Sprucing things up

In my efforts to make my models look as good as I can, I've been working on my Canadian armoured cars and Shermans to add both remaining markings and some weathering.

Only pics of the Humbers so far, but you'll see what's been done. The decision to use such a bright "clay" colour was mainly an artsy one - all the better to stand out and be more easily seen from the table. I used a combination of GW's Blackfire Earth textured paint with some Secret Weapon Miniatures wearthering powder on top.

(I'll get pics of the tanks up at a later date.)

I've also been gaming, quite a bit actually including my first Early War Flames of War tournament, a team event where I paired up with Wyn Robertson playing his French forces. We finished 5th out of 9 teams with two wins and a very close 1-2 loss, but considering it was crazy early war, I feel it was a fair result. Early War feels a rather unbalanced setting in this rules set where Soviet tank hordes rule supreme and more dice were thrown about than a game of Warhammer 40K. Not sure I'll be collecting an Early War force anytime soon.

I also hosted Wyn yesterday as he was visiting family in my area to give him a practice Mid War game before he jets off to Philadelphia (Or some such) for this year's Masters tournament. (He's a rather good player, you see.) We played 1485 points and he brought some sort of US Motorised infantry with large infantry platoons in 1/2-tracks supported by 3 Shermans and some 1/2-track mortars.
I put together a list from the latest updated British in Italy .pdf and made a Rifle company with 2 infantry platoons, 6pdr Portee (Mounted on flatbed trucks) AT guns, some 25pdr artillery, HMG and 3" mortar platoons and an armoured car/Universal Carrier Recce combo. I also had some Limited Hurricane air support.
The mission was No Retreat, one where we played long-ways on the table and I was the defender. It was a fun game and a frantic affair with almost all the action occuring on my right flank due to Wyn placing his objective super close to his own table half and far away from my own defensive objective.
Somehow I pulled a win off after Wyn had successive missed platoon morale checks seeing two platoons scarper in one turn and he conceding considering what remained would have swiftly been overwhelmed by my boys. A 4-3 win is nothing to sneeze at against an opponent of Wyn's class and caliber!

This is early game. I got 4 platoons on (One of which - 6pdr AT guns - was in ambush) and 4 off in reserve. My reserves didn't enter into the game until turn 3!!! And I had those damned 1/2tracks stuffed with MG's and all sorts of other nastiness rammed down my throat from turn one.

For those paying attention, my table has also been spruced up a little by the addition of new houses from 4Ground, road pieces by CGR painters and some trees! I have a couple more houses on the way and am currently hunting about for a decent looking river and bridge or two. 

Portees finally arrive on turn 3 and with succulent targets available open fire with 12 dice and..... bail one 1/2-track. *sigh*

Poor Bloody Infantry indeed! These poor sods suffered more .50 Cal and Machine Gun fire than any other platoon I've yet played or played against. Eventually after 3 or 4 turns of this beating they were down to 4 or 5 stands received an assault and scarpered, but I don't blame them. They at least did their job and held up the enemy almost single-handed long enough for reserves to come relieve them.

Believe it or not, this is not spilled ice cream nor yoghurt.

The British 8th Army wipes out the Yank invaders on the objective and pushes them back! In this picture, you'll see on the left three burning Sherman tanks, one of which was taken out by a flank shot by a Piat! My first ever kill by a Piat AT launcher! (I usually fail every firepower test with these.)

Game over man. My reserves are advancing up to add further weight to my retaliation.

Along with the above game, Densmol and I continue our fencing and I saw my 2nd only defeat to his hated Nazis for which I have declared retribution of the highest order in the very near future!

No gouging, no blows below the belt, no more drunken shirtless wargaming from here on in I think.....

Humber Recce Platoon - WIP (Part 1)

Whilst waiting for Total War: Rome2 to install on my PC (Yet to play mind.), I decided in between glasses of wine to slap some paint on my next platoon for my Canadians.

Offering more options for reconnaissance in my lists, the Recce Armoured Car platoon is a fun option to stick in 3 Humber III’s and 2 Humber III LRC’s with option to add up to two Universal Carrier Patrols. So potentially 3 Recce platoons all in one slot – not bad.

I do love my Universal Carriers and find it hard not to hum the Benny Hill theme tune as I move them about on the table, but one of my favourite units in the British/Commonwealth arsenal are the Armoured Cars. They are only marginally better armed than a Carrier, but being wheeled they can hustle way faster about the board, especially on roads. Only poor side of them is that being wheeled means that in any rough terrain slows them to a horrible 4” a turn! (Last tournament I played in, I was stuck on a snow table and my poor 6pdr Portee trucks were next to useless as the whole board was snow! >_< )

So base coat of Russian Uniform Green done on all 5 vehicles. Next up, I’ll take care of the wheels, stowage and other details. I am not all that fond of over-the-top stowage on tanks, feeling that the lines of the tank are lost amongst all the jumble of canvases, etc. So these may seem a little stowage light to most eyes - matter or preference really.

 These were super fast to paint, so I'm hoping I'll have them done and dusted by Sunday. Though a trip to the movies tonight for the new Riddick flick and Game Night with my rpg mates tomorrow night might make that deadline a little tricky to meet. We'll see! (At the very least I'll be painting as I watch my Raiders get creamed by the Colts on Sunday. O dear, a Brit who's into NFL - whatever next?)

Painted things and another Tournament

Greetings from the far off land of allergies and drought.

What's painted to date, not including the Heavy Mortar Squad pictured way below.

Last weekend was a 2000 point Tracks and Turrets tournament at the local Gaming con, ConQuestSac. I took a list from the Market Garden source book, British 11th Armoured - 1ic & 2ic Shermans, 3 platoons of 2 Shermans/2 Fireflys, full platoon of M10 17pdrs, a Sherman ARV and Limited Air Support.

Over all, I had a really fun day, though only won one of my three games. Here's a swift round up.

Round One had me up against Brad and a bloody horrible list with 6 Konigstigers and some AA vehicles that didn't come into play. Of course there were delayed and scattered reserves (No roll for reserves until turn 3 and on a random place on my table edge!!!) involved, so only half our forces were able to start on the table, the other half being rolled for later on. Seeing as he only had two platoons, he stuck his 1ic & 2ic Konigstigers and his platoon of.... 4 more Konigstigers (KT for short.), leaving his AA guns in reserve. I chose to place two of the Sherman platoons down and kept the third and the M10 platoon in reserve. If you haven't already guessed or are clueless as to what this situation is, I started the game facing 1800 of Brad's 2000 with only 850 points worth of my own. Trouble from the start.
He camped his 1ic and 2ic on his objective and had his platoon in position to move toward the objective in my deployment zone. I figured I'd only have a chance at all versus his 40" range and armour 15 front tanks, if I ignored the platoon of KT's and rush my whole starting force (10 tin can Shermans and fireflys) at his defended objective, hoping that come turn 3, I'd be lucky enough to have taken his objective and roll for one single platoon to come contest versus his KT platoon. Funnily enough, my rush of wee tanks rushed through and killed off his 1ic and 2ic and holding the objective. Unfortunately, what happened next was a fine example of Piss Poor Planning/Preparation on my part and I totally shot my self in the foot, losing the game.
I rolled on turn three to get a reserve platoon and lucky day of all luck days I got one! So i grab my M10's with their big Tiger killing guns hoping to shoot his big cats off the objective and look to see where they deploy. Okay, 1-2 was rolled, so my bottom left corner, not perfect, but hopefully I can maneuver well enough to get the job done. Here's where it went wrong - neither of us could figure out just how big the deployment zone was and saw mistakenly 8" from the corner. So sadly, I couldn't get close enough to the objective to contest and I was only able to kill two KT's, losing the game. Deal was, reserves actually come in on 16" from the corner..... *facepalm* O well, lesson learned. So this was a sad 1-6. (O and my planes did bugger all through the game.... You'll see a pattern here.)

Round Two was a fateful showdown versus my Flames of War mentor, Eric Riha (Often mentioned on the wwpd.net podcast.) and his American Patton list. This game was over before it started. My dice were abysmal and Patton's Spearhead moves (Everything in his line of sight get's a pre-1st turn move, like a recce team = shenanigans) had Eric's tank platoons in my grill almost turn one. By the time I was able to roll for reserves (Again on turn 3 - damn you delayed reserves!!!!), I had already lost enough in my army and was forced to have to roll (And fail) a Company Morale test and the game was done. Another 1-6, but at least this time it was both against a far superior player than I and not due to my own lack of preparation.

Round Three saw me going in tied for last place in the rankings. Seriously?! *sighs* I was to face a very fun chap called Joe, who gave me my first taste of Russian Heavy armour. (Thirteen IS-2's I think.) Funny thing is, This was my first and only game all day where I got to be the attacker, so (finally) I got to start with ALL of my platoons on the pitch! Hoo-rah!
The 1st turn saw me move all of my Shermans and M10's in and line up in wheat fields so that I got to take 10 17pdr (AT15) shots at his ugly Soviet armour. Now, odds are that this should have taken out at least 4 of the 7 tanks camped on his objective, but per the rest of the tourney, Lady Luck had other ideas. Boom and bang went all those lovely armour cracking guns and when the smoke cleared..... I'd managed to bail just one. That's it. Conceivably I could have won the game in my turn one, o well. The rest of the game though did see my fortunes turn around somewhat for the better though and using the far better maneuverability of my own tanks versus his slow heavies, I managed to both keep his reserves at bay and keep the objective for a 4-3 win.

All in all, the tourney was super fun, if frustrating and I got to watch a lot of super cool games with a LOT of wonderfully painted heavy armour forces after my own 1st and 2nd games finished so abruptly. :) I did learn though, that armoured companies are not my thing - much prefer to play my Poor Bloody Infantry! Next tourney I plan to attend is in June, a Mid War affair and I think I'll be bringing some Kiwis from the Italy lists. Lots and lots of stuff to bog Nazi armour down with.

This is my Hawker Typhoon, fully painted with markings and all. I'm too cheap to buy decals tho, so I freehanded the markings instead. The "F" is taken from the Battlefront "How to Paint a Typhoon" webpage, the DE... well, are my initials. :)

All of my Shermans are painted now. Just need to add weathering and markings, but for tabletop play, they are good enough.


 

Since my original tournament in February, I've managed to get my good mate Densmol interested in Flames of War. He's a big Nazi Tigers fan and so has amassed an impressive collection of heavy Nazi armour in a short amount of time. He went to the above written about tourney as well (His 1st) and almost took the 1st prize! It's good to finally have a mate who's into miniature gaming and that is as enthusiastic as I am, and also who's up for playing on a regular basis too.
We got a game in last night where he played his same list he took to the tournament versus a Canadian infantry company I hastily put together - 2000 points. I won, though it was touch and go for a bit there. Here's some pics:

My boys camped the Nazi objective on the hill early on. Stupid Sherman's hid in the woods bottom right almost the whole game....
 

On the other end of the table, Otto Carius and his best pal burnt to a cinder as my M10's, Infantry and WASP carriers advanced on the other Nazi objective. Please note the scary Elefant heavy assault guns! o_0

Right before I managed to contest his objective right side of the pic and rush my WASPS to camp my own in the mid right for the win.

This game gave me the opportunity to bring out and show off my completely finished 6pdr platoon;

and my newly touched up and rebased Heavy Mortar platoon, that were a horror when I bought them off of Ebay and now look decent enough for tabletop I think.

I'll close out with a few pics with different views of the Typhoon and latest painted Shermans. Cheers if you kept reading this far down! :)

*"Where's the 40K stuff gone?!" I hear you ask? Well, I've not forgotten, nor abandoned my other projects, merely set them aside to get myself enough painted Brits so I can play multiple lists in Flames of War. Watch this space though as I can feel the Grim Dark creative juices a-flowing!*

Sgt. Pilkins, scout on ahead!

In a blur of brushes and a slip-slapping of paint, I managed to bash out my Universal carrier Recce Squad and the Lloyd Carrier from my 6pdr AT Platoon for my Flames of War Brits these past two nights. Couldn't find anything on the Flames of War website regarding the kind of markings these things would have though so I fear they look a little bear, though that could just be me.

You'll notice one of them has a passenger laying on top of his carrier with some sort of weapon in his grasp - that's my PIAT carrier. I didn't want to have to shell out for an official model for a PIAT (Brit version of a bazooka, only crappier) so I copied my mate Eric's idea and used a spare PIAT trooper from an infantry platoon, bent his legs and hey presto, home made PIAT carrier. (IS rather silly to have your recce team out there without any Anti Tank option, even the piddly PIAT.)

The pics below are of the team cresting a ridge and looking down upon some sort of Catholic Church in Italy of South of France or some such.

Here's the PIAT Carrier. Looks like the machine gunner is not very happy with how close that PIAT launcher is to his noggin!

And lastly, on their lonesome is the Lloyd Carrier from the Anti-Tank Gun platoon. Only one, because I got the Sgt. Tom Stanley boxed set, but I'll not be using that character and so this carrier will probably be used for something else, most likely as the transport for an 1IC or 2IC in an infantry company.