Sorry for the lack of posts

Hi anybody who looks, life unfortanlty got in the way blog. As i now look at my sleeping 5 week old daughter, after sorting out my 4 year old thats had a nightmare I'm now sat in front of the laptop. Sorry I now swear to make sure at least one post a week. I will be putting up some posts of games I've had in the mean time with I took at the time put never got my finger out.

Enjoy sleep

Bryan

Panzergrenadier Lehr Platoon - Painting step 2

Stage 2 and a bit

I've now done all the flesh and started the greatcoats and as you can see.

Here is the three paints I used BEIGE BROWN base, then MEDIUM FLESH, then final fine highlights of FLAT FLESH.

Panzergrenadier Lehr Platoon - Painting step 1

Here is my first platoon, I'm using Vallejo paints for the first time as I can get the right colours out of the pot instead mixing it up each time.

All these models are from Peter Pig (including the 1/2 tracks)

I know at the moment they are all spray black (the newer GW black spray is a lot heavier than their old ones, almost had a panic as the colour went on really thick, but spread out as it dried thankfully)

My wife bought me the new GW paint station for Christmas, and is one of my most used gifts ever, the sculpted bottom sit well on your lap. This means I can sit with her on the sofa, but still get to get some hobby done while she watches TV.

German Halftrack sdKfz 251/C from Plastic Soldier

German Halftrack sdKfz 251/C from Plastic Soldier

Inside are 5 spures with 1 1/2 track on each

With some very easy to use instructions

At the end you have 1 of these

 

You are also left with these add on bits to add on at your wish.

 As you can see it is very easy to make very individual look 1/2 track across a platoon, they are also bringing out an upgrade sprue/box so you have all the bits to make the different types of 1/2 track you want from the 2 boxes.

Review

I really like these models, they are inexpensive, easy to put together, and look great. So all in all fantastic.

There is very little flash, the only bit being on the front slope of the bonnet(hood) section which came off very easily and cleanly with a modelling knife, the few sprue connection points also disappeared under the knife leaving a very clean, crisp model.

A definite 10/10

http://theplasticsoldiercompany.co.uk/

15mm Flames of War build your own terrain

I have some models now I need some thing to play on, so have started to build my own board.
Now I have trees for woods and hills, but need hedges, walls, roads and buildings.

I had a thought on hedges as an easy start so went to town (Salisbury Wiltshire) and bought some clump foliage(2 colours) from Salisbury model centre, then went to a fantasic store called Endless Models near the towns GW. Here I got the loli-pop sticks and some resin walls that where 60p each.

For the hedges I first started by sanding the loli-pops

Then sprayed black

Dry brush with dark and light brown

Added the first layer of clump foliage

Leave it to dry for 12-24 hours and then add the second layer

Then add some scatter grass

All done.

 These top two photoes only have one row, It needed the second row as seen below.

 The bottom 2 pictures have a second row of clump foliage ontop. It need this to give a hiver more cncealing look.

Flames of War, or how I became a historical gamer

I have had langishing upstair in the loft for a good few years some fantasic peter pig WW2 models but I didn't really like the PBI rule set and had no one else intrested in WW2. So they went upstairs surviving year after year of bring & buy clear outs because I couldn't quite rid myeslf of the itch to play some WW2 games in 15mm.
Now a few years ago when Battlefront sold their models through Hobbycraft here in the UK and I picked up their 2 player starter set from 2nd Ed. I had a read of the rules and really liked the idea of a reasonably quick play set of rules that combined all the section of forces involved in WW2, apart from naval(unless you play D Day and have naval bombardments).
I showed to my friend Ben and he really liked the idea as well (mainly as I would be supplying both sides), so we set about taking the infantry off the bases for PBI and putting them on the correct FoW bases. I needed to buy a couple of extra models to fill out the bases correctly which I picked up from Warfare in Reading form Peter Pig to make sure they matched.
After getting them already we had a go at playing a few games trail games and liked what it did but due to hobby butterflying were drawn off into other projects, and my brief stint at WW2 passed again. Once more they went upstairs and again they survived bring & buy as I love the models and told myself I just needed to get myself so terrian to make it good to play, but money has a habbit of slipping away from a hobby butterfly like water down a stream.

Now a few months ago a couple of new guys turned up to the Salisbury Wargaming Club and had FoW, looking for people to play against. I offered to play but didn't have an army to use, Paul and Nigel supplied everything form models to terrain and we played a great North Africa game of British Vs Germans.
I WAS HOOKED AGAIN!

I went home and hit the internet that night and found out about the new 3rd Ed and decided that I would get some new bits at the upcoming Salute show at ExCel in London.
So on the 21st of April Karl and myself drove up to biggest wargames show in the UK to give our money away for new shinny toys. We both got the new rulebook and after dropping off some other things to my car(such as 2 new cases in a backpack from KR mutlicase for my models to go in), we sat down with the basic army list and decided what we also needed to get to have legal forces and any extra toys.

The week after Salute I had my next game using my American Infantry Company at 1200pts against Martyn from club, with his bits I picked up from Stafford Games for him, a German Panzer Company. We used on of the simple fair fight scenarios and after 4 turns had to call it quits and ended up neither winning as we both had 2 objectives but I had wiped out one platoon.

The main thing I learnt were
1. How hard it is for people to get rid of my dug in infantry
2. Artillery can be awesome in the right places
3. My M4s die very quickly against German PZ IVs if I don't kill it first hit, but they don't like bazookas jumping out of trees next to them.
4. Attack, Attack, Attack keep the intative

We are planning on having a big game soon with 2 players each side at 1750pts each player so 3500 each side.

Malifaux Tournament 5th May 2012

Report from the Malifaux Beginners Tournament 5th May

Sorry for the delay but I couldn't find my camera until today so here goes.

On the 5th May a group of ner-do-wells meet to through down some cards and cheat fate as best they could. Each round you can score 4 points from the scenario and up to 4 points from your schemes(which are best thought as secondary point scoring objectives you get to choose, but can only choose them once during the whole tournament) to give you a max score of 8 per game.

We had
Dan - Lady Justice with her Death Marshals
Mathew - Dr McMorning with his lab built monsters
Neil - Kiari and her spirits
Pat - Colette and the showgirls
Rob - Lucius the 2nd in command of the Guild
and me with the deadly duo of the Victoria's.

We started with Slaughter which is kill the other guy before he kills you. Everyone chose their schemes. After some hard battles the results were

Bryan 8    vs Dan 2
Mathew 4 vs Neil 1
Pat 5         vs Rob 0

Next we played Recconitior were you have to control the board, which is split in to 4 sections and have to have more models than the other player in each section. The results were

Dan 7       vs Rob 2
Mathew 3 vs Bryan 7
Neil 4       vs Pat 3

The last game was Claim Jump which is hold the centre, and have more models in 3", this finish with

Neil 6  vs Rob 1
Dan 4  vs Mathew 0
Pat 1   vs Bryan 1

So the final scores were counted and the winners are

1st                   Dan

2nd                  Neil

3rd                   Mathew

Best Painted    Neil
Most Sporting  Mathew

A big well done to the winners who got vouchers to spend at 7th Heaven thanks to Rob.