Quick Review : FoF Enduring Freedom

A while back I received my copy of the Enduring Freedom sourcebook for Force on Force by Ambush Alley.  This is Force-on-Force's book on Afghanistan from the commencement of hostilities in 2001 to the current day.  It is a lovely looking book, paperback with full colour pages.  Some comment has abounded regarding the cover art.  Earlier placeholder art was in my view better, but Osprey / Ambush Alley have obviously decided to go with this one in the final release.  It wouldn't have been my choice.

From my perspective this book is "more of the same" when compared with the earlier Iraq book (Road to Baghdad).  There are 20 scenarios in this book, most of them seem to trend towards the larger size of game (Full platoons with support on both sides), rather than the earlier small forces we saw in the initial Ambush Alley product.

The format of the book roughly follows the same approach taken in "Road to Baghdad".  An overview of the conflict is followed by explanations of the specific rule elements for Force-on-Force that apply to the current conflict in Afghanistan.

After that we have the 20 scenarios, followed by details of organisation and vehicles for the various ISAF and Afghan forces.  A quite nice part of this book is a guide to uniforms, painting and model selection for the conflict.  It desn't suit my predeliction for 6mm all that well, but it's nice to see in what is essentially a hooby book.

If you've been a follower of Ambush Alley Games and modern wargaming for a while, there may not be a whole heap for you in this book, apart from the scenarios.  I had a vague feeling of "samey-ness" leafing through the book, but to be honest I have not found the time to invest in a cover-to-cover in-depth read.

If you're interested in Afghanistan, it's obviously a must have.  If not, then I'd leave it.
Maybe it's because it's Australian focused, but I think the older Operation Uruzghan book that AA Games issued before the Osprey partnership was a better book, with scenarios more suited to what I'd like to game in the Afghan conflict.

Roll a D6

I'm a bit late to the party on this one.
Just heard about out on the D6G podcast.
Hilarious!

6mm AK47 Game

I had a quick game of AK47 Republic with by brother, Thomas, on Sunday night.

Full After Action Report has been posted to the Angel Barracks forum as part of a competition Michael was running.
Check it out there!

6mm Fedayeen

Last night I had a crack at sculpting some "Darth Vader" helmets on some H&R Soviets to create Fedayeen Saddam figures. 

I'm finding that the "greenstuff" is drying out to much as I'm working with it - I'll need to look online for solutions.  Looking at the line-up you can tell that the figures in the middle are the ones I started with, and the I moved to the ones on the edge of the sprue.  As the putty dries out, I'm finding it becomes harder and stickier, resulting in worse sculpting.

My plan is to mix Darth helmets with balaclava'd figures (next conversion job!) to create my fedayeen for Road to Baghdad.

For those of you who aren't familiar with what I'm talking about, here is a google image search for "Fedayeen Helmets" : link

I couldn't find any images I could satisfy myself about ownership/copyright in the short time available to re-post here.

6mm Moderns begins in earnest

The new Force on Force and Road to Baghdad have pulled me away from my Vietnam project.
It's now on hold until later this year.
I picked up some mid east buildings form ebay before easter.

I'm inspired.......

Quick "Road to Baghdad" Review

I'm going to cheat and post a quick review I knocked up for Book Depository.  After I've had a chance to read through RtB more thorough over the Easter break I'll post more detailed thoughts:

The Road to Baghdad is a return to roots for Ambush Alley Games (AAG). Their original game "Ambush Alley" was firmly rooted in the events of the 2003 invasion of Iraq - Operation Iraqi Freedom.

As the first offering from their new partnership with Osprey, AAG have served up a wargamer's treasure for this conflict. The book is 104 pages, soft cover, and full of colour art and photos as you would expect from an Osprey publication.

After a brief introduction, 11 pages are devoted to the an overview of the war, with the timescale stepped out.

After this comes the real "meat in the sandwich"; 19 scenarios for the conflict spanning 83 full colour pages with maps, force lists, suggestions for alternate and augmented forces, and the all important historical outcome. These scenarios are design for use with the Force on Force ruleset, but could equally be used with any ruleset focusing on about a platoon per side.

Finally there is an overall listing for US, British and Iraqi forces to enable further scenario creation, as well as a bibliography of further reading.

If I have one immediate criticism of Road to Baghdad, it is that there is so much information crammed into the 104 pages. Skimming the book it can be difficult to pick individual scenarios immediately, as there is very little whitespace (camouflage space??) free in this book to delimit the individual scenarios and they often run on into each other. The Table of Contents obviously helps here, but this is a lot of content in a compact form.

Force on Force Arrives...Early!

My colleague who sits next to me just came back from the mail area with two packages.
Inside was this:

The books look very nice and are more compact than the A4 printouts I had of the original rules.
More details after I get a chance to have a flick through over lunch.
But for now.....Back to Work!!!

Nice 6mm Terrain

Up late working on a number of customer proposals for work.
I take little breaks to look at other stuff, took keep me going.
Just found out I't missed a great post on the Ambush Alley Forum for 6mm.
Check it out here:
http://www.ambushalleygames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6155

Not a lot of progress here at the moment.  Just behind my laptop on the desk are this VC conversions I need to finish.....

Conversion Attempt - part 2

A couple of days ago I took a quick comparison shot of my new "VC" against the H&R US figures.



 Unfortunately it turned out to be against some of my worst hat work, but the size comparison is significantly better that vs the Irregular figures.

Since then, I've started basing the figures.  This was a bad move, as I need to file off their webbing to represent poorly equipped Local Force troops in just "pyjamas" and a rifle. 

Note also in this picture the figure who is missing their hat because I tried to file some of the wonkiness out of it.  He's so depressed that his rifle barrel has gone droopy.....

The dodgy hats will need replacing rather than fixing it seems.

Plenty of work to get them to where they need to be, but it's a start!

Conversion attempt

Found myself with some time last night, so I had at putting some rice hats on some warsaw pact figures to convert them to Local Force VC.

Converted H&R Warsaw Pact Infantry