FoW US Armored Company

So,

Way back in in August of 2010, I started my second Flames of War army, a US Armored Company. I took the plunge and purchased a ton of Old Glory Command Decision vehicles. Recently I picked up two boxes of the Plastic Soldier Sherman Tank kits.

For those who have not bought these awesome kits, I highly recommend them and the cost is perfect! (5 tanks for $30.00!) I got the M4A2 kit and M4A1 kits.


Once again these kits are perfect for building a quick force for very little money. While at my local shop I took a look at the price of the FoW tanks and I almost fell over, Plastic Soldier company will be getting a lot more money from me with there kits.

Now onto the US force I have been working on for about a year now. Now I approached building this force I went with a historical bent. You see when I first started this force I was reading a great book called Army at Dawn, which is about the US involvement in North Africa in WW2. There is a great part in the book that talks about how when the US force landed in North Africa they could not get the Sherman tanks out of the hold of the transport ships. The only tanks that hit the African coast first were light tanks.

So I decided to do M3A1 Stuarts as the main back bone of the army. So here is two Combat platoons of 5 M3A1's and the HQ with two Stuarts as well. These are all from Old Glory and are great little models with a lot of character.

To give the force some punch, I added in 5 M3 Lees with the shorter 75mm guns. These are from Old Glory as well.

Now we have the Sherman tanks from Plastic Soldier and will only be added at a later date to the list. These models are the M4A1 kits.


Here are the other Plastic Soldier kits, the M4A2 kits which like the other Sherman tanks will be added later.

Next up is my artillery command, Forward Observers and Staff teams. All the models are from Old Glory.

For my artillery I went with T19's which are going to be tough to play in the game do to the Awkward layout, meaning they can only move or shoot. So while they will be tough to play, it makes the force very historical. Once again these are from Old Glory as well.


Last up is some Anti-tank platoons, these are M3 75mm GMC half tracks. This unit is not done yet because I still have to finish painting 3 jeeps and the command stands for the unit. These are also from Old Glory.
Now this past weekend I got to get this force out onto the table against Robs Fallshirmjagers
that he is working on. Well I would like to say the US won, but it was a draw, which is not bad and is not a loss. Playing a all tank army for FoW is going to be tough and it is very different from a combined arms army. I am happy with how it is looking and is nice to learn how to play some different.

So there you go...

TK

Pulp Time!

So,

For a long time I have been interested in doing some Pulp gaming and have been acquiring Pulp figures for a few years now. My particular interest has been to do some Egyptian gaming, or more to the point, some sort of game using Mummy's!

Well thanks to my good buddy Jerry of Jerry's Big Picture and a discussion we had last week I have started planning on doing a few games. Well our discussion lead to me coming up with a basic storyline and what characters I would develop for the game.

Next up would be the rules, this is something I have been wrestling with for years (see my other blog The Pulp Project ). Well I have decided that I am going to adapt the Lord of the Rings rules for a set of rules. The LotR rules or the Legends rules have enough variety that I am looking for and I am most familiar with.

So anyway, here are a few pictures of some of the figures that I will be using in the game. I of course will post up here as I work out d=some of the story arc and rules. But without further ado here are the figs (which are a mix of Artizan, Copplestone, West Wind, Blue Moon and a a couple of old Ral Partha figures).















So stay tuned Pulp adventures, there is more to come...

TK

Tanks in the Night!

So on Sunday Jerry came over to play some Flames of War (and also get me sick!, Thanks man!) but we wanted to do a tank battle. You see Jerry and I have both been feeling the same way towards FoW, just sort of uhh towards it. In the last few years I think I have only got in about a dozen games.

So a few days before Jerry came over we were talking about why we do not play FoW more. Basically we had our own reasons which were somewhat the same, so I asked what is that attracted us to FoW? Well that was easy, it was the tanks! So I told Jerry lets just do some tank battles and build a few Tank armies. In fact this Tank idea had me talking with Rob about possibly doing some sort of Krusk battle with all tanks, more on that later.

Well back to this past Sunday, Jerry came over and we busted out some tank on tank action. Jerry Had 3 Sherman's and about 7 M5 Stuarts. I realized that my collection of vehicles would be lacking, I only have a 4 tank Platoon of Panzer II's, a Panzer III platoon and a F2 & F1 Mark IV.

Also this little game let us use my new Desert board that Jerry & I painted up last week, got to tell you, the tanks looked great rolling around on the table. So below are a few pictures from the game and just for the record, I lost to Jerry, of course I did not have the right tanks (come on Panzer II's against Sherman tanks!). All in all it was a fun game and now Jerry & I are looking at adding more tanks to our collections.

TK

It is Finished!

Well,

The Moria Goblins are done! I started the last push on Thursday and I completed all 48 models on Sunday. Now as I said before, my goal was to finish up all of my Goblin models (some of them from the first release of the game!) and now I can say that I have done it!

So to recap the 48 models I had 20 Goblin Archers which you see below.


There were 17 Goblin spearmen.


And there were 6 Goblin Swordsmen with shields.

Here is a shot of all 48 models together finished.

And here is a shot of the whole models completed for the challenge.


So, I took a picture of all of my Goblin collection together, that is 116 total models in the collection! I did not know that I had this many Goblins and it is a nice looking army (too bad I can only field 75 models in most games!) and it gives me many options when I do field the army.

Here are a few close ups of the whole army.



So now, all I have to do is play some various point games (175, 350, 525 & 700). We are all (Rob, Jerry, Mike and Myself) going to get together and try to play through our catch up games to see how the points shake out.

I have to say, that this little challenge was very fun to do. At first some people were worried that they could not stay focused to do this, but in the end we all did a great job of staying focused. And this show just how easy it is to paint up a army over a few months time. I have heard that our little challenge has sparked a few other LotR SBG gamers to do the same sort of thing. Once I here for sure I will post a link to their little challenge.

So there you go, I will post up more photos once we play our catch up games and off course I will let you all know who won and where we went to eat! I hope you guys enjoyed the coverage and I will leave you with one last shot of the whole Moria Goblin Army...
TK

Tera forming in progress

So,

In a previous post you saw the terrain ordered for GitD 2012, well last weekend I dived into some little world building. So where to start? Well I decided that the best place to start would be with the Realm of Battle boards, these are the largest pieces and these would set the tone for what I would need for these in the future.

So before I got started I enlisted a few friends to come over to help, (Rob, Mike & Jerry) but only Jerry could make it over (Mike had to work and Rob was out Jeeping). Also one reason for inviting Jerry was the fact he had just recently painted up his GW hills and I really liked the colors he used. The base color was Krylon Flat Brown, then a heavy dry brush of Americana Honey Brown followed up with Americana Desert Sand color. The rocks were painted with Americana Burnt Sienna and wet brushed with a mix of Burnt Sienna and Desert Sand. The paved stones were dry brushed with Desert Sand and Americana Sand.

The red rocks remind me of Sedona Arizona's red rocks and are a nice color contrast to the rest of the board. Once again a big thanks to Jerry for doing the work on the rocks.


Finally here is a shot of 6 out of the 8 tiles with my cat Gabby inspecting our work!

After letting the boards sit for a few days I realized that I do not have any other terrain for this board! Most of the other terrain ordered were to supplement other GitD boards. Then I noticed the crash lander kit I ordered, it would be perfect for the board (not for LotR but for the Combat Patrol for 40K). So I had nothing to do so I busted out the crashed lander and got started, here are the results. Let me say that this older kit (from the 4th Ed. of 40K) is a great little piece, I have been wanting to paint one up for some time and I really had fun working on this.

Here is the cockpit of the lander.


Here are a couple of the wing sections.


Here is the other wing.


Here is the other engine section with a wing.

Overall the board looks great as well as the crashed lander and I am looking forward to doing more for these boards.

TK

The Final Stretch

So we are all now in the final stretch of our Tale of Four Lord of the Rings Gamers, and it has been a great success. While talking to Rob (Drunkensamurai) the other day, he mentioned that he was amazed that we have all been able to keep this little challenge going. As of yesterday two people (Rob & Jerry) have completed their armies and that leaves Mike & I to catch up before the end of the month.

So today I decided to put together my last 175 points for the challenge. But my motivation with this challenge was for me to paint up all of my Goblins from the start, in which there are more than 700 points worth! So after pointing out my next 175 (which would be 35 more models!), I noticed that I still had 13 models left over out of my collection. So I have decided to paint up all 48 models by the end of the month! I will still only use the 35 models for my list, but now I will have extra options.

So here are 6 more Sword and shield equipped Goblins that will be in the list.


Next up are 17 spear armed goblins, a bunch of these are going into the list as well.


Next up are more bow equipped goblins that I can really use, there are a total of 25 of these little buggers.

Here is the group shot of all 48 models ready to go to the paint desk! So wish me luck since I have less than 2 weeks to get these little guys ready. Once we get to the end of the month, the four of us need to play a few more games (since we have not had time to do them) to see how the armies shake out at the various point levels.

One last thing, you may have noticed that these guys are sitting on desert terrain, well these will be covered in the next post and these are two new boards for GitD 2012. If you remember the last post, I had just gotten in a 4'x8' Realm of Battle table. Well last weekend with the help of Jerry, we got them all painted up, so stay tuned for that coverage and a few other bits I did.

TK