Leigh's Wargaming Blog

Club Night 10th February

2012-02-12T17:01:00.003Z

Steve K organised a Black Powder using our 6mm troops from the Battle of Alma the club put on a while back. The scenario was based on Inkerman, with me taking the Russian Naval Brigade, new club member Lyndon, the two regular brigades adjacent to me, while Bob took the later arriving brigades. Against us Steve and Ben took the British, with a Guard and French Brigade in reserve.

It started badly for me with my unreliable units not moving, once I got them moving I made slow progress, and even blundered ordering my gun, so four turns in it had retreated back to where it started! The other Russians were not doing much better, making slow progress, although their artillery was proving surprisingly good at suppressing the enemy artillery with counter battery fire.

We finally pushed forward to the tiny units of skirmishers holding the ground ahead of us, only for them to fall back, although we eventually caught them. By now Bob had arrived and was having about the same luck we did in getting his force across the bridge on the post road and deployed ready for battle.

Then my sailors suddenly got three moves and swept up the ridge behind Lyndon's troops, attacking and destroying an artillery battery on the flank and a unit of skirmishers. Meanwhile some of the main British force had advanced and Lyndon was valiantly fighting it off on the road up the hill, however he then launched a counter attack, which was repelled with a unit destroyed and the supporting units streaming backward.

On the other flank Bob had made it up to the high ground and was gradually forcing Ben back, although Lyndon was giving spectacular support from his artillery and rifle armed battalion, the British refused to break (rolled double-6 twice for break tests at a hefty -4 modifier).

By now the evening was advanced, and with the French and Guards coming up, while the Russians were battered ad quite spread out, it did not look like they would be successful and it was declared an allied victory.

This was a good scenario by Steve, although the skirmishers seemed a bit too effective (they were a tiny unit with a stamina of 1) and we will need review the rules and check we were doing them right.

Club Night 3rd February

2012-02-05T18:18:00.007Z

After a long break for one reason and another I headed up the club without a planned game to join in something that was on. Colin, Steve K and new guy, Dan, were playing a small (just 3' x 5') ACW with Fire and Fury scenario for the battle of Spring Hill from a very old Wargames Illustrated. They kindly let me join in , so I joined Steve as a Confederate.

The scenario was very interesting, with the confederates needing to get across the table and cross the turn pike for a victory, or bring it under musket fire for a minor victory. Although they had a numerical advantage it was not that simple as turns 4 and 5 where dusk, applying a -1 modifier (on a D10) to command rolls, reducing all firing to 6" and command distance to 9". From turn 6 to the end of the game in turn 9 it was dark with a massive -2 modifier on command, half movement and command and firing limited to just 2".

Steve started with the cavalry and on table infantry and I took the reserves, mostly because one brigade was commanded by a Jackson! The cavalry moved forward and dismounted screening our right, with the infantry advancing on the union regiment on the wooded hill in the centre. My first reserve unit hurried forward and the artillery unlimbered on a nearby hill to make maximum use of its range for as long as possible.

My infantry moved forward to a small wood and started a firefight with the enemy cavalry who had been driven behind the woods by my artillery and dismounted. In the centre Steve launched his first attack, but was repelled. As my forces moved up Steve launched a second, more successful attack and pushed the enemy out of the woods.

In the fading light the Confederate pushed forward, although one of my divisions seemed to be a bit lost (the negative modifier to the manoeuvre rolls makes a difference, even with fresh units, when you roll 1's!). My other division finally pushed forward, while Steve consolidated his gains in the centre. On the right flank the Union had decided to advance and had attacked and driven back our cavalry.

By the time darkness fell we were able to attack without the defenders getting supported due to the reduced fire ranges. Although the Union had moved round our flank, the darkness and the intervening rivers slowed them down from turning our flanks, while Steve had attacked and overrun the Corps artillery, while I had pushed through and taken the orchards adjacent to the road.

Steve pushed on and I launched a final attack. Although our troops were getting battered we had driven the majority of the Union back and were across the road, and with just one turn left the Union conceded that there was no chance of them driving us back and it was more likely we would wipe them out, so the Confederates took the victory.

This was a fun little game and showed that you don't need a massive table and lots of troops to do a game and I look forward to playing one of the other scenarios in the series that Colin had soon.

Club night 13th January

2012-01-20T17:33:00.003Z

Steve and I decided to play a Dystopian wars game. I have not yet used my new Dreadnought, and the 1.1 version PDFs re-inspired us to play again. Steve had to knock out my big ships to win, while I had to destroy more than half of his fleet, including all the larger vessels. I started with most of my fleet on my right, with a small element on the left.

Above: Early moves

Both fleets moved forward and opened fire.My AA proved remarkably effective against the incoming rockets thanks to some jammy dice rolls that would continue for most of the game, while my return fire caused some serious damage to the FSA battleship. The fleets continued to close and I concentrated my fire on the enemies left, destroying all the support frigates and inflicting more damage on the battleship.

On the other flank I managed to bring my destroyers and frigates to bear in combination and destroyed the enemy frigates opposing them. They then began to sweep towards the centre, despite some heavy losses from enemy bombers.

I was then able to move most of my fleet towards the centre and bring my heavier short range fire-power onto the cruiser occupying the centre of the FSA fleet, destroying them and then turning my fire against the airships, bringing them down. I was then able to board and capture the severely battered enemy battleship.

Although my big ships were damaged they were not out of it, and all the FSA really had left was their dreadnought on their far left. I pulled my air fortress back as it was beginning to suffer against the rockets from the dreadnought.

At this point we called it a day as the FSA fleet was defeated and my Prussians managed to claim a victory, thanks to a bit of luck and a finally better grasp of how to use my fleet effectively and maximise its strengths.

Club Night 6th January

2012-01-09T22:10:00.002Z

Luke and I played our rescheduled league game after last week. Generally I struggle against Dwarves thanks to their high toughness and my sucky luck, but after the game against Colin and Luke's luck in his last league game I felt slightly confident.

When we rolled up the terrain my confidence changed as we rolled two settlements, plus a bunch of extra buildings and walls, so looked good defensive terrain. However it turned out Luke had no warmachines or missile troops so was going to have to bring the fight to me, as much as I was going to need to close with him. Also the 8th edition rule make moving through obstacles with my chariots a lot easier. My magic also looked good as I got the spells from shadows that reduced the enemies toughness.

We both set up with the bulk of our forces quite centrally. I put my Giant and the Minotaurs on my left and my Ungors on the left against the Iron-Breakers. Both sides moved forward to get to grips. I moved the giant towards the middle, while the Minotaurs moved out further to circle around, while the dwarf warriors moved to face them. On the other flank the Iron-Breakers and the Ungors began a fight, that somehow the Ungors managed to keep losing, but having more ranks were stubborn and kept passing their break tests.

In the centre a general melee had broken out which I gradually got the upper hand in, and then finally broke through, particularly helped by my magic, reducing the enemies toughness and increasing the strength and attacks of my already quite obscene general on his chariot (one turn he was throwing out 14, strength 10 attacks!). Luke continuously failed to stop my magic, despite help from various runes.

Once I broke through the middle, and the Minotaurs swept round the flank, I finally managed to rescue my Ungors and get another victory against the dwarves.

ACW Naval 30th December

2012-01-02T18:40:00.003Z

For the last game of the year Luke and I planned to play our Warhammer league game, however Luke's work delayed him, so by the time he got to mine it was a bit late, so we rolled my Hammerin' Iron mat out on the floor in my flat rather than going to the club and played a ACW naval.

Luke again took the Union, while I took the confederates. I had more luck with the placement of my fort and the forces I started with getting CSS Arkansas right up against two of the Union Ironclads from the start and a fierce firefight started immediately, me forcing the Union to move by releasing a fire raft into them.

Combined with the fire from my fort, I exploded one of Polk's turtles, and then rammed another with CSS Van Dorn, before she was crippled herself. The massed fore of a surprisingly resilient Arkansas and the Fort pushed the Union fleet to navigate a narrow strip of river on the opposite bank between the bank and a line of river pilings (we use these to represent sandbanks).

As my final ships turned up, there was no sign of the last Union ironclad and the final floating ship was the third of the Union Cairo class, and was already badly damaged and facing the might of the whole Confederate flotilla, so Luke conceded a major victory to the confederates.

Club Night 28th December

2011-12-31T12:21:00.001Z

As a mid week, post-Christmas game Luke, Duncan and I decided to play a flames of war desert game. Duncan has been reworking his Germans to suit early war as well as mid, but only had tanks done, so we played 3,000 points, with me using my army I have been using against Luke in the axis of attack game to provide the infantry and he provide the Axis armour. Against this Luke fielded a Crusader company. We played the desert dust up scenario from Hellfire and back.

Luke started with his artillery, infantry and machine guns on table, while I dug in my infantry around our objective. The German armour then began a head on attack on the British positions, pressing them hard, and demonstrating the difference between the quality of the tow Axis nations vehicles as Luke struggled to knock them out.

As the Germans pushed centrally and my Italians dug themselves deeper in around our objective we could see the reserves could be decisive. And here we had the luck, a few British tanks turned up but had to manoeuvre around the wadi, bringing them towards the centre of the board, in range of the anti-tank guns and German armour. By the time the rest arrived it took so long to get into position it was too late as on the other flank the Italians had won it.

The Italian reserves hurried on in the opposite corner and despite casualties pushed on towards the objective, managing to overrun the machine gun platoon. Once again the L3 tankettes proved their worth. Finally the demolisher platoon pushed on to the objective, only to have their commander gunned down, but we then discovered he was an unknown hero and I could now pass my motivation on a 2+, which I did, hanging in there to claim the objective and victory for the Axis forces.

Club Night 23rd December

2011-12-23T22:49:00.006Z

As it was almost Christmas and finish work early day so I headed up early with Steve K to meet Luke and play some early war desert games as it has been a while. Also the club has juts bought the desert fort and we were keen to try it out.

Our first game had me take a Compagnia Mitraglieri of two platoons, with a fort, an AT platoon, and a cannon battery with a Meharisti platoon and Autosahariana platoon in support, fighting a withdrawal against a British rifle company.

This first game did not go well. Attacking under darkness I could not see the British until they assaulted the fort and pushed me back and almost out twice, while on the other flank they took the objective without me even seeing they were there! My poor deployment had exacerbated some poor dice rolls and lead to my quick defeat, still at least it was early and there was time for more games.

The second game saw my force unchanged, while the British gave up their artillery and took a pair of Matildas. This was going to be an issue as I had a slim chance of bailing them out if they exposed a flank to my 75s, otherwise I could not hurt them. Playing a hold the line scenario I decided to use my fort to make an issue of the game by deploying it quite far forward in to no-mans land and forcing them to pass close to it to get to the objectives.

Despite the sneaky Brits again trying to creep forward under nightfall, there must have been more moonlight as I clearly saw them and demonstrated the power of massed machine guns, even in the hands of the poorly trained Libyans as my opening volley reduced one platoon to two stands which ran away and damaged the other, which subsequently tried to assault the fort but was eventually defeated too.

To the left of the fort the armour moved forward with impunity with infantry support to encounter an ambush Mitraglieri platoon which forced the infantry to stop and dig in for survival, but made no difference to the tanks which continued there relentless advance. Again and again they assaulted the infantry driving them back so they became intermixed with the anti-tank guns and the Meharist, but although I was able to deny them the objective I could not stop their attack.

However on the other flank the Autosahariana rushed forward, speeding up as dawn broke and swept into the British rear decimating their support unit and breaking the enemy before the tanks could drive off the massed infantry trying valiantly to hold the objective on the other side.

One game all and time for a final game. A total change this time as Steve and Luke took an Australian Divisional Cavalry squadron while I took a Positione Fucilerito try something different. And as we found ourselves playing an encounter battle this could be tough for me, as although me defences might make it easy to deny the enemy victory, pushing forward to take an objective for the win could prove tricky.

After a couple of false starts I think I deployed my fortifications legally with one platoon covering each side of the table and a cannon battery covering one objective on one flank and the howitzers on the other flank. And it began to go wrong immediately. The howitzers were pinned by the enemy artillery and for the rest of the game repeatedly failed to unpin and also eventually lost three guns to the fire as well. But worse was to occur on the other flank. The armoured cars had recce'd forward and then dashed in and assaulted the cannon battery. With 8 shots against lightly armed vehicles I felt confident and then missed with 7 shots, lost the assault and fell back being wiped out in the process.

I now needed to do something decisive. My 47mm gun nest covering the objective destroyed the pesky armoured cars, but my force had still taken a big hit. And armoured forces still streamed forward on that flank to try and take the objective. Fortunately my trusty L3's turned up on that flank and the Solthum armed tank proceeded to knock out a vehicle a turn until overwhelmed by the sheer amount of fire. By now I had also managed to get a mortar platoon deployed in the trenches abandoned by the cannon battery but they got pinned down and remained so for the rest of the game, but somehow managed to survive when numerous vehicle trying to get at them got stuck trying to pass over the gun-pits also vacated by the cannon battery.

On the other flank my 3 tankettes had arrived and proceeded to bombard the Australian Vickers machine guns and to my surprise caused heavy casualties. Behind them the demolisher platoon crept forward taking lighter causalities than expected from the surviving enemy machine guns. Eventually however the tanks strayed within range if the 25 pounder and met their inevitable end, but by now the engineers had got close enough to assault and wipe out the machine guns.

They were not quite close enough to the objective though and had to move forward and brave a turn of enemy fire. Everything engaged them, Bofors guns, infantry, 25 pounders, even the 2-in-C in his MkIV tried to dash across but ended up out of range. It was now time for dice to turn in my favour. Despite the mass of fire I lost my last rifle base, and even the platoon command was hit, but decided he was an unknown hero, so remained, and improved the chances of the platoon hanging in there, which they did.

All that was left was for him to pass his last man check at the start of my turn and victory was mine! I nervously rolled the dice, but the fickle gods of luck where back with me and I managed to make it 2-1 to the Italians. A great afternoon of dashing about in the blue (or in the case of my Italians, finding a big fort or trench and hiding in it!).

Club Night 16th December

2011-12-20T21:36:00.008Z

Although I have not got them painted yet we decided to risk the mockery of other club member and try out Hammerin' Iron. I umpired/learnt the rules while Luke and Steve concentrated on rolling dice. First of all we played a version of the demo game Martin runs at shows, tweaked to fit my vessels just to introduce them to the rules.

Once we had done this we leapt into a full game and it was great fun, even if I was mostly watching! Luke cunningly used his army support to bombard one of the objectives, while in the river his fleet engaged CSS Arkansas which fought long and hard and took a real pounding, but somehow was still afloat at the end of the game.

The union also took heavy losses, but managed a minor victory. This game really got me enthused again and I am keen to try and find the time to finish adding all the masts and details to the ships so I can then get on and paint them!

Club Night 9th December

2011-12-20T21:36:00.007Z

I had finally arranged another Warhammer league game, this time against Colin and his dwarves. With a mass of warmachines and some favourable terrain it looked like it could be tricky. However some gods somewhere were on my side, warmachines misfired and destroyed themselves, thunderers could not hit, even before I used the chalice of dark rain and all my spells went off. Seeing my general under the influence of Mantle of Ghorok chucking out over 10 attacks was an awesome sight! I think my luck was confirmed when they finally killed my giant and for the dirst time ever he fell over on top of the unit he as fighting and took some of them with him

In the end I achieved a good victory and moved up the league table. Whether I can catch Duncan and his Daemons is another issue though.

London Toy Soldier Show 3rd December

2011-12-05T21:47:00.004Z

The London toy soldier was a very relaxed affair this year, although a little disjointed as we were not able to meet for our usual pre-show breakfast. After an initial wander round, we gathered back at the table Chris R had set up with one of his magnificent building in the centre and a cunning scenario and some clever little combat rules.

Having rigged the character selection Mike and I found ourselves on opposite sides as the main characters with other members playing our faithful companions/lackeys. We were both out to seek our claim to the widows fortune, and perhaps even her as well!

While I strolled forward with my faithful men (or at least down right rogues I thought I had paid enough to be loyal), Mike haughtily rode up to the inn with his man. One of his men read out a proclamation claiming his rights, which I rebuffed, and told Mike exactly what I thought of his honour and manhood!

He then retired around the corner of the inn and dismounted before coming back round. Now I thought something fishy was going on here (the giggling from the players was a clue), but challenged Mike none the less, knowing I was a far superior swordsman. As we drew blades I realised I had been conned and it was in fact one of him men posing as him, and renowned as a superior swordsman, but I had my honour and would not back down. And it turns out of greatly inflated reputation, our first clash of blades left me with a slight cut to my arm, but as we moved in again I ran him through much to my amazement and Mikes horror.

Meanwhile my men had dealt with Mikes other man and Mike had remounted, and despite my cries rode off, leaving me to claim the widow and her fortune, take Mikes man into my employee and generally be quite smug! It was a fantastic little game from Chris, fun, individual characters and nice and quick to giuve us time to look around the show, which Mike and I then did and I managed to pick up some cavalry for the start of my Duchy of Warsaw force for our Liepzig battles. 2013 will be the 200th anniversary so that give me plenty of time to prepare forces for a big game.

Above and below: Some example of Chris' beautiful figures

Club Night 2nd December

2011-12-05T21:08:00.002Z

I finally had the opportunity to try out the Culps hill scenario I have played with the skirmish wargamers (see here). With a few players for each side I was excited to see how it played out with some very different players.

The game looked like it was off to a positive start with Steve K hurling a unit of Rebs straight into the Yankees on the hill. But then Steve's recent luck reappeared and he not only managed to lose the combat, but then break completely, losing a unit in the first turn!

And the game continued in this vein for the southerners. They could not get their commands going, or if they did they were losing combats or being out shot. The union right took a long time to get going and did look like it might get in trouble, but eventually out shot its opponent and when they charged it was decisive. The middle of the Union line waited until the Confederates were hard pressed on their right (the Union left) and began to make a remorseless advance across Spanglers meadow and on to Culps hill.

By now on the Southern right they had been pushed back off Culp's hill and although we ran out of time to complete the game (probably fortunately as Rick seemed to be suffering from a case of very bad jokes that evening and was in danger of getting lynched - McDougals brigade as the flour of the union army - and that was one of the good ones!), and also as the Confederates were getting pushed back and could just about argue they hadn't been defeated, but I suspect it was just a matter of time.

Above: The Union right, Below: The Union drive the Rebels off Culps hill

Above: The Confederate left, Below: The Union retake the defences

Club Night 25th November

2011-11-27T19:57:00.004Z

Steve K and I dusted off his copy of Victory at Sea for some WW2 Naval combat. We decided for a change to pick fleets using the points system and play a standard scenario and see how it went. I continued my love affair with the Italians and took a battleship, a trio of cruisers and a destroyer squadron. Steve took the British and decided to try out a carrier, with some cruisers and destroyers in support.

Our game quickly focused on just one flank of the table, I think mainly as we were sitting nearer that end and wanted to keep our forces concentrated. I sent my destroyers steaming out ahead and tried to close to torpedo range. The first shots were exchanged to little effect. Meanwhile overhead my spotter plans were easily despatched by the massed British fighters and these then moved on to escort the torpedo bombers in.

By now my destroyers were in among it and the cruisers of both sides began to exchange fire, with the Italians having the better of it. The my Battleship came into action. In one massive salvo (with more 6's in one dice roll than I have see from my for quite a while), I changed the landscape of London, by sinking HMS Belfast. It then began to deteriorate for the British.

They lost another cruiser to combined gunfire and torpedo attack, and most of their destroyers were lost as well. I managed to weather the aircraft strike. This HMS Illustrious and a surviving destroyer against the majority of my battle fleet so they turned and fled, while I hunted down and sunk the last British cruiser.

A decisive victory for the Italians, with my Battleships opening salvo being almost as noticeable as yet another set of shocking dice rolls from Steve.

Warfare 19th Novemeber

2011-11-27T19:56:00.007Z

Having finished my French Line I managed to get the scenarios written too and headed up to Warfare at Reading to join the rest of the Skirmish Wargamers for our Napoleonic extravaganza. With a 20 foot table we managed to fill it all with terrain and began to set up our troops. Between the group we have managed to amass quite a collection and can deploy quite substantial forces.

The first game for the Saturday was a typical fighting withdrawal that represented the early part of the campaign using a modified version of the Flames of War scenario.

Above: Beth commands the French left against the Russians, Below: Ted commanded the Austrians in the centre of the allied lines
Above: French forces deploy in front of the Prussian forces, Below: A view across the battlefield
Above: A view down the battlefield, Below: The French cavalry take advantage of a gap in the enemy lines and a great command roll.
Above: The allied cavalry moves to counter attack the French, Below: The French find themselves surrounded on the right flank
Below: French squares repel allied cavalry

The whole battle was hard fought. In the centre the Austrians made an early advance and took heavy casualties, but were the first brigade to withdraw from the battle. On the French right a single brigade found itself facing the entire Russian army. Despite the fact the heavy cavalry was being held in reserve the Russians fought hard, with even the Militia managing to hold off the French. When the heavy cavalry was released the poor French infantry's fate was sealed.

On the opposite flank the main attack was lined up against the Prussians, spearheaded by the Old Guard. While the extreme right of the Prussians held their positions, the right advanced to take on the French. This left a gap between the line the French cavalry ruthlessly exploited, riding down the Prussian artillery and forcing the infantry to form squares which were then pounded by the French artillery and Infantry. The Allied light cavalry counter attacked, but were chased off, one unit of French cavalry ending the game in possession of two enemy standards.

Despite this the French attack was simply not quick enough and the Allies held on till the end of the game to claim victory. It was hard work running a game this big in a noisy environment, but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

I was unable to make the Sunday, but they played the scenario I wrote based on Grossbeeren, and all accounts report that it was enjoyed again and the same French cavalry caused havoc again. And as an added bonus the group won best in show. For more photos see Mikes pictures here.

Painting Napoleonic French Line (Pic Heavy)

2011-11-20T19:57:00.009Z

At Warfare the Skirmish Wargamers planned to run a very non-skirmish using black powder on a 20 foot long table set during the Liepzig campaign. I agreed to plan and umpire the games, but when I got the army lists I noticed there was no line infantry for the French and mentioned this to Mike who said "OK, I'll send you some, paint them!" I agreed, not really thinking through that this would mean I would have two weeks to complete them as well as plan the games and do all the resources to help make them run smoothly.

When the figures arrived from Mike the first thing that struck me was that they were Armies in Plastic (AIP) elite infantry, so were not line and all the officers were the same. The first job was to base them up (fortunately I had some spare bases), trim the epaulettes and plumes from my centre company figures and convert the officers. I decided for variety I would make each 12 man unit up of 6 2 man companies just like a real battalion, a Voltigeur, a grenadier and 4 line companies. They are not quite perfect as they still all carry hangers, but needs must and they are close enough.

Above and Below: Unpainted figures converted and based
Above and Below: Unpainted figures converted and based
Above: Converted officer, Below: Unpainted Tradition metal figure for regimental commander.
Above and Below: Figures sprayed grey primer and then white airbrushed on where appropriate
Above and Below: Coats painted below and paper flags tested out
Above: Red trim base coated, Below: Flesh, green and yellow base coat
Above and Below: Voltigeurs and Grenadiers highlighted and bases painted
Above and Below: More shots of the flank companies
Below: The centre companies bought up to the same standard as the flank companies
Above: The entire regiment of 3 battalions, Below: Command receives a coat of army painter
Above: The whole force covered with army painter and bases dry-brushed, Below: Matt varnish applied
Above: The completed force

Not too bad for 10 days work! Now it just remains to see how the 13eme Ligne perform on the battlefield.

Club Sunday 6th November

2011-11-07T21:10:00.009Z

We gathered up the club to play the finale in our Crusader campaign, but some events conspired and so we could not really proceed. Instead we threw together a quick total war game using the desert forces we had. Due to numbers I found myself on the Allied side so took a compact little Divisional Cavalry Squadron, to fight alongside an infantry company and a tank squadron against a Panzer company and a Bersaglieri battalion. Rather than recount all the details as lots happened I will just illustrate them with some photos.

Above: Initial deployment on the diagonal
Below: The Australian Cavalry dash into a depression and try to hold on against the Italians
Above: Another shot of the position in the depression
Below: German armour surrounds the Aussies, Grants arrive to the rescue and artillery continues to land in the depression

Above: German armour arrives behind the British artillery

At this point I got all caught up in the game and forgot to take any more pictures. It really broke down into two separate games. The fight around the depression had more armour from both sides thrown in and finding fire lines through the burning wrecks began to prove tricky and neither side really made any progress. On the other flank the German tanks caused problems behind the British lines, while in front of them the heavy Panzer IVs shelled the dug in infantry with their 75s, while staying at a range that the British anti-tank was ineffective. This gradual crumbling on the far flank eventually cost the Allies an extremely close game and I am keen to try some total war again in the future.

Club Night 4th November

2011-11-05T12:18:00.005Z

Steve K and I decided to try out the 7TV rules from Crooked Dice that he had purchased at SELWG after seeing them at Salute. Now my youthful years means a lot of the 70's jokes I don't get, but I follow enough to get an idea of the intention of the game and so was looking forward to trying it out.

I naturally took the bad guys, an evil boss, his henchman and a series of faceless heavies against a smaller (and female dominated) band of heroes. We set up the terrain to be outside and distinctly Scottish by using a few of the buildings from the Border Reivers game the club put on a few years back to get a nice busy table.

The first game was a rescue as the good guys tried to rescue a prisoner from my crooks. But it stated going wrong for the good guys from the start, I ended up with more action tokens as well as having more men and was able to quickly bring my guys against a smaller part of the raiding force and mercilessly gunned them down, before switching against the other part of the force and gunning them down too. A dreadful start for the good guys and certainly not good for the ratings!

The second game was a more simple reconnaissance mission and the good guys made a better start, clearing a couple of the objectives and taking out a few of the bad guys, but then my SMG armed heavies came into action again and gunned down the good guys. It was so bad one of the good guys ran out into the open to shoot down my henchman, with all her skills and gadgets she just needed a 2+ to hit, promptly missed and then despite needing a lot more to hit her in return machine gunned her down.

Despite a ratings calamity with the good guys getting taken out twice, they are fun, clever rules and with some more figures and tweaking the forces should make for some more balanced games. We did a few things wrong (you can't aim an SMG, one of the good guys with the melee skills could infiltrate so avoiding running the gauntlet of the fire) and the limitations of the figures (way too any SMG armed bad guys, although it did cost points), they showed some real strengths and I can see them useful for many other, personality driven, episodic type games.

Club 2nd November

2011-11-02T20:14:00.007Z

Luke and I continued our desert themed axis of attack campaign, with my Italians forced to attack in a hold the line scenario. As a primarily foot force this was always going to be a tough ask. I decided to try and use smoke more effectively and plastered his artillery with guns and mortars to prevent them shooting as I tried to push forward as fast as possible, flanking him with my motorcilisti and L3's.

However this was not enough and under constant heavy fire my relatively immobile force just could not bring enough combat power to bear, quick enough to force the breakthrough and the Italians were thrown back and yet again the attack moved in neither direction.

Club Night 21st October

2011-10-24T20:33:00.003+01:00

Duncan and I finally got together to play some games of Malifaux, even if I had not managed to paint my stuff yet. It was very much a learning experience and the games were not especially quick and strewn with errors, but the second game we played was for me the highlight as I got some good tactics worked out and everything went quite well.

I managed to use Candy and her run away home ability to grab the objective and leg it and I also used the Dreamer for the first time, and although I will need to refine him a bit, found him easier to use than Pandora and very enjoyable. Using his I can fly ability to rush across the battlefield and then summon a teddy and Lord Chompy Bits straight into combat is some awesome alpha strike ability and makes the force feel very manoeuvrable which always suits my style of play.

SELWG, 16th October

2011-10-24T20:32:00.004+01:00

SELWG has come and gone. I always enjoy this show, if nothing else since it was the first one that Luke and I went to over 15 years ago and it is good for a bit of nostalgia!

There seemed to be less game and more traders, which is good for shopping, but not so great for inspiration, which again I found sorely lacking. Again there was nothing that really grabbed my imagination, which is not to say there were not some good looking games, they just retrod the same old themes again, albeit very well.

There was one exception, I got a chance top play the new Hammerin' Iron rules from Peter Pig and will definitely be investing in them and some ships at Reading next month. I did some shopping, but it was not very exciting! Figure case galore! All from the excellent kaiser Rushforth range, I got case for my Helldorado, Malifaux, Blood Angels and nice little bag for my Dystopian wars. One of those not exciting but essential purchases, like paints and brushes.

Club Night 14th October

2011-10-24T20:30:00.008+01:00

I played my second 40k league game against John-Paul and his Dark Hunter marines. It was an objective based mission with dawn of war deployment. The Dark Hunters had a mixed force, 3 scout squads (1 with sniper rifles), and a long range dreadnought (twin-linked lascannons and missile launchers), then 3 tactical squads and a standard assault cannon armed dreadnought all in drop pods and a squad of terminators. The force was finished off with a pair of land-speeders, a pair of whirlwinds and a chaplain to lead them.

The sniper scouts started on table and John-Paul took the first turn landing two tactical squads right over deep in to my table edge with the land speeders sweeping forward to support them. I bought my assault squads on, one attacking the marines in the centre and one beginning to flank the enemy.

A viscous close combat developed in the centre with my assault squad eventually re-enforced by some death company against tactical squads and some terminators. I was eventually defeated but had inflicted heavy casualties on my opponent.

On my right flank I found my flanking squad caught up with the drop-pod landed terminator in a prolonged combat as I failed to defeat it. However the death company with the Chaplain who had dropped in to support them were attacked by a scout squad they quickly dispatched and they moved off to support the attack on the enemies rear.

I dropped the veterans into the enemy centre and saw off my opponent and hurried to try and attack the snipers, but had to go to support the the final assault squad. This combat finally swung against me and the game ended with the objective on my table edge not held by anyone, the objective on the left also not held by anyone as I was still unable to defeat the dreadnought and move to take it, while the objective on the Dark Hunters table side was held by the scouts and my surviving marines in the combat on the far side were too far to contest it so I suffered a defeat after a close, enjoyable game.

Club Night 12th October

2011-10-15T20:40:00.006+01:00

Luke and I headed up the club for mid-week game and decided to start an early war axis of attack campaign, with Luke using a Jock Column force and me using a Bersaglieri company. Our first battle was the Jock column attempting a breakthrough. Luke made a brave gamble by keeping his infantry as part of the flanking force and committing just his armour and artillery to the main attack. I used my numbers to surround him as best as possible and keep my armour in reserve.
I used my reconnaissance move to hurry my motociclisti into the town to my rear and occupy it ready to repel the flank attack
Luke through his armour at my forces, but a combination of 47mm gun fire and the amazing pluck of my fearless conscripts in the front line they defeated the first attack.
I then began to hammer the artillery with air power and my own artillery. By now my reserves had started to arrive, but the other element of the jock column appeared to be lost in the desert.
I even was able to launch my tankettes (my new favourite unit along with the mid-war L6 light tanks) against the 25 pounder battery. This proved the last straw and the battered attackers broke.
So the Bersaglieri had been victorious and are now on the attack and ready to push forward to Egypt.

After this shorter than expected game I tried to introduce Luke to Malifaux with a basic game. He took my Lady Justice crew and I tried out Pandora for the first time. And she is touch to play. Initially I seemed to have the edge with my multiple moves and distance spells, but once I got in too close Lady J and her Marshalls did what they do best and dispatched my physically weaker crew with ease.

Club Night 7th October

2011-10-09T20:30:00.006+01:00

Rick and I took an early war Compaignia Carri against Luke and Steve with a Jock Column defending in a fighting withdrawal. With all the fearless veteran RHA we knew it would be tough, and our 8 million bayonet rolls did not help us. We decided on a flank attack with the motociclisti troops attacking towards one objective, with the armour in the centre free to support or attack to another objective as the game played out.
The flanking troops hurried forward with tankette support and managed to destroy the universal carriers sent out to meet them which prevented their reconnaissance move. In the centre the armour force advanced on mass.
As the flank attack pushed forward we unfortunately lost our coastal artillery trying to move it into a less exposed position. Despite coming under artillery fire the Bersaglieri pushed on with their own artillery providing support. But now I failed possibly a key roll as I failed the motivation to perform an avanti move and dismount to enable me to assault the pinned down defenders.
With this failure and the appearance of the RHA 2 pounders in the centre we were on the back foot and beginning to take unsustainable casualties and eventually our company broke before we could threaten the British withdrawal.

Club Sunday 2nd October

2011-10-09T11:57:00.003+01:00

As the club met for our usual Sunday I decided not to game but to take advantage of our Indian summer and the outside space to get some painting done in the sun so I sprayed the base colours on Steve K's infantry tanks and primed my next wave of Dystopian wars.

I managed to actually get the Dystopian wars ships not just primed but painted to completion and army painted then when I got home, ready for basing and flat-coated. They are looking good and I will bring some photos when they are finished.

Club Night 30th September

2011-10-01T16:30:00.003+01:00

Having played Hail Caesar at Colours I was keen to play to play them again at the club. We had a member unable to play at the last minute so we changed it to a Roman Civil war game as we could get plenty of Romans at short notice.

The rules played so well and quickly we actually managed two games. In the first the enemy deployed all their infantry on one side and their cavalry on the other. Our cavalry promptly engaged theirs in a mutually destructive and very brief melee. All that was left was our light cavalry. This covered our flank as we advanced and moved to encircle the enemy. With their infantry pinned in and surrounded on one flank they admitted defeat and we stared our second game.

This time the enemy deployed in a more concentrated position, but again refused to advance on us, forcing us to advance and attack their infantry behind a stream. We made good progress before eventually being pushed back. Meanwhile under a new commander, their cavalry moved round our flank and defeated our own cavalry and begun to roll up our flank and threaten our legionaries rears so this time we were defeated.

Club Night 23rd September

2011-09-24T12:28:00.004+01:00

I arranged a league game against Laurence and his Dark Elves. We had to leave some forces in reserve and I found myself starting without one of my Shamans, the Minotaurs and the Giant. The rest of my force deployed on my right leaving space for the others to arrive.
I swept my line forward pivoting on the building to close with the Dark Elf line. I came under heavy bow fire and magic as I advanced and my charge rolls seriously let me down. My Bestigors charged forward twice and turned around and charged back after the Shades once, and never moved more than 3" for their failed charges!

However despite my chariots being shot up quite badly they charged into the corsairs and crossbowman and managed to break and chase down both of them. However the Gors got caught up and eventually cut down by the enemy sorcerer, angered by the nearby alter of Khaine and protected from harm by the pendant of Khaleth.

My General had his chariot shot from under him, but at least managed to kill the Shades so he made a slight contribution.On the other flank my reserves arrived and the Giant failed to charge the chariot while my Minotaurs also failed to charge. The Giant was charged by the chariot but survived and managed to crush it before charging in and inflicting heavy casualties on the cold one riders, who then brought him down. The spearmen and their assassin charged the Ungors I had positioned to cover the flank of the Minotaurs, discouraging anyone charging them previously with mind-razor so they where strength 7!

However without the spell to enhance them, they fled and failed to rally, leaving the table. The spearmen redirected into the Minotaurs and fought them to a draw, but with a musician they won, and the Minotaurs failed their break test, fled and also failed to rally, leaving the table very ignobly. Despite bombarding the spearmen with magic I could not break them and the game drew to a close.

I was defeated, and by more victory points than expected, but felt a lot closer and I was pleased with how my tactics worked, even if some key dice rolls let me down too badly to be able to compensate for.

Blood Angels XI - Almost finished

2011-09-20T21:14:00.001+01:00

I have the final touches to my last units of Blood Angels. That is the whole company now completed, just need some flat coat to finish them. I will then take and post some pictures of the finished units.

Above: Tactical Squads, Death Company and Honour Guard,
Below: Assault Squads, Dreadnoughts, Land Speeder and Terminators

Above: Command, Veterans, Below: The entire company

Battle of Beda Fomm

2011-09-20T20:22:00.009+01:00

Steve, Luke and I gathered for a mid-week game. We decided to try out the Beda Fomm scenario from Wargames Illustrated as with Steve's BEF tanks we could virtually do the exact forces. The British Combe Force deployed across the road while the Bersaglieri deployed at the far end ready to try and make a breach for 10th army to escape through (below).

The Bersaglieri advanced valiantly against a storm of British artillery fire (above), while the British armoured cars attempted to flank them, but were driven off by the Italian tanks, who then swept on as the British armour arrived behind them (below).

However the British opening volley failed to take advantage of this position and the return fire decimated them, as the rest of the Italian armour arrived (above). meanwhile the infantry had continued to push forward, taking heavy casualties, but managing to hang around and even attempted a very unsuccessful assault on the British lines (below), before finally faltering under the massed fire and breaking.

The British MkIVs has also arrived by now (below, cunningly using the mirrored wall to enhance their numbers) and began to attack the Italian artillery. Although this quickly proved fatal for them, they destroyed enough gun crews to seriously hamper the Italian supporting artillery fire for the main attack. The heavy losses to the British armour meant that if the Italians could break one of the defending platoons they could win, but the dug in infantry was going to prove too tough for them, and the Italians eventually broke after many turns of tough fighting, resulting in the destruction of the 10th army.
This is a really tough fight for the Italians and I think we were all surprised how close I actually came. I was even more surprised when I saw the following weeks Wargames Illustrated and found they had changed the scenario after more play-testing and made the Italians just have reserves rather than delayed reserves so they arrived much earlier, which could prove decisive. We will now have to repay it with the revised scenario and see if I can manage to save the Italian 10th army!

Club Night 16th September

2011-09-20T20:22:00.008+01:00

Having missed the last game I persuade Phil to run another Check your 6 air combat game as I really wanted to try out these rules. He fortunately obliged and run two scenarios for us based on the start of the Battle of Britain.

The first game saw me commanding flight of Hurricanes, chasing down some unidentified aircraft under Phil(history is unsure what they were but most likely RAF Blenheims), while some of the shiny new Spitfires under Bob attacked me in turn. yes, this was the historical recreation of the first aerial kill by a Spitfire and not a Jerry in sight!

I swept around to try and use my superior speed to run down the more ponderous aircraft and happily ignore the Spits' as why would my own side fire on me! However they did damaging one of my Hurricanes, which eventually crashed after I tried to climb after the 'enemy' bombers and stalled and my green crew were unable to recover. The rest if the Spitfires made attacks, but missed and then broke off as they ran out of ammunition. I managed to make a few passes at the bombers inflicting some damage before I also ran out of ammunition.
We then had time for a second game. This time involving the enemy! Bob and I shared some Messerschmitts while Phil took the British photography mission (I think they were flying Defiants, but I can't recall). Here the German should have had the advantage, but one of the down sides of air (and naval) games became apparent. If you don't play them regularly you don't have a full enough understanding of the limitations and manoeuvrability of your craft and fail to take advantage of it fully or place you self in poor positions. And this is what Bob and I did, not flying to take full advantage of our aircraft, while Phil made full use of his. This combined with our poor shooting and the annoyingly accurate Brits meant we failed to chase them down, took damage ourselves, although mostly ran out of ammo firing from disadvantageous positions.

Despite this I really enjoyed this, and a possible project for next year is the Jet-Age update, flying wither over Korea or Israel.

Colours

2011-09-11T21:24:00.004+01:00

10th September saw Colours wargames show at Newbury racecourse. I have said before that I really like this venue. Although the multi levels is not ideal, the glass front to the Grandstand makes it feel really light and airy. While the club put on our FoW game again I joined the Skirmish Wargamers for a 54mm Al-Andalusia game with Hail Caesar rules.

Pete had organised the game, even getting figures from members who could not make it and did a magnificent job. He and Beth had set up some brilliant looking terrain and written out cards for all the units so everyone had everything they needed. Myself and Alan played the Muslims, while Beth and Ted were the Christians and Pete umpired.

The first nice touch is Pete let me and Ted (as C-in-C) pick our units by flipping and coin and then alternately selecting units. This resulted in Ted placing a preference in missile troops, while I found myself with a mass of heavy cavalry and infantry, which I hoped would give us the edge. I took command of our cavalry on our right, while Alan took the infantry on the left with the lights planning to move through the marsh. The enemy deployment almost mirrored ours, with Ted having the cavalry opposite me and Beth the infantry opposite Alan.

Above: Muslim cavalry, below: Muslim infantry

Above: Christian cavalry, below: Muslim cavalry

While the Christian forces dallied (or failed many command rolls), the Muslims hurried forward to attack the infidels. I angled part of my cavalry to either side of the wood, chasing down and catching the unfortunate horse archers on the outer edge and preparing to charge the enemy infantry in the centre (below).

While I fought off the majority of the enemy cavalry, and drew the attention of the rest on the other flank Alan harassed them with his skirmishers, while the Frankish infantry (presumably gold had outweighed their faith to their God) formed a second line behind the cavalry that then took its turn to stand around doing nothing before finally charging in just dribs and drabs (below).

By now my flanking force was truly surrounded (above), but in the centre after some viscous push and shove, we had broken though and were sweeping left and right to open this hole in the enemy lines (below).

The remains of the enemy infantry tried valiantly to hold against the Frankish heavies, but were gradually pushed back (above), and with the cavalry behind them their fate was sealed,while all the Christian cavalry could do was face off against the Muslim cavalry and watch their infantry be cut down behind them, resulting in a famous victory for the Muslims.

This was a great fun game and ran fairly smoothly for a first run through of the rules, mostly thanks to Pete's organisation and I really look forward to playing the rules again in any scale, although the 54mms really do have visual effect nothing else can achieve.

Club Night 9th September

2011-09-11T19:15:00.004+01:00

Steve K and I decided to play some Flames of War but to go back to mid war and not campaign enabling us to freely pick from the lists and use some troops we haven't used for a while and for Steve to try out his armoured cavalry regiment.

We played the Dust Up scenario from Hellfire and Back, and I immediately came unstuck. I was using my favoured Squadrone Esplorante, but Steve had reinforced his light armour with 2 Lee-Grant troops which would cause me big problems. And when he got the first turn, it went from bad to worse as he was able to shell my Lancia trucks with their 90mm guns and destroy them with ease. This then left only my 75mm guns with the slightest chance of dealing with the big British tanks ad he astutely avoided them.

Above: The heavily armoured British, Below:The Italian defenders

I managed to push the game to its limits with my reserves, but the outcome was never really in doubt and I lost. Fortunately we had time for another game. This time I was defending in a hold the line scenario which suited my forces slightly better. I remember it was a good game, but I have taken so long to write it up I forgot who won (probably means it wasn't me!), so moral of the story is to try and blog more regularly

Post 200!

2011-09-10T22:11:00.001+01:00

So, as I make an attempt to catch up with my blogging, I find I have reached 200 posts. What I achieved in the last couple of years then. Well there are at least 16 people out there following the blog, and I know a lot of the club member read and are amused by my take on events! Most importantly it has given me some focus to my gaming and painting. I have been able to look at what I have painted and see my progress, and reflect on my games and my mistakes, and hopefully learn from them.

Most importantly of all though, is I have enjoyed writing it and sharing my gaming with other gamers. I love my gaming as it is a sociable activity and to be able to share it with a wider audience is fantastic.

So now on with the next 100 posts, with the Blood Angels virtually finished, the next projects are Malifaux and Helldorado as something a bit different,

Thanks for reading

Leigh

Painting Blood Angels Step by Step

2011-09-08T20:00:00.000+01:00

I have decide to try and photo the painting of my Sanguinary priests step by step so you can see how I work if your interested.
1. Prime miniatures with Citadel spray gun and Mechanite Red GW foundation paint2. Highlight armour with GW Blood Red applied with airbrush. I spray from level and above only so there begins to get some shading appear.

3. I then washed the armour with GW Baal Red wash to enrich the red and provide some guidance for subsequent painting.
4. For the sanguinary priests I found after the red was painted some of the crosses I had filled on the Death company parts were still visible so I refilled them and touched up those areas using the same colours as 1-3. I then put a base colour of Astronomican Grey GW foundation paint over any areas that were going to be white or gold.5. I then over-painted the areas to be white with Vallejo off-white and black areas with Vallejo black.
6. I then washed these areas with thinned GW Badab Black wash to provide some crisper depth than the army painter will give.7. I then repainted the white areas using off-white again over the washed areas
8. Next I painted metal areas with GW Boltgun metal
9. All bone areas and scrolls and purity seals were base coated with GW Dheneb Stone
10. All the gold areas where painted Vallejo Old Gold, I like this as its a nice deep aged gold. It takes two to three thin coats to build this up but its worth the effort.
11. It was now time to clean up the paint job again. With the amount of detail on these there is more areas that need cleaning up than usual. This is just a repeat of the colours used in steps 1-3. At this step I also pick out the blood drops and purity seals wax seals in Mechanite Red. I painted the eyes lenses Knarloc green at this point too.
12. The eye lenses are painted GW Scorpion green and white dots added. The blood drops are highlighted with GW blazing orange.
13. The next four images are almost the final steps. Highlight the blood drops and the vials with GW Sunburst yellow and off-white dots. It was also at this step any bone areas were highlighted with GW Bleached bone.
14. The final painting step is GW Codex Grey highlights to the black areas and GW Vomit Brown to the red areas. Unfortunately I forgot to photo this step.

15. Army painter. I use the strong tone and apply with a brush. Once I have brushed it all over, I wipe the brush clean and start lifting off any army painter that I don't want to leave shading in the recess and not affect the colour of the raised areas too much.

16. Bases and Transfers. Bases are painted whatever dark brown I have to hand, usually either GW Scorched Brown or System 3 Artists Burnt Umber, then over-brushed with bubonic brown, before a dry-brush of bleached bone, with the edges repainted bubonic brown. The decals are the standard Blood Angel chapter badge with one wing chopped off for my chapter badge. I complete my scrolls with a fine permanent pen

17. Final step is to flatten the shine from the army painter. I use the army painter anti-shine as it is made to go with army painter so as long as I follow the instructions I should be fine.

Club Night 2nd September

2011-09-03T19:47:00.004+01:00

We had planned to be joined my some members of South London Warlords to play a 7YW game, but unfortunately they couldn't make it, but we still played a game. Bob and I took the French against Austrians under Scott and Steve K using the Konigskreig rules which are nice and quick and fun.
We also used the 'hidden' movement system for the first time and I think Bob and I got caught with this as our dummy bases were quickly removed, while Scott kept his near the back of the table enabling him to activate them instead of another command and so letting them activate their 'fighting' commands after ours and always take advantage of whatever we did.

This advantage combined with some poor dice rolls on my part meant that my cavalry was quickly routed and our line was in danger of being turned, while in the centre our infantry was driven back leaving a victory to the Austrians.

Club Night 26th August

2011-08-28T19:47:00.003+01:00

As a total change, for the first time in a long while I participated in a big game with no less than 10 members involved. We used to play games like this quite a lot, but with the space we have and varied interests it hasn't happened as often so was a refreshing change. We played a Fire and Fury scenario organised by Steve H. It was a particular battle, but I forget which, although this shouldn't reflect on the organisation which was second to none.

Ian took the Union left flank against Rick, with Mark supporting to Ian's right. On our right was Andy against Colin, while Bob and I attacked up the middle with Scott supporting us, against Chris Jones, with Steve K bring up the reserves for the Rebs.

Attacking into a mass of guns and infantry in defences was always going to be a tough proposition, but we made it to the enemy lines faster than I had expected with lighter casualties. Except on the right flank, where Andy had rolled to see what the enemy cavalry was doing and it turned out General Forrest had swept around our flank and arrived behind our lines forcing a defensive action and a massive and rapid redeployment of our cavalry to counter this (historically this could have happened but didn't hence the dice roll).

We attacked the enemy trenches and were initially forced back, but with Scott's support arriving I managed to push into the trench and out the other side, only to be repulsed by Rebel reserves and pushed out again. Next time I attacked with Scott and Bob at the same time and we pushed in to the Rebel centre at various points, but again were met by a viscous counter attack that drove most of us out. A third attack made it in to the trenches again, but any further counter attack would be devastating as my brigades were all close to spent and the brigades of Bob and Scott's division were not in much better shape.

So a victory for the Rebs, but the Yankees had pushed it closer than anyone expected and a really fun game to play, both for scenario and rules, and the camaraderie.

Above: Hidden behind a rule book the Confederate flank attack arrives, Below: the Union right Above: The main Union attack in the centre, Below: The Rebel line is breached for the first time

Club Night 19th August

2011-08-23T17:54:00.005+01:00

Luke and I decided to channel our excitement over the release of Hellfire and Back and actually play some test games. We played around with various lists that we could build using proxies from our mid war to count as for early war, although we were surprised how much we could do without needing any new purchases.

Our first game matched a Comaigna Carri from the Italians against a British Jock Column in the new dust up scenario. With the high quality of the British, especially the RHA, I had a numerical advantage, but would have to cope with Italians with considerably less training and experience than I am used to, although their individual bravery is as good as ever. Setting up in opposite corners with an objective behind us I started with mostly armour and some supporting artillery, while the British deployed recce vehicles and 2 and 25 pounders of the RHA.

The massed RHA guns hammered my armour as I struggled with the handicap of the slow tanks before they had their engines upgraded and so an unusual lack of mobility. The recon swept around my right, joined my the British reserves and drove towards my artillery holding my objective, leaving just my CO among the burned out wrecks of the Italian armour.

However, hidden as he was by smoke and dust they ignored him and he was able to inflict heavy damage on the light British vehicles and my gunners (traditionally always the elite of the Italian armed forces) held off the rest, while my motorcycle troops arrived from reserve and swept onto the enemy objective, holding it despite heavy fire from the RHA as the British suddenly realised the nature of the threat and tried to react, but it was too late the Italians claimed a narrow and hard fought victory.

Above: Brits Flank attack, Below: Italians seize victory

After this game we decided we had time for another game, this time a Bersaglieri company against a British Armoured Regiment. However we ended up playing the new witches cauldron variant on the cauldron mission, and with no infantry and artillery support the British would have a very tough time defeating the dug in infantry with primary machine guns. And this was exactly what happened, the Italians lost some force to the weight of fire, and the coastal artillery when it tried to redeploy when the British attacked only on one flank, but in return dug-in 47 and 75mm guns made short work of the enemy armour, with the extra luck of hitting and stopping the CS tanks early on too. A decisive Italian victory.

Also on was a Great Northern war game. This has been a pet project of Andy and Colin's for some time and to see it all set out on the boards from Tannenburg it looked amazing so I took a couple of pictures.

Hellfire and Back - First Impressions

2011-08-13T22:12:00.002+01:00

My copy of Hellfire and Back, the new early desert war supplement by Battlefront, arrived from Wayland Games this morning and I have barely put it down since. It has been just what has been needed to revitalise my Flames of War gaming as we come to end of our Crusader campaign.

At first glance I am really not keen on the cover artwork, something about the perspective seems out and it lacks a strong focal point. Inside however it is a different story, the usual mix of artwork, mini photos and period photos illustrate it throughout. If you have nothing else to say about battlefront you can not fault their presentation and the quality of their printed products.

I haven't really looked at the German lists so I will just focus on the British and Italian lists and all the extra stuff. First up, the Italians. As usual they are slightly the poor cousin with only 4 lists, but they are all really good. Organisation is different for the infantry as expected for pre AS42 lists, but seem accurate and balanced. Points have varied which is as expected as quality for troops in 8 million bayonets has also changed, much less veterans so this will change the way they play a bit. The other odd thing to have changed is the stats for some vehicles and guns. I'm not sure about the rational about this, but it is going to be confusing when you also use the same vehicles in mid-war with different values.

The British have many lists, split between British and Commonwealth forces and include the terrifying looking Armoured regiment, just by the sheer number of vehicle they will have with a gun quite capable of knocking out their Italian equivalents, even if their armour is considerably left. The rest of the forces cover the other armoured forces, 'jock' columns and infantry forces. The reconnaissance forces look interesting with their ability to move an opponents objective after deployment. This could make them a really viable force to play with.

The new rules primarily cover the fortification force that are available (1 for each nation) and how these work. The basic rules are basically the same as the rule book but they deploy differently. making little self-contained positions separated from each other, with reserves to arrive to support them. It will be interesting to see how these play, especially as with the Italians I can have a CCNN forces. The other rules are the motorcycle reconnaissance rules which I understand are the same as in blitzkrieg, and should change the way my motorcilisti troops play (although I will need quite a few more bases to make a force).

The final part of the book (aside from the historical background which I haven't read yet) is the terrain rules. These provide variable terrain types that you don't roll up unit you get close enough (I.e. in contact) to see what is actually there. The only thing that I feel is missing is rules for deploying the templates on the table, like in the main rulebook. I think we will be modifying the desert terrain chart there to incorporate these new terrain types.

Overall it seems to be a really good book. I would have liked to see a fuller set of terrain rules, and more Italian lists, but seems really good, and opens out a period of the war Luke and I really like and we are already talking about what we are going to add to our existing forces so we can do some Operation battleaxe battles. I would give the book a 4/5, pretty good, but not quite perfect! A battle report should be coming next weekend.

Club Night 5th August

2011-08-10T20:22:00.003+01:00

My Blood Angels got their first run out in the club 40k league. I had managed to flat coat them, but unfortunately I got a slight whitening on some of the models so I need to revisit them and see if I can rescue them. Any ideas?

My first game was against Ian's Dark Angels. It was going to be interesting as both being marines we would be fairly similar and I had no idea what I would be facing. It turned out there were two elements to his force, 3 units of Deathwing lead by Belial, and 3 tactical squads led by a chaplain with his command squad, supported by scouts and a vindicator.

I finally decided to deploy some of my army on the table as we played a capture and control mission with spearhead deployment. I started with two assault squads, both with a sanguinary priest and supported by a land speeder on table, with the plan to launch them in opposite directions using the terrain to cover them before they could assault, avoiding the giant shell from the vindicator.

My squads bonded forward, coming under some desultory fire from the scouts and one of the tactical squads, but mostly staying out of sight. My deep striking reserves then arrived with the help of descent of angels. The veterans arrived immediately behind the enemy objective, declaring a heroic intervention to charge the terminators defending it, while the two death company units spread out to support them.

Here is where I took my first serious set-back. Both the chaplain with his combi-melta and the land speeder with the multi-melta missed the vindicator, leaving it free to fire accurately at Astorath and his Death company killing all but the Blood Angel hero and one of his crazed companions, while the chaplain and his squad came under fire from Belial and his escorts and a tactical squad and were also reduced to the chaplain and 1 death company.

Fortunately it wasn't all going against me. I had run one assault squad away from the enemy chaplain when I realised they were too far away to assault, and the other squad was working its way through a terminator squad, despite the re-enforcement of a tactical squad. And the veterans were having more success. Another tactical squad had hurried in to support the terminators that had been their initial target, but having lost the combat, the tactical squad fled from the combat with such speed they left the table.

The land speeder then moved around the rear of the vindicator and destroyed it, while the final assault squad had dropped in ready to support the other assault squads while the chaplain and his companion proved no match for Belial and his terminators, but Astorath and his survivor demonstrated how terrifying a full squad would have been by destroying the scouts in a single combat.

Almost all my unit were now in combat, with one assault squad reducing the command squad to just the Interrogator chaplain, and the other two combining to destroy the terminators and all but one tactical marine who stubbornly held on, while I moved the other units around to avoid Belial until I could launch a co-ordinated attack, but luckily my heavy flamer managed to kill two of them.

I finished off the survivors and moved my assault squads and surviving veterans into a position to attack Belial and his Deathwing, while one assault squad hurried back to claim my own objective. I then launched my final assault and took down Belial by sheer number and some poor armour saves.

I had managed to claim a total victory by wiping out the enemy, but I had learnt a lot. The death company can still get killed by massed small arms fire, and their pistol fire is better to sacrifice in place of a run when they deep strike to spread out so they are not as vulnerable to template weapons. Ian's army was good, but he needed to be more aggressive, probably by deep striking his terminators, and maybe in the longer term getting some Rhinos for his other marines. But at least I managed to start this league with a victory, lets see if I can maintain my momentum.

Blood Angels X

2011-07-29T15:04:00.003+01:00

The Blood Angels continue to progress. I have finished the basic painting on my Terminators and Dreadnoughts, so they just need basing and army-painter to complete them.

Really pleased with how these have come out, and no just have 40 marines (2 Tactical squads, a final Assault Squad and 2 5-man Devastator squads) left to go and all the Marines for the entire company and its support are done. I then need to make a final decision if I am going to do the drop pods or not.

Dystopian War Crosses

2011-07-25T17:16:00.002+01:00

I have uploaded the PDF I printed out to make the decals for my Prussians. Please fell free to use on your own vessels. To get the white border I printed it on white laser jet paper (actually, I printed it on paper and had a local copy store, photo copy it onto the laser printer) and trimmed the decals very carefully to shape and then applied them.

Hope you find these as useful as I did.

Prussian Cross Decals PDF

Club Night 20th July

2011-07-25T12:25:00.015+01:00

At the second attempt Luke and I managed to get the penultimate campaign game played. All that is left now is a grand finale as the Axis forces make their final grand assault on Tobruk. Out first attempt was aborted due to the need to look after children at the last minute, but meant Luke and I still got a board game in. In this case it was Axis and Allies D-Day, and everything went the Allies way and as the Axis I barely manage to make a fight of it until the last turn, but was still fun.
Still, a week later we managed to launch Ariete against a mixed Indian and armoured force in a hold the line scenario. The massed Italian armour advanced in a cloud of dust, with the AB-41 recon unit advancing out ahead towards the nearest objective, held by allied infantry.
I assaulted this light armour straight into the Indian defences and drove them back, pushing them off the objective.
A second assault by a supporting tank platoon took over from where the armoured cars had been destroyed by the Bofors guns and almost wiped out the defending platoon, dominating, but not taking the objective.
The Allies then sprung their ambushes, with the hidden 2 pounders firing into the flanks of the armour, with the MGs shooting up the supporting motorcilisti troops (we have a house rule for the desert that a foxhole can count as concealing terrain for the purposes of ambush, if what is in it receives concealment). In response I hurled all my armour into the area around the objective.
Unfortunately I chose to join a platoon that was just below half strength with my company commander, and despite both units being fearless, failed my motivation check, and the re-roll from the C-in-C. I now needed to push the enemy off the objective to claim victory before I had to take a company morale check. But Luke continued to deny me, by just getting his reserve Stuarts in a position to deny my victory time and time again (1 turn it was only by managing to re-crew an abandoned tank).
Despite how close I got, my troops were all bunched up and under continued artillery fire and anti-tank gun fire, and finally casualties mounted before I could drive the enemy back, and my company broke. To add insult to injury post game I had a battalion destroyed and another damaged in the campaign.

Club Night 22nd July

2011-07-25T12:25:00.014+01:00

Steve K and I got out my Teutons and Polish-Lithuanian alliance for another game, this time with Impetus. Steve took a small, but deadly force of Teutons, while I took a larger, but individually weaker force for the alliance.

Set up was fairly simple as there was little room for subtlety between two forces primarily made up of knights with a smattering of light cavalry. I had the Lithuanians on my right, with the main Polish command in the centre and another on the left. The Teutons only had two commands. A large knight command containing the Brother knights and Brother Sergeant, deployed opposite the Poles and a command primarily consisting of Livonian and Prussian light horse against the Lithuanians.

All the command thundered forward, and impacted after a small exchange of bow and javelin from the lighter cavalry. The slightly heavier Teuton left began to drive back my Lithuanians and looked as if they were going to turn my flank, with one unit of cavalry breaking through and looting my camp.

In the centre and left it was fairly balanced as both sides pushed and shoved but failed to achieve a breakthrough or decisive combat, until I finally managed to bring a second unit against the enemy commander and his brother knight and cut him down, breaking his command and the enemy army. Unfortunately with the casualties I had taken and the sacking of my baggage my army was also demoralised and both armies quit the field with neither able to claim victory.

Above: The Polish centre attacks, Below: the Lithuanian flank is driven back

General musings

2011-07-12T21:27:00.004+01:00

I seem to have been a bit slack in posting the last month and a half. Some of this is because I haven't been gaming as regularly, and wont be for a couple of weeks. However I have finally got back into my painting and am working to complete enough of my Blood Angels for the first 400k league game at the beginning of August.

Other gaming coming up will be completing my Malifaux stuff before I end up ordering more stuff over Gencon as we are able to order the limited edition models from the web-store, which is a nice touch from the guys at Wyrd. I also have the latest Dystopian releases for my Prussians and the Helldorado rulebook on order so once these are released I will have some nice new releases turning up, and hopefully inspiring me.

Towards the end of this month I will try to get back in the swing of updating every week after Friday club night. Thanks for hanging in and still reading!We are not far off the 200th post now!

Club Meet 9th July

2011-07-12T20:43:00.004+01:00

I had arranged a game on Friday with Chris D, but he had to work, so we rescheduled for Saturday. He took an my Teutons and I took a Polish-Lithuanian alliance using Vis Bellica and the first outing for my figures from last years show game since they have been on used on the game.

It was an exciting game, with most of it decided by a huge fight between the bulk of the Polish knights and the Teutonic brothers, as both sides drove parts of the other back and ground each other down. Once the flanks had been turned by the Polish alliance the Teuton centre begun to become enveloped and gradually the elite Teutons were destroyed and the Poles took victory.

Above: The opposing battle lines, Below: Teuton brothers

Above: Battle lines close, Below: The battle in the centre Above: The confused melee on the left as the Poles destroy the enemy infantry

Blood Angels XI

2011-07-12T20:15:00.015+01:00

I have been able to make some serious painting progress and get the latest batch done with Army painter.

Above: Scout Squad, Below: Chaplain conversion based on Dante's Body

Above and Below: More images of the chaplain

Above and Below: Terminator Librarian conversion

Above: Another image of the Librarian, Below: My converted Astorath the Grim high chaplain

Above and Below: More images of Astorath

Above: Librarian after army painter, Below: Astorath after army painter

Club Sunday 3rd July

2011-07-12T20:15:00.014+01:00

On Sunday we played the first turns of the final campaign turn. First Steve H attacked Simon and was narrowly repelled, while Steve H launched a vital attack on Bardia, which he had to take if he wanted to have any hope of avoiding a an Allied defeat and reliving Tobruk, so I entrusted the defence to Rick who valiantly held, despite the impenetrable might of the Infantry tanks in the attack. The final games was Steve K again trying to break out of Tobruk against Scott. Again my subordinates excelled themselves and defeated the British attack.

Above: The outskirts of Bardia, Below: British defences prepare to meet the DAK

Above: The British attack, Below: and are destroyed by massed MG fire

Above: Again Italian light tanks sweep around the British flank, Below: DAK Panzers drive into British defences

Above: The British attempt to breakout of Tobruk, Below: Ricks new (and beautiful) artillery OP team!

Blood Angels VIII

2011-07-02T18:08:00.004+01:00

I have continued to make progress with my Blood Angels. The Sanguinary Priests are done ( a step by step guide for these will be up soon), Vanguard Veterans are complete, my scout squad is done and 3rd assault squad.

My plan now is to paint my characters (Astorath, Chaplain and Librarian) so I have my army for the club league finished but for transfers and basing. After that there is just another assault squad, couple of tactical and devastator squads, my terminators and the dreadnoughts and the army is done unless I decide to go back and actually finish my drop pods, but probably not for a while.

Club Night 1st July

2011-07-02T09:42:00.004+01:00

Luke, Steve and I dusted off my 6mm Epic and played a game of Futurewar commander. Steve and Luke took the Imperial Guard and I took my Eldar. Initially it went all in the Eldar favour as Luke failed repeated command rolls and the Eldar jet bikes swept forward and drove back the guard. On the other flank the heavy tank and the Titan pinned down the Imperial armour and prevented it advancing.

It begun to swing when the enemy infantry were pushed back into the city ruins, and the enemy artillery came in to play, while on the other side the Imperial heavy tanks finally bought down the Titan.

It came down to a close finally with the Eldar jet bikes trying to get the guard infantry out of the ruins and the armour swinging forward on the other flank as the Eldar heavy tank was destroyed leaving the flank with no armour support.

The Eldar reached their breakpoint first, but held on, but the guard reached there and their battle group broke gifting the Xenos a narrow victory.

Club Night 24th June

2011-06-28T20:24:00.004+01:00

Steve and I played another couple of games of the Crusader campaign. Our first game was quite a one sided game, with the British defending in a breakthrough scenario, but as they were an armoured force they had very little on the table and the Axis forces took full advantage of this.
My armoured cars rushed across the table to sit on the objective leaving an impressive trail of dust.Meanwhile the mass of Italian armour descended on the scattered British infantry and began to drive them back from their positions.Until they found themselves surrounded and were cut down by the tanks and another Axis victory was recorded driving the British forces North into another pocket.Our second game was far closer as played another cauldron battle, following our now familiar process of grinding each other down and trying to avoid defeat until the enemy broke, which they duly did, resulting in another pocket of allied troops destroyed or captured.

London Toy Soldier Show June 2011

2011-06-28T20:14:00.008+01:00

I headed up to the King and Country Toy soldier show. We played a fun quick little game set in the Sudan with the lovely new Britains figures, where I had the pleasure(!) of cutting down Mikes characters, I also got a chance to snap some picture of the beautiful (and pricey) figures on offer.

Above: The Sudanese palace, Below: The Mahdist forces

Above: The British Zariba, Below: Figarati beach landing

Above: DAK on the TM Terrain stand, Below: Jon Jenkins Sudanese

Above and Below: British and Americas AWI by King and Country

Above: King and Country Italian War memorial (a bit big for my 15mms!), Below: Britains AWI

Above and Below: King and Country M13/40 variants

Club Night 22nd June

2011-06-28T19:12:00.002+01:00

Chris and I headed up the club to try out Malifaux with his Order of the Chimera under Marcus against my Lady J crew. It was very slow going as we learnt the rules, but brilliant fun, and as a bonus I managed to win both games. I'd like to say due to my brilliance, but with a game like Malifaux, you need to know your crews strengths and weaknesses and Marcus is a bit more subtly and will take more learning than Lady J's simple charge in and hit everything approach!

A longer write up of future games will be posted when I take some pictures and don't leave it so long to write up the games!

Club Sunday 5th June

2011-06-06T20:31:00.008+01:00

Steve K and I headed up the club on Sunday to play some more games in the Crusader campaign. The first game saw my Bersaglieri from Trieste against a force of British armour with RHA support in a cauldron battle. The initial British deployment looked very sparse, but I know the 25 pounders were hidden out there somewhere.
The supporting armour from the DAK swept forward into a battery of 2 pounder portees. However there heavier guns and the massed fire-power I bought to bare on the enemy artillery reduced their anti-tank ability and enabled the Panzers to drive across the British positions and claim victory.

Our second game saw a German force attack more British armour and artillery support in another cauldron battle. Again the British kept their heavy artillery hidden until the last minute
This time it was much tougher as the force were far closer matched, and there were some nervous moments as two platoons of Stuarts arrived on the flanks of the Panzers. Fortunately their shooting was inaccurate, but then so was my return fire. The next exchange of fire was much more even.
In the end the Germans gradually crept forward, pouring fire on the British positions and managed to claim a narrow victory, although in the campaign we drove the British back, we lost the Panzer regiment which was a major blow.

Club Night 3rd June

2011-06-04T19:55:00.008+01:00

The end of turn 4 was very good for the Axis forces as we managed to steal the initiative and push Ariete further south cutting off the major British thrust towards Tobruk. As we entered turn 5 the luck continued and I managed to win enough battle arrows to attack all the cut off elements, starting in the south and moving north, while an attack from 15th Panzer was launched to cut off another British attack towards Tobruk.

On Friday Steve K and I set up to play the first two attacks against the cut off British while Duncan commanded a German defence against an attack by the New Zealanders near Bardia. Duncan managed to hold off the British although it was a tough fight.

In the first game the isolated British Armoured regiment found that being out of supply reduced their strength while Ariete launch all 3 of its tank battalions against them. With the few British deployed in an arc during a cauldron battle I deployed a big arc of tanks against them. My superior numbers meant I could afford to sit and let the British come to me and destroyed them in short order by massed fire-power for a decisive victory, wiping out the British regiment in the campaign.
In the second game I attacked the second isolated British regiment with a force of Bersaglieri, supported by some heavy guns. In a breakthrough mission with an immobile force this could have proved problematic, but the allied commander made a mistake and deployed his armour forward, so I was able to deploy no less than 12 guns ranging in calibre from 47mm up to 100mm against them and destroyed all but 1, which sensibly was abandoned as the crew fled.
The rest of the battle was a little tougher as I ground forward under fire and tried to push the British infantry off the objective, but when their supporting armour turned up and also fell to my anti-tank guns victory was inevitable and once again the Italians were victorious, destroying another British regiment. The next game was scheduled for the following Sunday where I would attempt to wipe out a larger, but now totally isolated British force to decisively swing the campaign in the Axis favour by wiping out a large part of the allied armoured forces.

Club Game Sunday 30th May

2011-06-01T20:00:00.005+01:00

Mike has organised both Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 leagues to run over the next 9 months. Since Chris D was off work and I was taking along weekend we decided to meet up for the inaugural game of the Warhammer league, pitting my Beastmen against Chris' Goblins.

And it was a struggle! Chris fielded a pair of giant spiders, but they actually were the least of my worries. He also had 4 units of 40 night goblin archers. And these caused me serious issues. Using volley fire they could chuck out 30 shots a turn, and if I tried to actually attack them, unleash 3 fanatics each.

And this was my downfall. My largely unarmed Beastmen suffered under unending missile fire. It may only be S3 against T4, but with the number of shots the odds were in the Gobbos favour. This was not helped by the unerring accuracy of their bolt shooters bringing down my giant, and failed charge rolls for my minotaurs exposing them to more fire so neither of my elite units even made it into combat.

Although my general on his chariot managed to cleave through a couple of units with some support the rest of my army fell. The only upside is the enemy shaman-general managed to blow himself up repeatedly and give away some valuable victory points. Hopefully the results for the rest of the league will improve!

Club Night 27th May

2011-06-01T19:55:00.005+01:00

Steve K and I headed up early to do some club maintenance. Once we were done we played a game of Dystopian wars game with Luke joining us using a scenario generator from the Spartan Games Forum.

We rolled up the caught at anchor scenario with my Prussians being caught. The FSA swept forward and then sped into range and unlashed a devastating opening salvo, destroying the majority of frigates.

Although some of my ships then managed to get under-way and a viscous fight started in the mouth of the harbour as my battleship demonstrated its awesome short range firepower by returning the favour and wiping out the enemy frigates, while the cruiser from both side suffered in a mutual exchange.

The enemy battle ship and its supporting scout airships bombarded my sky fortress from range with rockets leaving it badly damaged and aflame and as the game proceeded the situation did not improve and the Prussians were defeated.

In the evening we played a Napoleonic Naval game with Langton Miniatures Signal Close Action rules. The purpose was to try out proper squadron orders and the increased strategic movement,. With all this it was not massively exciting as there was little fire exchanged but I liked some of the rules mechanisms. The multiple dice rolls for the entire turn was nice, but I felt some of the tasks seemed overly complicated for something intended for multiple vessels, they would appear more appropriate for single ship actions. I'd like to play them again before I pass judgement now we know what we are doing properly.

Malifaux, Continuing Beginnings

2011-05-22T21:26:00.002+01:00

Just a quick post. I have sprayed and washed some of the figures and begun to make a start on painting them.

Edit: Sorry the pics are so blurry!

Terrain Painting 4

2011-05-16T22:35:00.008+01:00

I finished the lava/skull cracks. Was surprisingly time consuming, There is a lot of little skulls in there!! Just need to give it a protective varnish and it is all done.

Malifaux - The Beginning

2011-05-16T22:35:00.006+01:00

Duncan, the Dell's and I are starting off with Malifaux. It was all Duncan's idea, but it seems to be a good one so we all bought a crew (actually I have bought two, but one is currently out of stock. I have assembled and based the figures for all the guys and then will spray them all and paint my crew and Chris' Arcanists.

Dystopian Prussians - Finishing Touches

2011-05-16T22:35:00.005+01:00

I gave the Prussians their anti-shine varnish and I am really pleased with the finish. Hopefully I will get them out and use them soon.

Above: Cruisers and Frigates,
Below: battleship and Frigates

Above: Sky Fortress and Scout Ships,
Below: Bombers and Tiny Flyers

Club Night 13th May

2011-05-15T18:35:00.003+01:00

Robin came up the club and bought his Salute Terrain for us to try out a full game of Gruntz. Me and Ben took some New Israelis and Luke took the Kra'vak. Benm and I split our forces, Ben took the majority of the infantry, the APC and the large walker to move through the built up area on one side of river. I took the heavy armour, flyer with power armoured infantry and the jet-bikes on the more open side.

Luke started with most of his force on my side of the river and had to take a power generator on the opposite side and the town, so he would be moving away from me and the objectives where near to him.

I closed as quickly as possible and started engaging the aliens, destroying the skimmer droid quickly and closing my bikes to the infantry sheltering behind the walls, while the alien heavy tanks used their anti-grav mobility to rush over the other side.

I moved my flyer into the middle of the bridge and de-bused and laid down heavy fire in all directions and inflicted heavy damage and destroyed one of the tanks that had moved to engage my armour, but in return they came under heavy fire and were almost wiped out.

Ben was making good progress on the other side, especially under the devastating cover fire of the walker, while my dice rolling was poor, and Luke's was very good, so I lost my armour and my jet-bikes, but on the other side Ben had driven them back and the aliens had no choice but to withdraw from their invasion.

Terrain Painting 3

2011-05-09T22:04:00.003+01:00

I finished off the small scatter items tonight. There are a couple of burning braziers, a well, the weapons and fire from the LotR set, two signs and a skeletal signpost. I just followed the same basic colours as the main boards and think they are nice little additions to the scenery. Just have to finish the skulls on the last two boards and I am done (for now!)...

Club Night 6th March

2011-05-08T20:32:00.016+01:00

Duncan and I had a practice game for the upcoming club league. Duncan wanted some more practice of 8th edition and we both wanted to try out our armies, although the lists have been submitted already so we can't change them now.

We rolled up the battle of the pass so deployed our forces in a nice tight formation and I rushed forward. It was in this enthusiasm I made my first mistake, casting bestial surge I rushed forward, but opened up some gaps that enabled Duncan to move his fiends through and position them ready to attack the rear of my units.

I continued to charge forward, but my Minotaurs fell short, although my Gor and Ungor herds got in against the Daemonettes in what would be a prolonged combat as I desperately, and just about, held on turn after turn. The Minotaurs where charged by the Fleshhounds and the Horrors, who turned out to have the changeling leading them who is a horrible unit champion against unit like this. They promptly lost and fled only to rally in time to get wiped out by a second hound charge. My Giant had seen off one fiend and was now in combat with the hounds and had started jumping up and down on them

In the centre my shaman was desperately trying to avoid the other fiend, while on my left I had chased off the furies with one chariot and then attacked the other horror unit with all three and the Beastlord. They then turned and one engaged the fiend and the other two attacked and destroyed the bloodletters.

The giant had felled a number of the flesh hounds but this lack of armour bought him down. As my Beastlord in his chariot charged and despatched the enemy Battle Standard bearer on his disc he overran into the Daemonettes. And here he met his end, using the shadow spell mindrazor, Duncan made their strength equal to their leadership so they were striking at S8 and I was quickly chopped into bits ending the game.

It was a good game and Duncan's army is really tough. I made some mistakes, such as putting my general off to one side and not using my infantry blocks to support my chariots properly. I will need to learn from these error before the league roper starts.

Terrain Painting 2

2011-05-08T20:32:00.014+01:00

I continued on with the terrain painting to try and get it finished this weekend, which I have almost achieved. I added some bright yellow over the orange between the skulls and then washed it with Baal Red to tie it together and give a nice glow. I then painted the skulls here, and elsewhere on the board Scorched Brown.
The trees were drybrushed Chardonite Granite.
And then brushed over that with Khemri brown.
The ruins where drybrushed bleached bone and then the edges highlighted with white
All the bones where overpainted with Dheneb Stone.
All the rest of the bones except in the glowing cracks where painted bleached bone, washed with Devlan Mud and highlighted with white, completing all the other boards
The trees were given a final highlight of white and the rope wrapped around some of them painted Khemri Brown, washed with Devaln Mud and highlighted with white to complete the woods.All that is left now is to finished the skulls in the glowing lava areas, and finish some scatter bits, then varnish all of it with some hard wearing, probably brush on varnish to protect it.

Dystopian Prussians - Decals

2011-05-08T20:32:00.008+01:00

I have finally prepared my decals for my Prussians. I drew them up in AutoCAD as I use this professionally, so although it may not be designed for graphics I know I could draw them accurately and size them precisely. I then printed these out at best quality and had them copied onto white laser decal paper. I chose white as I needed the trim to the crosses and though it would be easier to cut them accurate than have to paint on the trim. I used laser paper since I managed to order the wrong stuff! However this worked out well as copying was cheap and I didn't need to use any kind of fixative spray.
I applied them using both Micro Set and Micro Sol to get these tiny decals into place accurately. They all went on perfect with the exception of one of the crosses on the cruisers which took three attempts, but that is exactly why I printed more then I needed. Just need to anti-shine spray these and they are all finished.

Above: The decals, Below: The fleet with decals applied

Club 29th Apil

2011-05-03T20:50:00.014+01:00

As Friday was the Royal wedding and we had no interest in watching we headed up the club early for a full day gaming. We started off with some games for our Operation Crusader Campaign. While Rick defended with Ariete against Steve D's British I was to fight another defensive action with my RECAFM (an Italian reconnaissance formation) against a British attempt to break through towards a break out from Tobruk which if successful would open a route to through to Tobruk.

While Rick was successful and even managed to destroy the supporting Infantry tank formation I was ruthlessly crushed very quickly as my armoured car formation where held back in reserve, the supporting fusileri where ruthlessly cut down by the machine gunned on the British Crusader tanks.

Next we set out to prevent the British attack out Tobruk. Having fallen back to opposite this break out we had re-enforced the defenders so we had a good numerical superiority, and with engineers even managed to out out some Barbed wire.As the British moved forward under cover of darkness with supporting infantry tanks we launched our platoon of L6/40 light tanks down the exposed flank and begun to attack their machine guns and mortars. This forced them to turn their tanks around and by some miracle we survived their gun fire. This brave attack was enough to distract the advance and prevent British victory.

The Axis then had an opportunity to launch an exploitation attack which I did, launching the victorious Ariete south at a battered British armoured regiment trying to break a weak pint in the British lines and isolate the forces attacking towards Tobruk. This should have been an easy victory as we had a major numerical advantage. However the ability of the British tanks to move and fire was decisive and they destroyed many of the Italian tanks. However while they were doing this the motociclisti platoons had moved on from their flanking manoeuvre and taken the objective to claim victory.

Above: The Italian armour advance.
Below: Italian air-power attacks (unsuccessfully) the British armour

This means the Axis have now made a another major thrust south which the Allies will have to respond to as we start turn 5 and the penultimate turn.

After all these games in the evening I was joined by Mike to take on Ian and Colin with my Eldar against the ongoing raids of Colin's Dark Eldar. This was a thoroughly enjoyable and close game. With three objectives evenly spaced along the table we had a firebase of Guardians and Dire Avengers with harlequin and war walker support on one flank and a mobile force of primarily Warp Spiders and Jetbikes on the other flank.

But it stared going wrong from the start when they stole the initiative and went first avoiding out heavy fore and destroying the warwalkers, and most importantly getting their raiders a lot closer to our lines. However we started to pull it back as we used our manoeuvrability to hit and destroy units were we wanted.

As the game progressed casualties mounted on both sides. In the games clear highlight my Farseer found himself in combat with a Talos, but somehow managed not only to survive, but to destroy it! By the end of the game all that was left were our two generals, a single harlequin, the second Talos and an immobilised Raider. With no troops to take objectives and both sides virtually wiped out it was a clear draw!

Terrain Painting

2011-05-03T20:50:00.013+01:00

Over the Bank Holiday weekend I though I would finally get round to painting my GW Realm of Battle and all the matching terrain, primarily intended for my Helldorado games. I took advantage of the nice weather to spray it with some brown acrylic paint. I then drybrushed it all with Daler-Rowney System 3 Yellow Ochre which is a good match for GW bubonic brown which I use on my desert bases,
I then used Dark Flesh to shade the rocks and other areas
I then overbrushed all the rocks with a Codex Grey-Graveyard Earth mix to give a warm grey base.
This was then highlighted with Fortress Grey
A final light highlight was applied with Daler-Rowner System 3 Buff Titanium which is a close match for Bleached Bone
A red wash was applied to the skull areas and over the edge of the rocks surrounding them
The whole boards were then drybrushed with the Buff Titanium
Then a final highlight of the Buff Titanium and white
The skulls had blazing orange added between the skulls as the start of a glow to appear below them.
The arcane ruins were then drybrushed with Graveyard Earth
And then with Bubonic Brown
So I have made some good progress but need to make sure I give it some time to finish.

Blood Angels VII

2011-04-23T23:46:00.003+01:00

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

2011-04-23T23:25:00.001+01:00

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

2011-04-23T23:20:00.000+01:00

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

2011-04-23T23:08:00.008+01:00

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

2011-04-19T20:47:00.001+01:00

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

2011-04-19T19:47:00.007+01:00

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

2011-04-19T19:00:00.001+01:00

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

2011-04-12T22:09:00.005+01:00

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

2011-04-12T22:07:00.005+01:00

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

2011-04-05T19:02:00.010+01:00

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

2011-04-05T19:02:00.007+01:00

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.

London Toy Soldier Show, 26th March

2011-03-30T20:06:00.001+01:00

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

2011-03-30T19:01:00.001+01:00

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

2011-03-22T13:09:00.005Z

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

2011-03-22T13:07:00.007Z

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

2011-03-22T13:07:00.004Z

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

2011-03-10T12:18:00.005Z

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

2011-03-07T22:56:00.004Z

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

2011-03-06T20:45:00.015Z

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

2011-03-06T20:45:00.013Z

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

2011-03-06T20:45:00.004Z

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.

Tunbridge Wells, Cavalier 2011

2011-02-27T19:55:00.011Z

This Sunday saw the Cavalier wargames show at the Angel Centre in Tonbridge. It seemed quieter than it has previously, but this was not all bad as the games seemed more spaced out and there was some room to move around. This saw the last outing for Tanenburg/Grunwald and we had a fun game and again had a fair amount of interest.
The best demonstration games was won by Loughton Stroke Force with a beautiful WW2 next to us. There were even actual sewers built into the boards. It looked wonderful.
The best participation was a clever little game based on the raid on Taranto by the Royal Navy on 1940. A simple board with mono-chrome harbour to give the night feel and some nice models with clever interchangeable height markers. A really simple set of rules that were fun to play and hosted by some enthusiast and knowledgeable club members who thoroughly deserved the prize.

Club Night 25th February

2011-02-27T19:55:00.009Z

On Friday, Duncan joined me for his first game of 40k in a very long time. He has lots of Cryx for Warmachine and so used them as proxies for Daemons (with some nifty labels so we all knew what was what and there where no surprises!).

Our first game was an annihilation mission which I feared would play into the Daemons hands. Luck began to play to my advantaged though as the Bloodletters and one of the Daemon princes tied to deep strike near my men and failed so I was able to place them far from my troops. However his Plague-bearers arrived near my Dark Reapers and immediately attacked the Howling Banshees who had deployed to defend them. Despite the power weapons the great toughness made this very difficult.

This however freed up the Masque to attack the Reapers themselves while the Scorpions dispatched the surviving Daemonettes after they had been whittled down by Guardian fire. They then joined the Shining Spears in destroying their second Bloodthirster (they had destroyed one in the game against the Warlords) before moving on to help out the Banshees.

The Bloodletters and the second greater daemon had now gathered and began to attack the Guardians. Despite the withering fore they made it in and inflicted casualties and wiped them out.

As they pushed into the defensive line the game came to an end with victory for the Eldar.We had time for a second game, this time based around capturing objectives. After a vicious and bloody fight involving numerous close combats both sides were decimated and neither could claim victory, although as I had the only unit of troops on the table I claimed I could actually win while tar Daemons could not.

Painting Blood Angels

2011-02-13T18:26:00.004Z

Inspired by our big 40k game recounted here I have finally made a proper start on my Blood angles successor chapter, originally to be called Sons of Sanguinius, now possibly the Sons of Baal or the Choir of Baal. Still don't need to decide just yet. The plan with these is to paint them faily flat and quickly and use Army Painter to finish them off, so I broke out my Citadel spray gun and my compressor and my new spray booth and set to work.

Above: Some Marines base coated in GW Foundation paint Red,
Below:The honour guard in gold and Librarian in blue

Above: The first part of the force base coated,
Below:a close up of the force

Above: Honour gaurd after a thin brown wash to add some depth and guide painting,
Below: The complete force, with half having received a spray of blood red from above to rich up the colour and provide some deep shading where the foundation red shows through.

Above: Close up of the Blood Red sprayed force
Below: Death company finished except for bases and Army painter. Detail picked out and some hard edge highlighting applied to weapons and armour, but otherwise flat colour.

Above: More of the Death Company ,
Below: A Death company member (the flash has changed the colour slightly)

Above & Below: More close ups of the death company

Club Night 11th February

2011-02-13T18:24:00.002Z

Despite the mass FoWing recently I had actually arranged another game with Mike. Fortunately it was a bit different from all our recent desert forays set in late war Northern Europe. I was borrowing a mix of Mike and Ricks figures to try out a Gepanzert Panzerpioeer company and Mike wanted to try out his new 7th Armoured division force.

We generated a fairly open table and I found myself as the defender in a fighting withdrawal, so promptly sent all those half tracks I had to the rear so they didn't get killed. As engineers with some supply trucks I was able to string some minefields across in front of two of the objectives and hid the last behind a river.

The British advanced and I immediately sprung my ambush using my platoon of Stugs which devastated one of their Cromwell platoons. We continued to be able to slow down their advance with the fire of these Stugs for most of the game while our infantry stayed dug in with their heads down other than the occasional, and unsuccessful, although amusing attack launched using Goliath remote controlled vehicles. The reluctant nature of 7th armoured was really making a difference if we brewed them up, and our single mortar tubes where enough to pin down and delay their infantry support too.

However time was not on our side and we had to start removing some forces and the British bravely launched their self propelled artillery forward to give them some more manoeuvrable units, and with all the command stand making the unit stronger the few losses the vehicles took, led by the 2iC, didn't break them and they pushed pass the minefield and closed on the objectives, but too late as they were removed.

Meanwhile they had managed to cross the stream with their Cromwells and were threatening the one objective we could not remove. As their final turn arrived it looked like victory was to be the Germans, but I managed to fail a save and have a stand machine gunned out of its foxholes. Now began the first of three critical dice rolls. The first was the platoon morale which I managed to pass. Next was the start of the 8th and final German turn, first was a last man standing roll for the platoon that has taken the loss which I failed, removing the platoon. Worse this meant I had to take a company morale check, which I promptly failed, meaning we just fell short of checking victory conditions in turn 8 which would have given us victory.

A hard fought and really enjoyable game. Now I just have to find a way I can afford all those half tracks for myself!

Club Sunday 6th February

2011-02-05T17:32:00.005Z

Sunday saw a great gathering of warriors ready to fight in the North African desert as Operation Crusader continued. With so many players I decided as supreme commander I would not play, but helpfully lend advice where it was not needed and oversee my grand plan!

Rick and Steve D saw each other across the table again, this time with Rick conducting a fighting withdrawal which he did successfully, holding the British advance.

Steve K played the role of the British while Steve H and Simon attacked him. First was a breakthrough by 21st Panzer. After some initial bad luck the Germans were on the back foot and defeated, a second attack by 15th Panzer met with similar results, although got very close.

Finally on the third table Chris D and Duncan conducted two excellent defences with 90th Light, first against a South African infantry attack which they decimated, and then against an armoured attack which pushed them closer, but they still held.

With the first round of battle almost completed, no attack had yet been successful, but, I hope tellingly, the British lost a number of support units and had a number of units battered, while the Axis forces came off slightly better. All that is left is for an Italian attack on Tobruk and then the exploitation moves and turn 2 will be complete.

Club Night 4th February

2011-02-05T17:11:00.005Z

We kicked off Luke's Operation Crusader campaign with the initial moves of the British trying to turn the line south of Bardia and the Axis committing Ariete into a spoiling attack. As this was the only battle we had we decided to play three game with the same forces, but different terrain and missions and play the best of three for the campaign result.

Rick met Steve D with a meeting engagement and by pressing forward managed to win his battle. Steve H and Mike took on Steve K in the same mission, but this time the Allies seized the initiative and won the day. So with one battle left this would be the decider. And with each side having decided which table they would fight on without knowing their opponent I came up against my old adversary Luke.

However it was not to be my evening as Luke was defending with numerous 2 and 25 pounders in a Cauldron scenario and all I had was armour to throw at him, which I valiantly did, but to no avail. The British had won the first battle and held the Italian attack.

This left the supreme commanders to make their next moves. I fortunately won the initiative for the redeployment phase and was able to deploy the Germans and Trieste using the escarpments to extend my lines to prevent any further unopposed British attack. As we moved on to out combat actions I launched 21st and 15th panzer into attacks on the British right, while on their left, south of Tobruk they attacked Ariete and 90th Light divisions. These battle would be resolved on the Sunday.

Club Challenge, Crawley vs. Warlords

2011-01-30T19:14:00.004Z

We have a couple of club members that frequent both ourselves and the renowned South London Warlords and they organised a two legged 40k challenge, the first would be a home game for us followed by an away trip to London, with the home side playing the 'good' guys and the away side the 'bad' guys. I turned up with my Eldar and joined Steve H and Mike with Marines and Rick with his Guard, with Colin as an extra player to help us out against a primarily Chaos force, with some support from some traitor guardsman (some beautiful figures that almost inspired me to go back to this as one it has always been one of my on the back-burner ideas), some Orks and some Dark Eldar.

With the Imperium forces holding the centre my Eldar were split on the two flanks with Colin commanding half and me the other half. On my flank I advanced quickly through the jungle terrain towards the traitor guardsman who held the hill on the opposite side of the table. A massed flurry of Shuriken fire almost cleared the first objective which I duly advanced on to contest while my jetbikes earned themselves the respect of all by holding off and then beating some chaos hounds in close combat.
In the centre the Marine and Guard did their best to hold against an onslaught of Daemon princes with Lash of Submission, Thousand sons and plenty of Khorne berserkers.
On the other flank the Eldar again advanced towards a section of the Ork horde taking advantage of what cover they could to close on the other objective despite the mass of Orky shooting. They eventually reached it, only for some Chaos Terminators to teleport in and drive them back.
On my flank I was doing well, even despatching a summoned Bloodthirster with my Shining spears, until a Dark Eldar Talos arrived and proved just too much for my Eldar, who by this time were batter and quite stretched.
In the centre the Marines were just about holding, despatching a Daemon prince and causing some chaos for the Chaos forces with our own unit of teleporting terminators, but our forces were gradually being pinned back and the final assualt almost overwhelmed us.
Victory was awarded on a point for each turn one of the seven objectives was held. With the advance of the Eldar on the flanks and having been able to choose the most advantageous table edge we had taken an early lead, but gradually the Salute team pulled level and took the lead to claim outright victory.

A great time was had by all and some new friendships formed and I eagerly await the rematch when Crawley will attempt to get their revenge.

Club Night 28th January

2011-01-30T18:03:00.002Z

Duncan agreed to run a Konigskreig SYW game set around the battle of Gros Jagersdorf, pitting his lovely looking Russians against his Dad's British masquerading as Prussians. We are still playing an earlier version of Konigskreig, that has been used in the club for longer than I have been a member, but they prove that if its not broke, don't fix it as the game was hugely enjoyable.

Duncan and I commanded the Russians advancing around a large wood towards the village. Against us Bob commanded the Prussian cavalry against our right and Rick the infantry against our left, with more infantry in reserve. The Russians attacked forward as aggressively as possible and the cavalry battle swung back and forth as the better quality of the Russians told one moment and the number of the Prussians the next.

On the other flank Rick closed on the Russians, using the Prussian ability to conduct two actions to his advantage (an action is move or shoot and most troops can only do one, enabling the Prussians to start out of musketry range and advanced and shoot before their opponent can reply). Very slowly the Russians were driven back, holding on more tenuously than expected and even driving the Prussians back at some points of the line, but eventually the end of the evening drew on and the Russians were falling back rapidly and it was decided to declare a Prussian victory.

Club Night 21st January

2011-01-30T17:11:00.002Z

Duncan and I were joined by Luke and Chris D for a slightly different FoW. I took allies for a change, using a Polish force (count as Fearless Trained, but replace British Bulldog with for your freedom and ours, and cost points as for Indians) dug in defending against a German armoured attack. using my new barbed wire and Luke's new 25 pounders to give e no less than 12 guns I thought I had a pretty good chance.

I took the right flank and Luke took the left. When the Germans set up it was clear Luke was going to take the brunt of the attack, and his problems only increased as he took some serious casualties from the initial bombardment while I escaped relatively lightly. I easily saw off the armoured car patrol that advanced on me, while Luke had more problems.

Three tank platoons advanced on him, shelling him with their 50mm and 75mm guns as he failed save after save, and even failed his fearless morale tests, despite the re-roll from for your freedom and ours. The tanks avoided the mines, and some even ran the risk a few times, crushed the wire and overran Luke's battered forward platoon as the anti-tank gunners assigned to support them fled.

However as the German panzers swept round the hill that dominate the centre of our lines they finally game in direct fire rage of our 25 pounders and things began to change as they got heavily shelled. Finally the survivors fled leaving numerous burning wrecks behind them and taking the C-in-C with them.

At this point the Germans graciously accepted defeat. Our re-enforcement where arriving, they had not taken over 50% losses, but only had a single surviving armoured car skulking way behind their own lines and two infantry platoons about to try and advance into our fresh troops and a mass of artillery across open ground and their future didn't look bright (or very long). Tobruk had held for now.

Club Night 19th Janaury

2011-01-20T18:35:00.002Z

Steve K, Luke and myself gathered down the club mid-week to have a try out of the Dystopian wars rules. Although my fleet is only half painted, Luke's isn't even started, but since no one else was about we didn't feel too embarrassed.

A simple sea scape with a few islands was all we needed. I started with my cruisers and some frigates on the right and my battleship, bombers, Zeppelin-carrier and a squadron of frigates on the left. As I steamed forward we quickly found the strength of the Britannians as their massed torpedoes devastated my frigates. On the other wing I smashed his frigates for slight loss.

My cruisers rushed up the centre towards his immensely powerful carrier. Consisting of two battleships side by side with a deck non top the amount of torpedoes this could fire was immense, but an opening salvo proved decisive as a lucky round penetrated the hull and exploded a magazine destroying the flagship in as single volley.

This was a major blow for te Britannia fleet, but they still had their battleship and were beginning to damage my cruisers. I quickly realised the secret was to close quickly and get too close for torpedo launches, so this I did, combined with a dive bomber strike and seriously damaged the battleship, but at hefty loss to my self, especially one the cruisers came up to support the enemy.

By this point it was getting very late, so we totted up victor points and found that the Britannia navy could claim a minor victory, which was probably fair, although they would have had really difficulties in attacking my Zeppelin.

The rules were really fun to play and I look forward to doing them again soon.

15mm Barbed wire III

2011-01-18T21:04:00.003Z

I have almost finished the barbed wire now. I was really please with the barbed wire I ordered. It was nearly exactly the right amount, and was thinner that what I already had that made it easier to twist and bend. I strung the wire by circling it around the posts and then fixing it with a drop of super glue. Once this was done I painted it with army painter to dull down the silver-metal sheen and to add a little shade and weathering. I now just need to touch up the bases when the wash ran and then matt it and I think they are done.

Club Night 12th January

2011-01-15T18:18:00.014Z

Steve K joined me, Luke and Duncan for a Flames of War. This time Steve and Luke took the British as two armoured companies, one of Crusaders and one of Honeys. Against this Duncan and I took the Axis again, a Bersaglieri battalion and a DAK schutzen company, defending in cauldron battle. Duncan took some great photos so I will let them and the captions tell the story of the battle, but after a close run thing the Axis forces just managed to break the British forces and scrapped a victory.

Above: Italian Deployment, Below: British right flank artillery

Above: British Bofors on the left flank, Below: Armoured cars advance.

Above: British armour closes on the enemy, Below: The first casualties

Above: The defensive lines, Below: Stuarts launch an attack

Above: The Stuarts attack the Italians, Below: But with 20mm ATR they drive them off

Above: Bersaglieri arrive to silence the British AA, Below: DAK advance in the centre.

Above: Burning tanks in front of the Italian positions, Below: A second assault by fresh Stuarts break the defences

Above: The armoured cars join the attack, Below: British finally break through

Above: And finally overrun the last positions, Below: leaving a gap in the lines to be plugged.

Above: British Crusaders arrive on mass, Below: British Infantry moves past their supporting artillery

Above: Italian ATG knock out a company commander, this would prove decisive in the end, Below: Germans counter attack advanced British infantry.

Above: DAK Panzer drive the British back, Below: The first tank on tank battle.

Above: British scout carriers sneak forward, Below: while the infantry close on the previous defencive line.

Above: The armoured cars close on the objective, Below: British armour comes under fire from German tanks and lose one in a ball of flames.

Above: Italian armour arrives and falls to 6pounder fire, Below: German Panzers push the counter attack on, breaking the British Stuart company having lost their C-in-C earlier.

Dystopian Wars Prussain Navy 4

2011-01-15T18:18:00.005Z

I have finished off my Prussian air fortress using the same techniques as the naval vessels, it now just needs army painter to complete it. The aircraft on its deck are just white for now until I decide on my colour schemes. I have painted some of the fighters in colour schemes inspired by the WW1 jastas but they seem a bit too busy so a rethink may be called for,