It has been a while since the last post but never fear more updates are coming...hopefully

The last few months have been quite hectic with work and taking the wife on holiday. As such the gaming and painting side of things has been squeezed in where ever a bit of spare time was found. As such the blog suffered through lack of updates.

My Eldar have graced the gaming tables twice over the last few months and actually performed quite well in some areas and awful in others (so many failed activations). One thing the Eldar have taught me is the finer points of playing Epic, they are so different to using an Ork horde.
But what of the Chaos army that I was working on? Well that is going to be getting an injection of love in the new year. I have two warhounds to work on and some more infantry and the army should be ready to try out.

Vietnam has also taken a bit of a back seat for now but will be getting additions in the new year once I can find time to make more terrain. As ever there are more VC and US forces to paint including some Hueys.

I attended the Battlegroup Barbarossa weekend at the end of October and had a lot of fun and played three great opponents. There was an interesting mix of forces from all the players, all three of my opponents fielded very different forces which was nice as made the weekend interesting. I was using a PZ III heavy list with infantry in half tracks. This seemed to work well but the lack of mortar or artillery support was noticeable in the games. I hear next years event is to be Desert. James and I are already talking about getting stuff sorted well in advance (rather than the weeks before in my case). The other nice thing is that we will be starting this in 20mm rather than our usual 15mm and then having to do a separate force for the weekend in 20mm. The main reason for this is due to not having anything for the desert so terrain and forces will have to be made from scratch so why not do 20mm.

Finally James and I have been playing some scenarios that James has come up with based around key airborne actions in Normany (well the first week or two). We have played the scenario and then swtiched sides and made some modifications to make the game either flow or have a slightly better balance.

Below are a few of the pictures that I managed to get at the Battlegroup: Barbarossa weekend.

Here are some from our 15mm Normandy games. 

So I hope to have another update shortly with plans for the new year and can show off my gang that I painted for Deadmans Hand. I have also started the AWI in 28mm so this is going to be quite a pr0ject for 2016 and it would be nice to do regular updates on it. 

Quick update

The other week saw myself and a bunch of fellow gamers embark on yet another trip to the Normandy battlefields.
This time we focused on the British experience of D-Day and the fighting just behind the beaches (mainly D-day to D +7).
We finished with a trip to Villers Bocage to look at Wittman's and the later action around that now famous village. The final stop being at Hill 112 (another wargamers favourite but so often doesn't resemble the actual terrain or forces). Very interesting to be up there again and there is so much shrapnel still in the fields (bits of it had been placed on or next to the new Infantry memorial at the top of 112.

So here are a few pictures and I hope to have a bit more detail up in the next few days.

The original Pegasus Bridge

The memorial to the Infantry at the top of Hill 112.

The view looking north from Strongpoint Hillman. The coast is in the distance.

The view from the Hillman strongpoint showed why this was such a vital D-Day objective. The action here is also really interesting to follow.

On another note I have finished painting some more scenery and also some more for my Epic Chaos forces.

Sunday should be fun as SELWG has once again come around and I always enjoy this wargames show. More Vietnam stuff to pick up and may make a start on the Wild West terrain if there are any 4Ground products are there.

Charlie Don't Surf

Last night I finally managed to get a game in of Charlie Don't Surf. For a first outing it was a lot of fun ( I played the role of the umpire).

However there were a few thoughts that came up when playing or trying to play.

The first is that the rulebook is a bit of a muddle when first playing the game and trying to work your way around it for certain aspects or abilities of your troops.
The playsheets help but I think it would be an idea to also have a summery section of how the game deck starts and when you add cards in (all this is in the book but each bit is under its own section which means you have to have read the book cover to cover and remember where something is mentioned etc).
The second aspect is that the wording is sometimes not that clear on intent. Which is fine with an umpire but could cause some issues.

Once the game gets going it does tend to flow however and doesn't feel like it takes forever to resolve something.

The scenario we played was from the expansion and was the Great Rice Hunt. This proved a lot of fun but we needed a bit more cover. Was interesting to see how players that are used to only using army lists and having what they want, handled the situation.
The blinds added another dimension to the game as well. However due to where both sides had opted to deploy they actually ran straight into each other so there wasn't much opportunity for sneaky manoeuvring. This led the game in the direction of a very messy firefight.

The end result was an overwhelming victory to the VC forces both with a military and a political victory. If the game had carried on it might have swung in the favour of the US forces for a military victory.

Either way was a fun first game with plenty of mistakes made. Next game should be interesting as I know the rules a bit better now and can introduce further aspects.

No pictures again this week (mainly because the terrain is not fully finished so wouldn't make for a good look photo).

Quick Update

The last week has seen the Defilers getting finished and the Decimator Engine for my Chaos getting painted. Just need to finish the bases on the Defilers and also finish the Decimator and then I can get some pictures up on here.
Still working out what to paint next for my Epic Chaos Black Legion force. I am thinking of painting another retinue up along with transport and possibly some Noise Marines to give myself a break from all the black and gold that I have been painting.

I got given a copy of Frost Grave as a present by a friend which was nice, still need to find time to have a read through and rope some friends into a game or two (much easier said than done).

Talking of rules sets, I have also been reading through Charlie Don't Surf as I should have enough figures painted to put a small game on. Ideally I want to paint another platoon or two of Yanks but for the time being should have enough for a demo game to some friends. Just need to get the scenery finished for the game.

Aside from all of this I have been busy reading up on 6th Airbornes exploits on D-Day and the weeks following. Going to be taking some friends on a battlefield tour of 6th Airbornes Area of Operations. Then visiting Sword beach among other areas related to the British and Canadian involvement in Normandy.
Sword Beach is proving quite interesting to read about and already I have ideas for a few scenarios for Battlegroup Overlord. Naturally the actions of 6th Airborne lend themselves quite well to the sort of game that Battlegroup is so I hope to be able to write a number of scenarios up soon.

Well that is all for this week, hopefully I will get some more pictures up shortly.

Some Recent Hobby Action

Ok so most of this post is from a few weeks ago. But work and research for an upcoming battlefield tour have meant that there has not been a good deal of hobby time.

First up are the finished Chaos Rhino's and Predators for my Epic Armageddon "Black Legion".

Black Legion Predators

Black Legion Predators

Black Legion Rhinos

Black Legion Rhinos

These are some lovely models to paint, such a shame that they are out of production. 

Next up are a few pictures from the set up of a game between two of my friends. They played a 3K Epic Armageddon battle using the Net Epic Armageddon lists. James took his Salamanders against Neil's Blood Angels. Unfortunately Neil's Blood Angels were not painted.

I didn't get to stay for the whole game but what I did see made it look like it was going to be a very close range brutal game. 

I didn't really get any good shots of the two armies but I will remedy that soon enough. But James has a very nice scenery collection that comes from a range of manufacturers but he has done a great job with the painting and basing to get it all to match in together.

Currently working my way through a unit of Chaos Defilers that should be completed within the next week or so. They are a pleasure to paint, just finding the time that is the problem.

I also took advantage of the sale by Plastic Soldier Company to get some more tanks in 20mm for my early/mid war Germans. I will be going to the Barbarossa campaign weekend later in the year, most of the armour that I have is all in late war camo schemes so need to get painting grey. These should take too long to do and for the Infantry I am just going to add some more details. Most of the uniforms will just about do, I might add a few new figures into the mix to give the platoons a bit more of an "early" feel. The main thing is that they all have the correct weapons.

Finally here is a quick picture of some of the reading material that I am going through.

Not sure how much of this lot will get read cover to cover as I have more books to go through. Currently working on the 6th Airborne research.