Cygnar vs Cryx - The first encounter

New Year, new desire to play more games. I have been a beautiful combination of busy and lazy, leading to very little in the way of dice throwing, however, I have been actively painting over the past couple months. Here is why  - I picked up, on a whim due to the cover, the new Privateer Press Prime Issue #1 back in November.

CDN NATIONALS Early War: The Armies

Canadian Nationals, the armies. I took so many pics (for once, I usually forget) that I figured I'd put all the armies in one post, and post my games tomorrow.   We had a great first day, 46 players total this year.  Let's see how close I was to my over/under of 9 for number of Japanese armies from yesterdays post:   

Start off with Bob McBride's beach bum Japanese

Bob always has nice stuff.  here we see his excellent gun team camo netting.

Painted Panzers

I've had a few tanks lying around and have not been painting very much lately. I decided to break out the airbrush and some Pzr IV/70 tank destroyers that came in one of my German army boxes. We'll look at the tank and how it's represented in FoW.

'When in Rome...' FOW Italians for EW and MW Part I

"You lookin' at me??" <DeNiro voice>

So from my good friend Andrew/Twinlinked from the podcast, I have finally convinced him to let go of his Italians.  I am a sucker for those weird wacky armies (Free French, 21 Pzr Bathtubs, etc) so why not trade my unbuilt Canadians for these guys.  Most of the were built, but in varying states of disrepair.   I also bought a few more tanks and things, and am still awaiting a Falco biplane.

 

Here is most of them built.. the used stuff was in a tan glossy undercoat which I will have to cover to match the rest.

Long Weekend, Historicon Close Out and more!

Closing out my three part series on our trip down to Historicon, just some final thoughts more than anything. I got sidetracked by my new airbrush....can you blame me?!! All together it was a great event, the Flames of War Nationals certainly began a little later than expected, but Dave did a great job running it solo and we look forward to him running Canadian Nationals at the end of the month. This brings me full circle all the way to this weekend, where we had a holiday and as usual it was time for some gaming out at my place in the 'War Room'. I was getting tired of calling it the shop, not much work get's done out there....it's more of a fun place to chill out and listen to Split Infinity Radio.They're a great site and online radio station that plays to my inner geek. You can find them here SI RADIO

Wire Wire Pants on Fire

With the road trip departure time slowly approaching, I'm figuring I will have a few last minute things to do before heading out to Virginia. It looks like I have a few more barbed wire obstacles to build, maybe do a few more decals and then finally have a list ready for Historicon. The problem with my submitted list was that it lacked focus and was extremely weak when facing pretty much any other list. I'm looking forward to the tournament and not there to be over competitive, but I would like a win or two if I'm making the 10+ hour drive to come down there.

Adding armor of any sort in Mid War is crazy expensive, do you really want to drop the points on one tank? It can be killed by air, a lucky artillery strike or even get assaulted if you're not careful of what you're doing. I'm pretty much caught between these three choices, keeping in mind I can only build out of the models I have, and that's not much at the moment, I think Nebs, a few more Marders and some other essential German pieces are going to be bought on this next trip. I also need some more Australian blisters for my MW Africa Australians, if and when North Africa get's a proper re-write. I mean did we really need a re-vamped Grey Wolf this soon already? It was the first LW book I bought when I got into this game, and I have to see if the changes they made even effect any of my lists.

New Re-Worked Wire Obstacle

I was not happy with the way my first wire obstacles turned out, so with a little more time and some other materials, I went ahead and made this last night. I have a few more to make, but all together it didn't take too long to accomplish. The finer wire on the posts took a little more because of the wire itself, it's a plastic wire and has barbs on it to look authentic, so it was a little tricky to work with. I think with the lone wire on top, I'll place a post at each end to make it a little more 'full' on the base.

Low and High Wire Entanglement

So this is what I'm caught between playing, have a look and post a comment or drop me a line and let me know what you think about the three choices. They're not in any particular order. I'll be packed up today and have both with me, so I have a few more days to 'figure it out'. I'll let you know how it goes once again with a post-Historicon writeup.

First Choice Historicon
or
Second Choice Historicon
finally....after some mucking about in the late hours....
Third and Final One

Desert Rat Australians

So when I was deciding to create an army I wanted to chose something different. There were lots of Brit players, Americans and obviously Germans. Being Canadian meant I could go with a Canuck army as well, but I was finding the table was already crowded with Canadian armies as well eh. After reading about Australian and other Commonwealth nations I thought something along those lines would be fun and different enough where I was not going to run into too many Aussie players.

Getting my hands on the 8th Army Desert Rat box before it was all but gone from store shelves was essential in wanting to create my Australian list. They're fearless vets, they have access to 8th army assets from the period and they just sound like a good place to start when getting into building my first army. The Divisional Cavalry Squadron is just the right balance of armor and artillery that I was looking to play and has some flexibility if I want to change it later on and add some ground troops or swap out the heavy armored platoons for something else like air support.

My first game playing with this list was a learning experience and exposed weaknesses and strengths of the platoons that made up the Company. I played again this past Saturday and managed a win, I was lucky enough to close distance fairly quickly my last game and came out on top. Whereas the first time I played with this list using one of the new missions in V3 I got stomped pretty effectively. Suffice it to say nothing went right and being the attacker in that mission, I should have played far more aggressively. A mix of errors from me and hot dice from my opponent all but wiped me out. This first game, I had very little painted, some sad looking Crusaders, guns on bases with no teams, just the guns....and not one ounce of paint. I just wanted them to get some shells down range and use them during play.

After a hard honest opinion about my painting and seeing what other people were doing was an eye opener and learning some new tricks I now have my entire army painted and ready to roll out. I look forward to Friday as I will have them all on the board at some point and I no longer have to borrow 2 Crusaders from MattV to make my list complete. This past weekend I was able to table this list and play a game and received some nice feedback about the paint and what I had accomplished in such a short time. I can not thank MattV and Ca$h enough for the tips and Pripyat for allowing me to help with some of the terrain and miniature painting on some of the buildings used at GameSummit2012.

 

So now I have the entire thing organized and all I have to add is the decals. I'm not willing to take too much time painting and attempt to paint any platypus and boomerangs symbols just yet.....anyways here is what I am currently fielding. See you in the middle.

Platoon	Qty	Unit	Points
Headquarters
Divisional Cavalry Squadron HQ (Australian)  p.148	2	Crusader II	155
Combat Platoons
Divisional Cavalry Platoon (Australian)  p.149	3	Crusader II	230
Divisional Cavalry Carrier Platoon (Australian)  p.149	3	Universal Carrier with .50 cal MG	145
Divisional Support
Heavy Armoured Platoon  p.133	3	Sherman II or III with .50 cal AA MG	355
Heavy Armoured Platoon  p.133	3	Sherman II or III with .50 cal AA MG	355
Field Battery, Royal Artillery (Australian)  p.156	2 1 1 1 3 4 4 1	Cmd Rifle team Jeep Staff team Observer Rifle team 15 cwt truck OQF 25 pdr gun Quad tractor All Rifle and Gun teams equipped w/Sticky Bombs	255
Company Points:			1495

(source North Africa c/o www.easyarmy.com)

Gepanzerte Panzergrenadierkompanie Done! Woot!

Part of the reason why I take on painting projects, and I'll go out on a limb to say that the reason why almost everyone takes them on, is because of the incredible sense of accomplishment that comes when you have finished a major milestone in an army's collection.

I have just reached that milestone and finished my 1500pt list for the OMG FoW tournament on

Oct. 16th. So with a full 16 days ahead of schedule I am finished my army and love the way that my Gepanzerte Panzergrendadierkompanie looks. I do have 2 German objective markers to work on but I don't really count them.

So here is how my army composition works:

Really knowing nothing about army composition for FoW or Germans for that fact, I kind of went for something that would feel aggressive and would have a lot of pretty toys to look at. Some troops, some vehicles, tanks and some finesse to the army.

I've loved playtesting the army so far. While sometimes it does feel like it is pretty light (to the point where I consider changing it up for a Lehr list by taking out the Brummbars and a

Panzer IV and replacing them with a Heavy Morter Platoon and some Pak40s for a more static list) it does seem to perform wonderfully.

Getting the camoflage right was a bit of a trick initially. I wasn't really sure how to go about doing to traditional late war German camo scheme for vehicles considering that I didn't have an airbrush, but Dennis had recommended Dirty John's post on WWPD and that changed everything. Thanks John, and Dennis!

It's hard to pick a favourite unit. Right now I think it would be the Panzer IVs, they look totally

awesome, but I love the aggressive nature of the Pumas and they tend to set the tone for my army; busting out of the deployment zone, headed gibbering and slavering for the enemy in a

wild fury (at least in my mind).

So far the Brummbars tend to be either totally incredible or do nothing at all. They are the slow, implacable advance element to my otherwise speedy, bloodthirsty army. My Panzer IVs have a great deal of firepower and the Panzergrenadiers are a very solid component to nearly any army IMHO.

Anyhow, so there we go. All done. Might modify but we'll see how the rest of the playtesting continues.

Thundercats Ho!

So excited! If only I could field more!

Los Deimos Final Army List

Ok so I have literally waited until too late to figure out which army of mine I will be playing for Los Deimos, but I came up with a compromise and I'm quite happy with the results.

This is my 'Taros Force', meaning that it is comprised of Tallarn and Elysian Imperial Guard. It is designed to be like the Guard Alliance from the failed attack on the Tau Settlement on Taros (Imperial Armour Volume 3 from Forgeworld).

I would appreciate all comments/concerns/questions/death threats/marriage proposals etc!

Company Command - 3 Plasmaguns, Medic, Astropath, Officer of the Fleet, Plasma Pistol and Power Fist on Commander
Chimera - Multilaser, heavy flamer

Veteran Squad - 3 meltas, 6 shotguns, plasma pistol (on sergeant)
Chimera - Multilaser, heavy flamer

Veteran Squad - 3 meltas, 6 shotguns, plasma pistol (on sergeant)
Chimera - Multilaser, heavy flamer

Veteran Squad - 2 meltas, 1 flamer, 6 shotguns, plasma pistol and power weapon (on sergeant)
Chimera - Multilaser, heavy flamer

Veteran Squad - 2 meltas, 1 flamer, 6 shotguns, plasma pistol and power weapon (on sergeant)
Chimera - Multilaser, heavy flamer

Vendetta - heavy bolter sponsons

Vendetta - heavy bolter sponsons

2 Valkries - heavy bolter sponsons, multiple rocket pods

-1495 points-