German Armour Refit

As mentioned, I have finished a few pieces of German armour...

What can I say, the Tiger. This is probably one of my favourite models in my collection. It's not just the vehicle, but the way the tank riders are interacting on the diorama. I always enjoy playing with this model, even though it hasn't always lived up to wargames reputation.

This model is a favourite purchase. Myself and some friends went up to Ilkley, clutching a wad of notes, wanting to buy some Flames of War miniatures (when it wasn't popular). Sadly, the shop no longer remains, but this model does...

This model was one of the first WWII miniatures I bought. Can't quite remember the manufacturer, I think it's Qualiticast. I always like playing with lightly armoured kit, as it is less dominating in a game.

A Stug IIIG. If armour is on the board, there's usually a Stug in action.

Finally, a PzIVH to round off this collection. Skytrex kits are a big part of the kits you can find in my draws. Well, that's it for now, not sure which things I'll do next - but there's certainly a lot of choice!

 

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Latest Scifi recruits

In the post came the latest purchase from EBay; £41 worth of miniatures for £15 including postage. A bargain as I can find a use for all the bits and bobs. Not sure when I will get round to painting them though.

 

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Eyes and ears

More Yanks; this time, it's the lighter stuff. You can't beat lots of jeeps! The rules I want to check out state that recon is important, let's hope the plethora of jeeps makes this a reality.

Also finished the workhorse anti guns - 57mm s.

Might do some German armour next.

 

 

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Force Agenda - ongoing review

Played the scenario described in the posting related to 'Commlink Five'. After some thoughtful activity, and lively discussion with Stew, there have been some amendments to the rules. Whilst their context means very little to you folks reading this posting, the kinds of changes might...

V1.2 - Additions and changes

• changed activation points organisation/usage to a single action track, where the player with the highest number of activation points, activates a unit. When their activation point value drops BELOW the opponents, then the opponent then gets to activate their units.
• For Bugs, changed the ripper stat for combat from 2 blues to a white and a black.
• For Bugs, Added a swarm skill to bugs; for each adjacent bug to a target in close combat, add a black dice to the total attack dice.
• For bugs, changed the dice rolled for the number of hits a bug may have. Instead of using standard dice, use blog dice instead, e.g. Bio1 roll 1 black dice, number of hits is the amount of hits a bug can take added to 1.
• Armour review! Added an additional symbol to the dice to represent Armour saves to remove rolling a standard D6. Now a yellow has 1 Armour symbol dice face, white 2 Armour symbol dice faces,blue 3 Armour dice symbol faces, red 4 Armour dice symbol faces. Now penetration will remove an Armour save dice from a target. For infantry, this means potentially losing a save; for vehicles, they will roll multiple Armour dice as a save, therefore the penetration trait will reduce Armour effectiveness by removing dice.
• Élan re-activation of a unit is limited to it's quality. White 1 extra activation, blue 2 activations and Red three extra activations.

It's quite interesting how changes occur when playing through the course of a game; it's only when playtesting, do things crop up that you had not considered before. These problems can lead to potentially radical changes to how you initially perceived the flow of the game going. One thing I was quite pleased to change was the elimination of different types of dice (mix of my own dice and D6s). Now the game runs from my dice alone, however I did need to add an additional symbol to the dice to represent Armour. It's always a dilemma of adding extra complexity if it impacts upon the speed and playability of a game. Hopefully, I've struck the right balance; only several more playtests will tell...

 

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First German repaints

Just finished the first batch of Germans. I'm now in a position to try a simple scenario for 'Look Sarge No Charts WWII'. Game will work even better if my blank dice arrive in the post; I've got the labels to stick onto them...

 

 

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More G.I.s...

 

Just a quick posting. Continuing to 're-fit' some of my WWII collection. Originally painted these about 10 years ago (well, before Wills was born I think). It's surprising how just picking up one or two new techniques can allow you to improve on what went before. Some fresh Vallejo colors, fresh inks and weathering powders have encouraged me to enjoy re-touching these figures and vehicles. Let's see how far I get, as the collection is quite considerable!!!

 

 

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What's happened to Comlink Five?

Having done a lot of brushwork, it's time to have a go at pushing the mini's around a bit. I want to test out the bugs so I have designed a quick scenario to see how they play...

Comlink 5 hasn't made it's duty roster sit reps for three days. Maybe it's just the recently rough weather systems, disrupting signals. But to be on the safe side, the local CDF adjutant has decided to send out a patrol, just to check that all is well.

CDF forces (black entry (8 linked squares)

4 sections comprising of 4 troopers and a SAW gunner

2 sniper teams

1 Atak Trak

Scenario objective - spend 5 impetus points in each building to investigate situation

Initiative - 3 cards

Bug forces (red entry, random position, may bring on D4 bugs per turn)

15 Ripper bugs

1 shredder bug

Scenario objective - kill the troopers!

Initiative 3 cards

 

The first few turns the bugs decided to lay in wait, not using their activation points. The CDF marched on in column, headed and footed by sniper teams, with a solid firebase of the Attak Trak in the centre.

As the human chain began to become a little stretched, and the Atak Trak seemed vulnerable, the bugs struck out; two rippers crashed through the trees. One struck the Trak and bounced, the other was destroyed under a hail of close combat fire (4 hits), even it's armour couldn't deflect the blows...

The next few turns saw the CDF advancing and firing as they entered and searched two of the three buildings. The Bugs came on from all three sides in ones and twos. They vainly attempted to close assault the troopers, however they were not throwing enough dice (bugs - 2 blue, humans - 5 white). Something to reflect upon later...

The CDF continue to progress with a section entering the third building and killing rippers at a steady rate (10 twitching carcasses). Then the shredder decided to make an appearance. On an initiative card of 10, the shredder cleared the third building of all but one CDF trooper through several assaults. The CDF attempted to deal with the threat by throwing some firepower in from the Atak Trak. Shots bounced of the shredder's tougher carapace, it responded by closing the distance and destroying the vehicle through 2 rounds of close combat with the play of the next initiative card.

Sensing the urgency, the CDF upped their pace, finished observing two of the three buildings, and killed two more rippers. Visciously, the shredder was to have it's day! Through two rounds of card play, a ripper took apart a section standing by the comm tower, whilst the shredder destroyed the CDF section in the central building.

The game was halted at this stage, as my nephew wanted to play pool on the pool table the game was sitting on!!! However, I felt I had learnt enough from this playthrough.

Thoughts about the game:

The rippers aren't strong enough in close combat against full strength sections. I either need to add some ranged bugs, or change one of the blue attack dice to a black dice. This certainly worked for the shredder with a red and black dice.

I might try this scenario with Daz and Stew and see how it pans out.

 

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Welcome to the Heavyweight.

There are some really nice minis related to the Dust games system. A few years back I bought the first boxed starter set for Will and painted them up. He liked the models but was not inspired by the rules. As the system became well supported by Fantasy Flight, out came the Russians!!! I really liked their walkers as they had that rough, tough but rugged appearance. The weapons are large and cumbersome, but simplistically effective. As with several Scifi models, I thought that the walkers could make a scale shift.

I bought, what I thought was, three walkers (see the picture above) - Doh!!! This turned out to be quite an expensive purchase with only one model in the box, however I still like the kit; a good job I suppose...

This model is going to be used for my Marauders. When a tough job needs doing, it's time to bring out the big guns...as long as the price is right!

At least the model came with multiple arms, so, with the use of neodymium magnets, I can use the walker in several configurations. The kit comes already under coated so it was straight to the inks, and then a khaki drybrush.

I used the stat card to look at the paint scheme used. I tried using an industrial grey weathering powder in the centre of each of the large surface areas (armour plates, legs, torso). Then it was on to my usually track brown, black smoke, rust and dry mud powders.

The final look is a little dull, but I wanted the kit to look well used and slightly worn out - money is tight after all! In the scenic pictures are two other walkers from the AT-43 range; also Russian, and a nice present given from Bruno. The style fits nicely...quite a nice little force - if you can afford them...

 

 

 

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Yet another distraction

 

This one might seem another off-centre selection, however here are some modern vehicles refurbished from EBay. I've always liked the shape of the M1 Abrams; maybe it's because, like Wills suggested, it's got the feel of a Tiger, with simple, clean, angular lines eluding to the machine's effectiveness.

 

The idea for these vehicles is to supplement my human forces to fight against the machine, more specifically, my terminators. There is also a good overlap as I have quite a collection of AK47 figures and vehicles which I could use for 'Force on Force' ( and they were also an EBay bargain!)

Most of the work had been done for me, as the vehicles were undercoated and inked. There were some paint chippings yet these were easily masked with my inking and drybrushing. The models are QRF; some of the castingQ isn't as crisp as could be hoped for, but they still provide the relevant impact on the table. Now, must see how they could fit into a Modern African scenario...

 

 

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Time for a little change...

You know how it is, sometimes you just need a little change...after surfing the net I came across a set of rules called 'look Sarge, No Charts WWII'. The reason they caught my attention is that they use special dice to control the action. After a little more research, I decided to buy the rules form RPGNow.

Looking through the rules give me pause to think about my current WWII figure collection and how they are based. I'd previously based them on circles as I was using them on hexes, and quite liked their appearance. That was a while ago, and I must say that Imhave caught the 'Impetus ' bug of larger bases. After considering the new rules and my hexes, I decided to try a test bed with a few 15mm G.I. figures, here is the result:

Whilst basing the figs, I couldn't resist a little touching up too. The figures are on 3 inch by 1 1/2 inch bases. This allows two bases to be placed into a Hexon hex. Let me know in the comments section which you prefer, the 'before' or 'after'.

Talking of taking a little change, Wills just decided to draw some Simpsons characters, so I suppose I'm not the only one who likes to have a little break...

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