569 - More Sikhs

Hullo All,

Just a quick update pic of my Sikhs: 2Lt, radio man and Sections 1 and 2:

I've almost finished the next 12 minis now, too.

And yes, that subaltern is wearing a cricket jumper.

- Drax.

568 - Desert Sikhs: A First Proper Look

Dear All,

I'm off on my travels again (a wedding in London, no less!) and so painting has had to be postponed even further, but I'm taking late-night advantage of my hosts' WiFi to finally post the few pics of my new Desert Rats Sikhs that I've been working on.

Not much explanation needed - I'll reflect on the minis and the process in a future post. For now, all you need to know is that (a) the bases will be adorned yet with some tufts etc., and (b) that - inevitably - they look much better in the flesh. For example, the NCO's rank stripes barely show up here, but they are there - I promise!

Cheers for now,

- Drax.

567 - Bolt Action Intro Game

Hullo Readers,

The weather has actually been glorious recently, so no chance of photographing new units properly(!) but here you'll see one of them in action at least...

My handsome Staghound is now more-or-less finished,
bar an antenna and a bit of mild weathering.

Last Friday I ran a small 750pt introductory game for a seasoned player interested in converting to Bolt Action.


When I've tried to play intro games before they've always been unsuccessful, because despite my best efforts, I've won. 

I didn't this time.

Nope.

The Brits took an absolute thrashing at the hands of some veteran SS. 

Some veteran SS

We were wiped out to a man, but it was a cracking game, and we didn't go down without a fight!

The Brits. Going down but not without a fight.

More nasty SS types

The bastard panzerschrek. Bastard.

By the end of turn 6 I had been tabled, but it was smashing.

We'd played an 'open' game, with me talking Peter through his options as and when they appeared, so his Germans (on loan from David, who runs the club) had a decent crack at it. 

Highlights:

• With the last order die of turn 1, Peter brought on his HQ with two riflemen. I pointed out that they could have a crack at one of my lorries: a 6 to hit and a 6 to destroy. Guess what happened. 
• Peter had a metric crap-tonne of assault rifles (deliberately!) which caused me grief, but only a single panzerfaust and a panzerschrek team in order to tackle my Staghound. The panzerschrek team, on turn four, needed a 6 to hit. When it did, it rolled a second 6 for penetration, and then two more 6s on the damage table. Ka-boom.
• My last unit standing was my 2" mortar (yes, I took a 2" mortar - deliberately), and with its last, desperate shot, they just managed to kill the SS Leutnant and his remaining runner. Well done, lads

So there we are.

That's all for now; tune in next time for some unit updates...

Cheers,

- Drax.

566 - Bolt Action Game: 11AD & Paras Vs Germans, 2000pts

Hullo, All.

Well, here is a brief overview of the 2000pt game we had at the club last Friday: this time I allied with Alex and his Paras once again against the Germans. A new scenario and a new opponent, too: our very sporting foe was a chap called Adam, and with the gorgeous table that Alex'd set up, he suggested we play one of the missions from the 'Battleground Europe' expansion: the Allies had to seize a bridge from the Germans before they could blow it. Both sides had good, fluffy lists, and with one normal and one tank platoon, Adam's force was appropriately tank-heavy.

Fog of war. Alex's Paras run toward the bridge,
whilst my 1 Section (on the right) gives covering fire.

Too much fog of war? - the utterly reckless driver of 2 Section's
lorry starts gunning his engine. Foolhardy.

Long story short: the plucky Brits absolutely triumphed. When 'time' was called (at the end of turn 4, I think), Adam was down to two heavily-pinned tanks, his officer, a spent air observer and half a grenadier squad.

For our part, I had lost one lorry and three riflemen, and Alex had lost three Paras.

The bridge was ours.

In retrospect, Adam was up against it, as we were using a scenario aimed at the Germans defending a wide, heavy duty bridge with better field of fire...but even so, the dice gods really were NOT on his side.

My two 75mm guns open up on his tanks.
And yes there was a 1" firing corridor!

For instance, when Alex's artillery observer called down his fire, it was a.m.a.z.i.n.g: it killed outright his MG42 unit and his medium mortar before also destroying his Puma(!) AND heavily pining two of his remaining tanks. 

The arty was centred on the roof, bottom-right.
Prior to its arrival, there were two German squads there too!

Ouch.

When mine came in the following turn, it dropped short (I rolled a '1'!) and pinned pretty much every unit in our force which hadn't already been pinned by Adam's annoying airstrike.

The dice were on our side. 

Memorable moments (in addition to Alex's artillery): 

• Two first-round shots with my faithful medium mortar destroyed a (different) MG42 team followed by the remains of one of the two German squads guarding the far bank of the bridge in a building. 
• Alex's jeep-borne flamethrower finally getting into action and torching the guard unit in the nearside building, Toasty.
• My 2 Section in their lorry suddenly flies across the bridge and right over the other side, before being machine-gunned down by an MG42 that I myself had just advised Adam to put on 'Ambush'. D'oh! Oh well, the troops within lost only a couple of their number and whist they provided a distracting target for the Germans for the next turn until they could occupy the far-bank building, their truck proved something of an embuggerment to the enemy - lying aflame, as it did, right on their crossroads. Oddly, despite us telling Adam that his large, tracked tanks could safely roll over it or shunt it away, he instead used it for cover, creating for himself a situation of significant gridlock. Cue well-timed artillery.

2 Section's lorry creates a chokepoint, whilst its
erstwhile passengers de-bus and hop over the wall.

And that's about it!

Endgame. My firing line moves up to the river bank.
Alex brought along an Archer too: a novelty to me.

Endgame. The Paras and 2 Section invest the far-bank house...
The lone figure on the right is the doomed German HQ. 

It's now the following Saturday, and since this game I've finished two more units (yay!) and played another game of Bolt Action...so I've got some catching up to do.

Cheers,

- D.

565 - Bolt Action Cromwell CS Completed!

Hullo All,

A straightforward one today: in addition to ploughing through my early war desert Sikh troops (of which the first elements should be completed by the end of this week), I have been trying to tie up some of the many loose ends from my 11th Armoured. 

At the top of that particular pile was this - my Cromwell CS variant:

It's the nearest one. As usual, late-night phone-pics are terrible,
but it's named 'Pieter' after my fellow hobbyist who so very kindly
donated a Warlord Games voucher, allowing its procurement.

With its converted 95mm close support howitzer (which functions as a rather useful 'medium howitzer' in-game), I've designated this vehicle to be a vague representation of the exploits of Capt. Walter Luttrell (or 'Colonel Sir Geoffrey Walter Fownes Luttrell KCVO MC JP' as he ended up) of HQ Troop, 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars, whose bravery and professionalism  under fire in the vanguard of 11AD earned him the MC [link here].

I'm pleased with the way the vehicle has turned out (not least because I had to do the white turret details by hand), but as it sits next to the normal 75mm Cromwell variant, I cannot help but think that I really need to get some stowage on these vehicles to differentiate them a little more.

[Sikh soldier test mini]

I also played a game last week, so there'll be a post about that soon...!

- Drax.