Or at least, things of a word-like nature. . .
So, I'm well aware that it has been what experts may call "a while" since I've updated my blog. The past ten or so months have been kid of turbulent and busy due to massive changes at work, so I've not had a lot of time to sit down and paint stuff and not had much cause to update anything here. Somewhat ironically, though, I have started attending my local gaming club on a semi regular basis so i'm at least getting to play games!
So, just what the hell have I been up to?
Firstly, I did manage to get the Panthers finished.
As well as some Konigstigers.
And an Sdkf 234 armoured car
I've actually got two 234s finished, and I'll get more/better pictures of them in the near future. And yes, its on a base. Shock!
In other news, I recently took part in a Total War game at our local club's annual charity wargaming day, affectionately known as the G3 Annual Spencer Warner Memorial Gaming Day (or GGGASWMGD). I've not got round to doing a write-up, as uploading pictures is proving to be a nightmare, but Mark over at Breakthrough has put a nice wee article about it here. For now, you;ll have to make to with a single photo taken somewhere round turn 5 or 6.
While it was nice to get the toys out and have an all day game, I found that the total-war aspect of trying to capture a big action wasn't too satisfying in its scope as a lot of the killing seemed to be done by specialist units and funky toys rather than plain old line troops. While I have no problem with FoW or Team Yankee, they're quite restrictive in being company level games with no real restriction (other than points) on wonder units that many real world commanders wouldn't have had access to, and this is starting to become a little boring. I've been toying with branching out for a while now, and last week I finally took the plunge and bought another set of wargaming rules.
The rules I opted for were Rapid Fire, a set I stumbled across when I looking for Cold War inspiration on the excellent Cold War Gamer blog. As the 2nd edition is out of print, I took the plunge and spend 9 whole US dollars (or the soul of my firstborn at our post-Brexit exchange rate) on a pdf copy. I've had flick through them and I'm very impressed, they seem to be simple and easy to follow, and although written with 20mm and WW2 in mind they look adaptable to various periods and scales. The key thing for me, though, is that they're regiment/brigade level rules where your individual models represent whole platoons worth of assets. This could get exciting!
Cheery bye for now folks, if you're unlucky you may even get another update this year. . .
Good morning ladies and gents,
I managed, somehow and against all the odds, to not only get everything finished but to get it all finished ahead of schedule. I know, I'm just as surprised as you are. . .
The final list for yesterday read as a StüG for my CiC, a platoon of 3 StüGs, a platoon of 2 Jagdpanthers and another single Jagdpanther, a trained grenadier platoon with a Panzerschrek and a Panzerfaust, a trained 4 gun leFH18 battery, a security platoon and a Flak 36 battery. As predicted, this motley collection of units did not function in a cohesive manner, letting me down left, right and centre. Thought I wooden spooned it, and more on this later, I must say I had an absolute blast considering only 5 people showed up in, including the organiser, and I was pleased to play as many games in a weekend than I played in the whole of last year. I also won best axis by default as I was the only person who brought bad guys with them. Suffice to say I'll be back, but hopefully by then I'll have the luxury of being able to pick and chose what I'm taking rather than having to throw a Kampfgruppe together at the last minute.
On the day we played three games, and I ended up playing Surrounded as the attacker against Gav's Market Garden US paratroopers, Dust Up as the attacked against Mark's Comet spam list and Hold the Line as the Defender against Michael's Remagen US Armoured.
My first game ended in a 2-5 loss on turn 5 due to some poor deployment on my part and some sneaky flank shots on Gav's leaving me with nothing to deal with the two Shermans sitting on the objective I was going after. The second game ended as a 1-6 loss with a humiliating turn 1 at the double move from Mark's Comets and some terrible deployment from me, not putting anything on the exposed objective he could quite clearly snag. Mark being a gentleman, however, we played on for the learning experience but I was hampered by bad reserve rolls and worse reserve placement. Lessons learned, I went into the final game and still lost 2-5 by turn 4, though mainly because half my reserves didn't turn up and those that did had to wait until turn three at the earliest; t'was a close run and brutal thing, with the game coming down to a missed artillery strike on a recon platoon near the objective and a very successful motivation test for the single Stuart atop the objective not to run away. I can, however, take solace in the fact that I wiped out over half of Michael's army for the loss of a single Grenadier platoon, so thats something.
Having got my Market Garden Germans to the stage where I can field a fully painted 1750 points list, the next thing I want to finish up is some suitable terrain for them to play over. I have started building a fair few bits, hedges and buildings mainly, and I intend to add some roads, hills, walls, fences, trees and a windmill to the mix. More importantly, I want to get the stuff fully painted up so I can start taking pictures of my games. I don't doubt I'll get bored of this, or at least distracted, but hopefully by that point the stuff I ordered during the Tanksgiving sale will have been delivered so I can make a proper start on Jochen Peiper's Kampfgruppe War Criminals.
Take care for now, folks.
