New Thing Review!

Last week I ordered an Airfix 1/76 scale European Country Cottage Ruin and received it today. Joy! I'm trying to grow my 20mm collection and this seemed like a good way to go. Since the box art is not much to go on, I've taken some pics of the contents. Airfix has a lot of other buildings in their range and I can only assume the rest are very similar. I'm rather pleased with the model.

 Good packaging - no shipping damage which was surprising considering the condition of the box it came in.

4 inches wide, about 2.3 inches deep

Enough room inside for some miniatures

Clear plastic windows and metal window frames. They'll probably go unused - war zone houses don't keep their glass for very long!

I'll try to get it painted up soon and on the table.

Recently Painted - 6mm Ottomans

The Ottomans I picked up as a second army for Maurice got pushed to the back burner for a little while but they've gotten some more attention during the week and I finished up the first 16 bases of infantry. It should be noted that there was no attempt at historical accuracy with the uniforms, since they'll be an Imagi-Nation anyway. I was torn between putting one or two strips of minis on each base and settled on one-per, primarily so I'd have a bigger army when I'm done.

The Miniatures are 6mm Janissaries from Irregular and are mounted on 1.25" square bases. I've got loads more cavalry and infantry in the queue and hope to have some of the cavalry (8 stands) finished this weekend.

I also put some hedges and walls together since my 6mm scenery selection is mostly woods and buildings for Modern Spearhead.

 No comments about them looking like garden gnomes with their red hats! I am keenly aware that indeed they DO like a horde of angry gnomes.

 I snipped these strips apart and arranged them more like skirmishers.

Kitty litter walls. They turned out OK. They are very light and won't stand up to any amount of abuse but they were easy to make and get the job done.

Green dish-scrubber hedges. These came out better than I expected. I made seven hedge pieces and three walls.

Time Travellin'

Yesterday (Monday) was Labor Day and a day off work for many folks. I dragged the family off to Fort Jackson in Savannah since it has been ages (30 years?) since I'd been and the kids had never been. The fort is rather old - it dates back to the War of 1812 and is very different from Fort Pulaski which is much closer to the mouth of the Savannah River. Fort Jackson has a commanding position overlooking the entrance to Savannah by water. Enough history, on with the pics!

The wide open area was a rice field a long time ago.

My oldest son looking terribly excited about the pack gun he was next to. In his defense, it was approximately 1000 degrees and extremely humid.

A cargo ship was passing as we got up to the ramparts. This gun was lined up for an easy shot.

Apparently both this cannon and the hoist were props in the movie Glory.

One of the magazines.

Anyone for "Essence of Peaches?"

A nice collection of muskets.

The moat. The moat's water is drawn from the river and also serves as the sewage system.

This fine gentleman, dressed in Georgia Republican Blues attire, fired the musket and cannon for us. He was chock full of good info.

We enjoyed our outing and recommend it if you're ever in the neighborhood.

Use the Force!

David and I dragged our kids out of the house yesterday for a bit of X-Wing. The big, silly expensive ships don't get much table time with us so we decided on a WAY TOO BIG 120 points per-player 4-person game to allow for a real "anything goes" type game. We'd have needed another 2 hours to play it to completion but the first half that we did play through was good fun.

As usual, the kids took the Imperials so Dave and I put together Rebel groups. I used a Y-Wing, an E-Wing and Chewie driving the Falcon. Dave took two cheap A-Wings and two souped-up B-Wings.

Christian II took an Interceptor, a Defender and the Shuttle, whilst Anson took two cheesed-out Phantoms and a Defender. Kids. Always enamored by the new shinies.

Early goings... we played on a 6 x 3 mat but only used about 3 x 3 of it. The kids surprisingly set up as a refused flank - they aren't what you'd call tactically sound normally, but I thought it was a pretty good setup.

Junior's Defender ends up in a bad spot in front of half the Rebel squadron and becomes the first casualty.

The kids were rather enjoying themselves.

Junior's Interceptor drew quite a bit of attention. It would survive the match. We called time around 3:50 or so in the afternoon since I had dinner plans and needed to get going.

Dave lost a B-Wing and an A-Wing, summing 61 points including upgrades, while we'd managed to off the Defender and the Shuttle who were worth 61 points before upgrades. Minor Rebel victory! My favorite moment of the game was when my Y-Wing ended up in front of the firing squad of Anson's Phantoms and Defender and managed to survive the barrage with one hull point left. Anson was not happy at all. The Y-Wing went on to sow agony with its Ion Turret on a stressed and cloaked Phantom.

I'm happy with our new ships - I like the E-Wing a lot and Christian really likes the new shinies - the Defender and Phantom are both very good (dare I say power-creep?) and the Shuttle is just plain fun.

Natural Enemies of the Cave Bear

My 15mm Robot Army is ready for a fight! This may be some sort of a speed record for me as far as actual time spent painting and basing an entire force. The minis painted up quickly and easily - the basing by far took much longer. The silver guys are Rebel Minis "Scourge" and the golden guys are Super Battle Droids lifted from a copy of Risk: Star Wars Clone Wars Edition.

Zig and I will have to put them on the table in a week or so for another play test of my new sci-fi ground combat game.

World War 1 Saturday (part 2)

Ziggy, Jon and I set up for Victory at Sea Age of Dreadnoughts after cleaning up the earlier game. We played the same scenario that Z and I played a couple weeks ago, the Battle of Cape Sarych. Jon took the Turks, I took the Russian cruiser contingent and Zig commanded the Russian battleships.

Jon proved to be a lot more aggressive than we expected. I did my best to screen the big ships in the back with smoke but my little cruisers were still in big trouble.

Turn 1 resulted in a lot of damage to to the Pamiat Merkuria - a critical hit from the Midilli took out the A turret and a salvo from the Yavuv Sultan Selim crippled her ruining most of the rest of her weapons.

I change tactics a bit and start screening my own cruisers figuring the battleships could take care of themselves.

The Almaz (my aviation cruiser) and the Turkish Midilli trade shots. The Almaz is hit by a torpedo and sinks quickly although I did get some good hits on the ex-German cruiser, damaging her props.

The Midilli attempts some of that ol' Russian smoke magic but isn't quite up to the task. My cruiser's zig-zag, on the other hand, is perfect as Jon shakes his fist to the sky.

Ziggy gets a solid broadside on the Midilli with the battleship Evstafi and sinks it easily.

Jon grows weary of watching the Pamiat Merkuria struggle and finishes her off with a volley from the port secondaries.

And a few minutes later, after soaking a great many shots from the Russian battleship flotilla, the German crew send a torpedo into the side of the fine battleship Evstafi, splitting her in two and sending her under the waves. 

With that, the Russian navy ran up the white flag and ceded control to the Turks (for now anyway!). We'd done decent damage to the big German cruiser, but it still had over 75% of its starting hull points and would be able to crush another Russian ship every few turns while taking less and less damage in return.

Even though the fight was again rather one-sided, it was still a lot of fun. The Russians were able to do a lot more damage to the Turk this time around, although they lost a battleship in the process - not exactly an improvement.

The World War One games have been very good so far and I may be able to get one more in next weekend if time permits.

It's a World War 1 Saturday! (part 1)

Saturday at Morningstar Games in Savannah we broke out the First World War games again and engaged in further slaughter of toy soldiers! We had a very strong turn out again - more folks who don't normally game with us. I'm not going to work up full AARs but here are some pictures of the action.

First up was Games Workshop's "Great War" which is basically 40K with different models. I was the Allied C-in-C, with Ziggy taking the Brits and Jon taking the Americans. Mike and the two kids took the Germans who were tasked with holding the town in the face of the Allied attack. My brilliant plan was to attack up the edges of the board and pinch in once we'd made some headway. We had to capture eight buildings and the church at the far end.

The Germans were deployed in secret. I guessed that Mike wouldn't deploy their cannon in a table corner, limiting its lines of sight, which would make the side "gutters" relatively safe for advancing infantry. The gun was pure murder the last time we played and I wanted no part of it.

It's a long way to Tipperary! I controlled the tank, two HMGs and two mortars. My sub-commanders controlled the infantry.

The Americans got held up by a well-placed machine gun.

While the Brits get hemmed up on another gun on their side of the field. Ol' Smokey has had some engine trouble and is spewing clouds of soot but otherwise is in good shape.

Here's a shot of the players.

A shot from the American mortar goes awry and causes significant "friendly fire" casualties. Jon wasn't happy but the German players thought it was pretty amusing.

Amusing anyway until I cleared out half the Fritzes in the building on our left with a second mortar bombardment.

The Germans on our right fall back to the ruined building to outdistance the mortar and buy some time behind the deadly fire of the machine gun there.

Some liberties may have been taken by the Germans - you can actually see Mike bending the rules in this shot.

Here's shot of Zig's Brits on the left. One squad has taken the ruined building, the others have taken positions in the woods. The German squads in the middle buildings come out to greet them but this would ultimately prove disastrous.

You can see the squad nearest to us has been decimated. My tank has immobilized itself but it was still in a decent spot to support the left side. 

A nice blur-o-vision shot of the American's working their side of the field - firing rifle grenades into the ruins. It took a while but they eventually got the machine gun to run off.

At that point the Germans only had one intact squad, plus a mortar and cannon. We called it there after six full turns - it had been two and a half hours and we had other games to play! I solid Allied victory for sure, but a hard fought one that had its challenges. The flank machine gun positions were terribly effective and it was quite a chore to deal with both.

I'm not sure how much wargaming Alex and Andrew had prior to this game but they really seemed to enjoy it. Hopefully they'll be interested enough to keep with it.

Later in part 2... Victory at Sea. The Axis gets a bit of revenge.