Friday 26 December 2014

Ice and fire pt 1

I thought I'd post my first game of lion rampant for my ice and fire themed games.
It will in no way follow the books but take its own path and will have many twists and turns along the way.

It starts with a scenario from the rule book whereby one force has to find and safely retrieve an escaped enemy captive.

Young Rob Stark has not long been crowned King of the North, word reaches his camp that his mother, Lady Catelyn, had been travelling through the Riverlands when here escort was ambushed.
She is said to be hiding in a nearby village. Immediately Rob mobilises some men and they head out.
As they reach the village enemy banners are spotted to the west. It's Ser Gregor Clegane and his men. Backed up by a few Lannister regulars.
He must find his mother quickly.

The Stark host in the east
The Lannister host
Good fortune, Lady Catelyn is found by the outriders. (Jammy turn 2 dice)

The Clegane yeomen respond quickly 
The outriders start to escort Lady C from the battle
The Stark serjeants form up to cover there retreat.
Elsewhere the opposing forces close in.

Yards from safety, she drops an earring.
(Needed a 5 on 2d6)
The yeoman keep up the pursuit 
She drops another earring 
As she looks for it, Lannister men catch Greatjon by surprise 
And swiftly rout his host.
To no avail though as Lady C finds her earrings and is safely escorted from trouble.

Well an interesting game that I thought may end without a blow being struck.
Also seems highly ironic that the stand in unit of numidian horse was the star of the show. The law of sod strikes again.

Thanks for looking 

Epic orks

So the gorging on food and drink has passed, and I'm already itching to be productive.
As a break from the medieval posts recently I have revisited some neglected 6mm miniatures.
These are a mix of various wagons for epic orks. I use a simple system for painting these by selecting a base colour (usually red as they go faster!), then pick out any metallics, and finally glyphs or embellishments or crew. 
They are then inked with either black or brown before Matt varnish.
Simple but effective at this scale.
Some progress pics
Base colour etc
Bikes and trucks at various stages 
Some wagons awaiting varnish 

Thanks for looking back soon with more updates 

Monday 15 December 2014

Pre Xmas present 2


As posted earlier was a pic of the boxes, now a couple of pics of the parts and finished buildings. These have had a coat of 3 different spray paint and await the details picked out by hand.



An additional benefit of the buildings are the fact they can be unbuilt and stored in the original box 

Very handy indeed 

Pre Xmas present

I have not had much spare time recently so the blog has suffered accordingly. However many new and existing posts will be updated in the next few weeks.

As a continuation of my 28mm medieval posts I picked up these at half price.

A nice little set of buildings for under £40.
I currently have them in the shed getting under coated, full pics of the parts to follow.


Tuesday 28 October 2014

Ice and Fire

Well the dust settles on the Arnhem project and the mind starts wandering. 

A few posts ago I introduced Ser Gregor Clegane. I did finally paint his retinue of henchmen, all 6 of them, and played a few games. It was all good and then I bought this


A very nice light hearted set of rules, completely mission based. 
This got me thinking and it led to the construction of another 30 figures to fill out most of the force I would need


That isn't the worst bit, I then thought I better get an opponent for them,


Which looks like this,


And that's only half of them!
All this from the guy who says he hates painting 28's

You've gotta love any hobby that makes you challenge your own opinions lol 

Thanks for following, and always go with the craziest ideas.





Sunday 19 October 2014

Arnhem the battle



Well we were only a month late, but we finally got the battle played.

The Paras started the game dug in to the ruins of the city. 



Kampfgruppe Brinkmann arrives with a few platoons of panzer grenadiers 


This had little effect on the defenders, however reinforcements arrived swiftly.
Graebner and his armoured cars charge over the bridge 
And dive into a salvo of fire 

And they kept coming!


As the beleaguered Paras dealt with these persistent enemies Knaust arrived with his training school armour 

And surrounded 1st platoon which lead to their destruction 

Afterwards 2nd platoon and the 2ic stood there ground to the side of the bridge under heavy fire.


As if this wasn't bad enough Hummel arrives with his Tigers and grenadiers 

The Paras hold out valiantly for the remaining turns, fighting tooth and nail for every inch of ground.

As burning wreckage litters the bridge the heroic 2ic eyes up a chance for glory.
A panzer tank gets stuck between the buildings, time to strike back. He destroys the tank and sends the rest running.


In retribution for the tanks, SS grenadiers hunt down the hero
And finish him off before he does more damage 

Its looking grim for the airborne troops now
But they hang on and dig in further, even when the mortars stop firing due to ammo shortages 
The game ends with the narrowest of wins for the Paras.
The players certainly seem to have enjoyed the game. I must admit it worked very close to how I wanted it to. Bags of tension and stress, and went to the wire.

This game will definitely get rolled out again sometime, but it's got me thinking of making more scenarios, I enjoy the research and plotting twists in the tale.



Tuesday 7 October 2014

15mm german armour


Some more units to fill up the arnhem tables.
First up a platoon of panzer III

Next is a platoon of panzer IV 

A couple of AA half tracks

And finally a couple of support vehicles 

These were all done in a more early to mid war scheme to represent Luftwaffe units and the tanks as from the training schools in the area. 
I'm sure they will come in handy when I go back to mid war gaming though😊

Bye for now.



Wednesday 1 October 2014

Arnhem

I have been ridiculously busy in the last few weeks so progress has been very slow.
However I got some more buildings nearer finished and did a quick layout for the game.
The whole layout 
And again 
And just for fun a german convoy passing through.

Monday 8 September 2014

Arnhem 3

Got a little work done tonight but nothing major.
The SS platoons have been flocked and finished off the panzerwerfer platoon that's been sitting for months.
There's an interesting small objective marker in this batch too, but I leave it up to you guys to spot it, here they all are drying off before a couple of coats of Matt varnish.

Chow for now.

Sunday 7 September 2014

Arnhem

Okay, appears blogger is fine, I don't know how to use the app properly!
I must be getting old :)

Anyway here's some of today's progress

Under coated troops and tanks, plus a cheeky little building too

The SS platoons and markers

Test base for SS stands, looks good for under 10 mins a base.


Step 1 overbrushed with a beige brown


The almost finished Heer infantry, these had a similar process to the others. Overbrushed with field gray, pick out details with browns and greens, flesh out, and into the brown foot bath for the bases.
May give all of them a magic dip before flocking, I'll see how they look later.
Hopefully more tomorrow night, so stay tuned.