Blood Angels VII

In among the photos from Salute and the Model Rail Show I found that I had some images of my almost finished landspeeders I had not shared, so here they are. All painted, just need army painter. I am really pleased with them, and do love these old metal Mk 2 landspeeders compared to the flying shoe that is the latest plastic incarnation.
And here is a shot off everything that is painted so far. Need a batch of army painter, but then just basing and decals and about half the army is done

Dystopian Prussians - Continuing Progress

Having picked up some new Scout Zepplins for my Prussian Navy I found my self all inspired, and since I had my Airbush stuff out to do my Sanguinary Priests I decided to pant them and finish off the rest of the vessels. I started by painting the last two fighter stands and the planes of the Sky Fortress deck.
I then decided to base my sea going vessels. I have been trying to decide if I wanted to do this for a while, and went for it as some of my frigates has some slight chips so I felt needed more protection. I used some off cuts from the Citadel custom movement tray kits, nice and sturdy and easy to cut to size.
I then started on the newly released Pflicht class scoutships. Cleaned up and primed with Gesso, I then sprayed them and after changing the green a dozen times to match the larger sky fortress I painted them too.
I then added some medium grain texture gel to the bases, and painted them blue again, dry brushed the textured bow and stern wakes and added some blue ink to add some depth and tone to the bases. Now I just need to do Army Painter, and decide if I am putting ship names somewhere on the bases and source some decals for Maltese crosses on the vessels, especially the Zeppelins.

Club Night 22nd April

Most of last night was taken up with our AGM. Although my game proposal was voted down, I am quite excited by seeing what the other game ends up like and it is good to have two more club members making terrain.

After the AGM I took the Germans against Luke's Americans and Steve K's British in a game of Axis and Allies D-Day. While the Americans struggled to get off the beach, the British made good progress eventually drove on and took Caen.

I tried to form a second line diagonally from Omaha beach south, but the Americas finally broke out of Utah and attached up towards Cherbourg. However I then saw an opportunity, the British had failed and taken heavy casualties in an attempt to take St Lo, so I launched an counter attack, wiped out the British and retook Caen, resulting in a decisive German victory.

Club Night 20th April

On Wednesday we gather to do turn 4 of the campaign and play some games. After some initial success and launching some attacks on Tobruk the British begun to win the initiative and launched some attacks north and a counter attack out of Tobruk.

The two games we played were the attacks on Tobruk. Against Luke, Duncan made his third attack, but the defenders are starting to learn from their experiences and proving much tougher. Duncan pushed them close but was ultimately unsuccessful.

I took command of the second attack and moved my troops against Steve K. My opening bombardments were mostly unsuccessful and despite a Khamseen blowing up I still took heavy casualties. I then breeched the first line of wire and destroyed the bunkers with my engineers.

However I then got bogged down, under heavy fire and found the poorer quality troops of the Fuscileri not so keen to become unpinned. Then it looked like it swung in my favour. I breached the second line and rushed through assaulting the pinned down remnant of two British platoons, wiping them out, killing the C-in-C and overrunning into the machine gun platoon. However I did not break this platoon, so the British held on, and my attacking company broke.

The game then swung away from me as the British reserves begun to arrive and my surviving troops where too battered to do anything. To compound the defeat in the post battle phase I lost my heavy artillery.

We had failed to take Tobruk, but we are trying, now we just need to ensure we stop the relief attempt and we can still be victorious.

Crawley Model Railway Show

After the sheer size of Salute on Saturday, on Sunday I went to Crawley model railways clubs annual show with Dad. I started out with model trains and still love them, especially the scenery, which might go some way to explaining my obsession with nice scenery for my wargaming. Below are some pictures of some of the more choice layouts

Above: O gauge layout, lovely rolling terrain,
Below: Super detailed 2mm finescale layout

Above and Below: Santa Barbara layout. I don't usually like American layout, but this was incredibly well researched and modelled. They had videos taken at the actual station and you could easily spot there the photographer was standing when looking at the layout.

Above:O gauge and narrow gauge layout. Again wonderful terrain.
Below: A German engine shed. I really like the look of the black locos with the red running gear the Germans have.

Above: An O gauge modern layout. Full of lights, sounds and even diesel smoke effect.

Salute Review 2011

Last weekend saw Salute 2011 at the Excel centre in London. This is by far the biggest wargames show in the UK and the highlight of most peoples show calendar. Although Crawley where attending the show with our new FoW game as there were plenty of members going and the theme was ACW I had been asked by the Skirmish Gamers to run the Battle for Culps hill again, which I immediately jumped at.



We all had good fun, and the Union narrowly claimed victory after a titanic struggle, that generated a lot of interest from the public. As I was so busy with the game I didn't actually get to see much of the show, but I managed to pick up some new Dystopian vessels for my Prussians and some Micro-Sol and Micro-Set to add decals to my Blood Angels.

If you are interested in seeing what Salute is all about you can visit the Salute website here, or see Joe's photo guide here.

Club Night 15th April

Just a quick report from this Friday as the next day was Salute and no one wanted to be up too Late, so Duncan and I planned to play a Space Hulk. We were joined by Mike and Colin and had good fun, although Duncan's dice rolling was shocking!

Blood Angels VI

I have assembled the sanguinary priests and blue tacked my Astorath together. Pleased with all of them, just need to add detail like purity seals and do the bases. I really haven't decided how to paint Astorath yet. I am torn between classic chaplain black, bone white, or a dark red. I need to make him stand out from the rank and file but still not sure how. Any suggestions?

Updated: I have reloaded the images, I loaded these from the Android blogger app trying to be clever, and it has done some odd mirroring effect on them!

Club night 8th April

Duncan and Ryan had set up a Warhammer, for Duncan to finally try out 8th edition. They kindly let me join in, so I added my Daemons to the ones already loaned to Duncan by Ryan against his Dark Elves.Centre around a block of 40 Spearmen Ryan had a fairly aggressive army, but still with a unhealthy dose of shooting. Against this Duncan and I fielded two large blocks, 1 of Bloodletters and 1 of Plaguebearers.

It didn't start very well for us as we quickly lost our Seekers to the opening volleys. We marched relentless forward and I discovered why Ryan didn't seem to have a lot of troops out. Hidden in the Spearmen was a Sorceress with the reverse ward save item which meant she tied my herald up in a challenge, while the BSB with always strike first banner resulted in a lot of spearmen striking first against me, and I couldn't make a ward save which didn't help.

Eventually Duncan and I were simply ground down by the Dark Elves who proved annoyingly resilient, although we did rather satisfying kill the Hydra before it did anything with Pit of Shades cast by our Tzeentch herald.

Blood Angels V

I have taken a break from painting Blood Angles to build some more figures. I needs some Sanguinary priests as these seem to be essential, and I fancy a version of Astorath for my own army.

For Astorath I am using some Sanguinary Guard parts, with some skulls added to the knee pads. His axe is formed of a Death Company thunder hammer with the head replaced with a Sanguinary Guard axe. I have also managed to get hold of another Dante back pack the same as my other characters have so he will match.For the Sanguniary Priests the major problem is the Narthecium. I seem to not be the only BA player who is after one of these and they can not be found in stock on any of the bitz sites, and I didn't fancy paying £20 for a box set for one part. And really I'd need three anyway, so I asked around the club and Ken had one so i thought it was about time I had a go at some mould making. (NOTE: This is a grey area of copyright law, but as I am only making a few, and am not reselling, I think I am ok!)

The First step is to make the mould out of green stuff pressed into a spare base. This is two parts, plus a smaller mould for the vials, which although I could easily make from plastic rod i though I would have a go at the same time.

Next its time to grease up the moulds with a releasing agent. There are all sorts of suggestions out there, cooking oil, vaseline, but I went with some handcream I use for stopping putty sticking to me or my sculpting tools.The mould is then filled with Miliput and clamped until it is completely cured.
After it is removed from the mould and cleaned up it looks pretty good.I then removed the hand and replaced it with one holding a bolt gun and cleaned up and modified some detail with some green stuff.
I am pretty please with how this has come out, now I need to make two more. The final thing I have got done so far is to fill the crosses on some death company items so I can use them on my Sanguinary Priests. This is rally easy to do since they are marked just by some recesses in the items so it is quite quick to fill them with some putty to smooth out the surfaces,

Club Night 1st April

We played through a couple more campaign games. Duncan and Ryan attacked Tobruk with Luke defending. Again they pushed the British very close and although they failed to break through, they destroyed the defending infantry brigade which is now going to stretch the British line a their forces are reduced.
In the other game I (assisted by Chris D's dreadful dice rolling) defended Steve K's attack south of Sollum. This was going to be a tough game. Although my force was dug in and outnumbered the attackers, they had 6 infantry tanks that were virtually invulnerable to my heaviest available guns. To counter this I set up a heavy anti-tank obstacle across the table, with my main defences further back.However this proved to be a slight mistake, as the Indians moved past their engineers they overran the observers and so prevented me from successfully shelling the pioneers and preventing them from breaching the obstacle, and because they attacked under darkness, my main defensive line was too far back to put covering fire on the obstacle.The 8th army forces cleared the obstacle and unleashed their tanks (or as quickly as you can unleash as slow tank!) towards my lines. I managed to force some to be abandon a couple of the tank with the 75s that had survived the initial bombardment before they were destroyed by the CS Matildas.

It was then a desperate attempt to repel them with whatever I had to hand and some I threw engineers with flame-throwers and all the infantry I could at the tanks in an attempt to stop them. And I was almost successful.

I forced them all to be abandoned and so destroyed as they could not fall back, but lost my final attacking force in the process, which included my company commander. However the Indians needed to take a company morale first, which they past, leaving me to automatically fail mine as my turn came round.

This meant the Italian lines south of Sollum where now breached. As Sunday was mothering Sunday I was not at the club, but Steve H took over the Axis forces against Steve K. The first battle they had to fight was an incredibly outnumbered Italian force falling back against this breakthrough. Although they lost, they managed to avoid any further damage. The Indians then continued to push through, moving to cut off Bardia, they ran into the 15th Panzer and were defeated, losing one of their infantry tanks forces.