24 April, 2012

General Rookie

'Um, right. Er, well then. Carry on!
This is my take from a 'rookie' General's point of view on my first ever tournament. From what I could tell from some of the armies I saw on display and some familiar faces in the FoW crowd, I knew this was not going to be an easy day.

On April 22nd I found myself in Petawawa at Perkins' 15 minutes before games were about to start. I registered earlier in the month and paid my fee once I got in the door. I was scrambling to find somewhere to hide my case and backpack. I was already a mess trying to think of what kind of day it was going to be. I had played no more than a dozen games up to this point and was so busy the past few weeks to even look at my FoW stuff, let alone read up on missions or talk to other DD members about what I should expect.

After coming away with a hard fought victory my first game, I found myself with a huge uphill fight in my second round matchup. It's unfortunate neither my opponent nor myself can read, because we both botched up the mission and we had everything on the table at the start. OOPS!
It was a quick game and there were bombs from planes and some sporadic rocket fire that more or less rendered me very much on the weak side of trying to flank an objective to at least make a game of it, wait.....what?? Both of my command elements are dead? Hmm......good game sir.

Waiting patiently for my third match, the realization that I was taking the Australian DIV CAV into a cityscape was a little troublesome to say the least. After my opponent pretty much blocked my left axis of advance with AT guns and open fields to cross, it forced me into the narrow city streets. German 88's had the centre street covered to the half-way mark of the board and only turned into a good fight on both sides once I had some Marders to contend with. Neither my opponent, nor myself could really gain much ground, I had both objectives covered very well and likewise had his surrounded across the train tracks that were the 50% of the line in the sand. I did some damage early on, destroying a few Infantry stands and pinning one of his platoons early on, it allowed me to at least tuck my tanks in alleyways and force him to bring his observers up. Mine stayed in place well enough to continue my 25 pounder barrage and kill some units. At the end of the match, we had a 1-1 draw with neither of us inflicting enough damage to gain a point advantage. On turn 5 I was too busy getting my Shermans from the 8th Army into play, I forgot about my recon units I had on the sidelines. A gross error on my part for sure, as I could have used them to gain some ground and potentially re-direct some attention.

So I went 1-1-1 through the day and could have done a little better, I may look at some changes to my list, but was actually happy with the way it performed against players of more experience than myself. The crew at Perkins' in particular Gary and Bob were great, and had some help feeding us at lunch, which was provided as well. I'm looking forward to working on some more of my buildings for my Italian layout and hopefully we'll see that on one of the tables in July. I know Drew took some great pics of bombing the crap outta my artillery positions, so hopefully we see them soon.


17 April, 2012

Post 400: New GW "weathering" paint



So I have been super quiet of late, and that is because I have been furiously painting my Free French for the tournament this sunday up at the Army Base.

Now, I THOUGHT they were done, but I decided to weather my tanks a bit, and used a new GW paint that had texture in it, the one I got is called Armageddon Dust.



As you can see, it is fairly light, it is lighter than my old go-to for weathering, Uniform Brown (which is essentially graveyard earth from GW) which is great I found that it lacked a bit of color. Now this paint is designed to be used on larger surfaces, so MOST of the grit in the paint does not stick when drybrushing on, but thats fine by me, I want them weathered, not like they just got out of a Florida swamp! The paint itself looks like its dried up in the pot, but thats how its supposed to be apparently. I'm happy with it. Stuarts looking good as well, notice that I have used the black pen method to give some contrast on the flat green plates. I used a 0.20mm black pen from De Serres at St Laurent. It was like 4.95, not very expensive at all, and easy to use.

Catch you guys at the tourney!

15 April, 2012

Return of the Mid War

With Historicon looming on the distant horizon, a few of us from Ottawa are getting ready for a smaller tourney next weekend in Petawawa Ontario.

Having qualified for Nationals in February, I'm taking this tournament as a chance to try something wacky, something a little...different.

With that said, I present the Stuart Horde Mk. II (Moar Stuarts*)

Command:
2 M5 Stuarts

Combat:
5 M5 Stuarts
5 M5 Stuarts
5 M5 Stuarts

Weapons:
3 M8 Scotts
3 M8 Scotts

Div. Support:

ARP with 1 Rifle Squad and 4 bazookas



Just assembled and primed the M8 Scotts last night and hopefully should have them done an pics tonight!

A "small" diversion...

 BATTLTECH! This was my first miniature game. As I mentioned in my last post, Battletech holds a dear place in my hobby heart. I remember do...