Horus Heresy-Epic

 

Last Thursday, I got in my last game of what was a full week of gaming in Montréal at my friend Iannick's.  We decided to play Epic 30k, which was the game we played in our last encounter. We went with 2100 points each and I brought the same force as I had the last time. I believe Iannick might of changed things up with his force.

We scattered some terrain about the table, that actually seemed to work better than any specific layout. There were several hills blocking LOS and also several buildings which both blocked LOS but also offered cover if the formation was within them. It worked well.

As we both had Space Marine forces our initiative was the same but Iannick won the draw and went first. I believe we probably played less than 10 turns and generally did not have much problem remembering the rules, although I think combat may of got screwed up a little. I think that we missed that units are engaged if within 15cm after a single move and either engage in a Firefight or Close Combat depending on whether they are touching or not. It was quite a close game, I thought I had the upper hand for the latter third of the game but Iannick was able to pull off a clear victory in the last turn. I was really unsure about the ruleset but I actually have started to appreciate it's nuances quite a bit more and have decided to paint up a couple of more formations which include another formation of 5 Terminators as well as a formations of 4 Deredeo Dreadnaughts. I suspect our next game will be a little bigger. Here are a couple of photos.

I thought this was the combat that would lead me to victory, my Terminators had Freefallen via their Deathclaw to with  combat range of the a formation of the Sicilian tanks, they were successful but not enough to win the game for me.

In our next game, I will focus more on known the abilities of my units.

More 6mm Terrain and French AFV's

I am hoping soon to play some more "O" Group in 6mm, and while waiting for an EW Western Front Supplement to come out I thought I would have a go at some EW Western Front games from the TFL "O" Group Fall of France supplement.

I have lots of EW German AFV's but I thought I would add some French vehicles. Most of the vehicles, I found for free on Thingiverse so I decided to save some money and go with 3D prints on my cheap resin printer. It does not do a great job and cannon are quite a challenge but they do come out good enough for wargaming. I had a look through the supplement to see what I needed, I could not find everything but what  was found should be good enough to start working through the scenarios in the book.

There are:

2 Char Bis

2 Souma S35

3 Renault R35

4 Hotchkiss K39

3 Panhards

6 Laffly Trucks

2 Renault UE

I am happy with them and I am sure they will do good service on the table.

I also painted up a 2-3 BUA town base (I am using cm rather than inches) from Commission-Figurines. Nice how it came out but screwed up the assembly on one of the houses, but a very nice pdf model.

6mm terrain for WWII

I have been working industriously on some 6 mm terrain for "O" Group. Most of the stuff is bought but I did make the fields from some base material and some 3D printed hedges. Maybe some improvement with the fields but I am good with the rest.

The track is from Commission Figurines and the resin pieces are from Leven Miniatures. I can recommend both companies.

A Much Delayed Game: Epic Horus Heresy

Almost 4 years ago I decided to paint up a 6mm army for Epic Horus Heresy. My friend Iannick in Montreal had been working on a Epic army for some time and I remember looking at his army one day and thinking it would be sort of fun to paint up an army. I knew nothing about 40K wargaming and I have to say I had not a whole lot of interest in non-historical wargaming, but I decided to plunge in A Flight into Fantasy.

We both finally had build up armies: Iannick with the Emperors Children, a traitor faction in the Horus Heresy and myself with the Blood Angels, a loyalist faction about 2 years ago and planned to have our first game using the Epic NetAE rules on 2020-22-3. Of course as we all know that was about a week before the border between the US and Canada closed in Covid Year 1. Six months ago, the border reopened to casual travel so was finally able to re-establish myself in my native country.

Yesterday we finally got our first game in, I should note that neither of us had played the ruleset before (there numerous different variations) but the game actually played well. We both went with 2000 point armies and decided not to play with any aerial units. I do not have a copy of Iannick's OB but mine was exactly the same as I planned to use almost 2 years ago. 

I have to admit, no tactical considerations were made in putting together this army, I was just interested in putting some models on the table. I had made some terrain and had an old dessert mat so I transported this to Ahuntsic in a single shopping bag and we had a game.

We played for about 3 hours and the Blood Angels were soundly defeated by the Emperor's Children, but I have to say I think I only rolled 1's every time I tried to rally a unit. It was a lot of fun, and I will look forward to my next game.

A wintery view from my apartment in Mile End last night.

Troops for "O" Group-Finally

 

After several months delay, mostly because I hate painting 6mm infantry figures, I have completed pretty solid Early War German and Soviet forces to play Eastern Front games using Dave Brown's "O" Group rules for battalion wargaming in WWII.

We played a couple of test games virtually using plastic bases in March and April of this year when the rules first came out. I was not sure about going with 6mm troops but I really felt my 20mm WWII were out of scale for this game. I have a lot of AFV's in 6mm which were left over from my Rommel project so I thought why not. I am also having a lot of storage and transport issues and I really needed to decrease my wargaming footprint in our house (interestingly enough, all my 6mm stuff as well as some 28mm skirmish gaming figures and terrain for the FIW, Napoleonic's and SAGA will be taking a trip to Montreal to establish permanent residence in my apartment there). 

I also decided to play the game in centimetres rather than inches so I have put together quite a bit of terrain for this project. In retrospect, I might of gone with 10mm or 12 mm figures but now I am done, I believe I probably made the correct choice. But I have to say I got no pleasure out of painting these 6mm infantry. Now have to think whether I am going to add a Early War Western European force due to the release of the new source book for this theatre. 

Does not look like much but it took quite a bit of work and organization. I am playing on a 100x60cm mat, which I suspect will be fine. The Soviet vehicles are all resin 3D printed as are some of the German vehicles but most are metal from various manufacturers. The infantry and the guns are all from Heroics and Ros, the guns are OK but the figures themselves were not that great with a lot of flash, MicroArmor are much better. The bases are all metal and variably sized, but the infantry bases are 20x14mm. I had planned to go with a 1:1 scale but the infantry base had to fit with my plan to game in centimetres, so each squad (base) is around 1:2 scale with 4-5 figures per base.

Soviet OB

HQ Base

FO Base

4 Artillery Supports

3 Company Commanders-A,B,C

Company A-9 bases

Company B-9 bases

Company C-9 bases

3x Maxim sections

2x 45mm ATG section

2x 76mm IG sections

2x 57mm ATG sections

14x Gaz trucks

3x M3A1 Scout cars

2x T34 platoons

2x T26 platoons

2x T60 platoons

T70 platoon

2x BA10 platoons

SU76 platoon

German OB

HQ Base

FO Base

4 Artillery Supports

3 Company Commanders-A,B,C

Company A-9 bases

Company B-9 bases

Company C-9 bases

3x MMG sections

2x Panzerschrek sections

60mm Mortar section

2x Pak36 ATG section

2x IG18 sections

2x Pak38 ATG sections

12x Opel trucks

PzIV B platoon

PzIV F platoon

2x PzIII platoons

2x  PzII platoons

Pz38 platoon

Sdkfz 222 platoon

Sdkfz 232 platoon

Sdkfz 234 platoon

I appreciate some of the weapons listed above were not available in the EW Eastern Front.

For transport, I use a Chessex troop box which can easily carry 2 complete battalions with all the extras with lots of space to spare. Each army his adhered to a magnetic sheet. I suspect that I might be actually able to fit a 3rd layer in the box.......will it be French or Dutch!

It is funny to think that this blog started off documenting my progress painting 28mm Napoleonic figures and now it is almost completely devoted to Action Reports but I do have several nearly finished painting projects on the painting table which I hope to photograph before the end of the year.

"O" Group Terrain

I have been working away on my 6mm terrain for playing WWII at the Battalion level in 6mm for the last couple of weeks. This is the first 6mm project I have done and I as mentioned before I am really doing this on a minitaure scale as I am running out of space. 

We have had 2 test games now and the ruleset seems to work well at this scale over the airways. I am also finding the ruleset quite a lot of fun, I have found all three reulesets that David Brown as put out recently much to my liking. 

Certainly terrain for this scale is quite a bit more of a challenge for me that the 20 or 28mm terrains I have done for my other scales. You really need to do much more from scratch and in a lot of cases the terrain works more on an expressionistic scale than on the details.

To make things simple for myself I just converted everything from inches to centimetres, so noting that the terrain used in the demo videos was 60x72", I decided to lay things out on a 60x72cm mat. I think this might be a little small but it easier for me to go up inrespect to mat size than smaller. I felt 40 square centimetres was a good size for 1 BUA. I decided to scale everything else to this size, and since I was focused on EW and MW Ostfront, the terrain would be much more rural than what I have done in the past. I still have a lot to do and improve on but what follows are photos of my first go.

Ruined Factory Complex (I think I could of up scaled thesebuildings). This is a 2 BUA in size. 

A small 1 BUA Workshop Complex

Roads are always a challenge, these are rural dirt roads, I need to work on my road colour scheme.

Forests and fields with 2 German recon vehicles.

A 1 BUA farm with fields, the fields are suppose to represent corn fields, the height is right but I blelive they need to have narrower rows.

Only store bought terrain are the rivers, from the old JR Miniatures 6mm line.

A 3 BUA village with some T-34's. Everything has been printed on a Photon Zero resin printer.

Panzer III's traveling past the workshop.

Yes a Russioan Church from 3D Print Terrain

The Zoom View Screen Capture