Winter WW2 US

 Focus Project; No

   Another post that has come as a surprise to both you and me. I bought a WW2 winter Americans a couple of years back when I was feeling flush and we were playing quite a bit of Bolt Action. Then Waylands closed their gaming centre and the 3rd edition of the rules came out and we just didn't pick the game back up.

   Now, however, my wife has a friend who it turns out is a gamer. He currently only plays LotR but he would like to get into Bolt Action, so I'm putting on a quick demo for him using the theatre that interests him - The Battle Of The Bulge - and it felt right to get the correct troops painted up.

   I've painted a real minimum platoon just to give him a feel for the rules - 2, hopefully, historically accurate squads of 12 men and a lieutenant with mates for some mobile punch.

   I'm also fairly sure I've got the base uniform slightly wrong - possibly the brown trousers by this point, but I'm happy with how they look.

Will the next post be the first focus project post of the year? Who knows.

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Vehicles For The Desert

   A few months ago we took the family on a long weekend to Cornwall to take full use of the last year where holidays can be taken in term time, this was supplemented with an extra night in Devon to break up the journey home. Looking at where we ended up staying it became obvious that a quick stop at the Tank Museum in Bovington was a real possibility.

   We went to the museum fully aware that a young family and museums normally means a rapid exit when someone gets too bored, so I set my hopes low and aimed to see a few key vehicles. However, we were pleasantly surprised, every area has something for kids to play with, be it a table with army figures, fake Lego to build your own tank or a giant snakes and ladders, all topped off with a massive soft play.

   This all brings me back to the project I started as the big early project for 2023, my African theatre British for WW2. I worked my way through the infantry in January that year but I was stumped on the exact colour for the vehicles and while I was working out my plan, other projects took over and this one was forgotten beyond it being the first option to play with my brother before we both drop the plan as neither of our armies were finished.

   Coming back from holiday, I was, unsurprisingly, massively motivated to get some tanks painted, so I went to work playing with sprays and paints in my collection before deciding on a Zhandri Dust spray as a prime then a really watered down Tallarn Sand just to get the colour a bit closer and I was quite pleased with the result on the test Humber MK2 (below).

Humber MK2 from Warlord Games

   I then decided to use the other vehicle that came in the Gentlemen's War starter box to test the blue camouflage, which took me a few days of looking at my paints and photos online before I was happy to try an idea. Then work and home life hit hard and it took me about 2 weeks to finish this model, but again, I'm pretty pleased on the end result.

Stuart "Honey" tank

   With those done, I then sat on the project again for a bit due to just a lack of opportunities to actually use these armies, but with the new Wayland Games venue hopefully opening in the next couple of months, it would be good to get this project usable and ready to go.

   With that in mind, here are the first Matilda and a light mortar team that I need for my first list. I need to pick up another sprue of 8th army infantry as I am short an officer team in the new edition, but otherwise I just need a table and time to get a game in.

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German Heavy Infantry - K'47 Again

   Another one of those posts where I can't really justify myself. I doubt these units will see much of a board but I'd like to try out some Konflikt '47 at some point and these figures felt like the easiest in for the Germans.

   The block of men in the photo builds 2x 6 man squads with LMGs and a 2 man HQ - if you are going to have heavy infantry, why not put your commander in it too?

I'd like to give the Americans a unit of their jump pack airborne troops but that's not a short term idea as it can wait.

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WW2 M5A2 Coyote

   Wait a second you are thinking, a what? So I'm straying into weird war territory here, so bear with me. I really like Bolt Action as a ruleset, it has problems and limitations, do I think its better than Chain of Command or Battlegroup? Probably not, but for what I use it for, it's brilliant. In spite of all of that, I have always been Konflict '47 curious.

   However, you scroll through the Warlord Games websites looking at the weird walkers they sell for the game and then take a look at the price tags and you'll quickly see why I've not taken the plunge earlier. My plan had always been to use a regular WW2 army and just add a walker or two and maybe a unit in the future and call it done, but had never been able to justify the price tag. Then I saw that the Coyote was only £20 on Wayland Games' site and it seemed like the right price to dip a toe in and see what I thought about the resin and metal figures.

   In game, I'm not expecting a huge amount out of this. I've got the rules coming from Warlord Games, so I can't see points or slots but I'm assuming this will replace the tank - although armoured car would be a great result for me - as the walker only has a mmg and hmg as its ranged weapons.

   I've named it Mercy as I'm a fan of a series of books about a shapeshifter who turns into a coyote. When I saw what this was called it had to be done.

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American Engineers

   One of my aims for this year was to try and play a few more scenario based games, on this target I've been going through my backlog of Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy magazine for ideas and I came across a road clearing mission. The scenario is designed for early war armies with the Germans as the attackers and French as defenders but I plan to run it late war with the Germans defending and Americans attacking.

   With the scenario in mind I had a look online for some WW2 engineers actually using the tools of the trade and came across Black Tree Designs' US Engineers which fitted the bill perfectly, so two packs were ordered (to give my brother a set so we could play the scenario twice playing both sides) and I sat back and waited for my order to arrive. It looks like Black Tree Designs have sped their process up as it only took 2 months for these to get here and for some reason one of my packs had an extra guy, which is perfect.

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More And More For The Desert

   I've actually been fairly busy painting figures recently it turns out, with this post being the last of the infantry for the current desert project* and is the bits that were a bit more fiddly to paint. Not a huge amount to say here but I did like painting the monkey.

*although I have a single sprue of SAS left for after I watch the BBC SAS drama

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Even More For The Desert

   I always seem to run Bolt Action lists with the same three units of infantry, so when painting a new army I always feel like I've broken the back of the project once I'm a decent way into the third squad. This time I painted the third squad and the MMG.

   I'm well on the way on getting the infantry side of this project finished now, which will leave the vehicles, so many vehicles . . .

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More For The Desert

   My painting mojo isn't quite where it could be so far this year, between getting covid towards the end of last year and seemly having an endless stream of colds which also meant our little boy wasn't sleeping through but I am trying to get some projects moving with the aim of getting a game of Bolt Action with my brother towards the end of the month.

   Using the theory that if you aren't churning out many figures, the best thing to do is only paint the figures you need in the short term and then add the nice to haves to the end, here are the second infantry squad, a Boys Anti-Tank Rifle and a medic (that isn't in my list . . .).

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New Year - New Project. Into The Desert!

   So, what does 2023 have in stock for me? To be honest, at this point in the year I have no idea but I know what my plans going into it are, the first 6 months (ish) will focus on the Dark Ages* and a big focus on combat in the desert - primarily WW2 but I'd like to get my Crusades back on the table and maybe my New Kingdom Egyptians (interested Neil?). Then the last 6 months will be focussed on gaming in Normandy - again WW2 but including some 100 Years War and maybe some Norman on Norman conflict as Duke William cements his rule before his jaunt to England - which will be after a driving holiday to the province.** Then there will be a smattering of Lord of the Rings across the year as it's something my brothers and I are still playing and a few battle anniversaries I have plans to do something with.

*my favourite period in history and something that has been criminally overlooked in my gaming for the past three years

**but as ever, plans can get changed

   The first thing to do this year with all that in mind is to get the WW2 desert army painted as it's the biggest project for this plan. I picked up the British half of the Warlord Game's Gentleman's War box set that has been supplemented with free sprues from Wargames Illustrated and some other bits and pieces. We've decided to play at the 750 point level instead of the usual 1000 points due to the lack of veterans and expensive tanks***

***it also means we need slightly less trucks which were turning out to be a real drain on the wallet

   There will be more posts on these in the very near future (I hope) where I'll go into more details, but one thing I have decided to do on this project is tone my desert basing down a bit so its more brown than it is cream to blend into my new scenery better***.

***did I mention new scenery?

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Macabre Cows?

   I was reading the memoirs of Trevor Greenwood - D-Day to Victory: The Diaries of a British Tank Commander - and one of the things he mention is how many fields they advanced past had whole herds of dead cows in. Most seemingly dying from sheer fear or the shockwaves from bombs rather than direct hits.

   I mentioned to one of my brothers that I was half planning on buying some dead cows to put in a field on a WW2 board and then to my surprise a blister pack of Warlord Games Dead Cows turned up on my birthday. While its a bit ghoulish (especially from a vegetarian), I think the war should be portrayed as accurately as possible and with a game lined up, it seemed the right time to get them painted.

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Back In Old Cold Germany

   I'm pretty sure I declared that I had finished all the infantry for my WW2 Winter German project and yet here we are. While I didn't actually NEED them, I had long converted the metal winter German squad box that Warlord produce, for no reason other than for a bit of variety. I also don't have time to fit these into my painting schedule as there are far more important projects, but, again, here we are . . .

   These are just the contents of a single Warlord Games metal Winter German box, and the thing I liked about them was the lack of a solid uniform. The plastics need to be fairly similar so that everything in interchangeable, but with these metals we have a mix of long coats, white over coats, white over trousers and everything in between. Mixed into squads they should look the part*

*the photo is a tad bleached out

Now I'm sure I had I had more pressing projects to do . . .

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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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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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