HOTT Carnage 2012, Battle 2

Good evening,

And so, onto battle 2, my VSF Brits vs. Nick S' African Plains army.

I set up my shooters in the rough...


...and the rest on the flank.


Note the cute wee steam powered rocketeers flying around under the airboat!


Nick sends his vultures out to threaten my flank, so, well, Nick sends out his own flyers escorting his Airboat to meet them. Two Nicks fighting...this could get confusing...


The rest of the Africans come trundling forward. Those rhinos are Knights. Facing my Steam Tank Behemoth and Gatling Gun Shooter, flanking either side of my Royal Navy landing party Shooters. My Steam Powered Zappy Gun Magician General watches on...


First contact. Sorry about the clarity of the action, the camera focused on the Airboat floating above!


Huzzah! My Airboat actually killed something. I should really name it...Her Majesty's Air Boat Vulture!


The Rocketeers follow up and deal to the rest of the birdies.


With the flank now wide open, HMAB Vulture contacts the African rhinos in their flank. With nowhere to recoil...


And so Nick piles them in. While Nick, as he writes this report, wonders how we missed that end Rhino crossing across the front of the Flyers' Zone of Control...

Never mind.


Knights charging Shooters...someone was going to die...


Unfortunately for Nick, 'twas his Knights. Thankfully for Nick, 'twasn't his Shooters.

In comes HMAB Vulture again, this time into the flank of Nick's Lion Hero (Simba?) while the Rocketeers zoom over to protect the flank of the Tank.


In the meantime, Nick's Rhino Knights finally comes into range of Nick's Shooters on the other flank. But not for long. That's them what ain't there.


Heroically, as is appropriate, the Lion bounces off both the Steam Tank and the Airboat.


But alas for Nick, 'twas too late.

And so ended Nick's only win of the tourney!

Nick

HOTT Carnage, Game 1

VSF vs. Samurai

River, two pieces of rough, one steep hill in the corner.


The Samurai deployed across the river, and then proceeded to come forward. As did I, though the rough going did slow things up a tad.


As his line advanced up popped my water lurker. He didn't last too long - after a couple of recoils in hand to hand, he was sunk with a flurry of arrows from a distance.




The advance continues




The trio of Samuri Heroes pile in vs. my Magician General, Behemoth and Airboat.


One Hero was quickly ensorcelled...


...and the Airboat was also brought down in a hurry! Bother. There was now a jolly big hole in the centre of my line.



The battle for the centre continues. I try to bring my shooters on the flank into the the fight, and peel one off to lure the Samurai Hero from the flank of my Steam Tank. Thankfully, it worked.




The battle for the centre swung back and forth as time also ticked away. With this round drawing to a close, Joe charged his Hero into my Gattling Gun (finally running it down), and charging his Riders into my line of Shooters to the East, who cut his cav to pieces.

With time finally called, it was decided that the game was a draw, although to be fair I won by one point!

Nick

Air Boat Kinda Done

Good afternoon,

Well, I've pasted the Gardiner Guns and crew atop Andy's Air Boat, and they look the biz.




It's a bit hard to see from this last photo (the camera's macro setting focused on the nearest Gardiner gun, rather than the whole 'vignette'), but the loader is one of the navy Gardiner crewmen with his arms replaced with the ones from the HaT Colonial Artillery loader, as inspired by S. M. Manix's contribution to HaT's Everything Toy Soldier page.

I also replaced an arm on the other main gun crewman, though the effect isn't a lot different to what he had originally.

Eventually I may put a solid railing/fence around the Gardiner guns, and I'll paste the officer with the telescope (once I've figured out how to do the braids on his jacket) on top by the ladder. Or on the bow. But I think closer to the bridge would make more sense, from a command perspective. In the meantime I'm happy enough to put it away.

Sweet, another thing down, now to work on my Late War Kiwis...oh, and that VSF steam driven magician artillery thingie I've got in mind, since I've got those spare gun carriages from the Gardiner and Gatling guns. A bit like this...



...with one carriage for the steam driven electricity generator and one for the electricity driven shooty thing, courtesy of a mad boffin type - hence the magician classification.

Nick

VSF British Air Boat

Good evening,

A while back Andy Gorman gave me his excellent VSF 20mm army, including this splendid scratch built Air Boat. Balsa, card and cleverness. Brilliant, in fact!




Well, seeing as HaT have brought out a naval Gardener Gun, complete with deck mount, I thought 'Cool. I'll add a couple of them to the Air Boat'.

I picked up a box from Stan last night (any Kiwi gamers who are after 20mm plastics at a great price, contact him!) and have started to pull some things together...



First up, I had to crew the gun, so I grabbed a left over sprue of the HaT Colonial Artillery and swapped their heads for the spare naval heads that come with the Gardener Gun (the result of which looks a little odd close up, but I'm hoping they'll look a little more natural with a coat of paint), along with the Heliograph Operator from the Gattling Gun sprue. I'm going to put him in a crow's nest on the forward mast. Cool idea, thanks Stan!

The Gardener Gunners also had their heads swapped. It is interesting to note that the mount is not quite tall enough for the gun's crank handle to meet the gunners hand, so I've mounted the mounts on some spare crew bases. The guns themselves will be mounted atop the bridge, to which I will add a solid railing.


I'm also thinking of mounting one of the officers with a telescope atop the bridge as well. I'll have to see how crowded it becomes first.

Isn't it funny how easily wargamers are distracted from one item to the next, before the former is completed! :-)

Nick