Week In Review: Wait... Where Did The Weeks Go?!?

So as I previously mentioned, there had been a lot of packing as I moved back home for a few weeks.  On top of that was a ton of driving with me heading down to Boston one day, back to home the next, then back again, then home again... So much driving! On top of that, there has been snow storms, birthdays, medical things... it truly has been interesting times!  That said, I have been able to squeeze in a tiny bit of hobby so let's take a look!

Eastern Reinforcements From The West!

I picked up the last of the vehicles that I need for the 12th Company... a GAZ-AAA from Rubicon Models!

Yay for generic box art photos... since I threw my box away too soon.  Whoops!

Now for those of you with some knowledge of WWII (which didn't include me until recently BTW), the GAZ is a truck that was built by the Soviets which means it's in entirely the wrong theater for me to include with the 12th, right?

Nope.

The GAZ-AA is actually a version of the Ford Model AA that was licensed to the Soviets by Ford motor company.  Besides the USSR, the Model AA was also produced in other European countries including France.  So yes, in this case, I can field a GAZ-AA... I just decided to go with the Rule of Cool and slap the extra set of wheels on it as well.  The rivet counters are just gonna have to deal with it.

This was also the first Rubicon model that I've purchased and overall it's pretty nice.  There is a bit more detail than you typically find on Bolt Action models, plus their range actually covers more vehicles as plastic kits.  In fact, the only downside that I could find was gluing them together.  All I had on hand was Testors glue in the blue bottle.  This works great for Warlord stuff but Rubicon... not so much.  It still works, but the time that it takes to get a solid bond is much longer. Once I realized the issue I did a search to see if this was just me or if this is just something I'd not realized. Apparently Tamiya plastic glue is the recommended type, so I'll have to try to get some of that in the future.  As it was I made it work with the Testors with only a minimal amount of swearing so that seems like a win.

And with the Ford assembled, it also means that I have all the vehicles I need for the 12th to be fully mechanized and ready to go!

My motley mechanized force. Can't wait to finish painting them up!

I have no idea how this motley assortment will fare but even unpainted I love the feel that it gives.  The two trucks have MMGs attached to their roofs like they were pressed into service, and I swapped out the MMG on the from of the Hano for an HMG more fitting for the US M3.  I'm hoping that I can start painting them this weekend, plus I still need to make sure that I have all my ground pounders sorted as well.

The Building of Decks And More!

Other than picking up and starting to assemble the GAZ, there hasn't been any mini related progress.  There were boardgames though!  Dominion, Trash Pandas, Radlands, Splendor, Clank! Acquisitions Inc... so many games which has shot me up to 35 games this year!  Soooo much better than last year and the best part is the time that I've been able to spend with friends and family.

And that has been about it! I will be heading back out to the field soon which will in theory mean more time for hobby, but I'm starting college a week after that so... yeah, more interesting times. Still, I want to focus my hobby more while I am away so I'm going to narrow down the things that I bring down to work on. Variety is good, but too many options mean nothing gets done. I have some ideas that I want to try out for Core Space, plus I have all those minis that I painted! I also picked up the Outlands Delta Garrison terrain set from Battle Systems which I think will add some interesting variety to what I already have for Core Space. Oh, and there's a dragon that I want to paint. Until next time...

Week In Review: Hanos And Heroes!

Things happened this week!  In fact, I even managed to play a game!  Shocking, right?  So without ado, let's dive right in!

Harry the Hanomag

The first bit wasn't painting but it's a step forward for the 12th Company!  Introducing their captured half-track, Harry the Hanomag!

Going with my theme for the 12th Company, I had to include a Hanomag in their force.  I have always loved the look of the Sd.Kfz 251 and this is perfect excuse to put one into my army.  In this case, it will be as counts as M3 since the stats for the two vehicles are very similar but it will still let me run with the German version.  This leaves me with one more vehicle to buy but I've already got my eye on one that will give the 12th a wonderfully ragtag look that I am going for.  More on that soon, plus it's time for me to get to painting these guys!

Daqan vs Latari in Song of Blades and Heroes

Next I finished painting that one dude I needed for the Daqan force so it was time to dust off Song of Blades and give it a go again.  I stated up the two forces, set up a table, and away I went!

On the Daqan side, we have three Outland scouts, two crossbowmen, and a single spearman.  This gives the Daqan a good variety of units; the scouts are light while the crossbowmen and spearman both have heavier armor.  Not necessarily that relevant in SoBH given the high level view the system takes of things but I think I was able to capture the different feel of them?  Maybe?

Meanwhile, on the Latari side there are a whole two swordsmen and two bowmen.  That's it.  Nothing else.  When I did their stats I gave them all Forester but... yeah, we'll see how that plays out.

So with the forces set, it was time to hit the table!

For this battle, I decided to just go with a basic meeting engagement; two forces are walking through the countryside and stumble into each other.  Obviously, only one of them can leave here alive.

So... I actually did play through almost the whole game.  I even took pictures of each figures actions going back and forth across the table.  It sounds great, right?  Unfortunately it wasn't.  The lack of any real forests meant that those points were wasted on the Latari and left them at a numerical disadvantage.  Add that to a bunch of horrible dice rolls... yeah.  Back to the drawing board.

The Forester ability isn't worth the points sink that it became and I think that the Latari needed a bump to the Quality.  I had them at Q3+ but I want to kick them up to Q2+.  This will still leave them at disadvantage but the high Quality should help to balance it out better.

And... yeah, that's about it really.  I've been recalled for a few weeks so this week will be focused on packing and moving.  Hopefully there will be some mini time in there as well but... just gonna have to see how this plays out.  Fingers crossed!  Until next time...

Bolt Action: The Making of the 12th Mechanized Infantry Platoon

After more list building, I figured out a 750 Bolt Action list that I think will be fun to play without being cheesy at all.  The core that drove the shape of this force is the story that I came up with.

The 12th mechanized platoon is one of the units involved in the push through occupied France in1943.  As they went deeper into enemy held territory, the unit came under fire and lost their transports but were able to capture German vehicles and continued to push forward.

Is this historically accurate in anyway?  No idea.  I did some cursory research for to figure out a time and location but the rest of it I made up on the fly.  I might flesh it out more as I build the unit, but for now this gives me a solid framework to hang my concept from.

I also started working on the new paint scheme and so far, I'm really pleased with it.

The base is Vallejo US Army olive drab primer which I then hit with Citadel Agrax Earthshade to give it some depth.  Once this was dried, I tried to pick out the raised areas with some P3 Traitor Green to give it a little more depth.

Rather than leaving the helmet the same color, I painted these with P3 Thornwood Green to make them slightly darker, and I also hit the handle of the shovel with the same color just to mix things up.  Next came the brown pants, in this case P3 Gun Corps Brown and the shoes which are P3 Bootstrap Leather.  Once these were both dried, I went over them both with a shade of Citadel Seraphim Sepia.

The last step (so far) was some Citadel Rhinox Hide for the weapons.  I'll probably go back and pick out some of the hardware on with Citadel Abaddon Black eventually, but for now the Rhinox Hide is so dark it might not even show.

Once this was all dried, I coated them with Vallejo Matt Varnish to give them a bit of protection.  Then it was time to finish dressing up the bases, which in this case just meant painting the edge with Abaddon Black to give it a more finished look.  Once this was sealed as well, I took a white ballpoint and wrote BAR on the appropriate soldier to make it easier for me to see who has what.  I'm going to do this with the NCO's as well.  The labeling is only on my side so it doesn't disrupt the visual of the mini too much when you are looking from the front

There is still more to do with the 12 Platoon but I like how they are starting out.  The details that I added are nothing major but I like how they break up the solid green uniform and make them a little more interesting to look at.

I'm also taking a different approach to how I am painting them by only doing them one at a time.  Typically I would try to do blocks of troops but I'm really liking this approach more for some reason.  I'm also trying to mix up the skin tones a bit as well, instead of the ghostly white that I'd originally used.

Next will be more of the troops for the 12th, plus the first of their captured vehicles should be arriving this week, a Warlord Games Opel Blitz.  And I've also started some work on a couple of old Vor the Maelstrom Neo-Soviet rad troopers that I've been thinking of using for Zona Alfa.  Lots of fun stuff in the works and hopefully I can get back into my hobby streak by working through them one at a time.  Until next time...

Bolt Action: The Green Machine

I was planning on posting about the Green Machine before our Combat Patrol tournament but... better late than never!  See let's take a look at just what the Green Machine is and just how it did at the tourney.

A couple of weekends back, I was able to make some good headway assembling the minis I need to make the Green Machine a reality.  Thankfully I already have a good chunk of the minis on hand, but one of the things that I was lacking was a engineer squad... or more specifically, the flamethrower team that can be part of an engineer squad.

Yeah, it was that kind of list.

I did a bit of hunting around locally to see if I could find the flamethrower team mini in stock but no such luck.  Instead, I had to resort to bashing one together and overall I'm pretty pleased with the results.

In case you're wondering, Sparky is the one in the front to the right of center.

I'm the first to say that it's not perfect; the "flamethrower" should have a nozzle on it, not to mention the complete lack of a hose attaching the weapon to the fuel tanks.  That said, I'm quite pleased with the results and I was looking forward to terrorizing people... I mean, fielding this unit at the Combat Patrol game.

Along with the engineers, there was a 2nd LT with minder, three six man infantry squads (each with a BAR of course), a medium machine gun team, and Stewie (AKA an M3 Stuart light tank with LOTS of machine guns).  And since I was just looking for quantity over quality, everyone except the engineers and Stewie was inexperienced... hence the unit was "The Green Machine".

Brownie points if you've already noticed what I did with the paint scheme!

As the curveballs kept coming, I realized that I wouldn't be able to paint them up the way that I wanted so I did the next best thing; I painted all of them green.  Yep, the Green Machine went from being a Bolt Action army to being a bunch of plastic toy soldiers in a matter of minutes and it really made me happy.  People also got a kick out of it at the tourney which is a plus in my book.  I wasn't going into the event to be uber competitive, I just wanted to push around some minis a goal that I was able to achieve readily.

Doing even vaguely well in the ranking?  Not so much.

At the end of the day, I managed to lead Stewie, Sparky, and their buddies all the way to 12th place our of fourteen players!  What made it even better was I scored lucky 13 for my point total and I had a good time in the process.  There were a couple of "Really?" moments as one of the players introduced some house rules to the event but whatever; it was the last game of the day and I just wanted to kill stuff so I rolled with it.

So will Bolt Action possibly become a thing again for me?  Quite possibly.  My LGS will be hosting another event this fall and I want to try to field a real army for it.  Not real as in list building minutia but what that has a story behind it.  I'm thinking the mechanized platoon that I've always wanted to run, except I'm going to pick up a couple of SDKFZ's instead of using M3 half tracks.  I prefer the look of the SDKFZ, and I like the idea of a late war US force that was been pushing into German territory.  Their own vehicles were damaged or broke down so the did the next best thing; steal from the Germans!  Of course before I can do that, I need to buy the models which is all the more reason to pace things out.  I believe the earliest that they are looking at for the next event is September so I should be able to get some practice games in plus start making my minis look like a real army.  Until next time...

Random Updates: A Bon Voyage With A Bang!

Today we are having a going away Bolt Action game day for my friend Matt.  He is heading west to enjoy the amazingly temperate weather of Arizona (slight bit of sarcasm... just checked the weather and it's 84 degrees out there at 6 in the morning).  For this game, the limits are 750 points and 8 order dice... and that's it.  As I mentioned before, I had to take the cheese road for this one and built my list around my brand new 395 point heavy tank, an M26 Pershing.

Yes, it's ridiculous.

For the rest of the list, I was going to field a 2nd Lieutenant with a meat shield... I mean assistant, two 6 man squads of regular infantry with two BARs in each, a regular medium mortar with a spotter, a regular medic, and two inexperienced MMG teams.

The only problem that really sticks out for me is those regular infantry squads are pretty small.  Their firepower is pretty good at 8 dice but I can see them getting broken pretty fast.  Hopefully keeping the medic close will help but I suppose only time will tell.  No idea what kind of scenarios we will be playing either so I think I'm just going to go for blowing stuff up instead of objectives.  I mean really, I've got a super-heavy anti-tank gun... what else am I supposed to do?  Fingers crossed and cannons loaded!  Until next time...

Workbench: Stewie, Objectives, and Ghar

This past weekend was a long weekend but that was family time.  Now that I'm back out for work though, I've been plugging away on a few projects.  I went overboard and brought a ton of stuff with me this time.  All of my paints, some Bolt Action to work on, all my Concord, Ghar, and Algoryn, and even a 4' x 4' table topper.  Yeah, things definitely escalated.

First and foremost is Stewie aka the M3 Stuart fielded by the US Army in WWII.  This is a light tank with the potential to mount a ridiculous number of machine guns.

All told, this tank can potentially roll 23 dice on an attack which is just silly.  Of course this is the reason that I've been assembling it.  This Saturday I'll be playing in a BA combat patrol tournament and Stewie might be part of my force.

For those that haven't heard of this format, it's a 450 point tournament with some special restrictions for balance.  There are three specific scenarios which focus on infantry units so the most appropriate thing to do would be focus on the foot sloggers and pass on the tank.  Unfortunately I like crazy lists so I decided that I needed to build the Stuart that I've had sitting around just in case I want to field it.  I'm still really on the fence about it but it is really tempted.  I'll have to see once I get closer to the event whether I go with the tactically sound choice or Stewie and the gang.

Besides making my tank, the scenarios also call for a number of objective markers.

Since I had the Stuart kit with me, I scrounged up the various leftover bits and pieces and cobbled together four markers for the tournament.  Nothing too fancy but I like how they came out.  I think it's a hold over from Frostgrave; making "treasure markers" is just fun to do.

I also decided to make a drone objective for Antares.  I have a couple of Virai drones that I can use but I like the idea of a crashed Concord style research drone.

For this I used a C3D1 general purpose drone but cut off the arms from the subverter matrix (I used these to make my custom batter drones for my C3).  This keeps its profile familiar but makes it different enough looking to stand out.



To make it a bit more functional, I also made a crash site and the drone won't be glued to its flight stand.  This will let me place it on the "crash site" until it is reactivated at which point it can be popped onto its stand as its escorted off the table.

Last but not least, I've also taken steps to base the first of my Ghar force, namely the command crawler and some of the battle suits.

I still need to finish the three last battle suits and dig out the outcasts to slap some paint on them, but I like how these are looking so far.  It's definitely been a busy but productive week, and hopefully I can keep that momentum going into next week!  Until next time...

Workbench: Painting Machine... Kind Of... Plus I-Sores, and Combat Patrol

I had planned on getting a battle report up this week but I'm thinking that it's going to be delayed until next week.  I've been busy getting some more paint onto my Ghar and I'm pretty happy with how they are progressing.

The command crawler is the piece that is the furthest along though the squad of suits that isn't too far behind.  I still haven't gone as far as weathering yet but I've been adding some details; purple for the plasma generators, red for the sensors, and some black to break up some of the bare metal.

Once I get the squad of suits detailed, I think I'll hit the outcasts and see what I can do with them.  I grabbed the wrong color wash for the skin tones but the one it grabbed seems like it might work out.  It'll be easier to tell how it's working once I use it on a whole mini and not just the small flesh details that are on the command crawler.

I also went through the rest of my Therian miniatures and found some more that I can use as proxies for Isorians.

This gives me even more options for the regular troops though I still need to work out how many points I'm up to now.  Unfortunately it didn't look like there was anything that would really pass for support weapons or drones but this is a good start.

And finally, I've decided to take part in a Bolt Action Combat Patrol tournament next month.  I'd never heard of this format but it is a three round tournament with secret objectives for additional victory points, and a force limit of 450 points.  I'm excited to give this a try though I'm finding myself torn.  I'd planned on playing this one choosing the best combination of units to achieve the objectives.  Actually apply tactics and such.  Then I saw the M3 Stuart and my mad scientist brain started kicking in.

The M3 Stuart is a light tank from the beginning of the war but it can also mount a ridiculous number of machine guns.  One coaxial MMG, one hull mounted MMG, two hull mounted LMGs, one pintle mounted MMG, all with a light anti-tank gun for the icing on top.  This means this tank can lay down 23 dice just for the machine guns on a Fire order.  It's also a third of the total points, has weak side and back armor, and makes some of the objectives impossible to achieve since that can only be done by infantry... but it's still really tempting!  We'll just have to see if sound reasoning wins the day or the desire for more dakka!  Until next time...

Workbench: Machine Guns, Crawlers, and Critters

After the Bolt Action games this past weekend, I decided I should break out some of the US troops that I have laying around waiting to be worked on.  The first ones I broke out just had to be my medium machine gun teams.

The US version of dakka dakka!

This was the first one that I did and primarily as a test for the basing but I like it.  Rather than having the whole team on one base, I decided to piece them out so that I can easily remove casualties.  The positioning of the ammo feeder and the gunner are a little fiddly but I'm going to finish off the other two like this as well.  Might even redo some of the completed weapons teams that I "inherited" but we'll have to see how inspired I get.

I also put in some more time with my Antares stuff, though not the stuff that I should really be working on.

So cool! Wasn't going to get one originally but I'm so glad I did!

I still have yet to finish painting my Algoryn troops but I've been drooling over the Ghar command crawler for a few weeks now so I just had to put it together.  This thing is a beast let me tell you.  Very nice model though; some mold lines but it was a pretty easy clean up and I can't wait to get some paint on it.  I need to do the Algoryn first though; really want to have both armies ready to field by the end of the month.

And last but not least I started basing some more of my sci-fi critters, by which I just mean gluing them to bases for now.

The space rhinos are gonna getcha!

I can't remember which toy line these came with but I've got about a dozen beasties like this that I picked up years ago.  I plan on painting these up and to use them for random fauna for Antares games but I'm thinking I can use them for Operation Last Train as well, provided I have enough of them of course.  I'll have to get some more glued up to see what I can do.

On top of all of that I also had my Wrath of Kings order show up from Miniature Market.  Now I have almost all the basic troops, leaders, and specialists for four of the five armies in the game.  Think I'm done for now since I still haven't played the game but I'm sure I'll be good for a bit.  There are the named character specialists and leaders but those have always been less of a priority to me.  At this point I know that I can pull out a couple of armies and play the game with someone without them having to buy into a new game, and I do like the minis so I'm sure I can find something to do with them.  Until next time...