Blitzkrieg!

So,

Next weekend my local shop is holding a Early War Flames of War Tournament and somehow I was talked into playing! Now, Early war is not too popular out here in Phoenix, it seems that most players here are more interested in Late war FoW games. Personally, I prefer Early War since you do not see all the big Cats (Tigers, Panthers) and all the other big armor that the end of the war was famous for. There is something about light tanks that is just more appealing to me.

So with being talked into playing I had to decide what to take, I could take a DAK army and that would only mean having to change out a few units and vehicles. But when I think early war, I think of the fall of France and Poland. Also I just love the early war German tanks (well most German tanks really!). Now some intrepid readers will recall, at the beginning of the year I bought a ton (well more like 7 packs) of Old Glory 38t's. I have always wanted to build a Czech platoon tank list envisioning Rommel leading his 7th Panzer "Ghost Division" across France. So it seemed that I had the models and I just need to get them painted up.

So now the next thing was to build a list, I am not a huge tourney player and I tend to build armies around a historical theme. This leads to a problem since most historical builds for FoW just do not behave like there real counterparts. But I wanted to do the 7th Panzer and I wanted a lot of tanks. So thanks to my buddy Robert pointing me to this awesome blog FOW Lists which allowed me to quickly build a list.

So here is the army above and the list I will be taking below:

Compulsory Czech Panzer Company HQ - 1x CinC Panzer 38(t) B, 1x 2iC Panzer 38(t) B (175 pts)
- Recovery - 1x Sd Kfz 9 (18t) Half-track (5 pts)
- Rommel - 1x Rommel in Panzer 38(t) (must have other units with Panzer 38(t) (130 pts)

Compulsory Czech Panzer Platoon - 1x Command Panzer 38(t) B, 4x Panzer 38(t) B (440 pts)

Czech Panzer Platoon - 1x Command Panzer 38(t) B, 4x Panzer 38(t) B (440 pts)

Czech Panzer Platoon - 1x Command Panzer 38(t) B, 2x Panzer 38(t) B (260 pts)

Air Support - Priority Ju 87B Stuka (Schwerpunkt) (175 pts)


1625 Points, 3 Platoons

So you may notice that this is 16 tanks, all 38t's and Air Support. Will the army do well, I do not know, but I will sure have a blast playing it. It also fits with Rommel's "Ghost Division" with Rommel being so far away from his other support as he raced across France, with only air support being able to help.

So next up was building and painting, I wanted to get the Battlefront Rommel 38t model, but two things held me back, first up, the BF 38t would be a bit larger than the Old Glory model. Secondly I could not find the model anywhere here in the Valley of the Sun. So I improvised and use a Plastic Soldier tank Commander to represent Rommel. Now in fact the only Battle Front items in this army are two German Tank Commander heads I used for my Company Commander and the 2IC, all the rest of the items are non Battlefront models. This event is not using the crazy "Have to use 50% BF Models" ruling that BF came out with a few months ago and even if I win this event (yeah right!), I would not go to a BF National anyway.

You may also notice that I did some extra weathering on these models, I wanted them to look like they were out in the field and actually being used. One thing that bugs me is that many modelers paint up there vehicles so that they looked like they just rolled off the assembly floor. Tanks get dirty, so I weathered them up!

My Stuka is actually from Dragon Models and came pre-painted and all I had to do was mount it on a flying base. Even the flying base is not BF, I used an old GW flying stand and some plastic sheeting to make one that looks like the BF one.

The last thing I needed was some Objective markers. Now I have heard that BF released some large bases with National markings on them. Well I never bought any of those so I decided to do my own using their idea. Well to tie the army all together I decided that I wanted to use the 7th Panzer symbol which was easy to find on the old Internet. But how would I go about this?

Well I was watching a re-run of American Choppers and I noticed how some of the motorcycle painters use plotters and vinyl to mask their designs. So I made a call to a buddy of mine and asked him to cut out the 7th Panzer symbol and I would do the rest. So first I painted a standard Large base with German Yellow from Army Painter. Once dry I applied the vinyl and made sure it was seated down (so it would not bleed under) and then sprayed German Grey from Army Painter over it. I let that dry and them peeled off the vinyl leaving the symbol below in yellow. pretty simple really and I was really excited about it. (I know, I am a dork!)

So there you go, one 1625 Czech Army either ready to dominate the battlefield or to be dominated!

I will post up some after action reports and my personal thoughts on how I did and how my first FoW tourney experience was. If your in the Phoenix area next weekend, stop by Imperial Outpost games to see how the army is doing in person. Wish me luck, Panzers roll out!

TK

Pimp my Rides!

So,

I did these vehicles about a month ago and I am just now getting around to posting them here, better late than never right?

First up a few Old Glory Miniatures half tracks, which are a mix of M2's and M3's (with a jeep thrown in there.

I love Old Glory, too bad if I ever qualify for a FoW National tourney I will never be able to use these. Next up is the remainder of my DAK Fow army. It is funny, but I have not had a chance to put them on the table yet, hopefully that will change soon.

So there you go, better late than ever...

TK

Lessons from the Front!

So,

Robert from Drunken Samurai Painting Blog and I have been playing a lot of games of Flames of War 3rd edition. A few months back Rob talked me into playing some Infantry Aces sort of games (500, 700 & 900 points) and I have to say this is a great way to learn the rules. You can see Robs thoughts to the game here and I thought I would follow up his article with my own thoughts.

Objectives - Objective placement is huge! In more than one game I have blown my placement of objectives. It seems that there is an art to where you place them and I have been struggling with this and it has cost me the game more than once. You see, where you place the objective and either hinder or help you. What I find I have been doing is placing them where they would look cool on the table. While this looks good on the table, it does nothing to help me win games.

What I am finding is that you need to look at the mission and to think of what you and your opponent are going to do. If your playing a mission that means you only have to capture one objective, than place it closer to your deployment edge rather than your opponents. So in a nutshell, you need to think about where you place your objectives!

Army Special Rules - Read and learn your army special rules! For this series of games I started building and American Infantry army and unlike the DAK, there are a few rules that Americans benefit from. The first couple of games I never took advantage of the Truscott Trot (which allows US Infantry to move at the double 16"). In a few games I forgot to move troops and in this last game, I could have moved my Infantry up to 32" without being shot at. Learn your rules!

Today I also decided to take a few 105mm Guns, I just briefly looked at the artillery rules and thought I had them figured out. Turns out that I was wrong, I also forgot that the Americans have special rules for Artillery. So once again, read your special rules for your army!

Aircraft - Aircraft in 3rd edition is deadly and anti-aircraft capability is a must! Rob brought a Stuka to the battle today (I knew he would) and with Priority Air Support to boot. My only defense was AA MG guns on my Stuarts that I took. The only downside to AA MG on tanks is that they only get a rate of fire of 1, not too good. It is interesting that in this edition, Aircraft do not need to range in anymore, so unless you have decent AA or air power yourself, you are going to take it in the shorts like I did all day. So what is the take away, well you need to make sure you either take AA or aircraft your self.

So there you go, a few lessons from the front from your truly, hope this helps if your are getting into Flames of War. Once again, playing small point games is a great to learn the game are are a ton of fun!

TK

Busy 15mm Week!

Well folks,

It's been a real productive week here in the Valley of the Sunstroke, I have been on a painting terror. Besides my own stuff this week, I also completed a couple of commissions on the Saguaro Painting Service side as well.

Anyhow, lets get to what I did for myself, first up some awesome Plastic Soldier Company Panzer III's

I really love the PSC models, in my opinion, these are much better models than the Battlefront vehicles. They look much better and scaled correctly compared to Battlefront miniatures. The only draw back would be you have to do more assembly than a Battlefront mini, but it is not a problem for me since I enjoy building models.

Next up is another PSC model, a Panzer IV F2 which is one of the iconic tanks of the desert war for me. And once again, PSC knocks it out of the park with this model!

I also needed to do one more command tank for my American tank force, so here is another PSC (can you tell I love PSC tanks?) tank, this time a Sherman tank. Now I have added a Battlefront driver since I liked the pose of the figure.

Now onto the big project, my American Infantry army, which is made up of Old Glory miniatures. There are 2 Rifle platoons, a Weapons Platoon, 2 Heavy Machine Gun platoons and a 81mm Mortar platoon. This force represents the Americans in Africa when the US enters the ground war.

Here is the Company Command (Left BF) and the 2IC (right OG).

There are two nine man platoons, these are all Old Glory figures.

Next up a Weapons Platoon (OG)

Here is one of two Heavy Machine Gun teams (OG).

And lastly a platoon of Heavy Mortars (OG).

You may notice that I have a lot of Old Glory miniatures and the only BF models are the Company Command team, in which they are from the Infantry Ace pack.

There is a reason for it, having painted hundreds (maybe even thousands) of BF figures and for the most part, I am not impressed. They seem to be chunkier than most figures and really do not have a ton of detail. Old Glory on the other hand seems to be skinnier than most and the detail is better than BF figures. But that is just my opinion.

So after all the hard work, Robert and I decided to throw down a 700 point Infantry game. Here is the table with our deployment (we were playing Breakthrough). I was playing Americans and Rob took his Fallschimjager force.

Well after 6 turns, the Germans took an objective and won the game (lucky bastard!). So there you go, a ton of 15mm within the last few days with more to come...

TK

Embracing the (15mm) Dark Side!

Well,

I have been fighting it for almost 4 years, but tonight I think I have finally caved and embraced the 15mm side of gaming! First a little back story, as some know I play a lot of 28mm games (LotHS, LotR, EotD and the list goes on and on) and one area that I am very interested in is WW2. I have a huge collection in 28mm but have been waiting for the right set of rules to come out. Now when Flames of War came out a few years ago (more like 10 years ago now!) I was very interested but 15mm was just too small and dainty for me. Yeah I did buy some models (Tigers, 8.8 Flack Guns) but never really got into it during the 1st edition.

Then Battlefront released 2nd edition FoW, which I picked up and even got a Afrika Corps army. But I only really played a few games and was sort of left feeling meh about the game. I wanted to like the game, but I still kept telling myself that it was 15mm and too small. A couple of friends started getting into it and I felt like I should be enjoying it, but still the bigger scale (28mm) was winning for my interest. Also my paint service (Saguaro Painting Service) was getting a lot of 15mm figures coming from customers, so that meant I was/am painting a butt load of 15mm!

Then Battlefront released FoW 3rd edition and my gaming group got the rules, and my buddy DrunkenSamurai started hounding me to play some small level games. Well if it was his plan or Battlefronts, it seemed to have worked. Tonight as I sat finishing up another commission job for a Saguaro customer, it hit me, I am enjoying painting and playing 15mm games (grated it is only been FoW, but it is a start!). Maybe it was Games Workshop and their ridiculous pricing or them just messing with rules that finally pushed me over, it is any one's guess.

So it seems that FoW will be the game of the year for me (I already played more games of it than LotR!) and I have started building a couple of other armies in 15mm. Also it has got me thinking about what to do with Gathering in the Desert (which in the past was all about LotR). I am not saying that I am planning on running a FoW tournament (I hate tourneys by the way), but it has got me thinking of doing something with 15mm and FoW, you will just need to stay tuned to Cursed Treasures to find out.

So what is the take away from this post, well it is pretty simple really,

"Hi my name is Tim and I like 15mm and Flames of War"

TK

EotD on the Table!

So,

I was finally able to get Empire of the Dead onto the table today for a few friends that are very interested in the game since my last two posts. Anyhow I  figured it was a perfect day to have a few friends over and what a better time than to play EotD, plus I need to get the hang of the game since I will be running Demos in a few weeks at my local store.

So armed with the rulebook (sent to me free from the fine folks at West Wind for doing demos) and my huge collection of West Wind Miniatures (That I purchased on my own before EotD came out) and my huge terrain collection, I set up to do some demoing of the game.

I set up two small factions of about 95 points average each  (that is 4 models a side). I choose the Lycaon faction (Werewolves) and the Nosferatu Faction (Vampires). I choose to play the Fracas scenario and did a generic woods table with a ruin in the middle.

The Lycaon faction had a Beastlord, two Wolves and one Wolfskin armed with a wooden stake and two Handed Weapon. The Nosferatu had a Graf with a sword, Consort with two knives and a Bat Swarm. Oh, by the way, I did not take pictures of the first game, the pictures are from Mike & I's game.

Well in the first game, Jerry choose the Vamps and I took the Wolves. The Vamps beat the doggies back and got a win. Game two was with Mike and he took the doggies and I took the blood suckers, which the blood suckers won the game.

 The game took about 45 minutes or so and that was with us looking up some of the rules. Once again, if you are familiar with EotD predecessors (Mordheim, Necromunda, Legends and LotR) you will pick up the game rather quickly, both Jerry and Mike got it real quick.

So with the first demo games under my belt, now I just need to get to painting my figures. The good news is that three of my friends (Mike, Jerry and Rob who just watched) are interested in the game. So stay tuned folks, there is more EotD on the horizon!

TK

Empire of the Dead has Arrived!

Well, Empire of the Dead arrived here in Phoenix yesterday, which I was surprised that it only took 3 days to arrive from West Wind Productions.  If you are a fan of the Gothic Horror/Steam punk genre, than this game is going to be for you!

First off let me say that West Wind has done an awesome job on the book, they could have gone for a cheaper method of putting out this book, but they went for quality. This book will be around for a long time, the binding looks and feels very well done and I can say that this book will not fall apart after a few times opening it up like some other larger companies books! Page count comes in at 154 pages and are all full color!

The book is laid out well with with the first 21 pages being dedicated to the background of the world in 1888. Pages 22 - 53 are the game rules are are well laid out as well. I was able to figure out the rules rather quickly after only one read through. Pages 54 - 111 are how you build a faction and equip them. The rest of the book is dedicated to the campaign rules (which look strangely familiar, as much of the rules do). Also there are 3 pages of counters and templates (which can be downloaded from the West Wind Forums).

So, some of my friends have asked me why am I so excited about this game, well, first off I have been wanting to do some Gothic Horror gaming for a while. Secondly and more importantly the rules are very similar to a set of rules that I play and that I wrote. (Yes I am talking about LotR and LotHS) Yes folks, if you love LotR and the Legends rules, you are going to love these rules.

EotD uses a D10 instead of a D6 mechanic which is nice and gives a wider spread than a D6. The game uses 5 - 7 figures and plays on 4'x4' boards which is very similar to the Legends games. Another thing that Legends fans will notice is that the Initiative phase, each player rolls a D10 and the higher roll goes first, on a tie it goes to the player that did not have it last turn. And if the roll is tied, you roll again and one person is odd and the other is even. Sound familiar?One thing that EotD does that I could not do with LotHS, was have modifiers for shooting. There are target modifiers and cover modifiers, these are just a few things that make EotD different from the Legends rules.

So I could keep going on, but all I will say is if you love the genre and you love the Legends rules, than this game is for you! Go buy this game folks, you will not be disappointed! No folks, I am not on the West Wind payroll, I am just really excited about this game!!

TK

Wow, That's A Lot Of Lead!

Okay,

It seems that it has been awhile since I last posted, I have been busy with real life and I have not had much to talk about on the gaming front. But tonight that changes, you see a week ago I ordered a very large order from Old Glory Miniatures, and below you can see what I got in tonight.

Here is a break down of the order, on the left you will see Seven bags of Command Decision Panzer 38t tanks, this is the start of my 7th Panzer Army for Early War in Flames of War. For those who do not know, this was Rommel's "Ghost Division" in France and he was equipped with 38t tanks. Seven bags gets me 21 38t tanks, that is a few more than I need for the army, but if Flames of War ever gets around to doing a Operation Barbarossa list, these tanks will work out for that as well.

The lone Command Decision bag is a bag of 50 American Rifle men for my Operation Torch force for Mid War games of Flames of War. I ordered a bunch of stuff about a year and a half ago but was short one more bad of infantry men, now I have enough to finish out that army.

Now the Top row of Blisters are from West Wind Vampire Wars line and are the Vampire Counts pack 1, 2, 3 and 5 (I did not like the figures in pack 4). and all of these will be used for games of Empire of the Dead that I talked about in the last post.

The Second row of blisters are more West Wind figures and they are from the Gothic Horror line. They are Acolyte Vampires, Werewolves, Giant Werewolf, Nosferatu #2 and London Thugs. All of these will be used in games of Empire of the Dead as well.

Now I am just waiting for the Empire of the Dead rulebook to get here and I will then start building a few groups to run my friends through some games of EotD.

So there you go, a ton of lead and what you are going to be seeing in the next few weeks...

TK