Pooch's September 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

This month was a bit of an oddball. I had planned on getting a bunch of things done for the DAK, but bad weather prevented me from using the airbrush, and when I did get time to use it, I couldn't get the consistency of the paint or style in a way which I was happy with it. Net result, I only got one of the units I had planned to get done, done!

The locals had been talking a bit about getting back into Early War, which prompted me to do some thinking on what I would add for my DAK to make them more early war appropriate. The answer was obvious, things on a Panzer I chassis! 

With the Panzerjager 1 out of stock, I headed to the 3d printing pages and found an excellent STL. One quick order to Potbelly Miniatures later, and a short time late I had some beautifully printed Panzerjagers in my hands!

3d printed Panzerjagers

I think I might still add some crew to them, but that will be an October job (assuming I can find some!)

2. Add something to armies I have already painted

On the "make some actual progress into my Adeptus Sororitas" front, I have finished up five arco-flaggelants! Maybe not the most glamourous of models, and I didn't love the experience of painting them, but now that they are complete, I do quite like how they have worked out.

Whip it! Whip it good!

Not sure what's up next, I have a bunch there still to work through!

Also this month, McZ and Scotty picked up Warhammer Underworlds, and have painted MANY crews for it. Not one to be left out of a random gaming enthusiasm, I decided to grab a few for myself. I've painted up two crews so far, with more on the way.

Storm of Celestus

Hedkrakka's Madmob

No surprises to guess what my October game will be!

3. Finish up a table of terrain

More Silver Bayonet terrain, this time an MDF church from a local designer, who had purpose built it to be the right dimensions for The haunted ruins scenario in the rulebook.

It was a pretty simple paint job, using spray cans and oil washes, plus some contrast paint on the window frames and many tufts to get the overgrown feel. All in all, I'm pretty happy with what was a simple paint job!

The completed church

Mathilde vs Banshee

Banshee protecting the church

4. Play a game a month, that was different to the last month

Our gaming group pretty much all invested in a 15mm 1980s army, to play the Battlefront game Team Yankee. The group has moved away from the game a bit, prompting people to look at the other rulesets available, to use the super cool models we all own.

Seven Days to the River Rhine has become our game of choice, and this month was time to get my Polish out to give them a go at the new rules!

So to test it out, they fought Tank's US Army....

Scary Polish Infantry hunting a Sgt York

Mighty(?) Polish tanks

Shilka vs Car. Shilka wins.

Overall, I really enjoyed the game. The Polish are far from terrible, but needed to have a bit of luck/skill to deal with the M1A1 that Tank fielded!

Definitely want to play more of it.

5. Paint a new historical army

I am probably drawing a long bow with "new", but I have started putting in a bunch of work to my Flames of War Late War US army, with the focus on some upcoming tournaments. Deciding that plain green was a bit boring, and spurred on by my success with the DAK, it was time to give whitewashing a go!

A platoon of early M4 Shermans

3 early M4 Calliopes, because... Rocket roof racks!

 I've got a bunch more that need this treatment, so watch out for more whitewashed  tanks!

MORE PROGRESS IS DEMANDED

Pooch

Attenzione! Sottomarino!

 

Victory at Sea

This was going to be a whole game report but Tank and I got super into it after the first turn when this happened:

The HMS Urge came up from the deep and fired on the RM Conte di Cavour and the one torpedo that snuck through the belt managed to completely disable her engines. Conte's escorting MAS Boats had a good blat at sinking the Urge with depth charges once they knew she was there but it took a couple more turns. 

I ran some dive bombers into the HMS Neptune, the RM Aquila finally saw play and by the time Conte had repaired her engines (miraculously) she tried super hard to sink the HMS Belfast and failed SO hard. It was a lot of fun.

This game has reminded me that, aside from it's sometimes incomprehensible rulebook, Victory at Sea with the revised points is a solid game. I'd love to see some more support for the many, many, many, ships that are in the rules that don't yet exist in the world. I'd happily build out the Italian fleet and no mistake!

Underworlds

Otherwise, I've been getting stuck right into painting up some more of my Underworld's warbands.

This is the rest of Kainan's Reapers, after last week's marathon effort to paint the big guy himself. I'm fairly happy with the outcome. They got a run at the club yesterday and came out okay. Either getting Kainen stuck in early and not getting him killed, or ganging up on enemies with the Morteks seem to be the key to running up enough Bone Tithes to make them go.

Rippa's Snarlfangs were one of those model sets I saw in the Underworlds releases and decided they were amazing and that I should have them. So when I found a set, they were acquired and painted. I love how they've come out and though their first outing against Scotty's Idoneth was not successful, I can really see how they work and I think they'll be great fun to play. 

Notably, we've NEVER managed to take a single photo of our games so far which I think tells you how much we're enjoying them. 

Next Time

I can promise you more Underworlds warbands and some more 15mm Renaissance cavalry! 

One giant skellington

It's been a fairly hectic week IRL this week and 1:1 scale painting and basing (does that really work as a proxy for gardening? I dunno....) has absorbed much of my weekend so a very short post this week as I've done very little hobbying but at least persisted in pushing on with the jobs I can. 

More Underworlds

This is the leader of Kainen's Ravagers, one Mir Kainen, of the Ossiarch Bonereapers. I wasn't super sure what how to paint them or how I wanted to paint them so I watched GW's actually painting tutorial, bent it around the paint I had on hand and I don't think it's come out too badly:

I'm fairly happy with the outcome - it's a big change from how I'd normally do piles of bones, given all the other GW skeletons I've painted have been Khemrian, so bleached bones sort of seemed appropriate. These ones starting with brown for the bones is definitely different and my output here sort of resembles the official scheme but not remotely as polished as the studio painters!! It was a good little process that I'll use on the rest of the Bonereapers, now that I've got the big one done!

Renaissance Spanish

 

Three LH mounted arquebusiers for my Renaissance Spanish. These were fun to do as they're simple enough models and the horses were already finished. I had a bit of a think about how to do these bases alongside a couple of medium cavalry mounted arqubusiers and decided that the "aiming" poses should all get used on the light horse bases so that the formed cavalry look a bit more formed (and a bit dull as a result but so be it).

I've realised I haven't been through and done socks and blazes on my cavalry so far and I've decided I won't until they're all finished and then I can just smash all those out (and probably give the horses a bit of a tidy around the basing as well) at once.

Next Time 

I'm tentatively lined up for a game of 7DttRR at our next club day and will probably be playing some more Underworlds with Blogger Scotty at some point. I've also started on the next pile of 15mm cavalry, having mostly finished the horses for the rest of the mounted for my Renaissance. Then I'll have to do the next Tercio....

Pooch's August update

Well, August is gone, and we are another month down. And back to not being very timely with the blog posts.... oops, my bad on that one.... 

But more importantly, the big question is how am I going with my challenges?

1. Paint a platoon of DAK each month

This month's DAK platoon is a platoon I really wished I bought two (or even three or four of!) of when I had the chance- an Infantry platoon!

Comprising of 4 MG teams, an HMG, a Mortar, and a 2.8cm Anti-tank rifle, this platoon really does have all of the toys, but not really enough infantry to be an attacking platoon. Regardless, I am really happy with how they look, and given a chance to pick up another platoon I will do that in a heartbeat!

The full platoon

4 MG stands, looking cool

2.8cm ATR, Mortar and tripod MG42 

I also finished up the Rommel figure I had lying around too, you can't have a DAK army without Rommel....

Next up? Some more tank killers I think.....

2. Add something to armies I have already painted

So the goal of finishing more of my Adeptus Sororitas army continues, this time with two more Penitent Engines, bringing my total of heavy flamer and buzz saw wielding light armoured walkers to three.

So very grimdark....

Not sure what's next for them, which is possibly problematic given it is actually halfway through the next month already!

3. Finish up a table of terrain

A double feature this month- first is another building for my 28mm Moderns table- Apollo's cafe! Painted in some pretty simple colours, the cafe is a nice overall addition to the board (and likely sells simply terrible coffee).

Mmmm... you can smell the burnt coffee from here.....

I also managed to knock through more terrain for my Silver Bayonet table- finishing up the pieces necessary for the Troll Bridge scenario- namely, a river, a bridge and a boat!

Close up of the Bridge and River in action!

Longboat, with swivel gun added and Vindivanire for scale

The river came from Battlekiwi, with additional model effects put onto the top of it to make it look all watery and awesome. 

One of the six(!) river sections

4. Play a game a month, that was different to the last month

I was back to the wonderful game of Silver Bayonet this month, introducing my son to the game, playing new scenarios I had written and using the new terrain I had recently finished. 

A couple of photos (to go with the one of the Bridge from earlier!)

French vs Revenants

Prussians vs Russians vs Troll!

5. Paint a new historical army

Junior Pooch was keen on playing some games too, so I dug out some single based French Dragoons for him to use as his Silver Bayonet band. Never one to let an opportunity to add another figure or two to the lead pile, I also grabbed him a Vindivaniere from Warlord Games!

She also comes with a most important terrain piece- a donkey!

And that's it, back to the painting table!

Get those blogs out more timely!

Pooch

Vampire Gazpacho

A recipe. 

But first, a rundown of a game of Flames of War with clubmate Steve - my Sturmgrenadiers meeting his Heavy Assault Guns at the tip of the Spearpoint (see what I did there?) in a game of Flames.

A bit of an experiment...

Blogger Pooch and I were having a bit of a list build natter and were discussing the merits of the new Flames of War Late War Veteran Volksgrenadiers. I decided that I'd take a fairly conventional German infantry company, built from the Bagration book and see how it ran, then compare it with what a Bulge Volksgrenadier list would look like with a similar build.

German deployment with the attacking Soviets at the top of frame

 Turn One

The German turn one was uneventful - the rear Sturm platoon withdrew rapidly to cover the rear objective (as the Russian recce was likely to come screaming up the road) and otherwise did a big pile of nothing.

IS-2s advance under ISU-152 overwatch

Soviet Turn One was a bit the same, although Steve's ISU-122s arrived from reserve.... 

Turn Two

I popped my PaK40 ambush to start the turn, looking for a couple of cheeky kills on the IS-2s. I got plenty of hits and Steve saved like a BOSS. Spoiler alert, this continued for the rest of the game... 

'

Steve dropped an ISU-152 bombardment on my PaK40s, mortars and infantry and in a staggering display of dice driven incompetence, I lost three PaK40s, a mortar and my infantry were firmly pinned.

And in a cunning plan, he sent his IS-2s into the assault on front of the German platoon, saved all the defensive fire hits (*grumble*) and in the ensuing combat, lost two IS-2s for around half the stands in the defending platoon. I'll note here that the remaining IS-2 passed every single last man save for the rest of the game.

 Turn Three

Steve's armoured cars pulled off the road so I decided to come out and fight them. One went down in a screaming heap to the SiG33s but the shrecks all missed.

In return for my arrogance, Steve dismounted and decided to give me what for. His assault bounced off in a hail of MG42 fire.

Entrenching tools!!

Turn 4

Tigers. I was holding on to the front objective for dear life with half a Sturm platoon with two Panzershrecks and as such, Steve was reluctant to wade in with either the remnant IS-2s or the truly-awful-in-assault ISU-122s.

Reinforcements, finally!

My Tigers arrived in...not the worst spot but their long range fire did nothing to the IS-2s as Steve continued bossing his armour saves. All I managed to do was assault the remnant of his scouts and force them to flee...

...just in time for T70s to arrive from reserve and force me to run back to the objective. In the rest of his turn:

 

 he scored a janky hit from an advancing ISU-122 at a long range, concealed Tiger and I (surprising no one at this stage) failed the save and died but his ISU-152s failed to upset my Sturmgrenadiers any further.

Turn 5

This is kind of where the game ended. I continued to pointlessly bail out ISU-122s with Tiger fire (even getting enough hits to force saves on the whole platoon - for one bail....) and Steve went into the tank for a bit debating whether it was worth assaulting me off the objective, even if ISU-122s are terrible.  

In the end, he decided to shoot and rolled 4 shots, three hits (on 6s!) and, with Brutal, the 4 ISU-122s blasted the last infantry stands off the board as my consistent inability to roll saves carried through to the end of the game and the remaining IS-2 took the objective.

 Conclusions?

Disappointed but not surprised. I enjoyed the 58 Sturm Division lists in v3 but this just ain't it. Short of looking for a truly historical matchup, there's not really a good reason not to take Veteran Volksgrenadiers from the Bulge German book. They're straight better and cheaper, especially once you bolt on extra shrecks, with Panzerfaust 2 and Assault Rifles. They also have the option to take on cheap supports like Brigade Panthers which helps counteract the significant cost of the infantry core. I'm struggling to see why I'd run this list from Bagration at this point. I might take Sturm Platoons in support of other lists but I'll be running Volks in future if I'm running infantry.

 Warhammer Underworlds

Blogger Scotty and I played our first games of Warhammer Underworlds at the club! I had so much fun I totally forgot to take photos but here are my first crew, The Crimson Court. 

They were a lot of fun to play and worked like an absolute scream against Scotty's skinks. The first game was a bit of a slaughter because he attacked me (!) the second was a lot tighter. Being able to reliably one-shot things makes blood drinking (even though it must be like Vampire gazpacho) beasties very pleased. I also took my Ossiarch Bonereapers out for a run against Scotty's Sigmarines and had a much rougher time. Turns out getting three skeletons to do something together when you only have five and they collapse in a stiff breeze is quite hard.

But the game is super fun. We played four games in 4 hours, including a coffee stop and a lot of looking things up or stopping to read cards. Super cool. 11/10, will play again.

Next Time

I've decided that I need to make some more progress on my 15mm Renaissance so I'm going to be painting cavalry for the next week. I've got 4 bases of Knights, two of medium cavalry and three of light cavalry to paint so I think just getting into it will be a good plan. 

A light work week this week

 I haven't got a lot done this week. Long days and real life have definitely led to a diminished capacity for nerd related festivity.

Jagdpanther!

I finished the third Jagdpanther and it came together as easily as the first two. I had a bit of primer-related drama where the can was a bit too close and pitted one of the side skirts. A bit of plastic putty and some serious filework and the damage is mostly invisible.  

So now I have *most* of a neat little Jagdpanther list and if I can get hold of a box of Ostwinds before December, I might run this for our end of year club event.

From the Pile

Some classic Hordes Warlocks, Midas and Helga: 

Midas always struck me as an interesting Warlock for Farrow by making combat troops out of a support unit, which I loved. Helga was something that appealed as just as a concept and the fact that there are Farrow Valkyries are just a whole thing that I wouldn't say no to. I enjoyed working in a palette that was mostly shades of brown with a few highlights. Helga's metals are a bit shinier and goldier and Midas' are all rusted, as befits a bonepicker!

These are from back when I was super down the PP rabbit hole and was thinking of getting back into Hordes. With the impending release of Mark IV, and the promise of some new models, I'm tempted to consider Farrow going forward IF Mark IV pans out to be as good as it promises at this stage.

Workbench

Blogger Scotty and I somehow talked each other into giving Warhammer Underworlds a go. Partly because it looks like a lot of fun and the model kits that are coming out for it are frankly amazing. I've decided to start with the Crimson Court as my first team:

The GW pushfit models are frankly incredible. These ones required me puttying one seam which is super impressive sprue design. I've started getting paint on them and they're stonking models. They are, however, a bit of a pig to prime. I probably should have primed them on sprue if I'm honest.

Next Time

Scotty and I will play a game or five of Warhammer Underworlds so a review will be inbound. First read throughs look really promising though. I've also lined up a game of Flames that I think I'll take some Storm Grenadiers for and we'll see how that goes.