Show and Tell 25 January: US Army in Tunisia, 1943

Inspired by James and Andy I have started to paint up a stack of Pendraken 10mm World War II stuff that Andy bought me for Xmas (or was it Birthday?) last year. The plan is to have a go at Blitzkrieg Commander, but the rules are basically an excuse for me to paint up these super vehicles. This has been another experiment in speed painting, this time using coloured spray paints to both prime and 'paint' the figures (Monstercolors Khaki), then simply painting on the tracks (in umber) and drybrushing overall. Similarly the bases were based with Tetrion and flock, then sprayed (Monstercolours Olive), drybrushed and the tanks then epoxied to the base. I did all the tanks on and off over one day at the weekend and I've based and sprayed up all the infantry. If I get another reasonable run at it this coming weekend I should have done getting on for 30 vehicles and 15 or so infantry bases in a small number of hours.

The photos show the ubiquitous Shermans, both 75mm (above) and 76mm (below) variants.

Steam, 19 January

At Adrian's for the first outing of Kieron's new game 'Steam' (after a rapid show and tell of new Xmas games Tribune, Stone Age, Navegador and Kingsburg - all which look good).

Steam has echoes of Railway Rivals in terms of building track to link cities and towns - with extra costs for terrain features and joining up with others' track. But adds to this with the need to earn revenue from moving goods along the track from one city to another plus various special ability tiles which allow a benefit in the current turn and set the player order for the next.

In our game James found himself shut out of the track building in the early stages because of his starting player order; Adrian and Deej rapidly got into the black by building elements of track which allowed early goods shipments. Kieron's looping central route vied with Stu's for dominance, whilst Adrian pirated (or even depredated) James' goods, allowing Deej to build his route into a corner and bring on valuable goods there that he could then ship to his own cities. In the endgame, Adrian left conversion of dollars to victory points a turn or two too late, Stu and Deej racked up huge scores whilst Kieron and James steamed over blocked routes. The final scores were Deej 54, Stu 47, Adrian 45, Kieron 38 and James 35.

Whilst clearly a good game with lots of potential, for five players there was a fair amount of down time and a sticky wicket for the players that ended up by chance as playing last in the first turn.

Show and Tell 16 January: Zulu War British

Black Powder requires casualty markers to indicate morale states for units. I haven't ever previously done casualty figures but I'll play along this time (and they worked well when we played Jonathan's Tex Mex game) so here are the first two for the 24th Foot - accompanied by a Company Officer to fend off the Impis with his splendid moustaches as the rest of the column rallies round...

Show and Tell 12 January 2011: 8th Army

I'm painting up Monty's 8th Army ready for World War 2 North Africa desert action with Andy's Afrika Korps.  I've got lots of tanks and vehicles in the games room and in the post, but I've started with infantry.

Here's the first batch with (from the front) 3" mortar crews and medium machine gun crews, behind that three bases with Thompson SMGs and three with Brens.  And in the background (and below) sixteen bases of infantry with rifles.

This is what they look like close up.  Not too bad if you keep in mind that they are only 10mm tall!  This scale is equivalent to N scale in model railways or between 1/140-1/160, making the tanks around 30-40mm long.

Show and Tell 9 January: 15mm Medieval French

I agreed with Andy to get stuck into doing a Medieval French army for Field of Glory which would represent the French at Agincourt - Andy going longbowtastic and doing the English. So, starting with the lowliest members of the host, eh voila a battlegroup of French peasant levies. It's compulsory to either have a horde of these or some medium foot swordsmen. The hordes may turn out to pants but my gosh they're cheap - an 8 element battle group for 16 points. The majority of the figures are Corvus Belli Hundred Years War armed peasants, but there are some Two Dragons and Essex peasants, Essex monks and bored looking minder on the horse, plus a lone Peter Pig 'Rude Medieval' (mooning foot soldier) - not sure if these are still being produced, but very necessary for taunting the English.

Chicago Express - 5 January 2011

I've just been tidying up the study and came across some scores for Chicago Express.  It's not yet six weeks since we played this but my memory is a little hazy on it, perhaps in part because we played another new railway game just a fortnight later, Steam.

I remember it had a similar building cost and mechanism to Railway Rivals but a clever system of buying stocks in railway companies so, like Imperial, Red wasn't always me, and Green not always Andy, for example.

It played quite quickly and of course the winning strategy in one game was almost guaranteed not to work a second time, and I recall each game being quite different.  The first game everyone got thirty-something points with James reaching 58.  The second game had lower scores with Adrian just scraping into double figures and Andy winning on 36 points.  The third game saw everyone getting high points but with Kieron a good way ahead with 60 points.  I'd like to play this again soon.

(posted 14/2/11 but date reset to put in proper order in the blog)

Show and Tell 5 January: 28mm Zulu War Zulu Skirmishers

First show and tell from me in 2011. This is the first unit of Zulu rifle-armed skirmishers for Black Powder. The figures are by Redoubt (including the ones below in captured jackets) with 2 Old Glory chaps sneaking in at the back - and aiming a bit high methinks...

Battle of the Bulge - 30 December 2010

Back to Jonathan's for another big WW2 game, this time the Relief of Bastogne over Christmas 1944, part of the Battle of the Bulge.  We were greeted by a 4'x12' table covered in scenery and dozens of figures and vehicles waiting for deployment.  Jonathan had resisted the temptation to dust the entire table in icing sugar to recreate that winter wonderland feel but there was enough snow outside to keep us happy.

Here's the setup on the first turn.  Patton's 4th Armoured Division are entering the near edge, aiming to break through the German-held Sibret to link up with the American's occupying Bastogne in the centre of the table.  The German Panzergrenadiers (and others) are entering in the far left corner, intending to clear the outlying buildings and destroy the American's holding Bastogne.

Sadly, Adrian couldn't make it at the last minute, so Jonathan's cunning plan was for him to play the Defenders (Germans in Sibret, Americans in Bastogne) with James as Patton and Andy as the attacking Germans.  This worked well without slowing us down too much and also meant that: we each had our own areas of play to deal with; Andy got his wish of not having to play on the same side as James(!); and Jonathan was guaranteed to be on the winning side(!!).

James first mistake was not sending any infantry into the building on the very edge of the game board.

Fortunately, the chap inside with the Panzershreck bottled it and ducked out the back door.  James continued bringing on his tanks regardless since his figures weren't aware of the German even if he was, and subsequently the Panzershreck fired on Sherman bulldozer but didn't take it out.  The Sherman's MG made short work of the German.

James also brought tanks on the right hand side in a formation now known as the Artillery Deathwish.  They survived to split up into more sensible formation and it was the jeep on the road that took the artillery hit.

On the other side of Bastogne, Andy's troops started to advance after pulverising with artillery Jonathan's paratroopers holed up in the buildings in Champs.  Those out in the open started having firefights across the hedgerows.

Jonathan's artillery was similarly effective - taking out one of Andy's Stugs (although the other had a free rein to drive into town without any paratroopers left to threaten it) and having a devastating effect later in the game as Andy's infantry pressed on towards Bastogne.

Back in Sibret, American artillery was taking its toll on the German defenders.  But as proper daylight hours approached, there was worse in store...

Avoiding the church (this time at least - it did turn out to be full of Germans!), the airstrike dropped two medium bombs on one building and strafed the other with MG fire.  Very satisfying!

With the town softened up, the Americans moved in and occupied it.  As the Germans did with Champs on the other side of the board...

This is where Jonathan's (American) artillery was particularly lethal and Andy's Germans started to thin out on their approach to Bastogne.

The Americans pushed on beyond Sibret and started successfully clearing the bunkers of German defenders.  On the other side of Sibret, Andy's 88 and Panzershrecks slowed but couldn't stop the rest of the tank command making progress.  It was then that Andy brought on his Panzer IVs around Hermanville - just visible on the left hand side below:

The Panzers did some damage but were heavily damaged themselves by American artillery and tanks, and couldn't hold back Patton's advance.

This final photo shows the good progress the Germans had made through Champs and Hermanville to reach Bastogne but in the foreground American tanks have breached the German defences and relieved Bastogne.  A victory for the Allies!

Thanks again to Jonathan for organising and setting up the game.  Lots of fun.