Assembling an invasion force.

Six weeks to go, and it's time to put a dent in the pile of shame. For this year's convention game we are doing Holland 1940 with lots of dastardly German fallschirmjäger raining down on the happless Dutch defenders. I actually had more than a platoon of German paratroopers bought about 20 years ago; a mix of Wargames Foundry and Crusader miniatures. About a squad were painted and another squad and a half basecoated and in various stages of completion. Unfortunately all were based on standard Games Workshop bases which I have since abandondoned for historical games. So rebaseing were in order.

Oh the joys of rebasing. At the same time I fitted the figures on to team bases from Sarissa.

Back To Basics: Wargames Foundry Home Guard

(Warning: a small rant ahead. Pictures of models after the break, if you want to skip ahead.)

So I've sort of hit painter's block... I do paint... but I seem to take ages, not finish stuff other than the occasional odd miniature here and there. I buy stuff, build them, start paint a couple and then... I loose interest. It's just not the Wargamer's Attention Deficit Disorder, otherwise known as the Magpie or "OOh shiny" syndrome. Oh I got that too, but this is something else.

I was thinking back to when I started in the hobby. You bought a thing. Built it. Painted it. Played with it within a week or so. Sometimes you had a big project (like that Tamiya 1:35 Möbelwagen). If you didn't have the correct paint you used another, or mixed a couple of paints to a rough estimate of the box cover art. Things were simpler back then, I thought.

No this isn't a "Things were better before" post.

But no... things weren't simpler, my methods were. Now we have 200 or somewhere abouts paints in the GW range, many of them technical paints, some are dry, some are layer paints, some are washes and some are glazes, some are base paints. Back then you had paints, and inks. You could thin the paints to make washes, use the inks for pin washes or glazes, and you could wipe all of your paint from the brush for drybrushing. You drybrushed or highlighted, washed or pin washed, and that was it.

Don't get me wrong, all the new techniques, all the new kinds of paints are fantastic. You can do some amazing things. But they also lead to overcomplication. Do I need to paint every model like it could belong in the 'Eavy Metal section of White Dwarf? No, but I try to. It's partially because the models have become better and more detailed so they lure you into a complicated paint job. Back then the models often had unadorned armour, maybe the odd spike or symbol somewhere. If you wanted to you could freehand something or put a decal on it. Nowadays the armours are sculpted with lots of details and 3d insignia that beckons to be painted, highlighted, washed, weathered and then some git are doing them in non-metallic metallics. (Don't get me started about that... the Emperor's new paint scheme I call it.) But I'm setting my ambitions too high. It's not that I can't paint that fine, I can. But I don't need to, and it takes too long time.

My stash of Home Guard. Also includes some Crusader and Warlord figures in the top rows.

So I dug up a bunch of Wargames Foundry British Home Guard that I have had in my stash for a while, and decided to go back to the basics with them.

Welcome to the jungle

This year's Chain of Command game at Gothcon will be (a small part of) the battle of Dien Bien Phu in Indochina. This is a prelude to the Vietnam war of which I know next to nothing about, but my mates Thomas and Koen are well versed in both relevant history and tactics used. As such my role is relegated to terrain making. With mostly Vietnam war movies in my mind I ordered a bunch of cheap but useful items from eBay.

I can imagine the customs' dissappointment when they realised the contents were all plastic.

Doing a headcount.

As I mentioned previously I happened to aquire some Wargames Foundry German infantry -- a friend gave them to me, honestly -- and was thinking about how to use them. I then bought the Warlord Games German engineers to use the engineery bits to convert Perry DAK figures into... yes, engineers.

A good start for a platoon, although there are far too many officers!

So, my plan is to use the left over Warlord figures along with the Foundry figures to build an early war platoon. Not sure what I'm going to use it for, but I do have some early war British infantry and if Thomas buys the Home guard he has promised to, we can play Operation Seelöwe, the (planned but not executed) invasion of Great Britain.

However, I wasn't sure exactly how many figures I needed for an early war platoon, and when reading up on it a bit it varies quite a lot between the invasion of Poland in 1939 ) and Fall Gelb, the invasion of the low countries and France 1940. I don't know what organisation they used during the invasion of Denmark and Norway, but it's bound to be one or the other. In the interest of flexibility and be able to adapt my platoon to various different historical scenarios I plan to paint enough figures to be able to switch between 1939 and 1940 platoons.

The Might of the Afrika Korps

I have finally got around taking pictures of my Deutsche Afrika Korps force I painted for the easter convention.

Platoon commander, 50mm mortar team, AT rifle team and the platoon sergeant.

To be honest they are not 100% completely finished; when taking the pictures I noticed some stuff I forgot to paint here and there, and the bases really needs a unifying drybrush to tie them together. I have used textured paint from Tamiya and Vallejo and they differ slightly in shade despite both of them being called desert sand. The vehicles could use a dusting with pigments and perhaps a few decals, but by and large I'm calling them table ready. (A proven fact since they have been used on a gaming table!)

The rest of the figures behind the break.

Painting an Italeri Cromwell part two

At the end of the last post the basic paint job on the Cromwell was done; shading and highlighting of the main hull and turret completed. Details like the tracks and tools lacked paint however, and the application of markings and weathering was also left. Since I foolishly had left the top hatch open I also needed to paint a commander.

A Tamiya 1/48 scale crewman volunteers for duty.

G-Day!

G as in Gothcon that is, the largest roleplay-, war- and miniature games convention in Sweden. Scandinavian Lardies (as we have dubbed our little TFL fan group) will be there, demoing Chain of Command... the last month has been a furious painting and modelling ordeal to get everything finished, which is why I haven't updated for a while.

I won't write much, since I'm leaving for the train in half an hour, so I will simply post some WIP pictures instead.

Trying to fit stuff into my K&R satchel.

DAK, finished!

More DAK finished!

Brits and jump off points waiting to be varnished.

A well. Could come in handy in the desert. WIP DAK in the background.

An ex-camel.

British hero with looted MP40 and scoped Lee Enfield. Anyone who knows his name?

The vehicles fit! Hooray! 

The obligaotry Panzer Bucket.

Captured Bren gun carrier. One previous owner.

 Watch this space for the after-convention report in about a week.

Building Brutish British

Confession time: I hate painting.

No, no, no I don't, actually. But I like building more. I love building. Converting, carving, glueing, trying out different poses on miniatures, adding details like stowage or battle damage on vehicles. So when I bought the first box of Perry desert rats I quickly built all of the figures, and then painted a handful of them. And lost interest. Same thing with the Deutsche Afrika Korps; built every figure; painted five or six of them, and lost interest. By juggling painting projects around, switching between different subject I can usually keep my interest up a bit, but then another problem appears.

I was so bored painting figures I bought a Tamiya model kit. Of course, now that it's built I have to paint it. Doh!

When I'm steaming ahead I usually manage to build the figures to the wrong organisation, with too many submachine guns per platoon, or not enough light machine guns, or just plain using the wrong bases. With the desert rats I built two figures per squad with tommy guns but Chain of Command specifies only the NCO has one, and I have realised that not every player can discern big men by their equipment, so I needed to rebase the leaders on hex bases. So I ordered another box, of course. I can use the extra figures for dismounted scout squads and crew figures for support weapons.

Is it just me, or do they look like badly shaved gorillas? They look better IRL though.

At the same time I ordered a box of Bolt Action late war British Infantry. Since the Perry box is quite low on extra equipment I'm going to nick a few weapons and backpacks from the Warlord box, and I have plans for a special character using parts from both boxes. Although I already have a platoon of late war brits from Crusader Miniatures it's the bare minimum of figures, so the rest of the Bolt Action figures will be reinforcements for them.

But I have painted some stuff, among others the 2-pounder I bought from Perrys.

Even the sun has its spots

To supplement my Perry plastic Afrika Korps, I decided to buy a couple of their metal packs. At £7 for six figures they are not exactly cheap, and three packs cost as much as a box of their plastic figures. But I decided it was worth it, to get some different poses not possible to build from the box, and also because I really like the Perry twins' sculpts. In my experience metals are always better than plastic if all other things (like sculptor) being equal.

Perry Miniatures. Excellent sculpts, not so good casts.

I was in for a surprise though. The surface of the figures was quite uneven, with pits and even tiny holes were the metal hadn't filled the mold completely. Several rifles and one smg barrel were unformed, there were a lot of flash between legs on some figures, and the equipment on the back of some figures had big lumps of metal underneath. The figures are not unusable, but the quality is definitely not up to scratch. Either the Perry metals are extremely popular and have already worn out their moulds, or their caster is not up to scratch. A shame really.

As I now find that I need a few extra British figures I choose to buy another box of plastic figures instead of metals. Too bad, because Perry's metal British have long trousers instead of shorts and I wanted some variety but I do not dare to order them now.

Hugh Jarce, sculpted by Richard Ansell for TooFatLardies

Speaking of long trousers I recently found the Hugh Jarce figure that Richard Clarke commissioned for those who pre-ordered IABSM 3rd edition. He was buried in my lead pile under a bunch of Bushido miniatures. I originally planned to use him with my early war British, but now he gets to lead my desert forces instead. Armed with a drum magazine Tommy gun he's ready to bag the hun.

Figures finally finished! Frigging fantastic!

What's this, another update? Updates three days in a row? Will it start raining frogs next?

Actually what happened was that I had a lot of stuff nearly finished but didn't want to put it up before I had completed my X-wing Tournament report. It was tedious to write though, so I actually got some stuff painted in the mean time. So without further ado, pictures!

Crusader 28mm late war brits.

Tin for the Tin God! Tin for the Tin mountain of Laffe!

Just a quickie to show what the postman brought me yesterday!

It's a parcel!

Hooray, it's my Chain of Command starter set from Rich!

I'm normally more of a coffee guy but tea is essential when sorting figures.

More pictures after the break

Convention report, CoC sale and planning ahead

Phew, I managed to paint all the figures and finish nearly all terrain for GothCon, the biggest gaming convention in Sweden. But I will tell you more about that later on.

First I want to mention that Chain of Command has been nominated for an Origins Award in the Best Historical Miniatures Rules category. Rich is celebrating the good news with 15% off on Chain of Command until 1st of May. Now is a good time to pick up those tokens or jump off points you need, or why not the campaign supplement At the sharp end? And if you are like me and already have the rules and all the tokens and bits you need, then you can always splurge on one of the 28mm starter sets available: late war Germans and British.

Yep, you heard me, I have bought late war 28mm figures... I wasn't going to do that, it was an honest mistake. I was just going to complete the early war figures I already had, late war was always meant to be fought in 20mm... but those Crusader figures are just so damned nice, and 15% off an already discounted price was just too hard to resist. Add to that the fact that Italeri is collaborating with Warlord Games and will be releasing a line of 1/56 scale models -- rumours have been flying that Italeri already was doing the plastic hanomags and M3 halftracks for Bolt Action, but this new info is confirmed from both Italeri and Warlord Games. They will start with a Sherman, a Cromwell, a Panther and a Puma eight-wheeled armoured car, all late war stuff fitting for Normandy. There has been no announcement wether the kits are upscaled versions of their 1/72 models or not. I was also expecting some new terrain items, but instead Warlord Games will be selling Italeri's 1/72 scale stonewalls as 28mm, increasing the price without increasing the size, something that didn't go down well on The Miniatures Page.

The original kit...

...and the Warlord Games set. It's even the exact same pieces rearranged slightly.

So how did the convention go? Read more after the break. (Warning! Pictures of hairy wargamers!)

Building the world's smallest crucifix

For the record I'm an atheist, or maybe a heathen. Pagan, whatever. I don't care, I don't believe.

But the little people who live on my gaming table are probably religious, more or less anyway. There's a saying that there are no atheists in a fox hole and that may be true. But if we are a little bit more serious the inhabitants of Normandy in 1944 would mostly be of the Christian faith. So when I saw this little roadside shrine on eBay I knew it would fit right in.

Made by Extratech, the copyright is 1999 but the kit is still available.

More US Paratroopers painted.

Hi gang. Been slaving away on my paras and completed a big load of them. I was going to do them six at a time but for some reason I nearly completed six and then I started on the next batch. However as I can't count very well I actually painted nine more... well, here they are.

Half a squad of grunts. Note the poor sods lugging around the browning MG.

More after the break.

Painting table Saturday

There's a thing now on blogger where you show your painting table on Saturday. It was started by Sofie of Sofie's Paint Blog who also drew the nice graphic below.

I have forgotten about it previously, or I wasn't doing any painting on Saturdays, but today I remembered. Too bad I'm not painting,  just doing a lot of assembling. But here goes.

Yep, todays painting table is the kitchen table! 

Jump Off Points for Chain of Command

A wrecked cart and a lot of battlefield debris from Sgts Mess.

Oooh look a motorcycle! That will look spiffing in a ditch!

Until next time.

Perry Miniatures D.A.K. progress

About a month ago I showed you some WIP shots of my Afrika Korps figures from Perry Miniatures. Today I'm proud to show the first finished figures.

The first of my mighty Afrika Korps, a half squad and their platoon commander.

I haven't been working on them for a while really, because the 20mm US paras for the upcoming convention are taking precedence. Yet I keep returning to the DAK figures to get some variation. More pictures after the break.

Elhiem US Paratroopers Painting Guide

I have finally recieved all I need to start painting the forces for Easter's demo game at GothCon in Gothenburg.

Some lurrverly figures from Elhiem, or Matt as his real name is.

When I ordered the figures last summer I simply ordered a pack of everything, thinking it would give me roughly a platoon sized force. However, the 82nd and 101st airborne had very different equipment in Normandy which meant I couldn't use some packs and didn't have enough of other packs. I also realised when I was about to start painting that I was out of round bases. After a frenzy of completing orders I was finally able to start painting last week.

At the Sharp End and In the Sticky Stuff

Just a couple of quick tips today.

First, Wayland Games has a post free promotion until the 12th of february.

Just head over to Wayland Games and use the code above at check-out. (Not available if you live in Brazil or Russia though, bummer if you do.)

Buy this now!

Second, TooFatLardies has released a campaign supplement for their innovative WW2 rules, Chain of Command. Titled "At the Sharp End" this is a 48 page PDF detailing how to -- you guessed it -- run a small campaign centred around platoon sized forces.

The system uses a "ladder campaign", where each battle is represented as a rung on a ladder. At each end of the ladder is the objectives for either force, and the outcome of each battle will see the campaign climb up or down on the ladder until it reaches one of the objectives. What "At the Sharp End" does is tell us how to apply a lot of window dressing to this simple system to give the campaign both flair and a compelling story. The supplement contains info on both how to roll up the Big Men for your campaign as well as casualties, reinforcements and replacements. Your platoon commander must both succeed with his missions to appease his superiors while keeping the losses down to keep his men's trust. The system will also track your platoon commander's mental health, will he succumb to Exhaustion after loosing too many men, or will his string of victories make him an arrogant bastard?

The final chapter shows us how to put everything together and build a campaign. Richard Clarke talks through the process of aquiring info about the 5th Wiltshire regiment during the battles around Hill 112 in Normandy. Several actions are suitable for a platoon sized force such as the taking of the village Maltot. In showing us how to construct the campaign we also get to see the end result, meaning the book features a ready made campaign to play. Just add water, as they say. (And figures, and an opponent, but you knew that.)

At only £6, At the Sharpe End is a extremely good value for anyone thinking about putting together a small campaign for WW2. With some small changes it will also function for other periods like the Spanish Civil War and Korea or Vietnam. Adding to that the text is very entertaining to read as well. So what are you waiting for, go buy it now!

It's the secret ingredient in Noodle Soup!

My last tip is Instamold, or Oyumaru as it's originally called in Japan. I have had a hard time finding some as I didn't know what the real name was, but a friend who visits Japan quite frequently brought some back. If you do not know what Instamold is used for, let me just say that it's a reusable re-shapeable substance that can be used to make press molds with. It's like magic, just read on after the break.

Waka Waka (This one for Africa)

No this has nothing to do with Shakira, although I hope I get a gazillion extra hits due to the title. Sneaky eh? Instead I want to show you some finished and some WIP shots of the Perry figures I'm working on for North Africa.

You've seen these guys before, but I like them so I'm showing them again.

I finished these two for a speed build between christmas and new year's eve.

Some mould lines there I didn't notice...

The official designation was Rifle, Anti-Tank, .55in, Boys. I just call it a BFG!

And then it's on to the dastardly hun...

A squad plus a mortar team. I built a full sprue of figures at once but I only paint five or six at a time. 

I had to convert a MG team to that infamous "over the shoulder" pose.

Painting has begun. I try to vary the appearance but use similar colours on all figures to tie them together.

The squad leader naturally has an MP40, or Schmeisser as it's incorrectly called.

The DAK has more stuff to paint than the desert rats, like arm cuffs. Also I missed a mould line on the right guy's arm.

The platoon commander. "Vorwärts, männer!"

This project is coming along nicely. Expect a painting guide when I've finished the first figures. I'm already thinking of what to buy next, despite having more than sixty figures left to paint. These are destined to be used with Chain of Command where you start with a platoon and then add some support. So a heavy MG team on both sides is on the to-buy list, as is some vehicles. Maybe a carrier for the British and a half track or an armoured car for the Germans.

But here's the rub; Do I go 1/48 scale and use all the nice plastic models from Tamiya and others, or do I go the resin 1/56 scale that is supposed to be correct for 28mm figures? Price-wise it's a toss-up, they cost about the same. The kits are fiddlier, but I like building model kits so it's not really a down-side. On the other hand there are more vehicles available in resin as 1/48 scale is quite new for armour models, and Copplestone do a nice 28mm Rolls-Royce armoured car in metal.

And I have always wanted a Rolls...