Life can really screw your hobbies.

Rather annoyed tonight as life has stuck a big V sign up at my hobby time again. Coming home from work tonight my little 125 bike decided to pack in. As a non driver my bike is my main form of transport and the only way I can get down to the club for a game (due to the usual rubbish public transport system).

Of course sods law dictates that tomorrow was going to be my first game of 2011. Jim and I had decided to on a game of AK-47 (one of my favorite games) and it's been a while since Jim's country of Nbuto has been invaded. However I have now had to cancel and will end up spending tomorrow night up to my arms in oil and engine bits trying to work out why my bike won't go. only one word for it really

Bugger...........................

Kampfgruppe HQ

At last I've finally managed to get my first painting of 2011 done and finished of my SS Kampfgruppe HQ for rapid fire.

As you can see it has six figures (all Valiant some converted), a Sdkfz 222 A/C (Airfix), a 37mm SP AA (Haswega), a radio truck (Esci) and a Stoewer car (ready to roll).

The HQ should also have a couple of supply trucks and a Bergpanzer, the trucks I'll do some time. As yet though I haven't found a reasonably priced (bearing in mind it's more of eye candy thing than a useful bit of kit) bergpanzer in 1/72.

Next up I've got a German heer infantry battalion to finish (half the infantry are nearly finished, but that still leaves all the support weapons and another 16 infantry) . I've also got my US armoured task force to do. I've put the yanks on a brief hold though while I wait for some stowage packs I've ordered to turn up. I'm using quite a few armourfast kits which while nicely priced and easy to put together are just to plain so I'm hoping the stowage will make them more interesting (and a bit more realistic).

Cheers Jon

First game of 2011

2011 seems to have coincided with my son finding some interest in dads little men. He tends to drift in an out of wargaming (well his only 9) but does own a space marine army for 40K (which I painted for him) and a small New kingdom Egyptian army for WAB which we painted together.

On Monday he decided he wanted a game so we went biblical I took my sea peoples and he took his NKE. both armies weighing in at a hefty 830 something points (We really must paint the rest up to have two 1500 pt armies)

My army had two warbands of 20 warriors, 10 Lybian skirmishers and four chariots one with my army general.

My sons army had two 10 figure archer units, 2 chariots one with his general, a unit of 8 axemen, a unit of 12 spearmen and a unit of 12 sea people mercenaries.

The game lasted five turns the first couple saw me heading towards his battle line under heavy bow fire that wiped out my Lybians. My warriors charged in and saw off his axemen but failed to rout his archers. Which in turn saw my warriors counter attacked by my sons sea peoples and chariots (in the flank) my warriors routed and where cut down. My chariots attacked and destroyed his chariots before failing to make any impact on his spearmen (losing 2 chariots in return). At that point I conceded as I was surrounded by hostile units (and it was my sons bed time).

The pictures above show the scene just before the start of the battle.

Cheers Jon

It's oh so quiet....

If it seems a bit quiet on here it's not that I'm not doing anything on the hobby front, just not anything worth posting about. I could tell you about the couple of hours I spent going through and re-organising my paints but it wouldn't be much fun.

All my Christmas goodies have turned up now. Sadly a couple of my orders were wrong so I'm now trying to sort those out. Mostly I've ordered a lot of plastic for Christmas so instead of painting I'm spending lots of time cutting, cleaning and sticking together lots of multi part plastic which really doesn't seem worth posting pictures of if I'm honest.

It's a two pronged attack on the hobby front. At home I'm putting together my Rapid Fire US armoured task force. At work in my lunch break I'm putting the second round of my Mantic undead army together. Hopefully by the end of next week I can start to get some painting going and then have some nice pics to post up.

The only other thing I've been doing is putting some new scenery together for my wargames table hopefully some pictures of my efforts will be posted up soon.

Cheers Jon

Happy new year

Happy new year everyone!

Right now the festive period (never a very productive time on the hobby front for me) is over it's time to look forward to what I might try and achieve with my hobby time this year. The long cold days of January and February are always a bit depressing but luckily Christmas resulted in quite a haul of stuff to keep me going through the second half of winter. I got

100 more plastic undead from Mantic to finish the undead army I started last year.

90 odd plastic dwarves from Mantic to put together a new army of short bearded ones.

60 odd Valiant GIs plus some half tracks and tanks to make a Task force.

A few extra vehicles for my German Rapid fire forces my first Kampfgruppe is so close to being finished .

I've also promised myself some new scenery this year for my games room as I want to try a bit more solo gaming. I hope to still get down to the club once a month but life with children and wife does have a habit off curtailing my gaming so solo seems the way to go to get in a few more games.

Finally I'm going to have a good hard look at my various unfinished projects and stuff and clear out those that will never get finished or used to the great ebay in the sky. Sometimes I find half finished projects and such like tend to just hang round like a bad smell in the wargames room, you feel guilty for not finishing them but you know (deep down) you never will, best just to get rid I find.

First candidate for a sort out is my AK-47 stuff. I love the game and have loads of stuff for it but a lot of the stuff I have is dis-jointed and doesn't fit well with my main AK armies. My plan is just to keep my two main and nicest armies (the Zumatans and Lumatans) and then ebay the rest.

I've also got some projects that just need a final push to finish. In this case My Slann and Elf armies for WFB (3rd edition) both are so close to being finished you smell the varnish I just need to put that final push in.

Oh well It doesn't look like I'll be short of things to do this year, now if I can just win the lottery and give up work I might get it all done.

Cheers Jon

Raventhorpe Ready to Roll trucks

Finally my Panzer grenadiers have some transport. I decide to go for trucks as I'm planning to do a genzpart battalion for the 21st panzer division in Normandy (with all those interesting french equipment).

After a bit of research I decided to go for the Raventhorpe ready to roll range

http://www.rapid-fire.uk.com/ready_to_roll.htm

I bought a Stoewer car, a Horch car, three Opel blitz and a ford v300. Generally I was impressed

Pros

No assembly required

Cost (cheaper than metal, similar cost to plastic kits)

Already based (I like to base my vehicles)

Cons

They were a bit rough in places, big lumps of resin are not that easy to clean up.

The area between the vehicle and the base is solid which I'm not keen on

I painted them up using magic wash and dry brushing. I really should do the number plates but at the moment I'm hoping to find some water slide transfers to do them, as painting them is a non starter.

With the trucks done I just need to finish the Kampfgruppe HQ and a couple SP 20mm AA guns to finish my first Rapid fire force, hopefully in time to get some games in the new year.

Cheers Jon

Bargain rule sets from Northstar

Well winter is here and rather predictably my painting output has dropped like a stone. For those who don't know my wargames room/ painting area is my garage which is at the bottom of the garden, while I've done it out nicely boarding up all the walls, adding a new floor and installing a heater. This time of year it is still rather cold and unappealing when weighed up against surfing the net or watching telly in a nice warm house. Add in the snow and sub zero temperatures, sick children, the coming of Christmas and work and painting wise the last two and half weeks have produced very little on the hobby front.



Having said that a couple of nights ago I forced myself to go down the garage and paint up my newly arrived Ready to Roll trucks for my SS panzer grenadiers from Chiltern miniatures. They painted up surprisingly quickly so hopeful some pictures will be posted up in the next couple of days.




In the mean time I picked up three sets of Chris peers rules going cheap from North Star
http://www.northstarfigures.com/list.php?spo=1&page=1

First I picked up armies in crisis which is basically a WW2 version of Contemptible Little Armies with a few bolt ons. Not a big fan of CLA mostly because I feel the no moving and firing rule encourages both sides to play too defensively. Mostly there is little advantage to moving into firing range of the enemy who can then fire on you knowing you can 't return fire for a turn. Having said that they're simple and quick and I'm tempted to use them for solo games where I can tinker with the rules without upsetting anyone.




Second I picked up Empire of the Steppes which covers purely the 90 odd years of the great Mongol conquests. Again this appears to be CLA with add bolt ons for period feel. Having said that it looks like it would give a good game and really tries to capture steppe nomad warfare something many ancients rules don't do very well in my opinion. There are also around thirty army lists which are interesting and appear well researched



Last but not least is Advance the Flag ACW rules. These look very interesting, there are some similarities with Chris Peers other rule sets but this set is aimed at Corps level actions so a base of multiple miniatures represents a regiment and four bases a brigade. I'm quite taken with these I bought them thinking I might do something with my Perry plastic ACW miniatures as they are aimed at 28s. I actually think they would look better with 2/6/10mm miniatures though as four 28mm miniatures representing a regiment looks a bit odd to me. Of the three sets I think these are the ones that are most likely to form a new project for 2011.

Cheers Jon