May the Fourth Be With You

Rounds 1, 2, and 3

Round 1: 15mm Chuhuac troops. That's an APC in the back. Oh, and a Firefly-class ship for a dropship. I won this round.

 Round 2: The 17th Lancers (Aerocavalry) - the "bug boys". I finished out a unit of ten. Victoria Miniatures Rough Riders mounted on Mage Knight Mechanical Dragonflies. I won this round.

Round 3: Federated States aerial forces. I lost this round. The bad focus on the picture didn't help - you can't see the individual planks picked out on the upper decks, for example.

The Daleks which Exterminated me in Round 3.

Nicely done!

Bolt Action

   Before I forget, I wanted to mention that I played a game of Bolt Action with my regular gaming club last weekend. Jim Johnson was kind enough to provide the rules and the minis. All I provided was a tape measure and some breakfast tacos!

   The scenario was vaguely Market Garden: British Paras held a town across a bridge, awaiting reinforcement down a single road. Germans were deployed in the middle, to defend the road and prevent the British from linking up.

Marder holds the crossroads... but not for long.

   In a game of some serious ups and downs, the end result was a German victory. Sadly, the Germans lost three armoured vehicles (a StuG, Puma, and Marder) and a PaK40, but managed to hold off the British armour through sheer grit, determination, a flamethrower and a Panzerschreck. German infantry eliminated the advancing British infantry to a man.

StuG gets hit from behind...

   The Paras were virtually untouched, and spent much of the game awaiting a German assault that never came. Why? Because the Germans responsible for the assault had sneakily moved into possession of one end of the bridge, capturing an objective, without contesting the objective on the other end of the bridge. This gave the Germans two of three objectives for a marginal German victory as time ran out.

Paras Await German Onslaught. And Wait... and wait...

   A few thoughts on the game:

• It probably works better as a smaller game. We ran it with two players on each side, each player controlling a couple of vehicles, two or three squads of infantry, support weapons, etc.
• I enjoyed it, but you can not play it as if it is Flames of War. The losing team failed to adjust to a different rules set, and this cost them.
• I like that you have to declare what you are doing before you measure. I hate when people move up to just outside of assault range, for example, because they measure the distance to a fraction of an inch to stay safe.
• I like the dice activation system. I also liked the orders dice.

Scandinavian Armour

   A not-terribly-good photo of the Swedish heavy tanks and light tanks I finally finished. There are three more heavy tanks finished, so I have a light battalion of them (3 light tanks, six heavy tanks) minus the command tracks. Which I own but have not yet removed from the blister.

Hegemony Marines (15mm Scifi)

   Finally, some photos that I can share! These are the first units of human 15mm sci-fi that I have finished. I am planning on using them with Gruntz rules. I also have at least one other human faction to paint (and a few of these guys left), plus another alien faction, and more Chuhuac to finish up. Oh, and I am working on Lead Painter's League, too.

   Here they are. These are a unit of notoriously ruthless soldiers, in service of the Sirian Hegemony, the Hegemony Marines. I have some others that are painted up as an elite unit, the "Redcaps," but you can't see them just yet.

   The figures are Khurasan's Control Battalion. I painted them a nicely menacing black with white carapace armour over the upper torso, neck, and head. So far I have two full rifle squads with squad attachments and two mortar teams painted up and ready to go. Working on some command, an FO team, and one more squad. I also have, as mentioned before, one squad of the Redcaps.