40k Squats!

Well my dabbling in 40k continues... I have enjoyed several games together with my young son, fielding my squats and orks from the late 80s/early 90's against each other.

Last night I even took them down to the club for a try out against one of the guys there. It was rather amusing to see the looks on the younger players faces, wondering what on earth are they!? The older more savvy hands were quick to inform them; basically an 'imperial guard variant' in todays-speak, that was discontinued by the 'Evil Empire' many years ago, probably before half the current players were even born!

"Cor, they're cool" - looking at the squadrons of Guild Trikes equipped with pintel mounted MultiMeltas...

"You've got to bring these back again" , was a common request...

Well I played using my fan-made squat codex, against Mikes Grey Knights, which were not what I was expecting (Terminators and Marines - Nope!), henchmen, demon-possessed humans, an Uber hero (expectedly) and a psyker Inquisitor (expected), and a bunch of tanks - chimeras and a land raider. The Land Raider is huge - makes my one from the 80s look like a dinky toy...

The battles was for objectives which had to be held by troop squads.

I got to go 2nd and took the customary first turns firing... and lost my lascannon armed thunderer squad - boo hoo. On my turn, my guild trikes wiffed and missed just about point blank shots at the chimeras. But my Rapier nailed the Land Raider, blowing it apart spewing the Uber hero and Demon-humans out all over the place..

My Warlord and Exo-armoured Hearthguard (the famous eggs-on-legs) were charged by the Uber dude, and went two rounds with him before killing him - miracle of miracles! The Thunderhammer helped :-)

I was taking lethal fire from his twin-linked autocannon firing Dread' and most of my bike squads and trikes got wrecked pretty quickly before hitting anything...

However in the face of such incompetence from  the bikers the Warlord sauntered over to the chimeras and managed to charge one with his Thunderhammer, destroying it and all on board, before being melted by troops in the 2nd chimera... Still, I think he deserved a posthumous Man-of-the-match!

Time was drawing to a close and is it happened my Warlords charge had been just enough to push the chimeras back from the objective, and my ground hugging Brotherhood squad hung on by their fingernails to secure the centre objective, giving me a 1-0 victory!

If the game had continued it still could have gone either way...

Jolly good fun, and I learned a lot. Perhaps most importantly, the way units score now, and the use of Deep Strike and Reserves. I think next time I'll try bringing the Trikes on in reserve and see if they do any better.

The game is certainly better than when I last played back in 80s/90s, and I am up for more.
I'm just not prepared to pay the ridiculous prices now being charged by GW for their figures.

So...I'll stick to my squats, and look to increase my options with them, and even have plans to scratch build some Termites and an IronEagle Gyrocopter.

So, I am on the look out for any 80s/90s 40k squat figures you might want to get rid of, at a sensible price. Yeah yeah , rarity value and all that but they're still just a basic metal pewter figure, so if you want rid and have sensible price in mind, please get in touch (Emails to link in sidebar under pirate picture).

Many thanks.
Scott

PS I'll try and include some pictures of the next game if you're interested?

FoW - FlaK, Tank hunter team and WIP Panthers

I recently finished some Anti-Aircraft assets for my German FoW forces. I started these a little while ago, but got side tracked by the plastic tank making frenzy I embarked upon!

With the increased performance of aircraft in FoW, with auto-range in against targets in the open, the Typhoons I have been facing, which hit on targets on a 3+ have been making rather a mess of my glorious panzers, so something had to be done!

I initially order some armoured half tracks carrying 3.7cm FlaK43 guns, but these took a little while to arrive from the UK. In the meantime I grabbed a pack of these on impulse of the racks of my FLGS...

They will be very useful in my Atlantic Wall defences of the Normandy Beach terrain I have been making recently. Also they will add some defence to my Grenadiers once the Allies eventually push past my beach defenders.

3.7cm FlaK43 anti-aircraft artillery

The army lists also give the option to mount these as portees in the back of 3 ton trucks and I ordered a pack of Opel Blitz trucks. I had hoped to be able to make the guns multi-use by not gluing the gun to the ground mount, and be able to fit them in a mount in the flatbed of the truck too. But it was very cramped for space and without cutting off the truck sides, it wouldn't work. I didn't want to do this to the trucks as I wanted to be able to use them as is, as well.

So I left these guns as normally ground positioned. I'll make do with the armoured AA half tracks once I get them assembled for mobile AA.

These guns, I must say were quite fiddly to make, and it took me quite a while to figure out how to put them together. It took many repeated hard looks at the same item on the BF website from all angles to figure it out.

In the end I am pleased the way they have come out, and look forward to shooting down many allied aircraft with them including those pesky typhoons!

Next up...

I also finished the last one of my required 9 tank-hunter panzershreck teams for my Panzer Lehr Panzergrenadiers. These guys will hopefully make a bit of a mess of any allied armour they come across.

Panzershreck tank hunter infantry team

Finally for today...

The first of my sexy big cats! ;-)

A quick WIP shot of my box of PSC Panthers. The PSC boxed set comes with enough bits to make the 3 panther variations; D, A or G.

I have modelled these as the A variant to back up my Panzer Lehr panzergrenadiers above. The astute amongst you may notice some small variations amongst the tanks too.

Also the way the PSC set works, the A variant doesn't get the ball mounted hull MG . But I preferred the look of the ball mount, especially after looking at the A variant from BF.

PSC Panther 'A' - WIP

I did a bit of web research, and found that the Panther and its variants were rolled out over a period of time with differing upgrades, and indeed repairs done to battle damaged tanks,  performed over time, so it was quite possible for tanks to have a varying appearance, as upgrades were introduced to the models or repairs made.

So I started with the basic PSC A hull, and trimmed off the box shaped hull MG. I then drilled a hole in its place and added the ball mount MG. I stayed with the A variant for the turret front, but used differing cupolas for the turret, and made variations to the exhausts as well.

Finally as for paint schemes, as we know the tanks were issued to the crews painted Dunkelgelb from the factory and the crews were issued paint to add their own camouflage patterns. So just about anything goes, as you may have seen from my prior half tracks blog post.

These base colours have a harsh contrast now but once dark washed and then highlighted up it subdues the camo pattern in a rather effective manner I find. Again see earlier posts on half tracks and Panzer IV H's for the final 'look'.

More on these guys later...

I also hope to have the AVREs varnishing finished over next couple of days. Also I have finished the first of 3 Jagdpanthers, though it still needs decals and varnish.

Busy busy as always!

Cheers
Scott

another Beach WIP update

Just a quick update to show a picture of progress with beach.

I still want to add some more of the water resin to increase its depth and move it a little further up beach so that it's beyond the front legs of the 'ramps'.

The lighting in the picture has made it come out very blue. Its actually more of a turquoise colour when viewed naturally.

Also the resin has split slightly at its thinnest layer at leading edge up beach, as it has dried. But this will be covered, after final layer is done, with the water effects to make the wave details.

Hope to press on more with this next weekend - I've ran out of resin.

In the meantime I've finished two AVREs, just need to varnish them up.

Back soon with more pics.
Cheers
Scott

Oh Gods, what have I done...?

I have been helping my young son find the rules, at a sensible price, for his 40K gaming... He started playing a few months ago with his chums at school on their lunch breaks, with my old ork figures from years ago...

Then we joined the local club that mostly plays 40K & WFB, where he enjoyed playing there, whilst I introduced those at the club to Flames of War. All went swimmingly, with me so far...?

So in the quest for decent pricing, after the B***ards at GW banned online re-sellers like Maelstromgames in the UK from selling to AUS&NZ customers, I came across LiveWire games based here in NZ, who appear to sell GW 40k stuff at about a 25% discount from NZ RRP. But still no rulebook, on its own.

Rulebook RRP here is $113NZ . What a rip off, when its only about 30Quid in the UK...

Luckily I managed to find a copy of the rulebook on the auction site Trademe here and got it for $53NZ. :-)

However, I had been tempted by the Assault on Black Reach set from Livewire... listed at $149NZ, against $195 from GW...

It triggered nostalgic memories of the original Rogue Trader book and the starting basic scenario in the back of the book..., and it had all the templates and dice in too, to play the game...

I was suddenly struck by a couple of thoughts:

A chance to relive old fond memories, now with my son... and a cool idea for a Space Marine Chapter paintjob, especially with recent influences of VSF/steampunk activities involving the dastardly Hun/Nazi. There's also a new movie out at the cinema - IronSky, looks a lot of fun? Nazis in space...

So I thought why not do the Space Marines in a German armour late war colour scheme (as on my Panzer IV in above blog title picture), and use the German black cross transfers to finish the effect. Its probably been done before...? But it seemed an idea too good to pass up...

So before I knew what was happening, I was reaching for the credit card...
Oh heck, what will SWMBO say!

Beach WIP update

I managed to press on with more work on my FoW Normandy beach recently and tonight got the beach obstacles glued into position.

I have used one pack of BF beach obstacles, which gives me the mines on posts at the front and the ramps. I used two packs of Evergreen L-strut plastic (293), to make the 30 antitank 'Czech hedgehogs'. These were all painted up first then super-glued onto painted sand surface of beach. I then added a little PVA/water mix around base of each obstacles and added sand to cover the join and make the obstacle look sunk into the sand. The sand round the obstacles was then painted to match in with the beach surface.

I have tacked and hot glued, to seal, some mdf round the edges to act as a retainer for the woodland scenics realistic water I will be pouring tomorrow night. Only thing with it is you have to pour it in 1/8th of an inch layers and allow to set 24hrs between layers, so it may take me a while still to complete this.

The resin will fill to about half way up the beach. It will coloured with paint in the mix to a sea blue/grey/green colour. Finally I'll add wave effects by mixing in white paint to final resin water-effects.

Then I have the sea wall to add to complete it, which I plan to do on a series of popsicle or lolly/iceblock sticks so varying amounts can be added as required.

Getting there slowly but surely.

Sorry the colour is a little dark, but I think its a factor of the white table background.

Update 9/5/12

Managed to get the first layer of resin poured last night. I mixed in some acrylic house paint I had left over from painting my games table 'sea coloured' for the pirate gaming I was doing last year... It doesn't take much paint to change the colour. This first layer is very opaque but its going to be at the bottom. I will add less paint through subsequent layers to try to give a translucent effect.

I also got the sea-wall made and base painted last night, too. Just needs dry brushing and talus adding to base. Pictures to follow in further blog post update.

Black Powder - Last Arguement of Kings - 4 Player Battle report

Saturday saw a fine game of Black Powder played between myself, Roly, Brett and Reg.

Again I was unable to provide any figures of my own as yet, though was able to provide the venue and table and terrain ;-) And my good lady offered snacks and refreshments so hopefully that counts for something!

Roly and I teamed up and played against Brett and Reg.

There was no particular theme to the game again, call it imaginations if you wish.

Again for simplicity we did take very similar forces, each player commanding two infantry brigades of three battalions each, and a cavalry brigade of three units; two lights and a heavy.

One general commanded each army and each brigade had a brigade commander for which we rolled off for aggression, decisiveness and independence. All of these factors could affect how well our brigadiers would give commands through the game.

All units were considered standard size.
One of the things I rather like about this period are that there are no, or at least few, skirmishers to worry about, nor are there form-square rules to concern ourselves with.

Here's a few pics from the game:

Initial deployments - Brett is checking out Rolys troops. The large hill we played as a 'crested hill', not  a plateau, so you had to be beyond halfway acros to see the other side, in both orientations.

Roly and I advance our forces on the first turn as Reg and Brett look on.

Snacks and refreshments consumed - an army marches on its stomach after all!

Rolys cavalry advance on our right flank

The Duchess leads Bretts forces against Roly

Bretts "HQ" - a fine place to watch the spectacle and enjoy a cup of tea... perhaps a little too 'early' for our period, but it looked too cool to leave out!

Meanwhile the kids had their 40k game in the family room...

...old school orks vs space marines... I believe the orks won! The orks are mine from 20-odd years ago, played by my son Chris. The marines are Bretts son's; Rhys's.

Reg and Brett advance their forces

The first engagements, both shooting and melee

Cavalry set to it on our left flank

Brett advances his infantry boldly presenting my infantry with an enfilade shot!

Cavalry fight and retire as is the way with Black Powder

Rolys fine horse...

...drive back Bretts cavalry - the Duchess is not amused!

Things really hot up in the centre.

Roly sees his error, two fine moves from one command allow him to advance rapidly to meet Bretts line, but then cant fire! And they then face a close range first fire volley backed up by 2 battalion guns - it wasn't pretty!

Can our artillery save the day in the centre? Boom!

Brett throws his cavalry forth again only to see them rout the field

More cavalry shenanigans on the left flank

One of my infantry battalions breaks

...and a cavalry one too!

Final positions

Roly has won the right flank but lost the centre and I have held the left flank... net result, we called it a very enjoyable draw, as we had set no objectives at the start of the game.

A thoroughly enjoyable afternoons gaming. Fine fellows, fine food and drink, fine weather, and fine gaming :-)

Operation Sealion

The Boys at WWPD have come up with a great idea - A global Flames of War event, based on the hypothetical invasion of Britain at the end of WWII, called unsurprisingly, OPERATION SEALION. 

Click on the link to visit the site and register to take part.

So that beach I have been making will get used, but looks like my Germans will be attacking it, not defending it!

I have pressed on tonight, with items for it, finished a whole bunch more barbed wire sections. Also trimmed and undercoated the BF Beach Obstacle set, and made a whole pile of 'czech hedgehogs' from plastic L-strut, and spray undercoated them black.

I have been pondering how much resin water effect I will need, and if my maths is correct, I think I need about 2.5litres of it, to half cover the slope of my 120cm long beach section....