Video Nasty

I've developed a cunning plan.

I have a variety of projects that I'd like to crack on with, but I also have lots of Japanese infantry that I'd like to get done to add to the Bolt Action army I painted during an earlier phase of interminable pandemic-related lockdown.

Basically, I'm going to do both together. I figure that just banging through dozens of very similar Japanese models with contrast paint will be effective, but also deeply tedious both for me and you, my valued and numerous audience.

So, you should find that each time I post for the foreseeable, I'll have some "new" thing, and then some number of Japanese bits that I've added to the pile.

Here we go then. New bit!

That's the McGuffin marker from the 7TV Apocalypse set. I'd like to claim it's part of some master plan that I've painted it now, but really it was just on my desk already so it was readily to hand as something to do.

Like all Crooked Dice models it's really well made with lots of details that all show up well. So that's nice.

Japanese bits!

Yep, there they are

These are the models I need to bring two of the squads I have up to full 15-man strength. So that's also nice.

Right, there you go. Six models painted, quick post written, job done. Have some scores.

Painted: 15

Acquired: 31

Lead Pile Reduction: -16

 

Black Hawk Down

Not much else to say about this! I've painted a big chunk of resin, in the form of this crashed UH-60 Black Hawk.

Time to swap insurance details with whoever fired that RPG

This comes from Britannia Miniatures, as part of their Mogadishu range. For me, though, it's going to be featuring in a variety of post-apocalypse setups - I've got plans to do more of that sort of thing this year as it's a genre I really like and I have various little projects that would fit. A side effect of endless Coronavirus lockdowns is that I've built up a few painted things that have either never seen a table yet, or have only been out once or twice, so I've no particular need to rush other stuff through and I can muck about with stuff like this for a while. 

Thankfully this wall broke its fall

It's a hefty chunk of resin, I'll give it that. Nice and cleanly done, too, although for my purposes the stone wall the helicopter is lying against is mildly irritating. Still, I'm happy to live with it and I don't think it was expensive (I've had it lying around for years) so overall I rate this model as "fine".

It's that kind of top-notch consumer advice that keeps people coming back here, I'm sure.

Anyway. Since the last post on here, I realised I'd not accounted for some models I got on the front of a magazine, so my scores are actually getting worse at the moment:

Painted: 9

Acquired: 31

Lead Pile Reduction: -22

Still, no further purchases planned at the moment and none of the shows are on, so things should start moving in the right direction again soon.

2021... Begin!

It's a new year, and therefore, it's time for a new post. 

This time it's more on my Japanese Bolt Action force. Pete is the enthusiastic owner of a 3D printer, and as part of his constant trawling of files turned up a couple of designs for the type 98 320mm spigot mortar.

This unusual weapon has a profile in the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign book, so I have rules for using it at least, so I fiddled about with some plastic sprues to make enough crew.

Winter sun gives you some very long shadows

The only slight fly in the ointment is that they don't seem to feature in any theatre selectors, so I can technically only take them in a generic Japanese platoon list. Will have to see if we can house rule an exception. 

I also painted the second mortar...

One of these is a weird unit I'll
struggle to field, so two of them...

I'll need to cobble together a second crew for that at some point.

So, there you go. I've painted some things! 

Unfortunately I also received some things from a Christmas gift voucher, so it's still January and I'm already in negative figures. But still, let's have a look:

Painted: 8

Acquired: 26

Lead Pile Reduction: -18

More work needed there.

 

One Last Hurrah

2020 is, mercifully, coming to an end.

But before it does, I need to finish off the accounting and log the last set of models I've painted. If I didn't do that, well, you can imagine the potential consequences.

Right, let's kick off. First, a hangover from last time - I found a sprue with a single German model left on it, so I turned him into a forward observer. 

This photo came out ok.
This wasn't the case for the others. 

If my maths is right there should be another spare knocking about somewhere, but I can't find him up to now. Exciting, innit? 

Next, I finished off the remaining models for the Terminator Genisys board game. This will no doubt be thrilling news for those people who will be forced to play through it when lockdowns finally stop being a thing.

I already have better quality casts of two of these models.

It's the same guy three times!

I also have a better cast of this model.

Drones! A swarm of drones!

As I sat down to write this blog post, I realised that there are another six terminator models I've painted and not previously blogged. They're pretty similar to the ones above and I don't have a photo, so, you know, imagine that.

I've also painted six bits of ruined jersey barriers that Kieron gave me some time ago. I don't have a photo of those either. Sod it.

It's the end of the year, and I should really have some kind of summary, but I dunno. I painted some stuff, but lost a fair bit of time to general lockdown/childcare/homeworking business. I did manage to get some bigger stuff done with the contrast paints, and I now have Japanese and German Bolt Action armies that I didn't have before. I've also got the Terminator stuff ready to go when I can corner some victims. 

I suppose for the new year my main hope is to be able to get back to regular games, which is a bit obvious. I'd also like to move onto a couple of planned projects that I've not got to yet. On the other hand, I have a big stack of Japanese infantry and some 3D printed tanks to get to, and painting those would add to existing forces nicely. So... yeah. The main thing I think is to hope for more time for painting somehow. And, you know, the end of the once in a century global pandemic wouldn't go amiss either. 

Right, that went slightly bleak. Let's distract from that by honing in on the really interesting stuff, my scores for the year. When I account for unhelpful things like sales and people just giving me things, those come out as...

Acquired:184

Painted: 210

I've had worse years! The main issue here is that I'm fairly baffled as to when I acquired that much stuff. That's something to try to improve on next year - can I keep the influx of new things under a hundred?

I'm sure we'll find out how I inevitably fail over the course of the coming year. Assuming there's no meteor strike or squirrel uprising, or whatever.

Happy new year!

It's All About Turnover

It's been a couple of months since my last blog post, but for once I've been busy in the meantime. After I painted a few test Germans with contrast paints, I wanted a little tweak to get a greener base uniform colour before I pushed on with more infantry.

It's safe to say I managed that.

For future reference (my own, anyway, I'm sure no one else cares), the colour scheme I landed on was:

Guilliman Flesh - skin tone (obvs)

Creed Camo - uniform

Wyldwood - gun stocks, camo splashes

Black Templar - boots, Y harness straps

Skeleton Horde - puttees, helmet covers

Militarum Green - camo splashes, pouches

Basilicanum Grey - gun barrels, helmets

Agoras Dunes - panzerfausts, any other dunkelgelb bits

I was also steered towards Geek Gaming's base ready range, and I used the Scrublands version on these. I'm a fan! Don't think I'd use it for everything, but for getting through bases in bulk it works really well, so I'm happy with that.

Having sorted out infantry, it seemed reasonable to add some armour...

That's a flammpanzer b2(f), the Geman conversion from a captured Char B1 bis. Since Pete has so enjoyed dealing with these when controlled by the French, it seemed reasonable to let his Allied forces have a go at them. Also, everyone loves a flamethrower.

So there you have it. I've managed to do some painting and resist the urge to buy loads more stuff (at least until yesterday, Black Friday caught me out there). Which means it's now time to come to the most important part, the scores...

Painted: 178

Acquired: 145

More on the way!   

Line Dancing

After a period of time that likely rivals the duration of the entire war, Pete and I have finally finished our Bolt Action campaign from the Germany Strikes! book. 

The finale was an attack by German infantry on the blockhouses of the Maginot Line. 

I'd been feverishly painting bunkers, barbed wire and mine markers, and was able to put together defences that covered the full 8' of the table quite nicely - although with more gaps in the minefields than I would really have liked.

We'd already played the first part of this scenario several months earlier, so I knew that I would have some reserves to arrive in the later turns. Things were pretty finely balanced in the campaign overall, so this game would decide things overall - which was nice. 

Here's a canter through the battle - I'm writing this a few weeks after it happened so it's what I remember happening rather than necessarily getting everything just right. Assume it's a report being written by a French commander who's well into the cognac by the time he's finished.

Also, I took a lot of photos, not all of them have been cropped to my normal standards as my phone didn't want to cooperate. Please try not to notice.

Germans appear at the treeline

Faaasands of 'em!

The defensive line looks perilously close to the attackers

The bombardment blew a couple of holes in the barbed wire...

...and pinned some of the defenders, which hindered their shooting

The aerial view shows loads of advancing infantry,
with the French backed up by a giant tin and some rulebooks

A combination of pinning and very poor
dice rolls stopped me from doing much
as the Germans reached the barbed wire

Germans get ready to assault the entire line.
At this point, things looked somewhat hairy.

Infantry cross the barbed wire and stream toward the bunkers. 
My shooting was still abysmal at this stage.

The central bunker braces for an assault as
an 88 shows up to support the German advance

Pete took care to avoid the minefields, which is unsporting

A flamethrower took out the artillery from the right hand bunker,
but an assault on the retractable turret failed and the
Germans started to take casualties

View over the sights of the French howitzer in the bunker on the left,
before it destroyed the 88, as soon as it unlimbered

The central bunker is assaulted on both sides by
troops that stayed out of sight of its weapons

The tide starts to turn - on the right flank,
the Germans are mauled by artillery fire

Out of sight of the defenders, a German unit tries to breach
the right hand bunker's walls, but never succeeds

More assaults, but thick bunker walls and strong turret
armour keep the Germans at bay

Finally some success for the attackers as a flamethrower takes
out the central French bunker

German artillery tows start to crush barbed wire, but it's more
of a gesture by now

Attacking squads take enough casualties on the left
that they can no longer actually damage the defences

A German howitzer takes a few shots but doesn't manage
to cause any damage

The French reserve arrives in the form of a single cavalryman,
who promptly machine guns the flamethrower team

At this point, Pete threw in the towel as he couldn't damage the fortifications through assaults (he'd lost too many men) and didn't have enough time left to get his surviving flamethrower to the other bunkers. 

I also had a random assortment of further reinforcements about to arrive, but by now it was all over anyway.

So, I'd won the game, and with it the campaign! Huzzah.

This was a decent set of games and the campaign tied it together quite nicely, but Germany Strikes! is an older supplement and it shows - some parts of it are hard to make sense of. So, of course, we're moving straight onto Battle of France and the campaign there.

And let's not forget, setting all this up meant I needed to get some barbed wire and mine markers ready. I've also been buying stuff (bad Matt! Bad!) so that's all affected the scores...

Painted: 148
Acquired: 145

Well, I'm ahead, but not by miles. I do have more on the way though, and at least for now have no further purchase plans. So things should improve! I'm sure you'll be on tenterhooks waiting for that.

Contrasting Opinions

I've been at the contrast paints again.

This time, I'm trying them out with some German grenadiers. I have a lot of these lying around the garage so figuring out a quick way to get through them would be very nice indeed.

Here you go - five grenadiers...

I painted these using the colour scheme from this post on Wargaming 3D. It was good to have a guide to work from, but these don't really match the uniform colour of the (few) grenadiers I've already painted. I know that there were dozens of possible shades of field grey, so I've no problem in keeping these and mixing them into my force, but I'd like something on the greener side to match what I have already. So I'm going to have another go with a different shade next time - I have a colour in mind so I'll try that out, and of course will thrill you with the results here.

I also found time to get started on the models from Terminator Genisys: Rise of the Resistance. Here's the first set...

I had a bit of a dilemma around how to base them - a lot of the scenarios from the game seem to be indoors, but I also have my Terminator Genisys Miniatures Game stuff to match with, so in the end I went for the tarmac effect I've used for those.

It's this kind of fascinating insight that keeps people coming back here, I'm sure.

Any, score time. I've been given some 3D printed barbed wire thingies this week so the acquired total has gone up, which leaves me...

Painted: 118
Acquired: 118

... with a lead pile the same size as it was at the start of the year. Hurray!