Five Parsecs from Home: Turn 8 - A Quest ends...

So I hadn't played in just over two years... Reviewing my Google sheet I discovered I somehow had enough quest rumours to get a final quest mission...even though you are meant to move planet between each quest mission. From a narrative perspective it actually worked because it looked like the local governor making a last ditch attempt to off my crew. I ran with it and decided that I would revise the rules and carry on on a new planet as it makes sense from a narrative perspective to get out of dodge. 

A rabble quietly approached The Pelican, attempting to remain in the cover of some shipping containers.

The crew of The Pelican warily stocked up in preparation for a hasty departure from this rock. They had obviously outstayed their welcome and needed to get out of dodge. Lars had set up to cover as the rest of the crew shifted various containers into the cargo hold.

Seeing movement Aralay Brenko and Estelle Phillips moved into more covered positions. Phillips saw an opportunity to open fire and got off a few shotgun blasts taking out one of the shifty figures. Unknown to her he was one of the rabble rousers. The rest of them faltered right away, then decided to keep going.

One of the rabble swung to the left and opened fire with his rifle. Out of cover, moving cargo Oslan Baratski was hit, a dark patch spreading across her leg. Mao also took some fire and was lucky enough to be able to scamper to the relative safety of the shadows under The Pelican and the cargo crates.

Estelle Phillips also had to duck for cover under a hail of rifle rounds.

Seeing movement Lars opened up, his rattle gun tearing chunks out of a storage garage and also one of the attackers.

This death forced the attackers to take cover, retreat and regroup, they took some ineffective fire but nothing happened for a little bit.

Augustus Holmes managed to get a bead on another person taking a shot and putting a hole in him.

Then disaster stuck as a brave attacker ran up and sprayed wild fire at Estelle Phillips. She crumpled and fell under the fire! Meanwhile Lars and Mao were taking inaccurate fire.

Augustus Holmes and Mao exchanged fire with other figuresn, taking them out. This was helping keep this side safe and was forcing the rest of the attackers to advance around the containers...where Aralay Brenko was lying in wait.

Aralay stuck! Running out of cover she swung her blade at one of the attackers, his head flying away from his body.

Caught in the open the other attackers panicked, fell back a little then regrouped. Aralay managed to pin one of them.

She then charged in and in the desperate grapple both she and the attacker fell back from each other, tired, and worried.

Before she could recover a hail of bullets slammed into her sending her to the floor.  

Augustus Holmes charged around opening fire on the remaining attackers, knocking one to ground.

Holmes, Lars and Mao caught the remaining person in a pincer and while Mao took the fire Holmes closed in for the kill. Upon investigation one of the final people killed was the governor himself! He had been determined to witness the job being done and see it through. It did not go well for him unfortunately. They managed to find a purse on him with enough credits to probably look at upgrading some weaponry at some point. 

 And with that it was time to leave. Holmes, Lars and Mao carefully carried Brenko, Baratski and Phillips back to The Pelican and got them into the medbay. It turned out none of the wounds were going to leave any permanent damage. The only thing left to do was to hightail it out of there. 

Germans on the move!

 I finished a group of late war German transport vehicles! I wanted them to be able to mount FHQ units, infantry squads and other small units in vehicles if needed, thus I painted up a load of Sdkfz 251s, Opel Blitzes, Kübelwagons and some other vehicle that I ordered and I think counts as a "Heavy car" in Battlegroup language. 

One thing I decided was to not bother doing any sort of camo job on the Opel Blitzes, Kübelwagons and the "Heavy car". It just wasn't worth it. You can see from the picture that they all look totally fine. They will do and are very obviously German.

I tried to do some camo on the Sdkfz 251s but gave up. I am definitely unhappy with how the couple turned out - the stripes are just too thick for my liking, and the handful of stripes I liked I struggled to replicate - I think I just need very little paint on the brush...or a thinner brush? Hard to find one that thin though.

This Sdkfz 222 has a little camo. It is okay. Servicable. I think I would rather it have some camo than not. 

I am mostly pleased with how these all turned out though and am looking forward to getting them into action. 

Camo vs. generic nation colours in 6mm.

 This blog contains images I took from google searching. I don't own these images.

Reflecting on my choice to not give my WW2 German support vehicles any camoflauge I had the thought about how it looks a bit like the old game Sudden Strike 2, which was a game I sank a lot of hours into but gave up on when it got too hard.

Below you can see the Russian forces. They are all this bright green colour, so you can spot them in the green of the grass. There is no variation.

Below you can see the late war Comet fighting what must be a late war Tiger...that is grey. I remember finding it a little jarring seeing all German units as grey, infantry included, but it worked for the game's internal consistency. The British forces all had this vaguely desert colour as their journey started in Africa.

From the distance the player is playing, the generic colours really helped identify which unit belonged to which faction. I can live with that in 6mm - although do take issue with all German being grey. 

My USA, British and Soviet forces - the vehicles will all be a generic green, infantry will be painted as accurately as I can. Germans - early war grey, later war midstone with camo if I can make it look non awful.

Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics. US 6mm

 Here are a few more vehicles, that I finished over the course of this week. If you paid any attention to my previous post then you will see my musings on paint jobs. I went with US Dark Green. The soft tops and tilts are British Uniform - a generic canvas sort of colour. 

I like the cartoony look of having blue windows at this scale. With the jeeps and trucks I worried about how they have no doors and are open sided, but due to molding needs they are filled in. How would I paint them then? I think it worked decently to be honest. 

These Chaffees are the new mold. They are pretty gorgeous. I had fun painting them and look forward to them dying quickly to some Panthers...

Painting up some 6mm WW2 British infantry and armour.

 After allowing myself to dilly-dally and not bother doing much, I finally have a platoon plus some support of British infantry. I also have some armour. I was basically unsure about what colour to paint the armour and exactly what to paint on the infantry because I felt like the soldiers would just blend in with their bases, which is kind of what happened. 

I found this link from A Bridge to War blog which gave some interesting tips on painting 6mm WW2 infantry and armour. It goes very much down the "it can all look the same when looking down at a table" route and does enough to make the figures look different while also being simple to paint. 

Infantry

The infantry were essentially primed in a light grey. This differs from that link, but it is all I have for now. I then used all Vallejo paints and painted them in the following order:

Flesh - Light flesh.

Uniform - British Uniform

Helmets - US Dark Green

Weapons - Beige Brown, then Black

Washed with Citadel Agrax Earthshade

Gear - Russian Green (I only painted canteens and a pouch or two)

Light drybrush of Sand.

The original link just paints weapons black. It also primed with brown, which made the need for British Uniform paint layer unnecessary. 

I am pleased with how they turned out. I should have probably painted boots also, but couldn't be bothered. I would have painted them black if I had thought about it.

Armour

I convinced myself I needed Bronze Green to paint my armour, but ended up just painting them US Dark Green, washing with Citadel Nuln Oil, drybrush with Desert Yellow. They look fine to be honest. I have painted up some KV1s and a KV2 using Russian Green, which is noticeably lighter, but after washing with Nuln Oil I literally can't tell the difference between the two colours! 

The link above has inspired me to paint up some Waffen SS though. I had always thought they were too difficult to paint up in 6mm and was just never going to play them. 

Next up, some US logistical vehicles. Then some German trucks and half tracks - they are just waiting for some more colours and a flocking.