Commonwealth 2 Pounder AT Platoon

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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 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

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

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.