Return of the Chindits

I finally managed to get a few decent photos of my second installment of Chindits. My own camera is on the fritz and insists on bathing everything in a creepy golden light so these are courtesy of my friend Wayne, who, despite terrible lighting, managed to take some great pictures at a recent game.




So without any further fanfare...

Radio Op



Medic



2 Inch Mortar



Assistant Mortarman to the Stars

SGT with Thompson



SGT with M1 Carbine



Burmese Scout



Burmese Scout


This rounds out my Chindit force for now (YAY!) I enjoyed painting them immensely, the sculpts were great and came out looking wonderful. We have recently started to experiment with vehicle rules so I may have to add some anti tank chindits to completely finish the squad. And a flamethrower, I definitely need a flame thrower…

Incidentally I have led my Chindits into battle against the Japanese and victory was mine, despite some desperate fighting with Bayonets.

The Three Month Mark

So I'm halfway through the six month plan I made when I started this blog. So I thought I would take stock of what I have managed so far.



My first and foremost accomplishment is that my WW2 operation squad force is complete! I have posted pictures of some of it and am hopeful of having the rest of them photographed and posted here by the end of the week. I have been having a blast with Operation Squad although these last few weeks have seen a bit of a lull due to other commitments.



I have also managed to connect with the local hysterical historical gaming community. I've played with several new people and taken part in an epic 6mm Battle of Antietam game. 

Fire and Fury at Antietam

As well as enjoyed a WW1 Naval battle in which I was handily defeated by the British. There seem to be a great group of guys around here and even some interested in pike and shotte period minis.



Which brings me to my pike and shotte army… Absolutely NO progress has been made on this front beyond taking a couple of models off the sprue to do some test pieces. I did manage to pick up all the requisites including the elusive yellow spray paint that I wanted to get them started. Bad weather and real life commitments have been mostly to blame for this but I have also continually put it on the back burner for other projects. Hopefully as the weather cools off I will find more time to work on this.



I have also failed to sell off any of my Warhammer Fantasy stuff. I think I might have been more successful in this had our purchase of a house gone through and the lust for gold had overcome my sentimental attachments. I am content to hold onto them however because my best friend is coming in February and it will be fun to have a variety of armies to field.



So that concludes my successes and failures for the first three months of my grand plan. So what are my new goals?



1. Have an awesome holiday season and decide on a Hallowe'en costume.

2. Speed up my microbiology course work a bit.

3. Finish at least the first part of my Spanish.

4. Construct a convincing deck of a Napoleonic ship in 28mm scale

5. Paint a pirate and Royal Navy warband to fight on the aforementioned deck.

6. Maybe add a unit or two of Skaven to round out my Warhammer fantasy army.



Given the hustle and bustle of the holidays this expanded scheme should carry me through to about February although I suppose I can hope that It might be finished sooner than that...

Chindits!

At long last the first wave of my Chindits is ready! So without any further ado...

At the time of posting this I have actually nearly completed the next ten, I just need this foul weather to lift so I can give them a spray of varnish to seal them. I have nightmares of all the paint flaking off during play...

Brettonian Knights like Brettonian days...

Brettonians are another of my hangover armies, things I start after a night of particularly heavy reading. I'm working hard to get all these half finished projects done so I can focus


Last year I read Mallory's Morte d'Arthur and was absolutely blown away by it. Even though it was written in the 1400's it has this kind of intense unknown pagan landscape that really fires the Imagination. It is full of misty forests and strange fey wells and frozen snow covered hills. It's a great deal of fun as well, until the Holy Grail shows up to remind us that there is nothing so fine that it can't be messed up by sanctimonious moralizing. I've always been fond of the Arthur ledged although I prefer the more energetic 'Welcher' versions like Culhwch and Olwen. I guess its just easier to see Arthur in a Welch warband rather than in an English cathedral.

As if this wasn't a heady enough brew, I also acquired an audio version of Barbara Tuchman's The Calamitous 14th Century: A Distant Mirror. This is an absolute masterwork of bringing history to the wider world. Winding the story around the character of one man, Enguerrand de Coucy the seventh, it moves the reader through grand campaigns, peasant rebellions, marauding mercenary knights, worldly prelates, Italian internecine politics, trends in art and literature, crusades, the black death, the murderous Breton wars and a dozen other topics that are spectacularly diverse and come together to produce the best picture of the time I've ever seen. I must candidly admit that I have listened to it three times and it will probably not be the last.

Anyhow, you can see how I was practically forced to start a Brettonian army... Unfortunately, as with many of these literary sprees, the inspiration dosen't always last. I plan to sell what I have painted and hope for a profit. I'm trying vainly to clear out the backlog of fantasy stuff so I can address my backlog of historical stuff. Sigh.

I need to either read up on how to set up models for photography or, more likely buy a new and better camera. Even with the macro feature on this one seems to kind of grain out on me and pick up too much glare.

Anyway without further ado…

Knights of the Realm

One of the great things about Brettonians is that not only are you free to paint your army in any scheme you want, but you a free to paint each individual a different color scheme. I chose to keep the champion and banner man fairly similar to reinforce the idea that the members of the unit are feudally linked to the particular family whose banner they are following.

The Green Count

This particular character was inspired Amadeus VI of Savoy who makes periodic appearences in A Distant Mirror. He was reknowned for always wearing green, being accompanined by a body guard dressed in green and often lead into tornaments by ladies dressed in green. Where his nickname comes from I have no idea.

Black Guy

This guy is one of my personal favorites the inspriation behind him is Guy Du Bas-Tyra from Raymond Fiest's magnificent Riftwar saga.

Black Guy

This is another shot I tried of him. It was my first attempt at stubble on a model and I wanted to capture his face, unfortunately I failed.

Viney Knight

This was an experiment in using patterns. It worked ok but I think it makes him look a bit too fancy for a regular knight. Maybe for a character model.

Banner

Banners are awesome. You know it. I know it.

Champion

This is the unit champion. I really dislike the stretched out neck on the horse. I guess it would look ok on a galloping mount but here it just makes it look like the horse is having some kind of cardiac event...

Random Shot

This is a random shot.
 
So much for the knights. On to the artillery!

Trebuchets: Throwing heavy things since time immemorial.

Obviously it is missing its counter weight. I actually have this painted but am struggling to find a way to suspend an extremely heavy metal weight up in the air. I need some kind of hard core superglue I guess.

Side Shot

Other Side Shot



The Motley Crew

 And last but not least a shot of the crew of this incredible machine. Unfortunately the child/teenager/midget sitting on the wheel barrow suffered a terrible varnishing accident which completely screwed the paint job and it was a terrible shame because he looked AWESOME prior to that. Lesson learned go easy on the varnish.
 
That concludes my Brettonians for now (although I have to admit to having 2 more units of knights in need of painting). My full focus can now go to my Chindits who have been waiting so patiently...

Didn't We Just Look AWESOME....

This is apparently the uniform of the West Australian infantry units that fought in the Boer War.

These guys are probably examples of the 3rd Contingent West Australian Bushmen as most of the other troops WA sent were mounted troops of varying types. This has got to be the single most awesome Australian uniform I have ever seen.

Come to think of it Foundry minatures have some period Australian infantry from their 'Darkest Africa' Range.

Hmmm dosent take a genius to figure this one out...

Operation Squad and the Flea Market

A couple of weekends ago I attended a wargame flea market in Bath Maine. Although sorely tempted I didn't buy anything as I am both poor and getting ready to move. There were a number of games/demo games in the afternoon and I had arranged with Wayne (One of my local historical gamers and all around good guy) to play a game of operation squad, a WW2 skirmish game in 28mm. Although I had never played the game before I found it easy to pick up and very exciting. I played against John a slightly less local gamer who will hopefully still be dropping by the local game store for a few games.

In view of my accent it was decided that I should defend the Mother Country with the British Infantry while John commanded a section of Panzer Grennadiers. I owe a special thank you to Dean for taking a few snapshots with his I-Phone. Although I had intentionally charged my camera battery I was still stupid enough to leave it at home!

I did up a short report of the battle but I have to admit due to the action/reaction action/reaction system that Operation Squad uses it is a little difficult to reconstruct the events of the battle afterwards. I very much approve of this as it certainly adds to the sense of confusion on the battlefield. I had to improvise certain aspects of the battlefield that weren't caught in the photos which gives the whole thing a sort of aerial photography feel.

This scenario was a patrol with an objective of eliminating the most enemy in the time allotted. There was a farm house in the center of the board that was a secondary objective.

John won the deployment roll and forced me to start deploying first. I spread my troops across a fairly wide front. The basic plan was to use the house as a shield to keep as many of the Germans out of the fight as I could while I bought all my weight to bear on one flank. Unfortunately I didn't realize that the house had a back door and this was doomed to failure. Johns deployment concentrated most of his forces on the western side of the road with a mind to seizing the farm house.

TURN 1

The bloodletting started immediately thanks to my careless deployment. A german light machinegun rather negligently gunned down a rifleman whom I had deployed in his line of sight. The rest of my gallant Brits moved forward to the cover of the house and towards the eastern woods. The germans advanced towards the western woods and the farm house with the exception of their machine gun teams and the sniper. One of my riflemen managed to wing an advancing german and my motar team delived the coup-de-grace. Unfortunately his companions managed to clear the blast area before the shell came down.

TURN 2

The second turn started in a similar vein to the first. The MG scored a second kill, avenging his recently shot and mortared comrade by killing the rifleman responsible. Unfortunately this used up his action and my bren gunner and a rifleman stepped around the corner of the farm house and killed the gunner and wounded his assistant. The Germans moved up through the western wood and my would be turning movement made it into the relative safety of the eastern woods. Johns sniper rather ominously turned to draw a bead on my bren gunner but for now held his fire.

TURN 3

Turn 3 began with a general rush for the house. I was staring to feel worried that the germans in this area had definite superiority both in weapons and numbers at the farm house (I also discovered the back door at this point!). One of my riflemen entered the house and my corporal moved towards the door. The wounded german dragged himself into the safety of the hedgerow as his compatriots blazed away at the group advancing through the eastern woods fortunately for me to no effect.

TURN 4

Having finally moved into position in the eastern woods I launched a rather cavalier bayonet charge on the German sniper. In retrospect im not sure why this was appealing, I had no guarantee of beating the German and in all likely hood the higher quality of the Panzer Grenadiers would have given John the edge. In any case he made the wise decision to flee and the sniper scampered across the road to safety despite my corporal taking a pot shot as he crossed the road. One of my other riflemen in the eastern woods tried to run to the hedgerow but was pinned by fire from the German corporal. Mean while a german rifleman stepped around the corner and shot my Bren gunner wounding him before he could return fire. Luckily for me he managed to crawl around the corner to questionable safety. The Germans also lobbed a grenade into the farm house but by luck and grenade bounce my rifleman was unscathed.

TURN 5

Things were now looking grim for the british. My troops were outnumbered, my only support weapon was wounded and by bad management on my part what little reserves I had were far from the action. Everything seemed to be on the German side and their predominance in machine guns and other automatic weapons was worrying in the extreme.

The machine gunner in the north west woods dispatched my charging rifleman with a burst of gunfire. The German sniper fired and wounded my corporal. I fired my mortar at the now exposed German but bad luck on the damage roll meant he was only pinned. Although at the time I was disappointed by this it was to have grave effects. Out numbered and out classed I tried to extricate my rifleman from the farm house but he too fell before a German machine gunner.

By this point British casualties were such that they forced a rout test. Amazingly all but one of my men held firm and I could continue the dubious struggle. My seargent managed to bring down the German who had wounded my Bren gunner and a second rifleman rushed for the hedgerow only to be met with a storm of fire which pinned him down.

At this point I had exactly two soldiers who weren’t pinned or wounded.

TURN 6

In desperation I moved my seargent and my mortar forward, hoping to use their fire power to somehow check the Germans and their infernal machine guns. John moved into the house with his seargent and a machine gunner. My corporal moved forward to throw a grenade at the sniper but it missed and he was cut down by a German rifleman. There was some ineffectual firing across the hedgerows and I managed to unpin my troops their. John hid his sniper preventing me from taking advantage of this.

TURN 7

Realizing that any chances I had would be lost if the Germans got MG's into the second story of the house I moved my wounded Bren gunner in and hurled a grenade through a window before the German's had a chance to gun me down. It deviated slightly but both the Seargent and the MG were caught in the blast and killed prompting a rout test for the Germans.

This test was DEVESTAING. John had rolled well all game but his luck abandoned him here. Five men including his sniper and an MG team booked it for rear leaving two solitary Germans facing five Britons. This stunning tactical reverse undoubtedly saved me. It wasn’t a done deal yet however, both of us were at our break points and the next casualty would decide the game.

TURN 8

 John hurled his remaining men into the farm house. If he could get to the upper floor odds were in his favor that he might gun down the exposed Brits on the other side of the road I was already trying to mitigate this risk by bringing my men across the hedgerow to the farm house. Unfortunately John rolled poorly and one of his men was caught on the bottom floor by a grenade hurled by my sergeant. This kill bought the Germans below their ultimate break point and the plucky Brits, more by luck than good management, had triumphed.

This game was a tremendous amount of fun it was tense and exciting throughout and I found the rule system to be very interesting particularly in the way it allowed reaction and counter reactions. Although I can technically claim the victory John had me dead to rights from Turn 1 and it was only due to a tremendous fluke that I pulled it out of the fire. I definitely need to think about my deployment and making sure I use all my available troops in future games. I under used my mortar and I committed the cardinal sin of focusing way too much attention on the sniper. Even without scoring a kill he was definitely the MVP for the Germans. That being said the Panzer Grenadiers are just SCARY. It seemed at times like every single one of them had a machine gun and was not afraid to use it.

All in all I had a great time at the meet. If I had one complaint it was that our game ran so long that it was the last to finish and I would have loved to have checked out the other fascinating games that were going on! Oh well, next time I guess. Many thanks to Wayne for setting up the game, John for playing and Dean for taking some photos for me!

Oh I also learned that Paint is a total pain in the rear for this sort of thing, time to learn to photoshop...

Now to scrape together the cash for some Chindits….

The Brits at the Hedgerow

The Farm House

The Germans gain the upperfloor too late.

The backdoor I hadn't planned on.

 

Dark Elves

I finally manage to take some decent photos!  These Dark Elves have been an ongoing project of mine for the last 18 months or so. I orginally bought them for my friend Damian back in 2004 when I was in England so its only taken me 7 years to get them all painted. The spearmen in particular have a storied past having survived a car wreck back in 2010 when I was on my way to my local game store.

The add up to about 2000 pts a pretty standard size for a Warhammer army. I have thought about selling them on a number of occasions but because they sort of belong to Damian I have held off. I also need to make sure I have at least two armies so we can play when he comes to visit. I've been trying to get 2000 points of skaven done for him but it seems unlikely that will happen before the next visit in feb-march. Although I should put together some sort of army list so I know what I need to aim for.

All in all im trying to avoid staring any more Warhammer projects for now so I can focus on my historicals. I may work a little more on the Skaven if I can finish up my other projects by the end of the year.

The aforementioned spearmen survivors of my poor driving. Its proably more miraculous that in the 2 years it took to paint them none were lost or eaten by my children.

My first unit of cold ones, I was inspired by Gila monsters to go for the orange and black rather than the more traditional green. Alot of these were bought second hand hand had to be stripped and repainted.

My second unit of cold ones, this is actually intended to act as a bodyguard for my general.

Malus Darkblade Esquire

Morathi, not the greatest photo, I had originally intended to do the base as a pentecal of purple flame but I whimped out.

A scorceress lightly converted.



A rather breastly sorceress I think this is convereted from a warmachine fig but im damned if I can remember. I'd kind of like to change the base and have her standing over the dead dark elf from the Tyrion model to represent the sacrifical dagger however the larger base would be awkward for game play.

Repeater crossbowmen, greatest warhammer unit ever. I have two units of these but I misplaced the pic of the other one.

Corsairs, I wish I had another dozen of these, in the two games we played this small unit never made it to combat.

The Bolt Thrower, the one unit of this army I was unsatisfied with, It just looks a bit sloppy for some reason.

I really wish I had though to take a picture of the whole army when I did this. Well perhaps when we play in february I can get a shot of them as a whole.  If I had the time money and energy id add 10 mor corsairs, a unit of dark riders and a unit of black guard. Perhaps that will motivate me to finish my pike and shot....