Chain of Command: Arnhem Game 1

Martin and I finally kicked off the first game of our Arnhem campaign. More models are ordered and on their way, but we had enough to play the first scenario.

The scenario depicts the Paras probing the German defences in the vicinity of Wolfheze. For this campaign Martin is limited to infantry support, jeeps and universal carriers for vehicles, and the 6-pounder for anti-tank guns, while artillery represents mortars and perhaps the pack howitzer.

The Paras enter from the left side of the table, and must move at least one unit off the opposite edge. This was admittedly a difficult scenario for Martin, as I held the half of the table with the cover.

In our first Patrol Phase I bungled and left an unguarded corridor down my left flank, which meant the game was essentially over before it started, so we decided to do over.

The first section of Paras creep tactically along the hedge.

A Flak gun (counts as HMG) reveals itself!

One contact is made, we got so involved in the fighting I neglected to take photos. What happened next was I deployed a section in the building and started trading fire with the Paras behind the hedge, while Martin sent in another section to bolster his attack. My section in the building was wiped out (the Paras can really put out a lot of firepower, and Martin rolled very well), but by this time I have deployed another section in the orchard, while a third section was sent round it to try to flank the paras.

With my third section committed, Martin sent his last squad down my right flank, rushing for the table edge. I then sprung my surprise: I have a fourth squad hiding behind the hill near the table edge! To my horror, however, my squad came off worse in the firefight, and I had to recall the flanking squad from my far left to come back to defend the flank. With victory hanging in the balance, Martin charged his depleted Paras into my squad - the Paras were wiped out, but they took enough of my squad to make further defence futile; there was nothing left to prevent the other two squads from moving to my right.

We were both surprised by the offensive power and the tenacity of the Paras. Their 6 Command Dice also gave them the initiative for most of the battle, and Martin's use of smoke rounds from his mortar rendered most of my movements irrelevant.

That said I did not choose support that will negate the Paras' weaknesses: artillery and armour. In my next game I shall not be so merciful...

Dropzone Commander Resistance vehicles

It started off because I wanted a Toyota Technical. I mean, which self-respecting Third World warlord wouldn't?

The problem is, a technical needs a context, and in this case context means lots of other militia figures in the same scale, maybe some elite Developed Nation special forces to fight them, and lots of terrain in the form of buildings. And that's *after* you get a technical.

I googled around and couldn't decide on a scale or a range, but the idea of doing a post-apocalyptic Mad Max/Car Wars sort of thing instead began to appeal to me. I chanced upon the Dropzone Commander Resistance faction which had the perfect vehicles for this. It took little to convince fg to get in on the project, and I ordered a pack each of their technicals, trucks, buses (yes, buses), and bikes to split between the two of us.

The models are incredibly well-cast and detailed, with all the undercarriage represented. The vehicles are single-piece resins, while the gun and crew are single-piece metals. The trucks come with resin weapons which I thought look too advanced for a "wasteland warriors" faction, and so used the technical weapon and crew instead. The buses come with separate fighting platforms that fit on top of them like howdahs. I decided to paint my bus more as a transport instead of a fighting vehicle for now.

I took the school bus with the intent of painting it in its "original" yellow, and had wanted to paint the other vehicles yellow too, but thought that might make them blend in too much with the terrain. Since fg picked red for his faction, I picked black.

The models were easy to paint, and the raised details easy to pick out. I weathered the models by dabbing a piece of sponged dipped in brown and then black paint, and washed with a black wash over the metal parts and a brown wash all over.

For rules we will be trying out Axles and Alloys 2, which is available free on the internet. I made some dashboard for the vehicles which I will show here after we have our first game.

A Captain of Rohan

The final figures in my Rohirrim warband.

They are both Footsore miniatures: the mounted figure is actually their King Arthur figure, and the foot figure is from their Gawain and Galahad pack (and presumably represents Gawain). They both have purple flowers on their bases to distinguish them, but I picked these two figures to represent the leader of my warband because they are sculpted with the same crest.

The Arthur figure is a single piece figure: the rider is sculpted on the horse and the shield is sculpted onto the arm and the horse. This probably accounts for the short lower limbs of the rider. I have left the shield undecorated for now.

With the Rohirrim done, I started prepping my Dropzone Commander Resistance faction vehicles. These are really very detailed resin pieces and I am not yet sure how I will prime or paint them. Stay tuned, and wish me luck!

Riders of Rohan

Here is the last unit of my Rohan force. The standard bearer is from the Footsore King Arthur pack, and the leader is from the Late Roman General pack; I have mounted them on the LOTR horses for consistency.

The Rohirrim are my favourite race in all of Middle Earth. That's probably because Tolkien based their temperament on that of the Anglo-Saxons, and the Anglo-Saxons are one of my favourite races from history. I have only the foot and mounted versions of the warlord for this force to finish, which I hope to do over the weekend. Thereafter I hope to field them in a game soon, probably against my goblins and their warg riders.

Romans vs Macedonians

So wahj wanted to take his Romans out for a spin, and Martin obliged, and I was able to field my new West Wind War & Empire figures.

The scenario is once again from Miniatures Wargames magazine, and features both armies arriving onto the battlefield piecemeal.

Half a legion holds the hill facing the bridge, while the other one-and-a-half legions race to reinforce them.

The Macedonians mass at three crossing points.

“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods,

“To every man upon this earth

  Death cometh soon or late.

And how can man die better

  Than facing fearful odds

For the ashes of his fathers

  And the temples of his gods,

Martin chose to secure the bridgeheads by deploying his skirmishers in the woods, while wahj threw his cavalry in to buy time.

The cavalry sacrificed themselves to allow the legions to form up, which allowed them to break the Macedonian morale.

I played the rules wrong in the first half of the game, which made shooting less effective and disadvantaged the Macedonians, but the scenario was fun nonetheless as it was a change from facing the death-dealing machine that is the deployed Roman legion. I am convinced Martin needs to at least double the number of his phalanx to stand a chance against the legion.

You can see more pictures at wahj's post.

Warriors of Rohan unit 3

Another week, another unit - admittedly a smaller unit as these figures represent the dismounted version of my mounted unit, which has 8 figures (yes, I only have 7 foot figures left to make up this unit).

The leader is again from Footsore, specifically the Bors and Tristan pack. I swopped the spear hand with a sword hand from my Red Box dwarves (which will be getting Gripping Beast spear hands...) and glued a Rohirrim shield to the left hand. The standard bearer is again a simple conversion, and I chose a longer pennon for the unit. This unit has white flowers to distinguish themselves from the other two.

Next up will be the horse and riders and then the foot and mounted version of the general/warlord for the force. After those I hope to work on the 10/12mm vehicles for our Axles and Alloys 2 project. Stay tuned.

August Giveaway

I can't believe I forgot about this month's giveaway!

To make up for the lateness, this month I am offering two copies of Might of Arms - yup, there will be two winners this month.

Let me know if you are interested by leaving a comment, and I will draw a recipient on the 31st of this month. This is not a first-come, first-serve offer.The offer is free; once I let you know you have been drawn, do let me have your email and mailing address and I will mail it off to you. You don't even have to pay for the postage. I am doing this not to get some money back, but to give these rules a good home. If you want to pay back somehow, I ask that you make a small donation to a local charity, or consider doing the same thing I am doing and give some rulebooks that you no longer use a chance for a new lease of gaming life.Good Luck

Warriors of Rohan unit 2

Here is the second unit of my Rohan force. The leader is the other figure from the Hengist and Horsa pack from Footsore. I freehanded the horse motif on his shield in imitation of the Staffordshire Hoard Seahorse. At least I tried to. The musician is again a quick conversion - I cut the shield boss off his hand and grafted a horn from the Gripping Beast Dark Age warriors sprue onto it. This unit sports yellow flowers for identification.

That's about half the force done; the next unit is a mounted unit, but because I have to paint a dismounted version of it, it will take me a bit more time.

Pleasant Surprise 2015

I took part in the miniatures exchange on the Warhammer Empire Forum this year again, and by chance was assigned the same person I was assigned to 2 years ago.

Coincidentally, he has started playing another forum RPG, in which he plays a space pilot. I had a suspicion he based his character on Peter Quill from Guardians of the Galaxy, and found this Reaper figure which I thought bears a resemblance to the character. I have no idea what the rectangular object in his left hand is meant to be, but I tried to paint it to look like a Sony Walkman.

The figure itself was painted "as is". The base is made up of an MDF base glued to a metal disc, and the "space corridor" made from Tehnolog bits.

Warriors of Rohan unit 1

We have had the Warriors of Rohan figures for years - I say "we" because I can't remember who these figures belong to; I know for a fact I did not buy them, so they are either from wahj or fg, and were passed to me as part of some gaming plans we must have had many years ago...

Anyway, after our last Strandhogg game when Martin brought some of his Gripping Beast figures, fg decided to buy some Dark Age figures from Footsore Miniatures and Saxon Miniatures, and Martin and I naturally tagged along. I figured this was the push I needed to finally paint up the Rohirrim.

My order was very small - just a few figures to allow me to build three "squads" of troops together with the plastic LOTR figures I already have. The unit shown above is the first of these. The leader figure is from Footsore (ex-Musketeer) Miniatures. He is visibly larger than the LOTR plastic figures (which, although excellent figures in their time, do show their age compared to the plastic figures available these days), but painted in the same limited palette and based on a slightly thinner base he blends in. The standard bearer is a quick conversion - a hand swap on a Rohirrim swordsman - and the image for the banner came from a quick google search. I have put red flowers tufts on the bases to identify them as one unit, as I plan to paint the whole warband in the exact same few colours.

Over the next few weeks I hope to paint up the remaining warbands, after which a couple other new projects will await my attention.

Dungeon Crawl Game 4

fg and I played the fourth game in the Dungeoncrawl campaign on Sunday.

Acting on the information from the lich and the villagers, the party decided to mount a raid on the goblin's lair to try to recover the phylactery. A couple of doughty villagers join the party in the dangerous quest...

The party attempt to set up a perimeter around the fleet-footed Halfling while he grabs the treasure tokens.

A brave villager falls afoul of the goblin chief (mounted on a giant gecko).

The goblin chief attempts to run off with the phylactery while his bugbear bodyguard covers his retreat. The bugbear is cut down and the party manage to recover the phylactery.

We also watched Mad Max: Fury Road for the purpose of "research" for our planned "Mad Max" type of game. After some googling the current plan is to use Axles and Alloys 2 with the vehicles from the Dropzone Commander Resistance faction. Some of the vehicles in this faction look like they are designed for Mad Max, and at 10/12mm scale we can probably change the ground scale and have a bigger area to play on.

A Wargamer in Melbourne

I spent last week in Melbourne with my family, and managed to see the very good WW1 exhibition at the Melbourne Museum. Here are a few photos from the exhibition.

An ambulance

Add caption

A selection of melee weapons and helmets

A piece of the Red Baron's plane

Original scale models of ships painted to test the various dazzle camouflage schemes

July Giveaway

(Photo taken from ebay as I didn't take one of my own before packing the books.)

This month's giveaway is copy of the Johnny Reb rules and the scenario booklet To the Sound of the Guns.

Let me know if you are interested by leaving a comment, and I will draw a recipient on the 15th of the month. This is not a first-come, first-serve offer.

The offer is free; once I let you know you have been drawn, do let me have your email and mailing address and I will mail it off to you. You don't even have to pay for the postage. I am doing this not to get some money back, but to give these rules a good home. If you want to pay back somehow, I ask that you make a small donation to a local charity, or consider doing the same thing I am doing and give some rulebooks that you no longer use a chance for a new lease of gaming life.

Good Luck

Also, will Robert Hingley and Michael Mills please contact me to claim your prizes from the March and June giveaways respectively please?

West Wind War & Empire figures and Tajima1 diorama tufts

I didn't really need more figures for my Attalid Pergamene force, but when the West Wind War & Empire figures were released for general purchase, I thought I would get a couple of packs to see what they look like since I still had space for two units in the tin I keep the Pergamenes in.

The unit bears the snake motif, which is associated with Asklepios, whose shrine at Pergamon was famous in the classical world.

The first unit is a unit of Successor Agema armoured cavalry. I based eight of them on an Impetus-size base in a wedge.

The motif on the flag came from a Pergamene coin. I am not sure what it represents but I painted it in plant colours.

The other unit is a unit of Successor Thorakitai, which I manged to squeeze 14 figures of onto an Impetus sized based in two ranks.

The details on the figures are in my opinion average, and their size is smaller than that of Xyston figures, which make up the rest of my force. As usual, if they are in a unit of their own, the difference is not that noticeable.

L: West Wind War & Empire, R: Xyston 

L: West Wind War & Empire, R: Xyston 

I also took the opportunity to use something I have purchased recently: diorama tufts from Tajima1 Miniature.

Tufts are by now commonplace, but Tajima1 goes one step further and offers mini diorama tufts which incorporate not only grass, but also small shrubbery and cork rocks.

The one I used for the cavalry unit above is from the "Floral Diorama" set:

(picture from Tajima1 Miniatures)

I also bought their "Desert Diorama" set, because I am working on some terrain for my desert mat and thought they might come in useful:

(picture from Tajima1 Miniatures)

They may not be cheap (8 pounds for 16 tufts per pack), but they do produce a very nice result quickly. Do get a pack and try them out if you work with large bases.

Boardgame Weekend

The school holidays allowed us to have four players for a session on Sunday, and we decided to play a few boardgames and have some durians too.

We started with a game of Space Cadets: Dice Duel - and of course the nature of that game prevented any photo-taking. The "real-time" nature of the game makes me think that it may be adapted to some sort of a team-based starship combat rules for a Star Trek type of RPG.

We then played Cthulhu Wars, which comes with massive figures in a massive box. Not being familiar with the Cthulhu Mythos, I am sure a lot of the references are lost on me - but the figures are really cool.

Finally, Adrian and I played a game of Warhammer Disk Wars. Despite the rather simplistic nature of the game, I was left with a feeling that perhaps it does produce a largely similar experience to what a miniatures game with the same number of units would have, minus all the dice-rolling. Adrian and I plan to try the Star Trek version of the game the coming Saturday. Stay tuned.

Strandhogg Game 11: She's a Witch!

It's been almost two years since we last played a game of Strandhogg, but when Martin asked to use some of the Gripping Beast Romano-British figures he has painted in a game, the rules were my choice.

We lack opponents for the Romano-British, so I decided my beastmen will play Fomorian invaders (led by the mighty Balor) in league with Picts. The scenario comes from Miniature Wargames magazine #383 and was written by Dan Mersey (thanks once again, Dan!).

The British have learnt that the pagans have set up a base in the woods and will be performing dark rituals by the light of the full moon. The Dux and his men pledge to thwart them and end the pagan menace once and for all...

The game starts with the forces at the ends of the table lengthwise. The Fomorians start in their sacred circle surrounding the sacred tree, with their priestess on a sacred mound in the middle of the table performing her ritual. The British start at the other end and the game begins with them shooting and wounding the priestess. They must then attempt to capture her and bring her back to the town to be burned, and also chop down the sacred tree. The Fomorians must prevent them from doing either.

The set-up.

Martin's Romano-British with a few Saxons mixed in, and my dwarf rangers pretending to be short humans.

Balor leads the Fomorians and Pictish allies.

The British have an early start and race up the steps of the sacred mound to capture the priestess.

One British warband races for the priestess as the other two form shieldwalls and block off the approaches on the flanks.

The British engage Balor while one fellow (on the right) drags the priestess towards their baseline. On the right a small band decides to go for the tree instead.

The Fomorians eventually managed to wrest the priestess back from the British (at one point nearly killing her with a stray arrow), while the British managed to damage the sacred tree before being cut down to the last man. Over all this rated a marginal victory for the Fomorians, although one earned at great losses.

The session like most was also a chance for us to pass stuff to each other. Just to give an idea of how dis-co-ordinated we can be: I passed Martin some 15mm Hellenistic figures and fg some spare bits from my Perry plastic WOTR; Martin passed me some 20mm Fallschirmjaegers and a Flak 38 plus some books on WW2, and returned me my Black Powder rules.

I was inspired by one of the WW2 books to order stuff for another modeling project, but the seller I approached is currently out of stock on the bits I need... Hopefully the re-order comes soon!

Immortal, Dark Age Fantasy

I don't often back Kickstarters or canvass for them, but I am making an exception for this kickstarter by Broken Spirit Wargames.

It sounds like the game that I had hoped Of Gods and Mortals would be, so I am keen to give it a try - however, it has still a bit to go before it is funded, so with six days left I thought I could try my bit to help. Do head over and have a look.

Thank you.

June Giveaway

This month's giveaway is copy of The Devil's Wind rules for the Indian Mutiny. These are an "old school" set of rules with lots of pretty pictures. Also in the giveaway is the S&T magazine on the same topic, but without the map or the counters.

Let me know if you are interested by leaving a comment, and I will draw a recipient on the 15th of the month. This is not a first-come, first-serve offer.

The offer is free; once I let you know you have been drawn, do let me have your email and mailing address and I will mail it off to you. You don't even have to pay for the postage. I am doing this not to get some money back, but to give these rules a good home. If you want to pay back somehow, I ask that you make a small donation to a local charity, or consider doing the same thing I am doing and give some rulebooks that you no longer use a chance for a new lease of gaming life.

Good Luck

Also, will Robert Hingley please contact me to claim your prize from the March giveaway please?

PSC 1/72 Panzer IV

When I bought the PSC StuG, I reckoned I might as well save on postage and get a tank I don't already have, and so I got myself a workhorse of the German army: the Panzer IV.

I chose to build the model with the schurzen around the turret but not the hull because I didn't want all the details on the hull to be obscured. I used the same colours for the camouflage, but varied the scheme slightly - the StuG had the brown bands adjacent to the green bands, while the Panzer IV had them spaced by the Dark Yellow. This was partly to show that the two vehicles were from different units, as the Peddinghaus decals I bought were for specific tanks, down to their units.

Once again, this was an easy kit to build, and the details are good. The tracks halves didn't quite meet once all the primer and paint were applied though, but I was too lazy to remedy that today.

I still have decals for Panthers and Hanomags, so maybe I will be getting those models too...