AJ's Wargaming Blog

The Last Crusade(ers)

2012-01-31T12:54:00.003-05:00

This is the last platoon of Crusader tanks for my British North Africa WWII army. These have been lingering on the painting table too long so I decided to just finish them up to clear some space for something new. I had initially intended on using these for early war, but they're just too damned expensive in points early war, even more so after Battlefront increased the cost for all of the British armor. These will still get plenty of use mid-war where they can form the core of a light tank swarm supported by my Grants and some Australian infantry and artillery. These are first-generation Battlefront models with the more modern styled turret which I like a lot. This platoon is adorned with blue triangle platoon markings on the turrets. The platoon commander had the hull MG turret left on more for identification purposes than for utility.

This will be my last post for January. I just thought I'd mention that it's been a VERY active month on the blog for me. The next most active month was 14 posts, which I've done a few times. This month I had 20 posts. That's a lot of painting, modeling and gaming! hopefully I can maintain momentum and continue to do a lot of fun stuff over the next few months. I know once the good weather returns to New Hampshire my wargaming hobby will suffer.

FOW Wrecked Tank Markers

2012-01-31T00:00:00.000-05:00

These are twenty wrecked tank markers for use with Flames of War or any other WWII game. They could also be used in other games to mark burning terrain. They're made by Sentinel Miniature Painting and come as unpainted white resin. With some black primer, a dusting of gray spray paint and several passes of dry-brushing (gray, light gray, yellow, red-orange) they finished up quickly. For half of them I glued on some small steel nuts. These help the markers stick to my tanks that are equipped with magnets to hold the turrets on. Photos below show this and also the markers on a couple of tanks.

These are a good quality product at a reasonable price. The only small complaint I have with them is I wish they was some variation between each. Having them all be essentially the same shame is slightly 'strange' for smoke clouds.

What Platoon Is THAT Tank From?

2012-01-30T12:45:00.000-05:00

In my game last Saturday against Don casualties and time pressures (in the battle) required that I intermix my two platoons of captured Italian tanks and my 2iC tank. Since each platoon had suffered casualties the whole fur ball became a confusing mess. The captured Italian tanks historically didn't have unit markings on them other than whatever Italian markings were not covered up by the Aussies. My figures originally also had no unit markings which only added to the confusion of the situation.

After the game Don and Gordon had some recommendations on how I could identify my 2iC tank by adding a left-over Italian aerial recognition symbol (an off-white circle) to the top of the hull. I've done this as you can see in the right most tank in the photo above. Originally I had thought about adding some additional kangaroos on one of my platoon, but much to my dismay I had used up all of the decals I had. Reasoning that the small Italian unit markings could have been left on by the Australians I added some to one of my two combat platoons. This should help me differentiate each platoon and the 2iC. Thanks go to Don and Gordon for the good advice.

Enter the Carthaginians

2012-01-29T12:00:00.000-05:00

I've decided to start working on a Carthaginian army to add to my Punic Wars collection of Romans and Seleucids. These two units are the first two battle groups for the new army. I purchased both from Dynasty Group Miniatures on Ebay. The spear-armed unit on the left is a group of Celtibierian medium infantry. The unit on the right is a group of Spanish Scutari that is also based as medium infantry.

Dynasty Group did a decent job painting these figures. I'd rate them a solid 6.5 on the GAJO scale. They arrived with minimal damage thanks to great packaging. I had to re-attach two shields and a few spears were bent, but that's to be expected. Dynasty is slightly cheaper than Dragon Painting Service (also on Ebay) with a commensurate difference in quality. All in all I'm happy to have these added to my collection. They were a good value and an easy way to jump start this army.

Saturday Game Day at Adler Hobby

2012-01-28T23:23:00.001-05:00

Today was one of our twice-monthly game days at Adler Hobby. The second such game day normally focuses on painting, terrain building and anything else we decide to do. Gaming of course is always on the menu if people bring armies and want to play. Several of us are considering supporting an upcoming benefit tournament hosted by our friends from the Boston Trained Bands club. To help support this effort I brought a couple of DBA armies so I could teach people how to play the rules.

The tutorial game started with Gordon playing the Greeks and Russ playing the Romans, but Don took over for Gordon when some new customers came to the store that needed help. All three players picked up the rules quickly and Don and Russ played a very good game with both making good tactical DBA decisions several times. In the end Russ squeaked out a win with the Romans with a score of 4-2 assaulting and capturing the Roman camp with a unit of Triarii. There's something you don't see all the time!

Russ had to leave but Don and I still had some time before Gordon had to close up shop so we played a 1500 point Flames of War game as part of our ongoing Campaign. Don brought his Fallschirmjäger company from the Burning Empires rule book, and I opted to use my Australian Divisional Cavalry Squadron. Don's Fallschirmjäger stands are beautifully based with tall grass and meadow flowers from Army Painter. They were so nice that I took the photos below so people can enjoy them.

For our game we played this month's featured mission 'Pincers'. Since I was using a mechanized company and Don was using an infantry I was the attacker and Don was the defender. Don placed his Artillery, Mortars and a large kampfgroup of infantry and weapons, including a very deadly recoilless rifle on the table and kept a platoon of Pak38 AT guns (proxied by Pak40 models) in ambush. The photos below show the first two turns. With delayed reserves I thought a bull rush attack was the best approach. I knew Don's AT guns and recoilless rifle would take their toll. I could only hope I could press him off the objective before my army vaporized.....then the Stukas came!

This was an interesting game. My Desert Rats dice show a rat when they roll a 1. Early in the game I was saying 'RATS!' a LOT. This meant a lot of bailed and bogged down vehicles some of which refused to get back into action for multiple turns. Don's fearless veteran Germans didn't need much luck early on to whittle me down. The combination of their high skill and my Australian's trained status meant Don was scoring a lot of solid hits.

A platoon of Bren carriers was bailed by the Pak38 AT platoon and finished off by an infantry assault, then 2 of 3 Humber II armored cars perished and then two of my captured Italian tanks died with the third failing morale (another RATS! moment). Just when things looked lost Don started to have a few turns of bad dice as well. Stukas failed to score kills, and after killing a PaK38 and their officer Don's remaining fearless gun decided they'd rather go to the rear for ammo. I was able to call in some smoke with my artillery at a critical time, and then Don's reserve rolls for turns 3 and 4 came up empty. With one last assault from my remaining few tanks and a spray of MG fire from behind the cover of a thin ridge I was finally able to eliminate Don's infantry platoon that was contesting the objective.

In turn five Don did get one reserve unit, but it was too far from the objective to contest it. Don attempted to storm trooper move a gun from his artillery battery to contest but it failed it's skill check to do so. Also in that turn Don's Stukas weren't able to kill enough of my force to force me to company morale so I squeaked out a narrow victory on turn six. If any one of a half dozen rolls that SHOULD have gone Don's way had, I'd be writing about a defeat instead of a victory. Don took it all in stride like the gentleman he is. This is why I like gaming with friends. Thanks for the fun game Don.

FOW Italian Vineyards - Review and Upgrade

2012-01-27T20:04:00.001-05:00

While I was at Adler Hobby last Thursday I was able to buy one of the new Flames of War Battlefield in a Box Italian Vineyards sets. Honestly I'm planning to use these more for ancients games using the Field of Glory rules than I do with WWII Flames of War. These are the perfect size for vineyard terrain pieces in FOG. The retail cost is $25.00 which may sound like a lot for two pieces of terrain, but the bases are made of a very durable semi-hard rubber and the eight removable vine rows are made of durable hard resin. The best part is they all come painted with good detail right down to ripe grapes under the vine canopy. They come ready to drop on the table right out of the box as shown in the two photographs below. Considering all that I think they were a good purchase.

Not being able to leave well enough alone I took an additional 20 minutes or so to spruce these up a bit more. I thought the brighter of the two greens on the vines looked a bit too 'fluorescent' for my tastes and the striping of the colors a bit too distinct. A quick dry brush with some white PVA glue followed by some blended turf seems to bring the look together a bit more for my tastes and I think adds some realism. The Brown bases seemed a bit too well manicured so again some sporadic patches of PVA glue followed by my favorite static grass blend - Scenic Express spring meadow blend were added. The end results of my 20 minutes of work are shown below - ready to be seen on the tabletop in my next Field of Glory ancients games!

Australia Day - EW North Africa Escalation League (6)

2012-01-27T14:22:00.002-05:00

Last night I celebrated Australia Day by going to Adler Hobby for one of my infrequent Thursday night visits to play in the early war North Africa FOW escalation league. I missed this past Saturday due to other commitments so I wanted to get in a game or two. My first game was a 1750 point game using new scenario called "Pincers" which will be in the new 3rd edition book. This scenario had my Australian infantry deploying half their force with delayed reserves against Adam's attacking German armor force.

Adam's force contains two platoons of tanks: one Panzer IVd and one Panzer IIc along with some pioneer infantry, a battery of 10.5cm leFH18 artillery and a single 88 AT gun. Very high quality, but low quantity. My Australians are quite the opposite, I had ten (10) platoons all fairly inexpensive, with the exception of my battery of OQF 18/25 artillery. To reach 1750 points I to have to use everything I have painted up for the Aussies, including much to Adam's dismay three platoons of AT guns and two platoons of light Italian tanks (which never got to the battle).

I was afraid of being overrun by Adam's tanks early so I deployed both of my infantry platoons on the table to act as a 'speed bump' delaying force while I waited for reserves. Behind them I put my artillery in a direct-fire position supporting the infantry, one platoon of captured Italian 47/32 AT guns on one flank and I held a platoon of 2 pounder AT guns in ambush. They were placed interspersed with the artillery on my first turn.

This was a tough draw for Adam as far as match ups go. My AT assets are a nightmare for a small tank force and I had early success with my 2 pounders and 18/25 artillery firing over open sights against Adam's Panzer IVd platoon eliminating it, and my Italian 47/32 AT platoon scored just enough bails and kills on the Panzer IIc platoon to cause it to take a platoon morale check which it failed. I also was VERY lucky with all my saves from Adam's artillery and 88 hits in his first turn making 5 gun saves in a row - all sixes, three in one turn shown above.

Adam took everything in stride and was an excellent sport about it and chose to continue attacking with his infantry. He knew it was a lost cause, but took the sportsmanly route to finish the game aggressively rather than concede the game early. I have to compliment him on this I can't say I would have had the fortitude not to toss in the towel. On my third turn I received one reserve unit and chose my scout patrol of six Bren carriers. With Adam's tanks all but eliminated the bristling Bren and Boys guns on the carriers made short work of the remaining infantry. For Australia day my troops were able to celebrate a victory.

Our first game finished so quickly that we finished before Gordon and Chris could finish setting up their game. Instead of sitting around Adam offered me a re-match with his Free French against my German Stutzpunkt. For this game we had to play at 1250 points as that's all the Germans I currently have painted up. We rolled in Gordon's new random scenario book and drew the "Counterattack" scenario that neither Adam or I had played before which had me defending one corner while Adam attacked it or another objective in the corner opposite his deployment. I was fortunate in that I only had one platoon with vehicles (four Panzer IIc tanks) so I was able to start with my entire small force on the table. Adam's giant free French force also started on the table and Adam wisely used his national ability to move the unguarded objective even closer to his deployment zone.

With recon moves and first move Adam was contesting that objective on turn one. We miss-read the objective and didn't realize that the objectives don't go 'live' until turn six (6) so I double timed my Panzer IIs to contest bogging two on the railroad tracks and another in the rough terrain near the objective. A single brave Panzer IIc stood between me and defeat! Adam was able to soften up my Stutzpunkt by surgically destroying my gun bunkers with his artillery direct fire and silence the rest of my static forces with smoke and pins from his copious mortar fire. My Stukas were ineffective all game so it was up to my Panzer IIs and a tiny infantry gun platoon to secure the remote objective. My MG gun pits seemed to be holding the line on my objective.

Honestly I thought this game was all but over on turn one. After 6 more turns Adam's Hotchkis tanks and my Panzer IIs were still at a standstill although I was able to dispatch his Australian Bren carriers and most of one of his AT platoons. In the end we had to call the game at 1am as a draw. This was a MUCH more exciting and fun game than the first one. I only wish we could have played it first so we could have finished it.

Flames of War 3rd Edition

2012-01-26T09:18:00.000-05:00

FOW 3rd edition teaser is up on Youtube:

See you in the funny papers

2012-01-25T08:10:00.000-05:00

Last week the local newspaper stopped by Adler Hobby to do a local interest article about the store and the wargaming hobby in general. I was there along with several of the 'Thursday Night Irregulars' for one of our FOW league games. The photographer popped the action photo of me shown to the left as well as some other nice photos. If you'd like to read the whole article or view the photos the photographer took you can see them on their website here.

BP Freeman's Farm & Northern Conspiracy Game Night

2012-01-22T20:07:00.001-05:00

Last Friday night I ran my Black Powder Freeman's Farm game at our club's game night. We're still learning the rules so we made a couple mistakes but still ended up with a fun game. This was a very closely fought game for the entire night. At the end the British force saw the German flanking force exhausted while the Americans had Poore's brigade becoming very close to exhaustion due to suffering several lost units. All but a draw I called this one a narrow British victory as I felt that they had a slightly better position. It wouldn't have been inconceivable that a few more turns could have easily seen the tide turn towards the American's cause. Photos here are in roughly chronological order.

We had two other great games at game night. New pledge member Gordon ran his modified Axis & Allies War At Sea game with a Mediterranean 1940 hypothetical scenario and Earl ran his popular Brother Against Brother ACW game with it's beautiful terrain. Reports from both games were that they were very enjoyable. I was too busy running my game to spend a lot of time watching either game but took the snapshots below of them in progress.

Also Andre was present and received the Sportsman of the Year trophy that the club elected him to receive at our November business meeting. Congratulations Andre!

Black Powder - Freeman's Farm Game

2012-01-13T23:25:00.000-05:00

Tonight we played the Freeman's Farm Black Powder game that I set up earlier in the week. I had initially intended on playing the game verbatim from the book, but with extra players expected I expanded the scenario with some creative alternative history. I put Von Breymann's brigade for the British on a faster timetable for their arrival and for the Americans I engaged Patterson's brigade in the battle when historically they remained on Bemis heights. This gave me what I thought would be a good 6-person game. My friends George and Byron played the British While Chris, Charlie and Mike played the Americans. We had one last minute cancellation so Byron and George let me as GM push Von Breymann's flanking force. By the time they arrived the game was mostly running smoothly so I was able to have a little fun pushing troops and answering only the occasional question about rules, etc.

The British had GREAT command rolls in their first few turns and entered the game at almost a dead run crossing the stream and setting up the beginning of some good battle lines. About two-thirds of the way through deploying their lines they had some commanders start to falter and issue only partial commands, but nothing that seriously hampered them.

The Americans were not as fortunate and trickled on at a much more leisurely pace. In the photo above you can see the British mostly deployed while Poor's brigade in the east (top of the photo) are still marching on and Learned's brigade in the west (bottom of the photo) are also bottled up a bit on the road by the British Indians and Canadian loyalists.

Things stabilized and entered into a general engagement after that. Dearborn's regiment held up the British advance in the Farmhouse while Poor's brigade with good support started to soften up Hamilton's (British) brigade. In the west Fraser's (British) brigade was fairing better against Learned's brigade with Patterson's brigade rushing into the middle of the battlefield to plug a gap caused by Poor's brigade's slow deployment. (See below two photos)

As the battle rolled on Learned's brigade finally collapsed in the west but Patterson was able to fill the void left in the American lines due to some of the mounting casualties on some of Fraser's units. Just after the left photo below was taken Poor's brigade finished off Hamilton's brigade collapsing it. With only one unit lost Poor turned it's attention to the German attack on the eastern flank. (see photo below right.

We ended up calling the game around 11:45. We probably had 3-4 more turns to come to a clear conclusion, but as GM if I were to call it I'd say the British had a slight advantage. Although Hamilton's command was collapsed, his two-gun battery could still continue to punish the Americans and Fraser and Von Breymann's brigades were still quite strong. Poor's brigade was fairly strong as was Patterson's but the American commands were of lower quality and Patterson's command was fairly small.

This was a very fun game to run and everyone played well and picked up the Black Powder rules fairly quickly. Some liked the rules a lot more than they expected to which was a fun surprise. With the outcome so close to a draw the big winner was everyone for having fun!

EW North Africa Escalation League (5)

2012-01-12T23:50:00.000-05:00

Tonight I popped into Adler hobby for one of my rare Thursday night games. I was able to play a game with my German Stützpunkt company. Chris was the attacker with his Polish infantry company complete with a platoon of two Matilda tanks which I feared very much. I deployed a maximum amount of mines and barbed wire. Chris paid dearly to gap the minefields losing several infantry stands, but once he successfully cleared a section his Matilda tanks made short work of the barbed wire (see below left).

My only answers for the queens of the desert were my Stuka dive bombers and a single 88 gun pit. Chris chose to make a night attack which is his option when attacking with commonwealth infantry (Chris' Poles use the Australian fearless trained list with some of his own self-imposed restrictions for historical accuracy). After dawn broke I got one pass with my Stukas but I only was able to bail one Matilda which re-mounted the next turn easily. My 81mm mortar platoon did cause Chris' infantry quite a bit of trouble eventually causing one platoon to make a break check, which it failed even though it was fearless. Chris re-rolled using his CinC but failed a second time removing the platoon and officer. I can sympathize with Chris, this is the type of luck usually reserved for ME! Unfortunately Chris also had a very bad streak of luck when his Matildas pressed forward into a wooded hill in order to avoid my 88 gun pit - BOTH tanks bogged down (see below right). I was able to swoop in with my infantry platoon and jump the helpless tank crews eliminating the Matilda platoon. At the same time my Panzer IIc platoon was able to shoot up Chris' second infantry platoon with MG fire and close with an assault which, thanks to the earlier damage caused by my mortars, was enough to force it to check morale which it also failed even though it was fearless.

Being below half company strength Chris auto-failed his company morale check due to his CinC leaving the table earlier in the game. I have to say Chris played very well and his dice robbed him of a better performance. Without several streaks of bad luck I think he would have rolled over my small defensive force easily with his fearless infantry and Matilda tanks. Next time we play we'll be at a higher point total. I'll need to bring TWO 88 gun pits to deal with the Matildas. One is too easy to avoid, which Chris demonstrated to me with great skill tonight.

Black Powder Game - Freeman's Farm Set Up

2012-01-11T20:49:00.002-05:00

I'm hosting my first Black Powder game on Friday. Since it's my first time I'm using the Freeman's Farm scenario from the rule book with very few changes. I'm going to be out gaming tomorrow night so I had to set everything up tonight in preparation for the game. Below are a few photos of the tabletop and a couple of photos of some table tent reference cards I made to help us keep track of what the different status markers mean.

Commonwealth 2 Pounder AT Platoon

2012-01-11T06:30:00.000-05:00

This is a platoon of 2 pounder AT guns for my Australian early war North Africa infantry company. They may also be pressed into service mid war, although there they are of limited value. During the early war these will knock out anything the Axis can throw at the Australians. These can also be used as dismounted guns for my portee 2 pounder AT platoon that I painted up a few months ago. I still have a few odds and ends that I could paint up for my Australian infantry company but this platoon finishes everything I NEED to field a full company up to 1750 points.

Small WWII Pillboxes

2012-01-10T12:30:00.002-05:00

These are two WWII pillboxes. They were resin pieces not made for Flames of War. With a little sanding and carving I was able to affix them onto FOW medium bases which will allow me to use them as MG bunkers or pillboxes for FOW and still use them for other rule sets as well.

Being pre-cast resin these painted up quickly once I modified them to fit on the medium sized FOW bases. The most likely use for these I will have will be with my late war Finnish infantry.

WOTR Billmen

2012-01-09T19:00:00.000-05:00

This is a unit of eight (8) stands of War of the Roses (WOTR) or 100 Years War English billmen. I picked these up off of Ebay from "The Horse & Musket Miniatures" for what I thought was a reasonable price by using Ebay's "Make an offer" feature.

I have a significant WOTR collection that was painted, and mostly used, before I started this blog. With my recent renewed interest in the Field of Glory rule set I'm hoping I can get some additional use out of my large WOTR army. All I have to do is build it up to be large enough to field two armies with it, or convince one ore more club mates to play WOTR. Adding these billmen is part of the effort to double the army size.

Black Powder Napoleonics (2) & FOW League Prizes

2012-01-08T21:41:00.000-05:00

Today I got to play another great Black Powder game at Adler hobby hosted by the guys from the Boston Trained Bands. The scenario was from the 1813 Leipzig campaign and featured a Prussian attack on Wartemburg which was defended by Wartemburg infantry and cavalry supported by a brigade of French Infantry which I was able to command. The photo above shows an early turn with the Prussians rushing over a pontoon bridge advancing on a remote village outside Wartemburg. In the foreground you can see the outskirts of Westphalia proper with my French brigade taking up positions on a dike overlooking a stream which is between my troops and the Prussian advance.

Below left is the village being assaulted by the Prussians who had great success early knocking out half of the defending Wartemburgers. The right photo shows the other brigade of Prussians advancing towards the stream and dike with one brave battalion of French advancing out to meet their march columns to hopefully force them to deploy. The tactic had limited success early, but eventually with help from a second French battalion was able to stop the advance on this wing.

Left photo is a close up of the advancing Prussian column - beautifully painted figures! Right photo below is the last advance units of the Prussian force being met by our reserve cavalry and one of my infantry units who were able to rally to the center after repulsing the Prussians on the left flank. This was a great game which could easily have gone either way. The more Black Powder I play the more I think that it lends itself to larger games where the additional units can help average out the large swings in both combat and break checks (morale). With only a few units a couple bad rolls can sink you, but with more units things tend to even themselves out a bit more.

Below is a photograph of me receiving TWO prizes from December's Flames of War league at Adler Hobby. I was lucky enough to win the monthly random draw and also won the sportsman award (thanks much to those who nominated me). Each of these awards gives a blister as a prize (or equivalent credit towards larger boxed sets). I chose as my prize two Wirbelwind AA tanks to add to my late-war German force which I'll be fielding in Adler's upcoming late war league starting sometime in late February or early March. Battlefront generously sponsors the leagues at Adler with great prize support, which is icing on the cake when you add to it that you get a lot of GREAT gaming while you play in the leagues.

Field of Glory Round Robin Games (2)

2012-01-07T01:46:00.000-05:00

Tonight the "Field of Glory Four" got together for another evening of round robin games using our 'Rise of Rome' armies. Tonight's match ups were my Mid-Republican Romans vs Phil's Seleucids (using my Seleucid army) and Charlies Late Republican Romans vs Mike's Carthaginians. In the photos below Phil and my games will be the left photos and Mike and Charlie's games with be the right photos.

Setup - Although I tried to clog the middle of the table with as much terrain as possible, Phil was able to move most of it harmlessly to the sides with the exception of one steep hill. In Charlie and Mike's game their terrain left for a good open center section.

The approaches - Phil and I pressed our battle lines forward with each of us pressing harder on our right flank. My Numidian cavalry engaged early to try to secure some fields with closed borders. On Charlie and Mike's table each of them were happy to press forward on the same flank with masses of cavalry. Charlie aggressively pushed the center with his Numidian skirmish infantry.

Mid-game - Roman vs Seleucid game ended up being a grind between Phil's imitation legions and my real legions. The only main difference was mine had some Triarii providing rear support. On Charlie and Mike's table the cavalry battle raged with both sides having some successes and Mike engaging his elephants with Charlie's cavalry. Charlie's skirmish infantry got broken, but did recover them and re-engaged them late in the game.

End game - I was able to break both of Phil's imitation legions and a cataphract cavalry unit. I lost a legion of my own and my Numidian cavalry. On my right I was able to press the flank and in the center the void caused by the legions allowed me to turn Phil's pike block. We called the game at 6-4 in points. Close game for sure. On Mike and Charlie's table Charlie had good success in the cavalry scrum pulling out to a 12-4 lead when we called it.

This was a great night of gaming. We hope to schedule another one in February where we'll go through our final matches in round one: Mike's Carthaginians vs My Romans and Charlie's Romans vs Phil's Seleucids.

'Average' 1-10 Rolls on 2 D6

2012-01-05T18:03:00.002-05:00

I asked a mathematician friend of mine to help us come up with a way to roll the numbers 1-10 on two 6-sided dice using custom numbers on each face of the two dice. We wanted the numbers to have a 'normal' distribution similar to the 2-12 rolls a pair of normal dice have only with outcomes from 1-10. My friend found two solutions for making a pair of 6-sided dice to have outcomes from 1-10 formed in a normal distribution.

Each 'Case' has 2 dice, A and B with sides as indicated:

          DICE                          Outcome Distribution
======================== =====================================
Case 1: A: 0 1 2 3 4 5    Number: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
        B: 1 2 3 3 4 5      Freq: 1 2 4 5 6 6 5 4 2 1

Case 2: A: 0 2 3 3 4 6    Number: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
        B: 1 2 2 3 3 4      Freq: 1 2 3 5 7 7 5 3 2 1

My mathematician friends says that Case 1 fits true statistical 'normal' distribution for all positions within 3.76 percent. Case 2 fits as well at the ends (same dist for 1, 2, 9 & 10) but is 'skewed' towards the center values too much (about 15% off of 'normal' distribution). Both are useable for wargaming. Case 2 would be more 'average' in wargaming terms.

Die 1A's opposite faces would add up to 5, Die 1B 6, Die 2A 6 and Die 2B 5. As for the actual arrangement of the faces, that is left as an excersize for the reader. As long as the opposite sizes add up the the correct numbers statistical distribution should be 'fair'. FYI normal dice add up to 7 on each pair of opposite faces.

I'm posting this information for my friends who play Fire & Fury (both classic and regimental versions) as a possible house modification. FYI I tried this and locals universally hated it and much preferred the original 10-sided 'wild' dice.

2012 Goals

2012-01-01T03:16:00.002-05:00

Here were my goals for 2011 and how I did on each:

Goal One - Finish My Early War FOW German Pioneer Company - Done!
Although I still have a couple platoons of unpainted German figures I could add to the force, I've more than completed the Pioneers and added a bunch of Czech Panzer 35t tanks and armored cars that allow me to also field this as a Czech Panzer company.

Goal Two - Finish Re-Basing my 15mm ACW Armies - Done!

Goal Three - Finish my Roman and Seleucid FOG Armies - Done!
I have a couple of unpainted Roman battle groups, but these are only to make my already completed army even larger for historical games. My recent completion of two battle groups of Seleucid cataphracts have also finished up my Seleucid army.

Goal Four - Convention Participation - Done!
Although I didn't end up going to Historicon this year, I did attend both Huzzah! and Carnage 14 including running games at both and helping the Carnage staff organize their Centuries of Conflict historical theme games.

Reward For Making My Goals - Done!
While I ended up shelving my 15mm FOW British Infantry Company and Matilda Tank Company I did replace this with my mid and early war British and Australian FOW WWII forces and started in on a 15mm FOW German North Africa force to face them.

Variety, the Spice of Life - Mostly Failed
I had hoped to leaven the onslaught of WWII I had planned on doing this year with a couple of 28mm AWI units. In the end I painted no AWI figures at all which I'm quite disappointed with myself about. I did however make great progress on our club's 28mm pirate project completing one and starting a second 28mm pirate ship using my laser engraver. This definitely is a huge divergence from the norm for me.

Over all I'm quite happy with achieving all four of my major goals and also being able to get a huge amount of progress completed on my early war desert FOW forces. I'm almost positive I'm not going to be able to complete 100% of my future goals with any regularity. That said, here are my goals for 2012:

Goal One - Finish My Early War FOW Desert Forces
My British and Australian forces are both more than 90% finished. I have a platoon of Crusader II tanks to finish to complete the British armor and a platoon of 2 pounder AT guns to complete the Australians. I'm not entirely sure what I need to finish to complete the German desert company, but I hope that most of what I need will come from my 'dead lead' box which currently holds a battery of 10.5cm leFH18 artillery guns, a platoon of motorcycle infantry and a battery of PaK36 AT guns.

Goal Two - Club Pirate Ship Game Project
I have to finish the CAD work on my 2nd pirate boat and hold a club 'build a boat' day at my house so other club members can get working on their boats. I need to do this as early in the year as possible to give everyone time to paint their assembled boats

Goal Three - More American Revolution
I WILL paint more 28mm AWI figures this year. I also will be running more AWI games including two I've already scheduled for January. My hope is that in addition to Volley & Bayonet games, which I love, I may also try a game of Black Powder with my AWI figures. I also plan to work on my own set of rules, which I'll post more about if I can make some decent progress on them. No promises on that for now!

Goal Four - Late War WWII FOW
After we finish our early war North Africa league at Adler we're going to be moving on to late war. I have a mostly complete Finnish engineer company which I may dabble in, but my primary goal for this league is to be able to field a German Panzerkompanie utilizing some Panzer IV and Panther A tanks I purchased painted from a friend many years ago. To do so I'll need to add some support, most likely in the form of som Panzerwerfer 42 rocket launchers, some Stug G tanks and maybe some infantry or motorcycle scouts.

Extra Credit - Re-Base my Napoleonic Austrian Army
I'm not officially listing this as a goal, since I think the above four are more than I can accomplish, but if I do get all of the above four completed, before I start anything new I have a fairly large Austrian Napoleonic army I purchased off of Ebay that I need to rebase from Napoleon's Battles basing to Volley & Bayonet. These are very nice figures, which I am assuming were painted by the Dragon Painting Service based on their basing and the style of the paint jobs on the figures. Until I rebase them I can't really use them in any games. If I don't get to this in 2012 it will definitely become a goal for 2013.

That's it! Sorry for the 'wall of text' post, but with a goals post there really aren't any photos I could add to break things up. Hopefully my next posts will be more 'fun'. My final word about all of my wargaming goals....I'll happily trade accomplishing ANY of them for a good game!

2011 Wargaming Year In Review

2011-12-31T11:51:00.000-05:00

2011 was another great year for wargaming for me. Following up after last year's great year I was able to have another fantastic year playing an amazingly large number of games (30!), hosting several fun games and attended two excellent conventions including helping the 2011 Carnage convention staff organize the Centuries of Conflict historical theme games again. I've been very fortunate to have great friends to game with, a great wife who supports my interest in the hobby and the time and means to do as much of it as I like.

My painting totals are similar to 2010, although it 'feels' like I got more done this year.

The year end tallies are:

Painted 25mm figures: 0 (much to my shame and surprise)
Painted 15mm figures: 389
Painted 15mm vehicles: 87
Terrain/Misc created: 37

Non-painting totals are:

Stands re-based: 90
Purchased painted 15mm figures: 109
Purchased painted 28mm figures: 126

My 15mm painting efforts mainly centered around 15mm Flames of War WWII all year. I started out the year finishing up my German early war Blitzkrieg in Europe force of engineers and then added some Czech Panzer 35t tanks and armored cars to allow the force to be fielded as an armored or mechanized force as well. After that I continued on to North Africa with my British/Australians for Mid and Early war including the super sexy captured Italian tanks shown above sporting Kangaroo identification markings! The few non-WWII items I did paint were mainly to add to my Field of Glory Seleucid army: two units of Cataphracts, and touching up some purchased light cavalry.

My re-basing projects were split between two projects, completing the conversion of my ACW armies to V&B and re-basing some beautiful 28mm AWI British and American figures that I was fortunate enough to purchase from Ebay (also seen left). Terrain was again mostly WWII based including fortifications and objectives for my North Africa forces.

With the laser I had a fairly creative year including making schürzen for some 15mm StuG tanks, a Brother Against Brother template for my friend Byron, some very neat heavy machine gun nests for my German North Africa force, some movement trays and a bee swarm template for my friend Gordon's Tanga WWI desert skirmish game, and some British Grenadier templates requested by some internet friends in England. Almost winning picture of the year honors was my favorite project on the laser this year, my 28mm Pirate ship. This is a project I will return to in 2012 as part of a club project. I hope to have club members come to my house to build their own copies of this and possibly one or two more that I'm working on. Should be fun.

I played in an embarrassingly large amount of games this year thanks to both my club and Adler Hobby each of which provided me a venue to play a large amount of games. Games at Adler were mostly FOW WWII but I also played two very enjoyable Black Powder games, one Napoleonic and one Seven Years War. With my friends from the Northern Conspiracy games ranged from ancients through World War II, with a surprisingly high quantity of ACW this year due to the 150th anniversaries starting up. My favorite game of the year was an epic Renaissance game in 28mm using house rules created by my uncle that featured what had to be close to 1000 beautiful 28mm figures per side and spread across 3 large tables.

I hope you all had a great 2011. I look forward to another good wargaming year in 2012. My next post will be a review of how I did accomplishing last year's goals and setting forth some goals for 2012.

Happy New Years All!
AJ

Australian Entrenched Mortars

2011-12-31T01:34:00.000-05:00

These will be the last figures I complete during 2011. They're two Australian mortars in gun pits for my Australian North Africa force should I ever wish to field them as a Tobruk fortified company in Flames of War. A Tobruk company has as part of it's headquarters section these two mortars which can either be British 3" mortars or captured Italian mortars. While these aren't official FOW large bases, they're so close as nobody should mind much. If I was called in a tournament I can always slide a base under them as a sabot, although only about two tiny 2mm portions will stick out of the corners.

I chose to model these permanently in the gun pits for two reasons. The first is that I'll always be deploying them in the pits either in FOW games or with any other WWII rules since I already have a full six-mortar platoon painted up. The second reason is the Musket Miniatures fortified positions I used are just too damn sexy not to use them and this command was the perfect size to match the positions I had - two. Next up on the painting table is a platoon of Crusader tanks and some 2 pounder AT guns for my Aussies. Neither of those will be completed before I post my year end review and next year's goals posts. Maybe I'll be able to be succinct enough to combine them...but since I'm and engineer (and a wargamer) probably not.

P.S. Since the gun pits were so laborious to paint I'm counting this as 8 15mm figures (6 crew + 2 mortars) AND 2 terrain pieces.

December Game Night 2011

2011-12-30T00:05:00.000-05:00

Some years we're fortunate enough that a Friday falls in between Christmas and New Years in such a way that we can hold a December game night at our club. This was one of those years. Tonight's games were both good ones hosted by prospective new member candidates. To the left is Andy Niven who hosted his epic 15mm WWII Crete game with a massive amount of hand-crafted terrain. I didn't play in this but those who did gave it high marks. It certainly looked like it fairly deserved them to me.

I played in John Macone's also very nicely terrained 15mm ACW Fire & Fury game. This was a scenario that saw the Confederates (my side) defending a crossroads and fortified hill from a superior Union attacking force. Our reinforcements were a bit slow to arrive but I did the best I could with a very nice cavalry unit to hold the line, but was eventually overwhelmed by the six infantry brigades and six batteries arrayed against me. On our other flank with the odds more even we did only slightly better holding the fortified hill with a narrow back-and-forth fight. This was a good looking game and fun was had by all.

'Plywood' Schürzen

2011-12-29T13:39:00.000-05:00

My friend Gordon gave me a couple of StuG G tanks from the Flames of War starter set as a gift. These tanks have nice detail in added stowage on some of the tanks, but have the schürzen cast as part of the resin hull which makes them brittle and fragile. When I received these Gordon had already sanded them off in preparation of replacing them with Battlefront's supplemental plastic schürzen. Not wanting to wait for them to come in I fired up the laser and spun off some of my own out of 1/64" thick aircraft plywood. The engraved panel lines are deep enough to take paint/wash and should show nicely when painted. I also find them satisfyingly thin. When painted up I think they'll look like proper armor plate. Good enough for me!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

2011-12-24T13:07:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas everyone! Here's hoping you get all the paints, miniatures and books you wanted!

North Africa Figure Review - 1250 Points and Tobruk Raid Game

2011-12-23T09:41:00.000-05:00

For our early war North Africa escalation league at Adler Hobby the December award was a free blister for a completed 1250-point early war force from the "Hellfire and Back" or "Burning Empires" books including two properly themed objectives. Gordon, the store owner, requested that each player provide a photograph of their completed 1250-point force for him to post in the store and send to Battlefront. The top photograph here is my 1250-point Australian Commonwealth Infantry Company. It's comprised of the HQ, two infantry platoons, an infantry mortar platoon, two divisional cavalry platoons comprised of captured Italian tanks (with Kangaroos on them!), a scout patrol of one platoon of universal carriers and a battery of artillery equipped with OQF 18/25 guns. I couldn't figure out how to get a good force composition at 1250 points with an even number of platoons, so I'll be slightly disadvantaged in 'halfsies' missions. Such is the nature of escalation leagues.

Below are two photographs of additional early-war platoons I've painted up for the league. The left photograph has a battery of captured Italian 47/32 AT guns, a platoon of Humber II armoured cars, a platoon of portee 2 pounder AT guns (with an additional Breda 20mm to proxy when the platoon is used as a portee 47/32 AT platoon), two platoons of Universal carriers and eight Chev trucks which I've modelled without gunners and guns so I can use them as transport, or by adding some additional gunners, as raiding units. The right photograph is two Crusader II CS tanks (to act as the HQ of a Crusader squadron), two Crusader III, and four Crusader II tanks to act as two combat platoons of Crusaders. The Crusader III tanks will have to proxy for earlier Crusaders in early war, but since the only difference is a very slight difference in the main gun assembly I doubt anyone will call me on that. With all of these units my Australians are ready to field forces all the way up to 1750 points. I might add the occasional additional platoon for fun, but I can field this as a complete company now using these additional platoons.

Below are additional mid-war units that will allow the above force to extend into mid war as either a British Light Armoured squadron, British Heavy Armoured squadron or an Australian infantry company. On the left is a squadron of Deacons - armoured 6 pounder portee AT guns which were just too ugly to resist. On the right is a heavy armoured platoon comprised of two Grant and one Lee tanks. In the front a CO in a Sherman II.

Finally my second force for early war is a German Stützpunkt defensive force. This will allow me to have an opponent for the Australians. The Germans have a fortified infantry platoon with 2cm and 5cm gun pits, two additional 88 gun pits, a mortar platoon, a platoon of Panzer IIc tanks (still in European colours) and a squadron of Stuka air support. I still have a ways to go on this army to finish it.

I took all of the above photos on one of the beautiful Adler Hobby gaming tables while waiting for my turn to fight a battle against Chris' Polish Tobruk defensive force with my German Stuützpunkt defensive force. Since we both were fielding fortified companies we played the "Tobruk Raid" scenario for the first time. Chris was suffering some brain melt from just trying another new scenario with Adam, so I tried to decipher the new scenario rules. We mostly got deployment right, but I incorrectly described the objective of the scenario so we both set up our defences covering the objective WE were supposed to capture not protect. This made for a very strange game nullifying most of the static defences. In a night battle with delayed reserves this deteriorated into mostly an infantry platoon vs. infantry platoon affair in which Chris' fearless Poles roughed up my Schützen platoon and ended up on the objective he had to capture early in the game. Still it was a good learning game for both of us and since it was late I was ok with losing quickly. Good game Chris!

Desert Entrenchments

2011-12-21T19:55:00.002-05:00

These are 16 sections of trench, each 4" long. I plan to use these for my German and Australian defensive positions for my North Africa armies. In Flames of War you need 8" long sections of trench line. Each two of these pieces will make one FOW trench section.

I had intended on scratch building my trench sections with concrete retaining walls and wire-cut foam berms. I put off the project long enough and then I realized I had to do something more expidient. These are the result of that realization. They are Musket Miniatures entrenchments. They're rated for 15 or 25mm, but probably fall right in between both. The log retaining walls are more suitable to non-desert, pre-WWII fortifications, but I'm going to roll with that considering they'e done now. Maybe later I'll scratch build some concrete ones and religate these to other duties.

Finishing these will allow me to field my German Stutzpunkt and Australian Tobruk forces in our early war FOW North Africa escalation league.

Photographic Light Box

2011-12-17T11:44:00.001-05:00

Like many wargamers, I struggle to get good photographs of my figures in the cold weather months when I can't use an overcast day to illuminate my figures. I've always wanted a photo light booth, but the prices have always scared me away. Recently I decided to finally spend the money and to my surprise, after doing some research I found this Cowboy Studio tabletop light box for under $40.00!
There are a lot of nice features, first it's portable so I can carry it to my club's game nights. Second it's inexpensive and comes with several separate backdrops. Third it comes with some portable lighting included. The lights that come with it are unfortunately not powerful enough to use to illuminate your subject THROUGH the transparent sides, but at the price, that's not a nit I'm willing to pick.

It's going to take me a while to get in the swing of using this portable studio, but even on the first day I'm seeing DRASTIC improvements. Compare these photos of my recently completed Seleucid Cataphracts to the photographs I took in my previous post. Night and day difference!

Seleucid Cataphracts

2011-12-11T22:44:00.001-05:00

These are two battle groups of Seleucid cataphracts for my Field of Glory Seleucid army. The figures are Old Glory 15s. I painted these up with iron armor on the horses and bronze armor on the riders after consulting with several friends from my wargaming club. The popular wisdom is that the less expensive and more durable iron would be used on the chain mail and the bronze would be used on the more detailed plate and scale armor that the riders would wear.

I've painted one unit with red horse blankets and one with a more 'royal' looking rose color. This will help me identify each unit. These were surprisingly quick to paint as most of the detail work was done with an initial set of dry-brush passes over black primer for the iron and bronze armor. Detail work was added after those initial passes.

These two battle groups finish everything I need to field an 800+ point Seleucid army in Field of Glory with all of the options I might want to put into an army for either historical or 'tournament' play. Additionally I have enough extra battle groups that I can field a much larger Seleucid army to oppose my Roman army to recreate the battle of Magnesia. Finishing this army also knocks off another of my goals for the year - finishing my Roman and Seleucid FOG armies. December 11th - talk about coming in right under the wire!

German Light Infantry Gun Platoon

2011-12-07T23:50:00.001-05:00

This is another platoon for my early war North African German Stutzpunkt force. It is a light infantry Gun platoon consisting of two 7.5cm leIG18 infantry guns, a command team and a forward observer. These are Battlefront models and figures. from the leIG18 blister and some loose figures from my spares box for the FO stand.

This unit gives my Stutzpunkt an inexpensive mobile asset costing only 65 points. The guns can provide light AT support firing directly and can also shoot a template up to 48" allowing for an additional chance to suppress enemy infantry. At only two models I won't be getting many template hits as I'll have to re-roll misses, so I expect mostly to be using these firing direct over open sights.

This unit will most likely be used for low point escalation league games but may stay in my army kit bag when the points level reach 1500 or more points. They're still a fun unit to have and were quick to paint up due to the low figure and base count.

7YW Black Powder @ Adler Hobby

2011-12-05T14:55:00.001-05:00

This past Sunday was our monthly Black Powder game day at Adler Hobby. The end goal is for the participants to use Black Powder to play 28mm Napoleonic games. While everyone is painting up their forces we're playing games using different people's figure collections for whatever historical period matches the figure collection we're using.

This month's game was hosted by Adam using his 15mm Seven Years War (7YW) Prussian and Austrian armies. For a learning game Adam was asked to come up with a smaller scenario. Adam designed a supply train raid scenario with a smaller Prussian brigade and a relief column of Prussian cavalry opposed by a raiding force of a larger brigade of Austrians. The Prussians were tasked with escaping off the far end of the table with as many of their supply wagons as possible. The Austrian goal was to capture the train by attacking it.

We were able to play two games. We opted to keep our sides for both games and after a day of gaming each team had one win. I'd say that's pretty balanced. The first three photos are from the first game, an Austrian victory:

These last two photos are from the second game, a Prussian victory.

Australian 47/32 Anti-Tank Guns

2011-12-03T08:49:00.001-05:00

These are more captured Italian 47/32 anti-tank guns in use by my Australian force. These are deployed as a standard anti-tank platoon. They may be used this way, or as dismounts for my portee anti-tank platoon. Since models don't exist for portee 47/32 guns, I'll have to proxy my 2 pounders when these are being used as portee guns.

These are Battlefront guns and gunners. The guns are from two Italian blisters and the gunners are mostly from my spares box, although there are a couple of figures that are head swaps from the original Italian crews.

The 47/32 gun is inferior to the British 2 pounder AT gun in two areas. It has a lower AT value and it doesn't have a gun shield. It is superior in one area though - it is able to shoot HE ammunition which will allow it to be used against dug-in infantry and infantry in fortifications. The 47/32 is also rated as man-packed mobility, which means you can move it around the battlefield fairly well without the use of trucks and you can dig it in to make up for the lack of a gun shield. For the Australians in early war North Africa I just though it was proper to have at least one platoon of captured Italian AT guns.

Australian 47/32 AT Gun Nests

2011-12-01T22:59:00.001-05:00

These are two captured Italian 47/32 anti-tank gun pits being manned by Australian crews. I hope to eventually be able to use these to field an Australian Tobruk Strongpoint. I had already made my gun pits able to switch between '88' and 5cm or 2cm guns so painting up these two guns was almost a 'no brainer'. I'll be able to re-use any trench lines, mine fields and barbed wire from my German Stutzpunkt force as well as a lot of my Australian troops and armor to make a Tobruk defensive company. The crews are Battlefront gunners I had in my spares box and the actually gun pieces were a gift from my friend Gordon.

Below is a custom troop transport tray I made for my Flames of War army kit bag that holds all four of the gun pits as well as the extra German and Australian inserts. I used some extra blank foam sheets glued to a thin piece of plywood which I cut to the correct size to act as the bottom of the tray. Next up on the painting table is a full platoon of four Captured 47/32 AT guns for my Australian infantry company.

EW German Schützen Platoon

2011-11-28T07:07:00.001-05:00

This is a German schuützen infantry platoon for my German early war North Africa Stützpunkt force. These are Battlefront figures I've painted using colors recommended in the Hellfire and Back book by Battlefront. The bases received the same treatment as my other North Africa forces. For this unit I decided to go with a black wash instead of my normal brown at the recommendation of my friend Gordon. The black definitely shows better on the darker uniforms.

This platoon has similar assets as the Australian infantry I painted earlier, namely a light mortar and anti-tank rifle stand. While these specialist stands offer only slightly improved utility they also have the crucial effect of bringing this platoon up to a full strength of nine stands which is quite nice for Veteran troops. The core infantry are all rated as MG - machine gun armed owing to the high percentage of MG-38 and MG-42 machine guns they carried.

My favorite figures are the ones in the lower right photo, with a machine gunner and loader firing their gun by having the loader hold the bipod on the run. Back then I'm sure ear protection was optional...ouch! While this practice may seem ludicrous, it's well documented in photos and German training manuals.

Brother Against Brother Artillery Template

2011-11-26T13:50:00.000-05:00

My friend Byron runs a lot of Indian Mutiny games using the Brother against Brother ACW rule set. He's been using a homemade acetate artillery template for canister shot, but these are hard to keep track of since they're transparent and thin. Byron asked me if I could make a template on my laser for him out of the transparent green material I make my other templates out of. This is what I came up with for him.

If there is interest from other gamers to get some of these I will add them to the items I sell on my website. Feel free to drop me an email or post a comment here if you're interested.

EW North Africa Escalation League (4)

2011-11-25T21:53:00.001-05:00

For 'Black Friday' I traveled down to Adler Hobby to get in another game in our Early War North Africa Escalation league. My opponent was Adam with his German medium tank company featuring a platoon of potent Panzer IV tanks, two light panzer platoons of Panzer IIc and I tanks and an artillery battery consisting of a single section of LeFH18 10.5cm guns (seen below left). My force was my Australian Commonwealth infantry company with a platoon of infantry, a 3" Mortar platoon, a full battery of four OQF 18/25 guns and two captured tank platoons each containing two M11/39 and one M14/40 tanks (seen below right).

The scenario was "Night Attack" which is this month's chosen scenario for the league. I deployed in defense with my artillery forward to act as improvised AT guns covering the center objective with my two tank platoons covering the right flank where I had only a single artillery piece. My infantry deployed in defense of Adam's objective on my right flank and my mortars on the left objective. Adam advanced aggressively under the cover of the first two turns darkness and when dawn broke started working on destroying my artillery battery which he correctly assessed as my biggest threat to his armor. In the duel I lost a couple of guns and my battery's commander but in the trade was able to eventually take out his CinC and one of his Panzer IVs. This reduced his damage on my batteries by removing 2/3rds of his high-firepower assets. Over the next couple of turns I was able to destroy the remaining Panzer IV with my artillery which left my tanks to clean up the light panzer platoons by the end of turn six.

Adam had a tough draw at 950 points against my infantry with it's high-AT value artillery pieces and two tank companies. At higher point values his tank list will continue to be able to add more good armor, while my infantry's AT asset choices thin out. Should make for a much balanced match up later on in the league.

EW North Africa Escalation League (3)

2011-11-23T01:20:00.001-05:00

Tonight we had a special Tuesday night session for our Escalation league since our normal day (Thursday) is the Thanksgiving holiday. Early in the evening Chris stopped by and started assembling his horde of Italian motorcycles. While he worked on that Gordon with his Italian Posizione Di Fucilieri (Defensive Infantry Position) company and I with my Australian Divisional Cavalry Squadron set up to play a game using the "Night Attack" scenario. Gordon and I both had 950 point forces to use for this game since we've already played each other earlier using our 600 point forces earlier in the league.

I thought the Posizione Di Fucilieri was scary at 600 points, but at 950 points it's absolutely terrifying! Gordon put 3 template forces on the table, two with direct fire capability that on paper seemed impossible to even approach with my thin-skinned Italian leftover tanks. Still we set up and I made one of the two critical moves in the game for me: I placed one of my objectives hidden behind a small ridge behind Gordon's defenses. If I could somehow sneak some of my force there I might have a chance....

Early on as soon as the shooting started things looked scary. As soon as I would shoot something in my force, Gordon's defensive bunkers and masses of artillery would jump on it. I lost a Bren carrier and an armored car on Gordon's first defensive fire. Luckily for me that 'lit up' one of his batteries. This allowed me my second opportunity of the game. I could smoke one of the guns in that battery and use that smoke to make a run for the previously positioned objective!

Over the next 4 turns I somehow miraculously was able to continue to range in on the critical smoke screen. I lost most of a platoon of tanks in one turn through direct fire from Gordon's howitzers and dodged a huge bullet saving 5 out of 5 savings rolls when his Stukas ranged in on a cluster of tanks, artillery guns and artillery command teams in my rear area.

The flanking maneuver and smoke screens held out long enough for me to get a narrow victory with one of my 4 platoons down to a single tank and my armored cars only surviving through the fortune of several lucky savings rolls. In a tournament environment this surely would have been a tie game with each of us walking away with precious few points. Great game, lots of fun and great company. Thanks Gordon!

Stützpunkt '88' Nests

2011-11-12T11:01:00.001-05:00

As promised here are the two FlaK36 8.8 cm '88' guns that insert into the Stützpunkt pits I posted yesterday. Battlefront models and crews. These were standard 88s made for a large base with crews on normal bases. I had to cut & grind the bases off the figures so I could glue the crew directly to the terrained insert disks for the gun pits. Now I'm ready to start blowing up Matilda and Valentine tanks! If the Matilda is the queen of the desert, these are the kings.

Sorry for the bright sun in the photos. Usually I prefer to wait for an overcast day but I wanted to get these posted before I brought them to game day at Adler Hobby today.

Stützpunkt Gun Nests

2011-11-11T15:22:00.001-05:00

These are four Stützpunkt Gun Nests for my German North Africa force: two 2cm AA guns and two 5cm AT guns. Each Stützpunkt platoon will have as part of it one of each of the two types, some infantry in trenches and two machine gun nests. These are sold in pairs by Battlefront and include the nest terrain feature, guns (one of each) and crews. I haven't decided if I will be using two or four of these as I haven't settled on a final force composition. Since there were two of these in stock at Adler Hobby I snatched them up and added them to my collection for my German force.

My force will also require at least one 8.8 cm FlaK36 "88" gun pit. I may optionally field two 88s which may be my preference. In order to be a little more economic in my purchases I'm going to make up my 88 pits using gun models I've purchased earlier by adding them to two of these pits. To facilitate that I've put the crews for one pair of the gun pits on thin plywood disks cut to fit the pits and terrained and painted to match. I'll put the 88s and crews on similar disks that I made up at the same time as these.

German North Africa 81mm Mortar Platoon

2011-11-10T15:31:00.001-05:00

This is the first combat platoon for my early war North Africa German force. After playing against Gordon's Italian defensive force (Position de Fucileri) I decided it would be fun to have a German Stützpunkt defensive force for my Australian's to assault. I'm a big fan if infantry mortars in Flames of War. I think they're one of the must-have items in any infantry force that's allowed to field them. They provide great utility with the ability to deliver a smoke bombardment and can suppress enemy infantry and if you're lucky you can even use them to harass light and medium tanks.

These are Battlefront figures painted up in standard North Africa uniforms. I've used the latter colors for the mortar tubes so that they may be used in early and mid war North Africa games. Next up will be some of the German gun pits that form part of the core of the force. These will be used in conjunction with the machine gun pits I posted earlier and an infantry platoon I have yet to paint.

Carnage 14 AAR

2011-11-07T13:16:00.000-05:00

This past weekend was Carnage 14 and the Centuries of Conflict themed games that I help the Carnage staff with as coordinator. This year's theme was 19th century and we had many great theme games. Pictured to the left was the Pour le Merite (best of show) winner, Byron Champlin's Indian Mutiny game using Brother against brother rules. Another Brother against Brother game won the Pour Encourager les Autres award for most inspiring game. The winner was Ralph Gero's "Battle of Gitschin" game from the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. This is a conflict that is not often gamed and Ralph's game was enjoyable and beautiful both in the terrain and figures used. Photos below are of Ralph's game and of Ralph and Byron receiving their awards. Not photographed was Andre Kruppa receiving the Admiral Byng (best naval game) award for his computer-moderated naval game which featured Beautiful ship models.

I ran my Cedar Mountain scenario. This was the same scenario I ran at Huzzah! earlier this spring. Although the game was the same, the outcome was completely different. At Huzzah! the Union successfully held off the Confederate attacks and won the day. At Carnage the Confederates initially faltered in their frontal assault, but a flanking force from Cedar mountain eventually overwhelmed the Union left flank winning the day for the Confederacy.

There were many other GREAT games. I've posted the remainder of my photos in our club's photo gallery. If you're interested in running a game next year for Centuries of Conflict at Carnage our theme century is the 20th century. Bring out your World War I, II, Russian Civil War, Spanish Civil war, colonials and anything else 20th century. We have great awards for the best games and thank you gifts for all theme game masters.

Carnage 14 Convention

2011-11-03T18:58:00.000-04:00

This year is the 14th year for the Carnage Convention hosted by our nearby friends in Eastern Vermont. The convention will be held thiw weekend November 4-6 in scenic Fairlee, Vermont. This is an excellent mixed convention with historical miniatures, fantasy/sci-fi miniatures, RPG, board games, a diplomacy tournament and a good vendor area with vendors supporting all of these gaming genres.

This will be my second year as the coordinator of the 'Centuries of Conflict' historical wargaming themed events. This year's theme is the 19th Century and we have an excellent selection of 19th century period events spanning the entire convention. You can read more about all of the games, in the official Carnage Convention Booklet.

Look for a detailed after-action report when I return. I hope to see you all there!

Macedonia Prodromoi Cavalry

2011-11-02T10:04:00.005-04:00

This is a unit of light cavalry armed with sword and light spear (or could be lance if you like) that I purchased off of Ebay from Dynasty Group Miniatures. You can probably find this unit for sale by them by searching Ebay for the keyword 'AHe11' which is their stock number for this unit. Like the unit I posted yesterday, I would give the painting a solid 7 on the GAJO rating scale. Also like the Thessalian unit I posted earlier this unit came with lead spears that were bent and a couple were knocked out of the hands in shipping.

All of the light spears were replaced with homemade piano-wire replacements that were glued in and painted. The hands were touched up but this was considerably easier on this unit as there is a considerable amount less exposed skin on these figures. These figures are definitely Macedonian Successor with the characteristic headgear. For light cavalry I am slightly put off that they wear a 'royal' violet cloak, but not so put off that I'm willing to re-paint them! I'll be using these as citizen cavalry in my Seleucid army.

Thessalian Cavalry

2011-11-02T10:04:00.003-04:00

This is a unit of light cavalry armed with light spear (or could be lance if you like) that I purchased off of Ebay from Dynasty Group Miniatures. You can probably find this unit for sale by them by searching Ebay for the keyword 'AHe14' which is their stock number for this unit. I'll give the painting a solid 7 on the GAJO rating scale.

I do have one gripe, the spears that were included were spindly lead cast weapons. Several of them had already fallen off and one had broken in shipping. The rest were all bent up and pathetic looking. Luckily they all came out of the hands, which were drilled to accept them and were easily replaced with piano wire spears that I made myself. I had to paint the spears and touch up the hands which ended up requiring some touch up the arms and legs to match the hands. I was unable to mix a matching color that I was happy with so in the end a re-paint of parts of the exposed skin was the easiest solution. Even considering the problem with the lead weapons I think this unit was a good value considering the quality of the painting and basing.

Australian Infantry Platoon (2)

2011-11-01T18:23:00.001-04:00

This is a second Australian infantry platoon for my Aussie North Africa armies. This one doesn't have to do double duty as a motor platoon for my Crusader tanks in mid-war so I was able to outfit these chaps almost exclusively in the snappy Australian bush hats. The platoon is made up mostly from the Battlefront Anzac infantry blister with a few figures tossed in from the Sting of the Scorpion box set (the guys with the head cloths) for flair.

We've been out of power for the past four days due to the freak Halloween heavy snowstorm here in New Hampshire. These were painted on generator power with a single extension cord running the width of my house to power the one light on my painting table. Surprising the lack of light didn't hurt the quality of the paint job - these guys are my normal shoddy workmanship!

EW North Africa Escalation League (2)

2011-10-27T23:59:00.003-04:00

Tonight was another of our Early War North Africa Escalation League game nights at Adler Hobby. We had a good turnout with 5 players showing up and several other people stopping by to shop or kibitz. Chris R. returned after a recent absence due to being a new father. The evening featured three 600-point games for our league and a snack tray brought in by James with cheese, salami, peperoni and crackers - YUM!

I played only one game, intending on leaving early but in the end I stayed the whole night because I was having so much fun. My game pitted my Australian Commonwealth Infantry Company against James' German Panzer Schutzen infantry mounted in armored half tracks supported by a platoon of Pak 36 AT guns and a platoon of pioneers including a flame thrower.

Early on I didn't receive my reinforcements and James capitalized with a mounted assault from his infantry riding their half tracks of death. I survived only due to the fearless morale of the Australians and some lucky dice in my counter attack. The following turn my tanks arrived from reserve just in time to help mop up the infantry platoon and its half tracks. With only three platoons and the unenviable task of having to attack with infantry things went south from there for James. Honestly the game could easily have been won in the second turn with only slightly different dice rolls. James bold attack was his best chance of winning with his force in this scenario.

While James and I were playing our game Chris pushing his Polish infantry (using the British army list) was the attacker against Gordon's tough Italian Position de Fuscileri. Gordon has re-worked his list to have only one defensive platoon supported by Artillery and a small platoon of Italian tanks. This proved to be too tough of a nut for the Polish infantry to crack even using the British 'night attack' special scenario rules. The first time you face one of the new defensive platoons it can be intimidating, particularly if it's supported by armor and you have to attack with infantry. I think as we gain more experience with this new force type we'll all start to figure out how to play against it. So far both games against the defensive force have proved very interesting to be sure.

In Gordon and Chris' game Gordon borrowed two of my German machine gun nests to proxy for his Italian MG nests. I laser cut Gordon some parts for him to make up his own Italian MG nests which he'll probably work on soon. I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with them. Sharing stuff like this with the group is part of the fun for sure. Enthusiasm builds when you're hanging out with people who share interests. That's one of the things that's fun about this group of gamers.

In James' second game he played a German vs. German game against Adam's Medium Tank Company. This was a touch-and-go affair where the Pioneer flame thrower knocked out one of the tough Panzer IVs and the infantry knocked out most of Adam's light tanks but in the end the tanks held on just long enough to break the infantry company's morale.

Roman Legion

2011-10-26T20:19:00.000-04:00

This is another Roman legion I purchased off of Ebay from an overseas figure painting service. The hand-painted white shields and white tunics are a stark contrast to most of my legions which wear red tunics and carry mostly red shields. I'm hoping to be able to use these figures to represent a lower-quality legion with lower morale. The eight stand unit will make two separate Field of Glory four-stand battle groups. All I'll have to do is paint up a four-stand velite unit (also in white tunics) and a two-stand triarii unit.

Although I don't always post units I buy that are already painted, I might start doing that more now that I'm showing an annual total of such figures on the listing on the left-hand side of this blog. I also wanted to show these because they're a good quality paint job and I was able to get them shipped to me at a total cost of only $1.50 per figure. I think that's quite a deal. If you're careful in watching the auctions there are still good deals to be had on Ebay even with the proliferation of overseas contract painters.

North Africa Heavy Machine Gun Nests - Finished

2011-10-24T11:00:00.000-04:00

These are the four completed German heavy machine gun nests that I showed in my previous post. I've added some additional grass and rock details to the sand portion and dry-brushed the concrete with a couple layers of sand color to represent all the sand that would blow onto and over the nests. The Battlefront figures are a mix of two different poses, each armed with a heavy machine gun. Two have bi-pods and two do not, opting to rest the gun on the bunker's lip.

I won't be painting any more figures for this German force until I finish up the last couple of units to complete my Australian forces. I'm the type that if I start a new project before finishing the last the uncompleted project might never get finished. A bit of discipline is necessary here to combat my gaming ADD.

North Africa Heavy Machine Gun Nest - WIP

2011-10-23T13:10:00.001-04:00

While I was making some items for some customers on my laser today I designed a desert heavy machine gun nest for use with my North Africa forces. After I finish up my Australians I plan to start working on a German defensive force using the Hellfire and Back Stutzpunkt army list. This list requires two or four of these heavy machine gun nests. Battlefront sells pre-made ready to paint nests, but they've been out of production for a while. I like making my own terrain and doing interesting modeling projects so this seemed like a fun project. Design work on the laser's CAD only took about 15 minutes and I cut the pieces out of scrap wood from other larger customer jobs. The only things I had to add were a standard Battlefront medium sized base and a German crew member converted from a figure from my dead lead box. Below is a photo of the bunker in several states of completion. I'll eventually finish up all four of these for my German list and probably another four for my Australians to use if I want to use them as a Tobruk defensive force.

Northern Conspiracy Game Night - October 2011

2011-10-22T10:11:00.000-04:00

Lastnight my club held it's monthly game night. I was fortunate enough to play in my friend Charlie's Carnage & Glory ACW game which was a scenario for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Camp Wildcat. I was on the attacking confederate side and at the beginning of the battle I feared having the challenge of attacking troops defending wooded hills behind stone walls was going to be an impossible task, but differences in morale grades of the troops and quality of the leaders made this a very well balanced scenario. The Carnage & Glory computer system keeps track of army morale and although it said the Confederates scraped out a Pyrrhic victory, the Union held one of the two hills with solid troops at the end of the game and still had a skeleton force on the other. Considering the victory conditions the best I would claim would be a draw. This was a fun battle. We don't play enough Carnage & Glory games. The rules are fun, but if you don't play them a lot you forget some of the nuances of running and playing them. Maybe I'll make an effort to run a game or two myself soon to keep us in practice.

Andre ran a large game of Aerodrome with three rounds being played and the winner earning the coveted trophy cup as best pilot. I heard a lot of cheering and clapping from that area so everyone seemed to be having a whale of a good time.

Byron ran a Volley & Bayonet game for the Battle of Wandiwash 1760. This was a nice looking game that was the perfect size for game night, in that it took a good number of players while still being able to be played to a conclusion. Byron's linear stands and nicely painted figures looked great in this game.

Burning Empires - First Impressions

2011-10-21T15:30:00.000-04:00

Last night I was able to steal a sneak peek at the upcoming Flames of War Burning Empires book at Adler Hobby. This is the third book in Battlefront's new Early War series and includes armies for the Italian and Greek campaigns as well as updated raiding rules for both early and middle war periods. Although I can't give a full review, these are my first impressions from the short time I had to spend with the book. My opinions are organized roughly by the book's major sections although I won't guarantee that I didn't miss anything. I'm writing this completely by memory. If you'd like to get a sneak peek at the book contact Gordon at Adler hobby and arrange a time to stop by his fine store and leaf through the preview copy.

Italy: There's one infantry list that can take all the usual support options including two platoons of M13/39 or M14/40 tanks. The infantry platoons range from normal sized to large to gargantuan to ridiculous topping out at 31 stands per platoon with all options added. There are additional morale options with Black Shirt and Alpine (elite) flavors although all still use the "3 Million Bayonets" rule.

Greece: The Greek lists include a mechanized list with motorcycle troops as the core combat platoon supported by hordes of Universal Carriers in platoons of five (5) and captured Italian tankettes in platoons of three (3). The list lacks much in the way of vehicle-based AT as all the vehicles are MG armed and the motorcycle infantry suffer the same fate ad the Hellfire and Back Italian Cycles - they cannot fire if they move. The other list is a Greek infantry list with lots of support from the same UC and tankette platoons. This list can take sufficient AT and Artillery guns to hold off enemy armor and could possibly have a similar feel to British UC horde lists if you wish. Interesting with Fearless Trained troops.

Germany: Germany offers some SS lists in the Motorcycle and Infantry flavors, not much new there. There is an Alpine infantry force and a Fallschirmjäger force that are slightly interesting but not much different than many of the other German infantry lists in the previous two books. The one gem here is a German glider infantry force that uses some new glider rules (included). I'm not sure why this list wasn't included in the Blitzkrieg book, but I'm thinking an Eben Emal historical scenario could use this list and glider rule set quite nicely.

France: There are Free and Vichy France lists. They're similar to the Blitzkrieg list mostly although with less armour choices and no armour-only lists. The Free French list can pull in several support platoons from British and Australian platoons also included.

Raiding Forces: The last 1/3 of the book is dedicated to raiding forces and desert fortresses. In addition to re-printing the existing SAS raiding lists there are many more added for most nations as well as some interesting desert fortress rules. Having all of the raiding rules in a hardcover book might make playing these smaller games more popular.

All in all I'm looking forward to having my own copy of this book even if I only use the raiding and glider airborne rules from it. The early war German glider company and Greek infantry company both also interest me enough that I may paint one or the other up at some point.

EW North Africa Escalation League (1)

2011-10-21T01:26:00.002-04:00

This was the first game I was able to play in Adler Hobby's new early war North Africa / Italy Flames of war escalation league. Anxious to put my new Kangaroo tanks to use I chose to field my 600 point army as a commonwealth infantry company with a single platoon of three M13/39 tanks, a platoon of 3" mortars and a platoon of portee 2 lb. AT guns as support for my one combat platoon.

I drew as my opponent Gordon with his Italian Posizione Di Fucilieri (Defensive Infantry Position) company. Gordon wisely constructed his 600 point force to maximize his defensive assets including two AT nests and two HMG nests. All of which scared the hell out of me. Behind these was his artillery battery. The photo above shows starting deployment. We played the 'Trench Fight' mission which means the defender gets even MORE defenses. At the start I was pretty overwhelmed by this that's for sure, but things improved greatly when my initial bombardment for the scenario took out 3 of Gordon's artillery pieces.

A couple turns in I decided that in 6 turns I wasn't going to get my Infantry into the fight moving at regular speed, so I took a chance and double timed them counting on my mortars to smoke the defenders protecting me from their fire. Well the mortars didn't come in and I lost that platoon in one turn to devastating fire from the HMG nest, AT nest and defending infantry teams. We broke for dinner and I was thinking all was lost, but somehow I was able to assault with my one team of three captured Italian tanks under the cover of another smoke screen and miraculously through some lucky dice rolls managed to clear the defenders from the objective. My assault killed just enough infantry to force a company morale check which the Italians failed due to my assault also wiping out their HQ. Close fight which I was lucky to win and felt like I lost. Gordon was both a skilled and gracious opponent.

While Gordon and I played our game Aaron and Adam played a quick game on another table. Their game ended so quickly that I didn't get any photos of it. I'm not even sure who won!

After all of the Flames of War games ended Gordon and returning gamer James played a scenario game of Axis & Allies War at Sea which is pictured below. This game featured a British reprisal raid on a Vichi French Battleship in an all-or-nothing raid. This was a close fought game with Gordon edging out James in a battle of attrition where Gordon was able to preserve the target ship while reducing James force to below what would be needed to exact the desired revenge the scenario calls for.

Australian Captured Italian Tanks

2011-10-19T19:15:00.000-04:00

These eight tanks represent two platoons of captured Italian tanks from the North Africa theater that were turned against their original owners by the Australian army. In order to prevent friendly fire the plucky Aussies painted every available surface on the tanks with Kangaroos to make sure everyone knew who was inside. I originally saw a black & white photo of one of these tanks in a reference book and fell in love with them. When Battlefront came out with their Hellfire and Back army list book there were two different forces that were allowed to represent these tanks: the Australian divisional cavalry squadron and the Australian Commonwealth Infantry Company which can take up to two platoons of these tanks as a divisional support asset. That's all it took to seal the deal.

I've been working on the other elements of my Australian force for quite a while as followers of this blog are well aware. These hulls have been painted and patiently awaiting the release of the iconic kangaroo decals. Monday night I was able to pick these up at Adler hobby and get the tanks finished. I think these will make for a fun force to push in the early war.

Each platoon consists of three M11/39 tanks but can optionally be upgraded to include one of the slightly heavier M13/40 tanks in place of one of the lighter M11/39s. Since most of the photos I've found of this force (see below) include a mix of tanks I've chosen to make my platoons of this mixed variety. The extra two tanks are for the squadron CO and 2iC for when I choose to field these in a Divisional cavalry squadron.

The only complaint I have about these decals is that the sheet only includes one size kangaroo. Since this has to be small enough to fit on the small M11/39 turret it is a little too small for the hull. Another small nitpick is the sheet only contains 'roos facing one direction so you have to apply half of them glue side up. It takes very careful work to prevent silvering when doing this.

Next up are my final platoon of Crusader I tanks for early, or more likely mid, war and my last platoon of Australian infantry to finish up my commonwealth infantry company. I'm not sure what order I'll finish these in. It all depends on what I'm motivated to work on over the next week or two.

Busy Times

2011-10-18T09:40:00.003-04:00

Sorry for the lack of posts. I've been very busy at home and work since returning from my vacation. I have several semi-finished projects I've been working on but none are in a blog-worthy state at the moment. I should have a flurry of updates coming soon when each of these projects comes to completion.

Time just seems to be melting away without anything completed to post. More soon I hope!

Mickey Mouse Dice!

2011-10-03T09:38:00.001-04:00

Quick update from vacation. I picked these up at Disney's Animal Kingdom yesterday. Maybe they'll bring me some luck?

Sorry for the stock Internet photo. Our phones don't take very good macro photos. See you all when I return.

Commonwealth 3" Mortar Platoon

2011-09-30T07:39:00.001-04:00

This is a platoon of 3" mortars I've painted up as a weapons platoon for my Australian rifle company. Since Battlefront doesn't make mortar crews in the Australian floppy hats I've used the Battlefront 8th army mortar blister in the British helmets. I'm sure plenty of Australians wore them so it's not much of a stretch. I painted this platoon for use with the "Hellfire and Back" early-war army list book, which only allows for two sections (4 tubes) of mortars. The blister is designed for the mid-war "North Africa" scenario book which allows three full sections (6 tubes) each with their own forward observer. I figured I might as well paint them all up. It's possible that I'll use these figures for mid war sometime with my Crusader and Lee tanks or in a historical scenario so they'll be used as a six-tube platoon at some point. Additionally, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have one section of mortars and loose crews rattling around in my dead lead box when painting them with the ones I did need was very little additional work considering economy of scale in the painting process.

There will be no posts next week as I'm off for a week long vacation to Florida. My lovely wife and I are making our annual pilgrimage to Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights. Soon after I return I hope to be posting some photos of a couple platoons of captured Italian M11/39 and M13/40 tanks that the Australians used. I'm painting then in anticipation of Battlefront's release of their kangaroo decals for them. Too cool. Hopefully the decals will be available when I return. If not I may hold posting those figures until they're properly adorned with the decals.

Black Powder Napoleonics

2011-09-26T14:37:00.003-04:00

Sunday I played in an invitation-only Black Powder Napoleonics game at Adler Hobby. I was able to renew some friendships with some of the members of the Boston Trained Bands wargaming club who are participating in the Black Powder games at Adler Hobby. I pushed two small brigades of infantry, one composed of Confederation of the Rhine troops and one of Bavarians.

When I saw the size of the game I thought there would be no way we'd get very far with so many troops and so few players, but the rules are definitely 'fast play' and easy to learn. With an occasional hiccup I was playing fairly competently by the third turn with the help of the excellent instruction of the other players. The other thing that allows Black Powder games to play quickly is STUFF DIES. STUFF DIES VERY QUICKLY. If you engage a unit and it's in a disadvantaged situation it's quite likely that it will be eliminated wholesale. Although this is a lower-level game in terms of organization, the way units are removed has a slightly higher scale feel to it.

All in all I left the game with a very positive view of the rule set despite losing three of my five units early in the game at the hands of a devastating set of cavalry charges. It was a fun game with easy to learn rules and good natured opponents that kept things fun. The rules are meant to be low-stress, high-fun and not overly complex or serious. Competition players need not apply.

WIP - Pirate Ship (2)

2011-09-24T19:47:00.001-04:00

I've made some additional progress on my Pirate ship. I've added the rear upper deck and railings and a cabin wall and door. The masts have been assembled using hardware I made out of 1/32" plywood. I've even added some crows nests. I'm not sure I'm happy with the height of the masts. They're not glued in (may never bee to aid in transportation) so if I want to re-do them I only have to laser up some more rigging hardware and cut up some more dowels.

Next step is to get together with my Uncle who's been assembling and painting some Old Glory pirate boats. I want to compare my mast layouts to what he's using before I start finishing the paint on this.

War of 1812 Game

2011-09-24T11:04:00.000-04:00

This is a game I played last night at my friend Mark D's house with some of my other Northern Conspiracy friends. The game was a historical scenario for the War of 1812 - the battle of Queenstown Heights, October 13, 1812. This was the second time I've played the scenario that Mark is developing for the upcoming Carnage Convention, the first was at our club's August game night. The game used Volley & Bayonet rules in wing scale using some additional period-specific rules. This was a fun game although the British side, which I was a member of, got soundly beaten by the Americans.

Mark is fine tuning the scenario and I'm sure his game at the upcoming convention will be excellent based on my enjoyment of both of the play tests. One of the unique wing-scale features Mark added was flank company stands that serve as the elites for each unit. These added a nice amount of flavor to the game and sparked quite an active discussion from the players about other periods where this mechanic could be used. I'm guessing we're going to see this used again by other people in possibly Iberian peninsula early Napoleonic games in 25mm. I'm looking forward to some of those games.

WIP - Pirate Ship (1)

2011-09-20T23:10:00.000-04:00

This is a 25mm pirate ship I'm working on. Several people in our club have recently started working on a pirate game project using Old Glory 25mm pirate ships. This model is my attempt to make a boat that will match these in scale and styling. The boat is completely made of wood cut on my laser engraving machine. The hull is three layers of 1/4" Baltic birch plywood with the curved portions sanded in with my bench-mounted belt sanding station. The hull sides and all detail parts are made from 1/32" plywood and 1/16" basswood. The plank details are engraved into the wood so when painted they'll still show through. Since most of the boat is wood I'm hoping to use stain in most places to allow the natural wood grain to show through.

I still have quite a bit of work to do: frames for the gun ports, top railing for the hull sides and a whole second deck with railings, oh then there's the whole painting, and rigging it. My hope is that once I have the basic boat designed I can make additional boats that are variations on this design. I'm particularly interested in making a more ornate version with a larger stern section and decks to represent a Dutch East India Company merchantman. I'll post more on this project as it progresses.

North Africa - Recon! (2)

2011-09-19T21:00:00.000-04:00

This is a platoon of Humber II armored cars. They're a divisional support choice for several British and Australian companies in both the "Hellfire and Back" and "North Africa" early and mid war OB books. I'm most likely to use them when I field my Australians as an early war Divisional Cavalry Squadron.

These are Battlefront models. I've chosen to model the platoon commander with an exposed commander figure in his very dapper red beret. The unit markings are located according to some photographs I found on the Internet, although the model doesn't allow any space on the rear of the model for unit markings in any sort of historically-accurate way so I left them off. As per my norm, I applied a 'chipped paint' look to the unit markings using the torn sponge technique. This was a fun, quick unit to paint up. Next up I'm working on two different units of which I'm not sure which will be completed first. The first is two platoons of captured Italian tanks in Australian service and the other is a large 3" mortar platoon. Both are large projects. Whichever one motivates me the most will probably be finished first.

Portee 2 Pounder AT Guns and Company Command

2011-09-18T22:00:00.000-04:00

This is a platoon of portee 2 pounder AT guns. They will serve as regimental or divisional support for my Australian early-war army and could also be an inexpensive 'add-in' for any mid-war British empire forces. The unit is an interesting mix of vehicles with an infantry command stand who can ride along in one of the Jeeps I painted earlier. If I paint up some towed guns to accompany these they can be used to represent these guns when they're dismounted off their trucks.

The portee AT guns I purchased separately in blisters, the command team was drawn from my spares box and the Jeep was one of the transport teams I painted and posted earlier this month.

These two stands will be the company commander and 2iC for my Australian infantry company. I had forgotten to add these figures to the infantry figures I painted up for my first platoon. While I had the command stand and crews for the AT guns on the painting table I took advantage of some economy of scale and painted these figures at the same time. Sometimes you can benefit from additional efficiency by looking at your process and optimizing it as much as possible. This was one small step I took in that direction.

Renaissance Game

2011-09-17T20:02:00.001-04:00

At our club game day today we played a very large Renaissance game over three gaming tables. The game was played using a set of rules created locally with figures provided by three of the club's members. I commanded a German mercenary command supporting the Spanish who were attempting to oust invading French forces from their land. My command is shown below on the left.

This was a fun day and although this was my first time playing the rules they seemed easy enough to pick up and fun to play. Makes me want to dig out some of my dead Renaissance lead and get painting! More photos can be seen on our club's photo gallery.

For the love of grass

2011-09-16T17:33:00.000-04:00

At first glance this might look like a post about Marijuana but that is not the case. I've been mostly underwhelmed with my desert bases. Sure I've got sand texture on them in two coarsenesses, and rocks added in two different shades, but it's all just a bit too plain. I ordered up some Silfor grass clumps. I've used these on other bases before, but I didn't have any appropriate for desert terrain. These are 4mm Autumn "Prarie Tufts" from Silfor. I've tried not to add too many - just enough to give some dimensionality to the bases. For the smaller sized bases things get pretty crowded so you have to pick the smallest of the grass clumps to use. I've gone ahead and added these to all of my completed infantry and artillery bases for my Australian/British forces in North Africa.

The photos here are a representative sample of how they look on the various sized bases.The only thing I can think of doing now to dress things up is maybe do some touch up on the tufts with a dry brush here and there to vary the colouring a bit. I'm interested in input as to what colors/shades might be appropriate, or if I should just leave them as-is.

Australian Infantry Platoon (1)

2011-09-14T07:42:00.002-04:00

This is a platoon of Australian North Africa infantry. They can be used for early and mid war. I've painted these up to use as support for a Divisional Cavalry squadron or one of the two main combat platoons for a Commonwealth Infantry company. Both can utilize captured Italian M11/38 and M13/40 tanks which the Aussies painted large kangaroos onto to prevent allies from shooting at them. Pictured above is the force deployed as a Commonwealth Infantry platooon: six stands of Rifle/MG infantry, an anti-tank rifle stand, a light mortar stand and a platoon command stand.

The figures are all Battlefront castings, primarily taken from their Austrailian (Anzac) blister. These are wearing the characteristic Australian bush hat that they loved so much. I've also mixed in a few figures from the aforementioned Sting of the Scorpion box set with white head covers. I think this gives the unit a sufficiently Australian look while still looking a bit shaggy as I feel desert troops would get on campaign.

As I'd like to also use this platoon to support my Crusaders in an early or mid-war Crusader squadron I've painted up a couple extra stands of anti-tank Rifles. Deployed as below the unit can very nicely be deployed as a motor platoon comprised of three stands of MG infantry, three anti-tank infantry stands and a command stand. As you see I've put the majority of the figures with the Australian bush hats on the non-MG stands so this platoon, while containing some such figures, is mostly figures without the hats. It's subtle, but I think will allow me to use these as straight British figures should I wish to.

Next up on the painting table are some more vehicles: portee 2 pounder AT guns and some Humber II armored cars.

British North Africa Transport (2)

2011-09-11T13:53:00.000-04:00

These nine trucks are more of the figures I obtained in the OOP "Sting of the Scorpion" box set I bought from a local friend recently. Like the jeeps in my earlier post these trucks were intended to be armed to the teeth with .50 cal and Lewis machine guns as assault vehicles for an SAS force. I've converted them for unarmed transport use, well mostly.

These trucks were my primary motivation to find one of the OOP box sets. Transport is always so boring in games. When I first saw these trucks in a friend's collection I knew I had to get some for myself. I've done my best to vary the stowage as much as I felt would be historically accurate. Captured German supplies, lend-lease ammo crates, water containers and British supplies all adorn the trucks. The drivers are the original SAS crews, but as I said in the Jeep post, I don't think they're much of a stretch for North Africa 'regulars'. In the desert heat a soldier will do a lot to be comfortable and officers will overlook a lot of efforts by their troops to do so.

The one vehicle that I didn't disarm was the 20mm Portee Breda anti-tank gun. The truck looked quite naked without the Breda in the cargo bed and I thought it was too unique of a model to pass up completing. Hopefully at some point I can come across another of these to complete a minimum platoon of two vehicles. If I can't find one from this box set I might try my hand at scratch building one from an un-armed plain truck. This has been a fun project, but took far too long to finish because of my distaste for painting vehicle tires. Next up some Australian infantry to ride in these trucks.

Field of Glory Round Robin Games (1)

2011-09-10T01:08:00.000-04:00

Tonight my friends Mike, Charlie and Phil came over to play a couple games of Field of Glory Ancients. All four of us made up armies from the Rise of Rome army list book and we're going to play a bunch of games 1 vs 1 with each other in a round robin format, hopefully getting in two games versus each of the other three players. I'm not sure there will be any high competition, but we'll keep track of wins and losses and maybe the winner can pick which historical battle we play once we all are more familiar with the rules. Field of Glory is definitely one of those rule sets that if you don't play it very often you can forget a lot of the details on how to play it.

We diced to pick partners for the first game. Mike's Carthaginian army drew Phil's Seleucid army, using my figures. Their game was a close-fought battle with Mike edging out Phil for a narrow victory. The photo above and the two below are of their game.

The other game pitted my Mid-Republican Romans vs. Charlie's Late Republican Romans. Mine featured a core of Superior legions with Atillid Pergamene allies and Charlie's army featured a core of Elite legions backed up by some superior legions and some Spanish, Gaul and Numidian cavalry. Early on Charlie's superior troops tore me up with their copious re-rolls causing many extra casualties. During the mid game I was able to bring my extra numbers to bear turning a gap in the line into a flanking opportunity which allowed me to beat a couple of his Elite battle groups. Our game was a close one until that time. I was able to secure a narrow victory. The 10-5 final score doesn't accurately reflect how close things really were. Most of the game I felt like Charlie was really beating me fairly handily. Photos of our game are below.

This was a great night of gaming. We're hoping to get together every 3-4 weeks to play another two games.

British North Africa Transport (1)

2011-09-05T17:00:00.000-04:00

These two jeeps are more of the figures I obtained in the OOP "Sting of the Scorpion" box set I bought from a local friend recently. Originally intended to be armed to the teeth with .50 cal and Lewis machine guns, I've converted them for unarmed transport use. One will be the ride for my staff and command teams for my 25 lb. Royal Artillery Battery I finished last week.The other is currently unclaimed but could end up being transportation for the company HQ for a commonwealth rifle company or a battery of towed 2 lb. AT guns, whichever I need them for first.

The passenger figures for these Jeeps are SAS raider figures, but with the exception of having white covers on their head I think they can pass for pretty much any other type of British empire figures. In the desert who's going to blame a chap for trying to beat the heat by covering their head in white?

Next up is another installment of transportation converted from the SAS vehicles: eight (8) Chevy trucks overloaded with supplies and stowage plus one portee Breda 20mm AT gun. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the latter, but it seemed silly not to paint it up while I was working on all of the rest of the vehicles.

Desert Objective Markers

2011-09-02T08:13:00.002-04:00

We're just wrapping up a short mid-war North Africa campaign, and soon will focus our attention on an early-war North Africa escalation league. Considering these two facts I thought it was wise to invest the time into painting up some desert-themed objective markers for Flames of War. What's more important in the desert than fuel, water, ammo and supplies? With nothing to scrounge from the land or the residents, ammo and supply dumps are the king of all desert objectives. They also have the added benefit of being country-inspecific so I should get years of service from these with any armies I should paint up for desert battles.

The right objective marker is a stock Battlefront piece I received in an OOP "Sting of the Scorpion" box set I picked up from a local friend. I mostly wanted it to use the cool Chevy trucks that come with it as transport for my British desert infantry but it also included the nice supply depot objective base and some very neat SAS raider figures which I'll be mixing into my desert infantry units to add some extra character. The left objective marker was made up using a bunch of smaller supply markers also contained in the box set. I glued these up together on a large base and flocked to represent generic North Africa desert ground cover (i.e. sand). I think the pair makes a very serviceable set. Next up will either be some Australian infantry with their characteristic floppy hats and some of those super-neat SAS raider figures mixed in or the previously mentioned overloaded Chevy trucks. I'm not going to win any battles in the desert with only Crusader tanks to fight with. I need some boots on the ground to seize and hold objectives!

Royal Artillery 25 lb. Battery

2011-08-29T17:49:00.001-04:00

This is a British Royal Artillery 25 lb. artillery battery with staff team and quad tractors to tow it. They are painted up for use with my mid war British armor force but are also viable candidates for use with the new Flames of War Hellfire and Back early war desert book which I'll probably be forming up a force for using my Crusader tanks.

The figures guns and vehicles are all Battlefront brand models. These are my first non-tank bases for the desert so I'm not entirely sure I like my basing scheme yet. I may add some other coloring and or some dead grass clumps at some point in the future.

Northern Conspiracy Game Night - August 2011

2011-08-21T13:02:00.002-04:00

Last Friday night I was able to attend our monthly club game night. I played in an excellent war of 1812 game run by my friend Mark using Volley & Bayonet rules. Mark ran this game using the wing scale optional rules which really give V&B a different flavor. He also had several interesting scenario-specific rules. When I say I played, I actually helped two of my guests with the rules as neither had played Volley & Bayonet before. Both of them did great and the British eeked out a win, although the Americans made a strong push during the middle of the battle. Had they not run out of steam things would have gone a lot differently. Both sides played very well and the game was a lot of fun.

The other two games were a Ruso-Turkish War (1877) game also using Volley & Bayonet and a WWII Americans vs Vichi French in Morocco game using Battlefront rules. There are a couple of photos of each below and more can be found on our club's photo gallery.

New England Aviation Museum

2011-08-19T11:37:00.000-04:00

During our recent vacation we also visited the New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks Connecticut. The museum has a good collection starting with a Wright Brothers original engine and ending with artifacts from the Apollo space missions. They have an extensive collection of WWII and helicopter artifacts including a complete B-29, B-25, P-47, Corsair, Hellcat and another Hellcat currently under restoration. Their WWI exhibit includes two replicas (Fokker Dr-I and Sikorsky S-16) and an original Hispano Suisa V-8 which was uset to power the SPAD fighters flown by the Lafayette Escadrille. Lori and I enjoyed a wonderful day at the Museum and I highly recommend it to any WWI, WWII or aviation history enthusiasts.

Old Sturbridge Village - AWI Buildings

2011-08-19T11:25:00.000-04:00

Old Sturbridge Village is a living history community / museum located in western Massachusetts. It serves to educate and preserve the way of life in 1850s America. As such there are several buildings in their collection that are ripe fruit for the picking when it comes to modeling buildings of the American Revolutionary War. My lovely wife and I visited there on holiday this past week and included in this post are some photos of some of the buildings that would be appropriate to model for the AWI. To the left the collection's 'small house'.

Quaker meeting house (church).

Above rural farmhouse, barn and out building. Note the natural unpainted wood siding. To the left corn drying shed for the same farm.

Large family home. This one might be a bit too 'modern' for AWI due mostly to its size.

Tin smith's shop.

Lumber mill.

Napoleonic Campaign Games

2011-08-06T12:16:00.000-04:00

Last night we played three battles in a Napoleonic campaign that my friend Charlie ran. The campaign was centered around the peninsular / Waterloo campaign with a French force trying to eliminate a Prussian and a British force each about 2/3rs of its size. The photo of the left is the first battle to make it to nightfall on the first day. Since it started late in the afternoon the British (lower army) and French (upper army) both established their lines right as darkness fell on the battlefield. Off screen towards the bottom of the picture is Waterloo.

The next battle was the battle of Ohain which started mid-day with a smaller French corps (top army) against a larger Prussian armeekorps. A few hours later the French received reinforcements in the form of a cavalry corps. The photo on the left is a few turns into the game after both armies had settled into their engagement deployment. On the right their locations at the conclusion of the night turn.

The last battle to start was the Wavre battle. This was the largest battle which started with a French Corps facing off against a larger Prussian armeekorps. During the battle which started at 07:00 and ended at 19:00, both sides received steady reinforcements. The French in the form of an additional corps each of infantry and cavalry. The Prussians received an additional Prussian armeekorps and just before nightfall a British infantry corps with some attached cavalry arrived. The photo to the left shows the early action with the French pressing to gain the Prussian side of the stream with both sides doing a bit of 'pinwheel of death' maneuvering. The photos below show action late in the day just before the British reinforcements arrived.

The campaign produced a good evening of gaming but at the conclusion the French decided that the uneven odds were too much to overcome so we called the campaign at this point with hopes to take another swing at it at a later time.

Skirmish Movement Trays

2011-08-05T07:51:00.000-04:00

My friend Gordon is working on a WWI in Africa skirmish game in 28mm. He has figures individually mounted on fender washers and wanted some movement trays made to match the washer bases. These are two samples I worked up last night. They're staggered formation echelon right and echelon left. They're made to work with Gordon's bases, but the plywood cut outs pictured below on the left could be used for figure bases instead of the washers as well.

These will need to be slightly modified. I got a little over zealous when I was doing the copy-and-paste for the individual figures and ended up with 12-man units instead of 10-man. I'll drop two holes and make up a few more for Gordon with 10 holes in them.

If I receive interest in these I may list them for sale on my website. I can also do custom unit sizes, shapes and base sizes. Just email me to ask.

More Prussian Napoleonics

2011-08-03T17:24:00.003-04:00

We're starting up an 1815 peninsular campaign. When the Prussian commander, Ed, asked if I would be willing to be 2iC for the Prussian army I jumped at the chance to get to use my new Prussian army on the tabletop. When Ed and I divided up the OB we found that between us we were still short some troops. Since most of the shortcomings were due to my army being built around the Dennewitz OB, and not the 1815 organization, I decided to fill in some of the gaps. These are more of GAJO's grade 7 painted Napoleonic figures.

Included are a bunch of artillery stands: Heavy, field and horse (denoted with 3, 2 and 1 crew respectively) and three stands of Landwehr infantry. I'm still short a few stands of Reserve infantry, but GAJO was out of these so I'll most likely have to paint my own down the road. Until then I may borrow a couple of stands from another club mate.

Also while I was ordering I picked up one unit of French Empress Dragoons for my French guard.

North Africa Campaign (2)

2011-07-29T12:31:00.002-04:00

Last night I stopped by Adler hobby to drop off some laser-cut bases I made for Adam, pick up some unpainted, figures I bought from Keith and to pick up my copy of the Black Powder rulebook. While I was there I participated in another game in the North Africa campaign we're playing there. My contribution was my light armor squadron. Chris brought his infantry company which included three Matilda tanks and an eight gun artillery battery.

We deployed with Chris on the left facing Gordon's Italian armor swarm supported by some German Stug G tanks. Chris was reinforced with our firestorm unit - my Deacon 6-LB self-propelled ATGs. On the right my armor faced against Adam's Fallschirmjäger infantry rhich was reinforced by some 8-rad armored cars, mortars and an 88 which Adam placed opposite Chris' Matilda tanks.

Chris held off Gordon's tidal wave of light tanks although he lost the Decaons and an both infantry platoons, one of which got blown up in their trucks by Adam's Infantry. I lost one platoon of Crusader II tanks which got destroyed trying to assault Adam's panzerknacker-armed infantry. The Germans lost Adam's armored cars, two platoons of Gordon's tanks. By the time we called it my tanks had reached our objective and it was a matter of time before they would capture it. On the other side Gordon's assault faltered as he started to run out of tanks in the face of the nearly indestructible Matildas. It was a good game, and I finally got my first win with my British armor.

Chris finished up the guns for his 8-gun battery of British 25-lb artillery. While I was taking photos of it Chris asked me to snap a couple photos of his Matildas.

Northern Conspiracy Game Night - July 2011

2011-07-20T17:09:00.000-04:00

This past Friday we had our monthly club game night. Since it was a summer month we had two games scheduled instead of the normal three we put on during colder months. Pictured on the left is Michael the game master for one of the two games: Viking Dawn. This local version of the megga-game from this past year's Huzzah! convention. Michael ran this game with the help of the other club members who participated in the Huzzah! game as part of our club's participation in the convention event. This large game featured plenty of Vikings, Saxons, long boats, cogs, civilians, livestock and other valuables to plunder! I didn't play in the game but everyone seemed to have boatloads of fun.

The other game was a battle of the bulge WWII game run by club member Charlie (pictured below) using 15mm figures and Battlefront rules. I played one of the three attacking German commands with a small infantry contingent and four Stug assault guns. The Stugs fared well against the American's Sherman tanks, but were unable to dislodge the stubborn paratroopers defending the small town. In the end time ran out with the Americans firmly holding both objectives. Good game by them. They took heavy losses in their armor assets but the Airborne held firm.

Caribbean

2011-07-10T14:26:00.001-04:00

Saturday at Adler we had a smaller than normal turn out due to Historicon being this weekend and it being a very nice day outside. Adam continued to use the day as a modeling day flocking the bases of a bunch of his 7YW figures. Gordon, Eric and I played a game of Caribbean.

Caribbean is a pure beer-and-pretzels game of piracy in the Caribbean. You play the role of a European merchant company who controls several ports in the area. Your goal is to get the local pirates to deliver their 'booty' to your ports. To accomplish this goal you bribe them with barrels of rum of course! Early on I ran off with a small lead due to a couple of clever steals of cargo. Gordon was close on my heals with Eric a distant third....but he was scheming a plan. During the mid game Eric climbed back into contention and in the final few turns he pushed Gordon and I down to 2nd and 3rd place with a couple of great cargo steals in the last two turns. Well played.

Thursday night at Adler Hobby & Bee Template

2011-07-08T00:04:00.001-04:00

With so many people on vacation this week the Thursday night Adler Hobby gaming group decided to have a modeling night instead of a gaming night. Adam was painting some 15mm 18th century Russians (Seven Years War I believe) and re-basing some of his other 7YW figures. Chris was painting a FOW British 25 lb. battery including gunners and Gordon was working on his 28mm WWI desert figures for his 'Battle of the Bees' scenario.

For my contribution I brought a couple new 'Bee Templates' for Gordon to use in his game. The templates were made on my laser and will represent the swarms of bees that plagued the battlefield. The bee swarms will move randomly about the table and cause havoc for any troops who are unlucky enough to be 'swarmed'. If you're interested in a bee template or similar custom laser-cut gaming aids, feel free to contact me at my business site, Wright Brothers R/C and Engraving.

While people painted we talked about various things and had a great relaxing evening.

National Civil War Museum

2011-07-04T16:20:00.001-04:00

One of the great things about vacationing in an RV is the fact that you can take side trips on a moment's notice when the mood hits you. During one afternoon of our trip it was particularly hot so instead of going to Hershey park for another day we took a drive to neighboring Harrisburg, PA to visit the National Civil War Museum. This Smithsonian affiliated museum is not something you'd stumble upon, but is well worth the trip to visit. They have a well organized and wonderfully presented collection of artifacts. The self-led tour of the museum is punctuated with many video presentations including a movie in a small theater. There are two additional galleries with temporary exhibits which are rotated periodically. During our visit these featured an exhibit on animals in the Civil war and an exhibit on the first year of the war in time for the 150th anniversary. Outdoors there are several artillery pieces on exhibit. Our visit took a couple of hours, but could have easily taken twice that time had we wished.

Of particular note for wargamers are two excellent dioramas. One of Rohrbach bridge at Antietam (in 25mm) seen below on the left, and one of the "Hornets Nest" at Shiloh (in 40mm) seen below on the right.

Off on Holiday!

2011-06-21T08:37:00.001-04:00

My wife and I are off for a long overdue and well needed holiday in our RV motorhome. We'll be starting off in Carslile, PA by attending the Polecat/Soaring Circuits 2K11 Open Soar sailplane contest.

After that we're heading to Hershey, PA, the sweetest town on earth. While there we'll be visiting Hershey Park, Hershey Chocolate World and the Hershey Gardens with their excellent butterfly aviary.

On the way out of PA we'll also be stopping for a day at Dorney Park. Hershey Park and Dorney Park hold some of the country's classic park ride treasures including between the two of them four carousels (my wife's favorite) and two of the few remaining still operating models of the turn of the century classic ride, "The Whip". Strangely I only know of four copies of the ride currently operating and they're all in Pennsylvania: Hershey Park, Dorney Park, Knobles Park and Kennywood Park. I'm sure there are others that I don't know about.

We'll be back home around the 4th of July. Until then the blog will most likely go dark.

North Africa - Light Armoured Squadron (2)

2011-06-14T08:00:00.002-04:00

This is the second combat platoon for my British North Africa light armored squadron. It's a platoon of three Crusader II tanks. These are painted up similarly to my first combat platoon in two-color disruptive pattern.

I decided to go with a full platoon of three Crusader II tanks after reading up on various design methodologies for this army list. Most of the posts on the FOW forums indicate that people like to use this list as a swarming light tank list. The Crusader II tanks with their "Tally Ho!" rule, which allows them to fire at full rate of fire on the move, are the workhorse of this tactic. If I'm going to play the list like the 'pros' do I'll at least have to build it like they do. This platoon is the start of that effort. My other platoon with one Crusader II and two Crusader III tanks is still a good asset with the up-gunned Crusader III tanks able to add some punch to an otherwise featherweight hitter. Eventually I may mix the platoons as one Crusader III and two Crusader II tanks per platoon. We'll see how it goes.

Next up on the painting table is a battery of British 25-lb artillery to go with this company.

North Africa Campaign (1)

2011-06-13T13:41:00.000-04:00

Saturday I played a Flames of War game with Eric at Adler hobby as part of our continuing North Africa campaign. I brought my British armour and Eric pushed Gordon's Italian armour company. On paper I thought I was in good position to carry extra armour weight against the lightly armoured Italian tanks. No plan survives contact with the enemy as they say. Once we selected our Firestorm units things turned the other way around. I was given an extra unit comprised of all things, Italian M14/41 tanks. Eric drew a unit of three Shermans IIs.

I underestimated how potent the Shermans would be and committed two platoons of Crusaders to counter them: two Crusader III tanks and four Crusader II tanks. In the middle I placed my HQ and Grants to press the objective against Eric's platoon of Italian tanks. On the left my 'captured' Italian tanks faced off against Eric's tanks.

Things went fairly well for me early with me knocking out Eric's AA trucks. Then I shot my Crusader II tanks against the Shermans. A quick look at the table showed me that to my 2-lb main guns the Shermans might as well be King Tigers. I couldn't penetrate them. My two Crusader III tanks with their 6-lb guns had a better chance, but were quickly knocked out before they could be brought to bear on the captured Sherman tanks in Italian service.

In the middle combined fire from the Grants and some Hurricane air support brought Eric's battery close to the breaking point but they passed morale with a single gun left. Similarly Eric's battered tank platoon on his right held tough long enough for his Shermans to knock out my HQ tanks and all three Grants.

Without a company commander my company was forced to withdraw losing 3-4. This was a close-fought game with Eric's three Firestorm Shermans causing all but one of my company's casualties.

I think my force is going to have similar trouble with Panzer IV and Tiger forces as it did with the Shermans. I think I had best figure out a solution for this challenge or I'm going to be in trouble. Good thing for me I have some 25-Lb artillery on the painting table!

ACW Re-basing Project (2)

2011-06-07T09:30:00.002-04:00

This is the final instalment of my 15mm ACW re-basing project. I've now fully converted all of my Fire & Fury lead to Volley & Bayonet basing. The Union figures consist of a dozen artillery bases of various types from smooth bore field guns all the way to siege mortars, a brigade of infantry and a regiment of dismounted cavalry. The latter includes a horse holder on the stand and is mounted as a linear infantry stand representing the less dense formation dismounted cavalry adopted compared to infantry brigades.

Below are the confederates. They're comprised of four artillery stands, three infantry brigades and four dismounted cavalry stands.

This completes another of my goals for 2011. In order to motivate myself to get this one done, I put the box containing the last of the un-based figures on my painting table. Each time I wanted to do a different project I had to move this one out of the way. Eventually I got tired of moving the box each time and got the project finished. Next up is another platoon of British Crusader tanks for my WWII British North Africa armoured force. Maybe when I finish that I'll look into working on finishing up my Seleucid FOG army which was goal #3 on my January list.

British Sherman II

2011-06-02T16:59:00.002-04:00

This is a British Sherman II for use in one of my heavy armour platoons. It will be substituted as the command tank with a couple of Grant tanks as the rest of the platoon. I can have whole platoons of Shermans if I like, but honestly I like the Lee's semi-indirect fire rule and multiple guns a lot. Using a single Sherman gives me a little more punch when I have a few extra points to spend.

The cammo scheme is two-color grey over desert sand. I used the grey to simulate scale 'dirty black'. I just can't bring myself to imagine black staying true black in the desert. I found this scheme in the same book that I found my Grant cammo scheme. It looked very striking with the high-contrast stripe on the side of the tank so I thought I'd use it. Since the Shermans were mixed into units as they arrived, having two different cammo schemes within a platoon is fairly historical.

Paint and detailing techniques are the same as I've used on my other British desert tanks. I did leave the ammo tin for the .50 cal in US OD-green under the rationale that they probably wouldn't have re-painted them in dessert sand.

Deacons

2011-06-01T11:50:00.000-04:00

There aren't a lot of support options for British tanks in the North Africa campaign. With a horde of tanks you really don't need a lot. This is one platoon I couldn't resist. Although 2lb and 6lb portee AT guns were much more prevalent, I couldn't resist the very 'cool' looking models of the Deacons. These armored 6lb AT guns have more armor on their sides and rear than they do on their front! The photo below on the left is the view my opponents will most likely see during a game.

I mounted the gun mechanism with rare-earth magnets allowing them to pivot and also be removed for storage if desired. For color scheme I had two choices: the very bland desert sand color, or the factory-applied 'Mickey Mouse' cammo scheme. I couldn't find any evidence that the more colorful scheme was used in combat, and it's a terrible pain in the buttocks to paint so I opted for the more plain scheme. Desert rats decals were added to the fenders and rear of the vehicles, again without photographic evidence of their use on the Deacons. Without them the would have looked just too plain.

As for use in game, these hit a lot harder than my 2lb-armed Crusader II tanks but are a lot less armored. They do have the 'tip and run' rule allowing them a short move away from the enemy after firing which might help them conceal themselves. At a similar point value to three Crusader II tanks I'll probably reserve the use of these for 1750 point lists and leave them in the box for 850 point games.

Dominion

2011-05-31T15:33:00.000-04:00

Saturday Jerry, Gordon and I played a game of Dominion at Adler Hobby instead of playing Flames of War. I brought the non-collectible card game as a backup game in case we didn't get enough players to play miniatures. As luck would have it we didn't so we played a three player game.

I had only played the game once before, but with that experience and owning the game I was able to struggle through re-learning it myself and teaching Jerry and Gordon. Within a few turns we were all in the swing of things and playing and having fun.

I tried the only strategy I knew, the one I used before which was to choose cards that allowed my deck to draw a lot of times each turn. The theory was cycling through my deck would get me to the coin cards to buy lots of VP cards. Well that was the theory. Jerry went for a balanced deck design with a little bit of everything except militia, which he had a few more than the rest of us had. Gordon went for a lean and mean deck with nothing but coins and VP cards. In the end this was a winning move with Gordon ending up with 48 victory points while Jerry and I were both in the mid 30s. Good win Gordon....I want a re-match! Fun game and a great alternative when you have an odd number of players.

Dennewitz Lite - Order of Battle

2011-05-27T15:15:00.003-04:00

I had a request to share the OB I used for my Dennewitz Lite scenario. If you'd like you can download it here. I'm not sure I'd consider this OB tuned fully yet. The allies need to have their artillery reduced a bit more and at least two of the French cavalry brigades that were removed need to be returned. If this is done I think things will be very close to balanced for a meeting engagement fight.

The only other thing that's slightly un-balancing is the Allies start on the side of the table with the defensible river & stream. This might be mitigated by having the armies fight on the battlefield from east to west instead of north to south. Either that or shift the battlefield a mile to the south so the rivers are just off the table.

Let me know if you give it a go! I most likely will be giving this another try with the modifications I mentioned.

Dennewitz Lite & Game Day

2011-05-23T09:26:00.008-04:00

Saturday our club held it's monthly event. Instead of the usual Friday night, this month we had a day long event with two gaming periods. This was a theme day covering the Wars of France throughout history. With the weather breaking for the first good day of the springtime here in New Hampshire we had fewer attendees than expected, but we still had four great games run and played and everyone seemed to have a good day.

My contribution was a re-play of my previously run Dennewitz game. This version was a what-if scenario using portions of each force using the hypothetical assumption that Napoleon allotted less troops to the push towards Berlin and similarly the allies were able to muster only a portion of their historical defending force. This resulted in similarly sized armies and a game I hoped would complete in under three hours.

Below are the players. On the left, the French, Dave and Ed. On the right are Bob and Kevin. Above the starting positions after each team deployed their forces during the 'night' turn.

During the opening moves the Prusso-Russian force was able to press forward into the town in the middle of the table. This key terrain was part of the scenario victory conditions. The French pressed forward with a solid line of infantry and guns to assault the town, but as the battle progressed the allies brought up more and more reinforcements while relying on the stream on their left to protect their weak flank. During the final turns a large-scale morale break in the French lines was experienced due to their prolonged close proximity of the Allied gun cannister shot, while the Allies remained steady under similar pressure. The Prussian cavalry was able to capitalize on this morale break and seal the fate for the French. Well played by both sides. I think I will need to adjust the OB even a bit more for a fast game and while doing so further reduce the allied artillery to bring it more in line with what the French have.

Earlier in the day I played in Ed's MASSIVE 6mm Nine Year's War (1698-1697 French vs Anglo-allied army) while several others played in Earl's award winning (at Huzzah!) French & Indian war skirmish game in 28mm.

While my Dennewitz game was being run, Michael ran a medieval castle skirmish game using his own rules, "Have fun storming the castle lads". In the photo are two guests I brought, Gordon (left) and Eric (right). Some may recognize them from my Adler Hobby Thursday night posts.

More photos of the games are available on the Northern Conspiracy's photo gallery page.

Tabletop Thursdays

2011-05-20T10:41:00.003-04:00

Last night I stopped by Adler hobby for their 'Tabletop Thursday' game night. I don't usually make the long drive on a work night, but I had some items to give to one of the Thursday regulars so I made the trip. Adam and I tried to play an 850-point North Africa FOW game. I used my British armor, Adam used a German armor force with attached Fallschirmjägers on motorcycles. I was suspicious of using any scenario other than 'Free for All' with such a low point total, but we gave it a go. We rolled 'Cauldron' . With three platoons in my force two started off board and one started in ambush. That gave me a single platoon and my HQ to protect the center of the board from all sides. Adam had four platoons thanks to some creative kamphgrouping which gave him two platoons on board to start.

In my first turn I failed to get reserves, and with an 88 and a platoon of infantry on board I decided to smoke the 88 with my HQ tanks and assault the infantry. I managed to kill the only stand I could reach in my assault. In Adam's turn he received reinforcements, used the platoon of newly arrived tanks and his HQ to kill my two HQ tanks. Game over. I had nothing that could reach the objectives to contest them after Adam would capture them the next turn. Lesson learned: trying to roll for scenarios for 850 points will give you some unplayable games. Play free for all or pick a scenario both players can agree upon. I don't think either Adam or myself would have picked cauldron with such small forces.

After that I dropped into a game of Wings of War that was being played. Since the two players were learning the rules they were doing a mission against some observation balloons and some 'Archie'. I rolled in with a Spad XIII to try to spoil their raid. I was able to shoot down one Albatros D.Va before getting gunned down by a Halberstadt CII's tail gunner. I think maybe Wings of War has the tail gunners a bit over powered for my tastes, but still a fun game. Maybe if there is a two seater on each side it will balance things out a bit more.

Meanwhile while we were dog fighting over the trenches of WWI, Adam and Chris were playing another game of FOW. Chris brought his newly painted Matilda company. I took a few photos of Chris' Matildas which were beautifully painted with full Caunter cammo scheme and hand-enscribed tank names using a technical pen. Awesome stuff.

British Heavy Armoured Platoon

2011-05-19T10:06:00.000-04:00

It's been a very busy week this week starting off with getting ready for and attending Huzzah! then working on my laser to make templates for a customer, getting ready to host a game this Saturday at my club's game day and getting ready for Thursday night at Adler hobby by working on my mid-war British armoured squadron.

These are three Grant tanks which will form a heavy armoured platoon for my mid-war British Desert Rats. There are two Grant tanks and one Grant tank with the Lee MG turret. Since these are a support platoon for my light armoured squadron, I decided to paint them up in a scheme that is different from my Crusader tanks. The image below on the left is the scheme I was trying to emulate when painting these tanks up. Since my primer was a good match for the darker tan, I started with that and added the lighter sand colour and the chocolate brown on top. As with my other tanks I 'chipped' the decals with the sponge technique.

The radio aerials are .010" carbon fiber rod. I'm not entirely sure putting them there is accurate. I'm guessing that the mount point I used was actually intended for a turret mounted exterior MG. The mount point looked silly empty so I filled it with the aerials. If people give me too much guff about them I can always remove them later.

British Grenadier Firing Template

2011-05-18T09:44:00.002-04:00

I was contacted last week by a gentleman who plays a lot of British Grenadier who wanted a firing template for the game made from Baltic Birch plywood. Using a sketch that he provided of what he wanted this is what I came up with. It's simple, functional and if you like the look of wood as much as I do you'll also find it ascetically pleasing. This is in it's raw state. After a quick sand with 300-grit paper and a coat of your favourite wood finish it really pops.

If you're interested in buying some, they're available on my business website here: http://www.wrightbrothersrc.com/wargaming/index.htm

If you have any other laser cut or engraved wargaming ideas, I'm always open to new custom work. Just drop me an email!

More Huzzah! Photos

2011-05-16T10:57:00.004-04:00

My friend Mike Paine sent me this link to Rich Wallace's Picasa gallery with a ton of great photos Rich took at Huzzah! this past weekend. Photos 28-32 are of my game. I hope you enjoy them.

Update! Mike has also sent me a link to his Picasa gallery.

Thanks Mike and Rich!

Cedar Mountain at Huzzah!

2011-05-15T08:33:00.005-04:00

Yesterday I ran my Cedar Mountain ACW V&B game at the Huzzah! convention. I was hoping for five players, but ended up with four, which is plenty for this small scenario.

This scenario was designed to be able to be played to completion in about two to two and a half hours. Readers of the blog will recognize it from my previous posts. The scenario starts off at 10:00 as both armies are about to enter general battle. The photo above is a couple of turns into the game after each army has had a chance to advance into position. Possession of the cross roads is the goal for each army with the smaller and poorer quality Union army having the advantage of being able to reach the crossroads first and defend them. As the game starts everything is at a tipping point. Usually the army that gains early successes is able to press those to a significant victory. Such was the case with this game.

Below, photos of the players. On the left the Union including Conspirator Robert and Adler Hobby regular Keith. On the right the Union players who's names I've shamefully forgotten - my sincere apologies.

The game started out with an across the board attack by the Confederates. With only eight turns until darkness they felt significant pressure to take the crossroads from the smaller Union force. Unfortunately for the Confederates their attacks against the center resulted in several of their brigades being turned back in rout. On each flank they enjoyed some success which the Union was forced to react to. With the center no longer in jeopardy the Union was able to press there while deploying their dismounted cavalry and reserve artillery to the flanks solidifying their position. The Confederates pressed home several additional attacks, but with their numbers dwindling their fate was sealed. The battle was concluded two hours before darkness (game time) with the Confederates lacking the troops to continue to press the crossroads. A very a historical victory for the Union.

I'd like to thank everyone for playing the game. It was a fun one to run particularly because all of the players that participated. I hope to game with you all again.

For those who haven't gone to Huzzah! yet, you're missing a real gem. There seem to be plenty of great games to play and from what I can see getting into the game of your choice was quite easy as they weren't over booked. The vendor support was excellent with plenty of places to spend your money and lots of selection. Good fun to be had. Portland is only an hour north of Boston and has great shopping and dining possibilities, so a dual-purpose trip with the Mrs. isn't out of the question either.

Huzzah! 2011

2011-05-10T09:47:00.001-04:00

Huzzah! is this weekend. I'll be running my Cedar Mountain game during the Saturday Morning session. This is a historical ACW game using the Volley & Bayonet rule set. I designed it to be able to be played to completion in about two hours. With a standard three hour convention time period that will give me plenty of time to teach the rules without cutting into playing time. Hopefully the players who register for the game will appreciate that and will also enjoy the game. Those who like Volley & Bayonet should also look for fellow Northern Conspirator John Magnifico's Leipzig game during the Saturday afternoon session.

Saturday my friend Gordon from Adler hobby will be running some FOW learning games using his "Train Raid" scenario that we play tested last month. It's a really fun game and a great way to learn Flames of War. Sunday Gordon is running a two-period team FOW tournament. It's an interesting format and should make for some fun gaming.

If you're going to Huzzah! stop by my game and say hi. I always like meeting people who read my blog.

North Africa - Light Armoured Squadron - HQ and Combat Platoon

2011-05-09T15:00:00.000-04:00

This is the HQ and first combat platoon for my Light Armoured Squadron. The HQ is composed of two Crusader II CS tanks. The combat platoon has a commander mounted in a Crusader II tank and two Crusader III tanks.

I chose to start with a Light Armoured Squadron, although eventually I'll be able to also field a Heavy Armoured Squadron and the Death and Glory squadron using almost all of the same figures. This was one of the things that made the British armor list so appealing to me when I selected them. The other is I like the looks of the Crusader tanks a lot. They look so modern. I also plan to have heavy armor support in the form of US-made Grant and Sherman tanks.

For the crusader tanks I've chosen the two-color camouflage scheme similar to what Battlefront uses on their sample images in their books. I like this look a lot on these tanks and I was able to find additional references supporting Battlefront's scheme. The tanks are base coated with Iraqi sand over a sand colored primer. The second color is standard chocolate brown. A homemade sepia wash highlights the panel lines followed by a final dry-brush of slightly lightened Iraqi sand. I think they look suitably dirty - a quality that I'm not always good at reproducing. The chocolate brown panels and unit markings were 'chipped' using the same sponge technique I used on my scout patrol. Again I assumed that the chocolate brown, when chipped, would show the sand base coat through. The CinC gets an exposed commander while the 2iC gets an aerial recognition roundel on his turret. The latter might be a bit of creative license on my part, but I don't believe it's far off.

In terms of combat roles, the combat platoon gives me a good solid light/medium tank asset. Decent armor, decent gun. Nothing that's going to stop a tiger, but just about everything else is a suitable target for these. The command tanks are Crusader II CS tanks. They can use their gun as a direct-fire AT asset, but their real role will be to fire smoke and smoke bombardments. They'll be what I use to silence those pesky 88s, Italian 90mm AT guns, and to slow down the occasional tiger's fire so I can hopefully out flank it.