Blood Angels VII

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

Dystopian Prussians - Continuing Progress

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

Club Night 22nd April

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

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

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

Club Night 20th April

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crawley Model Railway Show

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

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

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

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

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

Salute Review 2011

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



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

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

Club Night 15th April

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