Painting - Houses & Terrain for Cangames

So I finished off the other 2 of the Kerr and King houses I had. Nothing special just more of the same to go with the first couple. One thing I want to add in the future is some kind of a big town base that the buildings can sit on. My plan was to eventually pick up some of the crescent root ones, but they are no longer available it seems.

On a bit of a tangent from the prep for cangames now, I have a set of 4 Jumbo Shermans, just about finished for the campaign we have starting on the 19th. So starting to get distracted a bit, haven't gotten that much painting at all done over the last week or so really, but have been playing allot of games as well.

Anyway I decided to set up a mock battle using all the stuff I have for my Cangames Samurai battles to see how it all looks together on the table. Not exactly the same as the terrain set up might be but will be somewhat similar. I am hoping to get another half a dozen Takeda units done and then we can try out a practice game next week to see how this rule set works which is important. But I have a fair idea from playing Hail Caesar anyway. Plan is for this set up to inspire me to buckle down again on the painting front.

So i have a bit of an urban village on this side of the table, with a more rural one rice paddies and a vegetable garden on the other side, connected by a road over the river. Then a few forests and hills, nothing to fancy.

The basing I have blends in really well with the terrain items, but obviously the green mat looks kind of bad. I am hoping to replace it with a different one from before the con which should be better.

Charge!

I had the roads for a long time but forgot they existed and never used them so they do need to be flattened out a bit, and the kink in my table looks bad. But still I think this is a neat set up.

Thanks;
Mike

Note I didn't paint any of this terrain it's was from a commission

Wednesday Wargaming - Flames of War Market Garden

So Wednesday wargming is finally returning. As previously discussed we decided to start things off with a very nice city fight, I have been thinking of this as taking place in Nijmegen, but really it's just a bunch of the buildings that we had, on a map I had which is even intended for a different game/scale.

I went with a US Para force and Serge had the Germans. Here is a look at the forces:

So as you can see we approached things quite differently, I went for a small number of big elite platoons, and the Germans have a big bucket of stuff. The Germans are only trainees hah so I assume it should be easy to beat them. Honestly my first mistake may have been in the list building, I took the mortars thinking they would be very useful to fire directly and take out some heavy machine gun positions. However as it turned out in a city you could only see 6" most of them time, and they have to be 8" away to fire. So that is not brilliant. My other option was to take a big platoon of 8 light machine gun platoons, but I was thinking if I went crazy with machine guns it won't make for a fun battle.

We ended up doing the Dust Up mission, I rolled on the table but vetoed the missions I thought would not be fun/interesting. This is the one where you defend diagonally opposite corners and the reserves come in on the other side close to the opposing objectives. Actually quite like this one.

So here is a shot of the starting set up: Serge brought some ruins so we filled in a section of destroyed city.

I forgot to have no flash until later, I blame serge for this

So I started with my artillery and mortars in the big rubble area, and my engineers then dug into the road. Not I forgot that the enemy had placed an objective in the forest until turn 3, another piece of not brilliant generaling. So that left my 2 strong infantry platoons and the recon in delayed reserve to attack the enemy objectives.

I don't remember exactly the German reserves but they more or less had the opposite plan and started with their strong platoons, and had some weak small ones in reserve, generally speaking.

So here is a shot of like turn 3, I finally noticed the plane in the woods and moved to cover it, and the Germans have been force marching a big platoons across the table to get ready to attack. I bombed out a few things here and there with my artillery and a few pot shots with the sniper but not much happening. On the right flank the Germans moved up there other big platoon to prepare a defense.

Stugs cruise down the road, leader is the StuH very dangerous to infantry with his big cannon

On turn four I finally got a reserve in and took an infantry platoon to attack the park. To much stuff defending to assault right off, but my plan was to re-position the sniper to get a pin, and or use my platoon commander to call in the artillery since he was close and could hopefully see a guy. But a big danger remains of getting shot up by the 4 heavy machine guns and all the infantry teams.

The Germans brought in some half tracked recon with a bunch of machine guns to help get ready for there own big assault. I was sadly still not in an ideal position and not dug in due to previous mistakes!

The Germans tried to dig in instead of moving, so my platoon was spared a torrent of bullets, but they storm troopered out of the sight of my commander, foiling my artillery plan and getting a bit better defensive position.

So I out my sniper just in range of 1 team, and the got to bring in my jeeps to shoot them up a bit. I got a pin out of the sniper, and the jeeps maybe killed a stand or something. But this allowed for a reasonable assault, the Germans had like 11ish dice of defensive fire and got only 4 hits! So just barely but the assault went in and I ended up breaking the platoon and taking the position.

This park now belongs to the 101st Airborne

Ah bit of a gap in picture taking now as the game was getting interesting, but the Germans didn't want to be out done so they had a similar assault against the other park but a bit less successful and my platoon was not broken right away.

I thought I had the game in the bag now and after killing the German second in command who delayed my win for a turn, I set up in the street to make it impossible fort the Germans to contest without an assault. But the German in the street is 4.001" away so we are having some hard measuring.

But the half tracks assault and despite a bail just managed to get in, I counter assaulted and got a fair amount of hits but they made there saves. Now my platoons decided to fail it's motivation test to counter assault again, despite being fearless. So I was pushed back and the Germans had a clear contest to the objective, crap.

On the other side the same thing was happening in reverse and bad things were being done to my poor engineers. As you can see here they are pushed back almost into the street.

So the grind continues, I keep try to hold my objective solidly but the 3 half tracks stubbornly won't go down, and I keep failing motivation test when I have them in an assault I should be able to win. My other Infantry is coming in to back up, but will they have time to get in there?

Well no as my engineers are gone and I am down to technically contesting with jeeps and really stretching that I guess. But the StuH has a jeep vaporizing cannon so that just lasts a turn.

The half tracks finally get rid of the depleted platoon, and took back the park. Although the second platoon is there to take it back again if given half a chance.

But on the other side I don't quite have anything to contest with so ends up as a German victory. But very close game and a change to a motivation in a couple of spots could easily have swayed things.

At the start I was worried that the wide streets, more then 6", were going to badly impact the game but it worked out alright really. I really like this mat but it would be nice to have a 15mm scaled one with more turns in the streets. Still I think this was a nice looking set up, and you probably don't want many more buildings than this or the game becomes un workable.

List wise I was very happy with the sniper, and that was fun to use. The mortar platoon was useless, and I would have been better off with the machine guns. But eh I am not sure that would have made things more fun so maybe this was better. The air landing 105mm platoon continues to be an incredable value, line of sight was a problem in this game but it was still bringing down some pain with time on target attacks and forcing people away from the edges of terrain limiting the effect of all those machine guns some what. Plus my guys with city bases finally got to get in a fight in a city!

Not sure what is the plan for next week, maybe try out a Samurai game if I can get enough stuff re-based.

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Houses

Just a quick one here, I wanted to add a few more house to the table for today so I tried to paint the set of Ker and King ones I have had in a box for years.

I only managed to finish 2 out of 4 but that is not bad, have the bricks done on the other two so I am just going to use them anyway I guess. Feels good to get them done after having them sitting unpainted for so long hah.

Paints Used:

Vallejo: Beige Brown + Flat Red (brick color), Luftwaffe Green

Liquitex: Umber Ink

GW: Black Spray, Adeptus Mechanicus Grey, Dawn Grey, Palid Wych Flesh

P3: Blue, Grey


Just a quick job obviously but fits in with the other buildings I guess, I painted them the same as my ruins so they would match,

Pledge Status 2015:
Bought: 121 
Painted: 46 (2 houses)
Total: -75

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Samurai & Rus

So the work continues on the Cangames projects, finished off some more re-based Samurai guys and the Warlord for the Pagan Rus.

First up here is the last base for the Useugi stuff:

I painted a new command to get enough figures for a unit, so this brings them up to 16 bases and 2 commanders which is pretty good. That is all the Useugi troops that I had painted so then I moved over to rebasing some Takeda:

Started with the Cavalry on  that side, so I have 5 bases done for them now, and that is all the Cavalry I had done. So making quite good progress on that, but it will really slow down once I start having to paint new troops obviously, but should be just finishing off the armies at that point I think.

Also got the Warlord for the Pagan Rus just about finished, just need to add a shield and do the basing.

The axe is a bit small is the only issue with this guy, maybe I should have given him a sword instead. But my theory is that axes are cooler.


We are going back to doing some game on Wednesday this week, and the plan is to play a city fight game of Flames of War. So I started setting up a table yesterday.

Turns out I don't quite have enough buildings to convincingly cove a 6x4 table, but am making a good attempt. This is making me want to paint some of the unpainted ruins and buildings I have had for awhile hah. I have a few more rural style buildings I mgiht add, or else scale back to only 4x4. Turns out you need allot of buildings.

The mat is intended for 28mm and more of a modern / futuristic thing, but I think it still works ok even thou the roads are a bit wide but whatever.

Pledge Status 2015:
Bought: 121 
Painted: 44 (1 set of Samurai Command)
Total: -77

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - More Samurai and Infinity

So finished off a few more Samurai re-basings, a couple of more ranged squads and a couple of commanders. I was one the fence about the commanders but I decided to go for it just so they would all be on the same style of base.

So that brings me up to 15 units, and I have 1 more of Ashigaru Swords to go just need to finish the command, and then that will be all of my Useugi tuff re based. A bit heavy on the ranged units, but I am considering them to be skirmishers maybe so each stand would equate to less people. I probably will go back later and do some Oda guys to be the extra command and add some more Samurai foot and some Samurai with Nage-Yari, I think I have them unpainted. But will be ont to some TAekda re basing after the last unit so I will be able to try out a test game at least and see how it works and if it's even any good!

On the Infinity side I painted a Fusilier Paramedic, actually it's a special character medic but that what I am going to use it as mostly.

The pistol is actually a medical gun that shoot healing bullets, bizarrely enough. I'm not keen on the kiss blowing, but I wanted the paramedic stuff so that's life. I guess my plan is to paint 1 Infinity guy per week just to have a bit of variety in there. Next week will be the dude with the rocket launcher!

Paints Used:

Liquitex: Black Gesso, Black Ink

Vallejo: Black, Flat Red, Natural Red, Camo Beige, Ivory, Flat Earth, Dark Sand, Luftwaffe Green, Wood Grain

Warpaints: Soft Tone

Foundry: Flesh Triad

Pledge Status 2015:
Bought: 121 
Painted: 43 (1 set of Samurai Command and the Paramedic)
Total: -78

Thanks;
Mike

Cangames Prep - Taking Stock

So starting to get organized for the games I have signed up to run at Cangames 2015, and figure out what needs to get done to pull off what I want. I have submitted two games as follows:

Battle on the Ice - a 28mm game based on the Teutonic Knights retreating from their loss at Lake Peipus, basically as an excuse to make it a skirmish game. Using the historical adaption of the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. This one is on the Friday at 2.

Samurai Battles: Mikatagahara - a 15mm game based on the battle as named, using the Pike and Shotte Samurai adaption. This one is based a bit more on how things actually went down, but I think I will be making the sides a bit more even.

Battle on the Ice:

The first game requires the most work I would say, I have the Teutonic Knights I took to Cold Wars, but I would also like to add in a few Knights of the Livonian Order. Then I have to paint the Rus to fight them, I picked up a box of Pagan Rus and Rus Princes at Cold Wars so that will basically give me the opposition just need to get it all painted.

I have gotten started on that, all of the Vajarzi are primed and based along with the Warlord, and I even have 4 basically finished except for the shields, had to order some decals. So making pretty good progress on that one. I bought the Osprey book about this battle so I do have some back ground to base things on, but I am mostly just doing whatever I want to make a cool battle if I am honest.

Paints Used for Varjazi: (kind of an excessive amount of paints but never mind)

Foundry:
Flesh Shade, Flesh, Flesh Light

GW:
Leadbelcher, Dwarf Bronze, Mithril Silver, Kantor Blue, Khorne Red, Wazdaka Red, Asurman Blue

Liquitex:
Black Gesso, Black Ink

Army Painter:
Soft Tone, Electric Blue, Tunic Green

Vallejo:
Reflective Green, Choclate Brown, Deck Tan, Dark Sand, White, Black, Ivory, Dark Grey, Wood Grain, Orange Brown, Flat EArth, Neutral Grey, German Camo Beige, Smoke, Japanese Uniform


Samurai Battles: Mikatagahara:

For the Samurai game I actually have allot of stuff painted, the challenge is more on getting all the rebasing I want to do done. I have another half a dozen units done for that.

Bunch of Samurai this time. I was hoping to included more Ashigaru as retainers in the foot Samurai units as they had a second rank of retainers supporting them. But the museum miniatures ones I had for this lot are a bit big so it's hard to fit them in. Still I think the new basing system looks good and is a bit more realistic I hope. This brings me up to 12 units done for the Kenshin force which I am using as stand ins for the Tokugawa forces. I have another 4 units plus 2 commanders almost done as well. So I don't think I will have problems with this project. 18 is my current goal for the rough nuymber of units each side, and I already have a nice set of terrain ready to go.

I actually have a good scenario for this from the Killer Katanas book, which includes troop numbers. So I made a spreadsheet to give me an idea of the ideal mix of bases.

Here is a shot of that sheet so you can see what I am heading for roughly:

As you can see the Tokugawa were in fact out numbered by almost 3:1. Right now I am starting with it as balanced, but I plan to do some play testing later on when more stuff is ready, so I can adjust it towards a more realistic scenario. This is a 6 player game also, so I am planning to give each players a secret sub plot objective card. So your fellow Samurai may or may not be as loyal as you think/hope!

This will be the biggest game I ever put off alone so requires the most work.

Be sure to let me know what you are thinking about these games in the comments!
Duncan will do another Force on Force game. Maybe I will also finally be tempted to try out a demo of the Batman Miniatures game which is becoming popular who knows.

Infinity:

As a bonus for this post I also finished painting another Infinity miniatures for last Friday evenings games. This one is the free miniature that came with the new Infinity how to paint book, Joan of Arc.

Pretty happy with how this one came out, but obviouly it doesn't look super great in a zoomed in picture. I didn't keep a close record of the paints I used but it's the same blue blacks and white method that I have been using lately, so pretty similar to the Varjazi above oddly enough.

This trooper worked out great in game turns, she has excellent command abilities and is good all around. Plus you can get into fun bad ass sword fights which everyone enjoys surely.

Here is a shot of it laying some pain on an Aleph troop that was trying to break into a supply building at the end of my last game!

Totally different from the historical stuff above, but I really like to keep the variety going, and it is good to hang out with different groups some times. Interestingly the historical players and sci fi / fantasy guys don't seem to respect each other that much which I find curious since they seem so similar to me.

Pledge Status 2015:
Bought: 121 (Rus, Templar Foot, Infinity Set)
Painted: 41 (Few add in for Samurai bases)
Total: -80

So as expected big hit to the numbers, but I have a ton of stuff to paint in the next couple of months!

Thanks;
Mike

P.S. Apologies for the spelling mistakes I am sure there are tons!

Cold Wars! 2015 - Day 2

So on to Day 2 of Cold Wars. The main even of this day for me is the SAGA tournament, this time around I decided to take my new Milites Christi (Knightly Orders) warband as discussed previously. Every player got a leather pouch with some plastic ancient coins (quite cool actually), that we could use to bid on various things throughout. Like trying to go first ect..

Game 1: Capture the Hoard

So game one was a scenario in which we had to battle in an attempt to get some treasure tokens off the board. You get 3 victory points for getting one off, 2 for holding one, and 1 for having the most slaughtering points. My plan was to advance with my 2 units of foot warriors to take the coins, and use my mounted units to counter attack anyone trying to make off with them. Mt crossbows would take the hill and provide covering fire of sorts.

The Normans seemed to be coming up with a similar plan, but they had 2 units of Archers, and never moved their foot as much.

Their plan seems to have been to use the strong archery abilities on the Norman board to weaken my units early. But I was able to mitigate this by using Armor of Faith to get more defense when they attacked, and took some time building up Piety to strengthen some of my core abilities.

I managed to pick up one token but had taken a couple of losses, nothing serious.

The action really started on turn 3 or 4, my forward unit of warriors got pounded by a bit unit of mounted warriors, leaving only 2 men. But then I countered with my own Knights unit and wiped them out.

Next turn I continued to pull back my treasure, and advanced my crossbows, to more readily cover the unclaimed ones. Then I moved up the bishop and a unit of Knights, to bait the Normans scary Knight unit into attacking these guys instead of focusing on my treasure hunting. I ask allot of the clergy at times.

Not sure he is in full support of Operation Sacrifice the Bishop

This worked beautifully and some orders were 'wasted'. But I lost the Bishop and I think the Knights also. In the last turn the Normans had picked up the far treasure and were likely ahead on slaughter points so I just had to make them drop it. Since my plan had saved the crossbow men from a sure death the filled the would be richer Normans with arrows until all were dead.

Finally my Knight Commander decided it was time to challenge the opposing Norman commander to a duel to show him who's boss. (no effect on the Scenario so I tossed him in just for fun at the very end). I believe I got lucky and killed him but I am not real sure anymore. Anyway it was a 2-1 victory for me as I was still holding a treasure token, but had lost heavily on slaughtering points. I got to keep the 3 gold coins thou!

Game 2: Hold the Treasure

Now for an example of a game where everything doesn't go my way. This time I was facing a crusader warband.

In the second game the task was to defend the treasure (modified Homeland Scenario). We each had to bid how many points we thought we could defend with and the person with the least would be attacked by the other guys full army. I figure defending is easier as the attacked must push out every unit so I bid for. This was my first mistake as I should have said 5, (opponent bid 6), but I was afraid they would also bid 5 and wanted to defend.

I decided to put a unit of foot in each terrain item and then a unit of Knights to defend my commander and counter attack. I put the crossbows on the right which was also a mistake, they would have been better off in the center where they could shoot perhaps but hindsight is 20/20 on that one.

My opponent was advancing slowly to unlock all the abilities of the crusader board, but also was taking forever to do every turn so I got a bit bored if I am honest. We actually did time out. I took a mid game shot of Grorges game while I waited it out.

Vikings take it to the Norse Gaels

Then we get to mistake number two. I got ancy and decided to charge the big unit of mercenary Knights on my turn (they are weaker then). I should have just waited it out and continued on my piety but oh well, traded 2 Knights for 2 Warriors in the end.

Eventually we started to get somewhere. Then the Crusaders used an attack everywhere ability to launch a big attack.

A few assaults on the house killed off my warriors there, and one the other side some mounted Knights pushed me out of the forest. Meanwhile my crossbow guys tried to fend of some other knights. In this scenario we had to roll for a random effect due to Lokis mischief every turn. I got one the brought back my 2 dead Knights so that seemed ok.

Then my crazy Teutonic guys attacked the Heathen Knights again!

Loki made this picture fuzzy - not my fault

We traded a couple of guys again I think my Knights were slightly better off. finally of all things a punch of peasants trued to kill my Knight Commander, the nerve of some people. They actually made a creditable attack, but my Commander is not about to be killed by a bunch of stinky peasants so I rolled 7 5+ saves out of 8 and they gain no effect. Haha I thought how about them apples.

Of course while this was happening some crusader crossbows snuck up to my crossbows hill top retreat and killed them all leaving me with no one in the terrain. Time was called at this point so I just got my turn. I made a third big mistake here and tried to sneak my foot guys around into the hill. I thought you were only forced to charge if you are with in very short, but turns out it's short for a second move. So I was forced to charge the Knights in the forest without any abilities and lost. Could have just sent my Knights to the hill if I had realized. But that's war so ended up with a loss.

Game 3: Clash

The final game was a close to normal clash of the warlords scenario. So two warlords just had to kill each other, nothing to it. Once again I was facing off against the Crusaders.

I guess the Crusaders decided to chase my guys back home to Germany. The 2 close terrain items counted as rough ground, and the big ruin in the middle counted as a large building.

In the first half of the game not much happened, we moved into position and I prayed, while the crusader unlocked abilities. The crusader crossbows moved into the ruins and had a good old fashioned crossbow fight with my crossbows, and surprisingly were loosing despite being in a building.

Then I decided it was time for some action and I needed to kill some peasants. So I charged in with my Knights and used the 'Repent Sinners' ability to kill a whole bunch of them, leaving just a couple. The crossbows in the building tried to kill the Bishop with a round of fire, but he is the kind of guy that fights 8 Knights alone so they were not successful. Of course my 2 Knights died, and half of the next unit which I brought up to attack the crusader mounted. I charged into the building with my own crossbows and killed off all the Crusader crossbowmen, proving once and for all that Trutonic cross bows are best.

Sadly this sparked off a blood feud for control of the ruins. The Crusader Mounted and the Archers (very night Robin Hood looking guys, an old GW kit apparently) killed out my cross bows and took over. Then I sent in my men at arms to kill those guys and so forth. Many dead people and all that.

Looks like our Bishop is into again!

After seizing the all important ruined columns I now had an opportunity to beat up the Crusader Warlord, so I sent my Knight commander around who the charged in with my Men at Arms. Sadly there was a Knight just with in range to take hits for his boss so I ended up one hit away from killing him. I made a desperate attempt with the other foot but no dice.

The Crusaders counter attacked on there turn with the Ascalon ability to boost their warlord up to 10 attack dice, so my Knight Commander finally achieved a Glorious Death.

So once again a real fun game a tournament. Not super successful but allot of fun. I think I could have won round two if not for some mistakes but oh well. I didn't stick around to see who won the prizes (Tom had great support this year!), as I wanted to had to the bar and have a beer with the Kingston/Ottawa guys. Never pass up an opportunity to give Ed a hard time. Looking forward to the next Saga tournament!


As before here are a bunch of random pictures of the con:

Excellent Terrain from Muskets and Tomahawks Tournament

Same

I have to get into this game, really regret not getting the book now!

SAS raid a long table

Tod's Blucher Game, looked very nice

Will have to give it a try after all

So there you have it, another great convention. Things really picked up on the second day. The tournament events really seem to be picking up lately, the tournament room was full again, despite the biggest one (Flames of War), being moved to a different spot. They had a real impressive with like 8-10 tables of people playing an Ancients game called L'Art de Guerre, no interest in it myself but was impressed they had so many players. I have been moving away from the big battle scale games towards playing more skirmish like games like Saga and maybe Muskets and Tomahawks.

At the dealers area I picked up a bunch of stuff. Starter armies from Gripping Beast for Pagan Rus, and Rus Princes for a game a cangames, allot with some Teutonic Knights on foot for me to paint as the Livonian Order. Sadly they were sold out of the Men-At-Arms Foot set. Then I got a Beothuck Warband from the excellent Footsore Miniatures. They are also supposed to send me a Brad Pit from Fury!, foot and in cupola. So that should be fun. I will update my painting score next painting post, but this is sure to destroy it.

Thanks;
Mike