Dystopian Wars Prussian navy

For my Birthday and a thank-you for painting his extra Flames of War bits Luke got me a Dystopian wars Prussian fleet from Spartan game with an extra air fortress carrier. He has got some Britannian forces for himself. Apparently they are about 1/2000th scale which make the battleship about 144m long, which seems reasonable. They have a really nice look about them, steam-punk but realistic. The only really 'mad' bits is the carrier on a Zeppelin about the same size as a battleship and the bombers the size of frigates but it is supposed to be sci-fi so I guess its all OK. The casting are really crisp, although it will be interesting to see if the moulds are as sharp in a few years time.

I am going to try and keep you up to do date on my painting with some pictures so you can see how I do it. However I have failed already as got too excited and assembled them and base-coated them with white Gesso primer before I even remembered. I then got out my airbrush and my new spray booth (thanks mum and dad!) to lay down some base colours. I did everything a medium grey except for the Zeppelin body that is green. The plan is to stay quite close to the Spartan games own schema as I like the black and white dazzle patterns on them. However the aircraft are going to be more WW1 with each squadron having its own colours so I can distinguish them (and a Red Baron ace somewhere mixed in!) . The bombers I am still undecided about, I have sprayed them grey but might try and look for some pictures of Gotha bombers and go with their colour scheme. The only thing I had any problem with is the little frigates that are so light they kept taking off when I tried to spray them, even at low pressure!!

Above: The whole fleet,
Below: The battleship, with frigates in front and cruisers behind

Below: The Zeppelin flying one way and the bombers in the opposite direction

15mm Barbed wire II

I have now painted the bases for the barbed wire in the same way as I have painted all my other Flames of War Africa bases. I also coiled some wire, but it doesn't seem to go as far when you coil it as it looked on the roll so I have run out and ordered some more from Antenocitis workshop which seems to be the best value as their roll is under £3.00 and is about 9m of material so should be enough.

Dustclouds

After much experimentation I have finally made some dustclouds I am happy with. My first trials with cotton wool failed as it became too clumpy and heavy and looked wrong, so I bought some synthetic Kapok toy stuffing for a few quid and decided to try this. Again my first trials of dip and squeeze as suggested on the flames of war website (Making Dustclouds) didn't work as it stuck together, but as I tried to clean myself up I hit upon the solution. Get the paint/water mix all over my hands and then tease the Kapok into shape with my fingers gently, colouring it as I did so. This resulted in a nice random colouration and keep the fluffy appearance that I was after. I then used copydex to glue them to the bases I mad a long time ago now and will dry-brush the bottom to darken them slightly and hopefully they should look fine.

Let me know what you think.

Club Night 17th December

Despite a return of the snow I braved the weather for a couple of games of Warhammer with Duncan. Now Duncan has sold all his Warhammer armies, but having watched a few of the games Luke and I played wanted to give it a go again, which is good as Warhammer with Duncan is always fun.

He borrowed my Daemons and some of my Beastmen a proxy units to try out a fully fledged Daemon army. I took two armies with me, a knightly order based army led by Kurt Helborg and an infantry army similar to the one I had used against Mike a while back.

In the first game I used the knights and after some initial manoeuvring for position I launched my attack. Unfortunately some of my charges fell short and I found my self embroiled in combats with my flanks exposed. On the right my Pistolliers had fallen to the seekers and my small units of knights was struggling to hold off the two fiends. On my left I had fallen short of the horrors and the Bloodletters, but manage to get the unit with Kurt into the Dameonettes, but failed to wipe them out. The Bloodletters then followed Skulltaker into the flank, only to be charged in the flank themselves by another unit of knights led by Ludwig Schwarzhelm. This titanic battle continued until Kurt fell and then the rest of the Reiksguard shortly followed leaving the Daemon victorious.

The second game saw me take my infantry army in a battle of the pass. I actually found this slightly problematic as my army could not deploy successfully in the narrow defile. and it didn't get better from then on. My cannon was ineffective, the knights choose to flee from a charge by a fiend and rolled a double 1, getting eaten for their troubles and leaving my right flank dangerously exposed, although the archers on the other flank did a better job against the chaos furies. Although the flagelants held up the Dameonettes, the seekers poured round the flank and threatened to fall upon the rear of my line. On the other flank the Greatswords managed to hold the fiend and cut down the Masque.

In the centre, once again a titanic battle occurred. I had misjudged my angles and a fiend had pounced on the flank of my free company cutting them down and falling into the flank of my halberdiers. Frontally charged by the Bloodletters, I retaliated with a supporting charge from my swordsman. As Daemon and man hacked and slashed the casualties mounted and no-one know who had the upper hand until the final tally, when it was found the Empire had lost by a considerable margin, and failing their leadership fled and were cut down. All that was left was for the seekers to destroy the handgunners, and all that was left was the valiant Greatswords, surrounded ion all sides by the varied forces of chaos and with no hope but for a brave but futile last stand, we ended the game.

Above: The Empire army defends the pass ,
Below: The seekers approach the rear of the Empire army

Below: The final titanic battle (with Beastmen pretending to be Bloodletters!)

Two great fun games that reminded why I enjoy games against Duncan, Often defeats but I always learn form them and he is a very astute opponent that keeps you on your toes and always provides a challenge.

Old Photos

I recently stumbled across some nice pics on the net someone had made 'old style' using this website. I though I would give it a go with a snap from the Sunday game and chose the picture of the desert air force strafing my Italians. I think it looks quite good, especially as the flying stands have vanished in the conversion.

Club Night 10th December

I was not able to go to the club on Friday, but Duncan and Luke played a couple of Flames of War games and Duncan took some nice pictures of his recently finished German armour with Italian support loaned from Luke against British armoured with their usual mass of artillery support.

15mm Barbed Wire

When I ran the 54mm ACW at Partizan Mike built some lovely defences using 12" rules are a ready made base. I though this was a brilliant idea and would work for 15mm with 6" rules. Unfortunately these tend to be pricey (more than half the price of a double sized ruler) so had put this idea on the back burner until doing some Xmas shopping I went into a discount store and found them for just 10p each so immediately grabbed all 12 they had!

Having filled the holes in one end with a bit of filler I then drilled various patterns of holes in them and glued cocktails sticks in to them for the posts. I will then need to texture and paint the bases before adding the barbed wire itself. I have gone for a number of different styles, some straight and zig-zagged concertina wire, a lower level tangle pattern and some mounted on 3-sided pyramid frames. This give some 10 sections (just over 5 foot), so I used the last couple to make some breached versions, I will add detail when I texture the base, but will have one by cratering and one by tank tracks.

Club Sunday 5th December

Once again the weather played a part in our Sunday game. Although we made it to the club, some members couldn't so Luke's carefully planned scenario for an Operation Crusader battle using Battle-group Panzer-grenadier had to be put on hold and he came up with one on the fly instead.

Based loosely on the Gazala battles it saw a British force defending against a combined arms attack form the Italians, hoping to hold out until their armour forces arrived. The table was set up in an L-shape with the objective being the corner of the L and the Italians advancing in two forces along each length into the British lines.

Andy and I commanded the Italians and decided to concentrate in one area, although we still had to place a third of our forces on the other axis. We sent the reconnaissance squadron with an infantry company and a battery of 75s down the minor axis, and the remains of the infantry battalion, two tank companies, an engineer company and some 100mm howitzers along the major axis.

Initially we moved rapidly across the open desert. Andy, commanding the minor attack encountered a single MG section, but due to poor command and control struggled to keep the momentum forward and take advantage of this light resistance.

Meanwhile on the other axis I ran into two infantry companies with anti tank guns, one on either flank of my advance. Their opening salvos caused heavy casualties and stalled my advance, as artillery and the Desert air force joined in the attack on my armoured spearheads.

After this sustained attack the Italians began to get reorganised and combined armour and infantry forces suppressed and drove off the anti tank guns and then attacked the supporting infantry and secured their flanks to resume their advance.

The other Italian force had moved up and begun to encounter heavier resistance as it located the dug in British, but was making some headway on their left flank, but not on the right. To support them the other force was able to redirect some infantry and the engineers to descend on the rear of the British forces, led by their flamethrowers.

The British re-enforcement began to arrives in the form of a mixed battalion of Honeys and Grants. The Honeys immediately deployed and began to engage the Italian armour in a fight that would rage for the rest of the battle as neither side had a decisive advantage until near the end when the Italians managed to bring some Sevormettes into the battle.

The Grants proceeded behind the British lines to swing and take the Italian armoured advance head on. Covered by some 90mm AA guns mounted on Lancia trucks the first Grants to appear were smashed under the weight of the shot and the survivors fell back behind the front line.

Everywhere the Italians were pushing forwards and the British line was crumbling, and eventually broke. Although battered the Italians had won a famous victory against their opponents.

Also on today was a Flames of War Omaha beach landing game that looked action packed, although I don't recall the outcome.

Club Night 3rd December

Due to the sever weather we have had here (lots of snow if you didn't know) the Haywards Heath team (myself, Luke and Steve K) decided we would game here rather than try to get up to Crawley so we decided to try out the Uncharted Seas rules look had bought on Steve dining table.

Steve and I took the Bone Griffons (undead types) and Luke took the Iron Dwarfs (who are, well, dwarfs!). Lukes fleet was the typical naval dwarf force of steam driven ironclads with plenty of artillery, some in turrets. Out force was a little different. We had oared galleys which we chose to fit with trebuchets and undead Orcas which we could use to tow out vessels for a turn of speed or send into ramming and boarding (by spreading disease) enemy vessels. Another key part of the rules is a card system. The decks are fleet specific and consist of a predefined mix of cards, some common to all fleets and some specific and add a nice little change to the style of the game.

In the first game Steve and I scored a decisive victory, with some cards that enhanced our shooting we hammered the enemy battleship with long range trebuchets fire while we attacked the small frigates with the Orcas and sank them easily. We then turned our fire on the destroyers and destroyed them before laying the Orcas along side the damaged battleship and the last crew succumbing to disease from the animated carcases.

We had time to play a second game so we swapped our trebuchets out for gun decks (a craft piece of magnetising Luke and I had done) and the Dwarfs took some submarine and an airship. Disaster struck from the off. The Dwarfs went first and used there enhanced gunnery card to target one of our cruisers with the combined fire of a squadron of frigates. With a lucky roll it exploded taking its sister ship down and damaging the battleship.

As the battleship limped forward to close the range the Dwarven destroyers and frigates closed and destroyed the other undead cruisers. Although the Orcas dealt wit the submarines the battleship was damaged heavily and under the combined cannon fire of the opposing fleet was smashed to drift wood. 1 game all!

These were fun rules and it will be nice to start tweaking the fleets and trying some different scenarios and adding some terrain to manoeuvre around. Luke has also ordered their Dystopian wars, a steam punk Victoriana game with blimps and airships, presumably with a similar mechanism that should be fun.