Cake...err...Dragon.....err.... Cake!

My wife found this on one of the many cake sites that she follows and I thought I'd share it simply because its cool!

Plastic Soldier M5 Stuart

Following the extravaganza that was Panzerschreck I decided to paint some more toy tanks. Thats right, weirdly playing in a tournament had not put me off painting (which it normally does) and I have recently had a very nice experience with Ash's Stuarts, so therefore I decided to paint mine.

Prior to coming to NZ I had stocked up on Plastic Soldier goodies at my local stockist which were then packed into furniture for the long sea journey around the world. Since arriving here I have managed to complet 5 Panthers and now 5 Stuarts, however I still have Stug's, Panzer IV's and Shermans to paint so there's plenty to do.

Anyway I digress, I painted these little devils in the usual Olive Drab, wash with Vallejo Sepia and then successive dry brushing and weathering. I may have gone OTT on the mud but I quite like and really gets across the idea that these guys rush around acting as recon....

AAR - Isengard vs Mordor

MAÚHUR - I'm starving. We ain't 'ad nothin' but maggoty bread for three stinkin' days!

SNAGA - Yeah. Why can’t we have some meat? What about them? They’re fresh.

UGLÚK - They are not for eating! They have an Elvish weapon the master wants it for the war.

GRISHNÁKH - What about their legs? They don't need those. Ooh… They look tasty!

UGLÚK - Get back, scum!

SNAGA - Just a mouth full, a bit of the flank.

Pippin and Merry recoil in fright. Uglúk jumps on the Orc and cuts off his head, which bounces off the hobbit's shoulders.

UGLÚK - Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys!!

As you may have realised from the text above Orcs and Uruks will eat pretty much anything, even each other. And its with that premise in mind that Scott and I got together for a return to Middle Earth and the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. As some of you that follow Scott’s blog may know both he and his lovely wife recently purchased their own business and are very busy with this new adventure, therefore it was a stroke of luck that both of our diaries cleared at the same time to allow a little gaming to take place at Chez Bowman.

So I travelled up from my new pad in Whitby to Paraparaumu (I quote the names because it’s a great example of how wacky NZ place names can be) and arrived at Scott’s to find the board set and a rather gruesome (but lovely) Mordor force awaiting destruction by my Isengard Uruk Hai. This would be a little practice for Scott for the LoTR tournament at Call to Arms in Wellington (I’m not playing) and a good opportunity for us both to brush up on our rules and tell a cool story.

Scotts force comprised a bunch of Morannon Orcs with a healthy quantity of Orc bows, some Mordor Uruk Hai, Gothmog and Shaman (both on Wargs) and Grishnakh (hidden in the reserves).

I took Lurtz leading some Scouts and Orcs, an Uruk Captain leading the obligatory Uruk Hai (tanks!), Some Orcs lead by another Uruk Captain and some Warg Riders lead by an Orc Captain.

The mission we rolled had both of our forces split with half in reserve until turn 3.

Not much happened in the first few turns, I shifted my Uruks diagonally, taking advantage of the trees to hide from the nasty Orc archers and following up with my scouts and Lurtz (who took the heroic option of hiding at the back).

Scott wisely kept his fragile, squishy Orc archers behind his shield wall of Mordor Uruks and loosed off a few stray arrows, felling a pikeman and basically being annoying (missile fire in LoTR is pretty much ineffective and annoying, unless you have a lot of it!!!).

Then it all went pear shaped. Turn 3 and I had initiative, rolled for my reserves and got them. Woohoo. But then I rolled to see which board edge they arrived on and rolled a 3 – Scott gets to pick!

So obviously they came on miles away from anywhere. But never mind, they had captains with Might so I could call a few heroic march’s and they’d get in to position as a second wave (fingers crossed). So more shuffling on my part and my Uruks start to advance down the road to Scott’s shieldwall.

This is where the pear comes in, Scott’s reserves arrive, but luckily I get to decide where so I pick his side of the board, thinking that then he’ll just bring them on behind his already deployed troops.

But no, Scott being the evil mastermind that he is (I’m sure he has a white cat and a golden gun hidden away in his palatial manor somewhere) decides to charge on his Mordor Uruks and Grishnakh straight into my Warg Riders, totally negating their charge ability. 

What ensued was a blood thirsty killing spree and after about 3 turns I managed to extract my Warg Riders with only a few of them left. To deal with this rather annoying threat I had to detail my Orcs who were busy marching towards the Mordor Shieldwall flank to tackly the Mordor Uruks…… It wasn’t pretty.

Meanwhile I threw caution to the wind and marched straight towards the now inverted horseshoe of Mordor archery, my Uruks high defence keeping them alive. Scott also threw caution to the wind and charged in (we’d had a good natter, cups of tea and it was getting late), however Orcs’ vs Uruks is not the best match up and my Uruk’s refused to die.

We called it there, we learnt a few nice tactics (like always support with spears or pikes, never get into base contact because when they support they can’t be killed if you lose the fight).

Ahh, good times. I’m sure Scott will follow up with some kind of write up about his adventures at Call to Arms, so keep em peeled!

"Jomsvikings, farsands of em"

Just to illustrate that I haven’t been completely idle whilst moving house, I present to you four Gripping Beast Jomsvikings Hearthguard.

I acquired these some time ago however after Ash decided to get in to Saga (he’s recently watched Vikings!) I decided it may be fun to pay some attention to these models and get them onto the table. I have enough models to make a 4 point warband for Saga and Jomsvikings have their own very unusual play style in the game however I’ll elaborate on that at another time.

If you look at the painted models on the Gripping Beast website you’ll see that they’re rather colourful, I’ve deliberately avoided this look as it doesn’t fit my view of Vikings (Joms or otherwise).

I have spent a little more time on these than I normally do, simply because I wanted to try and paint well rather than get them on the table (quality rather than quantity). 

I’ve even gone so far as to paint eyes, not something I normally do and not something I’m good at (the air turned blue as I tried to get them right for 30 minutes).

 

Also I’ve gone with hand painted shields instead of transfers simply because I have none. It spoils the model if you go to the effort of painting them well and then glue on a tatty shield, however no I have to get creative in how I paint the rest of them! Next up are 4 more Hearthguard and the Warlord and then I can try and smash Ashley’s Normans (I have enough generic Germanic warriors painted to make up a 4 pt warband).

Brum brum!

As I recently spent a full weekend playing with toy soldiers I thought it worthwhile to book a day off and have some quality family time to make up for my absence. So on a wet and wintery Friday we went for a quick scoot up the highway to the Southward Car Museum near Paraparaumu. New Zealand being the small country that it is you don’t expect to find one of the world’s largest privately owned car collections on your doorstep and yet here it is nestled comfortably up against State Highway 1 (a single lane road that heads north from Wellington) and only 25 minutes drive from our new front door.

Anyway here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it (I’m lazy so didn’t see the point of rewording what was already a pretty good summary!).

The Southward Car Museum is an automobile museum housing a collection of over 250 vehicles, as well as three aircraft, located on Otaihanga Road, Otaihanga, just north of Paraparaumu on the Kapiti Coast of New Zealand's North Island. The museum is run by a charitable trust, incorporated in 1972. The museum's collection includes Marlene Dietrich's Cadillac cabriolet, a 1915 StutzIndianapolis race car, gull-winged Mercedes-Benz, a 1950 Cadillac "gangster special" that belonged to gangster Mickey Cohen, and an 1895 Benz Velo, imported to New Zealand in 1900.

The car collection was the work of Sir Len Southward and his wife, Vera, Lady Southward. They began collecting cars in 1956. After achieving success in business, Sir Len dedicated time and money to buying and restoring old cars, adding to the collection. The Southward Car Museum was opened in December 1979, and after his retirement Sir Len devoted his time to the museum.

The museum is a purpose-built building, featuring a 6000 square metre exhibition hall, engineering workshop, gift shop, and small cafe, and is set in six hectares of park-like grounds.

It’s actually a bit mental, as you can see from the main picture below, cars jammed together in a cavern like main hall with a mezzanine floor along one side dedicated to motorcycles and bicycles. Oh and they have 3 planes too!

Anyway onto the really good stuff, they have a very lovely Willys Jeep alongside a Schwimmwagen and Kettenkrad.

I didn’t realise how small the Schwimmwagen actually was, the Jeep seemed to dwarf it.

This is the civilian version of the Welbike made by Corgi, its really small. Even though this is the civvy version I really wouldn’t like to try riding it any distance. Imagine how the Para’s felt on seeing the Welbike!

Ever wondered what Messerschmitt did after the war, well here it is, they made cars. Really weird, cool looking cars.

I’ve been to lots, and lots, and lots of museum’s over the years and all of them attempted to do the same thing, take the visitor on a journey and tell some sort of story. What’s weird about the Southward Car Museum is it doesn’t appear to try and achieve this, it just seems to be a big warehouse full of cars. There are interpretation panels on most of the exhibits however there is no coherent timeline or purpose to the collection. Maybe that’s how Sir Len wanted it, however it is not a place that inspires you to revisit (unless you are truly an automobile nut!).

And finally anyone remember this crazy idea for personal transport.

From rubber keyed computers to commuter death machines...Sinclair was weird!

AAR - A Clearing Somewhere in the Ardennes

Now that I’ve unpacked and figured out where to put everything I'm able to start gaming again and Ashley kindly invited me down to his casa for a spot of FoW Panzer bashing. He's recently finished up his Panthers with his newly acquired airbrush (and rather nice they are too!) and wanted to give them a go. So both of us threw together lists from the Bulge books and had at it!

So will the rule of "newly painted tanks die first" apply here or will Ash be able to break the curse? To find out read on.......

Ash took some crazy list from Forces of War which had Confident Veteran Panthers (x30 CiC & 2iC in Panthers, Stug G’s (x3), a Mounted GPG Platoon, Wirbelwinds (x2) and an ME262 (Sporadic)

I had a 4^th US Tanks from BGG, Sherman Platoon (2x 76mm, 1x 75mm), Sherman Platoon (2x 75mm & 1x 105mm), CiC 76mm, 2iC 75mm, Para Platoon (x6 stands), Stuarts (x3) and M10’s (x4).

We ended up playing free for all as we’re both a little rusty on the rules (even after I played a full weekend tournament!), with me as the attacker. Ash had laid out a nice balanced table, quite heavily terrained however not many areas that blocked line of sight.

I had first turn and immediately did something that most FoW players consider stupid (unless you’re Paul and I at Panzerschreck vs Scott and Bryan. Go check out Scott or Pauls blogs to see how well that turned out!), I double timed my Stuarts up the flank. It was a risky manoeuvre as there were 3 Stugs, 1 Panther and two Wirbelwinds within range however I managed to cluster them safely behind a wood. The only way Ash was getting them was with his Panther or Stugs and moving into position would expose his side armour to my 76’s so they were pretty safe.

Meanwhile Ash went for the pincer approach, massing his Panther platoon and CiC on my right flank. I was in trouble as I only had my CiC 76mm and the Sherman platoon with 2x 75mm’s and the 105mm holding that side.

Two turns later and our ineffectual shooting had managed to bail a couple of tanks on both sides, not really much had happened although Ash makes a pretty good cup of tea, and his missus brought in some brownies (things were looking up).

Then it all turned to custard (as they say down here in NZ), at least for Ash it did. He’d had very little success with his Me262 as it tried to bomb my Para’s who were dug in on an objective (never gonna happen) and failed miserably to cannon any of my tanks (including my lone 2iC who was lingering as my mobile reserve!). 




Then I popped my TD’s slap bang in the middle of the board and proceeded to blast the heck out of the Panther Platoon. The curse of the newly painted tanks continues as they vapourised.

Where once there Panthers, there now are none!

I then proceeded to batter the GPG’s who were following up, and his CiC, even trying to take it out with a direct shot from the Sherman 105mm in the side armour (didn’t work, but it sure looked good). My CiC then got a bead on the CiC Panther and lit it up with his 76mm.

Meanwhile over on the other side of the board Ash finally managed to toast a 75mm Sherman however by now I was pouring fire into its side armour from my flanking Stuarts, my 2iC moved up onto the road running through the centre of the board and got a lucky side shot to seal the deal.

Are the Stuarts in a good position, what do you think?

Even Stuarts will make a mess of a Panther from the side!

The he leisurely cruised down the road to claim one of the objectives, pretty much sealing Ash’s fate.

Game to me, however it was by no means a certain thing. My TD ambush was really devastating on the Panther platoon and then the GPG. If I had had a bad round of shooting Ash would have battered the Shermans holding the objective and it would have turned into a slugfest between the Para’s and GPG’s.

Rushing my Stuart’s up the Flank really screwed with Ash’s plans to have a long range duel as he couldn’t afford to have them hitting his Panther in the side. Unfortunately no matter which way he cut it I had side shots from either the Stuarts or the Shermans.

(Note: All the US were mine apart from the Stuarts which were Ash's)

Once again a really fun game, however we do want to break the curse, maybe its only a Panther curse in which case the next game I plan on taking reluctant trained Panthers! Yes that’s right, its going to be awful, but I’ll have millions of tanks (so at least it’ll be fun).