Slow going but progress on some things!

It's been a slow week - already done a bit much socialising and playing video games and not a lot of hobbying. I have finally finished the first sister in my Imperial Agents Sororitas squad and I'm pretty happy with how she came out. 

She still needs basing (there are tufts inbound from the UK) and some transfers on the tabard but that'll happen when I do the whole squad. It was good to go through this one from beginning to end as now I have the order of operations that gets me to the end without TOO much repainting white... 

I've also started on getting my Early War Germans up and rolling. I started with these two tournament objectives that I picked up at Panzerschreck last year. They're going to be actual 88s (because you can't play EW without them!!) and I had enough models lying around in the bits box to crew them:

I've also started on the insane task of cleaning off my Early War Germans to repaint them. At least I thought it was insane till I borrowed Blogger McBeth's ultrasonic cleaner and ho boy. You can see how well it's worked on a couple of the models on those 88 bases and it's worked even better on the tank hulls. In one case, I think it took off nearly 20-year-old primer! 

There's still a dozen Panzer IIs, some self-propelled guns, some trucks and a bunch of infantry to do but I'm optimistic that it'll be fairly easy over the next little while. 

Next Time

It's our club's annual event so there'll be a late blog with some how it went and hopefully some good photos of the Flames comp and anything else pretty I see over the weekend! 

Testing Brigade Panthers

 So with ValleyCon25 a mere two weeks away, I booked in a couple of practice games to make sure that my proposed Brigade Panther Company was as bad as I thought. Here's my advanced secret tech (as I am wont to do every time this rolls around) for our Flames of War event: 

Core

• HQ Brigade Panther (Late)
• 3 Brigade Panther (Late)
• 3 Brigade Panther (Late)
• 3 Brigade Panzer IV/70 
• 4 Brigade Wirbelwind

Support

• 4 Volkshetzer
• Full Ardennes Assault Platoon
•  SdKfz 250 Recce Platoon
• Lucky
  

I'm musing on swapping out the Hetzers and the 250 Recce for 4 Panzer IVs but I do love a Hetzer and the rare occasions where a Spearhead move would come in handy will be pretty awesome. Hard to know right now...

Anyway, I played a game of Scouts Out with McBeth Jr Sr running a French tank company with no infantry and 13 as the best AT. This felt like a game where sending my Panthers up the guts was the right answer since I should be able to facetank AT 12 76mm guns... 

So we shall start with a photo of my first save of the game:

My COs Panther blown to bits by some M18 Hellcats. Because I can facetank 76mm guns right? I popped a Hellcat in reply but ho boy what a trade that wasn't.

He jumped into a new tank and promptly bailed out the following round to more Hellcat shots. From there, I pushed my remaining Panthers forward supported by the 250s (!) who removed the M18s from consideration from the game. The French HQ exchanged ineffective fire with my Volkshetzers.

Having seen off the M18s, I sent the 250s to distract the remaining Sherman 76s before any French reserves arrived. I also pushed my reserve Panthers forward, getting ready to shove Panthers onto both objectives - they're just on the left of the photo below:

This next pic was taken about turn 6 when the game fell apart for me. The HQ Shermans sold themselves to pop a pair of Panthers (four shots, two hits, two ones for saves, two successful firepowers) before my Panzer IV/70s sent them to the shadow realm exposing the front objective.

At the top of this photo you can also see my response to the arrival of French reinforcements where I retreated slightly after I lost another Panther to rolling ones. After I destroyed the 76mm Sherman in response, a couple of 75mm Shermans made the brave run through a forest onto the flanks of those two Panthers and the result can be seen in the picture below - two bailed out Panthers...!

The last photo is me making a cheeky shove to grab the objective, relying on range and smoky wrecks to keep that Wirbelwind alive:

 

But McBeth Jr Sr managed to get enough shots to hit it and break my company. I probably could have pushed on another turn but my Volkshetzers were about to get 76mmed and my IV/70s were too far back to really impact the game. 

So it mostly worked as intended, except for my staggering ability to roll ones when I really didn't need or want to. It was a useful reminder that I shouldn't trust my dice either... I think I like the idea of having this many Panthers. It is a lot of fun to be cruising around with arguably the best tank in the game but with some of the most hamstringing crews that Germans can field. It's a really good challenge. Playing it well is really rewarding.

My second game, with McBeth Jr Jr, went according to the plan suggested by McBeth Jr Sr - where it was Panther v. Panther, playing more conservatively was the go. McBeth Jr Jr was running a Mixed Panzer Company with Panthers and Jagdpanzer IV/70s and the realisation was whichever one of us started to collapse first would probably go down. We played Scouts Out again and this time it was McBeth Jr Jr whose armour saves were not where they needed to be. My firepower rolls weren't good either but they were made up for by a series of failing 5+ Remount and Last Stand rolls that meant my Panthers emerged victorious. 

It was a useful series of lessons. Am I prepared for how wildly swingy Brigade is going to be? Not really, but I am looking forward to it!

Next Time

I'll be working on finishing my Sororitas squad and kicking into a new/old project - repainting my Panzer Is and Panzer IIs for Early War...

Hot rides...

Been slowly grinding away at Immolators for the past couple of weeks and here we are:

 

 That, dear readers, is too much white. And if GW hadn't thrown Contrast Paint into the world then it would have been even more miserable. I have seen a couple of designs since that had a white turret and top plate on a black hull and, in hindsight, I could have done that. All in all though, happy enough with how they came out. I suspect each time I get them out of the box, I'll find more patches of white I want to tidy up and that's kind of okay.

 I really love the way the Aethermatic Blue came out of the statues for a real pop of colour and it was definitely a good idea I stole off the internet. I'm happy that I didn't put too much colour into the glass and while it's frosted (because you really have to spray some varnish on the model to get the paint to stick) I think it looks good being that simple. Didn't enjoy painting it though...

Lessons? Review the assembly guide before you start painting. I had the good sense to leave the gun mounts and the stained glass parts out before I started painting but I should have left the altar off the back and in pieces too and probably left the pilot's torso out but given what a pig getting all the parts glued into the cockpit and lining those up with the pilot were not easy at all.

The Immolator kit has been an exercise in frustration to be sure. There are some kits that go together like a dream and are so easy it's not funny (see Battlefront's Jagdtiger kit for an example) but this one feels like it fought me every step of the way.

Next Time

The Sisters squad that'll be riding in these Immolators with Inquisitor Greyfax are underway now and hopefully will get smashed through a lot faster than this insanity...  

Trying out the Atomic Mass Games version of Star Wars: Legion

AKA Return of the Scarif Beach Party...

 Blogger Pel and I decided it was time to give the new version of Star Wars: Legion a go. Given the wildly varying views on the internet and the bits and bobs that we'd respectively read it seemed like the best thing to do was give it a go. 

We both went through and built lists with a bunch of things that needed to be tested. Pel bought a couple of vehicles so we could see what happens when armour and vehicle damage play out and I bought the Dark Troopers (for armour) and a double-sized unit of Storm Troopers to see what that did.

The mission was a Bunker Assault with Sweep and Clear as a secondary objective - that was looking to defeat enemies in all areas on the board for VPs. Pel had Ordnance as his advantage (for a once per game bombardment) and I had Garrison (adding another Prepared Positions unit.)

The game began with both of us reading the orders rules to understand how we actually started with our commanders off the table and then working out how Prepared Positions worked. I deployed half my army (in the end) because Shore Troopers and their mortars, as well as my Storm Trooper garrison. Pel deployed his blaster cannon and his Rebel Veterans.

The first turn was VERY slow as we worked out how everything worked, looked up rules and abilities and double checked things we thought might have changed. By the end of turn one, I'd plinked some damage on the Snow Speeder and killed some Rebels and Pel had started a campaign on the giant unit of Storm Troopers but the amount of damage done to either side was fairly limited. 

Turn two and three were fairly violent - the Storm Troopers spent the whole game excessively suppressed and it was only Director Krennic standing next to them that kept them from panicking. The Dark Troopers armour and two activations did horrific things to Pel's Wookiees while Pel's rotary cannons destroyed most of my infantry.

This is about where we ended up. Darth Vader went screaming across the board and dispatched two reduced units of Rebel Troopers, the Taun Tauns and Dark Troopers continued to handbag each other and a Dewback had a good crack at Han Solo for not much of anything.

We called the game there as the Empire was ahead on VPs and while I was down to 4 Shore Troopers and one Storm Trooper in my line, I still had an angry Vader and most of my Dark Troopers still kicking while Pel was running out of infantry and the Dark Troopers dealing with the Wookiees blunted the Rebels attack. Also, Pel cannot make white-die saves in Legion.

What did we learn?

• Most units don’t deploy on table unless you have Prepared Positions. 
• Most units walk on the base edge. So unless you have range 4, you’re not shooting much of anything in turn 1, which isn't a bad thing. Speed One Darth Vader might struggle to really impact a game but that's just an inducement for transport.
  
• New cover rules are just straight better. 
• The flat hit reduction from v1 meant that the more attack dice you had, the better. Whereas the new cover rules allow for units to survive longer and they're more likely to be panicked than just shot off the board. Sharpshooter is a VERY good rule now.
  
• New armour rules just straight better, especially getting rid of the Armour with no number on it.
  
• Crit fishing is still a valid strategy for killing units with armour but it's possible to overwhelm armoured units with regular firepower. But dealing with armour is something that you need to have.
  
• Suppression doesn’t grant cover.
  
• That rule always seemed weird. Happy to see the back of it.
  
• Double sized units are interesting but not game breaking. 
• The recover Suppression markers using red defence dice, not white ones, and while it helps, they're also harder to hide since a 10 man unit takes up space!
  
• Pretty much all the simplifications are improvements we ran across are improvements. 
• The loss of fidelity on things like vehicle damage didn't measurably impact the game and having vehicles simply having a degraded state that requires a white die save to do more than one action is great.

The new battle plan setup is really good too. Picking out primaries and secondaries that your army can achieve and advantages that fill gaps in your army's capability is a nice way to go. We aren't on a 'who had the biggest bid to be Blue Player' stupidity either.

Overall? 

Well pleased. I think we'd both agree that this version is better than the last one. Most of the simplifications improve the overall feel of the game. The scenario generator is both more fair and more interesting. Dropping a turn and increasing the size of a basic army up to 1000 points doesn't seem to have much of an impact. I think at the end of three turns, the score was 5 - 3 and getting either of us to 12 by the end of Turn 5 was....looking unlikely. 

We're already looking at new models...

Next Time

Some more colours have been added to the Immolators. Well, black. I'll be pushing to get them done this week... 

Painting white...

Ho boy. Why do I do these things to myself? Two solid days effort on the turrets of my Immolators and here we are with two mostly complete turrets for my Immolators. Thank goodness for contrast paint is all I can say. The contrast has done a nice job of just putting in some shadows in good spots and letting me just tidy up the flat surfaces with some Vallejo Cold White (easily the best white. Easily.)

 

This was one of those kits when you start painting and wish you hadn't put the whole thing together but I say that having had a heck of a time getting the drivey-handles sitting in the right spots so even if I hadn't assembled them, they'd have superglue-based misery all over them instead. 

Overall, happy with how they've come out. Be interesting to see what they look like when I finally put the stained glass on. GW recommends a coat of varnish to help the paint stick so that'll be step one and then getting stuck into the stained-glass bits. I know what I want to do, so hopefully it'll come out gleaming! I'll be getting to work on the hulls next but not super sure where to start with those. Tracks and work up?

I've also finished a second Navigator for my Imperial Agents. I think they're a nice addition as a unit leader for Breachers as they can keep Deep Striking stuff away from my very squishy humans but also can shoot a pretty solid mind-bullet as well. 

Nice to paint a second one this many forevers after the last one and have them come out looking pretty much the same. Once I've done the Sisters as well, I'm going to break out the Veiled Blade detachment and do some seriously silly Assassin shenanigans,

I also managed to polish off the repaint of the rest of my Team Yankee infantry which, as it turns out leaves me with two full Mech Platoons, two full Para Platoons or one full Marine platoon which is a pretty good outcome I reckon. Got a couple of new toys arriving this week to finish off a platoon of M551 Sheridans for a game next weekend too.

Next Time

I'll be getting the Star Wars Legion out for a game with Blogger Pel to try out the second edition. I've got reasons to be optimistic the changes are good. Will let you know how it goes!  

A few quick updates!

 Bit of a short blog this week. Too much chorin' to be done!

Testing for ValleyCon?

So I took the Brigade Panthers out for a run and ho boy. 

It was a pretty rough handling for clubmate Pat who was trying to make Jagdpanthers work and having already given that list up it validated that decision. Bulge Jagdpanthers are too pricey to make a list with enough fat to sustain any number of losses. Jagdpanthers are definitely in the 'reach out and crush someone' class but the rest of the list is also too pricey to really work within the confines of the VC list builds for this year.

I did enjoy the Brigade Panthers though - I don't think I'm going to have many long games at ValleyCon - having seven Aggressive Reluctant Panthers does not encourage conservative play so I'm not going to.  Should make for some hilarious matches.

Sororitas! 

Blogger Scotty flicked me the limited edition Sister so I thought I'd give the paint scheme a punt and see where I landed:

 

I'm middlingly happy. The white came out well enough with some aggressive use of Contrast White which makes me happy because I really did want to paint them in the Order of the Sacred Rose.

However, I've already abandoned the red bolters for black on the unit and I'm going off to have a serious think about my insistence that all pineapple grenades are green and the webbing all being in black. Blogger Pooch suggested I paint them all as gingers, which I do like, but I need a better method than this one! 

But, it got me enough confidence in the painting white to start on this:  

Got a long long long long way to go and there are TWO of them! 

Next Time

 

Expect progress on the Immolators! 

 

It's not practice. It's not....

First off, let me be absolutely clear. 

We are NOT practicing for Panzerschreck. We are just remembering how to play Team Yankee. 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

Tank and I took our Bradley Mech / Bradley Recce doubles list out for a run against Pel and McBeth's Cheiftan / Warrior Mech doubles list at the club in a game of Outflanked!

Bit of a slow start as we looked up a bunch of stuff and figuring out how we have always adapted to playing TY on 8 x 6 tables (this is the correct size table for TY at this size and you cannot change my mind) and remembering how night rules work, finding out that Thermals are better than IR (and that the Brits don't have any) and remembering how ranging in with the same spotter happens!

The British ran an armoured spearhead straight up the guts toward the front objective lead by the Challenger Is:

 

The defending US shelled a bunch of the British AA out of the game (except the Rapiers....) and ambushing Cobras went after the British Abbots. The Abbots survived and a second Rapier volley deleted the Cobras. This is where we learned read Hunter Killer in more detail. Lesson learned. 

As we rolled rapidly into the final phase of the game, the horde of British armour arrived on the front objective and we finally managed to start really shooting at each other. A few Chieftains and Brads went down to incoming fire before the shove:

The ROMOR covered Challenger Is bowled into the Mech Platoon and pushed it and it's associated Bradleys off the objective which was taken by a Warrior platoon.

 Over the final couple of turns, a whole hail of ATGM fire rained down on the Chieftains and ended a solid most of them and then  the M1A1s coming in from reserve finally reached the battleline - one platoon outflanked the ROMOR Challenger Is and managed to destroy a single tank - reminding me why I hate Team Yankee as Tank and I rolled a ridiculous number of very untimely ones. Cross checks, firepower checks, everything. 

In the end, the other platoon of M1A1s rolled into the flank of the defending British infantry and in a succession of consistent 4+ rolls, Tank came alarmingly close to wiping out the whole platoon of British infantry - he got them down to a couple of teams before the M1A1s retreated from combat. We were dangerously close to pulling off a Hail Mary on this one. We were definitely a turn late on the counterattack mostly off the back off late reserves.

 It was a good game and lot of remembering how TY works and how it's different from Flames. Both the lists are solid and once we get a bit slicker with the armies, we'll be fine for doubles. It also got me to get a bunch of TY work done. I've finished up my last Bradleys: 

And got the two Mech platoons painted / repainted to go in them!

 

It's definitely better than it was. I still need to work out a way to get the chocolate chip details onto them but I'm happy enough that these can go on the table like this. I've still got another 8 bases to repaint to get a full Marine platoon back on the park but that won't take long.

Early War!

With the announcement that Early War will be coming out for Flames of War later this year, I'm going to be repainting all my classic EW German Panzer Is and Panzer IIs and I'm going to add some half tracks to my very old (but some of the best BF scuplts) German Pioneer infantry so on a whim, I built the first one: 

It's rather cool and I'm looking forward to getting them out and running at some point! Thanks to Che over at Potbelly for the excellent prints of the pioneer bridges! 

Plans?

Finally, in a surprise discovery, I had a Weetbix Warhammer game of ADLG with McBeth so we could both try out some "bad idea or worse idea" armies - him with Medieval Scots and me with Hussite. We both deployed badly, made some shocking tactical choices and then threw appalling combat dice when it mattered. 

 I think the end of the game conclusion is the Medieval Scots have legs but that Hussite might just be too niche if you want to actually have a fun game. If you want to make Fort Hussite then it's probably fine but it's not the right army to try and play aggressively. 

Next Time

It's time for my annual games of Magic the Gathering....