Introduction to Battlegroup

So in these wonderful days of lockdowns, covid restrictions, political shenanigans and general all round rubbishiness its been quite hard to find either the time,  freedom or enthusiasm to get any kind of gaming done. Admittedly here in NZ we had a little more freedom than the rest of the universe during the initial stages of the pandemic (woohoo team NZ) however with the arrival of Delta that has come crashing down. Hope looms on the horizon as our population marches grumpily towards the magic vaccination percentage target and boosters arrive into the country on magic wings of steel (sounds like there's a song lyric in there somewhere).

So what has any of this for to do with Battlegroup I hear no one ask.  Well my gaming circle finally managed to create space in our respective diaries to carve out an afternoons Sunday gaming at Chez Bowman (go visit scottswargaming.blogspot.com or https://www.facebook.com/Kapiti-Hobbies-120527141849458/for more info).

As a few of us were new comers to Battlegroup we decided to run through an intro game with the theme of "err, somewhere in Western Europe some Tommies bump into some Jerrys and hijinks ensue". We didn't bother calculating points and just grabbed whatever models were to hand,  then picked an arbitrary 20 BR rating for both forces.

The mission was some kind of meeting engagement with a scouting phase involving a SD.KFZ 222 versus a Humber Scout Car and 2 Universal Carriers. Whilst Jerry was outnumbered the Tommies couldn't get through the armor of the 222 whilst their autocannon made short work of one of the carriers. The Tommies did however make to claim 3 objectives in the initial scouting phase which put Jerry's morale under pressure early on with 3 chits getting drawn to the Tommies one. 

Then the game really began as the armour trundle onto the board slowly followed by the infantry.  It took some getting used to the spot, shoot, kill tests and how to calculate the respective dice rolls but we got the hang of it in the end.  

Surprisingly the Cromwells and Sherman's did rather well against the Stugs, but struggled against dug in troops (as they should).

We're all a bunch of old fogeys so no one really took it to seriously s the whole point was to learn the rules and have fun. There was much laughter, banter and genealogy merriment which at the end of the day was the whole point. 

I have to say I rather enjoyed Battlegroup and think that for anything larger than an infantry platoon this will be my go to for WW2 games. 

Zulu's, some more of them

I recently had the pleasure of being introduced to the new(ish) Osprey ruleset, The Men Who Would Be Kings by a few local gaming compatriots the Gentleman Historic Wargamers.

Our host for the evenings events (Herman and his lovely wife) kicked things off with a selection of homemade South African food (mmm.... pickled fish!) and a few beverages, then we adjourned to Herman's gaming room where we got to select from his extensive collection and play a few turns of a British Redcoats caravan being ambushed by a rather annoyed Zulu impi.

A much better write up is available at Roly's blog - https://arteis.wordpress.com/2021/07/24/a-zulu-war-game-and-a-south-african-feast/

However the game did prompt me to paint up some more Zulu (and a few Natal Native allies). 

These are a kit bash of the now defunct Wargames Factory Zulu and the Perry Natal kit. I quite like the shield style that I did this time,  although I'm not sure how many black and white Holstein-Friesian there were in Africa in this period. I still have a fair few more to get through but they'll suffice for some darkest Africa skirmish gaming using In Her Majestys Name at some point.  

I Made a Tree

What do you do when your getting a bit tired of painting the same thing over and over (I'm painting napoleonic British at the moment). That's right,  you guessed it,  you make a tree!

I started off with some jewellers wire and just started twisting,  and let me tell you wearing gloves or something to protect your fingers is a must as I ended with l up with a lot of puncture wounds. 

Once I had an armature I was happy with I hot glued it to a card base and started applying polyfilla (other brands of wall filler are available). As it started to dry I carefully scored grooves into it to look like bark which I think turned out quite nicely. 

Gray undercoat, burnt umber wash and multiple brown and get dry brushes and then I could glue on some foliage.  

Not a bad tree,  it'll be a nice feature in my western town (Malice), somewhere for those high noon showdowns to happen!

Wands!

Why wands I hear you ask, well a good friend of ours is getting married soon and my wife attended her hen night which had a Harry Potter theme, so she asked if I could try making some wands. 

So like any good modeler I applied my googlefu and 10 minutes later I had a method all mapped out!

A quick trip to get some wooden dowel and glue sticks for my glue gun and I was ready to go. Each one measures approx 12 inches,  I rounded off the ends and smoothed them out with sandpaper and then I went to work getting creative.  

I had quite good fun trying to come up with different designs,  you'll see a few have more natural carved textures,  just for variety. 

Once designed I undercoated all of them white and then painted them with acrylic art paints

Once painted I gave them all a good coating of spray varnish to protect then from all the wand waving and "expecto petronus" casting!