Words!

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. . . 

Kampfgruppe Würstideaever

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.

2015, that was the year that was

Howdy folks, 

Well, 2015 is drawing to a close and it feels only right that I should look back, reminisce and get all retrospective. It's been a strange year of ups, downs and hilariously over ambitious goals; having switched jobs earlier in the year, gotten married and gone on honeymoon my spare time has been at a premium and I haven't been able to get a great deal of stuff done over the past year. I've been a little better recently finding some time to finish off the Panthers I started a few mo this back (photos to follow), painting a trio of King Tigers (again, photos to follow) and starting work on one or two other things, but my output and consistency has still been sporadic at best.

Consequently I'm going to try and be a little more structured this year and come up smaller, more manageable and easily achievable, objectives on a monthly basis. This should, I hope, allow me to works towards goals while also breaking them into manageable chunks and giving a greater sense of achievement because I'm actually doing what I set out to do. At least, that's the plan. 

So, for January, I'm turning my attention to the Autumn of 1944 and the German defence of The Netherlands. The local FoW community are running the first tournament of the year towards the end of January, a typical 1750 points late war affair, and not only will I be attending but I'll be dragging a certain Gav along with me. Gav will be using my 101st Airborne paratroopers, completed quite some time ago, and I will be taking, after a little thought, a detachment from 559 Schwere Panzerjägerabteilung. The bulk of the vehicle work was completed some time ago, thought in my youthful innocence I painted the crewmen field grey instead of black so will need to correct that, however a few support units are required to turn a collection of tank destroyers into a playable force. The objectives are as follows. . .

1. Correct the uniforms and rank markings of the StuG, Jagdpanther and Wirbelwind crewmen.

2. Finish off a 10.5cm howitzer battery; these are roughly 80% completed, just need to add a few final details, finish painting the guns and apply basing foliage.

3. Paint a battery of 8.8cm AA guns; these have had the basing mud finished and they've been base coated but need everything else done.

4. Paint a security platoon; like 8.8cm guns, these are base coated and the basing mud has been applied.

The above must be completed by the 23rd of January, so I've probably got a bit of a fight got on my hands, but having a few simple objectives and the goal of getting to a tournament in just over three weeks ought to keep me focused and on target.

Until next time, whenever that may be, and I hope you all have a great New Years!

Progress demands sacrafice

Good evening folks,

Time for another update, still not as frequently as I'd like but probably more frequently than you're used to. Which is nice. . .

So first of all I've made a little progress with Si's challenge. A tiny little bit progress, but progress none the less. At this rate I'll have finished the first one by my thirtieth birthday.



I've also been working away on a trio of Panther Gs for my late war Germans. Not a lot left to do now, probably just weathering and national crosses on the back of the turrets then I can call them done.







Finally, and perhaps most excitingly, I've got my mini rulebooks back from being re-bound. Really pleased with how these turned out, and they'll be infinitely more useful now that they will stay at the required page.



Thats all for now folks, thanks for stopping by.

We're gonna need a bigger bloke. . .

Friend, readers, countrymen. . .

Belated greeting to you all. Blogspot, rather smugly, informs me it has been five months sine I last posted and in that time a huge amount has happened. I've switched jobs, got married and visited the Midlands over the past few months. All of this has eaten into my hobby time to the point where I even enjoyed spray painting plant pots for table decorations.

Fear not, though, for I am back to defend my honour from the one known as Simon. He has challenged me to paint a single Bolt Action figure per month. Why has he lain down such a challenge? Quite simply, to get back at me for manipulating him into something new and hobby related. In fairness, I've had Bolt Action for months but simply done nothing with it. What do I have? I'm glad you asked.

A starter set and a core box of both US Airborne and German FJ, to give me a couple of cheeky wee Market Garden themed forces. Unfortunately, Warlord have gone for a Normandy feel with their figures so a little converting will be required before I can paint them up, but I needn't rush as I'm only expected to do one a month.

And just so I don't post an update without any painted figures, have a couple of Panther Gs!

These are the start of my generic FoW Panzerbrigade force, suitable of pretty much anything after Normandy. Got a few more near enough done, so hopefully I can finish marking and weathering those in the not too distant future.

Peace out folks! 

A pack of Panzers

Greetings readers,

Once again my ability to plan has been surpassed by my inability to follow a plan, as I've discovered I only have a tiny drizzle of Typhus Corrosion left in the pot. This has killed any sort of painted mud based activities, such as defences and infantry basing, so I broke out the PSC Panzer IVs and had at it.

Having perused the order of battle for the Normandy campaign I settled on the 9th Panzer division for my armoured elements, and I went for these guys as I figured not many other people would. They didn't have the prestige of the Panzer Lehr, the experience of the 2nd or the funky toys of the 21st, but the 9th were still a capable and well equipped formation before the invasion. 

Having researched a little further, I discovered that these guys were an extremely fresh formation, having spent about six months rebuilding outside Paris having been shattered on the eastern front. This meant that they would have had a lot of brand new equipment mixed in with some older kit that they'd "liberated" from their R&R area. With this in mind, I wanted a slightly unusual colour scheme that hinted at some serious time being taken in unifying the division's paint jobs. A quick internet search turned up this picture. . .



A suitably inspiring colour scheme which I've modified a little, resulting in these. . .



The start of first platoon, second company, 9th Panzerregiment.

Close ups. . .



















Next up will be some half tracks of some description. 

Thanks for looking, folks.

Nesting instinct

Thanks mate, you know where I am if you need my services :P

Quick update here, been pottering away on a few things at once and I have some finished items to show for it! 


8cm mortar nests.


HMG nests


HMG pillbox bunker


Test minefield (signs are still to be detailed)

As you can see, my fortifications are coming along nicely and next up to the painting table will be a few trench lines as they should be very quick and easy to bash out.

I've also realised that the waffenarbe on the infantry platoon I completed last week was totally inappropriate for the actual platoon; I'd given them the bright green piping of Panzergrenadiers, but Panzergrenadier platoons are MG not rifle/MG teams (one LMG per base, not one per squad). As a result I've had to change the shoulder boards and I took the opportunity to not bother with waffenarbe, going for rank boards without coloured piping. By doing this I can multi-purpose my support elements like mortars and anti-tank guns and use such platoons as both grenadier and panzergrenadier units, meaning I don't need duplicate units that only vary by what coloured stripes are on their shoulders.

Thanks for stopping by.