I love Colours.....

...the wargaming show that is! I always find something new there every year. This year for me it was the laser etched scenery that seems to be sneaking into gaming more and more.

Is it a good thing? I had to find out. I got two 15mm kits from Warbases.com to try out. They were reasonably priced at £8 & £7 and I got started on the first on Saturday night. The first kit I did wasn't as precisly cut as I would have imagined but it went together after a bit of work. Thankfully the second, which I tackled today, went together like a charm. The 15mm kits are a little fiddly but not complicated. My overall thoughts on them?

CONS

Dirty. The laser etching leaves the edges of the HDF sooty. I assume this is from the heat of the laser. But they smell like lovely BBQs!!

A Fair bit of work. Whilst being quicker than a scratch build they are not a quick job to finish as the roof on each will take some time to fit the tiles. I suppose that it might be possible to find pasticard with a tile texture to speed this up but that will obviously add to the cost.

Detail. Resin cast stuff does have more detail but once painted I don't think there will be a great deal of difference.

PROS

Value. I enjoy puting things like this toether so I am more than happy with the price. For me it is almost like a double win as £7 or £8 seems like a good deal for a model kit that keeps me entertained for a few hours AND which I can then use again and again.

Weight. A good size building for the scale without the potential for many of them to turn into dead weight in a scenery box.

Robustness. I think the HDF will stand up well over time as it is pretty hard stuff. I don't know if paint will change this with the addition of moisture but I can't imagine it would make a great deal of difference.

I think I can safely say that I would be happy to buy HDF kits in future and having seen some nice ones already I think this is an area of the hobby that could expand quickly over the next year or so. With brands like Sarissa and Warbases generating new designs all the time, I will be keeping my eye out for any HDF releases.

I think I'm a convert. I also think Sarissa will be graced by my patronage in the not so distant future.

Malifaux - Branching Out 2

Finally, my ebay purchase of the Somer Teeth Jones crew has turned up.  I must admit I am truly dissappointed with the seller as they were all loose in a large jiffy bag, so they are pretty beat up.  It would also appear that in the absence of superglu, he has used plastic glue and blue tack to assemble all the figures.  So, this post is to show you a pic and let you see the transformation to them over the coming week or so.  The paint job is... adequate to be kind, so these are going for a dip in detol (other paint stripping products are available) once I have got the blu-tack out their little crevices.

Call me the Gok of Gaming !!!!

You can see the blu tack undercoated around the base of each piglet and the white on the back of the warpig.

The final throes

So, when we got back to the game we realised that we'd done more than we thought and we had only got two of my turns and 1 of Dave's to go! This was going to be close.

We started with my reserves rolls.... And I'm not sure why I bothered. One 6 out of 8 dice meant I had rolled a grand total of two 6s in 36 dice. I only needed 4 to have got all my reserves on as well! So sadly, this left my 4 Panzer IVs off the table just when I needed them most.... Undeterred, my lone platoon rushed towards the objective as the luftwaffe infantry platoon (too late to get near the objective now) sauntered on the edge of the table. The heroic observer called down a bombardment on the infantry platoon who were rushing towards the objective and killed one stand and more importantly, pinning them down......



After getting close enough to the infantry platoon defending the objective, they shot and assaulted.... And missed. The British swung back.... and missed. More Germans from the platoon piled in and assaulted and forced the British to fall back, but they passed their break test and so would be there to try to force the Germans off the objective next turn (pic below).

There were going to be some huge rolls this turn, starting with the pinned platoon rolling to unpin themselves on a 4+...... which they did! They then moved forward to get good firing positions on the Germans holding the objective. The British observer called in the Priests on the plucky platoon and spotted first time, hitting three. I then rolled my saves needing a 3+...... and got triple 1! There then followed a fusilade of shots from all the British, and making only 1 save out of 5 (again, on a 3+) the platoon was destroyed, leaving on the HQ to contest the objective. 3 shots from the AVRE later, only 1 hit and needing a 3+ to save.......I rolled a 1. I could see this turn wasn't going to go my way!

With the furthest objective taken, all eyes turned to the strongpoint Cod objective. Woud the plucky observer be enough to repel the might of the British army?

The pioneers managed to unpin themselves and storm towards the objective as fast as they could (bottom platoon). One British base from the infantry platoons trying to get into Cod managed to fight his way over the barbed wire and get into combat with the observer who was contesting the objective. We reckoned the Pioneers were probably out of claiming range of the objective and so this one base needed to kill the observer and occupy the house to get it.

My defensive fire hit... but the team saved it. This was it then, Dave's chance to get the win and all he needed was a 4+...... and rolled a 3! As he hadn't hit, my observer automatically counter-attacked and needed a 3+ to finish it...... and you won't be surprised to hear that I rolled a 1..... The British team then surged into the house again..... and rolled another 3! They must have over stretched themselves as the Observer then rolled a 5 to finish them in close combat and finish the game holding the objective!

............

.........Or so we thought...... I then thought I'd check the rules given we hadn't played in a while and there it was, independent teams could neither claim nor contest objectives and an observer was an independent team. So it all came down to how close the pioneer team at the bottom of the picture was from the objective!

After measuring it, they were in that area where there was only millimetres in it one way or the other, so we agreed that the British had shown enough pluck, vim and vigour to win the day and so the beach head was established and the kettles were put on for a brew by exhausted British infantry all along the beach....

A great game all told that really re-invigorated our interest in Flames of War and should catapault us nicely into the next stage of the landings - the battle for Caen and surroundings with a lot of the more esoteric stuff that we have in our collections for this very purpose.

Dave also has the US landing forces and so is keen to give Omaha beach a run, along with a couple of other beach landing scenarios from the books. There's also the chance to run a "what if" battle with the German operation Sea Lion not stopped by the weather this time around.....

Malifaux - Branching Out

So I recently added Rusty Alice to my arcansists pool of figures to use, one of the things that she can do is summon  a Steampunk Abomination.

Well when I went to research these beauties I found a couple of other figures that fitted with the Construct/M&SU gang that I am building up.

So I present to you the following (from left to right)

Renegade Steamfitter Johan
Desolation Engine
4 x Steampunk abominations

Here you can see the creepiest boys band to hit the victorian streets

And of course the big 2..

Pulp City - Dr Mercury

This figure was on my original order from the Pulp City boys but has only just arrived.

Very easy to paint, the base took longer.  May introduce Dr Mercury....

D-Day re-fought

So, Dave and I managed to get some time in our diaries to play Flames of War for the first time in quite a while and, having obtained the requisite passes from our commander-in-chiefs, we decided to make it a big one - D-Day :)

(Well, not actually all of it, just the Queen Red sector of sword beach for those of you with a historical bent)

We have played this before, but since then our scenery collections have improved somewhat, with new bunkers, landing craft, buildings, roads, etc. We set up the day before remembering how long it took last time.

This is a shot the British troops would get in their rolling ride up to the beach.

The key points were Strongpoint Cod on the right just of the beach (bottom right of this next photo) with lots of Germans in and an 88 bunker trained along the beach, and Strongpoint Sole in the top left (you may just be able to see the MG team and CiC who were it's only occupants at the start of the game if you squint hard enough!). To win, the British had to take objectives in both strongpoints and my reserves would be coming on to reinforce Sole later in the game.....

The picture above was the British first wave, with the sea playing havoc with getting things onto the beach in good time. Fortunately, Dave's prelim bombardment had pinned all of strongpoint Cod and it took them 4 turns to recover, much denting their ability to shoot the British! There's an artillery observer in the white house with the red roof and he would prove to be my man of the match as he could spot whilst pinned down, but more on him later......

This is more like it, with the drift of the current meaning a lot of Dave's troops came in right next to each other and hampered their ability to deploy and advance. It certainly proved to be a "target rich environment" for my artillery observer though :) You'll see the smoking flail Sherman at the top of the beach - he came into the sights of the 88 bunker!

And watch out for the sandy based platoon who've made it off the beach, more on them later....

This is further into the game and the artillery has been absolutely brutal, the smoking wrecks of 4 M-10s, MG carriers, AVREs and Shermans litter the beach, hindering line of sight, as the infantry try in vain to take Cod with it's minefields, barbed wire and trenches. You'll also see my KwK bunker in the middle of the beach is down, destroyed by a bunker busting shell from an AVRE.

Just following this, the commandoes stormed past the cowering infantry, ran through the minefield and the barbed wire, losing only a few to lots and lots of shooting (Dave's saves were just inspired) and smashed the defenders of Cod to pieces (I was too shell shocked to take pictures at this point I think, Dave used to be in a Commando regiment so this performance didn't surprise him at all!).

The brave commandoes were thrown back by the lone remaining platoon commander and then returned to their ships due to casualties suffered, but their intervention meant Cod was left undefended apart from my arty observer (my main platoon defending Cod also broke due to casualties suffered in the assault) who was cowering in the house having suffered 8 turns of absolutely everything thrown at him to try to get rid of him.

With Cod all but lost, attention turned to Strongpoint Sole...... Now, my reserves were rolled for from turn 3 onwards, needing a 6 to get a platoon and with 1 extra dice per turn (starting with 1 die on turn 3). Now that's a whole heap of dice. How many 6s have I got with 9 turns gone? One. Uno. Ein. I get 8 dice this turn and I'm not expecting to get any 6s in that lot either!

Anyway, below is the current state of play of the objective. The MG team died to a lucky machine gun shot before they got to fire and my plucky CiC (left of picture) is currently engaged in a game of cat & mouse with the AVRE who is shooting and assaulting him, but he has led a charmed life and refuses to lay down :) My one reserve platoon is storm-trooping towards the objective (top right of picture) and are taking fire from the Sherman flail tank as they do so. Dave's sand based assault troop (remember them?) are on the bottom of the picture. Took them a while to get up here as the they were hit by arty and then wouldn't unpin themselves for 3 turns!

So, it's all going to come down to whether my reserves actually arrive along the road at left top of the picture and whether Dave can keep me from contesting the objective (within 10cm).

It was such a long game that we didn't get to finish it in a day so will hopefully finish it this week sometime. I think it's fair to say that it's on a knife edge :)

The fun thing about re-fighting a historical scenario like this is that you care much less about winning and it's more about which little figures pull off heroic manuoevres.... or run away screaming at the first sign of trouble!

Stay tuned for the next blog post later this week to see how it all ends.....

Next please!

A.R.C. member no. 2 reporting for duty. I do like the sculpt for howler. He looks like something from a seventies cop show crossed with an episode of The A-Team!