Operation Unthinkable: Muskets & Tomahawks

Another month, another target met. I'm doing quite well with all this.

This month I set myself the target painting all of the Woodland Indians I'd originally bought to play Musket & Tomahawks, but later got co-opted into my perpetually stalled War of 1812 project. 20 Warriors, 2 Chiefs and 5 Villagers stood in my way.

At the beginning of the year, when I began Operation Unthinkable, I'd mentally earmarked these miniatures as destined for eBay, but the timely intervention of Dave, from the Spider Web of History blog, inspired me to save the tribe from this ignominious fate and get them done.

To celebrate this feat, I decided to do a little photo shoot of the tribe launching an attack on a small group of settlers in their farmstead. The settlers are putting up a fight, but are hopelessly outnumbered and regretting their decision to not bother with any fences (I need to make some of them). Their fate looks sealed.

I'm quite pleased with what I've done, and along with my settlers, I clearly have the makings of a scenario. However, what I don't have is an opponent for Muskets & Tomahawks. Matt has said he'd give it a go, but that would require him to add to his massive total of seven British infantry, whic have so far taken him four years.

What's more likely is that later in the year, I'll set myself the goal of painting up my War of 1812 Americans and use them for a couple of games.

I'm guessing that this qualifies for another Joker from 6MMRPC, but I've no plans to spend yet.

August is hopefully going to be a big month. As I'm not at work, I'm going to take the opportunity to take a chunk out of my Batman backlog (hereafter to be known at 'the Batlog'), which should include at least a dozen models, three buildings and numerous other pieces of scenery. As ever with the Batman stuff, nothing is being got rid of if I don't get it all done, but if I succeed, I might be burning a few of my Jokers restocking.

The Village People

No! Not those ones. Well, maybe the one in the middle...

With the summer holidays started, ive begun to pick up pace and I've managed to get my Native American villagers done.

Even more so than with the warriors, I've kept these simple as they'll ultimately enjoy even less table time. However, they'll make for a good objective in scenarios, and I might have a crack at making a lodge at some point (or even a wigwam as a kind of creative trolling :) ).

The miniatures are from Redoubt Enterprises and I'm torn about them. In the one hand they're quite characterful with nice details, on the other, the casting is really rough and ready. The woman grinding corn has a massive mould line down the centre of her face which I couldn't get rid of, and the children are quite flat miniatures. My settlers are Redoubt too and I've found quite a few miscasts amongst them. Redoubt are affordable, but a bit 'buyer beware'.

I've also done my chiefs.

Again, these are Perry and you can see the difference between them and the  villagers in terms of quality. I think I'll take a little flash removal over miscasts and oddly shaped heads.

The chief on the right is clearly based on Chief Joseph Brant, a famous Mohawk Chief during the French & Indian War and so I aimed to paint him in a similar way to the paintings I found of Brant.

The other Chief was done in colours of a vaguely French theme as I may end up splitting my warband to fight on different sides and I wanted an easy way to decide who was on which side. Yes, I'm aware that the French hadn't adopted the the tricolour at this point, but white would not make for an interesting model. I also figured that blue would work for the handful of natives who fought on the side of the United States in the War of 1812.

So that's all my Woodland Indians done (well, except for a baby in a crib, and a dog urinating against a tree), and now I have a couple of days to get them all based...

All of a quiver...

Another quick update on my progress with the Woodland Indians. Another six done; this time it's all the models with bows.

All six of these are from Perry Miniatures and the difference in detail and animation between these and the Crusader models I've mainly been painting is noticeable.

However, as ever with Perry figures, the additional detail also comes with significantly more flash and cleaning up required.

Nevertheless, better models are more enjoyable to paint and my spirits are higher than last week as now only have two chief models and half a dozen villagers to do before the end of the month. The villagers should be quicker due to the lack of weapons and war paint, so I might try to be a bit more ambitious with the chiefs. 

"White man paint with slow brush."

Work continues on the Native Americans...slowly.

However, I have managed to get through another nine warriors, leaving just six bow-armed warriors, six villagers and two chiefs to get through before the end of the month. Oh, and the bases.

The miniatures I'm painting are a mixture of Crusader and Perry sculpts. The Crusader miniatures are more chunky (especially the weapons) but relatively simple sculpts. The Perry miniatures are more detailed and finer but more prone to flash.

I'm being quite simplistic about how I'm painting them, mainly for speed, and not worrying too much about detailing and patterns. I may go back and do this in time (but probably won't), but for now I'm not worrying too much about models which, if I'm honest, won't get used that much.

In other news, despite trying to gain some ground on my unpainted mountain, I've managed to gain 30 plastic Germans for a new Bolt Action army. I'm claiming immunity from spending a joker as they were free when I renewed my subscription to Wargames Illustrated. I'm planning to do a very small, elite force of Germans, which should play very differently to my Soviet horde. However, a couple of recent experiments with veteran Soviet have gone less than well, as the reduced number of units means that I've suffered from a lack of redundancy, and been more vulnerable to freak dice results.

I've also received my copy of Frostgrave, a new fantasy skirmish game from Osprey. It only requires 10 models in a warband, and the fantasy theme means that I've already got plenty of usable models and don't have to buy or paint anything. I may eventually do some models specifically for the game, but barring two or three miniatures to add a bit of variety, I'm ready to play.

That's it for this week. Expect more Indians next week...

Muskets & Tomahawks (Literally)

Just a quick post charting my progress with the Woodland Indians. So far I've done five of them, and this blurry photo shows.

Although I'm keeping most of the paint jobs really simple, these guys are taking time as I don't want their warpaint to be too uniform so I'm basing each model on a different photo or painting such as the one below.

The other issue I've run into is that the warpaint has had the unforeseen consequence of making them models look less 'human' when they're finished; sort of less 'alive' than usual. In it's own way, this 'dehumanising' effect has highlighted one of the reasons many different cultures adopted forms of warpaint.

I've still got another 17 to go and half a dozen villagers, but I've hada fairly busy week, so I'm happy with my progress.

Savages!!!

The end of June's project heralds the beginning of July's project, and as a culmination of my Guildball project, JP came over to give my Morticians a thorough going over with his Butcher's Guild team.

I'd like to point out before I begin, that JP was the winner of the world's first official Guildball tournament last months...with his Butchers. In fact, he apparently won the final in the manner of a steamroller. This wasn't going to be easy. However, it was going to be fun; I haven't played JP since our gaming club folded a couple of years ago, and we have a history of some brutal, and epic Bloodbowl matches (I seem to remember that our Skaven/Norse game broke the scoreboard).

The teams were as follows:

Morticians - Obulos, Dirge, Casket, Graves, Cosset, Silence

Butchers - Ox, Princess, Shank, Meathook, Boiler, Gutter (apparently he was being 'nice' by not using a character called Boar)

We deployed in fairly flat lines, and the game began with Ox kicking straight down the middle and following up. I used Casket to move up and use a range of his abilities to prevent Ox from moving, and then a combination of Silence and Obulos' Puppetmaster skill allowed me to move the ball out to the right towards where Dirge and Cosset were making headway up the field.

Apologies for the rubbish photo.

 I felt that I'd made a good start and then I started to learn how the game really worked. In a flash of special rules, Shank leapt forwards, stole the ball, dodged through my defence and flash a shot straight towards my goal. Score 4-0 to the Butchers. Ouch!

The ball was kicked out and Dirge went to collect it and again move up the right as that was where I had players. I began trying to batted the Butchers in the area, but found Shank hard to lay my hands on and Gutter could heal herself fairly easily. Cosset, however, struggled to do the same and eventually fell in the battle of attrition. 6-0 to the Butchers!

In the middle, Casket was doing an excellent job of tying up the lethal Ox, and when Meathook joined the fray, Graves managed to get behind the pair and unleash a scything blow that hurt Ox, but put Meathook and the nearby Shank onto a dangerously low level of health. However, before I could capitalise on this, Graves also fell to some brutal combination attacks from the Butchers. 8-0.

However, the build of damage I'd been inflicting across the Butchers finally paid dividends and with the writing on the wall in terms of the overall game, Obulos battered Gutter into submission and Dirge launched up field with the ball in a desperate rush to score. 8-2.

However, this was to be my final act as the job of holding up the main Butcher attack alone finally told on poor Casket and he fell before Ox's cleaver and then Boiler was launched towards the fragile Dirge and was more the capable of bringing down the the ball-bearing Bat. 12-2 to the Butchers.

Well, that was brutal.

To be honest, I wasn't at all surprised at the result and I feel that in some areas I did quite well. Casket was very good at keeping Ox occupied and to some extent out of the game. However, instead of attacking him, Casket's actual attacks should have been focused on a squishier player like Meathook, and he would have been helped in this if I'd given Graves more influence to get involved earlier.

Obulos is excellent and his Puppetmaster ability is really useful at controlling play, however, each time I got the ball, I didn't do enough with it and found myself drawn into a slugging match with the Butchers that I was destined to lose. I needed to get the ball moving sooner and be more aware of how easy it is to lose the ball. Cosset really struggled to make an impact, and she may find herself substituted out of a Union player like Mist in my next game.

I'm really enjoying Guildball and this game (my second, as I played another friend's Alchemists using his Fishermen a couple of weeks ago) has really whetted my appetite for more.

So with one project complete, a new one begins. Dave, one of the participants of the 6MMRPC has been working on some excellent Woodland Indians from the French & Indian War, and has inspired me to finally have a crack at the warband I've had kicking around for some years.

I originally bought these for Muskets & Tomahawks, but I never really played that, and then the got co-opted into my continuously false-starting War of 1812 project, and recently they've become a potential opponents for Mike's new Pirates project. And so, with numerous outlets for them, I've finally begun to paint them.

This picture is actually a rarity for me, as I don't normally like to post WIP photos, however, I've done this one to show the skin tone I've got for my Native Americans. I've done some digging on different paint recipes, but it didn't really work, and so I've settled on simply using Ratskin Flesh and a wash. I works for me. :)

So my goal for July is to complete the warband of 22 models and hopefully get some form of game in with them. No idea what rules I'll be using though...

Unsettling Deformities

Three more settlers for Muskets & Tomahawks. I can now work on the basing for the whole lot together.

They're from Redoubt Miniatures and although they are good sculpts and reasonably priced I have criticism. There seem to be an inordinate amount of miscasts in the models. You can possibly see that the woman's hand is a bit deformed; this is because I had to trim it down from a full-on mutation. I've also got another model from the same pack which is missing a foot and several of the models that I painted last month have somewhat deformed faces.  Call me picky but this amount of miscasting is not something that impresses me - it may go against the spirit of cheaphammer but I'm happy that I've paid more for my natives from Crusader and Perry as I have a greater guarantee of quality.

Muskets and T-34's

As promised, some painting.

I've recently bought Muskets & Tomahawks, a skirmish game for the French and Indian War and the American War of Independence. Now, I'm not particularly into either of these periods, although I have been looking for a system for the War of 1812 for some time. As most Napoleonic rule sets focus on bigger battles that occurred in the War of 1812 (not to mention not including rules for Native Americans), Muskets & Tomahawks seems to fit the bill for me.

As it will take time to paint up the British and American forces for the conflict, I decided to begin by focussing on some settlers and Native Americans so that I could get some games played on a small scale. So far I've only done a handful of settlers (apologies for the poor picture quality).

First up, the womenfolk (some are more timid than others):

Fortunately, here's some gallant menfolk to protect them from the savages:

I've got about two dozen Natives and a handful of US Infantry to work. Expect to see them soon...I'll also get the bases done.

Last week I also played a game of Flames of War against Pete that had been put off for quite a while. I was fielding my Pantherkompanie (8 Panthers backed up by a Recon platoon, a Pioneer platoon and some sporadic air support).  Pete was fielding Russian Tankovy; I'm not sure what his tanks were but there were 7 big ones and 17 smaller ones (T-34's) and a small unit of Mechanised Infantry).  The scenario was Fighting Withdrawal and I was defending so I deployed first; having kampfgrupped two Panthers with the 2iC I was able to put 2 Panthers into Ambush and hopefully be able to respond if Pete massed on one flank.

On the left I had the Command tank and a platoon of two Panthers facing off against a veritable tide of iron.

In the centre, the pioneers took up position in a cornfield to protect an objective from assault.  The also had cunningly placed a minefield in front of the objective; this actually dissuaded Pete from ever making a move for the centre.

On the right, I had the recon platoon dismounted in a cornfield to guard another objective, and they were backed up by the 2iC's platoon of three Panthers.

The Russian horde began to advance steadily on both flanks, taking casualties from concentrated Panther fire as they came.

The arrival of my ambushing platoon of Panthers, allowed me to inflict a devastating barrage that all but wiped out the company of T-34's on the right.

In return, the Recon platoon and the 2iC's Panthers took heavy losses from the Russian heavy tanks. However, the need for accuracy prevented the heavies from advancing.

Meanwhile, on the left I was failing to inflict enough casualties and the Russian armoured infantry raced around my flank and dismounted ready to assault. Fortunately, I was able to pin them and they kindly decided to fail their motivation roll to un-pin.

However, the Russian advance continued apace, slowed only by the fact that the armoured infantry failed to un-pin again. Nevertheless, it seemed only a matter of time before they made a push towards the objective. It seemed like all was lost.

Then the cavarly arrived...well, the Luftwaffe. Not only did my Stukas arrive to carpet bomb the T-34's, but my Pioneers machine-gunned the Russian infantry into submission and the Panthers finally won their duel with the Russian heavy tanks.  Three failed motivation checks later and the Russians were below half strength, a fourth failed test and the Russians retreated, the battle was won.

This game was a load of fun and it was great to finally match my Panthers against something other than a horde of infantry. It was touch and go at the end, as due to fact I was having to remove units, I only had a single Panther left on the right to hold up the Russian heavy tanks that had begun to move. I'm also conscious that I was saved by three factors: the timely arrival of my aircraft, Pete not advancing as quickly as he could have and the fact that he didn't roll a successful motivation test all game.

I confidently expect aircraft, artillery and the squeal of wheels the next time we play.