Sunday, June 23, 2013

Finishing Touched on the D-Day Beach

I have finished of the beaches for the D-Day battles and now I can get back to painting up the German defenders that I will be commanding. Chet said he would make some bocage for inland while Eric is going to make some obstacles for the defenders and this is allowing me to switch over to painting the defenders.

I also downloaded some paper models of the LCA and LCM from Paper Tiger. These were quite cheap and pretty easy to put together though I left off some details as these are for gaming purposes only. They look quite good on the board though.

Well this is just a short post to show the finished beaches but come battle day if we have 4 players available we may run all four players on a 4 by 8 foot board with a beach landing and airdrop happening on the same board.

Note: all the below pictures are staged propaganda!

The beachfront, landing craft dropping the ramps!

A view along the beach.

From the defenders perspective.

From the other end of the beach.

A view from one of the bunkers.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Building the Beach in 15mm, D-Day Prep part 2

Continuing the preparations for our D-Day battles I have started to build a beach in 15mm. I have wanted to do this for awhile so this is just a good reason to get it done. I am building it on 2' by 2' sections to match some of the other boards that I have made. This is a generic beach but aimed with a look for the British and Canadian beaches. I will just show the work in pictures.

I also got the game Forbidden Island for Father's Day and already played a game. I think this will be am excellent game to take camping this summer.

The left board with the general layout in pencil. There is a bluff on the left side and a beach exit in the middle. I later decided not to include the bluff.

The right side penciled in. Here I have a stair on the wall. The material is 5mm MDF.

The 2 boards together.

The beach glued on in 5mm foam and waves using plaster.

The seawall and land in 1" foam.

The exit cut into the foam.

The beach and water painted. I plastered over the beach first. You can see the stairs towards the back of the picture.

Sea view on right side. The paint is still drying here so is a little glossy yet.

And the sea view on the right side.
 

Sunday, June 9, 2013

D-Day Preparations in 15mm

Me, my son and a few friends are hoping to log in a few games for the worldwide D-Day campaign being hosted by the WWPD (What Would Patton Do) podcast and supported by Battlefront Miniatures. There has been a delay getting the operation under way due some supply issues with Battlefront getting the new D-Day books to market. So the while campaign kick-off won't take place till the end of June this actually works out well for us as it gives us time to get miniatures and terrain ready as well as getting in a few practice games as we haven't played a lot of Flames of War lately.

I have been building some defenses as well as getting my German and US forces ready. My son is going to use the US though they will be more for the inland battles and not the beach assault as they are an armoured unit.

I am also going to see if I can get a game board built for the beach as well. I only need to build a 4 foot by 2 foot section just for the beach which can then fit up against my existing terrain.

So to get some Flames of War practice in I took command of some German forces fighting on the Eastern Front. Eric came over and we managed to get in 2 battles both were very lopsided with 1 win for each of us.

In the first game I tried a fortified company to get used to the fortification rules but this proved to be a very poor choice against the wall of armour that was heading my way and Eric was able to blow through one flank and capture his objective while taking very few loses.

In the second game I switched up my forces for an armoured panzergrenadier force supported by Panthers and Stugs and was able to destroy his advancing columns with the armour before sending in the panzer grenadiers to capture the objective. Both games played quite smoothly though and were fun to play.

Besides that I played a game of Runewars with Tristan which I lost and two games of StarWars LCG which I won.  

My foam bunker under construction.

Painted. I cut off the bottom to lower the profile a little. It looked a little high before.

My homemade trench lines.

The reverse side.

With defenders behind the works.





Some Germans based...

and primed.

My US force, some basing still needs to be done.

The Armour, a mix of Battlefront Miniatures and Plastic Soldier Company.

My M7 Priests.

My P-47.

The infantry.

The Eastern Front!

End of turn 1. The German infantry stayed in there defensive positions while the Stugs moved up to take onthe Soviet armour.

The Soviet armoured thrust on the flank.

My Stugs are burning and the Soviets have overrun my position capturing the objective.

Game 2. The German have abandoned the fixed defensive positions for Panzer Grenadiers and Panthers.

The armour clash on the flank.

The KV's giving a base of fire.

A T-34 column brought to a halt by the Panthers.

The KV's exchange fire with the Panthers...and not fairing well.

Once the T-34's on the right were taken care of the Panzer Grenadiers push through to the objective.