General Butternutts Epic Stand

So,

Today a bunch of us today got another epic Black Powder ACW game, This time around Tom was the organizer of said event. The players were as follows, Myself, Robert, Tim P and Al R being the Union side, while Tom O, Joe D and his Son Joey took up the confederates side.

The table was a small 12' x 8' and the terrain was supplied by myself, Rob and Tom. here are a few before shots.

Tom came up with an interesting way of deciding the forces, we drew randomly and each brigade had a random set of units with random skills. Once sides were decided, we rolled for our leadership of our Brigade commanders. Rob, Tim P and Al all rolled a leadership of 9, while I was to be the unlucky one with a leadership of 6!

Well, once we got under way, the North proceeded to march on in all the pageantry  that they were know for. Tim P advanced up the road, Rob and Al both advanced as well, I got lucky ad was able to moe on as well.

The Rebels advanced onto the table and took up good postions, but it was clear that the rapid union advance had caught them by surprises.

 

By turn 3 things started to get interesting, the Union had advanced across the table and started to pour fire on the Rebs. Also it came down to my brigade had to advance to support Tim P on our flank, the Union General attached to my Brigade (so I could use his Leadership) and I was successful with ordering my large unit into a firing line to start my shooting against the Rebs that were still in march column.

By the beginning of the 4th turn, things went bad for the Rebs, the Union had a good round of shooting and I even was able to get my large unit into Hand to Hand combat. they were successful and routed the Rebs on my side of the table. After the smoked cleared, it was obvious that the Union had won the day. Here are a few more shots from the game.

All in all it was a great day and it was awesome to see the game on the table. This has fired me up to get my Rebs to the table. I look forward to the next game.


TK

Bolt Action 700!

So,

Today a few of us met up at Imperial Outpost games to play some Bolt Action games. All of us (Myself, Robert, Howard, CJ ad Randy) are all playing in the Bolt Action escalation league being run in the Valley of the Sun at the local shops by the Warlord "Sarges", which is the Demo teams here in the states for Warlord.

Anyhow, we showed up to play some games, Rob brought his Fallschirmjager's out and I brought out my US Airborne. Everyone else brought out regular Americans (it seems the Americans were doing training today!). Rob wanted me to bring out my Desert buildings so that meant my Airborne were the 509th vs his Fallschirmjagers. The mission was Maximum Attrition, which is basically a kill them all sort of scenario.

The Desert Table

My force was pretty simple, three 10 man squads, one 8 man squad and a two man HQ. Rob ran small 5 man teams with double LMGs, had a Artillery Observer and a Medium machine gun as well as his HQ. Things started out good for the airborne, but by turn three, I was feeling that loosing feeling creeping up on me.

Paras advance thru town

By turn 5, the Americans started to fight back and by turn 6, it looked like the Americans would have the wind, which they did. Rob and I learned a lot during this game, especially moving into buildings, shooting from and at buildings and more importantly, Rob learned that assaulting a building is hard, damm hard by the way! Here are a few more shots from the game.

Paras advance down the street

And thru the palm tree groves

The American Paras in the south end of town.

Hey, are those guys with us up ahead?

Nope, here that distinct sound, its a MG34!

Paras in the buildings

It was a great game and we both learned a lot. Once again we got a nice compliment on how the table looked, in fact we get compliments every time we set up our stuff in the shop. As Rob says, "Okay painted figures, look better on a great looking table". I would agree!

 Now onto some items I have been working on over the last few weeks. Now some folks know, I have been doing 28mm WW2 gaming for about 13 or so years. So I have a huge collection figures. A couple of weeks ago, I decided that I needed to re base my Germans. I had some models that were painted well over ten years ago and a few that were painted a few months ago and one thing that stood out was the basing. Ten years ago I had a system for basing, but as I get older, I seem to have forgotten how I did it. So I started one night with unifying the basing and I am about half way through.Oh and I wrote down the colors I am using (Americana Burnt Umber, than Americana Mississippi Mud followed by Americana Mink Tan. Static grass is Army Painter Steppe Grass). So here are a few shots of my Germans.

Squad one, Crusader Miniatures

Squad Two, Crusader Miniatures

Squad Three, Black Tree Designs

Squad Four, Black Tree Design/Crusader Miniatures

HQ, Crusader Miniatures

MMG's, Crusader Miniatures

Medium Mortars, Crusader Miniatures

Flame Throwers, Crusader Miniatures

Captain, Black Tree Designs, attendants Crusader

So here are a few with the older basing that are waiting to get the new treatment, I also included a few pictures of some of the 1/48th scale tanks I use with the Germans.

PaK40's, Crusader Miniatures

Panzer Shrek team, Black Tree Designs, Engineers Crusader Miniatures

New Millennium Panzer IV

New Millennium 38T

Flak Panzer, New Millennium

Early Production Tiger, Tamiya 1/48th

Scale shot with Black Tree Design miniatures

New Millennium Panzer IV with Crusader Miniature for scale.

 

German painted left overs waiting for basing upgrade

Just FYI, the New Millennium tanks came pre painted and ready to go. I have been lazy in not weathering them up, but they are waiting for the elements to do there magic on them. These models were purchased about six years ago at Wallmart for $5.00 each! Between Rob and I, we must have about 30 of the vehicles, we went crazy for picking them up!

So there you go, a little Bolt Action update for you...

TK

Bring on the Night!

So,

As I mentioned last post, I had just got back from a vacation trip to CA with the wife and the Brightwell's. One thing we all did together was head up to Universal Studios Hollywood which we put in a 12 hour day and watch some folks get motion sick (I shall not mention the name of the effected party member so as not to embarrass him). Anyways one of the attractions that we did (except for my wife the scared cat) was the Universal House of Horrors walk thru attraction.

So as the name implies, this is your basic haunted house sort of walk thru, but the cool thing is that Universal has populated it with some of there classic horror creatures like Dracula, the Mummy, Frankenstein and the Wolf man as well as a few others. (Like Chucky who scared Robs wife so bad the cast member who was playing Chucky,  fell back laughing and Rob and I were busting up as well!).

Well Universal did an outstanding job on the sets inside and I was impressed and inspired at the same time. This got me to thinking of my Empire of the Dead collection back home and I needed to throw some paint on a few models.

So this week while working on a commission for Saguaro Painting Service customer, I painted up a few models for myself. So here are my efforts from this week. First up are a few of my Lycaon group that I am building.

The wolf pack!

 Now, you may notice that these are not the official EotD figures, but they are from the West Wind Gothic Horror line. Before EotD was announced, I purchased these figures just because they looked cool and I was going to use them for some Pulp games (which will still happen!).

So first up are two of the Great Wolves that are in the Gothic Horror line. I went for a grey scheme and you can not see it, but they both have a black strip running down their backs. These guys are pretty huge, they are close to the old GW wolves that were out a few years ago.

Fluffy and Fido!

Now for my Beastlord, I used the West wind Loup Garou figure which is massive! I had to bend his legs to get him to fit onto the base. I really like how he looks and he feels right for the Beastlord, which is the leader for the Lycaon  faction. 

I'm big and mean!

 I also painted up this pack of West wind Wolf men, which once again is from the Gothic Horror line. I use the guy with his head back howling as my Pack master. These figures were fun to paint up and look nice on the table.

Howling at the moon baby!

The last model I decided to paint up is my Graf for the Nosferatu faction. This figure comes out of the Nosferatu #2 pack from West wind. I like the classic look of the Nosferatu vampires, heck, the Nosferatu movie from 1922 still creeps me out, maybe because its black and white, not sure. So when I saw this figure in the EotD book, I had to have him for my Graf.

Count Von Something!

So there you go, some inspiration from a vacation trip with friends. There will be more EotD models coming soon as well as some terrain that I have been working on. I may be taking this game to Adepticon in 2014 as a multi-player game, I will know more about that next week.

TK

Brookhurst Hobbies Haul!

So,

Just got back from our annual 4th of July trip with the Brightwell Family and one of the highlights of the trip (which there were many) was the shopping day that Rob and I did to the War House and Brookhurst Hobbies. Both stores are infamous in the Southern California gaming community and were two stores that I frequented while I lived there. Every time I am in So Cal I try to stop by at least one of these stores.

Now in the past, every time I have had funds and a list of items I was looking for, it never failed that I would not find what I was looking for. Well this trip I decided that I was going to find what I was looking for, using the power of positive thinking. It must have paid off because I found just about everything on my list, so here is what I got on the trip. I found all of this while at Brookhurst Hobbies, unfortunately I could not find anything to spend my money on while at the War House.

The Haul, except for the Kursk book.

First up is this Osprey hard back book, now this was not a find, I am just borrowing it to read from Rob. Since there is plans for a Shifting Sands event for Kursk, this was a must read and is a very good book.

Robs Kursk book on loan to me.

Now the first purchase was this duel book set that I found. Rob recently picked these books up but separately and since I had not seen these here in Phoenix, I picked them up.

A surprise find

 Now, here was the first thing on my list I was looking for, a few Zeveda Panzer II's for my early war list. Now I was only looking for 3 of these kits which I picked up, but on Friday night, Rob and I made a late night run for me to pick up the other two kits. This would give me a full platoon if I ever needed it and at $3.98 a kit, how could I not buy all of them?

Finally my Early War list is legal!

 Next up is two boxes of StuG F8/G from Plastic Soldier Company for the list I am working on for the SS2014 event. I plan on running a StuG list since they were there at Kursk. So I picked up two kits for $30.98 each.

The Beginning of a new army!

 My next find were a set of British Desert decals for the 8th army tank force I am building. It seems that decals are tough to get and find for FoW items. So when I found these, they went into the basket!

Decals, we have decals!

 Next was this lone Honey Stuart, I have a box set of these guys with only 5 vehicles, but now with the 6th one I can run two 3 tanks platoons.

Number 6, we now have two platoons!

 Now I had to dig for these guys, two quad AA guns for my StuG list. Good thing I wrote down the code number, because I had to dig through all of the blisters to find these guys.

Two Quads are better than one!

 This one was another surprise find, a German recovery vehicle which you can only get from mail order. Rob found this and suggested I pick it up, good find Rob.

Mail Order only

 Last thing up is the new P-38 kit that just released. Since I have a Mid War American army for the desert, this will be a perfect fit for the army. Plus I just love this plane and had to have it.

One of the coolest planes of WW2!

So there you go, my little haul from this past week. Now I did see the Dreadball game and all the teams as well as more Call to Arms Star Trek stuff, but I can get those at my local store. All in all I did pretty good and the power of positive thinking paid off. So stay tuned for some building updates...

TK