Stompy robots are stompy

I took my House Cadmus Imperial Knights out for a couple of practice games at the club against Blogger McBeth's Thousand Suns: 

in which his magic and infinity rerolls plinked a Cerastus Castigator for 27 wounds pretty much with nothing but bolt guns and Lethal Hits in a single round of shooting despite me passing an improbably number of 4++ saves. He took most of my Armigers and dinged up the Errant pretty badly (with more Lethal Hits) but the Lancer impaled Magnus with a degree of good luck to effectively close out the game. It was a learning exercise for both of us - picking up rules we'd missed and understanding how to deploy some of our kit to best effect. 

Then I took on clubmate Ryan's Eldar and ho boy. Like, I knew Fire Dragons were vicious but wow. They did some spectacular punishment (with their infinity rerolls) and Grandad Eldrad making me pay 2 CP for Rotate Ion Shields to try and save my Castigator. Ouch. 

The whole game pivoted on the explosion of my Castigator  in the end - it plinked some wounds off the Errant and the Lancer and did some serious damage to my Moirax but it also blasted all of Ryan's Howling Banshees, Fuegan's second life and the last of the Storm Guardians that were protecting the Seer Council and other than some Warpspiders in my back field ripping my Sisters to bits, his offensive basically stopped dead with that carnage.  

I learned a few things about Titanic as a rule which gives me a bit more confidence on doing secondaries with my big knights and also dealing with stuff in buildings as well as some of the shenanigans that can be committed by the ever-cheaty Eldar. Knights are a good army and they're pretty forgiving for an inexperienced player. I'm looking forward to getting my Guard out sometime in future for funsies. 

Painting? 

I decided I should paint something just to keep the pile moving so I did some JU87 Stukas for Victory at Sea: 

Just something quick and dirty to keep my hand in. I haven't been in much of a mood of late and there's a pile of half done projects on my painting desk that just need doing so I decided I'd start on one of the easy ones. 

Next Time

Workbench. I've pulled a little present I got myself many moons ago out of the box and will start work getting it together. What I'll do with it when it's done, no idea. That's a future me problem and future me has plenty of those.  
 

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! 

Pooch's April Update

 A much more timely update for April- so timely that it's actually still April!

But more importantly, how did I get on with the painting goals....

1. Paint a platoon of DAK each month

The Afrika Korps production line rolls on, this time with a quintessential unit, the mighty 88! 

These figures are the new plastic models, and are brilliantly designed by Battlefront and have come out really well in the chipped/distressed style that I am working with for my army. 

Not just one, but 4 of the heavy AA/AT guns!

I've used all of the cool gubbins from the sprues on the bases too

Lots of spare shell cases on the sprue- so I used them all!

Next up, not sure. Need to paint some Panzer IIIs for the Panzershrek army, but... I also now own Bison....

2. Add something to armies I have already painted

A simple one for this category this month, two civilians painted for Dracula's America games. They came from a Wargames Foundry ACW civilian pack. Not much more to say, other than I am happy to have more civilians for the game!

"Oi, point your lantern at where I'm pointing...." 

3. Finish up a table of terrain

It's possible that I am becoming mildly obsessed with the amazing buildings from Corvus Games. Because.... I finished two more of them, and I have more on the go for next month.

Two more awesome buildings!

Such cool detailing

And the back has cool little details too!

I don't think I have ever been addicted to buying and painting terrain before, this is weird for me!

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

This month was playing the Victory at Sea ruleset from Warlord Games, using the community led points system. As a ruleset, the game is quite solid- it's certainly a "game of the movie" kindof feel- it stops well short of charts and tables to decide the effectiveness of gunnery, and everything all boils down to rolling d6s, and d10s for criticals.

One of the core issues with the rules as written is in the points- in that they are really off in a number of places, and the response from the designers seems to be "no, they are fine, we did it on purpose". Cue the community stepping in to do some points balancing, which we tested out for the first time in this game. Overall, it made for a much better experience in our opinion.

The game was the US Navy, led by the USS Missouri fighting the IJN, led by an off table Akagi carrier. How did it go? Not so good for the US Navy, in that... pretty much every ship got sunk, and the Japanese were able to achieve all objectives!

The USN Fleet

The IJN fleet

The Mighty Mo underway

And then I mostly got too distracted to take photos, as my ships frantically avoided being struck by Japanese torpedoes! 

The effectiveness of the Japanese torpedoes was on full display in the game- while a number of torpedoes were fired, it was a single torpedo that did no less than 82 points of damage to the Mighty Mo in a single hit, due to escalating critical damage throughout the ship!

A lot of criticals. And actually, more occured shortly after the photo....

I'll certainly play Victory at Sea again this year, I do enjoy the game- even if all my ships get sunk!

I've already got a solid plan for next month too...

5. Paint a new historical army

Well, I said last month that progress would be some Cuirassiers, and maybe some basing. I did one of those two things, in that I painted some Cuirassiers!

Will look so much better when based!

Next up... for something different.... more Cuirassiers, and maybe some basing?

Good... good...

Pooch

Just, like, stuff and things...

Teutons

So Blogger Pooch summed it up when he said "nice to find a game where they're not &^#%" and I agree.

I lost to Blogger McBeth's Scots, but the almost all cavalry list ran really well and I managed to get a couple of favourable matchups which went well. I didn't quite manage to blow through the line in the way that I had hoped though. In the turn I lost (when, for the only time in recorded history McBeth, roller of 6s, rolled the required 1 to pop one of my Generals and break me!) I got McBeth to close on his side so it was an encouraging first run for the list.

Workbench

I rulebooked for Bloggers Tank and Scotty through a couple of games of Silver Bayonet yesterday which got me super enthused to get into painting my French. I decided to start with the Officer and the Junior Officer.

One of the joys of these sorts of games is coming up with good names, so the officer on the left will rejoice under the moniker Colonel Jean-Hippolyte Gavreau de Laframboise and the Junior Officer on the right is Captaine Abelard Beaumanoir, Baron de Laffitte. 

I'm relying pretty heavily on Perry initially for the colour palette but I'm going to have to go digging for some of these models for figuring colours but that's part of the fun! 

Islands

All done. I foolishly got them out of the hot water cupboard and the clear medium started frosting again, so they've gone back into the warm to set as while I expected a week in the cupboard would be enough as I didn't think I'd been quite as heavy handed with it as I did with my Star Wars Legion, but apparently I did so they'll be curing for a bit...

While I probably need to put some whitecaps on some of the surfaces, at this point I really like how these have come out and am definitely looking forward to getting my Regia Marina out to have a wee blat around these.

Next Time

More French and my 'platoon a month' for April. Nothing exciting. :)

In the sea, on the sea and over the sea!

Sea Related Things

We shall begin with a short showcase of things maritime, for my Victory at Sea Regia Marina fleet.

First the first couple of the islands I bought from Battlekiwi: 

I have to rave a little bit about Mod Podge for this. Applied liberally in around 5 coats, most of the print lines on the PLA islands have basically vanished. I've lost a bit of the crispness of some of the more 'reefy' islands but that's kind of okay given the scale and a bit of flock and sand to cover up the rest has done a nice job. The only lesson I will impart is it probably needs a blast with a hair dryer or heat gun or something to pop all the bubbles. If it bubbles, those set pretty hard.

 Secondly, the RM Emanuele Filiberto Duca d'Aosta:

This was an easy ship to paint in the end and has a goodly amount of detail for the white and orange splashes I like on the grey. On the other hand, I had to strip and repaint the stripes as I confidently finished this ship well in advance of this blog and then discovered I'd painted the stripes rising left to right, not right to left like EVERY OTHER SHIP I OWN. 

 Finally, some BA 201 Dive Bombers over the sea. I needed another four stands of planes to fully crew the RM Aquila and given I already have some RM 2001 fighters, some dive bombers seemed like a good call. 

They're painted broadly the same, but different, from my fighters just for my own sanity. I still find the weird asymmetric stands for these things to be odd but I'm used to it now.

French for Silver Bayonet

An order from Perry Miniatures, my first, arrived this week so I've started working on the French for Silver Bayonet. I'm building my crew out of Perry's Retreat from Moscow range as it's suitably characterful for this game. 

Dismounted Cuirassier, Supernatural Investigator, Officer

I'm stuck now waiting on an order of paint for this - Blogger Pooch recommended Vallejo's Prussian Blue as the best base coat so I have ordered some but having some courier-driven chicanery at this point has delayed really getting into these models. 

I have managed to do one model so far, this chap looks suitably like a Cossack, I went off down the Google Image Search rabbit hole and found a great illustration of a Ural Cossack from 1812. I could do this without the necessary blue so I figured I'd crack on. 

He'll be a Native Scout in Silver Bayonet terms as that sort of works for the French in Russia.

Knight

So the core of the build is done and dry fitted, looks like this:

I'm really happy with how it's come together and given how little pose-ability there is in the legs of these models it still looks dynamic enough for me to be happy. The arm is hanging lower than it will when I'm done but I'll have it reaching more forward.

 The current conundrum is whether to paint the pilot and then how to pop the carapace hatch open without it weirdly getting in the way of the rocket launcher.

It's a bit of an evolution of style and design from the original Epic-scale Knight Errant.

Next Time

The Teutons will hopefully get a run in ADLG and the Regia Marina will sail again against the American navy.  I'll be finishing up the rest of the islands before then too.

And I thought last week was bad...

She was a busy week in real-life-land this week so not a lot's been happening hobbywise. Although with Easter coming up, I'm hoping to remediate that and get a bit of building and painting time.

Workbench...

 I've tentatively lined up a game of Victory at Sea with Blogger Pooch at our next club day so I thought I should probably get moving on the Emanuelle Filiberto and my BA201 Dive Bombers.

 

 

Apparently I also forgot to document any of my palette decisions or techniques when I painted the whole fleet last time so it'll be a bit of a process to figure out how to match up with my existing fleet. I'm also mildly nervous about doing candy stripes again...

 

So while I waited for inks to dry and procrastinated about candy stripes, I started a new big build: 

 

This is the core of a Knight Errant for 40K - a project that'll finish up my small 3-vehicle Knight detachment and enable an entertaining knight + Imperial Guard army I want to play. I'm debating building the pilot's cabin, which I kind of want to do, but putting the rocket pod on with the hatch open feels like it might wind up looking a little silly. Anyway, I'll keep building and this model will be a blog feature for the next wee while as it'll be assembled and painted in parts, a valuable lesson learned from building Titans.

... and at least one thing got finished...

 I did my ADLG camp! The excellent print that Blogger Triple T (over here at Potbelly Minatures) did for me came up a treat. The white's a bit rough, which is kind of fine given that it does a good job of matching the rest of the army.

 I 'primed' the tent with Mod Podge which covered up the print lines, especially on the tent roof, and while I lost a bit of the detail, I'm pretty happy with how it came out. I've also started Mod Podge-ing the islands I bought from Battlekiwi in advance of probable boats in a couple of weeks.

...and a game!

I had a game of Late War, 100 point, Flames of War with clubmate BB and his able die-roller, BB-Junior.

BB wanted to try out a US M18 list in an offensive, long table game and in advance of our annual club competition in a couple of months, I wanted to give my Jagdpanzer IV/70 another run with some relatively recently painted Hummels going in for the prior Wespes and dropping two of the four Pumas that had been in the list. 

We played Escape, with the Allies attacking. I left the Jagdpanzer IV/70s and the Pumas off, knowing they would come on the short table edge behind BB's deployment zone.

Soon to be Sherman Crocodiles

BB attacked vigorously up his left flank under cover of smoke, part of his cunning plan running 2 Priest batteries and a 105mm battery. I got no reserves till turn 3...

I ambushed my StuGs in turn 2 in an attempt to remove some M18s (to prepare for the certain arrival of my Jagdpanzers) and that resulted in a couple of turns of us shooting marshmallows at each other and my not dealing with the Sherman Crocs. My Hummels put some serious hurt on his infantry platoon though and even had a crack at some of the M18s.

Underprepared for Flame Tanks

When the Flametanks finally arrived on the objective (when I lost the game the first time but we carried on playing), they slowly set about removing my infantry on the objective alongside my Quad AA guns. The AA and 251s easily prevented the remnant infantry platoon from holding the objective but I also singularly failed to remove enough of the Sherman Crocs due to my over reliance on my Jagdpanzer HQ which eventually cost me the game the second time!

This should have gone better than it did

The Jagdpanzer IV/70s had three turns in the rear of BBs army, including two turns surviving M18 hits to the face and side, and managed to do a sum total of nothing, despite having a good chance at breaking the fairly fragile M18 company. 

In the end, my poor StuG ambush choice and BBs aggressive use of his Sherman Crocs won the day for the Americans although a post-game analysis suggested that had I deployed my StuGs better, BB would have had a much tougher time. He said afterward that having a crack at the company break to save the game (in a turn where every Jagdpanzer shot missed instead) has led him to rewrite the list and I really like where he's gone with it.

 All in all, a delightfully chill game with a mate which I very much enjoyed. 

Next Time

More Knight and the finished boats I'm sure. 

Noodling along

 I played most of a game of Victory at Sea yesterday with Blogger Tank, when the Regia Marina and the Kriegsmarine had some wargames in what looks very much like the Pacific... 

Moments before the Vittorio Veneto launched a full broadside into the Admiral Scheer

This time I got to land both MAS and MS boats (oh my!) and launch a lot of destroyer-based torpedoes. I also got U-boated (is that a verb?) and that went less well. The Tirpitz is a beast of a ship and I shot a lot of torpedos into her and really struggled to get past the torpedo belt.

I also got my Jagdpanzer IV/70s out against Blogger Pel's Desert Rats. He's working hard to make them work in LW and I reckon he's cracked it. We played Scouts Out, a mission that neither of us has played and looked, on the face of it like it would be over super quick.

Jagdpanzer IV/70s in ambush

I expose not just the Jagdpanzer CO's flank but also it's rear armour!!

Totally wrong about that - we ran the game through to 7 turns in the end and had Pel not taken an opportunistic shot on the flank of my CO Jagdpanzer by moving his two PIAT-armed carriers away from the objective and that allowed my 250 OP and most of a platoon of Panzergrenadiers to give his Para platoon what for and win the game. Had he not, he would have taken the other flank with his Stuarts who were definitely giving me hell, having taken out my Wespe battery and the two SdKfz 7/2s left holding the objective weren't going to hold it! 

The Jadgpanzer IV/70s aren't quite done yet, but they're coming along. Pel suggested using a cocktail stick or something similar to make the ambush camo dots and I rather like that idea so will be trying to knock them off this week. I was pretty happy to get all the basecoats and details on to get them to be table-ready! 

Workbenchy things

I've finished the last of the prep for the new Byzantines, epoxying in the last of the lances and spears that needed to be reattached or attached and getting them ready for primer so they'll be hitting the paint table soon. I'd really like to get the basing of the whole army done in one hit so that'll be a fun job coming up. I'm enjoying ADLG and it's nice level of complexity so I'm currently on the hunt for another army. In the meantime, I've rebased my generals: 

Crusaders

Finally done! :) 

 

Now I need a parts order from the UK to get here and I'll be able to finish up an OP Leman Russ I'm working on and should have a new and interesting small Guard army to try out. 

Next Time

I've got some 15mm Hummels on the workbench for my 15mm Flames of War Germans and the massive basing job on the Byzantines. Having played a game of Victory at Sea with Tank's sweet islands, that's got me encouraged to do mine, I just have to finish sanding down the some of the PLA and maybe find some filler primer. 

Pooch's October update

And with that, October is done too! 

I finished up a big painting commission this month, which burned me out a bit on things for myself. But that said, I still made a bunch of progress on things, most notably continuing to paint  a lot of Celts for my ADLG army! 

1. Finish a table of terrain

I have the pieces I need for this started. And have managed to fail miserably about doing anything at all about it. Maybe next month, or maybe December. I just need to do it.....

2. Play a game a month

But wait, there is more Victory at Sea! This time a Cruiser battle between the USN and the IJN. 

USN Cruisers, sailing around a South Pacific island

The first of many USN Cruisers to go down in flames.....

Cruisers vs Cruisers was interesting- the Japanese torpedoes were absolutely lethal, accounting for all of the USN ships sunk. The counter point was that the USN gunnery was far better- but that was really just down to my dice deciding to be incredibly reliable! 

I continue to really enjoy the game, and will likely end up playing more in November too!

3. Finish a 1,500 point 40k army

This month I finished up two vehicles for my Sisters army.

It wasn't intentional, but the posing is very horror movie-esque......

The first a Rhino....

I don't love painting white vehicles

Mostly happy with it however!

The second a Penitent Engine

Because heavy flamers and giant saw blades are necessary.

Next up.... more Sisters of some sort, I have some airbrushed and ready to go, and some I want to assemble and paint. So.... some of that I'm sure!

4. Finish armies that I have part started

My Afrika Corps army expanded from their initial Panzer IIIs, to now include Panzer IIs, and some 8-rad armoured cars! This means that I now have a legal list for Remember December, but I have far more tanks to work through.... not sure what will be next!

The airbrushing on these was a bit more annoying than on the Panzer IIIs, I think beginner's luck was at play when I did my first batch!

Two 8-rad armoured cars

Spot the replacement wheel....

Zvezda Panzer IIs looking cool

The whole army so far!

5. Buy, build and play a new game

More Celts painted, still more to go.... 

How many of them do you ask?

Many.

How many? 119 Infantry, 8 Cavalry so far!

Aiming to finish them all next month!

Two months to go.... better get cracking!