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! 

Imperial War Museum London

Did anyone notice radio silence for a week? I was overseas for the first time in the COVID era and that was itself an experience. While I was overseas, I took some time to swing by the Imperial War Museum in London as it's been 15 years since I was last there and was interested to see what had changed. 

One of my favourites is still sitting in the main atrium:

 

I remember being shocked at just how big the V2 is. This might be due to never having seen a modern ICBM in the flesh, as it were, but it's comfortably 2.5 stories of the IWM atrium.   The rear side has been cut open so the inner workings of the missile can be seen too.

 

 

On the subject of big, MBTs! Last time I was here, this spot was occupied by a Matilda II in Caunter camouflage which was large but this T34/85 staggers me. There's a Sherman elsewhere in the museum and man they're just big. I mean sure, not as big as a modern MBT but still. Shortly after I took this, a bunch of kids appeared from behind the tank and barely even came up to the top track!

 

 I do love good nose art and while this lacks the pin-up-ness of the side of a B25, I really enjoyed getting up close and personal with the nose of a Lancaster. I overheard someone tap on the nose bubble and comment to a small child "imagine what flying in there would have been like" and y'know what? I choose not to.

 

I included this image just for blogger Tank, who actually owns a 28mm version of this Home Guard weapon. The Smith Gun was one of those ingenious British inventions of World War II to make up for the shortfall of kit after the Battle of France. While it had both a reputation for killing it's crew and was not anywhere near as effective as anyone hoped, it's still brilliant.

 

This Harrier, hanging from the ceiling, might be one of my favourite museum presentations of an artifact ever. I love being able to look down the intakes to the actual turbines. It comes alongside a really good biography of the plane lingering on a sortie where it flew danger-close air support during the war in Afghanistan. 

 

Also hanging in the atrium are a Spitfire (because obviously) and again, hanging it from the ceiling is cool. There's also a specific exhibit of the Rolls-Royce engine elsewhere in the museum that gets into why it's so good! In the foreground though is a Japanese MXY-7 Ohka rocket powered kamikaze aircraft which I'd never seen. I assume it was here last time I visited but I don't remember!

Finally this Ferret Scout Car from UN Service in the Balkans IIRC. When I was last in the UK, the British Army were retiring the Ferret and were selling them on the open market. I thought about how much fun it would be to own one until I realised it wouldn't fit in the supermarket car park (that was 100% the reason I didn't buy one. Honest.) 

Exhbitions

The World War I and World War II exhibits were both very good and I loved that, as part of half-term activities, there was a dazzle camouflage class. New since the last time I visited was a sobering and very effective Holocaust exhibit that used some very personal narratives to tell the story of the persecution of Jews in Europe from the 20s to the end of the war. It was, fittingly, quiet and reflective compared to the rest of the museum. I also found the potted history of the Cold War and the part of the museum dedicated to the British Army's operation in Northern Ireland during the Troubles both very worthwhile.

 There was also an exhibition about wargames (of the electronic variety) that I didn't even get near given the half-term ness which was a shame given I think it would have been interesting to see but hey. 

Next Time

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.  

DROMM! Show me the wizard who killed my mother...

 Super short blog this week due to many hours not spent painting. I have finished Dromm, the eponymous leader of the Gorechosen of Dromm. 

This is another one of those ones where I've followed along with GWs painting guide up to a point before I diverged to paint armour the way I like painting red armour (see Titans here) and brass but otherwise kind of used their ideas. I am looking forward to finishing up the other two and getting these idiots on the park.

And if the blog title made no sense, I offer you this gem from Jon and Al Kaplan on YouTube:

Next Time

 Something different for a change. Not sure what yet.

Doin' it Easy

Ever since watching Band of Brothers I have wanted to build a US Parachute Company, based around the Battle for Foy. 

When I saw the winter troops for the American Bulge book I knew the project was on. Starting with the figures - I don't know why I was expecting plastics, but when they arrived they were metal. They are terrific sculpts with a good variety of poses and cleaned up really well. 

I like the chunkiness of the figures, as if they are wearing as many layers as they can. For inspiration I went back to Band of Brothers again. I wanted to pick up on the way the winter uniforms were haphazardly pieced together. Some men had winter coats, some in normal uniform, lots of scarves and gloves. I like the way there is only the occasional white helmet too, supplies were short and they spread them out as best they could. 

As the paint scheme came through the basing was my next challenge. White is alway a tricky colour to get some depth in. Citidels Wraithbone is off white enough to give a little depth into the basing. I decided to paint the bevels white too. I then put a snow flock over ther base. Some bases were finished with winter grass and some with log piles cut from trimmed plants in my garden. I like to base platoons slightly differently to be able to tell them apart on the board (small numbers on the back of bases don't work for these old eyes). I then went mad and bought Armour, 3" guns, mortar and an HMG platoon. Plenty of this project to complete. 

And here is what I have completed so far.

I've backed the Germans into a corner and that might not have been the best idea....

Three games of Flames at the club yesterday. Let's see if I have enough pictures to put together a coherent battle report.... 

Mid War Guastatori vs Panzers

Clubmate BB is running a 100 point MW event in the new year with the Panzer Buns points and while the changes in the Italian section aren't super significant, they're enough that I went off and had a look at alternative options for playing MW Italians and came up with something that I think might be really really good fun - Guastatori! Without the points changes, the list looks like this: 

• HQ
• 2x Guastatori platoons
• Mortar platoon
• 47mm Elefantino Platoon
• 5x L6/40 Platoon
• 5x M14/41 Platoon with the Iron Men Command Card
• 6x Semovente 75/18 Platoon 
• 100/17 Artillery Battery with the (no-brainer) Captured 25pdr Command Card
  

With the points changes, the list is *identical* with the reduced price for the 47mm and 100mm guns offsetting the increase in the L6/40s and Captured 25pdr upgrade. 

So how did it go? Well, it definitely gave Clubmate Pat's Panzers a really rough handling.

 I deployed one of my Guastatori platoons on the objective in my deployment zone and the other in column to run to the other objective alongside the L6/40s. I put the 25pdrs facing Pat's deployment zone. Pat went first and his 10.5cm howizers and the combined fire of some Panzer IIIJ (late) and Panzer IV F2s destroyed two of the 25pdrs but didn't do a lot else.

Apparently I didn't remember to take a photo until the third turn which was where my massive platoon of Semoventes had arrived and removed some StuG Gs and I was busy trying to chase down Pat's IVF2s with my Guastatori like this was Version 3. :)

In the next photo, you can see the hero Italian 25pdr crew that passed every single morale test it needed to and at this point had just shot the IVF2s into fleeing the board! I'd popped the ambushing 47mm guns to deal with the 251s and to reinforce that objective from the impending assault from the IIIJs:

Pat realised he had to go and give it a blat and he did. The Panzer IIIs had a bad time when one was destroyed by a 47mm gun in defensive fire and they didn't stay past the first round of combat. Then Pat decided that he should launch a Mounted Assault:

And boy did he ever. I missed with all the defensive fire and so he got to do a bunch of fighting from his halftracks. It was AWESOME. Eventually the Italian morale failed and they retreated before coming back the following turn and wiping out the Panzergrenadiers and the Panzer IIIs and breaking the Germans.

Pat noted afterwards, he faffed a bit too long trying to decide which objective to chase and by the time he'd decided, the insane 25pdr crew had basically ruined his plans.

Late War Volksgrenadiers vs Cromwells

Blogger Pel and I managed two games - the first was a short and brutal Breakthrough. I offer you this one picture taken at the end of Pel's first turn: 

 

Let's just say that the 75mm ambush, the arrival of Panthers from Reserve and a couple of horrible rounds of shooting broke the Cromwell Company. The second was Cornered and was a much more intriguing proposition. Here you can see our deployments. Me holding my corner and Pel making very efficient use of his Spearhead to shove all his armour forward and down one side of the board.

 

 

Turns 2 and 3were fairly uneventful aside from one thing. Pel sensibly hid his tanks behind the forest and hill on that side of the board, especially as I had Panthers come on from reserve and still had my 75s in ambush. What was interesting? I got one of my Volks assault platoons out of it's trenches and advanced, hoping to sneak through the central forest and accost the M10s. Pel brought up the Daimlers and Paras and over two rounds we had some solid fisticuffs where I pinned his incoming assault and then he didn't pin mine, but I failed EVERY save for the charging unit. He finally landed an assault and in the end, the Paras were wiped out and Siegfried Moldenhauer raced off at the end of the combat after the remnant of the Volks platoon fled the park. Why? See below:

 

 This is turn 4 I think - Pel baited out the PaK40 Ambush with a platoon of Cromwells and advanced the M10s. You can see Moldenhauer on the right of shot going to get the other Volks platoon that had decided to go sack the Sextons to stop them killing my PaK 40s. They spent two turns pinned and by the time Moldenhauer got there, they rallied without him.

This is the last dramatic photo. Over the last two turns, Pel had to get his M10s into the forest to get within 8" of the front objective to keep the game going. The Volksgrenadiers who unpinned turned back and charged into the forest to destroy the M10s in close combat. Moldenhauer made three assaults and rolled 1s in two of them. 6 points y'say? Actually, having Panzerschrecks hit on 4+ in assault is worth it, let alone anything else. 

It was a tough match for Pel - AT10 on the Cromwells means the Brigade Panthers are basically the best assault gun there is and the Cromwells are struggling against StuGs and even Panzer IVs - I'm definitely easier to hit, but I can make a goodly number of saves against the 75s and when I hit, the Cromwell's chance of saving is not anywhere near as good. In the end, Pel responded to an enquiry as to how the game was going with "I've backed the Germans into a corner and that might not have been the best idea...."

I *really* like this Volksgrenadier list. I've decided I really want to get rid of the "transform your leFH howitzers into pretend PaK40s Command Card" for actual PaK40s in the core because when you're all Reluctant / Trained / Aggressive, the core is very brittle. I'm also prepared to pay the extra points for not being a Large Gun and having a 3+ save because hot damn, I lost a lot of models to Sextons and me rolling less than 4+. I think to fit that in, I probably wind up having to downgrade the Volks StuGs to Volks Hetzers but as I'm a huge Hetzer fan, that's probably okay...

More Underworlds

I've finished up the Shadeborn and they are just fun. I really really enjoyed painting these and while I persist in hating edge highlights, I think I'm getting better at using them on some small occasions when they really do something I want. In a game with Bloggers Pooch, Scotty and Pelarel yesterday they did sterling work although I didn't once manage to do a Shadow Charge with Slythael Shadestalker - I had to walk like a peasant.

I've also knocked these two little horrors out of the pile:

They're a leftover from a couple of bases in my Ghosties Kings of War army and I'm planning to find a home for them in DnD somewhere. Not sure where yet, but they'll be good ones to have in the DMs box methinks. 

Next Time

The Gorechosen of Dromm! I've started on the next Underworlds warband and am making slow progress on them and I'm hoping to have them done by next weekend!