Epic 30k Preview - The Hammers Of Horus, Ready to Roll

Epic 30k firepower lined up prior to our game tonight

Tonight we will be playing some Epic 30k with the Fawcett Avenue Conscripts, and the little fellows above will see their first action on behalf of the XVI Legion.  The scenario features a Sons of Horus task force trying to break through the loyalist lines while escorting a convoy of lethal virus munitions they have purloined from a not-quite-as-abandoned-as-people-thought Adeptuts Mechanicus facility.  The Imperial Fists will stand in their way...as you can see from the task force elements pictured above, they are going to need to big guns of their own to get the job done on behalf of their so-called "Emperor".

We'll use the "Epic: Armageddon" rules - the last variant of the rules published before the douchetards at GW ditched their specialist games.  I've cooked up some stats and adjustments to the Space Marine forces from "Epic: Armageddon" to reflect vehicles like the beasts pictured above, Marine support squads and other things...hopefully it turns out well - stay tuned for photos and an AAR!

Up Next: Team Yankee

Great! More toys! 15mm "Team Yankee" US starter set from Battlefront

What's a New Year without a New Insane Project, right? The madness of Warhammer 30k will certainly continue in 2015 - in both 6mm and 28mm scales to boot! I guess I could try and "focus" on those.  I've heard of this thing called "focus"...but screw that. The release of a set of cold-war-gone-hot rules from Battlefront is certainly too interesting to pass up.  The goodies have arrived in the mail, and I was excited to dive in. Let yet another New Insane Project Commence.

I generally enjoy Battlefront stuff - Flames of War, when I take off my gaming snob hat, is a ton of fun, if you ignore some of the sillier stuff (and there is a lot of that - like artillery right on the table -arrgh! but I digress).  I was pleased to hear Battlefront was doing some 80s Cold War rules.  I expect they will be relatively light, fun and quick, and have lots of flaming tanks on the table.  If you check through a lot of the modern "what-if" and historical AARs on this blog, you will notice that is a recipe that works for me...
 

You get a bunch of cards...whatever - it's the figures that matter!

But in this case I care less about the rules and more about the figures. Finding a unified, relatively complete set of figures for any particular sub-period of "modern" is not easy.  Micro stuff is covered extensively and completely (see GHQ, Scotia and Oddzial Ozmy). Once you are looking to get larger than 6mm in size, however, the ranges become incredibly balkanized. So I'm excited Battlefront is stepping in, as they tend to be really complete with their ranges. They certainly were with the Arab-Isreali Six Day War stuff (and seemed to be with Vietnam).

Pretty nice plastic on the M1 Abrams sprue - I'm pretty sure the parts are included to make another variant...maybe the M1A1, which had a bigger gun, among other things?

And yet, a few things hang in the background. Maybe the word that worried me most is "plastic".  Battlefront is making a huge effort, it would appear, to have most, if not all of the Team Yankee product range be plastic. Plastic today seems to have this totemic place in the minds of many gamers as "oooh, this will be so great and cheap". But this is not always true.  Price is a function of supply and demand - plastic in and of itself is not magically cheaper as a final product.  Furthermore, plastic is really hard to do well, particularly in smaller scales, and my previous experience with Battlefront plastic has not been great - cheap, brittle plastic and soft details.

To give Battlefront credit, I think they have been working very hard to make improvements when it comes to the plastic. They care what customers think, and they want to get things done right. They seem to want to have a great product, and are prepared to risk some bumps to get there. So I was keen to see for myself when I received my first "Team Yankee" products.  

Test model number one...now to figure out that MERDC camouflage...

I wanted to start with the US forces first, as I already have some 15mm Soviet kit painted (as does Mike F), so this seems to be a quicker way to get to a test game. The US starter box contains five M1 tanks and a pair of Cobra Helicopter gunships. I stuck together one of the M1s, and I have to say, not too bad.  The detail on the plastic is nicer than I have seen on other plastics from BF, though still nowhere near the nice, sharp details you get on properly executed metal vehicles. And the plastic is still a bit brittle for some parts, like the .50cal MGs - use extreme caution clipping those suckers off the frame.

With the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge underway, one of the side-duels I have going on is "Modern Mayhem" with Curt and Byron.  Getting these models underway will hopefully score me a few points in that area.  Just have to try and puzzle out that confusing MERDC camo the US seemed to use in the 1980s...

Fourth Painting Challenge Entry - 28mm System Troopers from Pig Iron

"System Troopers" from Pig Iron Productions - 28mm Troops

After Sylvian landed huge points bomb in the Challenge late last week (like 400 points of stuff!!!), I felt a bit desperate to get something up on the score board over the weekend. I've been away for over a week, but lucky for me I had some primed figures sitting around which had been waiting in the pending pile for ages - and hammering out figures like that is part of what the Challenge is about, after all, right? So here are 10 "System Troopers" from Pig Iron Productions. These came off the painting table while watching the first round of the NFL playoff (go Chiefs!) (update - stupid Vikings!!!).

Heavy armoured troops for our sci-fi battles

If you follow this blog, or sci-fi gaming generally, you have surely seen the "Kolony Militia" range from Pig Iron on a gaming table somewhere - not least with us. Dallas has an excellent collection of them serving his "FuturKom" forces. That range is, I expect, the best-known one from Pig Iron, but they offer several. Pig Iron is home to some of the nicest, chunkiest, full-of-character 28mm sci-fi stuff out there. The ranges are small, but have some pretty decent overall composition and completion to them (as opposed to others who released three figures and wonder why the sales don't roll in, but I digress). I really enjoy painting the Pig Iron figures - nice, proper, heavy, chunky metal figures, the way wargames figures are supposed to be!

A view showing the back packs

These "System Troopers" are the heaviest of the heavy infantry (in fact, I think I stole that line directly from Pig Iron) - heavily armoured, carrying huge, frigging guns. The sculpts are brilliant - the armour gives a sort of exo-skeleton sense, without being all encompassing/enclosing. These heads are not the standard "System Trooper" heads - they are the "Inner Guard" heads from the "Kolony Militia" - there are many head options to choose from with these figures and I thought these heads looked spookier.

Red helmets to set the fire team NCOs apart...

I had painted a small group of these figures years ago - might have been the first or second Painting Challenge, actually, but before sci-fi figures counted in the race. I had a bunch more primed and ready to go back in that initial 2012 rush, but I moved on to other projects, etc. etc. and these have been sitting there, primed and ready to go, gathering dust in my hobby pile for years, until I got home yesterday, was spooked by Sylvain's huge entry, and broke out the paints!

Always like the officers to be pointing at something...

The chaps in the red helmets are NCOs/section leaders. The rest of the fellows are regular grunts. As a group, I think they can represent all sorts of factions, ranging from ominous mercenaries acting on corporate interests to the heavy infantry of a futuristic science fiction army. And they can certainly line up with Gün Schwarm, that enlightened body of hard-working soldiers...

Regular troopers - even the "basic" guns look really heavy, working well with the sculpts

Some variety on the backpacks as well

There is a large round spot on the back of these helmets, and I painted these lense-style. I think of them as part of the armour's "Decision Making Assistance System". The online DMAS helps the System Troopers stay in touch with HQ, know where to direct their fire, understand that orphanages make great firing positions, and realize that asking questions about the morality of their overall orders will have a negative affect on their own existence...

Close up showing the "DMAS" on the back of the trooper's helmet...keep focused, now, trooper!

Some more points for my sci-fi duel, but still not enough...

There are 10 figures pictured, but one of these pre-dates the Challenge, as he was being used as a model to make sure I matched the colours the best I could, so this gets me 45 points. Even with these points, I'm still eating Sylvain's dust... hopefully I can bear down and go full-Millsy this week to get some more stuff ready for next weekend...but in the event I don't, I'm wondering what kind of figure Sylvain will want me to paint...on the other hand, still a good, long time left in the Challenge, so we'll see what comes next off the painting line.

Painting Challenge Theme Submission - "Nostalgia"

Rogue-Trader era members of the "Imperial Army"

Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge features a very, very wide variety of participants and painting submissions.  To spice things up, Curt has also set up some "Theme Rounds", where the participants are encouraged to submit something in line with a particular theme.  You score a few bonus points, and the submissions are pretty interesting - and participants have in the past made some pretty liberal interpretations of the themes in question (a particular spider will live in infamy, but I digress...)

I have mostly ignored these Theme Rounds, not because they are bad, but because I am bad at being ready for them, and efforts on my part to try and prepare just derail what I was already trying to work on.  Best to ignore the trouble...but the first round up this year was "Nostalgia", and I had two figures that fit perfectly...

Proper lead figures, the way wargames figures are SUPPOSED to be made...

I'm in a big sci-fi groove (or "rut", perhaps) and with that in mind, "Nostalgia", to me, brings to mind Rogue Trader.  This theme rounds was a great chance to paint a couple more old timey Imperial troops for my Rogue Trader-era Imperial Guard. Or, more correctly, "Imperial Army".

Love that old flak armour...

The fellow with the "non-regulation" hair is "Trooper Brock", first seen in 1988(!).  He is carrying an autogun, the assault rifle of choice in the 40th millenium. 

The other fellow is a gun crew commander, seen with Thudd Guns, Rapiers, Mole Mortars etc.  Same era - 1988.

"Welcome to the Imperial Guard, dude..."

Both sport the distinctive "Imperial Army" flak armour of the old, early Rogue Trader era.  They were fun to paint, and should fit in well with the RT-era gang.  Although Brock is going to stand out from his more regulation oriented colleagues...at least he still has his helmet handy in case the Commissars show up...

The next theme round is "Epic Fail" - sounds perfectly named for my theme round efforts...we'll see if I manage anything for it...

28mm Great War Germans from Foundry

As I wrote in my recent post on my Foundry Great War British project, I've developed an obsession with the early part of the First World War to match my enthusiasm for the late war. So having finished the early-war British, it was straight into the early-war Germans to fight them.

What are early-war Germans without UHLANS??? Nothing, that's what! So I had to make sure my army had a contingent of these amazing lancers, led by a purposeful looking chap wielding a C96 Mauser pistol.

Sorry about the focus... but these models are too cool not to have a close-up. I love the musician particularly. The lances were included with the models and I painted the pennons to suit a Prussian unit. I was going to do Bavarians with their white-over-blue pennons for a pop of colour, but once I did the white it had to be Prussians.
 

The castings were fantastic, and so detailed that I had to buck my usual style and paint eyes on them.

Can just see these guys riding down some BEF infantry/getting slaughtered by machinegun fire...
 

Quite a lot of models here. The contingent started off with twenty-odd models from the collection of our late friend Glenn Shott, which I augmented with about forty-five more infantry figures. The totality represents a three-company battalion under the Great War rules.

The Germans took quite a while longer to finish than the British did, just because of all the detail on the models. While the Brits' P08 webbing was all one colour and a snap to paint, the Germans' equipment was multi-coloured and took many steps. Even so, I did paint all 45 or so infantry in one batch, one colour at a time!

These are some of Glenn's models, I just touched them up a bit and based them.

I really rate the Foundry models highly. It's just too bad that no modern figure ranges mix well with them. Modern figures are all too big and chunky.

Three MG08 machineguns, one painted by Glenn.

Here are some I painted. You can really get an idea of the detail in this shot. I painted the troddeln (bayonet knots) the proper colours for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd companies.

Infantry all together. These should be an adequate force for some early-war fighting where the Germans were on the attack. Of course, there needs to be lots of Germans to be targets for the famous "mad minute"... looking forward to getting these chaps out for a game soon.

Bolt Action 28mm Battle Report - Normandy '44

This year, in lieu of the New Year's Day game, I hosted a game just after Christmas. The impetus was a rare visit from Conscript Sean. He'd just finished a seven-year project (platoon of British paratroopers) and wanted to get them into action, so Bolt Action was a natural.

I set up some terrain and came up with a plausible-enough scenario: Brit Paras start at short table edge opposite the village, and have eight turns to get to the church, where they're supposed to link up with US armour. The German blocking forces come on from the long edges. Each side has three tanks (Shermans and Pkpfw IV(H)) which come on as reserves; the Germans on the road and the Shermans from the short edge behind the village.

Game on as the Germans move onto the table (top of photo).

The Paras dash up to the edge of the bocage. To simulate the tough going, we ruled that bocage could only be crossed with an "Advance" order, after which a d6 is rolled. On a result of "1" the unit stops on the near side of the bocage; on a "2-5" they cross but stop on the other side; and on a "6" they move their full movement past if desired.

Sean's figures looked very nice - well worth the wait!

Waffen-SS infantry advance up the road, looking to head off the British.

The first Sherman appears behind the village.

Paras break cover and dash towards the road - SS infantry in wait...

...while a Mk IV(H) moves up in support.

Sherman rolls up and pins down Germans lurking in the churchyard.

Heavy fighting breaks out in the centre between the Waffen-SS and a British section.

Overhead view of the action.

Just visible at the corner of the building at upper left are a PIAT man and his loader... these were the men of the match, doing for two German tanks.

Like so!

The third German tank made itself useful by lighting off some "Ronsons".

Remnants of a Para section dash past a knocked out Panzer.

Three Shermans burning but some of the Paras survived to make it to the rendezvous.

Bolt Action seldom disappoints in an entertaining game and this one was no exception. It was great to have Sean out for a game (especially with his great looking figures) and I think the guys who made it out all had fun too. And that's what the hobby is all about!