A few pics of Cangames

 So there was over the past weekend a local Con, called Cangames.  Back in the day, it was literally the only event in town.  I recall playing my very first 40k tourney here.  Many things have changed over the years, with quality all over the place.  This year, I stopped by to see the small F0W and 40k tourney, but decided to take shots of 2 other games running.  

 The first game is a 28mm WW I game, as you can see, Germans vs British.

 And below, is some shots of a 20mm WW2 game revolving around parachuting in to France during D-Day.  Check the cool Parachute markers, Wirbelwind, completely oversized Horsa glider, and a 1/72 C-47

 Lastly, a shot of my first completed DAK vehicle, a PzII with the black pen lining and sponge/spackled grey weathering.  I think it looks great, but looking at a calender, I realize Summer Siege is in just a few weeks, so I need to finish off some French DB stuff for it (Especially since Mike Haught has updated the points cost of the LW PDF for Version III!)

http://www.wwpd.net/2012/05/what-are-those-red-and-white-poles-for.html

Here is the link to an article I wrote for What Would Patton Do concerning those erroneously ubiquitous red and white posts on guns and tanks.

AAR 70 Early War Action

Back at it, Did a few Early War games at Rob Kelly's place.. we are doing an escalation league for Early War, so 600, 900, 1200 then 1500 point increments, hence the unpainted stuff!   Above is a pic of Rob's Aiming posts, otherwise known as the red and white sticks you see on every single gun or AFV it seems.   The box thing is the 'Director', a device used to make sure each gun is aimed correctly.  He was 18 years in the Royal Canadian Artillery so.. he would know!  Below is his blister of Kilt-Wearing desert brits.  my 51st Highlanders are totally jealous.

Below is the only decent still of this game, his British infantry victorious after I assault him with a Panzer III.

As usual, the good info is in the video below, expect another post on game 2 tomorrow, where I used 9 MK-VI-Bs, and 4 A9s vs his army.. it was nice to have more than 4 models!  Enjoy
 

AAR 69: World of Tanks Tier VIII style!

Can't believe its been 69 Flames of War battle reports already, I wonder if I can get the other 21 in by the end of 2012.. Anyways, this game was fought at Brent's wicked man-cave, which I give a brief tour of in the video below. 

Want Videos? got 3

Terrible close-up of the Fokker C-X conversion I made for Lothlann, using a Fiat CR2 as a base. I covered the cockpit, added a rear MG and bombs, and cut the front spinner off, as the Fokker had a blunt nose.

Some shots of a battle I had vs Rob's Canadians, using my Desert Rats. The Bocage was just hedges for this game.

Its been quite a while, and with the big Petawawa tournament gone, I can get back into something that isn't painting French! Last time for Skirmish, I posted pics of my finished army with a week to go, my buddy Serge B saw my post, and "redoubled his efforts" on his FeldHerrenHalle and got best painted! This time I posted almost nothing, hence why I wanted to keep some of these older vids until afterwards. Since I have the memory of a goldfish I then forgot to upload them at all! Of course, sadly, Serge couldnt make the tournament, and instead my RobK ended up sharing best presentation with Drew's DAK 15th Panzers. Anyhow, here are three battle reports from last month. I'll take some pics of my French this week. Scratch that, Drew has pics with his way better camera: http://covering-fire.blogspot.ca/2012/04/paths-of-glory-12.html#more Enjoy. Hedge row mania France vs Finland. How many C-X biplanes can I shoot down? Lots! My Armored Company vs Ca$h's Panzers. After this game I switch over to Armored Rifles and their Bazooka madness!!

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.

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!