Blitzkrieg and Barbarossa!

 I sit here now, with a whirling circle attempting to pay for an order of miniatures. This order will allow me to play some 1940 invasion of France, some operation Barbarossa, and I hope I can use the British infantry with some of my US Shermans and perhaps even 57mm guns in order to play late war Brits. I decided against buying any late war British tanks or cannon, as my order was already creeping too high in cost. 

Bring it on. 

Three orcs and a nun walk into a bar...

 I finished these Reaper Bones orcs last night, along with a gun-totin' nun and a weird knight.

I primed these a long time ago, in order to paint them with my children. They didn't get touched though. Thus over this last month I just went for it. I am mostly happy with them, although I think I should add eyes in red, and use a rustier colour to help highlight the metal. But as they stand, I can put them on the table. There is also an archer but his base isn't finished, so I left him out.

My 5-year-old painted the nun, or at least gave her her first coat of black. I finished her off. The knight is a problem. I painted his cape/cloak a long time ago. Then I stalled, not knowing what I actually wanted to do with him. He has skulls on him, and his shield looks almost like it could be made of wood, in fact, I painted the back of it brown ages ago. I wanted to use bright colours, inspired by the Witch Doctor on Diablo III. I looked on Pintrest for ideas and eventually decided to do actual skull colours, and just contrasting red and blue. I like it now. A bit gaudy though.

Adventurers from Reaper Bones

 This evening I finished off some figures. I am pleased with them. They are from my big box of Reaper Bones miniatures that I picked up in the 2012 and 2013 Kickstarters. I have barely even made a dent in them to be honest.

This is a figure that I let my five year old have a go at painting. He was largely green, and his base looked like the sky with clouds on it. In fact, I feel like you can still see some flecks of blue on the base. I painted over his greenishness with various khakis, leather colours and browns. I attempted point of light highlights on his arm, but don't think it really worked out.

I took inspiration from Diablo III for this monk. My first character on that game, well the first one I finished the game with was a kick-ass monk. I mean, this guy looks nothing like him, but I like to think they maybe know each other. The one thing I have forgotten to do is to highlight the blade with a blue. I wanted it to have a mystical air to it, like Sting from Lord of the Rings.

I am incredibly happy with my hireling. He has been getting splashes of paint added now and then for a while now, but a couple of nights ago I just went for it and filled in all of the gaps. I have, however forgotten to paint the flames in his lantern. 

While painting these, I also put flesh colour on a few other figures, and painted green flesh onto four large orcs. I intend to get those finished and play Song of Blades and Heroes again, although I can't find any of my terrain for it.

Back Water Landing Pads

 These two back-water landing areas are ready to go. They could perhaps use a little extra, but I am happy with them for now.

I have some peg spacecraft on the go, and have just spent a while sorting out my storage, which uncovered a few more stalled projects. I will get those on the table soon. I am feeling some mojo return.

Agridome Part 3

 I just need to drybrush the doorway but I like the idea of putting new things inside, and having it semi modular. The grass will stay. But trees, people, other things can come in and out.

Things have been really slow on the hobby front. A new child is a useful excuse. Busy at work is another. But to be honest I just can't be bothered. Every evening I get the children off to bed and end up just sitting in front of the TV watching stuff. I have watched some great TV though, but I find I am rewatching How I Met Your Mother, which hasn't aged well in my opinion, video essays on YouTube about films and TV, which while interesting isn't a great use of time. I just started watching TaskMaster, which is hilarious, but again, has been distracting me.

I aim to be a bit more proactive as it goes now. I think 28m fantasy miniature painting will be my go to as I didn't end up getting my huge shopping list of WW2 miniatures (hopefully for Christmas now). I just want to do more than I am doing, but finding the motivation to get it all out and sit for a bit painting, building or whatever is just hard right now.

Thanks for listening to my ramble.

I did another thing!

This is my final child. Now to get them all into gaming, painting, model building. 

Agri-Dome part 2.

 I finally got moving on this project. Well, any projects to be honest. This summer I have had a great time but have had little to no motivation to do any kind of hobbying. Here is a photo of my farming dome then. It needs some more work on the doorway area, but it is coming along. I will not stick down the building, in order to be able to put figures inside. As time goes on, I may also change what sort of agriculture goes on inside.

Rebased infantry and some building blocks.

After a month of inactivity I managed to get something done. I rebased these infantry figures, making them smaller and definitely magnetic. Here they are taking up defensive positions to stop looting.

 I have a box of wooden building blocks that have been sat around for a few years. Today I finally had a stroke of inspiration that I could use them as modular buildings. I figure if I paint windows on all four sides, put a door on two of them, and leave the tops blank, then I can have some seriously modular buildings. The round ones can be mostly glass. The long, thin ones can also make for useful buildings. If I lay them flat and stack them, then I have a high rise. If I stand them up on edge, they can be used to create the illusion of a closed in area. Sort of creating the edge of a computer game level if you see.

 

UK Games Expo 2022

 This weekend, just for the Saturday, I hustled my way up to the UK Games Expo to see what all the fuss is about. My brother visits every year, wife and kids in tow and they stay for a few days. Every year they try to convince me, a fellow, but somewhat more casual, boardgamer, to attend. Every year I respectfully decline. This year, my other brother of The Player's Aid fame was in the country for a family wedding. We all made plans to go up and attend. I didn't want to be left out so went for it. 

I now regret never going. The freedom I had this year to wander around and play whatever I felt was brilliant. I will give a breakdown of what I tried and saw in a bit. Next year I intend to take my eldest two children. I will have less freedom, but will be able to share the love of games with them a little more. The children and family section was large, and had lots of little games to try out. The cosplayers were many and friendly enough for photo ops. It was all around a good time.

 

Having sunk an inexcusable amount of hours into Skyrim, seeing this location as a miniature game was glorious. I remember my first fight here. I won't be sinking any cash into another miniatures game though.

Dragon!

Temptation to buy Skyrim miniatures rising...

Mr brother and I played a few rounds of this. It says the game takes 20 mins, but as it stood, each dogfight was taking about 3-4 minutes. Once you get caught in the opponent's gun sights it was really hard to get out of them. There were only two small plane miniatures, but they may not be the final miniatures. I would hope for actual plastic minis of the planes. 

We attempted to try another  game called Air Flix, where you have planes on disks and attempt to flick them into firing positions while avoiding flak, but the guy had sold all the copies and wasn't there on the Saturday to demo it any more.

There were other games I tried, which were fun, bought one for the family, bought a set of dice as that is customary at events like this. 

I will take my eldest two next year, I hope. It should be fun. 

Destroyed houses for WW2. Not sure manufacturer.

I painted up some more ruined houses. Unfortunately I have had these knocking around a while and don't really know who they are made by. The second story is removable. They could maybe be dusted up a little, but for now they will do nicely. 

These ones are surrounded entirely by rubble. Not sure how much I like that. I might need to pop them on a base and make it so the rubble has a non-rectangular edge to it. But as for now, they are useable. 

 

A Poor Man's A Billion Suns - Fleet progress

 I have made progress with the fighters, bombers, recon craft and smaller capital ships. Pleased with this.

As it stands, these are the smallest of the capital ships. Frigates? Corvettes?

These are bigger. 

Front row are recon scouts. Behind are some fighters. They are made from tile separators. 

Three squadrons of bombers. I like these the best.

Because I mount them on little magnets, storage is pretty straight forward.

Battlegroup Fall of the Reich Soviets attacking a hasty German defensive line.

Last night I played a "defensive line" game where an ad-hoc Wehrmacht vanguard is attempting to stall the inexorable Soviet advance. I don't think I have played Fall of the Reich yet. It was the one that got away all those years ago, and when they did the reprint I jumped on the chance. Playing it felt a little different, but mainly that it felt like I couldn't afford as much German stuff, with point costs being higher. But that may be imagined. I was also surprised that my two armies ended up with the same Battle Rating. Usually my US armies have a far higher point to reach before breaking. I assumed the Soviets would be the same. But both ended up with BR 23. The Soviets, however had many more infantry to throw at the fascist invaders.

Germans
FHQ is a Panzer IV.
1 infantry platoon.
1 Panzerfaust team
1 80mm mortar team
1 Pak 40 with loader team
1 StuG III
1 sniper + spotter

Soviets
1 infantry platoon
1 T-34/85 platoon
1 Maxim MG team
1 ZiS 76mm gun
1 BA amoured car
1 sniper + spotter
4 trucks and a jeep for the platoon command

A handful of German units held the wooded areas along the road. A sniper team were overlooking the northern fields, a Pak 40 also. An MG team were over looking the southern fields along with the Battlegroup Commander in his Panzer IV. A knocked out Tiger has been left on the road to create an obstacle to an easy advance.

The Soviets advanced across the field with a T-34 out in the open. It took fire from the Pak 40.

It brewed up easily, rounds cooking off inside.

The Soviet armoured car attempted to engage the LMG team, but the fire was ineffective.

In response to movement the LMG team opened fire on an advancing truck.

It blew up, but luckily the squad inside managed to escape. To be honest, advancing a truck was a bad idea, but I wanted to see how it worked shooting against soft skin vehicles.

Due to having to escape under fire, the Russian squad end up pinned.

The Panzer IV attempted to fire on the armoured car but missed. You can see a Soviet sniper team and the platoon commander advancing up the field.

Due to the left flank being unopposed, the platoon commander decided to relocate to the central wooded area, in order to best respond to the attackers. The forward infantry squad would soon follow suit, leaving the sniper on the flank to harrass any enemy towards them.

Soviet infantry managed to clear the MG 34 team from the woods, opening up the right flank.

This is the state of things. One lost truck and a T-34 gone. But otherwise, advancing. The ZiS 76mm has been deployed as a Panzer IV has been spotted firing. More troops will advance up. The forward most squad and armoured car will secure the woods ahead.

The Panzer IV and T-34 fired on each other.

With the T-34 coming out on top. The German battlegroup had now lost its overall commander. The platoon commander would attempt to keep the defensive line going. I searched and there didn't seem to be too much of a morale penalty for losing a FHQ unit, or a unit with the rule "senior officer". Maybe I didn't search hard enough. I feel like this should be a bad thing.

The Germans in the central wood managed to manhaldle the Pak 40 and move themselves around to face the enemy. This did, however, leave their new left flank exposed, but the infantry squad kept watch.

The T-34 and Pak 40 exchanged fire across the road. 

The Soviet shots went wild, whereas the Pak 40 scored a direct hit, destroying the attacking tank. The Russian sniper team advanced up through the woods, while the command tank remained just out of vision from that nasty German Pak.

Two Soviet squads and a Maxim team began to advance over the open ground on the newly exposed German flank. The German sniper did his job by providing harrassing fire to them, in an attempt to slow the advance.

The German platoon commander managed to spot the sniper team and fired with no effect.

Not wanting to get pinned down by sniper fire, the infantry squad bravely charged, killing the team and taking no casualties.

The Soviet squad advanced into the southern woods, claiming that objective. They could now provide covering fire while the others advanced up the flank. Inaccurate German mortar fire hit around the T-34 but achieve nothing, except for getting the attention of the Soviet armoured car, who circled the woods and plunged into the German rear to hunt down the mortar team.

Here we can see the Soviet flanking advance. The T-34 platoon commander still hugging the woods, and a truck load of infantry advancing up. Unseen, the ZiS has limbered back up to reposition in case and German armour reserves arrive, the BA armoured car has rushed into the German rear to cause havock, and the infantry squad has advanced to the edge of the woods to provide covering and harrassing fire.

More German sniper fire and he managed to take out the squad LMG gunner.

The central German infantry squad managed to pin a Soviet squad to help stall the advance.

Finally some German reserves arrived! The StuG III engaged and blew up the armoured car, which had been attempting to machine gun the mortar team into submission for a while.

With the armoured car gone, the mortar team was ordered to open up again on the advancing Russian trucks, pinning them. Unfortunately for the Germans the truck had already unloaded it's squad which was advancing towards the Germans in the woods.

The Soviets charged into the woods and destroyed the German squad, killing them to a man. The Russians took casualties themselves, and became pinned after faltering in morale. So they won the Close Assault, but lost three men and became pinned. Not sure it was a good idea. 

At this point it was 23:00 and I was getting tired. The Soviets had pulled 22/23 BR and so were not pulling more chits, leaving quite a lot of units pinned. Meanwhile the Germans, were only on about 12/23 and had finally gotten their reserves to arrive. We were on turn 6 or 7 I think. The Soviet victory conditions were to win by turn 9 by destroying/pinning everything or holding objectives. It looked like I was about to have a second battle within the battle by having most of a German platoon arriving to defend for two turns and time the Soviets out. So it was a pretty good German win. However, I played the Soviets poorly in two areas: 1. I wants to see how squishy T-34s were, so I sent one vs a Pak 40 to die. 2. I wanted to see how easily trucks died, soe let it die vs. an LMG. I would probably not advance trucks so close to the battle again. 

This game I switched inches to centimetres and I must admit my experience was far, far more fun than previously. The table felt the right sort of size for the game. The ranges, looked better when compared to the table. It was pretty cool. My brother is coming over in a few weeks and I imagine we will play. He bought me the Russians after all.