688 - Painting Chart Updates (Part 1 - WWII)

Hullo All,

Well, I'm back at work (which sucks) but I'm also partway through a pretty productive summer!

I thought I'd mark this by updating where I am with all of my forces and projects, starting with the WWII 28mm stuff. Next post will be the Ancient and Dark Ages stuff, which has been...er...expanding rather rapidly of late!

So without further ado, this is where I am with my...

British 4KSLI (11th Armoured Division): 

(Here's the key, by the way)

The British Indian Army in the Desert:

British Paras:

German Early-War Heer:

German Late-War Heer Grenadiers: 

...and finally, the RAF Regiment and the (as yet unbuilt but nevertheless expanding) US Buffalo Soldiers:

Cheers,

- Drax.

672 - 2018 Winter Challenge: British Paras - FINISHED!

It's over! Hooray!

Yes, Gentle Readers, I have actually finished my 1000 point Bolt Action force of British pathfinders from 21st Independent Company. 

The platoon selector is taken from the 'Market Garden' book, and comprises the following:

Captain +1,
Medic,
3x Sections of 5 men each, with a Bren,
3x Snipers,
3x PIATs,
3x 2" Mortars,

Vickers MMG.

Command Group 

1 Section

2 Section

3 Section 

3 Sniper teams

3 PIAT teams

3 2" Mortar teams

Vickers MMG team

Obviously, this is a very unusual platoon for Bolt Action, but I'm looking forward to the challenge of playing with a pretty tough but super-short-range force... what I'll miss in armour, transport, numbers and free artillery, I'll hope to make up with resilience, leadership, and order dice: these 1000pts actually generate 15 order dice! Three lucky snipers can commit carnage, and three light mortars can put down a lot of smoke, plus, veteran "small teams" are notoriously hard to hit and kill.  In terms of expansion, the three sections will eventually be reinforced by five men apiece, but that's about it. 

For the record, I also finished off my RAF Regiment PIAT team and my 4KSLI medic:

Lots to follow soon, including more finished toys and a couple of my recent games. 

Cheers,

- Drax.

668 - 2018 Winter Challenge: British Paras! Days 16-32

Evening, All!

This screen-grab of my latest Draxian Painting Chart(TM), shows which
Paras are built so far [pink] and which are currently being painted [blue].

Again, mixed fortunes in the interim with regard to to the hurried painting to completion of my 21st Independent Coy Paras. On the one hand, my red ('Crusted Sore!') arrived and - although the pics below won't do it justice - it's PERFECT...

...and on the other hand, THIS arrived,  

...so naturally I had to both build all the vessels and play a game of it. Two more nights gone, and totally worth it. More on this second naval skirmish in a future post.

Then I did manage to get some painting done. Whist still waiting for the Crusted Sore I painted everyone's flesh and even managed to complete the painting on my RAF Regiment PIAT team:

It's hard to tell, but the fellows below now have the red-brown camo patches:

...and then, THIS happened: I had to dig out my Sikh and Destroy army for an early-war desert-themed event hosted by the entirely excellent Vital Ground Wargames Group up in County Durham:

I had to repack these to get them into my carry-on

My end of the 24ft-long table during Turn 1. I had a blast,
but - inevitably - this is for a future blogpost.

(Note the new mug)

I'm pleased to announce that - even with too many evenings squandered on my poxy day-job work - I believe that I should be able to get the remaining tropers FINISHED in 5-6 days.

Do I have this long until the end of January (my arbitrary time limit)? - Yes. Just. But already, REAL LIFE is threatening those remaining days (note that I'm typing here - not painting!) so I may run over time. C'est la vie, eh?

So there. I may well manage it, but I'm not going to break myself trying, that's for sure!

TTFN,

- Drax.

667 - 2018 Winter Challenge: British Paras! Days 9-15

Evening, All!

It's been a mixed week. I made a lot of progress to start with, and then realised - to my utter frustration, that I was missing a key colour: the red-brown for the camo. 

As you might be able to see from the test figure I did, below, (which is only about 90% complete) the brown is just too...brown. Rats.

So how, then, did I fill the time in my hour of need? Well firstly, I got all the green patches, helmets and equipment...

 ...including my 4KSLI medic and my RAF Regiment PIAT team, just because they were at hand (note the RAF shoulder flashes on the chaps at the back):

I also bought this paint rack for a few quid. It's basic, but fits inside my little hobby cupboard:

 ...and whilst I had the Russian Armour green out, I took the chance to prime and base-coat my Challenger A30 - more on this in another post, sometime.

I also finished off the last of the Sarissa MDF scenery I was putting together for Guy, for Beyond the Gates of Antares:

And finally - I quickly put together a small rocky outcrop with a simple automated lighthouse and hut for Cruel Seas:

Annoyingly, what makes this worse is that I thought I'd ordered the red-brown colour. The paints arrived today, and I didn't. That means an even longer wait, and so I'll have to work out what to do with the paras in the meantime: probably boots and flesh at least...

- Drax.

659 - New Bolt Action Scenario: Hasty Attack - Part 2

Hullo, and welcome to part 2!

To recap... I've been a busy beaver recently: not only have I got a bunch of modelling and painting done (details soon) but I've also been play-testing a scenario I wrote for Bolt Action. As I've played it twice now, rather than try to present two different battle reports as well as the scenario itself, I think I'll just outline the scenario in this post (with some pretty pics from Game 1 in the last post, here(link)) and then reflect on it a little in this follow-up post, with some more pretty pics from Game 2 to illustrate.

To re-recap...

The basic idea is that the attacker has to come on from two table edges to blindly advance to engage a defender whose forces are completely hidden practically anywhere on the table (marked on a map, rather than placed on the table) in order to take the centre ground. Both sides start with just half their units (either secretly deployed or in the first wave) and all else arrives from reserve. The attacker has a 20% points advantage and a preliminary bombardment on a 3+.

In the first game, I had attacked with my Heer against veteran British and lost badly. For this second game I was attacking again, but this time with my 4KSLI Brits against Steve's Germans...and I won!

The table during turn 1.
By this point my carrier has uncovered the hidden
Fallshirmjager (bottom-left) and then been rumbled by a
hidden PaK40 (mid-left). It died quickly. See pic below too:

The hidden PaK40. Effective camo net!

The Fallshirmjager killed off the passengers too, but were
themselves wiped out by more of my advancing recce screen.

Meanwhile, I also advanced in the centre, toward the objective ruins.

My Stuart Jalopy led the charge against the incredibly resilient
Fallschirmjager on the upper floor.

AND THEN, A SODDING-GREAT TIGER APPEARED FROM ITS HIDING PLACE. Below, you can see its owner - my opponent Steve - helpfully pointing it toward my troops. Git.

Suddenly, the Jalopy felt rather...vulnerable.

Beside the building, you can see my PIAT team edging bravely
forward to engage the Tiger. They hit it twice, but to no effect.
So it goes. 

Steve's last remaining squad deliver shooty-shooty death to the
brave PIAT team. For them, the war was over.

In comes the cavalry...
...but that 75mm gun also struggled against the Tiger, and the
blasted thing kept slinking away behind the cover of the ruins. Grrr.

With the Jalopy destroyed and the Cromwell (which could no
longer draw a bead on the big cat) distracted by spotter-hunting,
my lovely Staghound weighed in with its puny light AT gun.
Any port in a storm, eh?
Meanwhile, my Toms swarm the ruins, and mop up his infantry.

This was pretty much the end for the Germans as the boys from
4KSLI - supported by the RAF Regiment - stormed the ruin and
defeated the beleaguered defenders.

End game.

I'm not actually going to go into any more detail about the scenario itself, as I may yet publish it elsewhere, but it was brilliant to get a chance to play-test it a second time, and I was very grateful to the assistance and notes from Steve and Guy. Without a shadow of a doubt, I absolutely love, love, love advancing into a scenario when I know there is an enemy force lurking, but I've absolutely no idea what or where. 

So. Much. Fun.

I shall leave you with some of the pics I took of my troops, just because. 

Rock Apes, manning the carriers.

Thanks for swinging by,

- Drax.