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!
Saturday, 29 August 2015
Monday, 24 August 2015
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....
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....
Wednesday, 19 August 2015
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.
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!
Monday, 10 August 2015
"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).
Monday, 3 August 2015
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.
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!
From rubber keyed computers to commuter death machines...Sinclair was weird!
Sunday, 2 August 2015
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 4th 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.
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.
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! |
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.
The he
leisurely cruised down the road to claim one of the objectives, pretty much
sealing Ash’s fate.
Are the Stuarts in a good position, what do you think? |
Even Stuarts will make a mess of a Panther from the side! |
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).
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