Crisis calling!

Well Crisis is looming on the horizon and that means I'll be packing my bags and entering radio silence for a while now as I'm already travelling to Belgium early tomorrow morning (or night actually) and coming back sometime next week. The better half has planned the rest of the trip after I was given Saturday to myself, so it'll be interesting to see what the future holds for me.

Half empty luggage is eagerly awaiting for goodies from the show. I've got some stuff lined up that I want to buy especially from Plastic Soldier Company, Warlord Games and Micro Art Studios. There's also the superb Northumbrian Miniatures Nightfolk that I've been wanting to paint up. They also stock 75mm figures and 120mm Busts so I might indulge on those if some nice subjects like Vikings or Napoleonics show up. And then there is the second hand area too... I already have a feeling that I'm going to go over the weight limit on the way back. Still the missus has graciously agreed to put something in her luggage too to split the weight.

Games wise I'm looking forward to seeing what Burkhard of DHC Wargames fame and his mates have set up as well as the Keren table from Newark Irregulars that has graced other events in the past. I might also try to get in a game of Infinity V3 now that I've finally received my Operation Icestorm box. Looking at the list there seems to be just too darn much to see and do for one day so I have a feeling I will be very busy there.


Painting wise I've started on my Bolt Action Sturmpionier force. Command team and the first squad are on the way as is the crew for their Hanomag that I've had painted for over a month now, but just waiting for the crew. I've been experimenting with painting the Feldgrau and trying to find a good and fast way to paint them up. I was first thinking of painting them Feldgrau and highlighting with Green Gray followed by a wash, but that was maybe a bit too stark of a contrast. I'm leaning towards Fieldgray followed by a black wash and then highlighted with fieldgray and a mix of fieldgray and green gray. Maybe not so striking from a distance, but looks better when looked from a closer distance.

The Napoleonics are also still waiting for basing. Maybe tonight after I've got my bags packed. No games in the near future really does kill the motivation for finalizing these.

Sorry for the bad photo, but it seems to be the best my fancy work Nokia is capable of today... Far gone are the days of glory for Finnish mobile making. I'm just hoping my company would make a switch to Androids or iPhones instead of sticking with Nokia Lumia...

Heavy weaponry for the Devils

I'm back at the painting table and going live with the first finished things! These are actually not the first ones I've painted after the pause, but the first ones I've managed to base up. Two 15mm Prussian battalions waiting for basing as well as a few bases of 28mm Napoleonic Brits.

However here is the heavy artillery for my Red Devils. A 6 pounder for countering those ever increasing numbers of tanks in our games and a 75mm Howitzer for removing any unit that gets too comfortable in a building or the like. This should see the Red Devils finished for quite some time. I still have a few odd minis and an extra squad blister that I got, but they won't be needed in games so I'm going to leave them for later when I'm tired of everything else :)

The broken wall that the 6pdr crew is using for cover is made from crafts foam and scored with a pencil. I'm not 100% sure I like the colour so I might have to tweak it a bit later on. Still perfectly good for gaming and carrying that 'Hard Cover' save around all the time :P

On the howitzer I actually had to do some fixing as the standing crew man was missing part of his arm. A little bit of green stuff and a hand from some Victrix box provided a nice quick fix. It was actually the first Warlord mini that I had any issues with.

Finally one extra PIAT toting man from Artizan Designs and the Warlord rulebook exclusive mini that I got from a fellow club member Juha.

Secret Santa has gone to war

Christmas is closing in and with it came Ian's Secret Santa project again. I've seen it going around the blogosphere previously and decided to jump in this time. The idea is to buy a wargames related secret christmas gift to your assigned fellow gamer for roughly 15 pounds + postage and somebody will do the same to you. Sounded like a lot of fun as with aging some of the excitement of Christmas has been toned down as you end up buying most of your own gifts anyway :) So now there's at least something that should end up being quite surprising!

I was originally planning to buy something from Crisis and shipping it later from home with some Finnish goodies as we are the official home country of Santa :) Alas that was not to be as I'd expect it to cause some issues with customs with the recipient, so I guess I'll have to resort to ordering something gift wrapped and sent straight from some of their local stores. So some research is going to be in need to find a suitable store and gift for Santa to deliver.

I'm not going to list anything too specific here for the Secret Santa, but as is probably quite evident from the blog WW2 and Napoleonics are what mostly makes me tick hobbywise. British and German armour in 28mm and 28mm French Napoleonics for D'Erlons Assault at Waterloo will definately see a lot of action in the future. But then again it's a painting hobby I'm in so anything that looks cool will definately get it's place of glory in my cabinet!

Eventhough Santa is from Finland wargaming stuff rarely comes from here so some sort of tips might be in place. Pretty much the only Finnish wargaming store selling historicals is Fantasiapelit, so overseas is usually the way to go. Still free shipping is usually available within Europe from many locations and for example Caliver Books has been servicing Finland very nicely!

Bolt Action: Hold Until Relieved

I'm back from the last grouse hunt of the year and back to blogging and other wargames related things.

I played another game of Bolt Action with the Red Devils again, this time against Fallschirmjägers in a more urban setting. I was set up for defence, which really suited me well as I could get in good positions and let the Germans advance within the range of my SMGs.

Red Devils:
HQ
FOO
Sniper
MMG
Flamethrower
3 Full squads.

Fallschirmjäger:
HQ
Sniper
MMG
Panzerschreck
3 Full squads
Kubelwagen
Opel Blitz
Sdkfz 251

The crossroads next to the church were chosen as the objective area. I set up one squad of paras in a house across from the objective and the sniper team in the church tower.

 I brought in my reinforcements from both flanks to stop the Germans from moving in from the sides.

 One German squad moved in towards the objective mounted in the Opel Blitz only to be gunned down by the British MMG that had moved up towards the objective. With their truck destroyed the squad dismounted across the road.

 Meanwhile the sniper in the church tower had managed to pin down the single footgoing German squad on the right flank. They failed their command rolls for a few turns in a row which effectively left them out of the fight. The FOO distinguished himself by managing to order an artillery strike on top of the squad on the right flank. Luckily they escaped mostly without a scratch and only took a pin marker. However they did throw a FUBAR roll on the next turn retreating out of the building.

 With time running out the Germans made a bold move towards the objective with the 251. Not wanting to wait for the British Flamethrower to open up on them a squad of Fallschirmjägers dismounted only to be fired upon by one Para squad and a MMG which took out most of the squad.

 The two transported units hunkered down in the ruins next to the objective.

 In the end I held the objective with two squads well dug in around the objective and the far left squad being well pinned down after multiple turns of firing. However the British casualties were light with only the sniper and flamethrower teams losing men and couple of riflemen going down from the leftmost squad. The Germans ended up losing both their transports and two squads.

Oldhammer acquisitions. There be dragons!

Well I'm getting back into a good hobby flow with some painting being done during this week which has seen 12 more British Napoleonics getting quite a bit of paint on as well as some 15mm Prussians, which are now only waiting for basing. I've also managed to get rid of my old 40k Tau project that has been gathering dust for a few years already.

But more importantly I've finally managed to acquire something that I've wanted for quite some time already! Behold Nick Bibby's Great Spined Dragon! Out of all old citadel dragons this is just somehow the most striking. Especially the facial features are amazingly 'realistic' and extremely menacing. I found this one from the main Finnish wargaming forum for 35 euros which I consider quite a good deal. It's not 100% original  though as the wings are the plastic Balrog wings from the LOTR range, but they look good and are actually quite close to the originals.

All didn't go as planned though as one of the wings broke when I brought it home and the grocery bags rolled on top of the bag where I had the dragon. Bit of a shame, but then again I'm a bit skeptical it would have lasted paint removal either and now I can at least fine tune the wing positions before painting. Now he is off to a bath of Fairy Power Spray and then some pinning and green stuff to fix the wings again.

Long time no see

It's been awfully quiet here on my blog for quite a while with nearly a month long pause between the posts. Real life is really interfering badly with blogging as practically all weekends are spent hunting, which cuts out most of my hobby time.

I haven't really picked up the brushes for nearly a month with only a bit of paint applied on some 15mm minis at home and my only really active painting being done during a club day where we painted a 1000pt German starter set for Bolt Action to be used freely by members.

It hasn't been completely quiet on the wargames front though as I've managed to get in about a game per week though and I've been trying to follow other peoples blogs and forums. Still about a month to go on the busiest hunting season so maybe I'll get my painting mojo back on after that. In the mean time finding energy for concentrating on painting seems to be nigh impossible with most evenings spent lying on the couch watching ice hockey or then playing some game. I have some projects set up though that I'm hoping to get started on when I can gather the motivation.

  Chuck will really be needed to kick me back into business.

Games wise I've played a few games of Bolt Action with varying degrees of success. I'm really growing to like this system more and more. There are of course some issues with it, but all in all in my opinion it does give quite a nice "realistic" outcome most of the time. Real life tactics work quite well and it's simple enough to allow for a fast game.

We also played a demo game of Longstreet a week ago. Seems like a great game and I really like the way the cards are used to influence both your and your enemies play. For small games with a handful of Regiments per side it seems like a great system, but I guess it won't scale that well upwards. I'll definately be trying to play more of this so that my 6mm ACW guys see some action too.

Project wise my Bolt Action collections will be expanded a bit as I bought roughly a 1000pt force of Germans to have an axis army to play with too as most of the players at my club only have Allies. These have been put together whenever I've had the energy. 30 plastic Pioneers and their vehicles etc was surprisingly tedious to do with all the fiddly bits. However no they are all put together and based and are just waiting for a basecoat. Maybe finding motivation for painting these will be a bit easier as I can at least see them being used in the near future quite often unlike some of the other projects. Then there's still most of the Baker Company Winter War stuff. I've only received the basic units until now so still loads to come. I did decide to sell the Russians though as I'm totally fed up with the quality. The Finns I'll finnish as I've already started on them.

Waterloo 2015 is drawing ever closer and I need to paint up 6 French battalions and 6 British and Hannoverian battalions and roughly 3-4 squadrons for both sides. This should keep me quite busy for a while, though I did decide to make my life a bit easier by deciding to revert to 4 models per base instead of the 6 I'd been using. Cutting down 50% of the paint load on the Frenchies and Hannoverians really should speed up the process. 16 guys instead of 24 per battalion is quite merciful.

15mm will also be featured quite heavily during the rest of the year as Early War is going to be the thing in Flames of War for a while. I took advantage of the Battlefront EW sale and bought up units for a Early War german Panzerschützen army. I've always found the early war germans most interesting and now that ETC will be an EW event and a lot of club members focusing on that I decided to jump in the bandwagon. Hopefully a rather quick project as I have quite a bit of armor and all of the vehicles and equipment are quite simple to paint as well.

Some more long term projects are expanding my 15mm US troops with a couple of platoons to allow me to run my collection as Tank destroyer or armored rifle companies. Not too much to add, but I'm not in too much of a hurry with these if everybody will be concentrating on Early War anyways.

Another longer project will be to finally build up my 15mm Prussian army. Most of the Napoleonic games at my club are played with 15mm so getting these guys ready for battle would allow me to take part without having to borrow other peoples minis. The horrendous Warrior minis ones I've had have really kept me from going forward with this too fast as they are all one pose and really bad castings. Now I bought a few test packs from Campaign Game Miniatures and Fantassin and these are from a wholly different planet quality wise. I've yet to test paint them, but hopefully I'll get these done a lot quicker as they seem like something that would actually be nice to paint rather than the tedious task that it is with the Warrior ones.