Sunday 28 November 2010

6mm Brits Underway

Long term readers of this blog may remember that about two years ago my wife bought me a bundle of 6mm British Paratroops from Irregular (via Eureka here in Australia). They were originally part of a plan to play Flames of War in 6mm. The idea being, as always, to save money and space as per my 6mm AK47 collection. Since then I've discovered other rulesets ghat have taken my fancy for gaming World War Two, most notably "I Ain't Been Shot Mum" by Too Fat Lardies.
I never did get those paras painted and on the table due to lack of time and too many other projects in 15mm. Recently I've been looking at 6mm again as a serious replacement for 15mm on the table. I can get them onto the table a lot faster than any other scale, which, in theory means more games.
Plus I really do need to finish some of my existing projects before I start any of the others I really want to do.
So, without any further ado, I present 9 platoons of paras and 5 mortar teams waiting to be undercoated.



I'm off to search the web for hints on how to paint 6mm denison smocks!

Thursday 28 October 2010

Force-on-Force Primer Available

The guys over at Ambush Alley have released the Force-on-Force Primer - a series of 6 scenarios for Force-on-Force that you can play interlinked as a campaign, by Piers Brand.

The scenarios are all generic and have examples of how they could be played both for WW2 and the modern era.

And it's all for the princely sum of......FREE!!


Wednesday 20 October 2010

6mm Napoleonic Skirmish - Awesome!

Check out this fantastic 6mm game of Songs of Drums and Shakos!
http://tacticalminiaturesgaming.blogspot.com/2010/10/song-of-drums-shakos-bridge.html
Tiny but looks great!
tempting.....very tempting......

Monday 11 October 2010

Reporters on the scene

Finally picked up a paintbrush for the first time in a LONG time on Saturday night.
I finished off painting the VC squad I had on the go.  I'll put them up after they've been based.
The other item I decided to spend some time on was this Reporter and Cameraman from Irregular's Riot range.
I haven't painted eyes for quite a while, so I'll need to go back and fix them up so that they look a little less "Coraline".
Pretty happy with how these turned out, nonetheless.  Just needs a little static grass, I think.  I say "I think", because I've never actually done anything more than add sand to bases.  Time to break out of my shell!

Monday 4 October 2010

Ambush Alley ceases AA & FoF Sales

Ambush Alley has just ceased the on-line sale of their Force on Force and Ambush Alley rules, and related material.  This was a condition of the new Osprey deal, which will see both of these published by Osprey (as a single tome) next year.
At the moment from the AA website, all you can pick up is Ambush Z and the Tomorrow War pre-release.

Before they shut up shop on all things AA/FoF, I picked up a copy of each of the scenario packs they'd published to date:
  • Three Block War
  • Art of War
  • Indian Country
  • Hawks and Wolves
I have to say these have some great scenarios, and they've got me hooked again.

I just have to find the time to get back behind a paint brush again.  I still haven't finished that section/squad of Main Force VC, and all that's needed to get them over the line is some black paint and a drybrush of gunmetal on their weapons!
This week for sure!!!

Thursday 23 September 2010

Latest Ambush Alley purchases

Well I just picked up Tomorrow's War and Operation Uruzgan from Ambush Alley.
A quick skim of Tomorrow's War and there's a lot of material in there. 
 Like any ruleset attempting to provide a toolkit to model all sorts of sci-fi settings, they've included a lot of content to model your favourite settings.  A lot to consume over the 102 pages....
I should note though the pre-release doesn't contain the "eye-popping" art and photography promised in the Osprey edition, it's still no slouch in the presentation stakes.

Operation Uruzgan also looks excellent.  Now if only Flashpoint or Eureka would ever get around to producing their modern Australian Infantry in 15mm! 
Luckily for the time being; the book has a guide to converting to British and US troops.
In my quick skim I was quite taken by this note at the end of the first scenario, "Render Safe":

For those Australians using Operation: Uruzgan; a humorous mini scenario can be played using this scenario template and substituting the VBIED and the EOD operator for an Army Major trying to locate and purchase a hair dryer for a visiting Prime Minister.....

That's gold.....

15mm Sci-Fi Force

Do yourself a favour and get over to the Ambush Alley Forum to check out more fantastic work by member mwda:
http://www.ambushalleygames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=37738#37738

That should get you in the Tomorrow's War mood....

Wednesday 22 September 2010

15mm Chinook from Old Glory?

Folks
Just came across this announcement from Old Glory UK :
http://www.oldgloryuk.com/disp_news_item.php?id=1003&sh=2
It appears that they are planning to release a 15mm Chinook kit - complete with components to enable it to be converted from Vietnam through to modern day.
This will be excellent news if they can pull it off (and at a reasonable price of course....)!
Check out their new Hesco-based buildings that are in the same announcement as well.

Tomorrow's War is out and about

The early release pdf version of Ambush Alley's Sci-Fi Rules have just been released :
http://www.ambushalleygames.com/TW.html
You can get it now in the pdf format, or wait until next year for the all-singing, all-dancing Osprey version.
At US$20 packaged with a printer-friendly copy of Force-on-Force, I think this is a pretty good deal, as FoF retails for that much by itself.
Maybe a certain brother of mine might be interested in the PF FoF if I pick up the bundle.....

Tuesday 17 August 2010

Main Force VC

Back from the wedding, and a good time was had by all!
Managed to snap a quick pic of the 15mm Flashpoint VC that I had photographed with my phone camera previously.
Here they are:

I need to paint up more, there's only these three so far.  I've done them in boots for these, but I'm going to try to paint some "Ho Chi Minh Sandals" on the next batch.

Thursday 5 August 2010

No Update

Sick.
Working.
No Camera.
Check out this inspirational stuff on the AA forum : http://www.ambushalleygames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4095

Plus check out the new 15mm scifi from Blue Moon Manufacturing:
http://www.bluemoonmanufacturing.com/index.php?cat_id=32

Off to die quietly under my desk....

Sunday 1 August 2010

Main Force VC colours

Well, I finally got a couple of hours this weekend to sit down and do some painting.
Below is a VERY blurry picture of the end result of some work on some of my Flashpoint Main Force VC.  All of the cameras have gone north with my wife, so I'm stuck using the very poor camera in my phone until mid Aug.

If you think these look bad, you should see the three that I need to strip back after my initial colour experiment went HORRIBLY wrong.

Really as a reminder for myself when I get to snatch a few more hours to attack more of these, here are the colours I used in the order that I paint them:

Uniform and bush hat: Dark Angel Green with a light drybrus of Camo Green to lighten the tone.
Webbing : Desert Yellow
Packs, boots and Rice Roll : Graveyard Earth (technically I think the roll should be uniform green, but then it won't stand out from the uniform.)
Skin : Bronzed Flesh with heavy Flesh Wash
Weapons : Chaos Black with light Bolygun Metal drybrush.  Snakebite Leather on the butt, stock and grip.

I'm also going to alternate in some figures with a mix of black items (pants or shirt) along with the uniform green.  The look I'm going for is from the illustrations in Gordon Rottman's Viet Cong Fighter (part of the Osprey Warrior series).  This shows the Main Force troops in a mix of the Green uniform and the traditional black peasant garb.

Monday 14 June 2010

Stick to the Plan

I've come to the realisation that I've broken one of the fundamental rules I set for myself when I started this blog and got back into wargaming.
The rule i set for myself back then was that I had a set scale for given game size. Reinforced platoon or less (skirmish scale) was 15mm, company or larger was 6mm. I've failed to stick to this.
Personally I blame Flashpoint and their excellent 15mm figures. I got caught up on the bandwagon and now have a sizeable amount of 15mm figures for Vietnam. I took the opportunity to undercoat a number this week.
Bottom line is though that I don't have a lot of room at home, and with money tight, I need to stick to the plan.
This probably means some 15mm sell-off later this year, to bring myself back to something manageable, and to fund the expansion of my 6mm Vietnam War models for the Flashpoint rules and TFL's Charlie Don't Surf.
With the month of house guests coming to an end soon, I also hope to get a brush to the undercoated figures, and take some pics of some minor developments.

Tuesday 8 June 2010

The Dreaded Lurgy


I've been completely out of action for the last week (complete with overnight hospital stay) with a vomitting bug of some sort.

Hopefully back on my feet and back to work tomorrow...

Just before the bug struck, TFL released their Charlie Don't Surf rules, so I had to pick those up along with the Surf's Up scenario and campaign pack.

Lots of content in these rules, and a foreshadowing of what's coming in the revised 3rd Edition of I Ain't Been Shot Mum later this year. Of course, being me, I just spent money buying scenario packs for the 2nd edition didn't I? Hopefully the differences will be easy enough to convert across...

Wednesday 12 May 2010

Eureka 15mm Sci-Fi German Stormtroopers

Eureka have just released new figures for their Sci-Fi German Stormtrooper range.
These look GREAT. I have some of the original infantry in the lead pile.... might need to pick up some more....

Monday 3 May 2010

Lard Sale!!!

I had a bit of a binge on TooFatLardies stuff again this weekend.
At the moment, they are having a sale with £1.5 off everything in store.
I had already planned to pick up a few bits and pieces over the rest of the year, but now I've been able to grab them in bulk.
First up was Footsteps of the Legions, which is army lists for North Africa and the Meditteranean.  This rounds out my current WWII interests with the earlier purchase of Gotterdamerung and Shadow of the Rising Sun.  To accompany this, I also picked up the recently published Operation Compass scenario pack.  There's loots of good stuff in there.  It is also an interesting deviation from most IABSM games in that much of the campaign was armour and artillery rather than direct infantry actions.  There are a number of more traditional infantry actions based on the Australians at Bardia though, which is one of the primary reasons I purchased it.

Still on the subject of World War II, I also picked up another Robert Avery scenario pack: Fall of the Lion's Gate.  I'm very interested in gaming the Pacific Theatre, hence the purchase of this, as well as the Shadow of the Rising Sun.  I also used a voucher my brother and sister-in-law gave me for my birthday to purchase Paul Ham's book on Kokoda on the weekend.  I was very impressed with Ham's work on Vietnam, so I'm looking forward to reading this as well.

 

I also picked up the Rock the Casbah expansion, which focuses on the Lebanese Civil War.  As it turns out, this expansion is actually for Troops, Weapons and Tactics (TW&T - TFL's skirmish rules).  However there are a number of parallels between TW&T and IABSM - B'Maso! give variations to both for the post-colonial african conflicts.  I'm hoping that the conversion here will be reasonably straight forward (if not directly documented).  Finally I also picked up the 2004 Christmas Special.  Looking at this one, you can see that the Specials have come a long way, in terms of production values, in the last 5-6 years!  I've wanted this one for quite some time as it contains details on how to convert IABSM for the Falklands - a variation known as "We'll Have to Bloody Walk!".  I've always found the Falklands a fascinating conflict, and I'm keen to get it on the table.

Thursday 15 April 2010

Flying Lead

I've been a bit behind on my Meeples and Miniatures podcast listening, so I've put the last few on my ipod as I walked the dog this week.
Last night it was Episode 62 wherein Flying Lead from Ganesha Games was discussed.

I must say I was quite interested. I've never played any of the "Songs of" games, although I've been aware of their existence. The promise of a complete game within an hour or a campaign within an evening is very tempting for my tight schedule. Also I've been looking for something light and simple to lure others to their unsuspecting doom of getting hooked on historical wargaming.

And at $8.53 for the rules, it's very tempting...
Plus it would lead Eltnot to once again accuse me of a lack of focus!!!

I'd definitely recommend listening to the podcast and the opinions therein.

So what do you think? Have you played any of the "Song of" rules? Are they a good solution for a quick, fun night's gaming?
Let me know in the comments.

EDIT:
I just went and bought it.  It's Friday and it cost $8.80.  What more can I say...?

Tuesday 13 April 2010

A Little Light Reading

As part of the deal for getting the hallway finished, I took advantage of the ongoing strength of the AU$ vs the pound and picked up some of the fine Too Fat Lardies publications.
Here's what I have waiting for me AFTER the hallway is finished:

Gotterdamerung - Army lists for Late World War 2 in Europe for IABSM
Shadow of the Rising Sun - Army lists for World War 2 in the Pacific for IABSM
Through the Mud and the Blood - Large scale skirmish for World War 1
Triumphant Standards - the InterWar period with Mud and Blood (free with Mud and Blood and covers the fictional 1938 English Civil War amongst other things)



I also picked up the 2009 Christmas and Summer Specials. Included is the picture is my copy of Ambush Valley that I finally got around to binding at the same time.



Through the week I'll be binding some other PDFs that I have. Unfortunately my copy of Force-on-Force will have to wait as it's sealed up in the bedroom with the renovations.

Inspirational 15mm

If you want to see some amazing 15mm, go check out this blog:
http://15mmfun.blogspot.com/
Compare his QRF humvees here.
To mine here.

I mean, they're pretty close... right?...Right?

Man........

Some great ideas there I need to borrow / steal!

Sunday 11 April 2010

When the Navy Walked Preview

ArmChairGeneral has released the free preview of his forthcoming Victorian Science Fiction Rules - "When the Navy Walked on Rorke's Drift".
Go check them out!

Wednesday 7 April 2010

Quick Peter Pig vs. QRF M113 size comparison

I've just quickly thrown together a quick comparison of the relative sizes of a QRF ACAV and a Peter Pig M113 that I had in the cupboard.
The comparison is intended to be on size rather than the quality of the model, as the Peter Pig has been cleaned up and undercoated, whereas the QRF has been tipped out of the bag where it's languished for the past year of two and then clumped together with Blutack.
The QRF is also missing its headlights and the driver's hatch that I didn't blutack on (it DOES say QUICK comparison!)
So without further ado, here are the pics (hi-res if you click). I'll leave you to make your own judgements on compatibility.


Maelstrom Order Arrives

My order from Maelstrom just turned up in the mail.

It was sent on Thursday just before Easter and arrived here (via our mail section) on Wed Morning. That's impressive!
The tin of Quickshade got dinted, but it was securely taped up and there haven't been any leaks.
Lunchtime should see a quick perusal of the CWC rules.
Looking forward to getting it all home tonight.

Tuesday 6 April 2010

Bamboo huts

I thought I'd have crack at making some bamboo huts for south east asian games.
Here is where it is at, at the moment.

I know the CannonFodder figure is quite out of place, but I couldn't find any on my VC in a hurry.

I made a rough cardboard frame and then covered it with a cut-up bamboo placemat.

After fiddling with hobby knives and other cutting devices, I went out to the shed and grabbed the secateurs. Definitely the way to go for cutting up the placemat.

I haven't put in any doors or windows yet, so I think the secateurs will be called out again. I guess I probably should have put them in before I put the placemat onto the frame....

I'm uncertain on what to use for roofing materials. Should I thatch it, or use a corrugated iron roof? Do a number of both?

Anyone have any suggestions on the roofing material decision?

What did I achieve over Easter?

Not a lot really.....
On the modelling/gaming front at least.  On the gyprocking and plastering side, there was good progress.  But this is Tiny Metal Men, not Renovating for Nutcases!

I have started on a bamboo shack that I hope to get some work in progress of pics tonight.  My order from Maelstrom has shipped, so I'm looking forward to that arriving so that I can forge ahead on my Flashpoint Vietnam figures. 

I did get in a few minutes of reading and finished off Target Basra about the Royal Marine Commandos in the invasion of Iraq.  Some interesting scenarios there that could work for Force-on-Force. 

On the train in to work today I've started on 3 Commando Brigade about the Royal Marines in Afghanistan.
After that is Ground Truth which is the follow up to 3 Para (which I thought was a good read).  I picked up all three of these (Basra, 3 Commando and Ground Truth) for $25 from my local QBD.

On the gaming news side of things, TooFatLardies released their Operation Compass scenario pack providing:

An extensive history of the Italian invasion of Egypt and the British response: Operation Compass, the Five-Day Raid that turned into a campaign. Set between June 1940 and early February 1941, the booklet contains twenty-three unique scenarios for “I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum!” including attacks, counter-attacks, encounter battles, desperate defences, and the types of action typical of desert warfare: tank vs tank and tank vs gun battles.


From the 11th Hussars’ initial reconnaissance and harassment missions; through to the assaults on the network of Italian camps in the Western Desert; the Australian assaults on Bardia, Tobruk and Derna; and on to the thrilling climax at Beda Fomm, you’ll encounter British, Australians and Italians of all shapes and sizes.
I'm hoping to pick this up to accompany my current collection of 15mm Battlefront Australians.

Monday 29 March 2010

1938 : A Very British Civil War

As I was prepping my order up for Maelstrom last week, I noticed that they stock 1938 A Very British Civil War.  Coupled with their shipping policy, this represents a bargain for international customers, but I had already committed all of my funds. 

For those of you who aren't aware of the this fictional Third English Civil War, it essentially exists in an alternate timeline where Edward VIII refuses to abdicate over Wallis Simpson, and the political turmoil that would have arisen from that decision.
There is a much better summary than what I could provide here.

Here is the TMP post from Solway Crafts and Miniatures for the first book:
http://theminiaturespage.com/news/787475

Definitely something I want to explore in the future.
Yes!  Even more periods to game - exactly what I need!

As a final note, it appears that Maelstrom does math that does not conform to normal worldly arithmetic.  They're still significantly cheaper on a lot of things at the moment due to the strength of the AU$, but I need to follow up with them as to why there is the difference between what I end up with when I total up the costs, vs. the online shop's calculation.  It's probably some error on my part.

Birthday Loot - Flashpoint USMC

As part of my birthday haul back in Feb, I managed to pick up some of the old Flashpoint stock that Drew had.  It came in a big baggie and I'd started to sort through it into poses, etc. I took this quick photo (phone camera) of the container that they are sitting in as I headed out the door to work this morning.

Because it's a bulk bag of old stock, it's not really representative of the product that Flashpoint are putting out now. Some of the figures will need some clean-up due to flash, but becasue there are so many I should be able to get an initial couple of platoons together without having to resort to clean-ups!
They should go nicely with my Marine Corps Helos.

Sunday 28 March 2010

VSF-ish

The family went to a 2nd Birthday party at a park across town today.
The park itself was once used as the facility to store coral that had been dredged from Moreton Bay before it was crushed up and turned into concrete.
They have one of the old crushers there and I took this pic.
The way that it's buried into the ground made me think of some sort of Victorian Sci-Fi tunneling machine.
It was a massive piece of machinery.
Here's a closer shot along the shaft.

Thursday 25 March 2010

Buying more stuff!

When I started this blog it was supposed to be a bit about doing this hobby "on the cheap".  Now I find myself buying even more stuff!

This is a little different though as I'm not buying any new figures (I tell myself....) with this birthday cash.  I'm going to get some hobby stuff from Maelstrom thanks to the weaker Pound and their free shipping policy.

Top of the list is going to be some Army Painter "dip".  I'm keen to give this a go, as anything that speeds up my painting will encourage me to get back into tackling the Lead Mountain.  Also I'll be picking up some Flames of War bases for my Flashpoint figures and......for the first time ever...... flock and static grass!  w00t!

I'm also going to pick up a copy of Cold War Commander.  I know at least one reader of this blog who will now be fighting his gag reflex at the thought of the Warmaster system, but I'm looking at options to get my 6mm stuff back out again.
Hi all!
I know I've been pretty quiet for a while.
Mainly been loitering over at the Flashpoint Miniatures Forum in between bouts of frantic demands from work.
No progress on painting or modelling, and I haven't even managed to take any pictures of my birthday haul!
As part of the engagment with the Flashpoint forum, I've been doing a lot of vietnam reading and research, so to keep the blog going while I'm in a bit of a hobby slump I'll probably post some reasearch notes etc.
I wished I'd started doing that sooner, because I now have no idea where I found a particular table of equipment for the Viet Cong!

Thursday 28 January 2010

TPLC Update

Initial page of the new comic is up.

Turkey Shoot II - Revenge of the Turkeys

As mentioned previously, we replayed the Ambush Alley Turkey Shoot scenario a week later, but this time with a few modifications:
  • Marines were dropped from Recon (d10) to standard (d8).
  • No APC was taken (again).
  • An extra Hotspot was added to the table bringing the total to 5.
The table layout was also a bit tighter than previous.

In addition, this time we had two players (myself and Adam) playing the Regular fireteams, while Brad took the Insurgents again.

With two players as Regular, we opted to allow the situation where we could end up with 2 Fog Of War (one per Regular Player) per turn. 

Part way through the game, we realised that this was a bit of overkill, so we drew two assets (suggested by Insurgent commander Brad to redress the situation we'd found ourselves in) and went back to maximum of one Fog of War per turn.

The Regulars moved forward just fine to begin with.

But with the Fog of War flying thick and fast, the Marines got pinned down in the alley just beyond the target building. 


They were attacked by friendly fire (mortars and air strikes - luckily this A-10 could hit a barn door!),


3 technicals,


and a carload of insurgents.


Just when these threats appeared to have been neutralised, the Insurgents torched the target building (Fog of War "Fire! Fire!" card) , rendering the mission a failure! 


Luckily, while they had been pinned down in the alley,  a secondary mission to investigate hostages being held in the area had been radioed through.


So the Regular teams quickly set out to attempt to free them, despite now being low on ammo ("Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition" Fog of War). 


After assaulting the building, the hostages were rescued, but by this time each Marine fireteam was nursing casualties, with one man dead.


We finished the game there because we were over time, but hopefully it was a very enjoyable game for all!  Especially Brad and his team of pyromaniac Insurgents!


I'll be starting to shoot a Tin Pot Little Country comic for this engagement over the next few days.
I'll put a quick post up on this blog to let you know as the pages go up on TPLC.

Wednesday 27 January 2010

Turkey Shoot - initial run

This is a report on my initial run of Turkey Shoot.
We've run the game subsequently with some changes after this run through, and it was a completely different game.  More details on that coming soon...
Okay, so back at the game on the 16th Jan:
Turkey Shoot is a scenario where a squad of Marines must escort a sniper team to a position where they can engage targets "off table".  The Marine Squad must keep the team alive for 3 turns on the roof, and then exfil off the edge they started at.

The Scenario as written has a full squad of US Marines (3 fire teams and a squad leader) protecting two snipers and accompanied by an LVTP7.
I didn't have a suitable APC available, and it seemed overkill (more on that soon) so we dropped it from the game.  It should also be noted that the Marines themselves were Recon Marines.  This meant that they were rolling a d10 rather than the standard d8 for trained troops.
Even without the APC we were soon to find that this scenario would be a whitewash for the Regular player.
The Regular team stepped off and engaged an Insurgent RPG team on a nearby building.  The threat was neutralised, but during the shooting roll, a Fog Of War card was triggered!  "The Colonel says what?!?" meant that the Regulars were pinned in place for a turn, unable to move forward.

In the mean time, the Insurgent player took the opportunity to occupy the target building....

And prepared to spring a trap on the Regulars....


However, this where the Recon Marines stepped up!
They demolished the ambush on the left hand side of the road, leaving one man standing.

In a later turn, this one mad insurgent managed to skirt around the fireteam that had engaged his group to charge another team from behind....

He was quickly dispatched.

Meanwhile, on the right hand side of the road, the Marines in position there had achieved a similar result.

As you can see, machete-wielding Insurgents are hardy indeed!

At this point the Insurgent group in the Target Building began engaging the Regulars.

Their shooting was inaccurate, and over the next couple of turns, their numbers were whittled away from 6 down to 2.


The Insurgents had received some reinforcements by this stage, but due to a lucky break on the Fog Of War, the "What's this made of....Swiss Cheese?!?" card rendered them vulnerable to the Marine Fireteam  holding that arc.



It was around this point that Brad failed the rolls to bring 21 fresh insurgents onto the table!


However, luck was not completely against him, as another Fog OF War ("Contact!") provided him with another squad of Insurgents. These, however, were still unable to cause casualties on their Marine foes.


At this point, the Marines reached the building and began clearing it:


After the building was cleared, the sniper team swung into action and began to engage their "off-table" targets.


Some further reinforcements for the Insurgents was "too little, too late"....


...and the Marines exit the area with no casualties!


In the post game wash up, we believed that the Marines were too strong (and we didn't even use the APC!) and that at least one more insurgent hotspot (there were only four) was required.
In the second game played recently, we dropped the Marines to "Trained" (d8) and added an additional hotspot to bring the total to five.
But more on THAT game for another post!