The Big Winner!

The Gamer's Armory, a game store in North Carolina, recently held a gaming marathon to benefit the Turner Syndrome Society of the United States. I live across the country from North Carolina, so I didn't participate in the event, but I saw on the shop's Facebook page that they were holding a raffle as part of the event. There were a couple of items on the Raffle Wall that looked interesting to me, so I bought a few dollars in tickets. A while later I got an e-mail announcing that I had won a Flames of War Operation Market Garden: Guards Armoured Recce Company boxed set. That was my first choice in prizes and the one that I applied most of my tickets toward, so I was pretty excited about it. Because I live too far away to just stop in and pick up my prize, I sent in a payment to cover shipping and they sent it right out.

It's a pretty cool item, with 17 vehicles, 2 terrain pieces, and some dice and tokens. I haven't opened the plastic wrap yet. The box makes a lot of noise when I move it around, so I hope that the contents haven't been damaged too much in transit. The box is a little worse for wear, but even if a couple of the vehicles are damaged I still made out pretty well, getting a significant WWII miniature force for the price of a few raffle tickets. Their website says they have raised over $45,000 over the course of 4 annual events, so it sounds like they are doing some good things. It is nice to win a prize, but I didn't mind pitching in a few dollars to a good cause anyway.

There is still not much going on here; I may be caught up enough on schoolwork to do some painting tomorrow. That would be rather nice. We visited our friends again last night. E.A. hasn't made much progress on his Tau; he's in the same boat as I am with homework taking up most of his free time. Hopefully we can have a game by the end of the year. I anticipate having to do a lot of stuff military-wise this summer as I will attempt to fit the schools required for me to be promoted in between college semesters.

Imperial Guard

The internet has been somewhat abuzz with sneak peeks at the various Imperial Guard releases that are due to come out with the new Codex. I think the best-looking model is the Valkyrie, a flying troop-carrier. The Bell of Lost Souls blog has a couple of posts with pictures of some nicely-painted models. I am rather partial to the orange and grey one. I'm not sure on a price point. I've heard that it will cost as much as a Rhino and I've heard it will cost as much as a Land Raider. Due to the size of the kit I'm inclined to think it will be closer to the Land Raider in cost. It seems an ideal vehicle for carrying Catachan Jungle Fighters into battle.

And speaking of Catachan Jungle Fighters, I've been trying to come up with a color scheme for mine. I've noticed that all of my armies tend to be painted brown and green unless I am going off of a painting guide as I did for Moria Goblins and Easterlings from Lord of the Rings. My Space Marines are pretty bland compared to some of the other Chapters out there, but I don't think I could handle painting them orange or purple or bright blue. I'm running into the same dilemma with my Imperial Guardsmen and my Reaper CAV models. I just don't think they would look right in flashy colors. I did see a nice picture of someone's Catachan army painted with a lot of red accents; I might look at something along those lines.

Historicals

WWII

I've been pondering my reluctance to actually begin a historical project. I think it stems partially from a fear of getting "it" wrong, "it" being uniforms, orders of battle, vehicle variants, terrain, and any other nitpicky thing you might come up with. I used to be an avid reader, but I've really moved away from that in the last few years and I feel that my mind is worse for it. I am drawn to Flames of War because they have army lists similar to those found in the Games Workshop games as well as painting guides and prepackaged paint sets. Essentially everything you need to play their version of World War Two. And I think you could reconstruct real battles using that system, as long as you had a working knowledge of the scenario you want to play and the actual or approximate composition of the units involved.

Another route would be to use the various scenario books out there, like the Skirmish Campaigns series, to guide your force selections. Back when I was considering the Eastern Front I got a couple of those books with the intention of building the forces outlined in the orders of battle. I think part of what stopped me is that the scenarios seemed to be built for those who already have decent collections, as they often included odd variant vehicles that would be interesting for an experienced gamer but ramp up the starting cost for a novice. I recently have considered that a person could just cut out the variant vehicles for now and use more common things in their place without unbalancing the game overly much. I could probably still use the painting guides from Flames of War to get fairly close to the right colors for my armies, at least close enough for me.

I'm not sure what I'll do. I'll probably start with painting the little Flames of War forces I've got on the shelf and do some meeting engagements or something with the Flames of War rules.

American Civil War

Earlier I discussed my interest in the American Civil War, and particularly in the 10mm GHQ models. GHQ also has a set of rules designed for their figures that it would be interesting to try out. The rules apparently come with several scenarios, which may or may not be the same scenarios available for download on the GHQ website. They also sell starter sets for both sides of the conflict, comprising approximately one Brigade (2-3 guns with crew, 9-10 stands of infantry, a couple of stands of cavalry, and a general) according to the GHQ ruleset. After looking at the scenarios available for download it looks like one of the smaller ones would take approximately 4 of each starter set to build and play. So theoretically I could get started for around $100, but the scenarios would call for at least $340 plus terrain and other odds and ends.

I've also been looking at smaller figures in the form of Baccus 6mm ACW, and the Polemos rules. Battlegames #15 has a decent article about the rules along with a battle report. The starter set from Baccus comes out to just a hair over $130 with the rules, two armies, a painting guide, and a couple of armies. They offer various booster sets that run from about $15 to around $40, depending on how big you want to go. The website says that one starter set offers enough figures and stands to play games right away, so that is a point in favor of the Baccus models.

I've also been looking at the Perry plastic figures, but they aren't really practical for me at the moment. According to the Baccus website you can paint an army in a couple of weeks and be ready to play small games. It would take me a year or two to get through an equivalent number of units in the larger scale. I don't really see ACW as taking precedence over my other armies, but if I could get a couple of armies painted in between other projects that would allow me to scratch the itch without overwhelming myself with another large-scale project.

I'm leaning in the direction of the Baccus figures and Polemos rules at the moment. We'll see what happens when it actually comes time to make a purchase.

I wasn't really planning on watching any of the Olympics, but today I got sucked in by the swimming events, especially the much-talked-about rivalry between the US and French teams in the Men's 400m relay. All of the videos of the race on Youtube are pretty fuzzy and jumpy, but it is definitely a race that you have to see. Here's a link to a site where you can watch the video in full quality. The French were heavily favored to win, and had done some trash-talking in the media beforehand. They led for most of the last lap, but Jason Lezak of the US team exploded at the end for a world-record split time and a gold medal for the Americans. They also broke the world record for the event by nearly four seconds.

I also did some planning for a couple of fairly even Flames of War forces. I don't have a copy of the rules yet, so I don't know how much special rules and gameplay affect things, but it seems like the German army gets a lot less kit for the points compared to the Americans. I planned out a Gepanzerte Panzergrenadierkompanie and an Armored Rifle Company each with some support elements. Both lists came out to around 975 points, but the Americans got a 4-vehicle Platoon of Shermans and a Tank Destroyer section while the Germans could only afford a 3-vehicle section of Panver IV H tanks once the minimum requirements for the Panzergrenadier company were met. It looks to be a moderately expensive project, so I'll probably collect the units piecemeal over the next several months while working on other projects.

Hobbytown has started a weekly game night up again and if this new job works out I may actually be able to go get some games in with my Skaven and hopefully in the not-to-distant future with my Orcs and Goblins.

I wish there weren't so many interesting projects to think about. My Skaven still aren't properly finished, I've barely started on Orcs and Goblins, I've got a grand total of five Space Marines painted, the Orks have all these new models as well as the awesome deal that is the new 40k starter set, and I've got the WWII bug again with locally available figures in shiny little boxes. That doesn't even take into account back-burner projects like the three full Mordheim warbands I have figures for, a couple handfuls of Foundry pirates, a whole passel of Lord of the Rings stuff I have or want to have, and unfinished forces for Reaper's Warlord and CAV systems. I don't have the money or time for even a quarter of that stuff.

Flames of War M10 3" GMC Tank-Destroyer Platoon Product Review

I made a purchase from Hobbytown's Flames of War display. I picked up a Tank Destroyer Platoon box set, which doesn't at all fit into the Eastern Front games I plan on building forces for. I just can't resist the allure of American WWII vehicles. Some people can't get enough German kit but I'm a sucker for U.S. gear. So I'll probably wind up trying to build opposing forces for Germany and America; I'm trying to decide whether they'll be mechanized infantry or footsloggers. I can pick up various attachments (such as an M10 Tank-Destroyer Platoon) for them to keep things interesting. One thing I like about Battlefront's packaging scheme is the ready-made units. You can buy one box or blister and have all the vehicles, soldiers, and guns you need to fill out the unit. You can also buy individual vehicles and infantry groups. One thing that attracted me to the set I chose was that I got three AFVs, a couple of jeeps, and a couple fire teams worth of infantry as well as crew for each of the vehicles.

The vehicle sculpts seem a little fuzzy and there are some big globs that I'll have to carve off, mostly on the bottom where the tracks and wheels glue on. There is plenty of stowage sculpted on, as well as a sprue of accessories like sandbag armor for the front slopes of the M10s. One gripe I have is the way the metal accessories are attached to their sprues with huge tags running the length. On the jeep windshields, for example, the sprue attaches to one full side of the windshield, meaning I'll have to clip it carefully and file the whole thing down. The same goes for the machine guns and stowage. The M20 armored car has a ring mount for the machine gun that is going to be bear to mount as it doesn't match up with the attachment points. I imagine my fingers and that part will spend a little time glued together before it's all done with. I don't see any problems with the crew and infantry figures although the jeep crew figures are attached to a sprue with the same large tags as the machine guns and windshields.


I like the variety of the sculpts. The jeeps are both a little bit different. The stowage in the back is slightly different and one of them has the windshield folded down with some gear tied across it. Looking closely at this jeep just now I noticed that a section of the windshield broke off at some point and wound up stuck to the hood. I don't know what Battlefront's policy on replacing miscast figures is; I guess this is a chance to find out. The extra stowage sprue for the Tank Destroyers is nice. Aside from the ring mount on the armored car the parts appear to fit well.

Overall I'm satisfied with the product. Hopefully I can get the jeep replaced or fix it myself. It should be fun to put the kits together with their stowage and accessories. I like the full-unit-in-a-box packaging, especially when you can get a unit with a nice mix of vehicles and infantry. I haven't worked with resin figures before, so I'm not sure what to use for glue. I'm sure I can search on TMP and figure it out rather quickly. The resin seems to give them a little more heft than plastic, but not as much as metal. I also don't have any paint for the figures, a situation I'll have to remedy at some point.

Plastic Soldiers

I thought I had a pretty good handle on the inventory of the local Hobbytown, but I found something new there this week. To be honest, I haven't spent a lot of time in the plastic model section of the store, as many of the models are civilian vehicles. Well, I happened to wander through that section and on one of the back shelves I found a pile of boxes containing 1:72 scale (from what I can tell, it's a little smaller than true 25mm figures) plastic soldiers from various periods in history, including Vikings and the American Civil War. What really grabbed me was the price point for the figures. Each box contained 40-50 figures for $8.00-9.00. That's a pretty good value. I'd read about some of the virtues of plastic figures in my copy of Battlegames #5, but hadn't really made any connection with my own hobby plans.

My initial excitement centered around the Vikings, but after spending some time thinking about my plans and going over the pictures on the Plastic Soldier Review website I decided that I'm really set on using Foundry's figures for my Dark Ages armies. But there are projects that I don't have figures chosen for that I may use plastics for. The American Civil War is one of those periods that I don't have figures chosen for, and plastics would be a great way to get into the period without breaking the bank, leaving cash in the budget for higher-priority projects. It may be an option for WWII gaming as well, but I'd have to do some research. I like the potential for plastics to act as a cheap way for me to build armies outside of my "core" interests, but I still need to look around before making any final decisions.

I tried to do some painting on the Rat Ogre tonight, but I didn't get very far before I lost my motivation for painting. I put some clearcoat on the bartender and the barmaid. After that I fiddled around with planning for my WWII Eastern Front skirmish project. I'm still trying to decide whether I should go with Micro Armour scale or 15mm scale. So far I've been able to find all of the miniatures I need for my scenarios in Micro Armour scale, but I don't know the 15mm manufacturers well enough to find all the figures in 15mm.

Then I made up some stat cards for all of my pirate miniatures. I personalized them a little bit by cropping a headshot for each pirate and gluing it onto an index card. Then I used the tables in the Blood & Swash rule booklet to roll up the various stats for the figures. I may have my little brother over for a day or two this weekend, and hopefully we'll be able to play a game. I don't have a tavern built yet, but we can probably rig up some sort of scenario on the table using felt for terrain. If we end up playing I'll try to take pictures so I can post them here.

Herbert has been enjoying her new cage immensely. Every so often she'll come flying out of her cardboard house and jump up all of the ramps to the top of the cage, and then she'll jump back down to the bottom.