London Toy Soldier Show, 26th March

I headed up to Russell square to join the Skirmish Wargamers at the King and Country Toy Soldier fair. This is a great show for us large scale gamers and there was lots to see. AS ever many beautiful painted collectors figure. A gorgeous mounted British officer for AWI, only £120!

We played a Pegasus bridge scenario organised by Ted using a new set of rules written by our group called Tales of Derring-Do! This a re great fun and have many of the elements of the classical Skirmish Wargamers rules but updated to be far more playable, and I look forward to trying them out some more.

Mike managed to pick up a lovely little plane from Traditions of London. It is a cheap Chinese tin-late job, but the one they had painted up looked unerringly like an Auster so perfect for SOE and partisan games. I took it away with me to fill the edges and then spray in green. Below is the model after I had given it a gentle rub down with some fine sand paper to remove any irregularities from the surface and some of the glossy paint so any coat I apply takes a bit better. A bargain for just £15.

Club Night 25th March

We played a run through of the Show game ready for Salute this year. I don't want to give too much away, but it was really fun to play and I hope it will be popular with the punters. The Steves have made a good job putting it together and it still needs some tweaks but should be ready for later this month without any problem.

Club Night 18th March

We decided to try out Steve K's new Federal States of America fleet against my Prussian navy. This time I had a better grasp on how to use my fleet and kept them closer together and had all the initial success by destroying a number of the enemy frigates.

However the long range rockets began to take their toll and I lost a number of my Cruisers. But as the fleets closed I got my major piece of luck as I hit the FSA battleship with some long range fire and shredded its defences. Taking advantage of its vulnerability I sent in waves of dive bombers on the defenceless ship, followed by boarder and took the battleship.

However my battleship was also heavily damaged by now and was struggling to defend itself against the surviving enemy frigates.

As the early hours of Saturday morning dawned we called it a day and after totting up the victory points it was a narrow victory to the Prussians. The FSA has lost all their support vessels, their carrier was damaged and the Prussians held their flagship, while the Prussians still had their Airship and 4 frigates left, and a heavily damaged, but still floating battleship.

Club Challenge, Warlords vs. Crawley

We headed up to the Warlord for the return match. Unfortunately a river had been set up along the length of the table and this really spoilt the game for me as it so restricted the room for manoeuvre on a relatively small table for the size of forces we were using.

Some of the highlights though were John-Paul's beautiful Kreig guardsman (it was also his traitor guard that where so inspirational last time).

Another highlight was also thanks to John-Paul as our Traitor Baneblade opened up on the loyalist Macharius and punched through its armour and triggered a chain reaction that resulted in a massive explosion that also killed a number of the surrounding troops.

We lost this game in the end as we failed to cross the river in sufficient force to make an impact on the enemy.

Despite the result I would still like to do some more games with the Warlords.

Club Night 11th March

Chris and I played another couple of games to let Chris continue to learn the Flames of War rules. This time I took an infantry force so there would be an even chance of Chris' infantry attacking. However we ended up playing an attack with the British attacking. Advancing under darkness we had the surreal image of the only unit on the table being a Tiger and its escort Panzer III as its supporting infantry where in ambush and the rest of the German force was in reserve.

Unfortunately I have taken so long to write this up I can't remember who won, but I do recall that our 17 pounder failed to hit the Tiger, and on the odd occasion they did they bounced off the armour. And that Chris' new self propelled guns looked really good. Can't wait to see them with some crew added.

Painting Blood Angels IV

No actual painting this time (although I have finished the Army Painter on the last few Death Company and the missile launcher on the tactical squad which I somehow missed!), but some small details. I was looking at some old White Dwarfs and saw an article on Bobby Wong’s Blood Quest conversions (see here), and there was picture of one of the models pre painting with a simple plasticard blood drop instead of the skull on the chest and I thought this would be a great way to add some Blood Angel detail to my models, especially the assault squad and vanguard veterans that have no classic models in them. An hour later and some thin plasticard, careful knife work and super glue applied with a cocktail stick and I had some nice blood angel detail added to the minis.

Painting Blood Angles III

I started 'dipping' the models tonight. I used Army Painter strong tone applied with a brush and then lifted off so it was left in the recesses and didn't settle too much on any of the large flat areas of the armour. It has changed the colour slightly and made everything darker., but experience from my FoW Italians has told me that the flat coat can change the look of the colour again so I will need to just wait and see. Doing the few death company I managed seemed a bit pointless against the black, but the lighter areas still needed the shade so has to be done!

Above & Below: Some 'dipped' figures and some still to go to show the difference. Very shiny as still wet!

Above: Tactical Squad, Below: Captain and Honour Guard

Above & Below: Assault Squad

Below: Death Company

Club Sunday 6th March

Steve K ran a nice little ACW using Black Powder. Set just before first Bull Run, I managed to persuaded Steve to finally let me play the Rebs with Simon, while he took the Northerners. I deployed two brigades staggered forward right back towards my centre, with my third brigade covering the wood that lined the valley to prevent my mainline being flanked.

The Union began by advancing through the woods on my right and generally along the majority of their line. I moved my cavalry forward into the woods to harass the column and advanced the two advanced brigades.

However my cavalry was not able to stop the columns effectively and they deployed into skirmish lines and began to drive through the woods. The centre of my line had advanced, but only with two regiments, that now found themselves exposed and coming under fire from their front and right flank and began to take heavy casualties, before finally breaking. Meanwhile against my right the Union left had tried to advance, but blundered and fell back, but I was not able to take advantage of this as my supposed better commanders where proving to be anything but.

By now on my left the Yanks had pushed into the woods and a worrying gap was beginning to open up so I had no choice but to order the third brigade to advance which it did with surprising alacrity compared to the rest of the army and quickly pushed into the woods and started a drawn out fight that would eventually see the Union troops pushed back by the confederates.

However this was too little too late as the survivors of the second brigade had advanced to try and plug the gap left by their comrade and came under the same intense fire, while the right advanced piecemeal and although 1 regiment drove through the enemy lines the others where taking heavy casualties from fire and the Union brigade had finally extracted it self from the woods and was turning the Rebel flank.

Tragically this meant a decisive victory for the Union, Steve had written a good scenario, with the northerners having the advantage of bigger units, but poor commanders, but my dice rolling totally failed to take advantage of my better command and the greater size of the Yankee unit eventually told in the battle of attrition the firefights degenerated to.

Painting Blood Angels II

I have been busily painting my Blood Angels successor chapter and now have a number of units ready for Army Painter and basing.

Above: Tactical Squad, Below: Death Company (Taken with flash so you can see them!)

Above: Assault Squad, Below: Honour Guard

Above & Below: Sanguinary Noviate

Above & Below: Company Blood Champion

Above & Below: Commander Remiel

Above: Commander Remiel, Below: Detail on Remiel's shields on his shins.

Below: Remiel and his honour guard

Club Night 4th March

I played a couple of 1,000 point FoW games against Chris Dell to give him a chance to learn the rules better. Since I only have my Italians and Chris only has DAK we conducted some 'training' exercises.

The first game was a hold the line with the Germans defending. Initially my reconnaissance force did its usual job of rushing forwards and overrunning the front German lines quickly. This forced Chris to keep sending troops forwards piecemeal to deny my victory, until his armour arrived and I had nothing to stop the heavy armour and my company broke.

The second game was a breakthrough scenario and again I used my speed to flank the defending Germans and push them back and managed to destroy the first platoon and the kampfgruppe with the antitank guns in. However on the other flank my artillery failed to impact the German armour in the direct fire role and were destroyed by the counter fire. My company then broke before my reserves arrived.

Meanwhile Duncan was commanding an attack by 90th Light against the South Africans who had been beaten back earlier in the campaign. After some initial difficulties the reserves arrived and Duncan was able to claim victory and wipe out one brigade and seriously damage the other.