Second piece of loot from Colours was a pond from Debris of War.
This is shown here with a couple of bases of Polish infantry for scale purposes.
Lovely bit of kit. Not on the Debris of War website, so I'm assuming it was made up just for the show. Whatever, it cost me £10.50 and I'm very happy with it. DoW also do movement trays, resin walls, the odd building: lots of different stuff really, well worth a look.
Expect to see the pond appearing in many AARs to come!
First of the loot from Colours: some slightly different buildings to round out my Russian village.
Hadn't seen these before: they are a selection of five laser-cut MDF buildings from a company called RedVectors that market through Minibits.net.
As you can see, there are two different houses, two different open-fronted barns, and a pig pen with fence.
They go together very nicely (not quite as nicely as the 4ground or Sarissa stuff that I have already, but very nicely all the same) and are a great way of adding a bit of variety to your hamlets.
How do they directly compare? Well, I prefer the 4ground roofs, and I think that the RedVector houses look a bit gingerbread, but the open-fronted barns and big pen are just fantastic. Here's a couple of comparison shots with a 4ground Russian shack:
Yes, they look a bit different...but not enough to matter on the 15mm wargames table. I shall probably use the barns and pigpen all the time, and save the houses for when I need to represent a hetman's hut or something different to the run-of-the-mill shacks.
As regards price, the five buildings together cost me £18, or about £3.50 each. 4ground come in at a whopping £8.50 for one house, down to about £7 each for their collections. Yes, 4ground are "better" (more detailed, I prefer the roofs) but £18 for five buildings is a really, really great price.
Incidentally, the RedVector/Minibits buildings also come in a ruined variety, at £15 per pack:
In all, these get a huge thumbs-up from me: a change to the 4ground buildings; I love the open-fronted barns and pigpen; and the price is excellent.
Highly, highly recommended.
Another great 6mm IABSM AAR from Mark Luther. This scenario involves the Germans advancing into a hail of fire from Soviet anti-tanks guns...and then there's the JS-IIs to contend with as well. I'll play the Soviets please!
Click on the pic below to see all:
For those who are interested, I will be at Colours tomorrow, Saturday 16th September, probably for most of the morning.
For those wishing to join me, you can find details of the event by clicking here. At only £6 entry, it's got to be worthwhile, either as a shopping trip or a chance to see the demo games. I personally can't stand the venue, but the show is always good.
Another brilliant Lebanon 1982 battle report from Anton Ryzbak's blog, Anton's Wargame Blog.
This AAR, from 2012, covers the further adventures of the Israeli column featured in his last two games, and is actually written by fellow player Justice and Rule.
The report features vast numbers of pictures (seventy-five in all!) showing off some of the wonderful terrain they were using. Viewing is highly recommended. Click on the pic below to see all:
Morning all. This is what happens when I leave the Challenge for more than a week: huge numbers of entries!
That's all good though...the more the merrier...but it would be nice to see some of the less frequent contributors upping their, er, contributions. Come on everybody: it's September already. Time to get those points totals up to record levels. All you have to do is beat what you did last year by one point...
Anyway, onto today's entries. In no particular order we have:
As usual, clicking on the name above will open their gallery in a new window. I'll update the Scorecard tonight.
Here are today's pictures:
28mm British Softskins from Jason Ralls. Loving the windows.
Going down: 15mm Polish tanks from Jon
Continuing the descent: micro armour SdKfz's from Derek Hodge
War wagons of a different sort: Hittite chariots and infantry from Sapper
You may remember that when I posted James Tree's AAR using the A Canadian VC scenario from the rulebook, I posted links to all the other battle reports using the same set up.
Well, James had a look at some of them, and decided he hadn't quite played the scenario correctly...so there was nothing for it but to play the game again.
Click on the pic below to see how it worked out this time: take two!
Fellow Lardy Norseygamer has been working his way through a Bashnya or Bust! campaign.
Here's his latest battle report: the Germans, fresh from their victory Near Osen, now try and take the village and ford of Sorok.
Click on the pic below to see all...
Just realised that some of the army lists in the Quadrant 13 section needed updating...so I've updated them.
First up is a new list covering Khurasan's Tah-Sig: some very non-human aliens for which there are figures to represent a nicely scoped out platoon. No vehicles yet, but the infantry are cracking.
Here's the particle cannon team from Khurasan's website:
Click on the pics to go to the relevant manufacturer's website
Secondly, I've updated the Xar list to take into account the relatively new Xar infantry on flying saucers, and the fact that I've equipped mine with vehicles from Critical Mass/Ral Partha's Kaamados Dominion range.
The pic on the right is a shot of the saucer chaps in the raw, as it were, straight from GZG's website.
I haven't linked here to the pdfs of the relevant army list: how boring would that be! You'll need to vsisit the Q13/Army Lists page to get them.
Great battle report from Mike Whitaker from a game he played recently: British infantry and armour assaulting German positions in Italy.
Mike's blog Trouble At T'Mill is also recommended reading.
Click on the picture below to see all.
It's hard to keep track of all the manufacturers of 15mm sci-fi figures: old ones keep disappearing or being acquired by other people, new ones spring up all the time.
Here's one new one whose website went live only about a week ago: Boon Town Metals.
Describing themselves as a niche figure manufacturer, they currently have two ranges: cyberpunk orcs (with a few other bits and pieces included) and sci-fi dwarves.
I have, of course, immediately purchased some of their dwarves. As you all know, my opinion is that, whenever you see miniatures that you like, you should buy them immediately as, if you don't, they can disappear from the scene without warning (e.g. Cactus dwarves where are you now?) so we'll see what these are like in the flesh.
Anyway, good luck to Boon Town, and hopefully they will be around for a long time.
Rather than immediately clear away the rather nice set up for the For the Honour of France game played a couple of weeks ago (click here to read the AAR, opens in a new window), I decided to use the same scenario for a game that I was umpiring between John and Dave that took place last weekend.
A very different game from last time. Click on he pic below to see all:
Here they are at last: the second Polish infantry platoon. These are a mix of Forged in Battle and Battlefront figures, but mostly FiB.
Love the Poles as an early war army, but thirty-six man platoons are a killer to paint, especially as they're all in khaki! Only one more platoon to go now.
It will soon be time to start on the armour. I'm just waiting for PSC or Zvezda to produce Vickers and/or 7TP tanks, as I need about three squadrons worth, which could get rather expensive if I go the Battlefront route.
Another quick battle report from James Tree, first posted on the IABSM Facebook page.
Here, the German panzers steam forward only to be met by a storm of fire from Soviet tankers in reply. Click on the pic below to see all...
Here are this week's entries into the TooFatLardies Painting Challenge:
As usual, clicking on the name of the submitter, above, will take you straight to their gallery (opens in new window)...and keep them coming: it's September already!
Today's piccies are below:
Mounted Samurai from Mr Haines
Where they will end up if they are not careful, from Mr Duffell
Superb 3D printed stone barn from Treadhead
Ship's boats from Chris Stoesen
Whilst I was waiting for my Battlefront bases to arrive (to finish my second Polish infantry platoon - do keep up!) I decided to start on one of the four sci-fi armies that I have in my lead mountain.
Yes, ridiculous to have four entire armies in the mountain, but I've learnt that you have to buy them when you see them in case the manufacturer goes under whilst you're still vacillating over whether to buy them or not!
Anyway, the chosen race was Khurasan's Tah-Sig: part of their Zantin Reconquest range. They are described as:
The Tah-sig are radically different from humans from a biological perspective, using liquid nitrogen as a solvent rather than water, and therefore living in a much colder environment. They are also burrowers rather than surface dwellers and rely on hearing more than sight as their primary sense. The Tah-sig have eyes but their main sense is hearing, and this is as acute, precise, and long-ranged as the human sense of sight. Their armoured environmental suits have built-in aural enhancers mounted on either side of their helmets to amplify and fine-tune this, and to prevent enemy disruption. The suit also has vision enhancement (the faint blue vision slots being visible in the recesses on either side of their helmets), but even when enhanced the vision of a Tah-sig is not equal to the unenhanced sight of a human.
The current range of figures covers only infantry, but is nicely thought out in terms of the company and platoon OB.
Here's the first couple of infantry sections:
Now to start thinking about what vehicles to go with them...
One of the things I love about being a scenario writer is seeing how different people interpret the scenarios that I write: how do they translate my maps to their tabletops, how do their players handle the tactical challenges set for them.
I enjoy all this not just with my scenarios but with all scenarios, so it's nice to see the eleventh battle report for a game using the A Canadian VC scenario from the IABSM v3 rulebook: this one posted onto the IABSM Facebook group by James Tree.
I hope he doesn't mind, but I've also reproduced the whole AAR here as well. Click on the pic below to see all...then perhaps go back to the main AAR page to compare and contrast how the other ten games looked and played out.
Here's a great IABSM after action report from the somewhat surprisingly named Miniature Bastards* Russian-language blog by Valderech.
I haven't been able to make contact with Valderech, so I hope he doesn't mind me reproducing his entry here, but his game looks absolutely superb and deserves a wide audience.
As for the accompanying words, I have tried to convert the gobbledegook that Google Translate came up with into something resembling good English, so for any clumsy phrases etc, blame me.
Click on the picture below to see all:
*Now whilst my little men do sometimes let me down (my orders are always clear, my tactics always sound!) I'm not sure bad language is called for!
Regular readers might remember that the chaps at Gaming Models in the US sent me some of their 15mm Polish models to have a look at. A previous post dealt with the Polski FIAT truck, now let's look at the Ursus wz.29 armoured car.
The wz.29 was supposedly obsolete at the start of the German invasion, having been largely replaced by the wz.34. All remaining wz.29's were attached to Polish units in the Modlin area, and fought against the reconnaissance elements of Panzerdivision Kempf and infantry from the SS Deutschland regiment. Despite their apparent obsolescence, the wz.29's fared better than their more modern counterpart: mainly because in addition to the standard MMG, they had a 37mm gun in what must have been a very crowded turret.
So what of the model? Very nice really, and good value at $5 (£3.80) a time. The detailing on the gun is quite difficult to bring out but, as I said, it is a very small turret, and I'm even considering gluing it in place so it doesn't get lost.
That said, the detailing on the wheels makes the tyres really easy to paint, and you can see how the various doors and hatches come out with a bit of dry-brushing.
The model above was sprayed green, then had the bone and brown camouflaged patches brushed on. A brown wash followed, then a very light bone drybrush focusing on the edges.
Recommended.
I'm not a fan of painting huge numbers of infantry. I love painting a squad here or a squad there, but table-topping an entire company of three platoons of, say, thirty men each, plus light supports, drives me absolutely crazy.
I like to try and do a good job on every figure, but doing 100 good-jobs without going mad is proving more and more difficult as time goes by.
Fortunately, I have already collected most of the WW2 figures that I will ever need (just Afrika Korps and Desert Rats to go!), and as my current non-WW2 focus is sci-fi and moderns, with their smaller, more powerful units, I'm hoping not to be troubled by the 100-plus malaise any more.
So you can imagine how frustrated I was today to finish my penultimate platoon of 1939 Polish infantry (that's three squads of TWELVE men each) and discover that I have run out of 'biscuits of death' bases on which to mount them!
Yes, I had enough small bases to mount the light mortar team, but not enough medium-bases-with-the-holes-in-them for the main platoon.
Obviously I have ordered some bases for tout-suite delivery, but I still cannot get the instant gratification that I require...and require now!
What frustrates you about painting miniatures? Comment below please...
Plenty of entries still flooding in for this year's painting challenge. Plenty of time for you to get painting and photographing if you haven't entered anything so far.
Here, in no particular order, are this week's entries:
As always, clicking on the names above will take you straight to their gallery (opens in a new window).
Here are today's pictures:
Loving the Zen garden from Andy Duffell
Hittite chariots from Sapper
Carole's African Huts in 28mm
Just some of Matt's Deathguard
Mervyn's Saracens
Me gaming...actually it's some of Stumpy's basing
Really, Ralph? Really?
Vis Lardica is a website devoted to wargaming and military history, with a special emphasis on the company-sized rulesets produced by the TooFatLardies: I Ain't Been Shot Mum (WW2); Charlie Don't Surf (Vietnam); and Quadrant 13 (science fiction)
Welcome to Vis Lardica, a not-for-profit website mostly dedicated to the company-sized wargaming rules produced by the TooFatLardies, but encompassing my other gaming interests as well.
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