Tanks for the Memories

I put together some new tanks for the 1/72 and 1/76 collection this week. I'm planning to use them in our planned Memorial Day game at the end of May. A bit of Barbarossa in the works.

That's two Pegasus BT-7s and a Revell Panzer IIF. They went together easily and the paint is just a quick splash and go. Nothing fancy, they're toys for the tabletop. I was hoping to playtest the scenario tomorrow but that got goofed up by some garbled plans with my wife's family. Burgers, beer and board games will be a lot more likely. Y'all be well!

Batman and Robin and The Rest

 Last Saturday the Dynamic Duo got a bit of table time in a four-player game of Batman Miniatures. I arranged a game with Mark, Wayne and Ziggy featuring the Riddler's gang and the Falcone crime family fighting it out with a bevy of caped crusaders.

I ran the Riddler crew and Mark was my accomplice using the Falcone gang. Wayne took Bats and The Boy Wonder while Ziggy used Batwoman, Katana and Green Arrow.

Two of our heroes plan their moves.

Riddler and his boys unload a special shipment and deliver it to the Falcones.

From the darkness an arrow strikes Quelle! She's knocked down. The busy criminals quickly look for cover from whatever's out there.

A well-aimed Batarang puts young Alberto Falcone on his back as the Dark Knight makes his way to safety. Some smoke won't hurt either!

Katana rushes in and begins fighting with Carmine's bodyguard, Sam.

The Falcone boys and a Riddler bot keep moving crates as the rest of the crew try to figure out what to do.

The heroic man of action has been on the sidelines too long! 

But the Boy Wonder beats him to the finish line! Robin takes down one of Riddler's goons. Down, but not out.

"Knuckles" gets back on his feet to teach this former circus act a lesson.

Kate Kane, who's been propping up the far side by herself, drops down and points a finger at Riddler. Riddler's no dummy! He and Quelle aren't going to give that psychopath the satisfaction! "Alexander! Show her who's boss!" yells Edward to his lieutenant atop the truck.

He happily obliges of course!

Oliver Queen has slowly made his way to the center and steadily grinds through the Falcone gang one at a time. Not a good time to get caught at the docks!

And then I stopped taking pictures for whatever reason.

But at the end of the night, the Falcone's managed to pull one crate off the map and the Riddler Bot still had control of another. A victory for the crooks, but not resounding by any means.

I think Wayne could have been more aggressive with Batman. He's a really tough cookie and the bums he was facing were schlubs. Granted, Mark and I would probably have run off like scared rats, but the heroes might have been able to control the narrative. As it was, they gave us the opportunity to hole up, get a plan set and take advantage of the situation late.

Nevertheless, BMG again proves to be an excellent skirmish game that's tactically deep and remarkably entertaining. For any of you curious, we're still using the second edition rules. The third edition rules, although free, are a substantial departure from the prior versions and Wayne and I aren't keen to change for change's sake.

April Gaming

Good morning readers! A short update on goings-on from the past fortnight. Last weekend Mark and I played a game of Stardust: Ground, my company-level sci-fi game. This battle featured blatant GW-lifted Space Marines fighting against the Robot Army who are a far cry from their GW corollary. 

Pre-game. The Marines were deployed in the center of the battlefield, the robots entering from all four corners. The 'Bots launched their attack at night, giving them a real shooting range advantage.

The only bright spot for the Marines during the early going was one of the Dreadnoughts who was rather effective smashing up Robots in close combat.

The mechanical menace just dumped an amazing amount of firepower on the superhumans; Marine armor proved to be up to the task, reducing casualties to an acceptable level, though the 'Bots were still firmly in control.

Once the sun came out though, things turned into a real blood and silicon-bath. Initially, the Marines took an massive beating and things were looking very grim, but then I was able to get a couple units into close-combat with the Robot troops.

The close combat didn't go quite as well as I'd hoped but it was rather disruptive and broke up the 'Bots attack quite nicely as they were forced to move, hide and otherwise get themselves into a worse position.

The last shot of the game... a Marine Dreadnought's cannon rips into a RepairBot's back armor.

It was a bloody, closely-fought affair that we both really enjoyed.

In other news, I ordered this beauty last week:

It showed up in short order and I got in a first game last evening with Ziggy.

 Now I don't have exhaustive  C&C experience like some of you, but I have to say, Samurai Battles didn't disappoint. It's of course a familiar experience but with plenty of tweaks and additions to give it a much different feel from Ancients and Medieval. Very happy with this addition to the collection.

Recent Painting & Projects

 Happy weekend everyone! Just a quick post about some recent minis painting and other projects I've been working on recently.

First up is this Kraken for Armada. It's from Monsterpocalypse collection but was the right size, price and look so... INTO THE BANDSAW YOU GO!

 Yeah, he was chopped in twain at the waist and has the Viginia-class in his tentacle gently removed.

The resulting model...

He's on an 80mm square base and ready to wallop some boats. Speaking of which, Ziggy's Dwarves are mostly table-ready and we played a small learning game of Armada last weekend. Good fun. Go Goblins!

I also assembled and painted some TT Combat MDF buildings for Infinity. Pretty happy with the result there.

And in the category of non-gaming projects, I've been mucking around with guitars. It started with this kit last summer that I added a handful of "Kustom Gadjits" to and really enjoyed the process.

Surprisingly, it turned out really well, plays very nicely and spawned an urge. So in January I purchased another kit, this time a Jazz bass clone. I've never had a bass and because I know what I like guitar-wise, wasn't really after another six-string.

The process was equally enjoyable and this is how she turned out.

You can tell I had a bit of fun with that paint job. I'm no bassist, but it's a fine learner's instrument.

So then I went right off the deep end. My main guitar for 20+ years, my Tele, got some attention. My first Tele that I bought in 1991 was stolen in the late nineties. It had been modded a bit with a pickup replacement. This is a standard Telecaster:

My son's parakeet had caused a little damage to the bridge pickup, pecking at the winding. So then I'm torn - if I'm going to go through the effort replacing one pickup, why not go bananas and replace both? A couple weeks of shopping later, I ended up on replacing both pickups.

I bought a Wilkinson Hot Rail humbucker for the neck and a Wilkinson Vintage Alnico dual-coil for the bridge. This would involve chopping up the pickguard, replacing the bridge itself and routing out the bridge pickup cavity in the body. The of course there would be soldering - a skill I am very familiar with but never expert at. A tall order for a greenhorn like myself, especially considering the going rate to replace an American Standard is about $1100. 

I went at it patiently, and over a handful of weeks brought it to life.

DEEP KIMCHI. Routing the body cavity out was scary as hell and the biggest opportunity for complete disaster.

Slow and steady wins the race though, and in the end, this beauty was re-born.

In keeping with recent politics, I've made it "less white." It's a burner too, holy shit does it growl.

Mods

1) Neck pickup swap. Also involved cutting the pickguard hole larger.

2) New bridge that would accommodate a full-size humbucker.

3) New bridge humbucker pickup.

4) More pickguard cuts to fit the new bridge.

5) New control plate to make it blacker.

Damn that was fun. I'm ready to chop up another guitar.

Rubber and Lead - Back on the Table

My wife's brothers and families were over last weekend for a dinner and hang-out. One of her brothers lives halfway across the country in St. Louis so we hardly ever see him/them. The three of us played a good bit of 40K back around 92-93-94 so I knew they'd be up for a game of something or other. Two brothers who are very competitive? What could be better than Rubber and Lead, my combat racing game? 

The brothers, Chris and Winston, were joined by young Christopher (age 10) and me as the four drivers. I only got one picture of game one, at the penultimate turn.

I was driving the yellow car. A couple of wall-scrapes and a cannon hit put me in a terrible condition for the Blue Blazer, driven by brother Chris, to finish me off. Having T-boned me, he was at a dead-stop. He reversed into his brother in the purple pick-up, destroying both vehicles. Young Christopher's panel van was the only car still running; he maneuvered past the wrecks to claim victory. Feh.

Game 2 was a bit more interesting since all players were now expert veterans. R & L is a simple game to learn that's very difficult to be excellent at. 

Cars are randomly assigned and we managed to get some repeat vehicles for this race. Christopher in the Blue Blazer, brother Chris in the H8-Team van, Winston in The Silver Bullet cement truck and me in Pick-Em-Up. Between us, I think we had about eight or nine oil slicks available, making for a very hazardous track for lap 2.

In a rare move for me, I actually survived a full lap! For lap two, I threw caution to the wind and gunned the engine. Slow and steady is for sissies!

The pay-off was that I managed to smash it into little Chris' truck and we both died noisily. The brothers continued their race to the finish line. Winston had a commanding lead until the final corner which he mis-judged. He left himself in a poor position such that regardless of whatever speed he set to or turn template chosen, he couldn't clear the finish line! Chris was able to gun it across the grass, cutting off a bit of the last corner and shooting over the finish line! It was a brilliant race and a heck of a victory for Chris.

All three of them enjoyed the game and I'm looking forward to getting it on the table again. There's no better four-player game!

Short AAR - AK-47 Republic

 Mark came over Saturday to learn AK-47 Republic. I put together two force lists for my Litumsian belligerents - the The WPA (Workers' Party Army) of President for Life Johnson and MCC (Militia Campaign for the New Congress) communist rebels. Mark chose the MCC force and we set up. 

My got two units to begin the game - I put my PT-76es on the large bridge objective and a unit of infantry, towed artillery and an armored car in the village towards the upper right. The MCC started with a huge unit of militia, an armored squadron and a smaller infantry unit.

Early on, the big MCC militia company pushed towards the village by the river. I had some guns and infantry defending. Mark's hope that his C-in-C and numbers would help him get past the firepower was misplaced and after a few minutes of firing, the large group of rebels quit the field. They did however eliminate my field and AA guns.

I received reinforcements early on - two platoons of infantry. One arrived right behind the MCC attackers

The other unit arrived from the opposite side to take the wooden bridge.

In the middle, the armored units clashed.

It got ugly very quickly.

Mark's mobile reserve arrive - lots of jeep-mounted infantry supported by two mounted recoilless rifles.

They moved towards the wooden bridge. I was feeling pretty good about securing that position just before. The two machine guns were in a great position!

I abandoned the village to go put pressure on Mark's troops still moving around on the right. My unit of reinforcements was having a tough time and the vehicles' HMGs would right the ship, or so I hoped...

Then of course the MCC Navy arrives. Curses. Those boats were carrying troops and aimed to capture the village.

Meanwhile, the armored units continued tearing into each other.

Over by the wooden bridge, the MCC unit rushed forward and exchanged fire with my platoon. It was a bloodbath! My troops hammered the jeeps and infantry. I received a timely artillery barrage that went a long way to ending that troop.

 

 

 My remaining tank in the center fled and Mark's two M-46es took over the dominating central position. He sent infantry across the rail bridge towards the village.

I was able to rush my APC back to the village and dismount the troops before the boats arrived. To my delight, my final reinforcement unit arrived so they of course headed towards the village as well.

In the last bit of firing before sunset, the government forces were able to wreck an insurgent attack boat! The terrorists within were able to make it to shore.

As the sun went down, the forces retreated for the night.

At the end of the day, it was a hard fought draw. I was the victor by a very slight margin but any win by less than 5 points in AK47R is a draw. Mark had a terrible first 45 minutes with what is a new game for him - losing a huge unit, poor movement rolls, you name it. In the end, it turned out in his favor as all those slow movers acted more like a reserve force. I was happy with how my troops performed and it's nice to get off the schneid - I've had a long losing streak in AK47R.

 

AK-47 Republic - still one of the best tabletop wargames ever conceived.