Fallschirmjager reporting in

Another decent weekend of hobby time, in amongst family fun and shopping trips.

The Fallschirmjager continue apace and platoon #1 is pretty much done now. Have to sort out the washes and basing but quite pleased so far.

Platoon 1 reporting in for duty mein Herr

After a couple of games one of the things I'm really liking about FoW is the scenarios. They are very different to what I'm used to and my set up in each game so far has been great for 40K but not FoW. For instance last week I was defending so put out my AT, Mortars and HMG teams in what seemed a cracking defensive position.

Unfortunately it became obvious very quickly that because I had nothing on one of the objectives that it would fall very quickly so my HMG teams ended up in a 100m dash... obviously they were wiped out!

With a bit more thought I should have played with combat teams and added the HMG to my 9 base platoon above and my company HQ with Panzerschreks and dug them all in around the objective. Now try shifting fearless veterans from there whilst I wait for my reinforcements to arrive.

The other thing I'm liking is the fact that mobility is key in some scenarios. AT guns are great and all but once they are flanked or the enemy closes they are stuffed. So I'm now looking to enhance my AT capabilities with some Tank Hunters. Always been partial to Hetzers but for now I'm going with some really poorly armoured Marder IIIH.

Why? Well the short answer is because I can. This is something else I'm liking about FoW: you can take the apparently weak stuff and still achieve some amazing results. Plus I just like the idea of vehicles with armour 1 that also pack a 7.5cm PaK40 gun and some serious AT12. Take that T34s...

Look at the barrels on those boys

I will probably end up with a couple more to make the full squadron. My AT guns are 240 points for 4 and these boys come in at 260 points for 4 so not a bad swap. Will have to see how they do as I fully expect them to brew up at the slightest sneeze in their direction.

Open topped for that +1 damage roll. Oh hang on...

And here are the crew of the Marders all ready and, erm, well not ready at all to be honest. Will get these Tank Hunters painted up once my German Armour spray arrives.

Zzzzzzzzzz

Now my FJ list comes from Grey Wolf. One of the things I've been doing this weekend is looking at the Earth & Steel book to see what differences are involved with fielding these boys against the Western allies.

Jumping off the page so far are the Panther A tanks of the SS. Yes I can take 3 of these for the princely sum of 600+ points. Sheesh. Still I do like a nice Panther and it would be rude not to right? Right?

And the votes are in!

I made my mind up last night, cos strangely nobody chose to call my premium charge voting hotline, and plumped to leave out the weapon pods and mount the Lascannons straight onto the fuselage. I also decided to keep the wings....but not wanting to be conventional I mounted them at the front and I don't think it has turned out to badly. The added bonus of poping the wings on the front is that the model has a smaller foot print and will therefore be easier to store. Result!

I really like this model. Ugly to start out with but for such an oddly shaped thing there is actually quite a lot you can tinker with to make it your own, much less stupid looking, swooping killy death machine!

Zvezda Katyusha for Flames of War

So, whilst recently sorting out my Soviet force, re-basing some to get the right mix of weapons and to make sure I had the right number of bases I realised that I had an issue.  I like Katyushas.... Not an issue in itself as they seem to me to be one of the iconic Soviet units from WW2, but the issue was with how many I had, the availability of new ones and the army lists.

I shall explain as I can almost see your eyes glazing over ;)

So, I bought the Battlefront box of 4 and very nice it is too - 4 well detailed models on nice resin bases withholes for crew.  Perfect.  They're one of the units that I've finished apart from a bit of work on the base and I've used them pretty much every time I've used the Soviets (yep, around 3 times).  The army list tells me that I can either get 4 of them (for a double width template) or 8 of them for a DEVASTATING BOMBARDMENT (I just felt that had to be written in capitals).  All's well so far....

Well, I also had another two Katyushas from Battlefront that came individually in blisters as a birthday present a fair few moons ago.  "Great" I thought "only 2 more to get".  Only to find that Battlefront apparently doesn't do the blisters anymore..... So the only way to get 8 was to buy another box for about £35.  Ouch.  And then have 2 Katyushas spare.

Then I remembered a recommendation from the "Model Dads" blog (a very valuable resource for FoW - trawl their archived posts if you haven't seen it already) of small plastic single Katyushas from a company called Zvezda.  A quick internet search later revealed that they were £2.97 each and looked well sized.  But came with no crew.... But fortunately I have so many spare Soviets that a quick tally revealed I could staff them from spares - so there is an upside to buying too much as it saves you money sometimes.... honest :)

So I plunged in and ordered a couple.  They turned up and I took one out of the pack and here it is

Doesn't look too daunting, does it?

A quick peruse told me it was snap-fit..... which made me slightly concerned because the holes and dibbits would need to be pretty perfect, so I grabbed my glue and clippers and files (just in case).  The instructions were all in picture form (good job as I don't speak Russian!) and I was very pleasantly surprised by how well the model went together.  Some other plastic miniature manufacturers could learn a thing or two from these boys....... I still glued most bits to add to longevity, but all of the pieces went together very smoothly (apart from the bonnet, which was a bit of a chore but as it was the last piece I fitted, I magnanimously forgave it).

But was the scale right?  Pretty much spot on actually.  Couple of pics below of it next to one of the sadly neglected blister originated Katyushas.

Not bad......

........Not bad at all

The launching rails are thinner, probably due to the fact it's one piece plastic instead of metal, and it had a slightly sleeker feel, again probably due to the way you can use plastic, but I'd certainly have no concern fielding these two together in an army!

Bargain cost of less than £6 as opposed to £35 - well chuffed!

So, would I recommend only buying the Zvezda kit as opposed to any battlefront ones?  Depends on how much time you have.  The battlefront box includes the crew, command and observer teams and a truck for the command team.  Once you factor in 4 Katyushas (£12), a zvezda truck (also £3) and enough crew and command teams (about £10 from maelstrom for example with the little special order packs to get some ammo too) you're comparing £25 to £35.  But the time element is much greater as it's plastic sprue based kit as opposed to the 5 or so pieces in the Battlefront kit.  It's better when you compare for the 8 gun battery as you only need 1 command team and truck, so the saving probably goes up to £25 or so, which isn't to be sniffed at.

Right, I'm off to look for a DEVASTATING BOMBARDMENT template as I may need one in the not too distant future.....



Some choices...

I got to have a chance to finish the Storm Talon last night. In truth I would have completed it if it hadn't been for......well me.

I spent far to long uming and arring about what to do next. The photo shows the nose guns without the chunky pod and I have to say I had a clear idea what I wanted there so that happened pretty quickly. What I got stuck on is the wings and the lascannons.

Now the wings should be on the side of the engine pods sweeping downward slighty due to the little kink that they have in them. Problem is that I'm not sure if I like it better without the wings entirely!

I was also stumped regarding how to mount the Lascannons onto the fuselage. The side weapon pod are nice little designs in of themselves but I'm not overly enamoured with them sticking out of the sides. I've been toying with the idea of just mounting the Lascannon barrels straight onto the front of the block that the weapons pods are meant to be stuck to and then adding some power pack detail just behind the barrels on the side of the block.

What do you think then guys. Wings? No Wings? Gun pods? No gun pods?

Pretend it is like one of those Saturday night talent shows that hypnotise the masses have ruined TV. In fact it is exactly like them as I, like Simon Cowell choosing talentless numpties, have already decided what I am going to do and any pretence of a vote is a sham. The phone number if you choose to vote is 0800-UGLY BRICK-555 and is charged at £20.00 a second.

Still. It'll be fun to hear your opinions.

;-)

Work in Progress

Urn and Von have inspired me to get back to the blog. I had intended to try for one post a week but that has falling by the wayside. I was trying to post finished projects and we've proven that this just does not happen as we hope so I am now intending to fling up more frequent posts even if they are jut work in progress stuff. After all that is what these blogs are about isn't it?

Anyhoo. First off is the recently acquired Ugly Flying Brick Storm Talon. What were GW Designers thinking? I can only conclude that it was one of the following:-
1) Someone snuck into the CGI dept after a few Bugmans brews and tinkered with the design as a joke but it was never picked up before the design was sent to manufacturing.
2) It was designed by a committee suffering from full blown 'Group Think' which manifested as an inability to see the flaws in the design.
3) GW were being asses the day this one was born.

In truth, many elements of the things design do work. Okay...it does look like a Rhino humped an Apache helicopter but it has the correct elements but still doesn't quite work. Why? Well in my opinion it is simply because they tried to make part of it true scale. Just part of it tho'!?! True scale cockpit slapped onto a micro-machine combat helicopter body. But......even that is forgivable compared to the 'chin'. Who. Designed. That?

So my plan is simple de-emphasize the ridiculous chin mounted weapon and then take a view on what to do about the side weapon pods which are also a little on the chunky side.

The kit itself goes together well and apparentley fairly quickly but sadly ones young daughter saw fit to interupt her fathers hobby time so I'll have to try and finish it tomorrow night. I think with the few small changes I am planning to make I will be able to learn to quite like this little model. ;-)

Flames of War Soviets come blinking into the light.

So Dave and I have been playing Flames of War in Normandy for absolutely ages.  But in addition to the Germans (who I mainly got as Dave was a staunch British Army fan) I just couldn't resist the Soviets from the little I'd read about WW2.  Which wasn't a lot.  I couldn't tell the difference between a sherman, a tiger and a P4.  But as I collected them, I read more and more and was intrigued.  So did not having an opponent mean I kept my purchasing relatively small?  Ha!  I'm a wargamer and therefore pathologically incapable of applying that kind of logic to purchasing shiny stuff :)

I even put some of it together and undercoat/basecoated it with ary painter.  Heck, I even painted a couple of infantry platoons.  But not many figures compared to the total purchases..... It's probably easier if I show you what I'm talking about....

T-34s!  Both 76's and 85's for those in the know. Which i now am after playing FoW

Errr, more T-34s... And some KVs....

"And you bought all these without an opponent you say?"

"Errr, yes..... But in defence these aren't T-34s!  Does that even help a little bit? No?  Thought not."

Some infantry!  And some even have filler on their bases....

More infantry!  And trucks... and recce vehicles.... and.....

Hurrah - some painted ones at last!

Oops... back to not really painted ones.....

So Von's decision to really go for it with his FJ has cheered me up no end - I get a chance to use the Soviets!  It's amazing how much more I'm incentivised to work on them now I know there is some game time coming up.  And looks like this might also inspire Eddie to get some Germans finished to give me two opponents.  Excellent!

The plan is to get at least a 1500 point army ready for play and go from there.  I'm excited by this - new version of the rules, new army, new opponents and what more could a gamer ask for? :)

Say Guten Tag to mein kleine freunds

Whilst everyone is getting geared up for 40K VI I've taken a complete jump to the right and dived into Flames of War. I know. Odd considering my love for 40K but for some reason I'm not feeling the excitement and so have transferred my hobby time to the Fallschirmjager.

Now there's a lot of them in an army so it's going to take a little while to do but thought I'd chuck out some WiP shots to show where we are right now.

Thought I'd paint up a single Rifle/MG Squad first to get a feel for the camouflage scheme.

First up add some Flesh (GW)

  

Then Field Grey (Valejo). I'd forgotten just how green field grey is! Just the trousers for this lot. My first try with Valejo and I'm very impressed so far: good consistency and very good coverage. Painful switching from 28mm heroic to 15mm mind - almost had to get the magnifying glass out! 

 

Then German Camo Beige (Valejo) on Smocks and covered helmets. This will form the base for the splinter camouflage.

Now the fun begins. According to various paint guides I should be aiming for angles with the camouflage and then some thin green lines to create the splinter design. I took one look at the amount of space to paint and immediately said no to that! Instead I started with German Camo Brown (Valejo) and painted on some zig-zag lines.

Then using Luftwaffe Green (Valejo) I added blobs to the design. The one piece of advice from the paint guides that I did stick to was to only cover about a 1/3 of the area with the brown. This means that at least we can still see the Beige showing through. Quite pleased with the effect and it wasn't too long a process which is good considering how many of these I have to paint in an Infantry Company.

 

Final pieces were then painted: rifles, SMG, Helmet (Dark Camo Green) and bottles/ammo (green/grey). I then decided to wash them with Earthshade (GW) to tone them down a bit as they were quite bright. This is supposed to be camo so having them standing out like a beacon isn't exactly right!

The base is not yet completed as I've yet to decide exactly how to do them. I've used Army Painter Steppe Grass for the initial covering and allow the mud to show through: I want this to look like there are fighting in the Russian countryside where the grass has been churned up by tanks...

The final stand:

Currently seeing how long it takes to paint the other 8 bases + command team in this Platoon.

Wish me Luck!