More period books and a tournament!

A couple more supplement books arrived in the mail yesterday:

I got into ECW a few years back, through GW Historicals (now defunct) WECW book. I hooked up with a chap up north, and we started building armies for it and had a couple of trial goes which went OK-ish. But then I moved down south and that knackered that. 

I then hooked up with a couple of guys down here, and tried WRG and WECW again, but it didn't really go anywhere, and my troops as usual got abandoned, and left as pretty figures in my display cases.

Black Powder, and later Hail Caesar came along, and I really enjoyed the rule mechanic from these games, after enjoying a long time playing Warmaster, from which they are based.

But there was no ECW period covered by the rules... a period gap between the two supplements/versions, but there were rumours that ECW would follow. And sure enough it has! I will be intrigued to try these out, though it is unlikely to be soon, as other things have me very wargamingly busy at the moment...

Next up, and this book was more readily looked through as soon as the box was opened...

The Eastern Front, for Flames of War, their MidWar supplement covering all forces that fought here, both Axis and Soviet.

I wasn't really a huge fan of Eastern front stuff and the Russkies... I always found the Normandy and European stuff of the later war period more interesting...

However, there is no getting away from the sheer scale of events on the Eastern front, and the length of involvement in time that both sides fought here; indeed the majority of the whole war period.

There is one battle that always intrigues me; Kursk. Reputed to be the largest tank battle in history... How cool would it be have a chance to replay the events of that epic battle?

And so, as local players have Russian forces there seems no getting away from it... I can see a pile of PSC 251/c hanomags arriving at Bowman Towers in the not too distant future...

But that will have to wait because, after the last six months worth of frantically painting Late War German Wehrmacht forces, I have found something to do with them...

The Wellington Warlords are hosting their annual Call to Arms tournament, which will feature a Late War Flames of War tournament, pitched at 1750pts, and with 5 battles played over a weekend.

More details here:

http://www.warlords.org.nz/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=2&Itemid=5

So I am now considering my optimum, 'take on all comers' German force. I'll be taking my Mechanised troops in their Hanomags, and will have to decide the best mix of support elements to get the job done.

I hope to get a load of practice games in, in the meantime, to sharpen my knowledge of the rules, and tactics of my chosen force, so I can try and play at a reasonably competitive level at the tournament. I don't want the experienced hands groaning at having to play the newbie... 

I am not expecting to win anything, far from it, unless its the wooden spoon, but I expect to learn a lot from the better players out there, and hopefully have some fun while doing so!

Wish me luck!

Pumas and SdKfz 7/2 Armoured AA halftracks

In attempts to increase the options open to my Panzer Lehr panzergrenadiers, I have added more support platoons, offering strong recce and powerful anti-aircraft assets.


First up the mobile AA.  These are armoured SdKfz 7/2 half tracks fitted with a 3.7cm anti-aircraft gun.

Being armoured gives them some resilience against routine infantry fire, and the 3.7cm gun is very effective at knocking down enemy aircraft, in the hands of skilled crews from the Lehr division.

If no aircraft show up, the gun is equally useful in shooting up light skinned vehicles and armoured cars etc. and will also give dug in infantry a head ache. So they are quite a versatile piece of kit.

In modelling terms, I drilled in a small length of brass rod, to allow the guns to swivel on the spot.

Next up the Puma, a much vaunted recce armoured car, the pinnacle of German recce troops. A fast and manoeuvrable 8 wheel design, and sporting a regular MG and a decent antitank main gun.

So once the recce role has been performed, these vehicles can be fast enough to move forward to seize objectives, or be an annoyance in the enemy rear areas perhaps shooting up and assaulting artillery positions, or adding weight of fire against enemy infantry positions.

And most enemy tanks would be wary getting these on their flanks.

Weird anti-virus warnings - "Glorious Works"

I am coming across more and more blogs where I get an anti-virus warning from my security software, upon visiting the blog and viewing its content, and no, theses are not 'those' kind of things, but regular wargames and hobby blogs. The warning flashes blocking the following, from the blog visited: "www.thegloriousworks.co.cc/favicon.ico" Whats this all about? Is it 'catching' , is my poor blog going to get affected by the weirdness??? Is it just me or are other folks getting these warnings too? Anyone care to shed some light?

Panthers

I managed to get my boxed set of Plastic Soldier Company Panther tanks finished tonight. I am quite pleased with the way they have come out.

The hulls do not have the zimmerit, but I think they look good enough as is.

As I mentioned in the earlier WIP post - I have done them as a variant A, with a few variations thrown in too!

I decided to model them as two higher command tanks, and a regular platoon of 3 tanks, as can be identified by their turret numbers.

I know the panthers often had spare track and other stowage on the turrets, but this really makes adding decals difficult! So I left the turret sides clear, and put the spare track pieces on the rear hull areas.

Decals by DOM.

Now where are those allied tanks hiding?

ACW with Fire & Fury

At the weekend I joined in an ACW game held at one of the local school libraries, by one of our two local gaming clubs. The game played using 25/8mm scale figures and using the Fury and Fury rule set.

Steve came up with a scenario where by opposing mounted scouts come across each other and dismount to hold their positions while the two armies follow up to engage.

I played the game on Rebs side with my fledgling unit. Our mounted scouts held a hilltop church and graveyard, whilst the Yankees held the adjacent farm. The Rebs got first turn, and started their advance on to the field, with the Union coming on with a reserve, which heavily weighted their left flank. The bulk of our forces were also on our left flank. This caused a typical rotation of the battle lines about a central crossroads position.

Here's a few pics of the game...

Rebs deployments

The opposing scouts

My fledgling unit takes a circuitous flank march

The Yankees advance on to the field

The Rebs advance and deploy guns on a central hill

Yankees threaten to advance on and overwhelm Rebs in church

A view from Rebs right flank as Yankees advance on church. Scouts mount up and back off.

Battle lines begin to form and meet. And that dreaded single dice roll of a '1'...

Rebs push heavily on the farm forcing off Yankee scouts, whilst their own right flank pulls back to avoid being out flanked. This was just about the final positions, with both advancing flank forces moving slightly further on...

The game looked good, but I have to say for my tastes played poorly.

After 4 hours of play we had advanced into battle lines, with negligible result. Shooting had to this point killed about one stand of an infantry unit from each side. One charge had pushed off one unit from the farm.

The problem for me was all the shooting was doing was causing 'disorder' which petty much had the effect of halving your movement and subsequent shooting. Which resulted in a tedious slow grinding game.

Also the single dice mechanism was also for me a failure in the rules. Its too open to random chance. Whereas when many dice are rolled you get a more likely statistically and predictable average result.

When the Yankees finally amassed enough fire power to seriously damage an enemy unit they rolled a 1 on the single d10 rolled... groan...

I was left feeling that was an afternoon wasted, to be honest.... I would have been better served getting on with figure painting!

I couldn't help but wonder how better this scenario and game would have played using Black Powder as a rule set...

Fire and Fury? Nope.... Smoke and Disorder? Yep!

Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers - AVRE

Just a quick update to show I got my AVRE's done.

These are based on the Churchill Mk III tank, armed with a 290 mm Petard Spigot mortar, known affectionately as the 'flying dustbin'. It was to all intents and purposes a 'bunker-buster'. In the game it only has a 4" range, but once it gets within that range, anything it hits has pretty much had it, thanks to its '1+' firepower. It will hopefully help my commandos get off the Normandy beaches....

Old school 40k Squats - Pictorial

By popular demand I present pictures of my 40k Squat army from the late 80s / early 90s. I painted these in my late teens / early 20s. They have been pretty much in storage for last 20+ years.

Please forgive some of them looking a bit dusty, and the basing flock I used way back then was just cheap coloured saw dust... I'd never heard of static grass then...

I hope you enjoy the pictures...

Ogryn Squad

Ogryn Bone 'ead

Ripper guns and attitude!

I recently rebased these as they originally came on 40mm square bases.

Quad launcher, AKA the Thud gun - I have two more half painted

Rapier Laser destroyer - Ultimate tank killer

Ratling sniper squad - hobbits in space! (check out the furry feet)

Guild Trike squad, with pintel mounted MultiMeltas

HearthGuard Exo-Armour squad - the famous 'eggs on legs' - the original squat terminator

Stronghold Warlord in ExoArmour MkII with thunderhammer and custom gun.

Thunderer Squad with Multimeltas

Thunderer Squad with Lascannons

Mole mortar or 'Moler'

Living Ancestor - squat psyker

Guild bike squad. Looking at these now from 20 years ago - its no wonder I bought a Harley!

Brotherhood squat warriors with assorted weaponry

Hearthguard squad with meltaguns

Hearthguard squad with Plasma guns

Stronghold standard bearer - I like the Romanesque look.

Thunderer squad with Heavy Bolters

Mole Mortar battery

Tarantula sentry guns - looks familiar from the movie - Aliens

Berserker and cyborgs

Hearthguard flamer squad

I have a few more bits and bobs to finish off for the army too, but they effectively got put on hold all those years ago when GW canned them...

So if you have any old spare squat models, and don't mind offering them up, I'll be sure to give them a good home! ;-)

Thanks for looking.

Scott