Bolt Action Winter Germans- Complete!

After getting my winter Germans onto the tabletop for the first time it gave me the impetus to get the rest of the force finished!

And so, with a minimum of rubbish text from me, below is a whole lot of pictures of the completed army. Click on the pictures for a closer look.

As a reminder, the miniatures are from Warlord's Winter German range, and are all based on some of the fantastic cobblestone bases from Battle Kiwi (if all of our posts recently haven't been clear enough, we really like Battle Kiwi!).

The Infantry- 2 Grenadier Squads, 1 Volksgrenadier Squad, Flamethrower, Sniper, Panzershrek and HQ

The guns- 75mm, 105mm, PaK 40, Mortar, HMG and Goliath team

The armour- Tiger, Puma, Panzer III and 4 Halftracks

PaK 40 looking gorgeous on the cobbled base

Removable crew!

81mm Mortar 

More removable crew!

LMG team on a pill shaped cobble base

75mm Infantry Gun

More removable crew!

Grenadier with a panzerfaust.

Panzer III. I am very proud of my whitewashing

Panzer Bum

Tiger 1!

Side view of the Tiger

One of the halftracks. Looking much better for having crew and a splash of whitewash

Goliath team. For when you absolutely HAVE to spend points on a next-to useless unit

Sniper team for added sniping

Medic!

The boss.

And so there you have it, a Winter Bolt Action army. There are still some things I would like to add to it, mostly in the vehicle department, but for now, it is done!

Pooch

Bolt Action- Winter Skirmish

I have been cracking through painting my Winter German Army, and since McZ has had a Winter US Army for a while now, it was only a matter of time before we had a wintery game of Bolt Action!

The Regiment has been thinking about small scale, 500 point games of Bolt Action for a while now. Having so few points lends itself to being a brutal affair, so when McZ and I took to the field with 500 point armies, it was no exception!

I was running Regular Germans, with
- Second Lt
- 8 Grenadiers with an SMG and LMG
- 8 Grenadiers with an SMG and LMG
- 8 Grenadiers with an SMG and LMG
- 6 Veteran Pioneers with an SMG and a Flamethrower
- MG42

McZ was running (I think)
- Lootenant and buddy
- 12 GIs
- 12 GIs
- Pioneer GIs with a flamethower
- Light Mortar

The mission was to claim the loot from the Panzer III in the middle of the table, and then leg it off your table edge. Sounds simple enough?

As for the game, in picture form it went something like...

Hans, the disabled Panzer III got stuck in the middle of the table

The Germans arrive on table (after spending the first turn NOT arriving)

The German pioneers took some positions next to large fuel tanks. With their flamethrower....

The Americans showed up! 

The pioneers claim the Panzer III!

This is called a "horde" of Americans

A flanking squad of Grenadiers deploys next to the huts...

...and is charged by the US Engineers...

....And totally wipe them out!

All in all, my dice were terrible for the first three turns, and then they were just great, which meant that I was able to wipe the Americans off the table, claim the loot and win the game!

As for 500 point Bolt Action? Man it is brutal, and when it starts going wrong, it really goes wrong. I liked using small unit tactics, and certainly enjoyed getting the Winter Germans out onto the table. Just three elements to go then they are all done!

Whitewashing on the vehicles is going well too, I am super, super happy with the Panzer III

Grubby whitewash!

Till next time, I will get back to the painting table...

Pooch

Bolt Action.....with automatic rifles....

Seems like an age since I've posted anything, which is weirdly not to suggest that I haven't been productive over the past while. I've painted a lot of Infinity stuff and there's a draft post waiting for me to finish the last eight models, do some much needed cleanup work and take some decent photos.

I've previewed a few models from my Bolt Action collection before but I figured after their semi successful outing over the weekend, I should take a decent set of pics.

FAO, Medic and 1st Lieutenant

One Rifle Squad

Two Rifle Squad

Three Rif...*cough cough* Engineer Squad with Flamethrower

.30cal Team

Sniper and Bazooka Teams

Artillery Support - 81mm and 45mm Mortar Teams

M8 Greyhound and M20 Utility

Sherman Bulldozer

One of the things that always vexxed me about painting Americans in that the Sherman is so bleeding boring to look at. However, thanks to the chaps at Company B, I've made mine into a doozer. Who doozes. And it's great. It's a bit of a pain of an add on but it does make me ponder their Calliope.......(!)

There's also a Chaffee on the assembly table at the moment, an M18 Hellcat on the wish list and I've promised myself one of Mad Bob's Long Toms as a Christmas present. Why? I hear you ask. Why not? is the only answer I can give.

I've also started work on some Frostgrave terrain now that I've knocked off a winter BA table for this army (which I meant to take some photos of over the weekend and completely forgot. Also the lighting in the club hall was terrible. Yep, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.)

Pooch and I (and maybe Scotty and McBeth) are also working on a throwback surprise for this year's 12 Games of Gamesmas. It's going to be terrible to behold....I'll get a sneak peek up next week.

T Patrol, blasting through the desert!

The Bolt Action bug has been well and truly caught by me. After getting into the game using spare figures I had lying around, I have been loving the chance to paint WWII in the 28mm scale. On of my first loves of WWII history is the LRDG, of which the Kiwis played a big part. Finding the "Behind The Lines" list for BA I set to the project with glee. Most of the figures are from the Perry SAS range with a small mix of Artizan figures. The Chevy trucks and jeep are from Warlord Games. The Chevy trucks are stunning, I had a ball painting these and can't wait to get them on the board. The jeep is cool too - but really small, either that or the crew are a couple of All Black locks, the stowage is very well done though.

The infantry are all individual sculpts - and if I run them as SAS troops, they should pack some punch :)

And here's the whole force in all its glory.

So musings, very pictures, such magpie

It's a bit of a mixed bag this time around - a few pictures of some projects and some few thoughts on the general state of things-magpie.

First off, I've painted a BA army. Well most of one. This is the first test basing for the army. I'm pretty happy with how they've come up.

BA American Command Troops

Panzerschreck 2016 is in a couple of weeks and this year Tank and I will be taking tanks, tanks and more tanks. Tank's done some really nice Stuart I 'Honeys' to zoom around my mostly much slower captured Italian M13/40s.

My half of the McZ / Tank pairing for Panzerschreck 2016

My attempts at Caunter Camouflage. Hard. Very hard. 

And I'm finishing up the last of the support for my 6mm TY army. The helicopters are done and I'm just painting the Frogfoots (Frogfeet?) at the moment. 

And then this happened. How many Hind Ds does one man need? Six, apparently. 

And how is the state of things-magpie? Well, I've played my first games of Warmachine Mark III and I think it's fair to say that overall, it's good. Better than Mark II? Different certainly. The core of the game has had a fairly significant overhaul (there are better summaries out there than I will ever give you) but the changes to the Focus mechanics certainly feel to me like they've opened up a whole bunch of play possibilities for me at least (look at me avoiding the words design space!) I found some ways to run some interesting combinations of big, stompy robots in Mark II but looking at Mark III, this is going to be the norm not the exception and that, in and of itself, is an improvement.

Inside my own faction of choice (the Protectorate of Menoth), I am generally pretty happy with the way things have panned out. While I freely admit to being puzzled by some of the choices made by Privateer Press (the "rebalancing" (and yes, the inverted commas there are, I think, somewhat legit) of Exemplar Bastions and Exemplar Cinerators is completely inexplicable), for the most part the changes to the game engine have made the faction more entertaining to play and the changes to most of the troop and support choices mean that every list I make doesn't immediately dial in a shed ton of support from the get go. Reckoners will no longer be my go-to warjack (although they remain very effective) and instead I'll be looking to the combined arms forces that I prefer anyway.

To put all of this in some context (at least for the Warmachine readers) - I dropped Thyra and Amon into three games at the last club meeting. In all three of them my casters were on half way and in the last one, Thyra was most of the way to my opponents deployment zone. In Mark II, if I'd tried getting that far up the board with either of those two, I'd have lost. Now admittedly, I did lose Amon to assaulting Trenchers but he was over half way and I ain't got no issue with that. It was good to see Trenchers on the table too!

In closing, I'm pretty sure the Vigilant giving cover is absolute jank. Especially with a journeyman warcaster who has Fortify. That's Warmachine though.

I've also been enjoying essentially building scale model kits again. I've so far managed a Warlord / Italieri M8 and an M20 and am most of the way through a Rubicon Sherman kit. I think a quick review of these two kits is in order, since I'm in writing mode. I'll put some photos up when they're done (mostly I need to order some crew - too many years of playing Flames of War means I have to have a dude in the turret if at all possible!)

The Warlord / Italieri M8/M20 kit is really nice. Easy to assemble, looks great and paints up well. I would have liked some crew for the two crew compartments. I'll be picking up some aftermarket crew from Company B in the not too distant future. I liked how easy it was to put together and the level of detail is exceptional for what is designed to be a gaming kit. I'd love a slightly more cunning design to allow a straight swap of the deck plate and turret so one kit would do both vehicles, but as it was, the kit is so affordable that I simply bought two. There's very little not to love about this kit. I would recommend avoiding the 3 part decal for the rear engine deck unless you are some kind of masochist.

As for the Rubicon M4A3 Sherman kit, well, it's great. I'm not quite done with it yet, but it looks great too. It's got a nice level of detail and plenty of room to customise the kit once I add some stowage. The entire hull assembly was done in less than 20 minutes and it's pretty solid, not the empty box of a lot of plastic scale kits.  The turret assembly would be equally quick if you decided to just build one of the three variants available in the box and this is where I get really, really ticked off with this kit. If Rubicon included a second turret ring and a second commanders hatch, anyone who's had a bit of experience with modelling could assemble all three variants in the box. Even someone with little to no experience (who would otherwise love this kit) could build the 76mm variant and either the 75mm or 105mm. But as it is, I have had to cut a new turret base and ring from plasticard for the 76mm turret and am currently mucking around with greenstuff and plasticard to build a second commanders hatch. I know I'll be super happy with the result - to get all three Sherman variants that might want to use will be cool - but it could have been a thousand times simpler.

The projects have been quietly being ticked off. I'll probably not get to the Farrow this year for Hordes, as I suspect I'll be more interested in playing with my Protectorate and acquiring the small number of models I want for my third Frostgrave Wizgang is proving to be harder than I would like. But the Teutons are done, the 6mm Russians are done, the Elves are done, the Panzerschreck army is done and the BA army (that I was genuinely not going to buy when I wrote at New Year) is mostly finished - awaiting the purchase of a Chaffee and a Hellcat (oh, and maybe a Long Tom). I've even done a fair whack of a BA table as well.

Anyway, the rest of the BA Americans won't base themselves so signing off!