Christmas

Been a lack of blogs as work and getting ready for Christmas has took over everything ☺ now all done kids asleep feet up now. Hope you all had a great Christmas.
Amongst the gifts I got more bolt action stuff (confusing family members with random links to models I want)

Bolt action gifts

So I got a Cromwell tank and a Sherman tank along with a 6 pounder anti tank gun.  Should give me a bit of punch to take on my regular opponents tanks. Also thrown in there are some order dice in Airbourne colours ☺
Next up is

Some scenery from  Amera Plastics . There is a sandbag position and various hills and a ruined building. Once all painted up should add some nice depth to put battle fields.
Have a great me year folks!

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The week that was!

Over the last week or so I've started painting my Bolt Action British Airbourne soldiers. I found another blog with a painting guide in so I used for tips you can find that here.  I didn't follow it completely as I'm not that good at painting but the guide for camo and the rough colours helped so my airbourne are a tiny bit accurate. I tried to start with painting all 30 odd models doing trousers then jackets I got so bored I realised I needed to break it down into groups of around 5 otherwise I'd go insane ☺.

First group completed

The second broil

The second group includes all the weapons team I have for airbourne. So there is a PIAT,  light mortar and medium Machine gun. The MMG I added what hopefully look like logs just to add a little something to the base.

Close up of MMG team

Hopefully they look like wood!
Also I found in Aldi an airfix model Cromwell tank starter set in the middle asle. The scale is to small really for bolt action but it will make a nice proxy until I get actual tanks as my regular opponent is stocking up on armour! !

Assembled tank

The model was really easy to put together the problem I had was some of the tiny details like head lamps were so small my giant fingers could not get them into place!! The turret had stoppers on so the turret pointed in one direction. Well I couldn't have this so I chopped the stoppers of so the turret can traverse and come off easily in case it's destroyed. (Hopefully not needed!!!)

Painted tank

Tank with my earlier made destroyed vehicle markers

As you can see from pics above the effect of destroyed vehicle marker looks brilliant. My blog about the vehicle markers is here .
I've started painting the tank with paints provided but they are really thin (bonus I got a nice new brush though!) So after a few coats still not fully covered. I probably should of undercoated it first but I just wanted it built d'oh!! Couple more coats needed then I might add a few dry brushes or highlights while I'm painting something else.
Have a great day!

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Few odds and Ends

A quiet week or so. Been the wife's birthday had a poorly 1 year old and was ill myself so not to much time free. After making up all the late war British infantry (mentioned in last blog) I set about painting my airbourne troops. I've played skirmish games for so long I forgot what it was like to paint an army! Slow start as I want to take my time and do my best with these.  So only started on the base colours at moment.

Next up once work shifts are done will be the green on the jackets.
I've also under coated all the regular British infantry so they will be next up.
On the horizon (christmas) I will have a tank to make up and my friend who is my main adversary in war games has a few tanks he is making up so I thought I would try my hand at making a destroyed vehicle marker. I have seen these used in various battle reports and they add to the battle field I believe. I scavenged some flickering battery powered tea lights and raided the baby supplies for cotton wool. I found a few different videos with techniques on so used those.
I stuck a lollipop stick to one side of the tea light and then stuck cotton wool around tea light and up the stick to hopefully maaaje what appears to be a smoke plume.

I think the lighting effect looks great but white smoke won't do for burning vehicles!  So I blasted it with black spray paint!

I think these will look great and took very little effort to make. Hopefully I will be placing them on my opponets tanks and not mine!
Lastly I reciveved my war bear and rider from the Dead Earth games Shattered Crown Kick starter. Lovely looking model. I've had to order a new base as I wanna try something a bit different with this one. It did come with a base but that was more a cavalry rectangular base so the bear can be used is a unit.  It will be a while till I get a unit of bear riders.

Have a good week folks!

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Bolt Action Mid/Late War Infantry

Throughout the week I've been working on British infantry box set. The British Airbourne units I already own were solid models so required no assembly. However this box sets contains options for many varieties of soldiers. Obviously being new to bolt action and didn't really know what to aim for and there are a lot of sprues! Luckily I got some advice from Jamie at Infamous wargaming club (the very man who gave me the box set) and had a list in my mind.

My officer and 2 body guards with SMGs

My officer has got 2 bodyguards along with him. He did start out as pointing with one hand but after looking at the sprues I decided that I would have a slightly eccentric officer who had 2 pistols! No in game effect but I like it anyway.

PIAT Team

Next up a bit of anti tank. A PIAT team setting up their gun.

Light Mortar Team

A light mortar team next. The loader does look like he will fling the mortar round himself but with some special placing of mortar and loader hopefully the effect I was after will come through.

Sniper Team

I made a sniper team up (virtue of scoped enfield) there were no specifically designed prone figures in the box set so I went for a sniper getting into position with spotter. Point to note: the binoculars were a nightmare to fit in the spotters hands!!!!!!!!!!!!

Squad of 8 Tommies

2nd Squad of 8 Tommies

Last was two 8 man squads containing an LMG team, 2 SMGs and 4 rifles each.
Great fun putting these together as the amount of sprues give you plenty of options and poses for your soldiers.  I think this box set is great you get virtually a platoon on it so could start playing straight away. Now a mass bolt action force painting session is required!
Have a great one guys

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Busy weekend

After finishing a large run of shifts Saturday was games night. First off we tried a tiny game of bolt action just to give the rules a try. My friend had a German  lieutenant and a 10 man squad I had a British Para lieutenant and 2 5 man squads. We really liked the bolt action rules and they flow really well. Great fun can't wait to finish up our armies and have a full on battle.

Next up was a large game of x wing!

2 large squadrons were assembled. The empire had slave 1 and 4 tie aces the rebels had the millenium falcon, an E wing , b wing and an a wing.

The board was pretty crowded with ships. We started our game both sides speeding towards each other. A few shots were exchanged before unfortunately my little 1 year old got ill so had to call it a day and look after him all night. He seems much better today though. On Sunday I took a trip to a new gaming club that has opened up  Infamous Wargaming club based on oldbury at a community arts place. Here I met Jamie who set up and runs the club. He gave me a demo of bolt action (I know i had played a game the night before but I always find it good to have someone that has played a few times to show you). He had a german force and we played a scenario called envelopment. I lost the roll so Jamie picked the defender and I got the attacker. I had to get my forces across I to his deployment done and off the board.

My forces were in white as they haven't been painted yet just under coated  as you can see I suffered from a lack of cover where as the Germans were well dug in.

One of my squads (above pic) managed to get into opponents half and some brave charging and close quarter combat.  This squad did make it off the board.

My other squad did not fair so well as it had more open ground to cover. In bolt action (as I'm sure many of you are aware) you have pins this reflects squads receiving incoming fire.  I had made my own pin markers to look like little explosions. As you can see from the picture the squad had already acquired 2. Pins affect taking orders and shooting

They fought their way across the river but were wiped out. I lost the game but 2 victory points.
One of the other blokes at the club offered me a second game against Russians.  After set up I noticed there were a lot of Russians on the other side of the battle. This was a straight up meeting engagment where both sides run into the table.  This went fairly evenly but we ran out of time so didn't get to finish though to rub it In my artillery spotter at extreme long range and enemy in cover took 2 enemy out with his SMG with some lucky dice rolls. I love bolt action and can't wait to get my army sorted. Also Jamie was super kind and gave me a box of British soldiers which should be enough to make up another 2 squads of regular British Tommies.
The box is full of sprues and loads of choice!  Below is what I started this morning (wonderful children waking up before 7 am)

Have a great day!!

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Zombie books

Not quite miniatures but hey it's Halloween and some bloggers are doing zomtober so I thought I would waffle on about a series of books I've been reading.
The series is called day by day armagegdedon. It's a cracking series the first two are done in diary format so the chararcter writes about events after they happened. Which is great when he writes something like "I barely made it" makes you want to read on to find out what happened. The last 2 books he seems to go away from that format slightly but there are more characters in different places so I guess that it would be hard to stay in diary format all the time.
The first 2 books are the strongest in the series the fourth book seemed a little bit rushed I felt but still enjoyable as it carries on the story.
If you like zombie books give these a try!

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Terrain! Part 1

I've been working on some new terrain. With my force for dystopian legions and my new foray into bolt action I decided I needed to add a few buildings as all of mine are post apocalyspe type buildings.  I wanted some cottage type buildings and a bigger one so I settled on an inn type building. These should hopefully be Ok in both game settings. As funds are low (as always) for gaming I aim to scratch build them. We have had a new microwave so the box was sacrificed to make said buildings. After making a template out of paper

Using the template I cut the pieces out required.
Using a bit glue gun I assembled the buildings

The big building has a balcony on as well (ignore the coloured lollipop sticks it's all I had to hand!). Next up I've added lollipop sticks to simulate wooden support a some old buildings have

The large building comes apart I can take the way floor off for access to ground floor and also the roof off. One of the cottages roof comes off also the other has a while 'blasted' into the back. The roofs were a real challenge for me getting the right angle and securing them son I could take them off in games. I've managed it but they don't fit as nice as I would have liked.
Next up was tiling the roofs! Thanks again to Lukes APS Facebook group (link here ) I was offered some good advice as I was looking at cutting each tile out separately!! Thankfully the advice was cut one inch long strips og cardboard (the length of your roof obviously) then mark a line halfway all the way along. Along this line mark every half inch then cut up tothe half way marked line. Starting from the bottom of the roof stick one strip down the the next strip on top with the 'tiles' covering the non cut but of the strip. Hopefully that made sense and it looks like this

I think the effect looks really decent. The cardboard could have been better quality but I'm working on a budget (so far a microwave box and happy box have been sacrificed) but you only really notice it on close examination  for gaming I think the will be ok.
Next up is undercoating and painting

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Game Night! Part 1

Last night my good friend came over for our usual game night. I was quite excited about this game night as my friend had recently purchased Star Wars Armada. This is made by the people that made X-Wing but uses the bigger capital type ships from the star wars films such as Star Destroyers so every thing is on a bigger scale.

I played the rebel fleet and my friend took charge of the imperial fleet. He had one star destroyer (an absolute beast of a model) and six squadrons of Tie fighters.

My fleet consisted of two capital ships. The CR 90 Corvette  (famously in the first scene of the 'first' star wars) and a Nebulon B frigate (I believe it can be spotted in Return of the Jedi) escorted by 4 squadrons of X-wing.

Nebulon B Frigate

CR 90 Corvette

The game looks quite foreboding when you are getting all the bits and bobs you need out but once you start playing it runs smooth and you can see all the little things they have done to aid the speed of the game. Squadrons of fighters have there own section of the time and are super simple to use but add so much to the game. This makes moving squadrons fairly quick and allows you to concentrate on your capital ships. The capital ships is what the game is all about.  Theu have order dials like x wing  but depending on the ship you have to go stack them up and plan ahead. So a slow strong ship like the star destroyer has 3 order dials and at the start of your game you have to choose orders for all 3 which will be revealed one at a time over the next 3 turns. Each turn you add another order dual to the bottom as you take and activate the top one. This means you need to have a good think about what you plan on doing ahead of time. The dials allow you to speed up or slow down (if you don't choose this on one turn you move at your selected speed), charge your weapons,  make repairs to shields etc and finally order near by squadrons to move and attack.  Next up you attack with up to 2 weapons from different arcs. The ships have various weapons, the strongest being at the front and they have anti fighter weapons to fend off nearby fighter sqaudrons also. After the attack you can manoeuvre  (we did this the opposite way round before realising but finished the game the way we were playing as we were nearly at the end). To move you get a cool movement tool that is spilt into 4 sections which can move left or right a certain number of clicks.  Depending on your ships movement and speed determined how you can manipulate the movement tool.

So after getting set up we used the first scenario type game the book suggests to learn the rules.

Not really knowing the game I set up quite basically giving each ship 2 squadrons of x wings as support. Looking over the star destroyers stats I knew a frontal assault would end badly as my ships lacked the shields to hold out against the big guns for ever so my plan was to spilt my force and circle star destroyer (my ships were far more agile than the star destroyer). The first turn was spent advancing towards each other my ships spliting and going  for either side of the star destroyer.

One capital ship with x wing escorts

The Corvette leaves it's escorts behind!

The two frigates went round the sides while their escorting x wings engaged the tie fighters. My Corvette did manage to get ahead of its escorts and was hit quite a bit by a Tie fighter swarm.

Both rebel ships flanking the slower but more powerful Star Destroyer

The Rebel capital ships Strip the star destroyers rear shields while the x wing squadron goes on a bombing run

My frigates managed to get round to the rear of the star destroyer and a few lucky long range shots stripped its rear shields. Then a plucky x wing squadron took a shot at the star destroyer now lacking shields. Thanks to a handy special rule for x wings attacking capital ship I could potentially cause a critical hit. ....which I rolled! ! The star destroyer ended up with a thruater fissure meaning wverytine it changed speeds it gets one damage Go X wings!!!!!
The next few turns had the star destroyer stuck moving at a speed to fast (remember the orders were set a few turns ago) putting in an awkward position soon it took the damage and slowed down for better control. Using the space given by the star destroyers move my remaining x wings finished off the tie fighters . The game ended (you only play 6 turns) with my capital ships and remaining x wing squadrons chasing after the star destroyer which to be fair had plenty of hull points left and could have repaired shields so if the game would have carried on I think I could have took it out but I would have lost a capital ship.

The rebels chase off the star destroyer!

Victorious Fleet

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Games Night!!! Part 2

After our game of star wars armada we broke out thevteuated Across the Dead Earth gangs for a shootout plus the very first time my game board got used!!

Looking good I have to say

It was getting late so we only had a small game 2 loot counters and 2 rare item counters up for grabs on a quite open board (cover is you're friend in ATDE) that seemed to simulate the edge of a ruined town leading into the country side.
Both gangs came in from opposite sides and spent the first turns getting into position.  The Coggers  (my friends gang) leader made a dash for a loot counter on when turned round to run back I pulled out the trip wire event card and stopped him in his tracks. Both ganga seperated and grabbed loot on the edges of the board.  My scout hopping over the stream for a rare item which he retrieved. The centre of the board was held by the Coggers and they had been shooting at my medic and assault guy taking the medic out but once again a  handy heroism event card meant the assault dude took the hot and was healed by my medic again he was shot by a 'lucky' shot event card after my opponent missed my  medic. Again he was  healed.

Coggers hold the centre ground

I tried to flank them with my leader unfortunately I'd forgot about a Cogger lurking behind a lorry who ruthlessly shot my leader down.

Leader down!!

The infamous 'Wall' lurched over to finish my leader off but he had a surprise!! A sacrifice event card meant my leader dropped a grenade taking both of them out of the game!

Boom!!!

In revenge for my leader falling, My sniper for into position and 2 actions 2 shots 2 downed Coggers!

My assault guy (who'd spent most the game being shot and revived) scrambled over and finished the 2 downed Coggers off.
The last few Coggers were trying to get loot back, My scout took the Coggers heavy out with his bow and arrow! 

The last Cogger made off ending the game.
Another great game a lot more bloody than our previous games but great fun. My leader survived unscathed and my friends gamg members were generally ok a few were -1 Toughness but all still alive. The rate items we found? The Coggers got a nail grenade and I got a pistol stock hmmmn think our gangs got some duff info about rare items ha ha ha ha thats all folks!!

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