The results of my molding attempts

Not too shabby! Its a little light on the detail around the tracks and the rear looks scruffy. But thats what weathering and mud effects are for!

I could probably have paid for another set for the cost of the craft supplies I used to create this.  However I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and sometimes that's what this hobby is about. Or maybe my focus is changing and I'm getting more pleasure out of the hobby side these days than I am out of the gaming side. 

Who knows!

Not Lockdown Anymore - Sherman Firefly

A few months ago I added a very nice Rubicon Sherman Firefly to the lead pile and with the lockdown here in NZ coming to an end I thought why not celebrate by painting a tank! Makes a change from 28mm!

This kit was a dream to put together, which agrees with everything I've ever heard about Rubicon. Even better you get an extra hull and turret so you can build a regular 75mm and swap them if needed (its built so you don't have to glue the hull and chassis!)

The trickiest part was painting the camo on the barrel. Panzer crews quickly raised how deadly the 17 pdr was and would target the firefly in each tank troop first, so the crew camo'd the end of the barrel with a disruption pattern to make it look like the 75mm.

I'm looking forward to trying this bad boy out, i'm sure it'll suffer from the newly painted curse and explode in the first couple of turns.

Warlord Games SAS Jeep!

A Warlord Games SAS jeep,  resin model with white metal parts. This was a relatively easy build,  not much flash and the parts went together ok,  although the wheels were a bit fiddly! I like the characterful crew,  very dynamic and in theme for the majority of the Brit special forces in there Bolt Action range

The jeep itself is armed with two twin Vickers and a single driver operated Vickers, unfortunately this isn't reflected in the Bolt Action rules for this model. Luckily I'm not that precious in my games and neither are my gaming buddies although in a tournament it might be a different story !!!!

All in all I quite like this model and it makes a nice addition to my slowly growing Para force. 

Bolt Action Cromwell

This is a nice simple plastic kit from Warlord Games, not part of their collaboration with Italeri, and makes a welcome addition to my British Bolt Action force. The kitset comes with decals which are perfectly functional and as you can see provide that final finishing element.

This kit is similar in cleverness to Rubicon kits, very few visible join lines and was a joy to paint up. I may have gotten a little carried away with the weathering and mud, but I enjoyed it anyway!

And in the usual way for all newly painted models this went pop in its first game, why do all newly painted models fail miserably in their first outing?

Warlord Games Universal Carrier

Posted by Ste

I’ve always had a soft spot for the old UC so when one of my family got me one for my birthday I just had to get it painted. Unlike the Pz IV I talked about earlier this is a Warlord Bolt Action kit and is nice and sturdy with plenty of crew options and stowage. 

It painted up nicely although I’m not sure about the scale as it looks a little on the large side next to my SAS jeep!

Warlord Games/Italeri Panzer IV

Posted by Ste

I picked this cheap from a local model store and I have to say I’m not impressed. The Italeri/Warlord link up is producing some weird stuff. I’m sure you all remember the walls debacle from 2016 (I think). Well this range if models seems to be cut from the same cloth, I have two from this range (Pz IV and Tiger 1) and they’re both pretty average kits. The Panzer IV went together ok however the tracks and hull join on the Tiger were awful also both of them are pretty thin plastic, it’s questionable how long they’ll with stand the rigours of hard gaming. 

So what’s good about it, well it painted up ok!

I went for your pretty standard camo although I tried out sponging the greens and browns which seems to have worked out ok, there’s a few filters, inks and washes on there too and notwithstanding the average nature of the kit (it’s certainly not a Rubicon) it was actually quite good fun to paint. 

Rubicon Panzer III

Posted by Ste

Although Ash, Bryan and I are busy beavering away with our Saga campaign I keep getting the urge to return to North Africa so here I present a rather significant reinforcement for my motorised column - a Rubicon Panzer III.

I have to say this was my first Rubicon kit and it was a pure pleasure to put together. It only had about 10 parts in total with almost all the joins cleverly hidden. the plastic is very sturdy and overall I was very impressed. The kits comes with  couple of options, I've chosen the ausf G with 50mm gun and external mantlet.

I have a Rubicon Hanomag to build which I'm looking forward to now as these kits are just superb.

Laters
Ste

Back to Afrika - DAK Motorbike and sidecar

Posted by Ste
My DAK force continues to grow with the addition of this Bolt Action motorbike and sidecar. This was a complete pain to build, my superglue refused to stick it together, I've pinned it and propped it and it's fallen to bits several times.

However it does look cool! In Bolt Action these guys are normally part of a Kradschutzen platoon however there is an option to have a single one operating in recce mode. However it normally mounts an MG34 which I couldn't be bothered to model on to this one.

Hey ho, it still looks cool and as I don't play in tournaments I don't have to worry about it as my regular gaming opponents will be fine with a "counts as" model.

Now on to my Rubicon Panzer iii

K47 - Oberleutnant and Staff Car

So, when you’re an aspiring evil baddie you have many items on your wishlist – evil sidekick, funny skin colour and some kind of super weapon. However one of the key bits of evil baddie equipment is …….A COOL CAR!

This chap is a Bolt Action German Officer painted in a suitably evil pallete to represent a member of the nazi occult society, The Order of The Black Sun. And as both an officer and senior member of said society he gets to ride around in a rather spiffy staff car which is simply a 1/48 toy car that I picked up on Trademe (NZ eBay) for about $7.

And here’s the gang all together!

K47 - Totenkorps

First off the blocks in this new game are my Totenkorps (reanimated soldiers). I really liked the sculpts on these models, they do have that shambling undead look. I painted them in a pretty muted colour scheme to reflect their rotting, dead for some time nature as I picture some Nazi special services team collecting up dead bodies and recycling them through a fancy thingumajig to spit out fresh meat!

I've played K47 a couple of times and I have to say that I'm quite underwhelmed with it. A major cut and paste job, some nice new mechanics that have been shoe horned in and don't mesh well with the existing core Bolt Action rules. Oh hang on, that would be the old Bolt Action rules as within the space of a month of releasing K47 Warlord then release version 2 with some significant changes!.

So, although I like these models I'm not sure how much I will use them, unless Warlord update K47 an address some of the problems.

Demo Game at Call To Arms

Call To Arms (CTA) is the annual Wellington gaming event, many dice are rolled, distances measured and cups of tea/coffee drunk. To fit my very busy personal life, Mrs Off t'Club and I have an agreement that once a year I can devote a weekend to my hobby and this year it was going to be Panzerschreck, unfortunately my health disagreed this year and both mine and teammate Ashley's work diaries decided to get rammed and therefore we had to bow out this year (and my 4th Indian were coming along so nicely!)
So at quite short notice we both decided to devote a day to demoing Bolt Action and therefore booked ourselves a table at CTA (we also thought it may help out mate Scott's sales of hobby related crack!).

So we rolled up early to set up in the drizzling sleet with our bundles of terrain. For anyone that didn't know Bolt Action is Warlord Games WW2 game and has been instrumental in attracting whole swathes of 40k players from the ranks of the evil empire across to historical gaming due to its neat, clean mechanic and competitive army lists (of which I am not a big fan). BA is commonly referred to as WW2 lite primarily because of the aforementioned competitive army lists that don't necessarily reflect the historical reality.
However if you play a game that feels like WW2 and if you don't obsess over the minutia of points values and damage points, then it gives quite a satisfying game. I must say that Chain of Command is probably a better game for the period, but it just doesn't gel well with my neanderthal brain!

Anyway we demoed BA for the day playing 3 games with pretty equal forces (we didn't use points values) and managed to garner a reasonable amount of interest.

Below is a pic dump of our table to give you a feel for what went down! 
Ash provided the German forces, I the Brits. All vehicles were Ash's (he's so much better than me at painting tanks!) and he also provided the ruined buildings and base boards. All other terrain came from my collection (yayy I finished my Sarissa buildings).

Unfortunately I didn't get much chance to take photos of any of the other splendid display games that were there however I shall endeavour to rectify that next year. There was however a very nice demo game of Sharp Practice 2 being played next to us, which almost convinced Ash to enter the wonderful world of Napoleonic's (I'll keep working on him), for an entertaining write up (with pics) head on over to von Peter Himself.