Flames of War Battle Report: KG Peiper vs Cdn Infantry Bridgehead 1050 pts

Sitzkrieg, 1944

A quick Late War match, 1050pt game, a tune-up for Canadian Nationals.   I used a K.G Peiper list (fearless trained stuff) vs  Rob's Canadian Mech Infantry out of Market Garden.  I think Rob was out of his element, as he had no artillery of any kind, which for him is unheard of!    The hecklers playing 40k on the next table over decreed we should play Bridgehead.  (bonus 40k pics at the end of the post, and as ever, a video as well)

Dug-in Canadians guarding the roadside supply dump objective and wrecked SPG objective.

Hard to see behind the tall trees in the back, but the transport section of Kangaroos are there.

My half-finished Puma's Spearhead to this area of trees, with plans of Fritz-Moving up, shooting at the Kangaroos, then moving back to cover if they pass the Movement Orders.

KG Peiper, when attacking, the Pzr IV platoons can Spearhead, and the King Tiger HQ and KT platoon take advantage of the expanded deployment zone.

I had successfully Blitzed, shot at the Kangaroos, then Shoot N Scoot back, but AT9 vs FA 5 plus range meant I didnt get any shots to count.   Rob now rushes his Kangaroos forward, with designs to .50 cal. my Puma's.    My armour saves were made however.

The game devolved into a waiting game.  I couldn't commit anything until his 4 x Achilles with AT15 came in, but they were in Scattered Reserve.  You can see in the background I had Skorzeny jeep trying to block that back quarter from being a viable deployment for his Achilles.  Meanwhile, my Pzr IVs had to hide in the crops, as his ambushing 6lbrs had to yet to be sprung.

With no armour to shoot at, these are just very expensive AP3 platforms... which, when needing 6s to hit infantry, were useless apart from I think one kill all game vs his Infantry

Turning point of the game:  I had elected to use Skorzeny to block once again the quarter deployment option for the Achilles' reserves, and failed.   Since I can not move when Disrupting the enemy, I was challenged by the HMG unit leader, and FAILED the challenge: "Who won the 1941 Stanley Cup?   Umm, the NY Mets???"  Firing Squad!    The Achilles come on and start workign their way up the side of the board, whilst the 6lbr AT11 x 18 shots made short work of my concealed Pzr Platoon.

Rob passes his Blitz move order to see the side armour of my HQ King Tiger.  I had to move it up to be within 16 inches of an objective or lose the game.   2 shots, two hit, 2 bails!!!!  I rolled a 2 for my remount, and we thought that was it, and I was down to one platoon In Good Spirits and lost the game.   Turns out, one of the hits could have been put on the platoon KT, and that the HQ tank can reroll on himself.   But still, this is why we are playing test games before Cdn Nationals.

The excitement is palpable in Rob's face as he exults in his Achilles winning him the game :)  Great game, and now I know a bit more that I need to keep the thinly armoured Pzr IVs hidden, since being trained and only FA6 means almost everything in LW can hit them easily.   Video and bonus 40k footage below.

Tristan and Andrew played V8 40k on Brett's phenomenal Sci-Fi board

Brett started digging out his old Forgeworld army, the Death Korps of Krieg.

Black Powder Napoleonics 2 vs 2 Brit-German alliance vs French plus Irish

"FEUER FREI!!"

Over the weekend, we had ourselves a Napoleonics game featuring Chris Caron and I running the dastardly French (and one unit of Irish allies) vs Mark and Rob's assorted British / Allies including Kings German Legion, Badeners (posing as Portuguese) and some Black Brunswickers.  We kept things reasonable and had roughly 200pts per player, and thus 400pts per side.     Laid out 2 static objectives (Lion statue and french supply cart) in the middle and would score 1 VP for each enemy unit broken.    As ever, Video Battle Report is at the end.  Enjoy!

View from the French side, you can see supply cart left middle and lion statue mid right.

We decided to deploy onto the table using orders.   Hands up if you can guess whose entire Brigade failed its command rolls?   I took a cavalry Brigade with 3 units of Horse and 2 Horse guns, and thus was not able to take advantage of 'Attack Column' Command bonuses!

Rob's splendid King's German Legion preparing to deploy in Line Formation to sort out the frenchies.

Mark's British and Light Dragoons.   He wouldn't let me take shots of half-finished Brunswickers!   Ignore the unpainted casualty markers please.

After my Brigade failed to get on the table, and Chris' 3 infantry and 2 light infantry (in attack columns) only moving one move, the Redcoats managed to get everyone in place, except the guns. Rob here has left room for the guns on the hill.

Close-up of Rob's KGL, front view

For the second straight turn, most of my army does not come on the board.  Only my 9eme Dragoons are on board near the house and obscured by my alcoholic beverage :)

Meanwhile, Chris' 2 units of Lights move up to the Supply wagon and deploy into open order, with the Irish plugging the remaining gap to the trees.    Mark already has some British in the middle and a vicious close range firefight would ensue .

Mark's Brigadier fails to inspire the troops to get into the safety of the houses, even though they would be much safer from the musketry coming from the stone walls in the background there.

Meanwhile the German's under Rob's Brigadier await the tardy french horse to arrive!!!!!   Only my guns made it on (back right) and took pot shots at Rob's limbered guns on the hill

Holding the Supply Wagon and manning the defences, Chris' Brigade has no reason to move and focuses fire on the limbered  British gun in the town square, Disordering it repeatedly so it can never unlimber and fire cannister (see below)

Mark's Brigadier would love to order the gun to fire, but its is permanently limbered with Disorders. It would eventually break off after failing a morale test.

Chris' Light Infantry command jeering the British from the supply wagon, waving the colours!

FINALLY my cavalry brigade comes on the board, but can only declare charges on the infantry and they form square.   My Horse Guns, despite being within Cannister range, only on the last turn do would they finally break Rob's KGL line infantry.    With Mark's Brigade below half strength from the town-side fire, the British -Germanic alliance would fall back and leave the field to the French.  To be fair, Chris' infantry did all the heavy lifting.   Still, great game, and it turns out we have enough models and terrain to play in Scott's absence.   Looking forward to our next game, perhaps some Colonials?

Hobby: Been working on 28mm Terrain

What I've been working on the past month, after finishing rebasing and highlighting my French Napoleonic army, is some terrain to go with them.   Quick video at the bottom, as usual

Stone walls, box-barricades and grain-sack barricades, and some old-school  15mm Normandy Bocage, which works great as hedges for 28mm!   In the middle is the Rorke's Drift barricaded Wagon piece (I have 2 french soldiers defending it)

www.impudentmortal.com    Laser-cut MDF building, 25$ USD

Smaller MDF building from Impudent Mortal, 20 $USD.   I go into more detail on them in the video below.   Stayed tuned, we have a Black Powder game coming on Saturday where we will put these to use!!!!

SAGA Milites Christi v Scots, and bonus video of Vikings, Scots, Welsh, Danes and Castle Ravenloft!

 Celtic defeat Motherwell 3-0 in the Scottish Premier League, "WAAAAAAAAAAGH"

We've been playing some SAGA lately, Tyler has his Danes on the go, Christian does Vikings, Andrew has Anglo-Danes, Tris has Welsh, Moser has Mongols, and Scott and Matty have the Milites Christi and Crusaders.   Loving the game so far, its quick to pickup but has lots of granularity from the battle board options.   Here is a game Scott and I had, and at the bottom, Bonus video of last week's game plus some Ravenloft.  Enjoy!

Blonde adventeress, both sides had to capture and bring off their board edge at M speed (sorry Cavalry!) The Milites maybe thought she had information on the Dead Sea Scrolls? while the scots were after her for probably more base reasons!

Speed Painting Anglo-Dane Warriors for Saga

Saga fever is hitting the club hard and I was one of the first to jump on CA$H's bandwagon when he returned from Cold Wars. I made an order through a local store and waited patiently for my goodies to arrive. Then I started to get less patient and pester the store. I prefer buying stuff off the shelf precisely because I don't do well when waiting for a mail order to arrive. Reading the other posts about people painting their miniatures and playing games did not help me to remain calm.

By the time my miniatures arrived I was positively frothing to get started. I felt really behind the pace and wanted to get the miniatures painted as quickly as possible. Based on my success setting strict deadlines for my Guild Ball project I decided to do the same with Saga. I was able to paint two 6-player teams for Guild Ball in 3 months at an average of 1 week per model. For Saga I knew I had to turn things up, all the way to 10. Darn, I wish I had painted 11 miniatures a week so I could have made a This is Spinal Tap reference.

Going from 1 miniature a week to 10 was not an easy task. I've painted large batches of models before but usually only 4-5 at a time. Once, when I was actively painting, I managed 9 figure batches. That was my high water mark and every other time I attempted that amount I regretted it. Still, I have been actively painting and I really wanted to get my warband to the table as quickly as possible so 10 it is.

Hard to see because they are primed black there was 10 plastic warriors glued to craft sticks glued to 4 home-made painting grips.

As I assembled the miniatures as quickly as I could I had to make a decision whether I was going to paint the shields separately and attach them at the end. I think I made the correct choice of attaching them during assembly. While it will be tricky to reach a few places it will save me time, plus I won't have to worry about accidentally highlighting the wrong edge of the shield.

In the picture you can see how I handled my highlighting and shading. I made three mixes, shadow, midtone and highlight. Starting from black I applied a coat of my shadow. Then I applied my midtone over top, leaving the shadow in the lower portions of the miniature where shadow would fall. Finally I added my highlight to just the upwards facing areas.

I wasn't worried about perfect coverage, I just worked quickly. Since I was building up with a darker colour over the black I knew I would be able to get away with less coats for coverage and a little blotchyness, as opposed to visible brush strokes, would appear to be carefully applied "weathering". Only rarely did I apply a second coat.

Occassionally I would find the transition from midtone to highlight to be too stark. I'd quickly make an intermediate mix of the two colours and paint it at the borders. I think I only ended up doing this for a couple of colours.

One night of painting later.

Many years ago I worked out a system for painting a non-uniform unit of miniatures while painting 10mm Orcs. I would pick a colour and randomly apply it to either the tops, pants or neither of each miniature. I would make multiple passes of different colours, doing the same. When I'm done I have a pseudo-random and motley looking crew while still using an assembly-line painting technique. This time I noticed that the first few colours I pick will dominate the group as I tend to use it on 1/4th of the miniatures in each pass. After a few passes some models have both top and pants painted at that 1/4th shrinks.

The skin, clothing and wood are completed. Should be the home stretch, right?

After my second evening of painting I had painted the skin, cloth and wood on all the miniatures. One of my speed painting tricks when dealing with non-uniform units is to only worry about the large areas looking difference. At this stage having all the wood painted exactly the same colour isn't very noticeable. I will do the same for the leather. Boots, belts and pouches will all be painted the same shade.

I was feeling very good about myself at this stage and was evening thinking I might be able to handle two batches of 10 a week. It was a heady few minutes of delirium until I remember that I still had all the shields to paint. I hadn't ordered shield transfers like an intelligent person so painting the shields was going to take at least as long as everything else.

By Saturday I was slowing down. I'd missed a day of painting on Friday to attend an epic whiskey tasting event and was still feeling the burn.

I used a technique similar to the clothes when painting to shields to keep them from looking too uniform. For each painting grip, I had four with either two or three miniatures attached to each, I picked a background colour as the base and then painted the design using a different colour. I had also painted the hair at this stage.

Sunday is laundry day so I get to spend my day in the basement swapping loads of laundry and painting miniatures.

My miniatures arrived Tuesday but I wanted Sunday to be the end of my painting week so I pushed hard to complete the rest of the shields and other details. Although adding all the battle damage to the shields increased the time it took to paint them I think the effect is well worth it. The lines draw the eye and distract from any wobbly lines in my freehand design. In order to create the damage I just randomly painted brown lines (the colour I used for all the wood) followed by a black line on top and a nearly white line on the bottom. This creates the illusion of a large gash in the wood. I paint chipped paint the same way.

One important, but subtle, touch was a big of spot glazing at the end. Every face received a few spots of red glaze on the nose and either the cheeks or eyes. Those without beards received a couple of glazes of blue-grey for stubble. Finally everyone received random splashes of brown glaze focuses around the legs, bottom of shields, tunic bottoms and armpits. These slight touches of colour make the miniatures look more detailed than they are.

Finally, the bases had a 13/64" hole drilled in them and then a 1x5mm neodymium magnet super-glued in place. This is for my storage as I plan to use metal-lined storage containers. I will finish the base with some modeling putty painted brown followed by green flock once I've painted the entire warband.

Post-Disaster 28mm Dragoon Highlights

Quick hobby article.. had a great game of Black Powder showing the ropes to Rob, David (British players with 1 painted battalion apiece) and Christian (who is waiting for MDF bases for his French)    However, the footage for that game is on another machine, so instead, I decided to fix all the chips from a disaster that occured driving home from that game on Good Friday:

I had slammed on my brakes, and David and I could hear all my models jostling around the trunk.. So this is what 7 battalions all smashed together looks like!    I have already fixed all the damage (mostly bayonets) but figured why not start by highlighting my battalions as I fix paint chips?    I had initially just speed-painted these guys to get them playable.    

These are how my whole army looks:  Blocked-in colours, a wash.  Thats it.  "good from far, far from good"  But this allowed me to play a whole Division vs Scott pretty quickly.

Command base, with white highlights, sky grey on the trousers, green and red highlights, the bridlework done in black, with a dark grey highlight.  about 30 minutes.

When highlighting the cloth, I left dark areas for shading.  Turned out great.  Vallejo 909 Vermillion is a great red highlight color.

All 6 bases done.   The white really pops on the strapping and gloves.  FYI, these are Perry Plastics, with a few different torsos and arms.. I built these when I had no clue.. I mean I didnt know what a Turnback or Shako was :)

As ever, Video:

Bonus pic:  Ever wonder if there is such thing as too much stowage when putting together a tank? The answer is yes:

WTF I don't even....

No idea what this guy was thinking when he was putting wings on top of wings and onto the SIDES of his car..  Oh, I watched him pull away from the parking lot.   The horses' eyes on the roof light up in red!!

Anyways, on to highlighting my other Dragoons.. exactly the same as above except yellow instead of red.   Riveting stuff, I know!

SAGA: A Two Year Crusade

Getting into SAGA has been a long and complicated road. Over the past two years, I pushed to try out a game I had played at a gaming convention in 2015. With the majority of our group having played some sort of 'Fantasy' based game years and years ago (Warhammer something something), there was not a lot of appetite to get into anything resembling a fantasy based game again. With the several other gaming systems like Infinity (more like 'Unfunity') and Kings of War (magic Goblins FTW) failing to scratch the itch of either a fantasy, or skirmish based, reactionary game. The Dice Devils have decided to take on SAGA, buying and painting armies, it looks like we'll give it a shot!