DAK Reinforcements Arrive

Okay sports fan,

It's Supper Bowl Sunday and I could care less about the game today, so I decided to finish up a few tanks for my DAK army for Flames of War. So here is what I got done, first up a few Plastic Soldier Company Pz IV's, which is one of my favorite models. These guys are set up as Pz IV F2, a nice little unit for the DAK.

Plastic Soldier Company Pz IV's

 Next up, is my last PzIIf from Battlefront, this make 5 total tanks for my army. I also have a fondness for Panzer II's and these little guys are great in my DAK force when I am doing a straight up Africa list.

Battlefront Pz IIf

 Last but not least is the dreaded Panzer VI Tiger! You can see this model from my previous post here. I had the chance to play with a Tiger last weekend in a game of FoW, I only used one, but that was enough! I think this model had something like 6 kills in the game and it lasted the whole game. Now I see why FoW German players like this tank! Being a Historical nut, I will only have two in my DAK army collection and will not bust them out all that often, since there were only 6 Tigers in Tunisia. Still it is a cool looking model!

Plastic Soldier Company Pz VI Tiger

 Here is a group shot of all the tanks finished today, all but the the Tiger were half way painted, so really it was pretty quick to finish them up. I really enjoyed getting these units finished up and look forward to getting them onto the table.

Group Shot

 So yesterday DrunkenSamurai and I took the day off from gaming and decided to do a little shopping here in the Valley of the Sun. We hit Game Depot, were I scored a box company box of American Para troopers for 35% off retail price. Then we were off to Empire Games were we looked over there small amount of FoW products. After that we headed over to Crusaders Retreat since DS had never been there. We then ended the trip at Imperial Outpost games were I picked up a box of PSC M4A2 and a Sherman III Objective Marker. With the purchase of the PSC Sherman's, I now have enough vehicles for my British 8th Army Tank force I want to build.

The Next project, British Armour in the Desert!

So there you go, this is what I have/will be working on for this Super Bowl Sunday...

TK

First Installment Done!

Well,

The first installment of our little paint challenge is complete, as you may remember I am doing US Airborne and this first group is all Artizan Design figures. I have to say that these figures were fun to paint, they have just enough detail and they just seem to paint up quickly. So here you go, first up is my HQunit.

Next up is the 10 man squad of veterans, once again all these figures are Artizan Design figures.

Here is a shot of the whole group, all 249 points worth in all their glory!

 So with the first installment done, time to think of the next batch, so here is what I will be painting for this next month.

So I will be painting two more airborne troops with BAR's (36 points), one airborne troop with SMG (16 points), a 60mm light mortar team (46 points), a 75mm Howitzer (60 points) and lastly a 57mm Anti-tank gun (90 points). The 75mm Howitzer and the 57mm Anti-tank gun are from Warlord, the rest are Artizan Designs. So stay tuned until next month on the paint challenge.

So besides my first installment, I have been very painting. I am working on a large Chaos commission over at SPS and in the last week I completed 21 Plague Marines, 10 Obliterators, 20 Chaos Cultists and  Agis Defense line. I also completed these seven stand of American Bazookas for my Flames of War American mid war army (Here you go Robert!)

So there you go, January is in the books and I would say I am off to a good start...

TK

Soft Kitty, Warm Kitty...

 No this blog post is not about The Big Bang Theory, but the new Plastic Soldier Company kit I picked up the other day, that's right, I bought the German Tiger I Tank kit.

As some readers know, I really really like the tanks by Plastic Soldier Company (PSC) and they have many great things going for them. First up, the are affordable (5 tanks for $30.00), secondly they are great looking models. Thirdly with each kit, you can usually make three or more variants depending on what your trying to do. Lastly they are affordable, yeah I know, I already said this, but I think this is a huge benefit!

The kit includes enough to build 4 Tiger I's for either early, mid or late production models. The kit includes nice instructions that show you how it all goes together and shows which pieces to use for each variant. Since I will be adding these to my Tunisian force for Mid war, I choose to build the first one as a mid production tank. The nice thing with this kit, is that the hatches on the turret as well as the hatches on the turret can all be modeled open and the kit comes with figures for you to have crew sticking out.

 It took about 10 minutes to assemble the first kit and it went together without any issues. So once I got it all together, I wanted to see how it stacked up against a Battlefront Tiger. So I busted out the only Tiger I had, which was an old Battlefront Tiger from back in the FoW 1st edition days. Here is how they look side by side, the Battlefront is on the left while the PSC is on the right

 

So after building the first model, I think that PSC has got another winner on their hands and I can see more of these tanks on my table soon. I look forward to getting some paint on this kitty real soon.

You may have noticed that this year I am keeping track of my win loss record with each game I play. My buddy Robert over at DrunkenSamurai did this last year and I thought I would take a crack at it. And as you can see, I am 3-0-1 in Flames of War which means that Flames of War is getting a lot of table time this year. Robert and I have gotten in 4 games thus far. We are also going to be doing a mini campaign re-fighting El Guettar, so I will need to keep track of the wins.

Oh and last thing, I will have my 250 points up on Feb 1st for the paint challenge so check back in a few days to see my first installment for Bolt Action...

TK

Tale of Three - It Begins!

Welcome folks to 2013 and to the newest Paint challenge that I have cooked up for a few buddies this year. Some of you may have remembered when myself and three other buddies did the "Tale of Four Lord of the Rings Players" back at the beginning of 2012. Well with a new year, comes a new challenge.

As I posted last year our little gaming group has been waiting for Bolt Action to come out, well it did last September and our group has loved playing it. So I cooked up another challenge to get three of us to paint up 3 new 1000 point armies for BA. So here is the gist of our little event:

We will be building up to 1000 points in about four months with 250 points each month. The challenge is to only do 250 points each month. You can do less than that but no more than 250 points each month. Now if you come up short points for each month, you can carry over the points to the next month. Example is you build 235 points this month, the following month you can add the extra 15 points to that month. So here is the schedule that each one of us will be following:

 Start Date: January 1st
 1st Installment Due: February 1st, 250pts
 2nd Installment Due: March 1st, 500pts
3rd Installment Due: April 1st, 750pts
 4th Installment Due: May 1st, 1000

 Our “Prize” for winning the challenge is twofold, first up we each get a new 1000 point army painted up for the game! Secondly we will celebrate by having a BBQ with a few adult beverages and throw down a game or two, a perfect prize for this challenge.

The challengers this year are:

Myself (Duh!) US Airborne
Jerry from Jerry's Big Picture doing Russians
Mike from Da Green Skins Doing US Infantry

So with the stage of players set and this being January 1st, I had to get started on my first installment. Now since the US army book is not out yet here in Phoenix, I will be starting with the US Airborne list in the main rulebook. So I dugout all my miniatures and started planning.

Artizan Designs and Bolt Action Figures awaiting paint!

 So first up would be the HQ. So I choose a 1st Lieutenant Veteran armed with a Thompson SMG at 90 pts. I then added two Veterans armed with Thompson's for another 26 pts, making the HQ unit 116 pts.

 Artizan Designs miniatures

This left me with 134pts to play with so I went with a 10man Veteran squad with the NCO armed with a Thompson for 133pts. I wanted a full 12man stick, but I was going over the 250 a month guideline we set.

10 man Airborne squad from Artizan Designs

So that gave me 249 points with one point to carry over to next month, man Veteran Airborne troops cost a lot!

 

So there you go, 13 figures for 249 points, not too bad to paint in one month. I shudder to think how many troops Jerry is going to have to paint since Russians get a free squad to start with! So stay tuned folks for more updates on how it is going and make sure to check out Jerry and Mikes blogs. Also Judson over at BoltAction.net has run an article on what we are doing, so make sure to check in there as well.

TK

2012 comes to an end, bring on the New Year!

Well,

It is that time of year again and it is time to look back at what was and how I did on the gaming front. So without further ado here what I wanted to do met up with how I actually did.

Terrain
Well I had grand plans to do some cool looking terrain for a couple of projects, WW2, Old West and a Caribbean town for Pirates. Well, this was an epic fail! Now I did help my buddy Robert work on some roads for WW 2 games and I did paint up two buildings for GitD and Pulp games, but other than that was it.

Games
First off I wanted to get Legends of the Old West back on the table this year, and once again this was an epic fail. Besides talking about playing, that is about as far as we got. A few friends did buy a couple of buildings, but nothing else happened. In fact my son and I were just talking about it how we both failed on this. Also I wanted to do a LotOW day, but that did not happen either.

One success has been Bolt Action from Warlord, I got the game in September and have gotten in 4 games, one of them today (I lost!) and this looks like the game for 2013, but more on that later.

Flames of War stayed on the table and Robert and I got in a ton of games as well as I played in my first Flames of War tournament. In fact I think FoW was the most played game for 2012. I completed my third army (American Infantry) and feel pretty comfortable with the game.

As some know, Last February saw the last Gathering in the Desert for Lord of the Rings. After 5 years of running this event I decided to hang up my hat of organizer for LotR. Some were sad to see it go away, others said it was time. There has been talk of running something else, but we will see.

Lord of the Rings went cold for me this year, after GitD, I was spent and disliked where GW was taking the game. Most recently GW released the Hobbit game, a revamp of the LotR game. But due to the crazy pricing, I can not justify spending the money on the game anymore, in fact GW has become way overpriced and I am done with them, on to better things.

I also wanted to get Empire of the Dead to the table, did get in two games of it, but that is about as far as that got. Did get a few Werewolves painted and a few henchmen built, but than it got put on a shelf and that was that. I had plans to Demo the game at our local convention in February but the convention has been canceled, so no big demo for Empire of the Dead for now.

Lastly my buddy Mike and I had ideas of grandeur of doing a Blood Bowl tournament. I started the year with a Blood Bowl day on new Years day and it was a hit, hence the idea for a BB tournament. Well, do to some local issues with BB players, this idea sort of petered out. So fail on this.

Blog Stuff
Well I got an online award for the blog, I was nominated 3 times for the Liebster Award! This award was given to me as a way to bring attention to smaller followed blogs and it is nice to get a nod from peers on what I am doing.

So there you go, now lets look at the plans for 2013...


 Well with my divorcing of GW, I have found a new game company that seems to be hitting it out of the park with their games.

Bolt Action will be getting a ton of play since it is now my favorite WW2 28mm. I will be doing a challenge with three other buddies starting on New Years day so stay tuned for that. I also plan on working on terrain to go along with the WW2 gaming.

A Black Powder American Civil War game that Robert got to the table this year has got me committed to building a brigade of Confederates for another game. 

There has been talk of doing Hail Caesar games and since I have a Mongol army and a viking army just sitting, this could become reality rather soon. Seeing how Bolt Action and Black Powder are great games, I am sure HC will be as well.

I am looking at still doing some Old West and the inspiration is coming from a PS3 game, Red Dead Redemption. I got this video game for Christmas and it is giving me the itch to do some old west gaming. I am going to be play testing a friends Old West game so this will be perfect for this year.

Flames of War will be back this year since just today my buddy Robert just got a cool scenic piece that looks like Anzio. So perhaps we will get our act together and finally play a campaign using the FoW rules. Regardless we will be getting back to 15mm WW2.

So that just about does it for 2013, I am going to keep the list short and sweet and we will see how it shakes out for the new year. Robert and I have a saying, once we write it down on our blogs, it usually dose not happen, so I am trying something new this year, short and sweet. Happy New Year folks, see you in 2013...

TK

Hunting Tanks we are...

 So,

Today my buddy Robert and I threw down another Bolt Action game, this being the 4th game for me and Roberts 5th game. Robert wanted to try something a tad bit different today and I was all game for it. He wanted to try out a all tank army against a more balanced list as written in the book. I know, I know, some of you are thinking, "You can't take all tanks! It's not in the rules!" Well, Robert and I love trying out new ways to play games and Heh, this is our game! Oh and we also took about 1100 points to boot, I know crazy huh?

So here is Roberts force below:

4 Sherman's
1 M10

I can't remember which Sherman's he took and I am sure he will chime in when he see's this post.

 My force is as follows:
Veteran 1st Lieutenant with two attendants all armed with SMGs

Squad 1 - Regular 10 man unit with NCO with SMG and a light MG, also equipped with tank grenades.
Squad 2 - Regular 10 man unit with NCO with SMG and a light MG, also equipped with tank grenades.
Squad 3 - Regular 10 man unit with NCO with SMG and a light MG, also equipped with tank grenades.
Squad 4 - Veteran 10 man unit with NCO with SMG and a light MG, also equipped with tank grenades.
All Infantry squads are Tank Hunters 
2 Regular MMG's
1 Regular PaK 38
1 Regular Panzer IV

Total cost 1128 Oh and I forgot to take pictures of my force!

We played scenario 3 Point Defence and we agreed that Robert would be the attacker while I played defender. Below you can see how I deployed, most troops being Hidden as per the scenario rules. the Veterans and the 1st Lieutenant were deployed in the buildings yard in the center.

This scenario uses 3 objective markers which were deployed 6" in from the edges and one in the center of the board. Here is a MMG team covering one objective wondering how they will stop a tank!

 My Panzer IV deployed on the road awaiting the Americans!

And my Pak38 hidden in the wheat fields with another squad of Tank Hunters lying in wait.

Robert opened up with a Preparatory Bombardment and the best he got was 2 pin markers on a few units, while most only got 1 pin marker. So Turn one started with me having to rally most of the units which I was successful with.

Robert got his tanks to come on his left flank and slowly moved towards my line.

 And he push forward on the right flank with the other two tanks, he kept the M10 in reserve. Once both tanks advanced on the right they took their shots at my Panzer IV, but both failed to damage it but caused me two pin markers and also caused me back up!

Turn two started with Robert pushing his tanks on the left closer towards my line. Meanwhile I kept most of my troops hidden not wanting to reveal them just yet. He took aim at my Veterans that moved into the farmhouse and one unlucky veteran was killed by MG fire from the tanks.

On the right the other tanks started to push up and close in. My squad in the wheat field advanced to the hedge line while the Pak 38 took a shot at tanks that revealed themselves on the right, but the gunners missed. Also my Panzer IV took a shot at the approaching tanks but failed to cause any damage, they must still have been shook up from rounds taken earlier.

Turn 3 started with my PaK 38 taking another shot at the Sherman's on the right, but once again they missed, the Panzer IV took another couple of shots from the Tanks approaching on the left, but now the US gunners could not hit anything.

So Feeling lucky, the German tank crew took aim at one of the Sherman's and scored a hit causing it to be knocked out

The Veterans that had moved into the farmhouse decided to move out and head towards the woods next to the Sherman's to get  into a better position to attack the Sherman's. While heading towards the woods one Sherman opened up with it's MG's and they manged to kill 4 more Vets, which was not enough to cause them to test. meanwhile the 1st Lieutenant moved up to assist with his Leadership for the Vets in the next turn.

 My regular unit decided to head towards the two approaching Sherman's that were concentrating on the Vets, while my MMG on the Left went into Ambush awaiting the M10 that was sure to appear.

Turn 4 started with the veterans in striking position to spring their trap but the M10than decided to enter on my left side.

Good thing my MMG team was on Ambush because it opened up on the M10 and got lucky to cause a Pin marker. This worked out for me since the M10 crew decided to open up on my regular troops coming out of the woods, but  their aim was off and no hits were scored.

the next order dice came up German, so the Veterans sprang their attack and since they were Tank Hunters with grenades they caused damage to the Sherman and caused it to catch fire. The crew had enough and lost their nerve and broke and ran.

Seeing that the Veterans did a great job, the PaK 38 trained it's sites on the M10. It was a long shot, so they took it and scored a hit on the M10 causing it to become knocked out.

With three tanks out of four being either knocked out or on fire, Robert called the game giving me my first win in Bolt Action! The Germans had fought off the American armored attack and they would live to fight another day.

So after was all said and done Robert and I sat down to discuss the game and we both came to the same thing. Unsupported armor in this game had the same troubles that real tank commanders in war have now, it is tough! What we also understood was that this was a very unique game with specific army lists. First off, Robert took all tanks and was the attacker, secondly I took all tank grenades giving my troops the Tank Hunter ability. So with that this was not like most games and I would have to say that I had a huge advantage in this fight, but I could have seen this going the other way for me as well. Robert dice rolls were terrible and I was glad that the dice Gods were on my side this time.

Well to sum things up, I know that the standard Bolt Action game is balanced for play, but both Robert and I both agree that this was yet again another great game and we will be playing this in the up coming year. Now I must get working on my Pim Markers and the rules for our little Tale of Three paint challenge.

TK