US Convoy

   With my 1st game imminent I stopped painting figures for the War of the Roses and went back to my WW2 US project. The last things to do we the Sherman tank, a Dodge Truck and a trio of jeeps, although I was also doing bits of scenery work around the edges to create a slightly busier board.

   Annoying at the point where I was starting to weather the vehicles, I managed to knock the tray they were sitting on off the side of a pile of things and broke some bits. I repaired most of it but only realised as I was weathering that some bits were missing entirely, so I decided to try and make it look like part of the project - if you can spot the bits, then well done.

   All 5 vehicles are Rubicon and were, mostly, bought in the before mentioned sale that set this all off - the jeeps being the initial order. 

This is the 3rd finished project for my 1 a month target for this year, so I am a bit behind on it now.

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A Busy Week For Games

   I'm not massively in the habit of posting game photos on here and I'm not really sure why - I've made sure I have at least one photo of every game that I plan to put on my end of year post, but that leaves some photos that I'm really pleased with that just go into the photo bank. Last week I managed to play some games with new armies and I'm pleased with how the boards ended up looking.

   The first game was my Winter Germans vs my brother's US using the Bolt Action rules. I've been working on adding some scenic bits to my 28mm western Europe scenery collection, which was mostly just telephone poles and teddy bear fur fields, but I think they make a difference, although with a new mat that is much more toned down than the dark green that Wayland Games always put out for us.

   The photos are in no particular order but the end result was a US victory, the preliminary bombardment hurt me much more than my brother and it took me about 3 turns to get all my troops moving at which point I was already in a bad place. The only big upside was that I took out his tank in the first turn or so and that left my little Marder 3 to just roll around the board causing a nuisance of itself.

   The second game we swapped sides of the war and I got my new US out, while my brother used his Germans - not winter this time!

   The second game was a essentially a rerun of the 1st game, the US infantry outclassed the German infantry for the bulk of the game but the second turn death of my Sherman and my 57mm AT gun being unable to do much more than scratch the Panther's paint work meant that the German big cat just spent the game picking units to take off the board - I have never been so happy to have a farm on the board as I was in this game. It ended up as a draw on objectives but it was a pyric draw for the US.

   On the Wednesday club night I also ran a Napoleonics game for a few of the members, with myself and Neil umpiring. Mostly I just wanted to get my 15mm Napoleonics onto the table and test my ideas out.

   We played a version of Quatre Bras with the Nassau (and some allied troops) holding a fork in the road to slow down the French advance. Rebels and Patriots is a brilliant ruleset for Napoleonics in smaller figure count games but in 15mm with blocks of infantry, it does have limitations - the French column for example stalled badly the moment one unit failed a move test, but all in all it ran pretty smoothly and it looked impressive on the night.

   The Allies held the field in the end, but with a few more turns the French would have overrun the fork in the road, there were just so many French units that didn't make it anywhere near the Nassau. The game has given me a bit of a boost to look back at getting troops done for this game, at the very least another cannon or two per side, more cavalry and some baggage?

   Watching the French Cuirassiers go through a unit of infantry like it was melted butter was a definite highlight of the game. While I didn't get to roll any dice on this one, its really nice seeing people having fun with something you've done and as two of the players were new to the hobby, seeing them grasp the rules and getting on with a game was excellent.

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Calling In The Liveried Troops

    This post is a quick one to show the next two units for my Andrew Trollope War of the Roses project. The second units of liveried archers and billmen*. Nothing hugely special to say about them as they are from the same boxes as the last few figures and painted in the same way, but they get me really close to completing this project before the looming the deadline.

*inc my 6th missing Man at Arms

   An interesting side note here and something I have only learnt since painting these troops is that while the flag of Andrew Trollope is white & green halved with white harts on it, it seems like his troops wore white and green halved tunic (but the opposite way round to the way I've done it) and the emblem on the tunic was a blue peacock . . .

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The Return Of The War Of The Roses

    I think it's been pretty obvious from past posts that trips to historical places tend to get my creative juices flowing, so if I was to mention that I went on a day trip to a castle (Baconsthrope) built during the Wars of the Roses, it should be no surprise to anyone that it got me thinking about that collection.

   The last time I posted about this time period was early 2021 when I said I was going to try and get two sides done for a game in May of that year - which didn't happen for me. I also said I would be painting up warbands and then mixing them to make units - but in hindsight at this scale I don't think it makes a lot of sense, so instead I'll be doing 24-30 points of Andrew Trollope and then maybe adding units from other lords at a later date.

The bits that I painted in this batch to make up the numbers.

Then, below, are these figures added to the others (minus the Men at Arms) to create two separate units of troops, one bowmen and one billmen. I've used the same recipe as last time which is why everything blends in alright, although this time I've written it into my recipe book.

I've been painting at a decent rate again over the last couple of weeks so the next batches will be along soon.

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GI's Deployed

   As I'm not playing as many games at the moment compared to pre-pandemic/baby I'm trying to make the most of every game that I know is coming up and planning well in ahead. I have two games lined up for the end of June, the first will be Bolt Action with my brother which is what I'm painting my WW2 US stuff for as it's another different opponent for his Germans (although I'm hoping to get a second game in on the same day so he can use his fledgling US army and I can use my winter Germans), then a second separate game which will be a few posts coming up. While I do miss weekly gaming, having a month to plan ahead is surprisingly nice and I'd recommend even regular gamers do a few like this.

   I've dug out my Normandy scenery, most of which I don't think ended up on this blog and I'm having a quick look at which bits need tidying up or finishing and I'm now trying to focus on which bits of my US army I need for the list so I can make sure that they are done, so I can make sure the other project gets the time it needs too.

   This post is covering the last of the infantry I need for the game, I've got some more vehicles to finish up but as I plan to do the weathering all at the same time, they can hold off for a later post. This squad is where I've tried to use up every figure left on the sprues, so it's got the regular 12 men with 2 BARs and a NCO with SMG, but in my list it needs another pair of SMG's for a slightly tastier squad and I've given it another SMG just because I had a spare body. At the same time, I had a body left with a big bag at it's waist so I built it as a medic as that future proofs my collection a little bit more.

Just the vehicles to go, so I suspect the next few posts will focus on my other impending game.

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Battle Of Maldon

   A slight to the current painting projects;

Statue of Earl Byrthnoth

   A week ago - at the point of typing - we booked a Friday off work and decided to take our little boy to Colchester zoo while it was still fairly quiet and with the weather being good and us leaving the zoo to give him a car nap in the early afternoon, we were planning how to spend the rest of the afternoon when we saw a sign for Maldon and I mentioned that it was a battlefield I would quite like to visit. . .

The towards the causeway to Northey Island where the Vikings had landed.

The probably battlefield as the closest land to the causeway, although with how wet and marshy the whole are is I'm not sure I'd like to have a fight there.

   Like my other battlefield posts, I'm not going to try and describe the battle or explain the motivations as I'm just not qualified when there are so many better places to get that sort of information, but it's always weirdly moving to go to battlefields and see how the terrain affected the events. In this case, I can totally see why the English Earl Byrthnoth, let the Vikings off of the island instead of either trapping them in or taking the fight to them, the land around the causeway is horrible, even with the modern raised path, you are much better off letting them come to you. It's just a pity it didn't work.

   This is very much a battle I've had my eyes on recreating, so much so that I have a specific bit of scenery made for it by Last Valley, so keep your eyes open in the future*.

*Just torn whether to go 28mm or 15mm

   Also as a side note, the path to the battlefield is not at all pram friendly . . .

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GI's Ho!

    I recently went to stay at my in law's house for a few days and as that meant there would be extra hands to keep an eye on our little boy, I took a box of sprayed figures and the minimal paints I needed to do them, in the hope that there would be spare time. While there wasn't much spare time to be had in the end, I did get the bulk of the base colours on, which sped the next few stages up.

   As what I took with me was everything built at the time and after the first squad - to test my theories - what I had been building were mostly special teams as rifles are easy to add at a later date, this post has a lot of 2 or 3 man teams in it.

The second squad - standard 12 men, NCO with SMG and 2x BARs

LT and adj

Sniper team

Air/Artillery spotter (depending on needs) and adj

Bazooka team

MMG teams

Medium mortar team with spotter

   Then the thing I didn't paint while away, the 2.5 ton deuce truce. The kit was one of the original mistakes ordered from Rubicon. In hindsight I should have added a lot more stowage and, honestly, I don't know why I didn't, but as it's for carrying infantry it'll look the part.

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American GI's?

   While I've not been all that good at not buying figures this year* the one thing I have been good at is not buying new projects** and this post is about the 1st entirely new project of this year - WW2 American infantry.

*better than normal but not 'good'

**I have bent the term 'new project' a bit out of shape

   I have been playing some games of Bolt Action with one of my brothers, with more planned for the future, and it really got me thinking about WW2 again. Then during a visit to the Muckleburgh Military Collection while on a visit to my in-laws, my brother messaged me to say that Rubicon Models was having a sale, did I want anything. Suffice to say mistakes were made.

   The mistakes resulted in me needing to pick up some matching infantry and I went with Perry Miniatures American Infantry for the vast bulk of my stuff - a box of their plastic figures and some metal packs to fill out numbers. This is the first unit plus a 57mm AT gun (which is the only unit from Warlord Games in this army - so far) that I was inspired to include in the first batch of figures.

The infantry squad has been built to my normal WW2 squad theory - make a full strength squad as it 'should be equipped' on paper. So for US I understand this to be 12 men, 2 men with BARs and the NCO with a SMG.

I doubt all 12 will be used as a single squad in a game but at least I have the option if I want to or if the rules force me to.

Next in my 1st batch is a 57mm AT gun. The only non-Perry infantry figures in my collection. I've given it a simple paint job and restrained myself from putting a giant white star on the front as I couldn't find any examples online that had one -  I suspect because why put a bulls eye on your gun?

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The Last Old Chaos Marines Repaint

   A slight change of pace for this post as I tidied up and rebased the last (I think) old unit of chaos marines from my pre-blog army, I think everything going forward will be new (er) stuff.

   As with the other stuff, these needed the red tidied up and then the other colours redone and they just look so much better for it. It's only as I look at this photo that I realise I haven't done their right pads black like my others, but that can be fixed later on or left as is.

   I'm also starting to wonder, based on units in the pipeline, whether the aspiring champion for this unit and my other bolter armed unit need to be made to look a bit more aspiring, but that's another problem for later.

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Ride for ruin and the world's ending!

    The figures in this post have ended up being much more of a slog to paint than I had expected, especially considering I've been using other figures from the same army as palette cleansers between batches of figures I have previously classes as hard work.

   What I have here are my first regular captain (mounted and on foot) who I gave a red shield to so that he would stand out in blocks, Gamling (mounted and on foot), 5 mounted Royal Guard and 3 on foot. I think the maximum amount of royal guard I need for the scenarios is 3 or 4, but a spare won't hurt.

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