Wednesday Wargaming Returns! - Team Yankee

So Wednesday wargaming has come back again, this time we decided to play some Team Yankee, still learning the rules a bit so I imagine some mistake have been made but that is ok. Actually I realized one this morning which is totally my fault thou, we remember that you don't get the +1 to hit for long rage with the tanks, but forgot that the +1 to armor save still applies, not sure how much of a big deal that is but there  it is.

We played a bit bigger of a game this time around, at 72 points. But we realized part way through that the Russians were down a tank, but decided to do nothing since there were no more units to use. I could have taken one off but it would have been out by as much for me then.

Also I never had time to pre-set the terrain due to needing to paint 2 tanks for this game, so the terrain is a bit weak if we are honest. Fine for a game but doesn't look great on film hah.

Anyway we decided to move on from Free for All and try some more interesting scenarios, and ended up with Hasty attack. The Russians lost the roll off so had to defend. They choose to start with a platoon of 3 T-72s on the table in the woods on the east flank, 9 T-72s in ambush, and a T-72 commander, and 3 Hinds in delayed scattered reserves. On my side I had a platoon of 3 Abrams, 2 Abrams for my commander, and a second platoon of 3 and 2 Cobras in Immediate Reserves. So my stuff could possibly start to come on turn 1 giving a slight advantage.

I decided to ignore the 3 T-72s in the oil tanks by the woods and move up unto the field. Knowing there was a real load of T-72s about to ambush I wanted to have as much cover as possible and not allow side shots!

As expected the ambush came, but it wasn't easy for them to get in the side, so they formed up in lone a breast. As you can see Serge pointing out all the tanks he will destroy, but bad dice meant just one bailed out tank which quickly remounted.

No reserves for me sadly, but I moved back my platoon to stay in cover and not give away any side shots, and moved my commander to get some extra shots. This meant abandoning the objective a bit but got a kill so worth it!

Bit of a gap in the pictures now, but the Russian tanks moved to the edge of their range and had a much better round of shooting. This time the killed tanks, but luckily my third held on. Next turn the T-72s killed the last tank, but I had gotten a reserve and moved that up to finish off the big platoon. Sadly by the time I got reserves the Russians did right after. A flight of Hinds came in and made a missle attack against my command section, but no effect the first go around. On my turn which is turn 4 as you see above I brought in my Cobras. I thought I would gang them up on 1 Hind and start to chip them away. But that stupid Hind with his only 3 shots brought down both of my choppers! Ah crap.

Things took a dark turn after that. They moved over and tried another missile attack, easily destroying my command section. Then I had the choice of trying to shoot them down with AA, or trying to kill enough T-72s for a formation morale. This was do able if I got lucky, but the test is on a 2+, so I went for the safer helicopter killing route.

This almost worked out, I was able to get to 4 fire power tests to destroy. Sadly I rolled 2 5s for the 6+ tests, and 3 and 2 for the 5+ tests.

Then the Hinds moved around and finished me off. I killed one of them with AA thou so a bit of revenge at the least. Really need the VADS AA platoon, but battlefront won't ship it to me! argh.


Still I felt this to be a very fun game, definitely seems better with a bit more points, I really felt like it was possible for me to win this one, just a few bad choices and a bit of not stellar luck.

I think it would have been better for me to park the Cobras somewhere and let the Hinds attack, but I really didn't expect to loose them both so easy.

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - Dead Man's Hand Heist

Time for another battle report, last weekend I had the guys over to try out some Old West gaming, we had Stan with some Desperados, and Duncan took the Pinkertons for a spin. We did some scenarios from the book, I think the first 2 are from a 'Few Models More' and we subbed in 'Massacre at Dead Man's Hand' for the last game to try out some multiplayer action.


Scene 1: Ambush

The Desperado's are plotting some trouble and decide to ambush a Pinkerton in order to create a distraction. There is one Pinkerton deployed by the stage coach, with 2 more in a building near by. The two Desperadoes are trying to kill a few before they loose to many of their guys. The Pinkerton by the coach is surprised so it should be easy to kill him in theory.

Unfortunately they are not such straight shooters and loose 2 out of 3 of their guys without killing anyone. Still life ain't worth spit if your a Desperado so there was still a distraction!

Scene 2: Heist

Taking advantage of the confusion the Desperadoes decided to rob the bank!

The Desperadoes have 3 guys in the Bank with loot that want to get out of town. A pair of guys in the street as look outs, and a few more around the train station, with one on the roof to provide fire support. The Pinkerton's are spread throughout town trying to find out what's going down so they can protect the Railroads assets. The Desperadoes have to get 2/3s of the loot off, or alternatively either side has to kill three of their opponents guys to win. But the Pinkerton's are mostly surprised the first round.

Things are going good for the robbers at the start, some of the guys with loot make a mad dash for the edge, and a gun fight rages in town. But a Pinkerton in the water tower was taking shots at them an brought one down. The boss of the Desperadoes got forced into a fist fight with the Pinkerton special agent who tried to arrest him just as he came out of the bank with his loot. This fight lasted the whole game really so no luck getting away with the goods.

General mayhem in town with both sides taking some losses. But luck was not on the side of the Desperadoes, one guy was shot down, and the Boss was eventually beaten senseless, but he gave it a good try. So in the end not a super successful bank robbery.

Scene 3: Massacre in Dead Man's Hand

For round 3 I decided it was time for me to get in on the action, and the Desperadoes were becoming frustrated with the law in this town. So they called in for some help and my Outlaw gang came into town on the noon train. Plan was to march down opposite sides of town with the law in the middle and gun them down. The Pinkerton's got a few deputies to even up the sides.

The Pinkerton's all promptly took cover in the Hardware store, not sure how much the owner appreciated that. So we had a bit of an Alamo type situation with the law hunkered down and all the bad guys moving in firing off shots. In this picture you can see my guys mostly around the stage coach, and the desperadoes moving down on the other side.

All sides are taking losses, the Desperadoes make short work of the Pinkerton agent in the water tower who had a rifle, and my guns are banging away at the house. All the windows are on my side mostly so it is looking a bit bad for the out laws in the early stages, and I am getting close to having to take big nerve tests, but not quite.

Attrition went on for awhile, until it came down to the Outlaw and Desperado bosses having a shoot out with the Pinkerton special agent, plus a few more peons around. The Desperado boss managed to gun him down, leaving just one pinned Pinkerton who failed his Nerve test to stick around. Both the bad guy forces had to take Nerve tests as well, but we both passed.


After that the bad guy bosses had a draw at high noon to find out who was going to be the big shot in town. My first card was super low, and the Desperado got a high card, and shot the poor guy down in one bullet. So fast I never even got a picture.

So hope you guys enjoyed that, these old west games are pretty fun, and I feel they have a bit of a story that makes for a good blog post. I am sure there will be more old west gaming some time.

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Old West + Others

Hello Folks,

So Got a bunch of stuff done in the last week or so, with that in mind I decided it was time for another painting post so you can check out this cool stuff.


Cowboys:

I will start with the boring things and work up I guess. I have re-based my Cowboys from a ew years ago in the first surge on Old West painting into the new standard with nicer basing and magnetic bases for easy storage. This was party because I thought an extra army might be needed for my big old west day on Saturday, and party because I want to have all my Old West stuff on the same basing so they can fit in one box. I kind of want to re-base all my old style miniatures this way but I have allot of Dark Ages stuff so that would be a bit annoying. Anyway here are the Cow Boys.

Not painting so well as they are from awhile ago but I touched things up a little bit and they are better with the new bases.

Also re-based the last for towns folk / vigilantes:

Dungeon Saga - Tyrant of Halpi Heroes:

Here I have the heroes from the last Dungeon Saga expansion I have to paint. I eas going to wait and put them all up together, but I now realize the dragon will be sitting on my desk waiting to get painted for awhile, so here are these two. Paladin and a thief.

Pretty nice models standard stuff for this set, I quite like the paladin thou.

Holy Roman Empire - By Fire and Sword:

These guys I have had unpainted for quite awhile, I quite like the game but have been procrastinating painting 15mm cavalry for ages. But there is going to be an open gaming slot for this game at Cold Wars so I decided it was a good time to get some stuff painted for By Fire and Sword and get gaming. Actually it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, I pushed for getting them done fast over being well painted but they still turned out alright.

I would say that these models are not bad, they have some problems but they work. I think the sculpting it good by the casting is mediocre-bad but a bit of that might just be a 15mm models thing. I have another 4 of these stands with armor, 2 bases of dragoons foot and mounted, and a commander and that is it for the base Skirmish set. I am not very tempted to order a bit more as they have turned out more fun then I thought.

Pinkertons:

Finally the main event of the post, the Pinkertons! I decided to order the second Dead Mans Hand book to get a few new scenario Ideas for tomorrow, and also they added some multiplayer battles. So of course I decided to get a new gang to why not! That all came on Monday so I decided to just get em done! This took a bit of an effort and some midnight oil was burned last night but now they are done!

Very pleased with this lot, especially the 3 in the back on the step. Great Escape does the best Old West models, I am sure there will be more coming for me some time. I decided to paint the long coats a few different colors, the brown one really doesn't look good but the others I like.


Be sure to let me know what you think about all this. Also I hit publish by accident before I was finished, then photobucket stopped working so I couldn't add the pictures! Very annoying. So sorry if that was annoying in peoples feed or something.

Pledge Status 2016:
Bought: 31 (7 Pinkertons, 6 Infinity Models for League, 9 US Cold War (realized I forgot to add this to the count) 
Painted: 42 
Total: +11 


Thanks;
Mike

Old West Terrain

So got some good hobby progress over the long weekend, getting ready for a big Old West game on Saturday. Mostly working on terrain, but I got the next Dead Man's Hand book and a pack of Pinkerton's on Monday so I started working on them as well. Not sure they will be done in time, but I am going to try anyway hah. In the new book they mention that there is a free gang with rules in WI 315 which it turned out I have, that is rules and cards for a civilians gang lead by Clint wood, and a set of scenarios for High Plains Drifter that is pretty cool. Note: not planning to paint my town red

Water Tower:

First up is the water tower, this one was pretty fast and easy to put together. But it didn't co me out perfect as the pack was er slightly sat on... But still looks fins so ok. I think it would have worked a bit better if they had also included some rings to put inside the drum to force it into the circle better thou.

Train Tracks:

Then I have the train tracks. Not quite enough to reach across the table, but it gives the idea at least. Maybe I will get another pack of those, but every railroad tie is 3 pieces so they are a bit tedious to assemble. Actually the game we play is meant for a small table also.

Train Station:

And of course lastly is the main event the big train station. This is another pretty big one, but went together allot easier then the bank. There are no individual wall tiles to glue in. There is a bit of an issue with the really big pieces, it becomes had to stay flat, so the building doesn't plus into the sidewalk base exactly the way it should, but I don't see that as a big issue.

Scatter Terrain:

I also got some scatter terrain, I don't have it all put together yet, but I got a couple of items. There is also a bar for the bar put that is a resin piece that has to be painted so might be awhile. But here is a safe and a piano for now hah.

If I am honest this old west town set up is starting to become a thing of it's own. Kind of like building a model rail road I guess.

Anyway here is a couple of shots of the full table as I have it ready for Saturday. Maybe will get some more sets in a few months who knows.

The no-roof building looks really bad but  I had it so no reason not to use it I guess.

I got some good painting progress over the weekend as well. But was split on a few projects, and interrupted by pinkertons, so nothing is picture ready just yet. But I will have another post later in the week for that stuff I guess.

Thanks;
Mike

Club Team Yankee Day, and Battling Banks

So this past Sunday we had our first Team Yankee day at the club. 50 point forces using the stuff from the starter boxes. We only got 3 people which was a bit less then we were hoping for but it was alright. I ended up not taking that many pictures for whatever reason, but I thought I would toss them up anyway why not.

Game 1: Stan Russians vs Bernhard Americans

The forces set up in rough parallel lines, both ignoring the objective placed on the far side of the river. The Americans actually won the chance to go first this time.

The Americans advance a bit, and move the Cobras to flank since they couldn't shoot that turn. Ultimately getting a couple of kills but nothing serious.

The Russians move their Hinds around to fire on the Abrams by the hill, loosing one to 50 cal AA fire but killing a tank in return so a fair trade.

Both sides trade shot for a few turns and things are looking good for the Americans for once. But then they fail some key morale tests and their force just crumbles away. This seems to be a common outcome for the Americans at this points level as they just can't take any losses.

Game 2: Mike Russians vs Bernhard Americans

We decided to give it another game since it plays so fast. Stan was not super keen for another go so I took over command of the Russians.

This time I got to go first and moved my tank platoons aggressively towards the 2 objectives (we never moved them due to lazyness). I figure that the tiny American force can't really split up.

This works out pretty well, the Hinds kill the commander while everyone moves up. My small platoon on the left going for the hill objective takes a pounding, and suffered a bail. But to many Abrams are being killed and there is no one to oppose the 5 T-72s on the river objective. So another quick victory for the Russians.


So that was our first day. Things are seeming fairly one sided for the Russians but I think that is just how it works out at this point level, I expect things to change for the next day, but we shall see I guess. The American tanks are always quite expensive so their forces will always be a bit brittle I think, but not this bad. We will be able to play more missions then just free for all as well which will open things up a bit.

The Bank:

I have been struggling to put together my Bank from 4 ground terrain all week, so I didn't get hardly any painting done. So with that in mind I decided to toss a few pictures of that at the end here why not.

So there you have it one bank ready to be robbed. This is a nice building, but it is the biggest and most complicated one yet, so it took forever to put together, probably 15-20 hours or something like that. The internal walls have a skeleton that you need to glue individual panels into and there is a ton of them, and allot of them had to be sanded down to fit in well. Plus there are allot of extra details that you don't get in other buildings like the counter allot of doors, fancy windows ect.. So it takes awhile. Not that I didn't enjoy doing it but I was not prepared for it to take quite that long!

Oh well the various Outlaws need something to rob so we do what we must. I also have the train station to do which is maybe a bit bigger, but much simpler so hopefully that won't be such a problem. No fancy paneling at least.

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Infinity Slow Grow League

Well tomorrow the Ottawa Infinity Association is starting up a slow grow league, start off with small armies and grow things up over the month. You are allowed to use old stuff but you kind of need to paint 1 new guy a month for points!

So to that end over the last 2 days I painted up an Aquilla guard that I have had around for a few months, and along with a few existing grunts that is my army for month one. No playing with unpainted stuff for me so it got to be done for day 1.

Aquila Guard, Multi-rifle:

So there is my guy, bit of a lame blog post with just one model. But it's for the points!



Pledge Status 2016:
Bought: 9 
Painted: 29 
Total: +20 

Pledge going good so far!

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Dungeon Saga & Dragon Tides

Well another week of painting done. I managed to get another Dungeon Saga expansion done, all the big ones are finished for it is starting to fall in place now. Only the Dragon one remains to be done. I decided to try experimenting with the picture box a bit, I used the blue background instead to try it out, and tried a new mat I got for frost grave as the bottom. This was not very successful as you can see. I am not sure why thou hah maybe blue is not good.

Dungeon Saga, Return of Valandor:

Ba'el, Bringer of Woe:
Undead Demon Lord

The idea for this model is pretty cool I think, a zombie demon so a big rotting demon lord. But the execution is not that great really, the details are a bit lacking. I think maybe they were rushing or something. But I painted it the same red as the rest of the demons, but then with zombie flesh and bones where the skin was hanging off. I think it turned out pretty cool. This guy is the same size as the ogres.

Valandor, Demi-God:

Valandor is also pretty big, much bigger then the normal heroes. But this guy is not super great either. I tried to do a blue wash over the armor which worked out ok, but doesn't really show here for some reason. This seems to be the weakest of the expansions for the game in my opinion, but it was basically included in the kickstarter for free so whatever.

Chests and Barrels:

Also got some more furniture finished.

Dragon Tides:

I also did another pair of the Dragon Tides models becuase they are kind of fun.

Brandon Lee:

Luke Elba:

Not sure who this one is meant to be based on.

Old West Terrain:

And finally I started to assemble some of the 4 Ground kits for my second wave of Old West terrain. First up is the Marshals Office to bring a bit of law back to my town! Including wanted board, and jail cells with break out action (you can bust out the jail windows). I think it is pretty nice, not as neat as the other buildings but I think that is my fault mostly. I never had the right elastic bands sadly.

Pledge Status 2016:
Bought: 9 
Painted: 28 
Total: +19 

Thanks;
Mike