On the painting table

As I predicted a few weeks ago, painting would slow done significantly after last month's bmper harvest. With all the other gaming related activities (and real life) taking up most of my time I have hardly touched my brushes and have finished only three figures so far. And that was more because they were figures that I had meant to finish in January. The little bit of time I did spend painting were used on my Space Marines and my Russians for Blitzkrieg Commander.


After I built up my infantry forces I decided to focus on my vehicles. I cleaned, mounted and started on my SU122s and 152s and I hope to rebase my T34/85s to the club standard of 20 by 40mm bases before adding the finishing touches. Given my limited available time this is looking more and more ambitious every day...

The other project, my "finish 100 points of SM each month" challenge is progressing slightly better. But that is the result of looking up points values in the latest edition of the codex. I was working with my 4th edition copy to get a rough idea of what I would need to paint, but checking the latest edition I found that the costs have gone up for infantry while vehicles are now slightly cheaper.



This meant that my force commander, a lowly captain, has gone from 65 to 100 points. January goal reached! And with a five man squad jumping from 75 to 90 points all I have to do is finish the weapons and backpacks of the four troopers (the sergeant is finished) in the second row to meet this month's deadline.

All I have to do this, is next weekend and one day off work next week. And then it's off to Reihndahlen for "Action 2010"....

Blitzkrieg Commander Week

Last Tuesday we held a BKC day at our club, the first time I played the game. A rather enjoyable game as I discovered. The basic mechanics of the game are easy enough, allowing you to focus on the tactics rather than the rules. Of course, winning the game most likely helped raising the enjoyment factor a few notches ;-)

It was a straight up 2000 point meeting engagement without artillery or air support. I played late war Russian vs Germans. Damn, those T34/85s rock! Better range, more attacks, more hits than the average German tank. After about two turns all but one of the StuG were destroyed, the last one being on a side of the battlefield that was rather dormant throughout the game. My opponent managed only two activations in the first six turns, leaving me to concentrate on the center and left flanks.

Tomorrow I'll be going to play as late war German vs Brits in a demo game we'll be playing at the open door of "The Heavy Brigade", another wargames club in Belgium. I'll be using our club presidents troops as my Russians still have a long way to go to be demo game quality. As you can see in the picture. But slowly they are getting painted...