Gaming, Adventure Prep...not much painting.

I have sort of fallen behind on my French Indian War painting project. I had to stop to do some research for the uniforms for the Compagnie France de la Marine and also to plan how I want my white to look on their iniforms. I also have been doing some preparations for running some rpg's. This has sort of broke my momentum but I hope to get back to it soon.

I ran another session do Dragon Age with my regular group plus a group of us have organized what we are calling CottageQuest inwhich we have rented a cottage for a weekend and will be running a bunch of one shot adventures in a variety of different games. There are 10 of us going and 4 of us are running games including Star Wars Edge of the Empire, Serenity, Numenera, Dread, Continuum, Exalted, Eclipse Phase, Shadows of Esteren and Mage: The Ascension. I have been writing up a couple of adventures for the 2 sessions I will be running, Star Wars and Serenity. 

I played another game of Bolt Action. This time pitting my Russians against Eric's Germans at 1000pts. The scenario was Top Secret where there is an objective in the middle of the board and it has to be captured and carried off the board. We had to call it a little early but I felt I was getting the upper hand and I am sure the Germans were about to be rolled by the Soviet horde! 

This was the table setup. The burning jeep marked the central objective we both had to get to and return to our table edge.

Another view of the table.

Turn 1. The Russians enter from the bottom edge, the Germans at the top.

Turn 2 from the German side. Both sides are closing in. I have a sniper team in the building near the objective. You can see my casualties on the side of the board, upper left. 

Duelling tanks.

The Panzer decided to head for cover while on the other side my flamethrower is crossing the road throwing down lots of pins on the German squad.

A closer look at that squad.

The flamethrower took care of that squad and the Panzer is lending support while avoiding the ISU 152.

My flamethrower sort of stuck in the open.

Looking down the road. A flanking German half track(far end) came in surprising my forces as they were crossing the road. Fortunately it botched it's attack and my flamethrower burnt it up! His squad is getting close to the objective though.

Where we called it. I brought I'm a White Scout car on the flank carrying a small squad. It quickly dispatched a mortor crew, while his Panzer was taking pins. I am pretty sure with his failed flank move on my right I would be able to push forward to victory from here. It was a fun game.

My French officer under way.

This is the rest of the 1st unit of Compaignie de la Marine for my French force.

Bolt Action and More Projects

I have been continuing  to paint up a few more Canadians for Bolt Action including a Daimler armoured car from Warlord Games. This was the first model I have put together from Warlord and it was pretty good. My other vehicles have come from Die Waffenkammer and I think they are slightly better models. The detail is a little more crisper and there is less (if any) metal parts, well parts period, with Die Waffenkammer. That being said I would not hesitate to purchase the Warlord vehicles if Die Waffenkammer did not have the model I needed.

This weekend I played another game of Bolt Action. This time we played a 1500 point battle. The game played well enough but I think we both agreed that 1000 points makes for a better game. I started off missing my pre game bombardment by rolling a 1. I also failed to take out a Panther with a Sherman, a Firefly and a PIAT team.  I managed to put pressure on both the German flanks but could not create a breakthrough to push through to the objectives. We found that 1500 points was too much for a reasonably paced game as well as not leaving enough room to maneuver units on a 4 by 6 foot table. 

I have started to paint my starter armies for Muskets & Tomahawks and I really like the detail of the Conquest Miniature figures. Little to no flash on the figures and nice crisp details. I am looking forward to see how these figures turn out.

Next up will be Vikings for Saga as my son received the base game and the Anglo Danish 4pt warband for his birthday. I ordered the Vikings to play against him and also if any of his friends want to give it a try there will be two armies on hand. Tristan's arrived in time for his birthday which was great though I am still waiting for mine to arrive which is coming from a different source.

I have also been playing some rpg's getting in a game of Call of Cthulhu as a player and Dragon Age as a GM. Cthulhu is always fun to play and I started my new character for this campaign hopefully creating a character that will fill in some of the gaps in our party. The character is sort of an Indiana Jones type. Dragon Age was my second session of this campaign with two new players joining the game. One player joining in on Google Hangouts and the other two at the table with me. The game seems pretty fun to run and I am interested to see how it plays over a few sessions and levels. So we have an Antivan rogue, a Fereldan warrior and a Fereldan apostate.

I have also been playing The Last Of Us on the PS3. This was another great rpg game on the console. I found the voice acting and the digital acting to be fantastic and the story was also very good. The only down side was that you had no control over the story, you were just there to fight through the bad guys. It was like watching a good movie and I wanted to know what would happen next even though I knew I was having no effect on the way the story played out. But that is the nature of most console rpg games and I still enjoyed the play through very much.

This is the Daimler kit from Warlord Games.

Here is the kit put together and awaiting paint.

Here is the packages from Conquest Miniatures for the French & Indian Wars using Muskets and Tomahawks.

Thee first 2 units underway. 6 Rangers(in the back) and 6 Woodland Indians.

A close up of the skin so far. I will add some highlights next and maybe some war paint.

Here is my 1500 points of Canadians, a mix of regulars and veterans.

Here is the battlefield with the Germans defending the left side. There are some forces on the table while a Panther and 3infantry squads are in reserve. All the Canadians are off board awaiting turn 1 with a Sherman, a PIAT team and a squad coming on in reserve on my right flank.

My right flank. I was planning on going for the objective in this flank(white disk) as well as the centre objective.

The German centre around objective 2. The German sniper took out the spotter for my off board artillery, good job he was zero point cost for the Canadians.

My flanking reserves have arrived by the German Panther. My Sherman missed a point blank shot and then got brewed up while my Firefly stays hunkered down afraid to fire apparently. The infantry lines close up along the front.

Crossing the fields.

The infantry lines close up on either side of the road.

The other end of the road.

The Daimler is trying to get to the other flank were it will be a little more useful.

The casualties along the road mount up on both sides. The Daimler tries to threaten the objective before I checked the rules and found out that the armoured car cannot claim objectives, only infantry and artillery can. Oh well there goes my only hope for some points.

My first lieutenant holding his own!

The end of the battle on my right flank, not much left on either side.

And the middle where the Germans still held strong positions.

A Little Bolt Action

After a bit of an absence I will get back it to a more regular posting again. Between a lack of tabletop gaming and some computer problems I have been very delinquent in my posting!

I have been playing a fair bit of rpg's lately returning to Call of Cthulhu as a player after running Star Wars with the same group and continuing D&D 3.5 with another group while starting another group over Google+ with Dragon Age.

Unfortunately my CoC PC died early in the 2nd session being suffocated by a blob so I will be starting a new PC next session. The D&D campaign is starting to make some headway, now if we can only get the weather to cooperate so we can get together as scheduled that would be great. And the Dragon Age game is bringing in a new player who hasn't gamed in awhile and who I have been reacquainted with through my wife's work place after many years. So we played an introductory game to introduce the game setting and mechanics and try playing over Google Hangouts which seemed to work out well so I will integrate 1 or 2 more players soon.

As far as miniatures go I put together the Reaper Miniatures Cthulhu figure, it is hard to call it a miniature as it is fairly large and managed to get in 2 games of Bolt Action with my Canadians. Now we did do one major rule error in that my off board artillery fired numerous times when it should have only happened once but it was shelling my own troops so I guess it was all fair!  So next up is to paint some more Canadians! I also ordered the miniature rules Muskets & Tomahawks which is a skirmish game set during the French & Indian Wars. It seems to get good reviews and I have been looking at it for along time now so why not indulge in gaming some Canadian history!

Cthulhu green stuffed, now I just have to figure out how to paint him!

My pin markers for Bolt Action. I need something that will not be mistaken as terrain(and over looked) but something that is not too distracting on the table.

The table. Our first battle was 500pts which we played on a 4 by 4. The red markers indicate the edge of the play area.

The Canadians advance in the foreground. We played demolition, The objectives were the green(in front) marker and a white one hidden in the back of the picture to the left.

Not many casualties yet as the Germans move up.

My sniper team goes down!

Most of this was caused by my own arty falling short.

The Germans have occupied the cover while my arty continues. This was a rules error, the arty should not have continued firing for the rest of the game. It took out both our HQ's and threw on more pins.

The Germans got into strong positions and that was the end for the Canadians!

The end. No one got their objectives though the Germans tried to push through.

The second game at 1000pts we used the whole 6 by 4 table.

My Sherman's moved up supported by infantry. This was the point defense scenario and my objectives were all along the back of the board. I planned a strong push on one flank but got targeted by my artillery...again. We made the same rule error and the arty kept falling. We plan to revisit the game soon.

The German defensive line.

Looking down the road...

Boom!

The Germans with clear command of the battlefield.

And viewed from their other flank. My arty really kicked the s*** out of my advance, so looking forward to a redo now that we know hoe the arty should have worked.

New Year Projects

I hope everyone had a great holiday season and managed to get some games in.

Now is the time to make a list of gaming projects to complete this year but seeing as I don't work that way I think I will skip that part, other than planning to finish a couple of 28mm units I have, some British Napoleonic line infantry by Victrix and some British Pike & Shotte by Warlord Games. I will probably just sell these when they are done as I have no real plans to game these periods in this scale.

As far as gaming over the holidays go I did manage to get in a few board games and there was a number of games arriving under the tree for various members of the family.

I received Firefly the Board Game while Tristan got SmashUp, Galen received Three Little Pigs and the family got Temple Run, Mario Memory game and Yikerz.

Tristan and I are playing a game of Conquest of Nerath, which is a conquest(surprise!) game set in the D&D world, though I am not sure if we will finish it as Tristan seems busy. We have also got in a number of games of Yikerz, Temple Run, Three little Pigs and Mario Memory game(which I am not very good at!) and hoping to try a game of Firefly soon.

I have completed my 2nd wave of 28mm Canadians so I can now field two armies for Bolt Action. I may try a solo game first just to get comfortable with the mechanics before trying it out with some of the other interested parties here. In this case I based the team weapons on one base so the mortar and 3 crew are all on the one base. I thought I would try this for a change instead of mounting the crew all separate as I have done in the past. I will see which method I prefer after a few games.  

So here are the pictures of my completed Canadians representing The North Nova Scotia Highlanders and the Fort Gary Horse.

The new group of North Nova's. A 6pdr, a 10 man squad, mortar team, HMG team, PIAT team, sniper Team and a 2 man artillery spotter in the back. 

PIAT team.

Sniper team.

The Bren section.

HMG team.

Mortar team.

The complete force joined by 2 tanks from the Fort Gary Horse.

Ready for review!