Yet more rats

I think I've developed a bit of a Skaven addiction.

This is the third horde I have refurbished for Thomas and fg - I buy half-painted units off ebay, make up enough for a horde, touch them up, make a unit filler if required, and a custom movement tray, and we have a horde ready for the table.

These 35 figures came more completely painted than the few lots I used for the other two hordes, so all I needed to do was to paint the eyes and dot the catch-light on them, paint the faces, and do a bit of touch up of the blue and silver, then wash the whole lot. The flocking was simple but effective, so I kept it original and flocked and painted the movement tray to match.

Closer view showing the command figures. I like the way the previous owner did the standard.

For the unit filler I once again used a 60mm x 40mm MDF base and the bits from my Tehnolog Castlecraft kit. This time I wanted to depict the skavens coming out of a sewer outlet. The Castlecrat parts fit just nicely on a 40mm square base which I then glued to the MDF base, creating a step. I glued two strips of plasticard on the sides on the inside of the sewer, and painted the "sewerage" part a dark green, and then smeared white glue over it once it is dried to create the water effect. Once the white glue has dried, I washed it with a brown wood stain to give it that, er, realistic look and a sheen.

Close-up of the unit filler

Rear view showing the interior of the sewer and a giant rat.

I enjoyed putting together this unit, and am bidding on more figures to do up another one. Wish me luck on the auction!

Chain of Command Campaign: Normandy Game 2

You can tell when a game was particularly exciting when the AAR contains few photos because the players were too involved in the game to remember to take them.

The second game in the campaign depicts a battle during Operation Bluecoat proper. Martin's British have been  tasked to roll up the flank of the German forces, which has been anchored on a village along a road.

I thought I did OK for the Patrol Phase, and had Jump Off Points which allowed me to deploy into all but one of the buildings on the table.

Martin rolled high on the Force Support, giving him 10 points and me 5 points to spend. Gambling that Martin will not pick a tank after the last battle, I chose an IG 18 and a Medic.

As it turned out I was correct: Martin chose to field a section of Paratroopers (he is planning to paint a whole platoon of them) and a Forward Observer with a 3" Mortar battery.

Martin started aggressively, pushing his paras and one section towards my position straight off. I deployed one section against his paras on my right, and in my centre I deployed one MG team and my infantry gun (seen in the foreground in the photo above - they were deployed inside a ruined building which we removed to facilitate play). Caught in the open, the infantry section was almost wiped out, while my other MG team kept the paras pinned behind another building.

I thought I had the game in the bag at this point, but then Martin's FO went to work and called down a barrage on my position. Pinned by the fire, I was unable to move my men or deploy more onto the table. To makes matters worse, I rolled very few 5s on my Command Dice, so that I could only lift the barrage once - when I used my second Chain of command die to end the turn, Martin (who had more dice) simply continued the barrage.

Under the cover of the barrage Martin withdrew the battered section. The shelling also killed my entire section on the right (leaving a wounded Junior Leader barely escaping with his life) such that the paras found themselves without opposition all of a sudden. As he moved another section to outflank me on my left, I knew the game was up and ordered an orderly retreat while I still could.

We both enjoyed the game very much; it was a tense game from beginning to end. We also enjoyed the support we deployed - I think I might pick a mortar battery of my own in the next game if I can!

My crushing defeat disappointed my CO and made me very unpopular with the men. With 8 men down for the next game, I decided to call for reinforcements and received enough men to bring my platoon up to full strength.

Martin on the other hand managed to impress his CO, although the high number of casualties he lost did not endear him to his men.

At the end of Game 2, the score is:

British
CO's opinion +1, Men's Opinion 0
Casualty: 3 lost (total 5 lost), 2 Miss Next Battle, 2 Returned to unit

German
CO's opinion 0, Men's Opinion -6
Casualty: 4 lost (total 7 lost), 3 Miss Next Battle, 2 Returned to unit

Reinforcement 8 men

Game 3 will probably be played in two week's time.

Halfling Huntsmen

As I said before, the problem with an army list is that you end up trying to have one of every unit on the list...

These count as hunstmen for my Warhmmer (The) Empire army. Officially, there aren't halflings in the Empire army anymore, but they are part of the fluff and lore, and so I wanted to include them in my army, and I thought the skirmishing, scouting huntsmen fit them best.

They are Copplestone sculpts now sold under by Vexillia/Mirliton and by Forlorn Hope. They are really nice sculpts and easy to paint. There are four poses for the archers, including the Robin Hood lookalike, plus one of the leader holding a sword with a bow strapped to his back.

I decided to model the skirmish tray to resemble the ground of a forest, so instead of using static grass I used a coarse light green flock, and some fallen foliage from Darkson Designs (not sure it is still available from them though) for the flocking, and fringed the lips of the tray with foam to represent the shrubs at the treeline.

I've got a unit of handgunners to do after this, but I've also got a few other things lined up, like an Armourfast farmhouse, another horde of skaven clanrats, some night goblins... should keep me busy till the end of the year.

Warhammer Game: Empire vs Orcs and Goblins

A few weeks ago we realised that between fg and Adrian we actually had a sizeable Warhammer army, and so we got them all together on Sunday and fought a battle bwteen the greenskins and my WOTR army.

3600 pts of troops face each other across farmlands 

'We was just having a stroll along the river when these trolls jumped out from under the bridge and threw rocks at us!"

Push of pikes!

Not being familiar with the Orcs and Goblins codex (Adrian literally removed the shrink wrap on the book at my place) we naturally played the rules wrong, but it was still a fun bash. In fact, I had so much fun, I am now in the process of getting enough night goblin figures to field an all-night goblin army (that's an army that is made up of all night goblins, not an army of goblins who don't go to sleep...)!

More rats and some gobbos

As part of my new policy to paint for my opponents, I painted another horde of skaven clanrats for fg.

Once again they were bought assembled and primed off ebay, but these were based on flagstone patterned plastic sheets which appear to be the same ones I bought from Wills. I therefore had an idea to use the ones I have to multi-base them, as I thought I could make some sort of a vignette with the skavens coming out of the sewers via a manhole.

As it turned out a manhole would be harder to fashion than I imagined, but in rummaging through my stash of toys I came across the Tehnolog Castlecraft castle which I bought but never assembled, and I found some parts which would work: I decided to make the whole unit as a vignette where the skavens are coming out of the dungeons of a ruin.

The whole unit on a custom-made movement tray.

Skaven coming out of a trapdoor on the floor - I cut the figure's legs off below the knees.

I added a giant rat on the base to make it look less sparse.

Side view again, showing the window.

I am quite happy with the way the unit turned out, and having just won another 35 skaven clanrats off ebay, plan to make another horde with a unit filler using the Castlecraft parts again.

After finishing the horde (37 figures) in 3 weeks, I turned my attention to the old fantasy regiment goblin archers Adrian and fg passed me. They passed me a total of 22, and I decided to make it up to a round 30 with command by buying another 8 off ebay. Unfortunately I had a minor disaster stripping them with Dettol and I lost some bits, resulting in me having one figure short; I decided to use a snotling figure fg gave me to make up the shortfall.

The goblins do not have a movement tray as I am not sure what the best formation to field them in is. They are also unflocked as I thought Adrian should flock them in the same fashion as his other goblins to give the army a more cohesive look.

They do come with home-made mushrooms on the bases, as well as a banner I made using a bit from the Warhammer giant kit and a dwarf helmet from the Skull Pass kit; I painted the helmet the same way Adrian painted those of his dwarves, and put an arrow through it - I call it the "Dwarf Mocker" banner.

While I wait for my next lot of skavens I may work on a unit or two for my own army to. Stay tuned.

Chain of Command Campaign: Normandy Game 1

Martin and I played the first game of our projected 4-game campaign this afternoon.

I set the campaign against Operation Bluecoat, but we did not use historical units or maps for our narrative. The opening game is set a few days before the launch of the operation, when the British are probing for weakness in the German defences.

The first game of the campaign was a Probe scenario, where the British need to get at least one team to the German baseline. Martin rolled a 6 on his Force Support, which gave me 3 points to spend. I decided to spend them all on obstacles: a minefield to cover the road junction to deny his quick access to my baseline, and two barbed wire entanglements to further restrict his movements.

The battlefield viewed from the eastern end. The Germans (entering left) have mined the road junction and set up barbed wire obstacles.

I did poorly in the Patrol Phase, leaving me with one Jump-Off point on the western side of the table and on the edge at that. Martin rolled a '6' on his deployment roll, quickly advancing to behind the barn and the hill on dominating the open area between my table edge and the barn.

Martin sends all three squads onto the table while I could only deploy one.

One British squad advances to the bocage.

I attempted to push the British squad on the hill off with an MG team, but this was shot up by the accurate fire from them. It took a few lucky rolls by the squad in the broken area before Martin was persuaded to withdraw. This gave me an opportunity to dash the squad across the open ground to seek shelter behind the barn.

The depleted German squad, now without its LMG, runs towards cover, but also closer to the enemy!

Meanwhile I pushed one squad on my left to the edge of the bocage, where they traded grenades with the British - my guys came off the worse. With the situation seemingly deadlocked, Martin revealed his Force Support choice: a Sherman!

I rushed my Platoon Commander forward with the Panzerschreck team, and he managed to land a shot on the tank - two Shocks and Commander wounded, but the tank is still operational!

Decisive moment of the game - if the Germans fail to take the tank out, they will have to fall back.

Martin returned fire with the Sherman, but the shot only managed to cause a Shock. He then ordered the mortar to screen the tank with smoke rounds... 

Smoke screen!

but I spent a Chain of Command die to remove it, and ordered my Panzerschreck team to fire a second shot. Martin rolled poorly on his armour save, and the tank was blown up!

With his trump card taken out, Martin decided to cut his losses and withdraw his platoon. Having lost 4 men against my 6, he managed a Losing Draw, which earned him the displeasure of his CO, but the men were less critical of his performance. Conversely, my CO was happy with my performance, but the same could not be said of my men.

At the end of Game 1, the score was:

British
COs Opinion -1, Men's Opinion +1
Casualty: 2 Lost, 1 Miss Next Battle

German
CO's Opinion +2. Men's Opinion -2
Casualty: 3 Lost, 2 Miss Next Battle

The next game in the campaign should be in 4 weeks, and may see a higher number of Force Support. I certainly hope to be able to field a gun or maybe even some armour of my own... Let's hope Martin rolls high again.

Rampant Self-Promotion

My complimentary copy of Lion Rampant arrived in the mail today.

Picture from Osprey

This is the second time I have had the privilege to be a play-tester for Dan (and the third time for the Osprey Wargames series), and one of the suggestions I made *almost* made it to the main rules; it did make it as an optional rule which I think fits the gestalt of the rules. Here it is:

It's been quite some time since final playtest, and I am not sure how much the published rules resembles the playtest versions, but on flipping through the pages I am impressed by the eye candy of both paintings and photographs of figures in play. I have to get a game in soon. Perfect for those Red Box dwarf footmen I bought and have been meaning to paint up...

Rats!

It took me 38 days - about one figure a day - but here the are:

As I mentioned in an earlier post, these were painted to help Thomas (and fg) kickstart their skaven armies - my brother suggested that the best way to make sure I have an opponent for my armies is to actually paint for my opponents. Between fg, Thomas and myself, we should have around 120 clanrat figures, and Thomas also has a bunch of those weird and wondrous toys that skavens are known for.

The colour scheme for this unit - red and bronze with green accent - was decided by Thomas. He also wanted a "muddy" base, so I googled around and found a tutorial by someone who was doing a WW1 themed Imperial Guard army, and adapted using what I had on hand. I also made a movement tray for the unit using plastic sprues glued onto a 1mm PVC foam board, my go-to material for movement tray bases now.

Close-up showing the basing.

The models are from the Island of Blood boxed set and they are a delight to paint, so much so that now I am contemplating another unit dressed in green; however, I do have another 20 figures with hand weapons to paint, and I did just order 20 figures from Forlorn Hope to supplement my (The) Empire army...

Close-up of the standard - the little guy seems awfully happy on his perch...

Boardgames Sunday

With the arrival of the one-week school holiday Adrian and Thomas were able to come over for a game. With four players,we decided to play a few board- and card games, which are more enjoyable with more players.

The first game we played was Battue: Storm of the Horse Lords.

This is a rather easy game which plays a little like Risk: You have up to 15 soldiers which you can field in "hordes" of up to 8 soldiers, and you move them onto randomly placed tiles of the city, fighting any defenders and looting whatever you find there. In the later stage of the game you may be fighting other players for control of tiles. The aim of the game to is gain the most victory points (which come from loot and tiles controlled). The game ends when three major tiles are occupied (or when only one player is left), so it's pretty much a matter of keeping an eye on the tally and ending the game when you are ahead. A frequent criticism of the game is that there is too much luck involved: walking into a bad tiles can ruin your day, for example. I think to an extent this can be mitigated by the players being aware of who is leading in the victory points and co-operating to bring him down a peg or two.

The second game we played was Dead of Winter, which to me is a mash-up of The Colony and Zombicide... in winter. We were initially a little apprehensive about the scale of the game, which involves a main mission, a mission for the turn, and a secret mission for each of the players. There are several things to keep track of, such as food for the turn, the resource required for the turn's mission, the resource required for the main mission, the amount of trash piling up in the colony (odd, but really quite realistic if you think about it), noise level and the number of zombies that will attract, wounds and frost bites on the characters... However, once we got the momentum going, everything became easier - the fact that we all watched the youtube video on how to play the game probably also helped.

We failed our mission due to a severe shortage of food - we kept finding new colonists instead of food when we searched - but it was fun enough that we want to try this again. In fact, it was so engaging I forgot to take any photos of the game.

The last game we played was something I have wanted to play for a while now: Cockroach Poker.

I won't give the game away, as it really is a very simple bluffing game which you can easily play using a couple deck of cards, but it's a lot of fun, especially after a couple of beers and with friends you have known for a while and can tell when they are bluffing. We played 3 games in a row, with much hilarity. If you are ordering something from an online retailer and they have this and you can save on postage, or if you see it in a store, you should get a pack.

Chain of Command Game 1

I apologise for the poor photos in this post, but the crank handle on my tripod broke and it's only when I have to shoot without it that I realise how difficult it is to get proper photos of a game while trying to come to grips with a new set of rules.

Anyway, after several months of preparation, I finally played a game of Chain of Command with Martin this afternoon.

Martin's British are recently rebased figures from many years ago when we used them for Crossfire (remember Crossfire?) while my Germans are Plastic Soldier Company figures painted by Dragon Painting Service operating out of Hong Kong. I will get some clear photos of them the next session. Promise.

Anyway, Martin and I played the simple Patrol scenario. I think we got most of the rules right, the exception being the one regarding leader casualty.

The British at their Jump-Off points

A smoke round saves the British section caught in the open and in the sights of a German section.

The game played pretty much as promised: with a high level of tension as you can spend a few phases without having a go, and very often you will not have the die-rolls required to activate your sections in a coordinated way.

We both made good use of our "national characteristics" - I delivered deadly fire with my leaders directing LMG shooting, while Martin managed to save one of his sections from a crossfire by using smoke rounds fired from his 2" mortar.

We feel confident enough to have a go at it with vehicles the next game.

Schiltron!

This little project took me weeks to complete, but I am pretty chuffed with the results:

A unit of thirty-five!

The command figures are from Perry, while the rank-and-file are 50% Ebob, and 50% Claymore Castings. Of the two I prefer the Claymore figures, which are really full of character; the Ebob figures are not as well-cast, but while the Claymore figures have their pikes mainly at "porte", these are in attack poses.

Phalanxes look good from the side...

The rear view is more colourful...

To make sure that they all rank up, apart from the three command figures the front three ranks are actually based six to a 60mm x 40mm base: 2 wide x 3 deep deep on the flanks, and 3 wide x 2 deep behind the command figures. The rear two ranks provide "loose change" for casualty removal.

I bought an MDF movement tray to hold these guys, but instead of using the MDF base supplied I glued the top piece to a 1mm PVC foam card, which reduces the height and weight of the whole tray. The bottom piece will be used to represent the footprint of the unit once it comes into contact with other units, on account of the pointy sticks...

They will be fielded as spears under the WHFB rules. I do like the look of these, and were they easy to paint I might have been tempted to convert my entire army into a pike-and-shot army with just spearmen and handgunners. But for now, this will have to be it.

Romans vs Hellenics

It's been a while since Martin was able to come over for a game, so I am quite glad we managed to get a short game of our Dux Bellorum-Impetus hybrid this afternoon and knock back a couple of beers.

Martin used his Early Imperial Romans and I used my Pergamenes and some Asiatics as some sort of a Hellenistic army.

I tried to delay contact with the legionaries by sending my skirmishers forward on the flanks, hoping to win the flanks and then envelope the Romans.

Light cavalry on the flanks.

Once the Roman legionaries make contact, the contest is over!

The rules are pretty solid, but as we had small armies there weren't many tactical options available. On the plus side I think we remembered most of the rules this time!

Otherworld Female Human Cleric

I've always liked the way the Otherworld figures look, so when I wanted a leader for my flail-wielding female fanatics, I was happy to find that the female cleric from their range seems to fit the look.

I cut off the religious symbol she was holding in her left hand and replaced it with a chalice from a Blood Angel bit I had (knew those would come in handy one day!) to fit the theme of the unit. You can see her posed with the rest of the girls below.

I am also slowly "finishing" 60 skaven figures I bought off ebay. These came either partially painted or just primed, but already assembled. I started this project on the advice of my brother, who suggested that I might get to actually use my armies if I helped my opponents to paint theirs. Skavens are actually rather cheap on ebay, so I decided to follow his advice. The paint scheme is based on that chosen by Thomas, our skaven player. They are actually rather easy to do, and a lot of fun to paint too.

X-Wing 4 - More or Fewer Wings

I like X-Wing as much as the next guy, but I think that the new fighters are really just a copy of the original models with more or fewer wings...

Anyway, Thomas, fg and myself played a 150-points aside game this afternoon. I decided to fly the new TIE Defender and a TIE Advanced, since these have shields, and Thomas flew the Firespray, which I always thought was a silly design.

fg flew the E-Wing (really, guys?) and the Z-95, plus Wedge Antilles in an X-Wing, and a B-Wing.

fg picked some really effective upgrades, and dominated the battle. I get a feeling I am playing the Imperials wrongly... or maybe I am just bad at this game.

After the game we posed all of Thomas' models on the mat for a shot. I suspect he will be adding more models to his collection soon...

New Season of Blood Bowl

It's been more than two years since our last game, but fg and I decided to start a new season going.

I chose to field my fantasy Greek-themed Chaos Dwarf team, and fg fielded his female orc team which he used in our first league years ago.

The orcs are a rather versatile team which we have both used previously, but I found the Chaos Dwarf had no answer to the Black Orcs.

The teams face off for the first kick-off of the season.

A series of good dice-rolls on the part of fg saw several of my team go down, and the orcs were up by 2 touchdowns in the first game of the season. In the final turns I decided to run a passing play and managed to slip a hobgoblin down the side to score a point.

The depleted Spartans sneak a hobgoblin down the flank to score a touchdown.

With a bit of time left we decided to play the first half of the second game. This time the dice were a little more to my favour, and we both managed to score a touchdown each.

Line of scrimmage.

We used the pitch that fg bought from Impact!, which is really quite pretty.

As before fg has a more cautious style of play while I prefer the riskier style of play (hence my 4 re-rolls). The two teams seem well-matched, and I think the season will be a close-fought one.

Pleasant Surprise 2014 Part 2

I went to the post office today to pick up a parcel which I thought was some spearmen I ordered, but it turned out to be my Pleasant Surprise!

My gift came from Simon, known as somegeezer on the Warhammer Empire forum, and are six Perry HYW armed peasants plus a priest, all of which I have actually been eyeing! What's more, in the friendly letter he had included in the parcel he explained that he tried to paint them such I can add these beauties to my unit of militia; and as you can see from the photo below featuring both his work and mine, he has done a pretty good job - my only complaint is that his work is better than mine!

These guys are definitely going on my army list for my next game!

The priest is superb - Simon's blending is beautiful on this figure. I can use him as a wizard or perhaps even a warrior priest. And not that I can field him in a unit of flagellants, but he really adds to the whole mood of the unit when I pose him together with them!

Thank you very much, Simon. I must say this has indeed been a surprise, and a very pleasant one too!

I can only hope that I can give so much joy to my recipient in next year's exchange.