Painting and Waiting

My game room remains in disarray. The renovation is complete as of today and I expect to have figures on the table by next weekend! In the meantime, I have not been idle. I received a copy of Sword and Spear Fantasy in the mail. This prompted me to pull out my fantasy figures and see what I had on hand to make armies with. The good news is I have 2 painted armies and a half painted army ready to base up to try the rules out. I have Dwarves and Undead ready to go but will need to paint up some of Beastmen to complete that army. I can also do Humans of course, using my many ancients figures. The rules do not stray far from Sword and Spear Ancients. Magic Users, Undead and Flight are the major additions. More on this later...

I have had the pleasure of painting up my sons Imperial Assault Figures. This is a board game from Fantasy Flight games and the figures were crying out for a paint job. The game is a bunch of fun with cinematic scenarios and heroic battles. There is an in-depth campaign system to allow the heroes to grow and also for the Empire to further it's plans. Top dollar but great components and very fun to play.

Troopers

Pew Pew!!

The Emperor's Royal Guard

Skywalker 

 Showdown!

 Trandoshan Hunters - Don't remember these from any of the movies

 Imperial Probe Droid

 Heroes

 More Heroes

 Imperial officers

 E-Web Engineers

Nexu

These are Mindflayers from the plastic Pathfinder collection

German Reinforcements

I played a game of Bolt Action recently and was inspired to fill some gaps in my German army. I did not have any infantry anti tank weapons and these a common in this rule set. I purchased some 15mm Battlefront figures used for Flames of War and based them on pennies. The jacket colour is not quite right but they painted up quickly. I am enjoying the one or two day painting projects. It is more fitting with my goals of playing more games. In the past, I would paint for 3-6 months and finish a large army. While doing this, I did little else in the gaming department. I have lots of armies now and can enjoy adding odds and ends as well as terrain.

The Hanomags are plastic Battlefront 15mm figures, the armoured truck with 4x20mm AA gun is Old Glory. The decals are from my bits box when I painted the bulk of the troops a few years back. No camouflage but lots of dry brushing. I watched a quick tutorial on weathering and added some powdered pigment. It came out ok but looks like they just drove through some mud and need to go to the motor pool car wash.

I had this last model on my shelf for some time. It is a 1/48 plastic model kit and don't ask me the make. I pulled it out and used the left over palette paint to add some colour and call it done. This vehicle may see action in my 28mm German army.

Paused for a Purpose

My game room has been turned into temporary storage to accommodate a room renovation next door. The good news is we are getting a new bedroom, the bad news is no use of my toys.

This is where the fun used to happen :-(

All is not lost as I have made some use of my gaming energy. I acquired a copy of Wings of Glory as well as a batch of 10 planes for a modest price. This game is WW1 air combat and is the precursor to many other games such as Wings of War (WWII air combat), Sails of Glory and even X-Wing. I had a play test with my local opponent and it was as fun as I remembered. Playing this reminded me that I also have a game from many years ago called Ace of Aces. This is WWI air combat played entirely out of 2 books. Choose your maneuver and the book interfaces the two planes to get a result. I got to play this as well as no table space is required.

Shoot out with Wings of Glory

Old and New

I have also been painting fantastic figures as painting requires less space than gaming. The figures are a new line of pre primered D&D figures from WizKids. The line is about 1/2 monsters and 1/2 characters. I like Dwarves so I bought some Dwarves Wizards. I also bought some Halfling Rogues. On the monster side I started with Mindflayers. The figures are nice with good action poses. The wizard is casting a spell and one of the rogues has tossed a smoke bomb. I have not painted many figures lately and it was nice to do only a few rather than the usual mass production. I have dug out other fantasy models from other games and I expect I will have more painting to show off in this genre soon. Not sure what to play with them yet, Song of Blades and Heroes perhaps. Sword and Spear Fantasy will be released soon so I hope to build 2-3 armies for that game.

"Bolt Action" Action

Saturday was game day and we had a great turn out. 6 players in all, including Ross of www.gameofmonth.blogspot.ca/ fame. I had put together 4 forces on 2 sides at 600 pts a list. This was a learning game as most of us had not played before. It was my figs and rules so I took the role of game master. The scenario was called envelopment and required the attacking Russians to occupy or escape through the German deployment zone. The Germans opted to defend the side of the table that had a good killing zone in front of it. Unfortunately for them, the Russians opted to avoid this area and squeeze the bulk of their army in a mad charge down their right flank. The Germans reacted to this but were limited because the Russians had kept a flank marching reserve which could have arrived on the other flank, but did not. The Russians overwhelmed the defenders on that corner of the battle field and marched off their army almost unscathed. The Germans were able to knock out a T34 in a long range duel as well as 3 smaller units (MMG, Anti Tank Rifle and Sniper). The Russian armored car got cocky and blew up on a bridge. The Germans lost a sniper and 1 infantry unit and an officer.

My role as umpire was greatly reduced after turn 2 as the players had gotten the hang of things and used the excellent 2 page QRS. I think this was a tough scenario for the defenders. I have read the the basic rulebook scenarios have been revamped and are much more balance and here is a link... https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9qPaKsZK_89TTlUUTRMeFNqN21ZSy1HVmhZLWlxSTBNR0NZ/view.

One of the modifications was not allowing the attacker to flank march would would have made a big difference for the defenders. The players appeared to enjoy the game and we had a nice lunch together. Welcome to a new member of the club Richard.

I reviewed the rules last night and found some errors I made. I think this is ok as both sides benefited or suffered from the errors.

View from the German lines

Table set up

Russian hordes advance on their right

Inexperienced T-34 heading for trouble

Germans hold the strategic bridge on their left

Soviet Sniper and AT rifle in cover