Cara Al Sol...

...Los Camisas Neuvas!

Today I started building my Division Azul platoon for Chain of Command. The figures are the Warlord Games' plastic 'Blitzkrieg' German infantry 1939-42, and are pretty characterful. Reasonably easy to build, and ingenious touches like the one-piece pouches are great. I'm splitting them into three squads, each with a different set of poses - one standing firing, one charging (with grenade-throwing and bayonet) and one prone and kneeling, firing. So far I've made up a mere handful of men, but here they are on my painting table:

Yesterday evening I went with JY to a wargames and games club based in Coventry, where I played a very nice chap called Kevin at X-Wing. His tactics weren't brilliant, and I beat him 100-59 with my TIE swarm, and then we swapped sides and I beat him 100-0 with his X-Wing/Y-Wing flight. Here's the turn-by-turn pics from the first game:

 Setup - Obsidian Sqn in their usual two flight groups side-by-side. Note the Y-Wings in the Rebel centre and the X-Wings off to starboard.

 End Turn One: Obsidian Sqn and the Rebels move in, no-one in range. Asteroids ahoy; time to move.

 End Turn Two: I made a serious error here. 'B' Flight moved 2 Forwards rather than 3 Forwards, which meant that 'A' Flight ran into them. D'oh! However the Rebels were not in a position to capitalise on this; ion turrets hit O5 but Obsidian Sqn firing knocked an ion turret off one of the Grey Squadron ships.

 End Turn Three: The furball begins! TIEs manouvering as best they could; O5 causing some problems as it drifts under the effects of the Ion blast.

 End Turn Four: O5 goes west, but so has one of Grey Squadron and now I outnumber them 2:1 and have concentration of firepower too.

 End Turn Five: The Rebels break, my TIEs strip them of their shields as they lose formation.

 End Turn Six: Howlrunner down! But so is the second Y-Wing, and the X-Wings are separated.

 End Turn Seven: O2 has managed to K-Turn himself in front of one of the X-Wings - an error of judgement on my part. Miraculously he only took two damage rather than go BOOM.

 End Turn Eight: One X-Wing down, one to go, but O2 has gone. I now have a 4:1 advantage, but not for long...

 End Turn Nine: Another TIE breaks up under the punishing firepower of the X-Wing, in return for a point of hull damage.

End Turn Ten: And that's all she wrote. Outnumbered 3:1, the last X-Wing is shot down and the day belongs to the Empire. Score: 100 points to 59.

In the rematch I flew the Rebels as a single flight, splitting into two elements each of a Y-Wing and X-Wing about half-way through. Kevin's lack of experience with a TIE swarm told; he flew them in a ragged line which meant O2 and O3 (both PS5) were on their own and dispatched by turn three, followed shortly thereafter by Howlrunner (PS8) which then meant the PS4 Rebels were shooting first and able to concentrate their fire on a small number of fragile TIEs, often at ranges 1-2, maximising their shooting potential and minimising the TIE's agility advantage. The result there was a whitewash; I destroyed Obsidian Squadron for no losses (although I was down to one hull point on one of the Y-Wings)! I think Kevin may be a tougher opponent next time; he certainly had a pretty solid list!

The club were a friendly bunch and I took some photos of the other wargames going on in the same room:

 The "two Petes" and their Romans-versus-Britons DBA game in 15mm! I think the Romans won but I'm not certain.

 Simon and John setting up for their second X-Wing game. Interceptors versus B- and Y-Wings.

Gary and Tony, playing Pulp Alley! - a race against time to stop the Dastardly Nazis getting away with a Death Ray! No idea who won but lovely terrain, nice models and by the sound of it a jolly fun game.

Oh, and tonight I introduced SB to X-Wing and had a couple of games of Magic: The Gathering. Tomorrow, more Division Azul and probably a bit more X-Wing, because why not!

Things

So in the month since I last posted, I've been to Tunisia (hot, dry, amazing), and amicably split from S.

Both of which have pretty much killed my modelling and painting. I've still managed to get a few games in, and there's a new shop opened in Leamington Spa called BAM! Comics, which is very friendly and deserves your support.

As to what I have been up to, well...

I've played a few games of X-Wing, losing some and winning some, played Firefly: the game (and lost), won a game of Talisman, and joined a games club in Coventry with my friend JY (his uncle and two lecturers from his college attend, and he had no idea, which is pretty funny).

Oh, and I finally got some Germans to paint up as Division Azul troops to fight my Soviets. Except, as I discovered, 30 figures isn't quite enough to represent a full-strength Wehrmacht-organised infantry platoon from 1942. I need another 19 figures for that - another 10 man squad, a platoon CO, platoon sergeant, three runners (one with a sniper rifle), a sanitats, and a 5cm mortar team of three. Ah well, it's a start!

Anyway, here's some pictures:

 A game of X-Wing against JY, early on, before I lost both TIE bombers by being run over by the Dodonna's Pride (the big bloody thing on the right!), and before my Lambda managed to pop Wedge(?) with its heavy laser cannon. My interceptors are busy looking cool and dishing out the pain.

Arrrgh! The death of Iorek the Shamed, my Dragon Age pen-and-paper RPG character, to a Shade, on the road from the Lothering graveyard. Poor sod. He slaughtered his way through a graveyard full of demon-possessed skeletons, only to run up against this thing against whom his battle axe was not effective and his mighty armour useless. So he fought, and died, after realising he couldn't escape. Still, it means I get to make a new character! Happy days!

 Setting up a game of X-Wing at BAM! Comics (£2.50 an hour to use a table, not each, per table. Jolly reasonably priced and you can play anything you want; there was a game of Magic going on behind us and then that turned into Conquistador). Me with Obsidian Squadron and JY flailing about trying to write a list.

 The forces. Seven TIE/ln versus two X-Wings and two A-Wings.

 Setup. Two flights ('A' on the right, with the blank space behind O2, and 'B' on the left, O4-O7) against one. Prepare to die, Rebel scum!

 End turn one. Moving in for the kill.

 End turn two. At this point I've lost O4 to X-Wing fire, while the A-Wings' assault missiles both missed, doing (thankfully) no damage at all to my closely packed TIE swarm.

 End turn three. One A-Wing downed, a few bumps as my 'A' flight run into the X-Wings which are now neatly on the tail of 'B' flight who had run into them earlier on, trapping them into facing the wrong way... aiee!

 End turn four. Bloody asteroids! Amazingly I've only lost one other TIE but I don't like these odds of 5:3...

 End turn five. I'm facing the wrong way with everything, and his X-Wings... aren't. Curses!

 End turn six. Predictable results really. Now one-on-one with TIEs against barely damaged Rebel ships; there's no way out for the remains of Obsidian Squadron now!

 End turn seven. Another TIE's bitten the dust. Still three rebel ships. The end is nigh.

And that's that! Taken milliseconds before the surviving TIE disintegrates under a hail of cannon fire from the X-Wings. A well-flown victory for JY, helped enormously by bad positioning and terrible dice rolls from me.

 Rematch. I got my own back in a 150 point game immediately afterwards where I took two Black Squadron pilots, Vader, and three Interceptors led by Baron Fel. This is the point at which JY gave up, having had all his X-Wings destroyed for the loss of one TIE, and the Falcon about to go down under a hail of fire.

A game of Talisman with CH! He took a monk who became EEEEEEVILLLL really early on (and became massively strong, a base attack of 22!), and I ended up with a thief who snuck into the Valley of Fear and seized the Crown of Command despite nearly dying along the way. Yipes! I love this game and really must get some of the expansions. And paint the figures. Must paint the figures.

And a game of Firefly in progress with SB, NR, NV, and AC. AC won, damn his eyes, but at least I got to fly in the 'verse and I was very nearly the winner. Very nearly. I just misjudged things a teeny weeny bit and ended up having to sack Inara from my crew! Sad times!

I have done some other bits and pieces, like some work on an Eversor assassin, starting to repaint the Rhino from the Aderaband Home Defence Militia, and that sort of thing, but really since I got back from North Africa I've just been gaming.

Vorwarts!

Today was an interesting day. First of all, I'd barely been in work half an hour when the shopping centre's alarm sounded (AWOOOGAH, AWOOOGAH, in best Calvin & Hobbes tradition) followed shortly after by our own fire alarm system. So off we all trotted into the glorious early April sunshine, while I fretted about the very hard to replace stuff in my paint-kit that I take to work each day! It turned out to be a duff sprinkler unit, but the excitement didn't wear off for a few hours so that was good.

Then, when I was sat down at lunch happily painting my Darendaran command squad (Yellow Company, Black Battalion, Darendaran X Mech. if you must know), the area manager came in and looked at me somewhat askance. Ah well. It keeps me sane and harms no-one; although he seemed surprised to find me still painting the same figures when he came back 40 minutes later. Well... yes?

Anyway, on my way home, I nipped into the Leamington Games Club to try and pick up the turret heavy flamer that's missing from Blue Platoon Squad 4's Chimera, only to discover that the fellow I was swapping bits with had forgotten it! Ah well. I stopped to chat to Rob, who is one of the glorious lunatics behind Prodos Games, and Will, the manager of GW Leamington Spa. They were about to be engaged in a game of Flames of War, the GW-esque 15mm approach to WW2. I was quite taken by their forces, and when Rob said he wanted to play early war games, I - perhaps foolishly - volunteered to raise a German force to fight his Poles.

I've got time to kill, and I'm quite looking forwards to the idea of a unit of 1939 German Whermacht, with their Pz. Is and IIs, not to mention their 35t and 38t Czechoslovak tanks and other weird and wonderful bits of kit. Peter Pig will, I think, be my first port of call as the prices that Battlefront charge are a bit much in my opinion.

So, today, I discussed Men of Company B, Slaughterloo, Flames of War, and Warhammer 40,000. Today was a good day.

Oh, and here are those Chimeras:

A terrible photo (I really must take more care in future). I'll take a better one tomorrow.

And, just for fun...

...a comparison between an original Darendaran X trooper (left) and one with the newer uniform (right).

Part of my unpainted mountain:

On the left is the full-strength Red Platoon (plus company Commissar); on the right is the under-strength Blue Platoon (still awaiting three rocket launcher teams. Yellow Company Command and most of Red (Weapons) Squad #4 are currently either being painted or undercoated.

All told the Darendaran Tenth number some 90 figures supported by 11 AIFVs, three Sentinel walkers, two Demolisher infantry support tanks, and a Hellhound flame-tank. I'm hoping to get the whole lot painted, based and finished this year. If I only finish one army this year I want it to be the Tenth Mechanised.

Oh, and just for Al Front:

Undercoated!

For J, Who Will Explode If I Don't

I have been really lax in updating this blog. Over the last week I have painted three Miliciens, a Jugoslav Communist partisan, 20 more Molgravians, and made good progress on my commission for J. I have also deflashed 36 28mm Napoleonic French and assembled the free figure of H4-ML37 that Hasslefree Miniatures sent me - because I came up with the name.

So here are the pictures:

Figures from J's commission: I still need to paint their webbing, woodwork, and fine detail before I do the faces and hair. About two thirds done probably.

Tito's finest - a female partisan. I think she was originally meant to be a French resistance fighter, but she looks better as a Jugoslavian.

Vive la France! Three Franc-Gardes non-permanente ready to repel the enemies of Vichy. No idea who made these chaps, who are in actuality meant to be FFI or Maquisards. I don't think anyone makes Milice figures, which is a shame.

H4-ML37 in his powered armour suit and carrying an advanced assault rifle (with 'smart' 20mm HE underbarrel launcher). I think I'm going to give him a San Francisco 49ers baseball cap, because my first baseball cap when I was small was a 49ers one. I am tempted to get his companion Smudge to form some kind of ultra-experimental US military unit. A bit like We3 (a brilliant graphic novel, read it if you can find it), perhaps.

And finally, the Molgravian Liebgarde zu Fuss expands up to 32 figures out of the final total of 52 plus Colonel.

Olley Painting Points:
This Week: 21 (and 3 from last week not previously counted)
October Total: 43
2012 Total: 88

Of Superquick and Metcalfe...

Fairly recently, my Dad and I engaged in a spot of WW2 gaming (as is our wont) with a Fallschirmjager assault on the sleepy village of Lower Bimble, defended by a company of Home Guard. A report from the jackboot side of things can be found here on the Gentleman's Wargames Parlour. I will be putting in a report as soon as I can get a replacement power cable...!

Anyway, what I was really going to be talking about was Superquick and Metcalfe. For the uninitiated, they are two companies that make cardboard kits of houses, factories, pubs and so on for model railways and, yes, wargamers, in 1/72 scale. We used their stuff for Lower Bimble. It works remarkably well with 28mm, and perfectly with 20-25mm too.

The amount of kits they do is incredible - between the two of them there's enough stuff to produce a whole town with industrial estate, railway station(s) by the dozen and an airfield. And I've got a load of them at work. They look at me, tempting me to get them and make them so that, next time, we can have urban warfare in the streets of Upper Bimble as the Field Army and its Home Guard comrades try to fend off the fanatical Nazi paratroops and their Whermacht chums.

Should I give in, or stay firm? Help!