2016 Retrospective

I started 2016 with a long list of gaming goals. In the event, the realities of life meant that most of the items on the list ended up either annotated "2017?", or simply crossed off as unlikely to ever happen. That makes this post a rather short review of my achievements for the year.

As we're out of town for the holidays, the photos in this post have to be repeats of ones from earlier in the year, rather than anything new.

The Flames of War competition at ValleyCon was the first event of the year, and as always it was an enjoyable two days. The location was excellent, the comp had a great format, and I played seven games with people I hadn't met before. The majority of the army hasn't seen the light of day since, but the infantry that I painted for it did form the basis for a mid-war event in December and my army for VC17 next month.

The Brandywine refight in March was another fun day spent with a bunch of great people. I had painted up two battalions of 28mm Perry Continentals for it, which was a nice change both in colour and scale from my usual painting, but to be honest I was glad when I finished them. Afterwards I acquired another painted battalion, and enough leftover sprues to make a fourth, so if any other AWI games come along in future I will be able to contribute a full brigade.

A highlight for the year was supposed to be Warmachine Mk III. I preordered the rules and spent quite a bit of time touching up my collection in preparation for it, but I have still not played a game of it. Part of the reason for this is a feeling, of course without being backed up by the experience of trying it and seeing first hand, that my unit-heavy collection needs a major revamp to make workable lists under the new edition, and the infantry that I had so lovingly repainted no longer have a meaningful role. It's still there in the background and there are a few other kits I wouldn't mind getting simply because they're amazing models, but to be honest I can't see myself playing it in competitions again, and at this stage there is no WM on my 2017 list.

One goal of 2016 was to pick up another system, and to that end I bought a second hand army of Italian Wars Florentines for Impetus, played a couple of games with them and quite enjoyed it. I had planned to add some light cavalry, start repainting the figures, and then play in V3 in May, but all of that was pushed back into next year at the earliest.

One thing that I have actually started, however, is picking up Team Yankee, and in 15mm rather than 6mm as I had originally intended. I don't plan on going overboard with it (I'm still not totally convinced about the scale) but the Battlefront kits are beautiful, and the idea is to build a couple of 60pt armies, starting with the Soviet starter box that I have bought to paint over summer.

The major news regarding 2017 is the upcoming release of the 4th Edition of FOW. I have mixed emotions about this. Version 3 is a good game, and it sounds like Version 4 makes major changes to it that are in line with the "TY is a closet open beta for V4" school of thought. Some of these changes sound refreshing, but others have left me wondering. Very little is certain at this early stage, but I do fear that 4th Edition will do to FOW, a game that has been a passion of mine for the last 15 years, what Mk3 did to my interest in Warmachine.

So, to summarise, what are my aims for 2017? In approximate order of priority:

1. Finish my ValleyCon army. I still have the portees, carriers, transport and objectives to paint. It seems like a lot when listed like that, but it's not difficult painting so should be achievable with four weeks to go. I also have to paint a platoon of Panzer IIs for the list my son will be taking. I had hoped to put together a new table of terrain for it, but that doesn't look likely to happen.
2. Flames of War 4th Edition. I have a decent quantity of 8th Army and Afrika Korps for a 1942 setting, and hopefully there'll be a fair amount of interest in giving it a go. I want to rebase the British teams I have to match my early war infantry, with the goal being to be able to play any Mediterranean setting from 1940 to 1944 just by using different vehicles and gun teams.
3. Team Yankee  - extension to 60 points of Soviets through the addition of Shilkas and an infantry company in BMPs, and getting a game or two, as there are a couple of people locally looking at trying it in 15mm as well.
4. Finishing off a number of other odds and ends for Flames of War - a squadron of Comets, various Shermans, M10s and Matildas, and the last few units for my LW Gebirgsjager. There might end up being a new army in there, depending on what competitions I am able to make it to during the year, but nothing planned at this stage.
5. Getting around to adding that Italian light cavalry for Impetus.

Hopefully I'll have more success keeping to these (slightly more limited) goals than I did in the year just gone. So, happy new year, and thanks for reading this blog. All the best to you for the year ahead.

Thoughts on "Remember December"

The club Flames of War event on Saturday was an enjoyable day. Full results can be found here, so I'll just focus on a couple of thoughts coming out of it.

I lost all my games, and only managed to avoid the wooden spoon thanks to my son winning his final game, relegating his opponent to last place in the process. It's fair to say that the Motor Company proved difficult to use. At 1000pts and having so many points tied up in the tanks, and with the small infantry platoons having a lot of firepower that is not available if you move, I didn't feel like I had many options to win as the attacker. And I ended up having to attack in all three games. I needed three infantry platoons, I needed the light mortars for an extra stand, I needed more carriers to give that mobile firepower, and I needed medium mortars for smoke and to give me another means of getting a pin. Basically, I needed a full Rifle Company in order to pull off what I was trying to do with a small Motor Company, and that directly stemmed from my decision to take the Shermans at the expense of all of those other things that I needed. But would I drop them in order to retool the list? Probably not.

One particularly good outcome of the day was Simon trialling a scoring system that completely abandons the official Battlefront victory point scheme based on broken platoons. It's a process that began back in the days of Version 1, by adding +2 points for a win to try and spread the table and reward winning a bit more. I don't know whether that practice continued and evolved through the years or if umpires generally reverted to using the official system, but at ValleyCon this year the rankings were determined by wins, with the VPs only acting as a tie breaker. Simon has now taken that to the next logical step, where it is the points value of the broken platoons that matters. The argument against this has always been the maths involved, but honestly it wasn't that hard to go "I lost 155 + 155 + 95 = 405 points". Still a little bit of tweaking to do, but the concept is good and the day was a good opportunity for it to be tested. A scheme like this pushes the definition of a "competitive army" far beyond just something that is able to win 6-1, and I fully support the change.

Armies for "Remember December"

I have completed painting my army for tomorrow's 1000pt Flames of War event, "Remember December" themed on Italy in 1943. I've played a couple of test games to get a feel for the list, and it's not quite as gloriously bad as I had thought. Yes, half-on/half-off games with delayed reserves are going to be a particular problem, but the Motor Platoons, while small, each put out as much firepower as a full sized Rifle Platoon, and are hard to assault due to being ROF 2 when pinned down. The Shermans are good, provided you can keep them alive, the carriers provide 12 dice of mobile machine-gun fire that could be useful if applied at the correct time and location, and ROF 3 AT 10 anti-tank guns are always going to be dangerous. As a bonus the company counts as Infantry instead of Mechanised, so it's possible I won't end up spending the whole day having to attack.

My 14 year old son will also be playing, which is nice. It's his first FOW event, so he's a bit apprehensive, but we've played quite a few games and I think he should be fine. The main thing he wants to get out of the event is enough confidence to play FOW at ValleyCon. He's taking a German Grenadierkompanie, using my late war Gebirgsjäger models.

German Grenadierkompanie (Tunisia and Italy) - North Africa (2016 Revision)

Company HQ, 45 pts

Grenadier Platoon, 3 Squads + Panzerknacker, 160 pts

Grenadier Platoon, 2 Squads + Panzerknacker, 115 pts

Grenadier Machine-gun Platoon, 135 pts

Grenadier Anti-tank Platoon, 85 pts
   2 x PaK38 + Transport 

Assault Gun Platoon, 340 pts
   2 x StuG III G

Rocket Launcher Battery, 120 pts
   3 x NW41 + Transport  

Total Cost: 1000 pts

The list is pretty handy, certainly a lot better than mine. Six platoons, cost-effective artillery, lots of firepower.

Hopefully I'll remember to take lots of photos tomorrow, and will post here how we get on. It should be a great day.

1943 British - Motor Anti-tank Platoon

I've completed the next platoon for my 1000pt 1943 British Motor Company - a Motor Anti-tank Platoon of 6pdr portees with a dismounted option.

Since Battlefront don't have anti-tank crew in their Italian Campaign range, I've reused some of my old 8th Army crew, with shorts converted into trousers using Milliput to make them better match the rest of the figures.

I have found very little information about the use of portees in Italy. For the camouflage scheme, I have largely based it on the standard 3-ton truck pattern, with further inspiration taken from video of the United Nations Parade in Cairo, 1943 (portees appearing at 2:45). I've painted the racked ammunition boxes in SCC2 brown to provide a point of contrast.

The portees in that video are on the Bedford QL chassis, whereas the Battlefront model is a Ford F60 - unfortunately I have no idea of the prevalence of each type, and there don't appear to be any Bedford-mounted 6pdr portees in 15mm anyway. A conversion of a QLT kit might be possible, but we'll leave that challenge for another project.

I still have three carriers and the Company HQ to paint. I've painted the remainder of the infantry and only need to base them, so things are looking like they're on track for completion over the next week.

But First, a Slight Diversion

In December the club is holding a themed FOW one-dayer in memory of Nick Garden, who passed away last year. I have taken a slight detour from my preparation for ValleyCon in order to put something together for it.

The theme is Italy in 1943, at 1000pts. This is a huge challenge, mainly due to the price of armour. A lot of the tanks you would expect to see at this stage of the war (British Shermans, Panzer IV H, StuG III G) are all 150+ points each, making them prohibitively expensive. The exceptions are the Americans and Canadians, who both get 115pt Shermans. I expect this will lead to seeing mostly infantry companies, with a lot of lightweight armour: Stuarts, M10s and Marders. There may be a few StuGs, though, as they can be bought in pairs. Hopefully some armoured cars, too.

Without the time to research, acquire any new models and build a force specifically for the event, I decided that the best approach for me to take was to spin the infantry teams I am painting for ValleyCon into something out of North Africa, bolting on other platoons from my existing collection, so that in the process I'm still working towards what I need for January.

My first instinct was to put together a Rifle Company and Night Attack my way through the event, but while it's a solid option it didn't seem like a whole lot of fun and would have required painting up a large number of additional teams. So instead I will be taking a Motor Company, because this just requires two PIAT teams and two extra Bren teams over and above the teams I am already working on, adding some kits from the stash and repainting some of my older models to suit. And for some illogical reason I have decided that it absolutely must include a 440pt platoon of Shermans...

British Motor Company (Italy) - North Africa (2016 Revision)

Company HQ, 35 pts

Motor Platoon + PIAT, 155 pts

Motor Platoon + PIAT, 155 pts

Scout Platoon, 105 pts
   3 x Universal Carriers + Extra MGs

Motor Anti-tank Platoon, 95 pts
   2 x 6pdr Portee 

Armoured Platoon, 440 pts
   3 x Sherman III

Total Cost: 985 pts

It's an awful list: five platoons, with nearly half the points tied up in three average tanks, no templates, truck-mounted anti-tank guns with no HE, two small six-stand infantry platoons, and a bunch of trucks that won't feature in any of the games. Should be good times.

I had the necessary transport for the CHQ and infantry platoons in the stash, which I have painted up in Light Mud/Blue Black camouflage and markings for 1st Rifle Brigade, 7th Armoured Division, and based to match the infantry.

And I have refreshed an old troop of Sherman IIIs to match, with markings for 5th RTR.

I still have the portees and carriers to repaint, plus the infantry to finish, but this shouldn't be too much of a stretch with three weeks to go.

ValleyCon 2017 - Modelling 1st Armoured Brigade

In this post I take a look at the decisions I've made for modelling for my ValleyCon 2017 list, themed on 1st Armoured Brigade in Greece, 1941. Photos show a wide variety of colour schemes on Commonwealth vehicles, the result of the rush to get units deployed, and one of the challenges will be achieving a coherent appearance.

Infantry
The weather in March had been cold, with snow and heavy frosts, gradually improving through April. Photos show infantry in full battledress or greatcoats. This raises a similar issue to that which I encountered last year, with a lack of early war 15mm figures meeting this description. As a result, I will again compromise and build on the infantry I painted last year from the 'Italy Campaign' range, meaning I already have one platoon banked with one more plus the Company HQ to go.

Armour
Part of my background reading for this project has included "The Gods Were Neutral", an autobiographical account of the campaign by Robert Crisp, a troop commander in C Squadron, 3rd RTR. In the first couple of chapters he describes the various colour permutations that their tanks went through between arriving in Egypt through to deployment to Greece. Starting with "having their camouflage altered from the green and brown of paddocked England to an exotic shade of red and yellow" - the scheme for the Sudan - through "hot yellow" - when it appeared that they would be sent to the Western Desert - to "a more civilised olive-green effect", "broad, deceptive patterns of green".

In his book "The Caunter Scheme", Mike Starmer provides drawings for, and spends quite a bit of time discussing colours for, the average scheme for 3rd RTR. The suggestion there is either Slate over Light Stone, or Silver Grey over Portland Stone, and I will be running with Light Stone/Slate.

While 3rd RTR had their tanks painted in Egypt, the 4th Hussars war diary has their vehicles being recamouflaged on arrival in Greece. The photos I've found appear to be a light base colour with a darker disruptive colour, but I can't discern any consistent pattern. Mike says that a number were deployed in European colours without repainting, and some were in Caunter.

I was confused for a while on the issue of tac signs. With 4th Hussars having a '51' Arm of Service Flash and 3rd RTR having a '52', in theory their tac signs should have been red and yellow respectively. Photos show Mk VIb tanks in Greece having tac signs in both dark and light colours, probably red and yellow. 3rd RTR tac signs are too dark to be yellow and are different to the red divisional symbol, so are possibly blue, although I've read one opinion that they might be in the regimental colour of green. I'm wondering whether the colours have something to do with the King's Dragoon Guards. They were the senior armoured regiment in the brigade until they converted to armoured cars in January 1941 and handed their Mk VIbs over to 4th Hussars. This combined with moving to Greece at short notice might help explain the apparent discrepancy but I have nothing solid to back up this thought.

Transport
The 1st Rangers war diary for 12 and 13 March says "During this period opportunity taken to spray paint carriers and scout cars at Athens aerodrome, all vehicles at this time being camouflaged for the desert." I have taken this to mean that the soft skin transports were either in Caunter or overall Light Stone, but it provides no further clues.

I've been sent a photo of a 2nd Armoured Division Quad in Caunter, and there is one of a 2nd Armoured Division 15cwt CMP (here) that looks like it's in an overall light colour. There is a photo of an abandoned Rangers carrier in the Images of War book "War in the Balkans". It is definitely not in Caunter - it looks like a light base colour with a wavy darker disruptive pattern. It is also a Universal Carrier rather than the Scout Carriers specified in the list, and I will be modelling them as such.

Taking all of this into consideration, for the sake of coherency I'm leaning towards using a base colour of Light Stone on all vehicles, with disruptive patterns in Slate on the carriers.

Guns
I have found nothing for the colour of the Northumberland Hussars' 2pdr portees. There are a couple of relevant photos on the web: an Australian 2pdr in Caunter (here), and a spiked 2pdr claimed to be in Greece (here) that is in the two tone green European scheme. Both options are entirely plausible, as is light base colour with or without a disruptive pattern per the other vehicles. I'm going to paint this platoon last, once I've had a chance to see what works for the rest of the list.

Army List for ValleyCon 2017

ValleyCon is coming up at the end of January 2017. The format is the same as the 2017 edition: 1000pts Early War. After taking another look through the possible options, I've settled on my second choice list from last year: a British Motor Company themed on 1st Armoured Brigade in Greece, April 1941.

1st Armoured Brigade arrived in Egypt with 2nd Armoured Division in January 1941.  While the bulk of the division relieved 7th Armoured Division in Cyrenaica following the defeat of the Italians during Operation Compass, 1st Armoured Brigade was sent to Greece in March as part of an expeditionary force known as 'W Force', along with 2nd New Zealand Division and 6th Australian Division.

1st Armoured Brigade comprised 3rd RTR (A10 cruisers), 4th Hussars (Vickers Mk VIb), 1st Rangers (motor battalion), and a support group including artillery (2nd RHA), anti-tank (102nd Anti-tank Regiment, RA) and anti-aircraft (155th Light Anti-aircraft Battery) units.

With the Greek army fully engaged either against the Italians in Albania or holding the Metaxas Line protecting the border with Bulgaria, W Force took up positions in the north near the border with Yugoslavia. The German invasion began on 6 April, entering Greece through Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. The Allied defence quickly became a series of delaying actions, leading to the evacuation between 24 April and 30 April of 50,000 of the 63,000 Commonwealth troops in the country.

The particular action that I have themed the list on occurred on Easter Sunday, 13 April. 2/4 Australian Battalion had fought a delaying action at Sotir that morning, buying time for 1st Armoured Brigade to establish a defensive line along a ridge near Proasteion. 9th Panzer Division attacked throughout the afternoon, pressing along the front with infantry while attempting to outflank the position with armour, but the Commonwealth defences held. The German attack was abandoned in the evening due to lack of fuel and ammunition, allowing the defenders to continue their withdrawal overnight.

Proasteion was the first major action involving A10s in Greece. It was also the last. The following day 3rd RTR was reorganised as a composite squadron, having lost two thirds of its tanks to mechaical failure, mostly broken track pins, over the previous week. A few days later the last remaining cruiser was abandoned, the long retreat and lack of spare parts having taken its toll.

To represent 1st Armoured Brigade at Proasteion, I am using the Jock Column from 'Hellfire and Back', centred around a company of 1st Rangers. Beyond the minimum compulsory choices of two Motor Platoons, a Carrier Platoon provides additional mobility and firepower. The list has one tank platoon slot, for which I have chosen the A10 rather than the Vickers Mk VIb. The small size of the games rules out the use of 25pdrs of 2nd RHA, but I have included a pair of 2pdr portees from 102nd Anti-tank Regiment. The spare points are taken up by bulking out the Motor Platoons with anti-tank rifles.

Several New Zealand machine-gun platoons were involved, but there is no option for including them in the list. Interestingly, the 'Reports on Operations' for 1st Armoured Brigade (WO 201/509) recommends the inclusion in Motor Battalions of at least two platoons of MMGs, or at least the inclusion of an MMG Company in Armoured Brigade Groups, on the basis of the support provided to the group by the NZ machine-gunners from 13 April onwards, and you can see this being implemented in battalion structures later in the war.

The final 1000pt list looks like this:

British Jock Column - Hellfire and Back 

Company HQ, 35 pts

Motor Platoon + 2 x Anti-tank Rifles, 170 pts

Motor Platoon + 2 x Anti-tank Rifles, 170 pts

Scout Platoon, 230 pts
   6 x Scout Carriers 

Anti-tank Platoon, Royal Horse Artillery, 105 pts
   2 x 2pdr Portee 

Heavy Armoured Platoon, 285 pts
   3 x A10 

Total Cost: 995 pts

As a mechanised company this list will be attacking infantry and defending against armour. It has the mobility needed to be able to attack, but lacks direct-fire HE so will rely on infantry assaults to clear objectives. On defence, it has two decent platoons of AT7, so should be better placed to cover a wide table than my list last year which had a platoon each of AT8 and AT6. And crucially it reaches six platoons due to the Scout Platoon counting as two.

My next post will look into my choice of models and colour schemes.

Hiatus and Looking Ahead

All of a sudden it's been four months since I last posted. Alas, we had a slight incident that resulted in a need to replace our kitchen, and that has been the focus of all our time and energy ever since. But as the skirting boards go down and life starts returning to normal, I've been reflecting on my gaming goals for the year, how few of them I've achieved, and what I will be looking to do over the last two and a half months of 2016.

The main focus is going to be preparing for next year's ValleyCon, and I'll probably be registering for Flames of War again. The FOW competition is another 1000pt Early War event, and while the format worked really well, the fact that it's identical means that I'm picking over the same lists I rejected last year, trying to find something to work with.

In last year's event, light armour was popular and it was pioneer companies that came out on top since they are tooled up to defend against that type of list, while Early War tank lists typically don't have any real options for digging them out in games this small. In general my armoured cars did okay, winning four games out of seven. For some reason they struggled to attack on the table that had a river (only crossable at two slow-going fords) right across the middle, and also had issues against British armour with captured M13/40s (solid mix of Front 3 and FP 4+), and Soviet T26s (too many tanks), both in games played across the table where the 6ft width combined with low points count made defending the widely-spread objectives problematic. That's the same problem that lists containing heavy tanks will face: not enough teams given the size of the table.

The required list for next year, then, is something that's capable of dealing with concentrated light tanks on a wide table, yet can also take objectives from entrenched pioneers, has a plan for dealing with Matildas and KV-1s, has a historical theme, and is achievable given time and budget constraints. Should be simple, right?

The closest list that the British have to the pioneer company is probably the LRDG from 'Burning Empires', and this could make for an interesting spoiler list in a small event like ValleyCon. As a mechanised company with Tank Assault 3+, Firepower 5+, and reconnaissance abilities on the core platoons, the ability to take a Commando Platoon as a support option, and special rules giving them Time of Day and the ability to mess with their opponent's reserves, they should be able to chew through any other infantry list, and would pose enough questions of tank companies to make life interesting. But I would be starting from scratch as it doesn't use anything currently in my collection, and the number of trucks needed makes it an expensive list to put together, so I've put that idea on the shelf for the time-being. Instead, I'm focusing on what can be done using models that I do have, either already painted or in the stash. I have a few concepts, but have a bit more background reading to do before I decide on exactly what and how. Once that's settled I'll look to put out a few posts on the background story and my progress in putting it together.

Recent Painting

It's been a quiet couple of months, with just a few bits and pieces completed. I've finished some StuGs and Panzer IVs as support for my Italy-theatre Germans.

I don't enjoy painting dunkelgelb

And I really don't enjoy painting it over Zimmerit...

I have also painted up a few Warmachine models, as the upcoming release of Mk3 has rejuvenated my interest in the game. I'm going to go back through my collection for touching up and rebasing.

Repenter

Exemplar Bastions. Three down, two to go.

Battle of Brandywine

I played in a refight of the northern flank of the Battle of Brandywine on Good Friday, played in 28mm on a 12x6 using the Black Powder ruleset. I commanded Conway's 3rd Pennsylvania Brigade in the American centre, with two battalions (6th and 9th Pennsylvania) that I had painted, and two more that others had done.

A write-up and photos from the day can be found on The Regiment blog, so I won't repeat what's been written. Needless to say it was an excellent day, relaxed, lots of laughs and a great bunch of people to be spending time with. And despite its issues, Black Powder enabled a game where 12 players, most of whom weren't that familiar with the rules, completed a 10 turn scenario in less than five hours, including a break for lunch. The game ebbed and flowed nicely, with the result only becoming apparent during turn nine. The key to the American victory was Lord Stirling's brigade to my left, commanded by Tank Engine, which spent most of the game failing order rolls, conveniently allowing them to enter the battle fresh at the end and mop up.

Here are photos of my two battalions. Basing and flags courtesy of the guys at The Regiment.

AWI Update

Last week I finished off the last of my 28mm AWI Continentals figures for the upcoming Brandywine game. I only had 36 figures to do, but it was hard work. I enjoyed the first few, and got through the first battalion of 18 reasonably well. But the second battalion was hard going, and I was mighty glad to finish.

No photos at this stage, they're off being based to match the rest of the units for the game, but I'll grab some shots on the day. They'll look okay in amongst a mass of units on a huge table, but I wasn't super happy with how they turned out. You can pretty much get away with anything in 15mm and still have the figures look great after an ink wash and a highlight, but my painting style was found wanting with these 28s, and running up against the deadline to get them finished, I lacked the time and energy to work out how to do it better.

But all is not lost, as I'll be getting some more practice with larger figures with the next items on the to-do list: 

There's a day of Warmachine silliness coming up at the club in early April that I'm hoping to get to, so I'll see if I can get some of these done in time for that.

ValleyCon Reflections

So, ValleyCon is over for another year. The venue was excellent: good location, plenty of space and an on-site cafe. All seven games were with people who I'd never played before, against a good mix of lists, the games were relaxed, played in good spirits, and I really enjoyed the weekend.

My armoured cars won four games out of the seven, placing 7th out of 18, and were also awarded the prize for Best Army. The games went as follows:

1. Encounter - vs Soviet T-26s and KhT-26s - 5-2 loss by objective. 
2. Free For All - vs German Schutzen - 4-3 win by objective.
3. Fighting Withdrawal - defending vs British M13/40s - 5-2 loss by company break. 
4. Breakthrough - attacking vs Strelkovy - 6-1 win by company break. 
5. Dust Up - vs French armour - 6-1 win by company break. 
6. Cauldron - defending vs Slovak LT35s - 4-3 win by clock. 
7. No Retreat - attacking vs German Pioneers - 6-1 loss by company break. 

The 1000pt format was interesting. The tournament was won by German Pioneers with Finnish infantry coming second, both on five wins, so the format didn't favour mobility quite as strongly as I had expected. But certainly, defending a 6' front with a static army against a mobile opponent, sometimes with half your force in reserve, is tough. On most tables the terrain was relatively dense, which limited lines of sight for anti-tank weapons and often providing concealed approaches. For less mobile armies, the situation called for either two platoons of good (AT7+) anti-tank capability to try and cover the width, or solid blocks of infantry that are capable of holding their own when assaulted by armour. The German Pioneers were from Blitzkrieg, two big platoons of TA3 infantry backed up by three PaK38s and four Panzer IIs, so that well and truly fitted the pattern.  I didn't play the Finns so don't know their composition, but I wonder if they were the Jääkäri with TA4.

Elsewhere, my son Jaime was playing in the Warmachine tournament. He won three of his six games with his Khador Butcher1/Vlad1/Sorscha1 combination of lists. A huge thanks to Tank Engine for lending him some extra units and jacks to help make up the numbers.

I bought a copy of Skrimish Outbreak, having enjoyed a demo game at the club last year, and also bought a secondhand Impetus army.

The table I'd put together seemed to meet the goal of being interesting and practical to play on. I had finished it off with some bushes along the riverbanks, and a cypress-lined track crossing the ford. There were issues with the trees falling over, so I'll look at weighting the bases. The vineyard posts proved a bit fragile, and should have been set into holes in the base instead of glued to the surface. The magnetised olive trees worked well. Future work will involve adding more bits to create a variety of possible layouts, maybe with the ultimate goal of extending it to cover an 8x6 table. 

Throughout the process, I've learned that making terrain isn't cheap. I tried to keep the cost down, but it was still in the order of NZ$150 by the time you account for the basecloth, tree armatures, flocks, gravels, foam for the hills, styrene sheet for roofs, and various cards, felt, glue and paint along the way.

One thing did happen that gave me pause for thought. A man came up as we were setting up for a round, and said that his father had fought at the action my list was themed on, and (sarcastically) that he would no doubt have appreciated us making a game out of something that traumatised him for the rest of his life.

All of us have probably at times reflected on the fact that we are gaining entertainment from playing a game that is based around historical events that are within living memory, from books filled with lists that are sometimes specific to actual units that real people served in, in some cases including the option of taking characters that bear the names and personalities of historical figures. 

Is it disrespectful, insensitive or worse to play games themed on Arnhem, Alamein or Prokhorovka? If so, how about Gettysburg, Waterloo or Crécy, and where in time is the line where it becomes okay? I don't know the answer, but my personal decision has always been to try to theme my FOW lists around a historical unit, and in doing so I have had to learn about and face up to their story, rather than glossing over it as if the game was based instead on some abstract concept. Having reflected on this for the last couple of days, I will continue to take this approach, but maybe it's good that every now and again something happens that makes you stop and reconsider where you stand.

Stream Sections

Just a quick update tonight.

The major feature missing from my concept for an Italian-themed table was a stream. I've been undecided about this for a while due to the impact of the obstacle on gameplay, but I've gone ahead as the table definitely needed something to break up the base colour.

The stream sections are based on MDF, with banks built up using polyfiller, and water made from multiple layers of PVA over the painted riverbed. Each section is about 40cm long and 10cm wide, with the feature as a whole broken into thirds by a bridge and a ford to provide crossings.

And here is the table as it currently looks:

Terrain Project Update

I have completed the village for my Italy-themed table. The impression I wanted it to give was narrow streets, plastered walls, terracotta roofs, short lines of sight, and big enough that it could comfortably hold an infantry platoon plus support, and take effort to clear if players want to get involved in a street fight.

This had to be tempered by needing to use it in a game, with streets and buildings sized around the Flames of War base sizes, so the streets aren't as narrow and winding as they perhaps would be in reality, but I think it's captured the flavour I was after.

The village itself is 40cm by 40cm. Buildings were made from 2.2mm card, plastered to give texture, with roofs from HO-scale Spanish tile patterned styrene sheet. The roofs are removable to allow access into the buildings, and the buildings themselves are removable as well, located on pegs, so in theory I could put together another base in future and reuse the buildings in a different arrangement.

The smallest buildings hold two medium bases, with others holding three or four per floor.

Some alleyways are large enough for large bases, while others will only fit medium bases.

The current state of the table is this:

I have put some hills under the base cloth so the table is not quite so flat, but I still need to put together the bridge and the stream, and it probably needs some other bits and pieces just to break up the colour. Three weeks to go until the competition, and I'm back to work on Monday, so could be tight...