Looking back on June, outlook for July

As some of the other blogs I follow do, I'll be doing a monthly report from now on. This might help me focus some more on whatever I want to do.

June was a good month for me when it comes to the "Less, More, More" idea. I didn't buy ANY figures at all, I only added four Perry Napoleonic British riflemen to the unpainted pile and these came free with Wargames Illustrated. Other than the standard magazines I bought one set of rules and the Toofatlardies Summer Special. Less spending: check!

Even though I didn't get round to painting all that much I still managed to finish quite a bit and the queue on my painting table is shortening rather nicely. The Wargames Factory zombies are advancing slowly but surely and my Blitzkrieg Commander Russians are finding ever more finished stands in their Order of Battle. This must the first month ever I painted more than I added to the unpainted pile! More painting: check!

And with the BKC campaign at the club I'v been playing almost every friday night. More playing: check!

So, looking back, June was good. Now what are my plans and ideas for the coming month?

Spending wise, it'll be more expensive but inthe end it will save me money. Now that Wargames Illustrated has been relaunched by Battlefront I'll be taking out a subscription. I was rather impressed with the new look and the content on FoW isn't too overpowering. And after buying it in the highstreet bookstore for more than eight Euro while it now has a cover price of only six Euro I am definitely feeling ripped off. If I can get a subscription at the cover price and get a box of free miniatures I'll be saving about 30%, not counting the cost of the figures.
This does mean the unpainted pile will grow next month with a box of Perry Nappy Brits and another blister of GHQ Russian infantry (should be ordered by a pal in one of the coming days).
Other than that I have no plans to buy anything (other than the standard magazines) so in all honesty, I am only buying the GHQ blister. Not too bad.

My painting will continue mostly with the zombies, I want to have all of them done by the end of the month, and my BKC army. I will also be picking up my Bloodbowl team again and try to finish them as well. They have been standing on my table half done for nine months or so, time to get the done. Plus I'll be doing the odd single figure to break up the monotony. And I'll be taking some days off this month, this ought to add to my painting time, when it's 30° outside it'll be nice to retire to my painting room as this is the coolest room in the house. If these temperatures hold for a bit, I'll be sleeping there on a bunk bed as well...

The BKC campaign will go on of course but the club is planning some other events on saturdays in July. We'll be playing a small Bloodbowl tournament and some guys from another club will be coming over with a Nappy battle, providing all the figures... Just show up and play, nice.

Come back in a month, then we'll see how everything turned out.

No more bitching about BKC

Yesterday evening we played two more games as part of the club Blitzkrieg Commander campaign. While the allies on the Western front fought the game to a draw, my Russian army beat the Germans to a bloody pulp. OK OK, so it were the German Nebelwerfers who did most of the pulping ;-)

I was defending in a Breakthrough attack scneario and as part of the field defenses I had bought a minefield that stretched all the way across the table. To my surprise the Germans left their engineers at home, those would have been my prime target. The Germans moved quickly in contact with the minefield and started crossing it. My opponent got a nasty shock at that time because he found out that he understood the rules incorrectly, infantry don't clear a path in a minefield, they all suffer from the effects of it.
After a few turns of moving into the minefield it was time to open fire and for the first time in weeks I managed to get in more than one command per HQ. The Germans lost something like a quarter of their infantry in a single turn of shooting, nasty. Of course, this meant that some of my troops were now visible and a volley of 15cm rockets was screaming towards the frontline. And then scattered right back on top of the German infantry in the minefield. Exit another quarter of the infantry. The whole German right flank was now destroyed.
Having nothing left to shoot at I tried to order my right flank to fire at a couple of units left in the open. Well, my command dice rolling was obscene this game. Even though I was ordering right acroos the table with a serious modifier, I ran out of targets to fire at before running out of commands.
Patrick had pretty much lost the game but he carried on, called on the nebelwerfers again only to see them mistaking a Hetzer for Russian troops and hitting that one. And the infantry right next to it. Exit the third quarter of his ground pounders.
At this time Patrick threw in the towel and we started rolling for the scenario for the next battle. At last we are moving into more mobile scenarios, so bye bye minefields etc...

This battle was also the third win I needed to conquer the Polish province we were fighting over, next battle I'll be moving one province deeper into Poland. This is the first area the Germans have lost in the campaign, giving me some serious bragging rights...

Painting Table Cleanup

My painting table looked more like the guys from Al Qaida had just paid a not so friendly visit, so it was time to clean and reorganize. This time I hardly moved anything into storage (only a few blisters of Perry ACW) so I'm left pretty much with what was there before. All in all not too bad or overwhelming. So what's on there? From bottom left you can see:

2 Perry British riflemen (from the June issue ofWargames Illustrated)
The Wargames factory zombies (all cleaned up and based and in different stages of completion)
Some street fight figures and scenery items (zombie fodder?)
A High Elf Bloodbowl team
A squad of Hydra Miniatures Galacteers
A handfull of plastic Perry ACW
A pair of Foundry old west gunfighters
Two Infinity Haq'islam troopers
A lone Wolfen
Some pristine street fight scenery
A Zvezda dragon (from their Ring of Rule game)
And in the boxes in the back my GHQ WW2 Russians

My main priority for the moment is off course the zombie horde that you can see coming out of the darkness in the picture below. Run, riflemen, run...

Blitzkrieg Commander Blues

Can anybody tell me why I keep saying that I prefer games that don't have the IGO-UGO style of play? Is it the unpredictability? The need for more tactical gameplay? Or do I have a masochistic side to my psyche?

After the last couple of games I tend to go for the last answer. With my talent for dice rolling I should better return to games that don't depend on rolling low to be able to do anything. My command rolls in the last two weeks were consistently poor. Getting even one command for every CO/HQ was a rare event, two actions for one command unit a rarity, do I have to mention three actions?

Two battles ago, we continued the club campaign 1875 Russians vs 750 Germans. No, wait, make that about 1300-1400 points as one of my commands passed its first roll on turn 5, yes five! This wouldn't have been so bad if my other commands managed to pull of two actions in a row. You know, firts action fire and suppress the enemy, second one charge and engage in combat. You can guess where that plan went south...
Meanwhile my enemy was able to pour massive amounts of fire into my troops, command after command after command... "Now for my fifth command roll, heck, that's been a very long time since I was able to say that..." After uttering these words, he then rolls a double one...
Needless to say I lost that battle, keeping it to a minor victory for the Germans by retreating out of range before the end of the battle to avoid reaching breaking point and giving the enemy a major victory.

Last Friday I played a small encounter battle vs one of the kids in the club (a few of them seem to be drawn away from the Evil Empire games by the sight of us old farts playing with these braille sized miniatures). In the center of the table was a village, this would be kind of the objective, the game being just a training exercise for Symen to get the hang of command rolls, firing, etc etc.
And yes, crappy command rolls were here again; Symen went first and his troops reached the outskirts of the village while I passed one! command roll. Half my force was sitting around doing nothing while the rest strolled leisurely forwards. By turn two the village was solidly in enemy hands and that was pretty much it. Any attempt to breach the defenses was met by, you guessed it, turns of three and four consecutive actions of firing...

Time to get those zombies finished, download Fear and Faith and get a few games killing hordes of shambling zombies...

Focus for June

Now that I have returned to the painting and gaming tables, I am also focusing a lot more than I did before. Right now that means I'm working on two projects: 1/300 WW2 and zombies. The first of those two has to do with the club's Blitzkrieg Commander campaign that I have mentioned in a few previous posts. Ever so slowly the first units are getting to the "completely finished" stage. Those GHQ minis have way too much detail... Means I end up doing webbing on 6mm figs... And touching up on the rims of tank rollers...


The batteries of my camera died so I had to take the picture without my flash. I do wonder how a sheet of white paper turns out pink in low lighting though ;-)

The second project is all about zombies. I'm working on those at a (for me at least) astounding pace. A first batch is completed, a second one nearly is while I'm busy putting the last miniatures together. Together with my gaming buddy we should have more than enough zombies between the two of us to run some games of All Things Zombie. Or "Fear and Faith", the newest game by Ganesha Games, based on the Songs of Blades and Heroes series and covering all kinds zombies, werewolves and what not. We'll probably end up playing FandF first.

A third project that is lingering out there is 15mm WW2 skirmish gaming. I had a squad of Russians mounted on 1 cent pieces standing around on my painting table for ooh, a year or so. Intended as a first squad for Battlefield Evolution: World at War, yet another one of those many started and abandoned projects of mine. For some reason or other I picked them up a week or two ago and got them done. I liked painting them so much that I nearly got some more of them out of storage to buid a viable force. But I am sticking to my two pet projects for now. Once my zombies are finished I'll pick them up again.

Stay tuned for more...

Blitzkrieg Commander Night

I'm off to the club again this evening, hoping that my Russian forces will kick German "arsch" once again. That would give me the third win needed to liberate the Polish province we've been fighting over for the last few weeks. This would also make me the first Allied player in the campaign to wrestle an area from the enemy...


For the fourth battle in a row we'll be playing the "deliberate attack" scenario. To deal with a dug in and invisible enemy, I've gone for a "swarm army". Mainly infantry, lots of infantry to completely overwhelm the enemy, MGs as a firebase, a platoon of T34s to tear down any houses the Germans might be sheltering in and the guys in the picture above.


Never go on a deliberate attack without your engineers. Possibly they can be used to overcome field defences, but I started using them as assault troops. In our player group, close combat is pretty much never used. Last week I changed that though. And in this kind of battle, you need to get up close and very personal if you want to achieve a major victory. As I did last week.

So it's "Urrah" and let the human wave attack go...

Victory (and some zombies)

I've been enjoying a four day weekend and even though I've been wasting a lot of time on my PSP I have been getting in some gaming and painting as well.

On friday we continued with day two of the Eastern Front Blitzkrieg Commander campaign. On turn one I didn't get to through the Germans fast enough to take the objective and so the tables got turned. This time I had to defend the objective. Some well placed anti tank ditches and lots of wire forced the Germans to rely on a flanking attack to take the objective within the time limits, but I was able to destroy enough enemy units to make sure he couldn't claim the objective. A minor victory for the glorious Russian army!
Next battle: the same scenario, again! With 1875 points vesrus 750 points Germans. This may seem like a walkover, but this is not unlike the last couple of games. A dug in defender, that is invisible at the start of the game, is a very tough nut to crack.


Last Tuesday I found my order of Wargames Factory zombies in the mailbox and I started putting one of the sprues together. And I started painting them immediately. The fact that these are all individuals seems to get me painting more quickly than when I have units to paint. The monotony, I guess. From left to right they go from finished (just varnish to apply) to just flesh. Meet bald skater dude, fat survivalist dude, soccer fan, doctor, biker punk and stressed out cubicle guy...

Not a bad weekend, and it still isn't over. And now you'll have to excuse me, my PSP is calling me...

All Things Zombie is go!

A while ago I ordered "All Things Zombie" from Two Hour Wargames with the "play more" idea in the back of my mind. Quick games with a limited number of figures... When it comes to humans, I have enough cops, gangers, armed civies stuffed away in my cupboards (yes, the plural is no typo) to cover that part of the game. Zombies, on the other hand...

With the new Wargames Factory 28mm zombies coming out at about the same moment that was not a real problem. One set of those should be more than enough so when the Red Barons show in Gent was nearing I preordered some from one of the traders that would be attending. The day came, but not the traders. Thier car broke down on the wrong side of the English Channel. So what, someone else is bound to have them? No zombies in Gent. Same thing in Rheindahlen, no zombies to be seen anywhere... Wtih all the zombie rules being published lately, I was surprised. Time do some online shopping.


So it was back to the guys at Wargames Emporium, the guys with the crappy car, to order two sets of zombies (only one for me, the other for my partner in crime) and a blister of GHQ Russian assault guns and one of CinC Russian artillery to augment my Blitzkrieg Commander forces. I ordered them last Friday and when I got home from work there was a Jiffy bag sticking out of my mailbox. I was hoping for a card from the mailman telling me to pick up a package at the PO, this was one better. Like a kid on boxing day!


After ripping open the envelope I wasn't too happy. The zombies aren't packed in a box but in a plastic bag, so I was a bit nervous about their state after being handled by the mail system. I would have liked some better packaging by Wargames factory. But the survived without problems. When I looked at them for the first time, they seemed rather small, but in the end it turned out to be a case of being used to GW steroid 28mm figures. Compared to a Perry miniatures ACW they look normal. Now all I need to find is a good skin tone for zombies in my Foundry paints.


So pretty soon they'll be facing of with these guys I picked up at the bring and buy in Gent, a painted blister of Foundry SWAT troopers that I got for 10 euros. The same price my friend paid at one of the traders after delving in the discount bin for exactly the same figures. Sometimes life smiles at you. Most of the time it just mocks you though ;-)

Action 2009 product review...

OK, so where did the money go to at the Rheindahlen show this year?


First, third, fifth and last stop at any show is the bring and buy stand. Here I picked up an Ogre tyrant and a Helldorado Saracen fighter. While I no longer fancy the idea of building an Ogre kingdom army, the tyrant will make a nice personality for an ogre Songs of Blades and Heroes warband. The Helldorado figures I own will end up that way too.
I also bought a box of Pegasus Miniatures "Large gothic building" from one of the traders. Excellent value for money, the box is packed solid with walls and assorted nicknacks to decorate them with.


One of the other traders had some Starship Troopers boxes stashed under his table and after some Mediterranean style bargaining I got a nice deal and walk away with some hopper bugs and a pair of MI suits.



Some more scenery in the form of Pegasus "Farm animals set" and the 1/72nd scale "Area 51 UFO". That last kit is intended for pulp SF gaming, looks pretty nice but (compared to the gothic building set) rather expensive for what you get. And I also bought Ceasar's "Modern US elite forces" for Ambush Alley. These figures wear the latest model of body armour and weapons and like all Ceasar figures look absolutely great!


Here you can see the UFO standing next to a pair of Hydra miniatures troopers. The kit is basically an upper and lower disc, four legs with hatches (not shown) and a green transparent dome and windows (also not shown in the picture)

Not pictured at all are some GHQ Russian WWII tanks and aircraft, these are being worked on (and played with) and some magazines.

All in all a pretty diverse batch of new stuff but everything was bought with a purpose, I managed to avoid the "ooh shiny" impulse buys...

Return of the Blogger...

After a rather eventful and at times uncertain period I got sidetracked and as a result I haven't spent a lot of time gaming or painting over the last few months, not to mention blogging of course. Pretty much all I did was visit the two springtime wargaming shows that I attend every year: the Red Barons show in Gent and Action in Rheindahlen.
I am glad to say that spending during these shows was well within reason and I kept away from getting into new periods/scales... More on this in a later post.

Last Friday saw the return to the gaming table as we kicked of the club's Blitzkrieg Commander campaign. My Russians failed to take the objective in a deliberate attack scenario after a sometimes frustrating game. Plenty of dug in German troops that remained quiet and as a result invisible, protected by a host of minefields. Next battle will be the same scenario, but this time I'll be defending. Those anti tank ditches seem rather inviting...

It's good to be back...

Quick update...

Not a lot going on this week as I just couldn't keep my mind on painting with all the stuff that is hanging over my head. I made a few attempts to start, but after only a few minutes I gave up.

Club night last Friday was better, I got a game of Songs of Blades and Heroes done. At least the "play more" part is still holding on. It was quite a long game, but that was because of all the distractions. One of the other members was dealing stuff, I mean selling someof his old 1/300 Heroic and Ross collection. I resisted temptation, but Stef needed a fix and broke down. He is now the proud owner of a WWIII (no typo) Russian Army.

All this got the three of us talking about big battalion old school gaming and then some other stuff as well. Looks like we'll be checking out FoG next week to see if we can start something new in the club. And because we're thinking of going the 1/72 route, this will cost me almost nothing. I have an extensive collection of plastic and some metal in 20mm stashed away. Carthaginians, New Kingdom Egypt, Assyrians, Indian (Alexandrian era) and then some... Being a pack rat does have its rewards, you just have to wait long enough.