633 - Drax's Painting Charts - Now Available in Print!

Hullo All,

Great news! I've had an article published in the latest edition of 'Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy' magazine! 

WSS 95 - I'm there, baby!

Long-term readers will be aware of the way in which I track the progress of my modelling and painting: the fabled Draxian Paint Chart [there's usually a link on the right sidebar], which uses simple colour-coding on a basic Excel spreadsheet.

It's a self-explanatory system, but rather pleasingly I've been able to share it with the wider wargaming world through my article - here's a link to the entirely excellent magazine [link here] ...and here are the rest of my painting charts, as they stand in March 2018:

My Main Guys!

Their Late-War Foes (and the key again)

The Early-War Germans (late-1940/Sealion theme)

My Rock Apes, for Italy/NW Europe

And of course, my (recently expanded) Desert Rats

...and in 15mm, the discovery of Battlegroup has led me to revisit and start to slightly expand my old Flames of War models - also 4KSLI:

It should be noted that I do also have a small15mm Bolt Action reinforced platoon, with the troops on separate (fivepence) bases, but they've not got their own chart yet.

Until next time, then...

- Chris

626 - Battlegroup - Attempt 2

Yup. 

Rolled out the ol' 15mm goodness again a fortnight ago, and gave Battlegroup another go with Guy.

We used the same same forces as before, but this time I had the advantage of having found/purchased and briefly even read the rules.

My lot. A platoon plus of 4KSLI.

The German end of the board.
Points for spotting the downed
Auster AOP objective!

It was a lot more successful. It was still slowed down by lots of cross-referencing of rules and stats, but it was fun and it looked pretty. After some initial bad luck, the British air support and 25pdrs managed to win it on points before we ran out of time.

The objective near my end.

2 Shermans Vs 3 Pz.IVs? Pah!

Next time, we'll be even MORE prepared!

TTFN, 

- Drax

606 - Trying 'Battlegroup' in 15mm

(or, 'I Can't Believe It's Not Flames Of War')

"Achtung - Jabo!"

Hullo, All.

Last week I managed to secure a night's gaming, and as Guy wanted to introduce me to something new, we went for 'Battlegroup' in 15mm...which if nothing else would be vindication for me not selling off my Flames of War army!

11AD in 15mm. For those of you newer to the blog, this is
the older of my 'historical' forces, but it's a company-sized
facsimile of my platoon-scale 28mm Bolt Action force!
Hearty thanks to Justin for permitting me to use his pics.

Battlegroup is very specifically divided into separate sub-games for the different theatres, so we went for 'Battlegroup: Overlord' for some 1944 Brits Vs Germans action at 'platoon' level: we both had a platoon of troops, a squadron of tanks and assorted support units, which was a perfect level for an intro game...

...what we didn't have was the rules. 

- We had three different theatre supplements (including - thankfully - Overlord) but not the core rules, so we had to blag those from a mix of 90% stuff Guy mostly remembered and 10% stuff I'd briefly read about beforehand. 

25pdrs are reassuringly versatile in BG...

...and the rate of fire from these buggers
against ground targets is vicious!

To this end, I won't go mad on what exactly happened, but suffice it to say that we had a good clash. When we called time, I'd clearly won 2/3 objectives, but I'd also accumulated one more 'point' than Guy (this is a Bad Thing in Battlegroup) so it was a happy draw overall. 

My FOO team took their grass with them! 

Time for some more pics, then my reflections...

The central objective: burnt-out tank by the building

The Germans advance on the objective

My miniature gun-line

3RTR loses a Sherman to the Panzers

Highlight of the game: RAF to the rescue!

At the end of the game, Guy realised that we'd missed out some fairly fundamental stuff, which might've helped some things to make a bit more sense, but overall it didn't matter at all. 

As I suspected, I much preferred the game to Flames (which tends to slow right down to a grind mid-game), and I look forward to playing it again. "Once more with feeling!" ...or at least, with the rules! 

Cheers,

- D.