Let's start with the first part (always a good choice).
The second Zvezda MG team is complete and on their base. If you look carefully you will still see the blue tint to the air that resulted from this exercise.
The hard part was getting both of their hands onto the gun's handle, without raising the MG in the air. The end result is that they appear to be holding hands from certain angles. I'm quite alright with that, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intention and that I botched the arm attachment.
Here's another view because I'm pleased as punch with the outcome:
Speaking of arm attachment. I rapidly went from "what happens if I try to use heat to bend this figure's arm" to "better lop that melted mess off with an X-acto and find a replacement":
The donor was already missing a hand - he came that way - and so I figured he was the best donor candidate. I also have like 10 of the grenade throwers, most of whom I have no other plans for.
I consider this a proof of concept for a "leader" figure - a company commander, for example, in my G Company or Company Fire - that doesn't look exactly like the figure I painted for the Commissar. I mean it really doesn't matter, but if they're going to be standing side-by-side, I thought it was too uniform and besides this is my first "big"-ish conversion attempt (i.e not hacking off a gun or a paint conversion).
The arm is presently held in place with blu-tac, just to prove to myself that it will work.
I will drill and pin it, and then fill in the gaps (probably) with green stuff before hacking off some of the excess bits that resulted from my previous hacking.
Peter S. was kind enough to provide me with additional feedback for the latest update of G Company (you can read his comment here). As part of that, he shared a great historically-based scenario for a British raid of a German radar station, which is absolutely worth checking out. There's a good bit of open ground for the British to deal with, so, at least given the present state of the rules, be warned that if you try it, it might get a bit bloody for them.
Inspired by his scenario, and with ample time during jury duty yesterday to sketch it out, I decided to finally get a historically-based scenario on the table that I've had in mind for some time. It is based on the section "Company G operates in Deep Snow (January 1942)" from Small Unit Actions During the German Campaign in Russia. (also, for those keeping score, this is where the idea for the name 'G Company' came from).
The scenario needs some tweaking, so I'll wait to post the full details. Suffice it to say, it's intended to play solitaire, with many of the decisions for the Soviets coming from die rolls, inspired by the print-n-play game, Sink the Bismark.(the link is to Boardgame Geek, but there is a link there to the site where you can get the download).
However, here are some screen shots from the game (please note, there's heavy snow on the ground):
A platoon from Company G sets up behind their snow defenses in front of Village M, along with an HMG, 81mm mortar, and ATG.
The Soviet hordes burst forth from the forest
The first wave struggles through the snow and is shot up well before they can get anywhere.
The second wave races toward the German line (I was playing with movement rates).
I got quite bit of painting done in the last few days, much to my own surprise
Both the Germans and Soviets can now field nine infantry units.
And even better, the Soviets can field their first proper HMG:
Nothing fancy but they will serve the Motherland well. Just don't get me started on the pain of attaching the Maxim to the base. All hail blu-tack!
The next figures in the queue include a German sniper (CTS), a Soviet commander (Marx, which will be my first "real" conversion attempt), and the second Soviet HMG team (the Zvezda box includes two) . It's probable I'll work on those this week.
Once those are painted, and assuming my
painting mojo sticks around, I'll probably return to painting figures
for my colonial Imagin-nation / VSF project involving the conflict
between Ginland (or is it Gntania?) and Vodkya in the late 19th C.
I figure a break before painting any more WWII forces will help prevent burnout.
I'd really like to get a game on the table with my figures, but I'm afraid to stop painting lest another long painting lull begin.
If you look to the sidebar, there's a new link for G Company.
I haven't been able to field a proper game with toy soldiers on the table due to my ongoing re-basing efforts and my desire to spend time painting (a rare thing for me, so strike while the iron's hot and all that), but I have run through quite a few play test games "on-line" using a very DIY grid surface and block armies and I believe the results are ready for sharing with the world before the inevitable next round of revisions/layout changes begins (might add some pictures to jazz it up).
What changes did I make? I probably should have tracked that.
Mostly, I have made the document wordier in an effort to provide clarification, as well as some rearranging. There are a few tweaks throughout, but it's not wildly different from its predecessor. Importantly, it includes a two-page QRS (print double-sided for single sheet) which should be all you need in most situations.
Vehicle rules have not really been touched - there is much more testing to be done there, but with a little interpretation, they are functional. Do note again, they are far more beer + pretzel, emphasis on the beer, than detailed.
If I can offer my own criticism of G Company, it's what appears to be a borderline obscene list of modifiers that apply to the Fire Result Table and the Close Combat results. That said, there is a lot of overlap between the lists, and after a few goes they aren't hard to recall (says the person who wrote them). The one I have trouble remembering is the bonus for Veteran/Elite units because I forget the units are such.
I still don't have a points values system for those looking to create their own scenarios (I rely on the hard work of others for my scenarios generally), but it's coming and, spoiler alert, it owes everything to Morschauser and Bob Cordery.
And because blogs are as much an image-based medium as a text-based one, here's a picture from a recent outdoor game with my son (based on this game, but using multiplication and basic division instead of spelling):
This has been my favorite "army man" pose since I was a kid. I seem to recall my army men standing up rather easily but these have very narrow bases and fall over easily.
The other night I was ready to wax rhapsodic about 1/35 figure kits. Assembling the soldiers was a breeze, cleaning mold lines with a blade was a delight (so easy with this plastic), and you can leave off bits and bobs that your Airfix and Marx figures don’t have if desired.
Of course, there are slight gaps at the joins that the more detail oriented would take the time to deal with but I am not that person and am not bothered by them.
In my joy-filled haze, I moved on to the Maxims next. How anyone can call this hobby relaxing is beyond me! Minuscule pieces lost, found, lost again (this time with glue on them), tiny little bits to be stuck perfectly in place with no support/hole/anything. Clearly these were created by a sadistic mind and dutifully, I masochistically went through the process.
The end result, however, was worth it in that I now have two proper Soviet HMG teams and for a reasonable price (dollar-wise, the jury is out on the cost of sanity).
One team and both guns. The nose of the gun on the right came from a broken resin kit I have as I lost the one included.
Despite my frustration with the fiddly gun bits, I expect I’ll be turning to more 1/35 figure kits for some of the specialists that no one makes in 1/32 plastic.
In the comments, I mentioned I had some medieval chaps of the same Russian-made sort, but featuring Teutonic knights and Russian knights. As there's no easy way to share pictures in comments, here we are.
Before continuing, I feel I should acknowledge that I suppose it's possible the Teutonic knights are in fact, Livonian, but that's neither here nor there.
I acquired a few packs of these several years ago and other than a few test paint jobs, which I never completed, they have languished, save for a few undocumented games of Songs of Blades & Heroes. Neither force is large enough presently for much else.
Without further ado:
The two armies.
The only painted figures of the bunch.
The Teutonic knights
The Russian knights.
There is a lot of action in these poses despite being flats (or are they semi-flats?) and I think they make quite a nice visual display, even in their Christmas-colored underwear.
The figures are a very hard plastic, have no flash, and quite minimal mold lines. Only the injection point serves to blemish them.
I was unable to find identical sets for sale currently, but there are similar sets floating about.
I had really wanted to do more posts this month, but Friday, I took a trip up to Philly to meet up with some friends to go see a band I had only seen once before, in 1994 or 1995 and which broke up shortly after but which was reuniting to play a special show. Sunday, I flew back to Atlanta (boy, are my arms tired).
As a word of warning, if you don't care for travelogues, there's not much else in this post.
Of course, Philadelphia is full of history, but I lived there for 13+ years, nearly all if it in the city proper, and much of that, within a few blocks of some of the most historic sites, so taking pictures of them seems a bit unnecessary from my perspective.
That said, the ubiquitous Independence Hall picture is a personal requirement.
This statue ("The Crier", I think is called), pictured below, is often overlooked by tourists (it's just a statue in a small park/garden after all), and as a result it's a nice quiet spot where you can enjoy your Philly soft-pretzel and a Wawa coffee (as an aside, perhaps my tastes in coffee have changed, because Wawa coffee tastes pretty terrible to me now, but I still drank it because tradition).
The greatest candy in the world was invented as a ration bar for soldiers in WWI and was manufactured in Philadelphia for a long time (now it's made by a Bethlehem, PA company): Goldenberg's Peanut Chews. Original dark is the only kind worth getting.
It has only recently made it's way to Atlanta at some convenience stores, as individually wrapped pieces, so by and large, I must eat my body weight in peanut chews whenever I visit Pennsylvania.
Finally, a picture of the omnipresent blue signage used by the city to denote historical locations and the personages who lived there. Why this one? No real reason other than I lived in this neighborhood when I first moved to Philly in 1996.
I've been home a few days but aside from sorting through my unpainted plastic pile - perhaps I'll ramble about this in a subsequent post - nothing gaming related has occurred. I look forward to getting some painting in tomorrow night however and possibly a game of some sort this weekend.
Figures are a mix of Airfix, Matchbox, Classic Toy Soldier (MG), Dragon (MG), and 21st Century/Ultimate Soldier (mortar crews). The Ultimate Soldier mortars are delicate and in my ham fists, they have all broken. The mortars pictured are from BMC. They aren't great but what they lack in detail and accuracy, they make up for in durability.
Here's a closer picture of the mortars and their crews:
One of the the mortar crew has a non-uniform base color. They will be dealt with accordingly.
One thing I have yet to decide on is how to handle the LMG teams for both sides. I can base them two figures on a base, like the HMGs, or I can base them with three figures(either three prone, or two prone and one kneeling) like the rest of the infantry and use them as regular infantry bases.- which sort of makes sense given that the LMG is just assumed when the bases represent sections/squads and above.
I'll let that sit on the back burner.
Next up, figure-wise: finish painting the next three-base German infantry unit and assemble and paint the two Soviet HMG teams in my to-do pile.
As part of my celebration of Halloween ('The most wonderful time of the year"), I decided to combine my love of WWII movies with the horror movies I tend to watch this time of year.
Last night, I watched the first such film this month: The Devil's Rock.
warning: the trailer might be a little on the gory side for some viewers (not any worse than Saving Private Ryan's beach landing. Well maybe a little, but that's the ball park).
The setup: On the eve of D-Day, two New Zealand commandos arrive on the shore of a small island near Guernsey to cause some havoc and distract the Germans from the Normandy invasion.What they find ,besides the big gun they are to blow up, is tortured screams and mutilated bodies. The cause of this carnage? Why, the end results of Nazi occultism of course!
I'll leave it there. Between my warning about the trailer, the trailer, and the setup you probably know already if this movie is for you.
I tend to prefer my horror movies to be vintage - not later than 1970 something, primarily because modern horror seems to love blood and gore and I do not. This movie was released in 2011, so vintage it is not. Still, this isn't that gorey a movie and I could stomach what there was and no nightmares resulted (always a plus). Why watch it if it's not the kind of movie I normally watch?
The main reason is that WWII movies with a supernatural element seem to involve zombies. With the exceptions of Shawn of the Dead and Zombieland, I don't generally like zombie movies (I find them too disturbing), so for that reason alone this movie made my list to watch. Also it's free if you have Amazon Prime (it's amazing how often that factors into my decisions).
It helped too that on Amazon, it has fairly decent reviews. Certainly it rated better than a lot of war movies from the 50s and 60s and I have suffered through those 1/2 star debacles so why not this?
Indeed, it was entertaining - even if at times I was distracted by what felt like anachronistic language (and hairstyle for the female lead). I felt they did an excellent job conveying just how diabolical a demon might be, not just physically powerful as they are often depicted, but capable of powerful deceptions. There is also some interesting manipulation of the audience (had we been deceived too?) that I don't want to detail so as not to spoil it for the one or two of you who do watch it. The resolution was clever, but I felt its impact was undermined by the very last shot, where we see the D-Day invasion getting underway. Rather than any kind of import, it felt underwhelming and unnecessary.
As a war game scenario, it would be pretty hard to pull off, unless you're using a small skirmish pulp set like .45 Adventure, or maybe Achtung! CthulhuSkirmish. You'd probably want to take some license with it and expand the forces - as I understand it, this was a fairly low budget movie and the general lack of cast members confirms that. You only need two commandos, a German solider, a German officer, and something from Hell to field the characters from the movie as written. Dungeon tiles could work for the interior of the fortification.
Almost certainly, however, the setup/plot is ripe for use with RPGs based around cosmic horror / supernatural / occult horror (Achtung! Cthulhu comes to mind, this time the RPG not the wargame)- assuming the player characters are able to shoot and brawl, and don't have a ton invested in skills like anthropology or art collecting.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say, for my average reader, this movie is probably of little interest. But if you're looking for something to watch for Halloween, and you prefer sten guns over chainsaws, ritual magic over science labs, and demons over the animated dead, then it it's not the worst way to spend 86 minutes.
Is there anything more terrifyingly tedious than rebasing?
I'm sure somewhere in the not distant past I said something to the effect that I had finally decided on magnets and sheet metal as my be-all-end-all basing. What I meant to say, was that it I was having a moment of temporary insanity and that thinking I had decided on basing was just a sign that I was delusional.
Well now I really have decided*.
And so, Saturday night, I spent a lot longer than I thought it would take rebasing my WWII Soviet infantry - which involved the usual prying them from their existing base, cutting out new unit bases from mat board, gluing the figures down and then painting the figure bases and mat board.
Six units of infantry, 3 leader types and a commissar.
The German infantry have been glued to their new mat board unit bases, but painting of the bases is on hold until I can get a suitable block of time. Heavy weapons and LMG teams for both sides will come after that.
The motivation for the rebasing came from a review of my 54mm WWII collections, and deciding to dedicate different figures to different types of games.
The painted plastic Germans and Soviets will be based as per the photo above, for rules where a base is a section or platoon. I may or may not base my painted plastic US WWII figures this way. My Britains / Conte metal figures ( US / British paras / SS ) will be used for Mediterranean and NW Europe 1:1 small skirmishes with a squad or less per side while my unpainted plastic TSSD Germans and Soviets will cover the same on the Eastern Front and mostly in the winter (as they are clad in winter gear).
Friday was rather productive and less tedious - I updated Company G with some clarifying details and a QRS. The updates aren't live yet - there's a few more things I need to do - but I'll announce when they are available.
I also worked on what will be the last batch of German infantry for awhile but then I randomly decided to finish up this birdhouse church that I have had forever and had never gotten past basic black primer.
Toy soldier-y church
I''m rather happy with the result - nothing fancy, but effective.
The blue-grey roof / grey door / white walled color scheme was taken from a Russian Orthodox village church image that I found online. At least that's the search I entered into Google.
Monday will bring more work on the rules and possibly a little painting if I'm lucky.
It doesn't look like much, but the picture below is a demonstration of one way I play test without going through the trouble of setting up a full table.
Two platoons of Germans assault a Soviet MG position, variously treated as cover and really really hard cover, i.e. a pillbox, across open ground.
In the above picture, I'm checking the relative weight of an MG vs infantry stands (in this case a single infantry figure represents a squad/section for the sake of testing). It was pointed out to me that in G Company, the MGs might be worth at least two infantry stands for designing your own scenarios. As I had been relying on someone else's fairly balanced scenarios, this issue hadn't happened on my table.
Because I didn't get out my cloth and terrain, and used figures at hand (the Germans were right there on the painting table), setup time was minimal and I could leave it setup because this small grid barely takes up any space on my desk, as opposed to taking up most of the kitchen table.
Admittedly, the squares were cramped and fitting two squads and a PL into one square required a stretch of the imagination - I could have used paper counters just as easily, but I wanted to see what using a single figure for a squad felt like. In any case, I was able to play more than a dozen games in order to see how things might work out and was also able to try different variations (adding a second MG, adding an MG to the attacker, etc.).
Expect to see the both sets of rules updated and available for download by the end of October.
Speaking of...
Plans for October:
Finish painting those eight Germans in the above picture.
Tweak, test, and make available the next version of G Company and Company Fire (I am considering combining them into a single document containing both rule sets, rather than pointing players of G Company to see Company Fire for terrain rules, for example. If you have strong feelings either way, please let me know!)
Since Halloween is this month, watch some weird WWII movies - you know, the kind where there are supernatural elements inserted into the WWII era. Usually these take the form of some kind of Nazi occult experiment.
