bolt Action German army!

Rubicon StuG G/StuH and a Warlord Marder III

This marder is simply lovely, such a good kit.

Warlord Motorbike and flamethrower team, as well as an Early Panzer III

Just the thing for invading Russia.... Unless you encounter a KV-1!

Initially, I disliked this model when I saw it online. Little did I realize how much I would enjoy painting the flames....

Every German army needs a BMW. This is fact.

So some cool wee additions to my Germans, adding in a few elements to let me do a more early war army, as well as some great late war elements! I think my Germans are more or less done at present, there is nothing I have a burning desire to add (I am sure someone will remind me that I don't have x and I just have to rush out and buy it...)

Sticking with Bolt Action, I have finished the fourth BA army for this year- US Rifles!

The whole horde

Black Tree Miniatures 57mm gun

Bazooka team

The Forward Air Controller showing off his sweet shoulder decal. Next time I think shoulder decals are a good idea, I have instructed my wife to slap me.

A standard issue GI with his standard issue Garand rifle

My sniper team, safely returned from the clutches of Tom's Lt Grohling. Which really means that I left him behind last time Tom and I had a game!

Prone guy with a BAR.

And another GI with Garand, this time showing off his Big Red One unit patch- again another decal.

On to the tanks...

The whole motor pool- Sherman and Stuart you have seen before with the US paras I painted

Rubicon M8 Greyhound- There was something fitting about naming a poxy armoured car after a barbarian...

And the same kit, just with a different top hatch to make and M20.

One of my personal favourite armoured vehicles, the M10 Tank Destroyer!

Same Rubicon kit, but with the M36 Jackson turret on top

Two Warlord Games halftracks, one with a 50, the other with an 81mm Mortar

Close up on the M24 mortar crew

So there it is, BA army number four! Overall, I am really happy with them. I am on the look out for some crew for the M10/Greyhound/Scott, but other than that, I think the army is more or less complete!

Lastly, this month I completed some Warlord Games Special Forces troops for their Project Z game. I decided to build them as a unit of the "Not Russian" Green Men from the Ukraine. Overall, I wasn't that impressed with the kit, but am happy to have them done (you can read more of what I thought here if you are curious).

7 man fireteam with NCO, RPG, RPK and some AKs

Close up on the NCO

One of the riflemen

So that was 7 of the 8 figures, so the final figure I converted to being my take on the Punisher, from the latest run of comics. Who better to do your zombie killing than him?

Anyway, that is it for this month, see you for the half yearly round up in a few weeks!

Pooch

McZ's Magpie Resolutions

#shamelesslyfollowingonfromMcBeth

I had a pretty good year keeping the magpie at bay in 2015, amazingly. I started one new game (Frostgrave) and bought a sum total of zero models for it. I picked up maybe half a dozen releases for my Warmachine Protectorate army and mostly spent the whole year staring at my assembled, but unpainted Teutonic Order army and used that as the lever to not spend more money on anything else!

So, like McBeth, I'm making a list for this year to try and tick off. I kind of hope that, come the 2016 Christmas holidays I'll be able to post a bunch of photos or links to posts with all this stuff in it. Am I going to get it all done? Probably not. But that's not a good reason to at least have a crack eh? I also blame Pooch for making me actually look in the boxes in the cupboard in the games room and finding things that I now want to do stuff with!

Warmachine / Hordes
I basically own one (or two...) of every model Privateer Press has released for the Protectorate of Menoth. Currently I plan to pick up three unreleased models this year - Pyrrus - Flameguard Hero, the Hand of Judgement and an Indictor. I doubt I'll ever buy a Colossal for Warmachine, but if I do, when the Revelator comes out this year, I'll make a call one way or the other. My real project this year is two 50 point armies for the Hordes Minions Faction, specifically the Farrow pact. I like the organic / mechanical mashup they do so there's lots of opportunity for some nice warbeast conversions.

What's to do:

• Paint two warlocks - Midas and Helga. 
• Purchase, convert and paint the three heavy war beasts required for both lists
• Purchase and paint one or two units

Frostgrave
I love this game. Love. It's fun to play, relaxed, silly and the other magpies are great to play it with. I've really enjoyed painting some old Warhammer Fantasy models to use for it and have been quietly painting new warbands for no really good reason other than the occasional game.

What's to do:

• Purchase and paint a wizard / apprentice for my High Elf warband
• Purchase and paint an apprentice for my Tzeentch Chaos warband
• Convert and paint a box of old Chaos Warriors for my Tzeentch Chaos warband
• Purchase some cheap daemons (hopefully from TradeMe) to make up the numbers! 

Flames of War
Unlike the rest of the magpies, my time playing FoW has not reduced to near zero! I had some great games with clubmate Richard (check out his blog here) last year and will be keen to play more games with him in 2016. What we'll play is something of a mystery although we do both have quite complimentary collections so anything's possible. My Flames collection is mostly painted and so forth so this is all pretty low priority given everything else on this list but if Panzerschreck in July is Early War, some of it might come screaming up the priority list pretty quickly.

What's to do:

Italians

• Purchase and paint a CR42 Falco
• Paint my Lancia da 90mm trucks

Germans

• Finish assembling and painting my Late War StuG company
• Tidy up the infantry and paint camo stripes the vehicles in my Early War Pionier company
• Paint four Panthers for Late War Panzerregiment Franz Bake

Australians

• A tidy up of the basing and some TLC is required for these guys - they've been a bit knocked about. 

Team Yankee
We've blogged one game of TY so far and played a couple more. Suffice to say, I'm keen. I've got most of the models already and enjoy playing Flames of War. So I have already ordered (yep) a few bits and bobs to make up the options for TY  that I want to use. It'll give me a couple of understrength tank companies, some recce, some artillery and an infantry option that'll either be in BMPs or be landed by Hind Ds. This, especially, is cool.

What's to do:

• Paint 5 T80s, 10 BMPs, 3 HAIL21s, 3 2S1 Carnations, 2 Hinds
• Rebase infantry to be identifiable for TY and possibly paint a few more LMGs 
• Rebase vehicles

Infinity
Infinity, Infinity, Infinity. It's a game I love playing. I love it's complexity and the world that it's set in. I hate the fact that I am almost always undone by lucky crit rolls because I don't know how to play the game that well. It needs to be played more. I've painted most of my Chinese Yu Jing army already and basically haven't bothered to finish it because we've not been playing enough. So, I figure if I get it done, and get a table made over the winter (see below) there is more chance I'll play it more too.

What's to do:

• Finish my partially completed Shaolin Monks, Yaozao Remote and Su Jian IAU
• Paint my Celestial Guard Link Team
• Paint my Authorised Bounty Hunter
• Purchase and paint a Terracotta Warrior and one (or possibly both because they are such nice models) Yan Huo Invincibles. 

Impetus
The end is in sight. I have painted, at the time of writing, 8.5 of the 15 bases of models I have for my Teutonic Order army. That's really quite exciting for me, given how long they've sat unpainted because I was too scared to paint all that white.

What's to do:

• Purchase and paint two bases of Livonian allied light horse and 2 of light foot
• Finish painting the 'change' base for the knight wedge (super low priority!)
• Apply transfers to tabards and shields for all the Teutonic foot and horse
• Make and apply banners and pennants for all the lances and foot banner bearers
• Build the baggage dice tower (this is a fun project I'm looking forward to) 
• Base the whole army (which I have no idea on how I'm going to do at this point) 

It will be done for V3, Prinny's Last Hurrah before he departs for Europe, in May. It. Will. Be. Done.

AWI 
Like a lot of the magpies, I am painting stuff for the big Brandywine game. No idea if I'll actually play in it, but it seemed like a nice little project for a change of pace. The assembly is done, but I've been focussing on painting my Teutons while I have the mojo to do it so it's next off the list.

What's to do:

• Paint two regiments of Maryland infantry for Triple T
• Paint a regiment of Hessians for McBeth

Bolt Action?
I think I'd like to play BA this year. I think this will be my one serious project that doesn't involve models I don't already own. But I am having a hard time deciding which army to paint - there are too many cool options. It was going to be Italians until I decided I don't want to paint more Italians and then it was going to be Aussies (using Warlord's lovely Chindit models which were on sale at Dat Ape) until they sold before I got to order them. Now I'm back to the drawing board. Tempted by Early War French, Marines, Rangers, Blitzkrieg Germans, honestly......MAGPIE!

Terrain

I have been meaning to put together a decent table for Infinity for a while, partly to encourage me to play it more. Dat Ape has some really nice options that I will invest in some time this year. Either the Plastcraft stuff or the really sweet looking modular bits from Mantic. Not sure yet. I'd also like to finish making up a few other bits to go with my GF9 ruins to make a good set of terrain for both Warmachine and Frostgrave and finally, my 15mm European terrain needs a bit of TLC. This is a winter project I feel.

Stuff that's been done

Yep. I have actually already done some stuff. [smug]

• Finished my Savage Orcs for Frostgrave - I found a Forest Goblin Shaman in the bits box, so he got painted and that was the impetus to finish off the Savage Orc Boar Boy (just in case mounted ever comes into Frostgrave!), the Forest Goblin Fanatic (I made it for Mordheim, seemed silly not to keep it) and the Stone Troll (also for Mordheim) who's just part of the warband. 
• Clean out my bits boxes - I have chucked a lot of random stuff, broken bits and pieces, failed terrain construction projects and reboxed all the things in my bits box into containers for different game systems. It was amazing what turned up. Some of that stuff will find it's way onto the blog this year, although what I do with an out of print 40K Callidus Assassin is a mystery.  I'm open to suggestions on that one. 
• Clearing my desk - it's already clear enough for me to go back to painting on the desk in my games room instead of on the end of my gaming table. Success! 

[/smug]

Anyway, that list is slightly terrifying so I best crack one eh?

On the 7th Game of Gamesmas

The magpies gave to me; Team Yankee!

*Image copyright Battlefront Miniatures

So you may know that most of us in the Regiment are playtesters for Battlefront. Well, while we all play Flames of War (and extensively tested all the WW2, Vietnam and Arab-Israeli books), none of us were involved in the Team Yankee testing or release!

We managed to get a a copy of the recently released Team Yankee rulebook and were excited to play this new version of the Flames rules. Pooch (of Radio DishDash fame)  and I broke out our 6mm moderns and had a go. Yep, 6mm! We dont really like the scale of the 15mm moderns after playing the AIW games (although the models are beautiful!) so we changed the measurements slightly and used our 6mm models. The measurement changes were simply to convert all the inches to centimeters. So if a M1 tank moves 14" in 15mm, it'll move 14cm in 6mm.

The one thing that I can say about this game is forget everything you know about Flames of War World War Two! While the structure of the game is very similar, dont assume that each rule is the same. Pooch and I enjoyed our games and are looking forward to getting the other Magpies in as well. More games will equal more learning!

shiny shiny painting projects

OK, I did say we were a group of Magpies but even I'm a little surprised as to how many projects I've started in the last couple of weeks!

First up, I'm going to show you the only thing That I've actually started AND finished in the same period:

loyal followers, meet Nevyn the Nyss my character in our current RPG group. The group of us Regimenteers on the blog play the Iron Kingdoms RPG from Privateer Press. the game system is based on their Warmachine and Hordes tabletop wargames so all of us have a reasonably solid foundation in the mechanics so we can kick back and enjoy the stories. Prinny is currently running a camapiagn for us which sees the group on a smugglers ship on the way to The Protectorate of Menoth to deliver some stolen Military Warjack Cortexes. However, our ship's captain has just made a short stop on the Isle of Cryx and we left the last session as the nasty necromancers sprang their trap!

The skin tone on the Nyss is supposed to have a 'slight' blue tint, unfortunately my first attempt at this left Nevyn looking like a very pissed off Smurf! I do think I've gone too far the other way with this repaint but Nevyn is stuck with the slightly pinky look as I can't be bothered to repaint his skin again!


next up was some more terrain for Infinity. I was inspired by those HDF buildings I reviewed a few weeks ago and started making some similarly styled buildings out of 3mm Styrene sheet. First up, a two storey apartment building

then an 8" square objective room

this one is going to get some pearl blue spray on the interior to give it a lighter, more 'sciencey' feel...

then some walls, about a dozen of the tall ones and 20 small ones

and, what would the future be without a couple of dumpsters and small raised garden

the buildings and walls are all waiting for the airbrush treatment to bring them into line with the other buildings and the dumpsters are still waiting for their basecoats. these I'm picturing and red and yellow to get the functional look. and ,make them stand out on the table.

next up was a little side project to get me painting something different. This is Witch Hazel from Hasslefree. She's not for a game or RPG I just liked the mini :) I have a custom base I made for her out of Fymo, that's been baked hard and is waiting for painting before I fix Hazel levitating above it..

Next up was a project that McBeth and i have had on the back burner for quite a while. We've played a few games of Ambush Valley with some 20mm plastic figs but really wanted to give it a go in 15mm to take advantage of the range of minis available so I'd picked up an NVA infantry box many months ago and finally gotten around to putting them on bases!

With a local Warmachine Tournament coming up in mid September, I've also been bashing around with lists and putting a few minis together...

Three Brute thralls up first - think steam powered zombies with 'roid rage and you're there.

I have restarted these guys since this photo - I think i went way too heavy on the purple in the base for the flesh and they just looked like walking bruises. They're currently back down to a base coat and a much lighter purple wash.

finally my Kraken! this guy is on a 120mm diameter base to give you an idea of scale. the 'mini' has had all of the highlighting and detailing finished but I'm toying with the idea of weathering and chipping to give it that well used look. The base is still a WIP, the concept is a woodland stream with steep banks and a couple of trees. I'm taking a step back at the mo and looking for inspiration - I really want to get this right!

It started out life as this:

And is currently stalled at this stage:

a wee bit of work yet but I need to pick up a decent water effect product and look into some more varieties of flock. I'm also looking a making a tree to go on the right hand side of the base as you see it in the picture.

well, that's me done for now!

churs

Chris