Tanksgiving 2020

 So,

My buddy Mike of Dagreenskins blog threw out a challenge on his live stream to work on Tank models for the month of November. Well Rob and I just happened to play a game of FoW that weekend so I had busted out my collection and saw some tanks that need some paint, so I jumped in working on Tanks!

First up are 5 Plastic Soldier Company Panthers that I built and painted up about a year ago, all I had to do was add the decals and do some weathering on the models.

PSC Panthers ready to Prowl!

Next up was four PSC PanzerIII's, these were built about 6 months ago and needed paint, decals and weathering. I opted to do these as two tone camo just for a little bit of difference on the table so myself and my opponent could tell different platoons apart.

 

PSC Panzer III's with two tone camo.

I then painted up these six other PSC Panzer III's in three tone camo, The reason for 6 is that two tanks will be the Company Command tanks while I have the other four being their own platoon.

More PSC Panzer III's with more color!

Lastly I did up five PSC Panzer IV's (dont know why I have only three in the picture) in a two tone camo scheme, these got paint, decals and weathering as well and were built six months ago.

PSC panzer IV's

So I completed 15 tanks with full paint and five more for decals and weathering for a grand total of 20 tanks in one weekend. By the way, this force is for some Kursk FoW games that Robert and I have been talking about for a few years which I am super excited about trying out.

So there you go, my tanks for Tanksgiving!

TK

World Ear III

 Well I did it!

New Two Player Starter Set

Yes folks, I decided to jump into FOW Team Yankee or World War III this past weekend with my buddy DrunkenSamurai. We had both been eyeing the game and with the re launch and clean up of the rules, we both were very interested. Well earlier last week Drunken and I were talking, and he suggested if we each get a box, we could swap out the extra force to the other one. So he wanted to start an American force, so I took the Russians.

Here is what you get for $49.99

You get 16 vehicles for $49.99 which is a great price and along comes the rulebook and cards as well as dice. And with each of us getting the others side, we would have enough for almost 100 points to start with. Now the only reason I went with Russians was that I already have two T-64s painted up for Tanks Modern. So I could roll those into the army, plus I love having a ton of tanks on the table!

The base forces in the box

So this past Saturday, we made our rounds in the valley looking for two copies of the game, our local shop Imperial Outpost had just got them in so we both picked up our copies. Drunken also got a few Necromunda books as well.

So yesterday, Sunday, I got to building my tank force and after the fifth tank, I was tired of cutting out parts! LOL! But  I manged to power through it and get them all built, the T-80s and BMP-3s were quick, the T=64's seemed to be a bit more fiddly and took a while to build. 

T-64's 

T-80's

BMP-3 and T-80 HQ unit.

So overall, I am very happy with the new set, and by the way, this is my first starter box I have purchased from BattleFront. But the one thing that was a bummer was that most other starter sets come with tokens and objective markers. Now this set does include them, except they are printed on the inside of the box, you have to cut them out. Not a big deal, as you get a lot of tanks and the rulebook, just was surprised it was not in there/

Overall I am pretty excited to get started on a new project and this will be an all BF army to boot! So now time to paint some green tanks!

TK 

Tanks, Modern Age

So, about 4 or 5 months ago I picked the Tanks Modern age game up from my local shop, loving the original Tanks game, I knew I would love this one. Also my brother really loves the fast pace of the original Tanks game so this was a no brainier.


Then about a month ago I decided to assemble the three tanks that came  with the game (2 T-64's and 1 M1 Abraham tank). Still have not played yet, but one way to get it to the table would be to paint the models up and that's what I did for Memorial day 2019.

T-64's

First up was the Soviet T-64's, these two painted up very quickly, but hey, its Russian green, no camo, nothing out of the ordinary, just pretty simple really. Did some light weathering on them and they look very realistic.

M1 Abrams Tank

 next up is some American armor, M1 Abrams tank, this is the command variant and was problematic on assembly, but once assembled looks very nice. Now in the 1980's American tanks sported the MERDC color scheme of about 4 or 5 colors. Well I was not a fan, but I did find some tanks painted in the US armor green color, so I went with that, these are for Tanks, so simple was fast and easy. once again some light weathering and I called it done.

With that the base game was fully painted and ready for the battle field. After assembly I went back to my local shop to pick up a few more vehicles, at this time, nothing has come in but the next model I found, the British Chieftain

British Chieftain

This one is a two tone color that was pretty easy to paint, did some weathering and this one is complete. The only thing I would say I dislike with all the Tanks kits, is they do not give you any decals for the models. Not a major issue, but would be nice if they did.

Now after building and painting these four tanks, I am eyeing possibly starting a force for Team Yankee, rumor is that a new version is coming, so I may hold off until that hits, but I will be buying more Tanks Modern Age in the meantime.

TK

4Ground Terrain

So,

In my last post I showed off some of the items from my CA trip, three items were 4Ground buildings. The past few nights I put together the three kits. So here is a brief review of the buildings.

These 3 4Ground kits are the first ones that I have purchased and looking at the package, they seem pretty easy, oh but looks can be deceiving! First thing you have to know, these are model kits, not something you can just slap together and throw onto the table.

Looks pretty easy right?

Once I opened the package, the truth was revealed to me, these 15mm kits were going to take some time. First thing I did was review the instruction sheet and familiar myself with all the parts. I highly recommend this since these kits do have a lot of parts. Don't rush and too help, I laid out the parts just like in the instructions, that was my anal side coming out, but it helped a lot.

Lots of parts!

 This particular kit has two floors plus a attic, the ground floor took me about 30 minutes to assemble. Once I had this section completed I started laying out the next section.

Ground Floor

 The next section took about 30 min as well to assemble. I made sure that the mounting points were clear so that the next section would fit without it being too snug.

Second Floor

Here is a completed picture after about an hours worth of work.

We have a building, almost.

 The last section was the roof/attic and this took about 15 minutes to complete.

Roof done.

 Here is the completed building with some added signage that came with the kit.

Completed!

 Total build time was 1 hour 30 minutes, which was not bad. The kit looks awesome and I am glad for picking up these kits.Each kit was about $20.00 each, which is not bad and I had a sense that I actually put something together. My buddy Drunkensamuari has just about all the Battlefront kits and even though they are $25.00 you just don't get the satisfaction of building them like these kits.

Here is another kit

Third kit

 

All three kits

All in all I really love these kits, at first I was not hip on the laser burn marks on the kits, but on the ruined kits they seem to work. I know I will be picking up a few more of these kits in the near future to add to my 15mm terrain collection. I highly recommend these kits, but be warned, they are model kits and will take some time building them, but the time spent is worth it.

TK

The Spoils of War, I Mean Vacation!

Well,

Another vacation is in the books and that means I spent a ton of money at California Hobby Shops. For the last three years now, my wife and I have vacationed with Robert and his family in Seal Beach CA. Each trip Robert and I get away from our lovely wives and families to do a little shopping of our own. Here is the haul from this year.

The total haul, about $400.00 worth of stuff

So the first store we hit was The War House, which has been around for ages. I first visited this store around 1988 or so and I think it is still owned by the same owner. This is a great little shop that seems to have a little bit of everything if your willing to sit and dig through items. There are old figures and merchandise covered in layers of dust and it feels like I am always on an archeologist dig while shopping there. Its funny, but I enjoy uncovering long lost items that I have not seen in years. Whats amazing is that most items are still priced like when they came out originally!The other great thing is that he still continues to bring in new items and I found this little set of books beneath a pile of old Flames of War boxes. So I got the D-Day slip covered books for $85.00. Unfortunately I did not find anything else on my shopping list, but I was happy with this find.
 

Score, two books I was looking for!

Our next stop was the World Famous Brookhurst Hobbies, a Orange County staple for many years. I cant remember the year I first visited Brookhurst, but they were on Brookhurst Way just before Garden Grove Blvd. The shop was tiny and was next to a hair salon shop. Well I always bring a ton of cash and a big list of wants when I visit Brookhurst, this time was no different.

First thing I picked up was two boxes of Perry Miniatures Afrikacorps. Now I resisted buying these since I have a ton a Artizan DAK figures and these guys are way too small. But since no one around here carries Artizan, I finally decided to build up some Parry DAK. Robert has two boxes of Desert Rats so I will have something to fight against that is the same scale.

More DAK!

Next up is a box of Plastic Soldier Company Panthers for my next FoW project. I was looking at buying at least 3 boxes of the new PSC Panzer III's but either they were sold out or did not have them yet, so I settled for Panthers.

Big Kittes!

Next were two Jagdpanthers for my Jagdpanther company I am working on. I wanted these two boxes because they come with a ruined building that I can use for terrain.

More Hunting Panthers!

Next is a box of Panzer IV/70's for my Panther project. Since I could not find a few other blisters I was looking for, I picked this box up to ease the pain of the blisters.

More Tank Hunter!

Next on the old shopping list was some 4Ground buildings. I was looking first for some 28mm old west buildings first, but they did not have the ones I wanted. So my second choice was 15mm buildings for FoW. I had picked out three nice buildings when Robert came up to me and said I should get the ruined buildings. Robert has a huge collection of Battlefront buildings, but what we were missing was some ruined buildings. So I picked up three ruined buildings in 15mm.

Building#1

Building #2

Building #3

Now besides hitting the hobby stores, the wife and I hit a Barnes & Noble since I forgot to bring a book to read while down at the beach. So I shot my brother a text and asked for a good book recommendation, he recommended The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman. It is about this guy who accidentally creates a time machine that can only go forward in time in increments of 12, first 12 seconds, than 12 min, 12hours, etc. A good read but the ending was a bit flat, but I would say it was a 7 out of 10. It was perfect reading for the beach and I finished in about 2 days.

Opps I created a Time Machine!

 The last item my son bought for me, knowing that I am a gamer, he found a large rock dice in one of the local stores on Main Street in Seal Beach. He told me if anyone gives me crap about my dice rolling, I should throw this dice at them or their models! LOL.

Big A$$ rock Dice!

So that was my haul from this trip to CA, I spent about $400.00 bucks on most items that I can not get here at home. Which leads me to a small rant about shops here in the valley.

It amazes me that I can always find what I am looking for in shops in CA as opposed to here in AZ. Most shops here in the valley have stopped carrying FoW since they can't keep up with all the items that Battlefront carries. I get it, what I would like to see is my local store actually order items in for me. I have tried many times to order from my local store but have had numerous special orders go missing. Heck I even order other items other than BF items to have them never come in. Whats the deal? Heck if the War House can get new Fow Items, why is my local store not getting them?

So in the end I will spend my money with folks that carry or can order the items that I am looking for. So if my money goes to CA so be it, I wish I could do that here at my local shop, but oh well I guess thats the way it is. Rant over.

TK

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

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

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