Thursday, August 29, 2013

Hobby Rundown

Well, it is the end of the month and looking into the next few months of things I want to do/get done...

Ordering:
1) Order some Old West MDF buildings and build some from scratch.

2) Order some extra French and German WW2 goodness, mostly just filler items like Calvary (German and French), French Resistance, some odd and end vehicles to round out my forces.

3) Order the Dropzone Commander city set to get ready for Robotech to arrive.

4) Order some Vallejio airbrush paint and some of the new Badger Miniture paint.

5) Order the Pegasus Bridge that Warlord is going to put out...ouch this is going to be EXPENSIVE!
(see my prior post)

Just ordered:
1) Some paint, the French/Allied book for Bolt Action, the P-16 French Armored car and some other goodies for a friend of mine.

2) Placed another order prior with some French stuff to bolster my army and the new German Pioneers with the new gas masks.

Working on:
1) Judge Dredd Ape Gang: Got just about everything, or at least enough for a good start. I primered and started to paint some of the figures.

Down the center there is a bunch of the Apes for my gang.

Close up of some WIP


2) Invasion of Normandy set for Bolt Action: This is my SARGE demo kit so I need to get it up and done within the next few weeks to start doing some demos. Maybe if I do enough demos I can build up credit to pay for for the Bridge set. I did manage to airbrush some green onto the Americans to get them started. I have since gone back touched up the green, added some skin tones and started to put the Field Grey on the Germans.

Americans, just have some basic green (airbrushed, then brush touch up) and some skin tones.

Germans, painting the field grey on the jackets.

3) Bolt Action: With the French and my German vehicles just slowly being painted. The Alpine Chaussers while I waiting for my paints (and to order a few more) are the only French unit I am working with as I have most of the colors for this one. There isn't anything else left German wise until the Pioneers arrive save for two medium machine gun teams.


Alpine Chaussers WIP

4) Old West: I have about 20ish figs left to finish painting, just finished 4 the other night and hope to snap some images to post up later. Each of the others are in various stages of being completed.

Teaser of the figs I am almost finished with.

A fistful of lead! Or whatever metal that is used now!

5) Supersystem 3: Started to sort a huge lot of Clix and grabbed a few other figures I wanted from the Battlezone and have since started to repaint some of them. Images up soon!

Random shot of one lot I am working on....

Head swap on Destiny with a Crossover head.

Another head swap with Magneto as he choice.

6) Learn to use my new airbrush that I got off Ebay. For $30 it isn't a half bad purchase and it is giving me some valuable experience.

Not bad, gravity fed, double action, adjustable pressure in the rear. I got extra needles and a nylon hose among other items. My only complaint was that there was a crack in the case from poor packing by the seller.

Tiger I that I was toying with....

The stripes are very light and hard to see here due to a crappy camera and lights.

Waiting on Kickstarters:
1) Word has it that the Crossover 2 miniature rewards should be in soon and will be ready to ship! Looking forward to seeing the latest from Rusti!

2) Robotech pledge manager closes next week on Tuesday due to the holiday weekend. I already pledged some extra money for a MAC II and some Armored Veritechs to go with my Showdown pledge which is an insane amount of models. They claim they claim to deploy earlier in Oct/ Nov before Xmas but I am not very hopeful. They just emailed us today and said they are pushing it BACK AGAIN to September 10th because some people can't make up their minds and others wanted to wait for another pay check o grab extra stuff. This KS was finished in MAY! You have had JUNE-JULY-AUG to SAVE UP! Instead people are being stupid and Palladium is being a dumbass and allowing this. Guess what, congrats dimwits for being unable to make up your mind you just DELAYED US MORE! Really, I am going out of town this weekend, I had my extra pledges planned out and I asked to be already charged and in the clear before we left on vacation. Pure and simple, plan your shit out.....*sigh*

3) Guardian Chronicles: This is to me the real silver lining to all the Kickstarters. This just looks like a kick ass (no pun intended) board game with tons of minis I can use in Supersystem 3 as well. The game just appears to be stellar and the pledge manager is open right now but should be closing out soonish. With luck they will make the October deployment deadline and release the expansion stuff just a bit later....




Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Bolt Action: Pegasus Bridge (image out for the set)


I feel like I am going to have to get a second job....I can only imagine how much this will cost, about $200 at least from what I read prior.

Here is a shot of said bridge from a lucky git that got one of the "Golden Tickets" at the Warlord Games Day!

SONY DSC

Monday, August 26, 2013

750 Bolt Action Tournament at the Battlezone!

My friend Chris and I loaded up and took a road trip down to Avon Park to the Battlezone to play in their 750pt tournament. Chris brought the British Desert Rats and I pulled together my German Heer army to lend a hand to the axis side. After a 2 hour drive we arrived at the Battlezone! Not your typical gaming club location! Ed the owner is a great guy and John the local SARGE for Warlord ran a fantastic tournament!



My list was:
2nd Lt with 1 extra man with Assault Rifles
1 Pioneer Squad of 5 men with a flamethrower
2 Squads of Veteran Grenadiers with 4 Assualt rifles and a rifle in the squad. One squad had a Panzerfaust.
1 251/16 Flamethrower Halftrack
1 Puma
1 Veteran Sniper Team
1 Regular Truck

The store had amazing scenery offering a variety of tables including several city/town based ones! Check them out!






Game 1: Top Secret- Josh (British)

Josh had:
Lt with 2 extra men with rifles
2 full sized Veteran squads with LMGs and rifles
Cromwell Tank
Greyhound
Artillery Observer 

Meet Josh!

I lost the dice off for sides, not which was a huge factor in this game as both table edges was filled with rough terrain and buildings. My opponent picked his side of the table and I setup my sniper after he picked a spot for his Artillery Spotter.

The first two turns was mostly us moving our units onto the table with my Puma taking a shot at his Greyhound and missing. He did not recce with his, his tank tried to nail the Puma but it fell back into the ruins and popped out again on turn 2 to fire and miss yet again! Josh dropped his Artillery strike on the first turn placing it in the most direct route to the objective. He had deployed his two squads and officer close to one another ready to move over the bridge and grab the objective. Most of my other squads closed into the ruins except the truck that had the Pioneers and one of the Grenadier squads, in retrospect I should have had the officer in there as well, but it didn’t make a huge impact. The truck after making it out of rough terrain first turn was able to roll up behind a pile of rubble to avoid being shot by most things, and then I waited.


Turn 3-4 is when the poo hit the fat for my opponent. My sniper took out his forward observer. My 251/16 showed on turn 3 and fired a flame shot at both the Greyhound and tank on my right side. Both took a pin marker but both also passed their tests to avoid panic. The 251/16 had the luck of the angels as both the Greyhound and tank missed it, at this point I doused both shots on the tank as the Puma took out the Greyhound.  The tank held firm. At the end of turn 3, I slid the truck over the bridge, had the Grenadier squad grab the objective (The German Secret Agent Helga with important war plans of the British) and the Pioneer squad jumped out and hosed one of the Veteran squads with a flamethrower and rifle shots point blank. They failed their test and fled the table. The top of 4 was critical to if the pioneers would die or not. The first dice pulled was mine! Yes! I hit the other squad; again my opponent lost another squad as the pin markers was a decent roll 3 or 4. Poof! Another squad dead leaving the officer and his two men and a tank with a few pin markers on it. My truck was already racing back to my table edge at this point and Josh conceded victory to me, I still wanted to see if I could move the truck off the table legally to see if it was a win or tie for us and the truck just made it to the edge at the end.

Game table for Game 1

Sniper takes up a good spot.

Lt and his adjunt advance!

The British prowl the field.

Attack of the 251/16!

Pioneers take the bridge! BURN!

Grenadiers grab Helga and make a break for the truck!

Random cool shot of one of the other players planes!

Game 2: Point Defense- Joseph (Japanese)

2 Lt’s 2nd (one man with rifle) Regular
2 Squads of 12 Japanese Grenadiers with rifles (Vet)
2 smaller 5 man squads of Grenadiers with Rifles (vet)
2 Medics (single man) (vet)
6 Suicide bombers (Inexp)

Joseph the Japanese!

We rolled for Attacker/Defender, I won and went Defender. I figured the Japanese as the Attacker would be tougher for him than for me. We setup our snipers and he placed his suicide bombers out, wow….this was going to be an ugly game.

We made a few mistakes as he placed some units out that should have started off the table and we missed preparatory bombardment as well. He slid his units back a run move so that was fine and I let him resolve the bombardment since we has just only pulled about 1/3 of the dice when we caught the issue.

This was a game of cat and mouse for most of the early turns. The 251/16 drove out from behind a building and fired on two squads. Alas, I rolled only 1d6 instead of 2d6 as I was thinking infantry instead of vehicle! It has been a few months since I have had an active game and really had a chance to use the 251/16. To me, this would have wiped the squads out faster and perhaps swung the game in my favor from a draw to a win.

His sniper kept missing and the only claim to fame for my sniper was killing an officer towards the end of the game. One of his smaller squads was down to 2 men ran into the church and was promptly ambushed by the Grenadiers in the building killing one. The lone Japanese trooper ran into the building and we went into a second round of hand to hand rolls before the sniper team killed the Japanese soldier and continued their sniper love.

I was able to shoot 5 out of 6 of the suicide bombs, setting Ambush works wonders to protect your vehicle from these instances. The disappointment was classic when I would down one, two and well the third finally made it around the corner and caught the 251/16 in the end and blew it to hell. Still it drew a great deal of attention and fear. One of the other classic moments was the suicide bomber charged out of a building at the Puma, which promptly backed up and around the corner. I had to show the player the rules that this is legal and to his shock failed to make contact! Next turn he tried to charge it again (cue up the Benny Hill music) and the Puma backed up again and shot him with the machine gun!

When the Japanese could assault it was ugly, very ugly. A heavy terrain board and a good player could really hand someone their ass in a game from my after game analysis.

The game ended on turn 6 with a squad that had gone down and had a bunch of pin markers on it, a medic and officer (I think) holding the one objective on my right. The middle one was contested by my officer with a truck parked near to prevent an easy charge on my officer. I had the Puma sitting on the other objective but sadly vehicles do not contest. I should look up if I could have tank shocked as it is a “light tank” classed scout car.

Japanese Snipers in the clock tower!


251/16 races forward to drive off the Japanese.

Germans and Japanese rumblein the streets.

Puma tries to drive off the Japanese from the objective!
Game 3: Hold Until Relieved- Angel (Germans SS)
His list:
Lt (Vet) 2nd with 1 man with Assault Rifles
2 units of 6 man SS Waffen Squad 2 ARs, 2 Panzerfausts, 4 Rifles (Vet)
1 Fallschirmager Squad of 5 men with 2 Panzerfausts, 5 rifles (Vet)
Heavy Mortar Team with Spotter (Vet)
Med. Machine Gun Team (Vet)
Panzerschreck Team (Vet)

Sniper Team (Vet)

Angel


He won the roll and opted to defend the church that was in the center of the board. He placed his sniper out, his observe and I had my sniper out (as per the rules for advance placement of these units). His two unit choices were a squad and a medium machine gun.

I setup my infantry, my vehicles in reserve; the truck was loaded with the pioneer squad, officer and a Grenadier squad.

This was a slap down and back and forth game. I quickly pushed to the church; the flamethrower fear from the Pioneer squad made his MMG team leave the church and was promptly shot apart between the Grenadiers on that side and the sniper team to finish off the last man. The other squad skirted around and found the truck racing to them dumping out everyone and plastering the squad to a single man.

Slowly his other units arrived and it was hit and misses at this point. I was holding the church but just barely and he had units advancing on it. My 251/16 was in flames due to his Panzerschreck team! Oh if the dice had been mine that team would have been toast as well as the squad near the church in the graveyard.

In retrospect, I should have pulled the truck out in front of the 251/16 keeping my vehicle closer to avoid it being destroyed and let it act as mobile cover for the half track. Lesson learned. Still it was classic to set the bell tower on fire and burn his sniper to nothing.

The game ended with a flat draw, he could have pushed those last 3 Pioneers out of the building he would have won but there was not enough time. Turn 6 and the game did not continue!

2 Draws and 1 Win. Not bad, still I feel if I had done the flamethrower rules right in the first game that it would have been a game changer. I think I made all fuel check rolls but I could not recall, I figure a marker may be in order to be a good reminder for an army of this theme. The last game could have been a winner for me if I had just done the truck gag and defended the 251/16 just in case I didn’t get the first die.

Still, it was a good time visiting the Battlezone, it was great to meet Ed and see John again as well as meeting new players and was very refreshing from player the old 40k burnout games with players obsessed with power gaming.

I look forward to September and heading back down for the 1k event! 

Germans Advance!

Hey! I thought we killed all those SS!

SS Adance to retake the church!

The bell tower was set on fire killing the sniper team.

The 251/16 advances in triumph! 
*yes, it is not painted yet, still have lots of work to do*

Oh hell! That was a Panzerschreck!

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Laughing Ferret Contest Plug

Amazing what you can find when you type in "plug and ferret"!

All humor aside, the above is a tragic thing that can happen to animals if the owner is not careful. So, take care and make sure your pets are always safe! On with the contest plug!

Laughing Ferret is doing a cool giveaway of 11 goodies! Drop on by and enter! 
Oh, just as a word of advice, check out his blog there are tons of cool things to check out!





Tuesday, August 20, 2013


Well, time to get down to business…monkey business! My friend Chris has had a spark of interest in Judge Dredd since Warlord has taken over distribution and handling of the game now. We had talked for a moment about it and the Call to Arms Star Trek game as some alternative games to try out. Chris has always been a fan of Dredd and also has really been impressed with Bolt Action by Warlord and feels that it is time to slowly say goodbye to GW and move on to other games out there.


After downloading the rules while we wait for the rules to be revised slightly and printed in a nice hardback. From what I understand mostly eye candy artwork and a few rules tweaks more than anything, nothing major in changes from my sweeps of the boards between Moongoose and Warlord.

Among the various gangs and my minis already in my collection, I have a few options for gangs including:
1)      Demonic Cabal – using various Strange Aeons cultists or 40k Chaos cultists.
2)      Street Gang – Using Necromunda Esher and Van Sarr
3)      Ape Gang – using the Ape gang a fellow blogger sent me
4)      Cursed Earth Desperados – Using Necromunda scavvies and some other figs
5)      Lone Vigilante – I have a ton of Super hero figs for Supersystem 3.
6)      Zombie Horde – super villain or Necromunda figure with various zombies I have.

In my readings it became apparent that some groups are more viable than others and thinking about the fact that Chris will have the Judges as his choice to play this could be a real challenge to find the right gang to be able to win games. Judges are loaded up with tons of weapons, most are heroes and some rules that could turn a game south quickly.

Demonic Cabal: Perhaps the worst of my choices. I am not impressed with this option. First, you only get one hero (the leader); no other members can ever rise to a hero spot from a minion, so no real access to skills or advancement options. The demons while good require you to summon and well, the summoning rules and chart does not inspire me. I am fine with a little random, but there is just a bit too much here.

Street Gang: Just two options Juves and Gangers, the big focus is being able to take a psyker and variety of weapons. The merc choices are also nice as with some clever skills you could slip something into your gang as a regular member of the gang instead of a temp member.

Ape Gang: Who doesn’t like monkeys? What strikes me is the mobility here, with some clever planning they could be melded with some skills and weapons into a dangerous gang.

Cursed Earth Desperados: another viable gang, mutants and desperados are your only two choices but you can take a psyker at least, plus there is a good amount of hero options and mutations you could add to bolster your stats.

Lone Vigilante: This could be a real challenge; one figure against x3 or x4 could lead to some epic games. Granted one mistake and POW Batman and you are out! I will save this for the future.

Zombie Horde: One character and a bunch of zombies. Not much flavor, just shamble forward and beat the hell out of the other player. Not much option here…we all love zombies but playing them? In the long run they would get tiring I think.

After some thought, the Ape gang was my choice and now it was time to develop it. After some number crunching I came to the understanding I would need more to round out some of the gang and conversions would not be very likely with how the gang was crafted. So, I went looking around and found Eureka miniatures has some Boiler Suit apes…with options I want! Plus I just found another ape from the Pulp City line with a minigun that was fairly cheap. Now, just to get one with a sword! There is one among the Pulp City line but wow, their stuff is EXPENSIVE for a single figure! Now, Reaper has some ape options, I do have Ape X but he is a bit huge for my needs, there is a cool Orangutan that is on a pole shooting I may grab also….

Here is what I got in the Ape Gang boxed set (I have the old one, not the new one):
Chimp with club
Chimp with Spit Pistol
Chimp with Laser Pistol (converted from a duplicate in the box above)
Chimp with Stump Gun
Orangutan with Sniper Rifle
Gorilla with club
Gorilla with double barrel Stump Gun (female in dress)
Gorilla with Spit Gun (wearing armor and grenades)


From Eureka I grabbed:
Boiler suit Gorilla with Flamethrower
Gibbon with RPG (chimp with rocket launcher)
Gorilla officer (has sidearm holster) (more than likely HTH and leader)

image

image

image



Ebay/Pulp City:
Chimp-Chi (Ninja Chimp with Katana and knife)
Gorilla with Minigun

painted example! not my work!




So that works to 3 Heavy Weapons (Rocket Launcher, Minigun and Flamethrower), a sniper rifle, a few hand to hand weapons and pistols with some Stump Guns and a Spit gun for ranges 10-20 for short range firefights. All in all a balanced list!

 Sadly Eurkea was out of stock of the Gibbon with the AK-47 and I would have had a cheaper minigun Gorilla as well. They do have a cool Gibbon set with mac submachine guns but I opted out to save a few bucks…maybe round 2. I glanced at the ape on the bike as well. If Chris wants to add vehicles then I will get one or two.

My friend just gave me his order for Warlord to get the boxed set of Judges to start with so in a few weeks we should have his judges in and we can get everything ready to a good ole brawl Judge Dredd style!

Monday, August 12, 2013

Unboxing Assault on Normandy Set

I received my Warlord Demo kit in the mail and thought this would be a fine opportunity to show new players what could perhaps be the best deal out there in the Warlord line for new players...

A nice heavy box! Great artwork!

The first item. A hardback rule book, not some small thin cheap booklet.

After the rules is a get started sheet, with a cardboard topper to protect the book and models.

Of course you can read the box or check online for the contents. Of course there are 20 American and 20 German figures, a ruined building, 8 dice (4/4 grey/green) and 5 accessory sprues.