Road to Nowhere - Laffly and Renault AMR-35 Army for Art of War

Hi all another update for the project - and more importantly the list and practice games so far leading up to 'Art of War'!

Firstly the AMR-35's, I've got 5 of these mobile MG's, I still view them as being an assault unit more than anything else, with TA1, and half tracked mobility they can get to the enemy pretty quickly, they may still be able to be pinned by 5 shots, but unlike many of the other units can hopefully pin and even remove a couple of infantry teams on the way in with their 13.2mm MG's.

Banzai! The Road to Art of War III - Part Two

Hello All

Last time I spoke about this project I had just picked up my first box sets and blisters. Since then I have been very busy building, painting, writing new a list, rewriting the list, re rewriting the list (still not 100% happy with it...), etc, etc. But what I have done which was successful and a solid fixture in all the list writing is the first two infantry platoons.

As you might remember from the last post I'm painting up my Japanese as the Special Naval Landing Force, this seemed like a simple task thanks to the work Mike Haught had done on his blog, but it wasn't quite as simple as I had hoped. The uniform seems to have changed quite a bit over the course of 1939 to 1943 and I wasn't able to find the an exact uniform to work off. With this in mind I decided to paint the infantry as I thought was best and chose the colours I liked the most out of the options available.

Random thoughts about Airbrushing

Hello fellow wargamers

Airbrushing is a big topic, full of opinions and there is simply no way I can cover all the aspects of airbrushing in this post.  I've owned 3 airbrushes since March 2012 and I've learned a bucket load in that time, but still have plenty left to learn.

Airbrushing the early days

I started airbrushing by purchasing one of those cheap Chinese kits you can get from eBay.  Now most airbrush artists will tell you not to get one.  My opinion, this is a great place to start and I'm very glad I did.  First off you may find you don't like airbrushing, that it isn't for you.  It's a steep learning curve and this can put people off.  Please don't think you can pick up an airbrush and start knocking out awesome looking freehand camo stripes because you've seen some youtube videos and it looks easy.  Back to the Chinese copy...I spent about £80.  I got a compressor, it lasted about 2 years and  I ended up donating to my FLGS along with the hose and of course I got a gravity fed, dual action airbrush which suffered a tonne of abuse at my hands for about a year.

Since then I've learned a thing or two, I now know that I should have gone for a kit which had a compressor piggy backing a tank and have gone for a single 0.3mm needle and nozzle.  This experience was put to good use when Adam's wonderful wife asked for my help in buying him his first airbrush as a present.  As far as I know, Adam's put that thing through its paces and it's still going strong.  I've just had a quick look on eBay and you're looking at £65 for similar setup, that my friends is a bargin.

Tale of Four Gamers Month Two - Fez

Arrgghh! Splosh, Splash, Dunk, Splat! Damn it!

The sound of last minute painting echoed through the Fez house hold once again. The new hamster Callie (or .50 cal, depending on who you ask - Stug passed away last month) looks on bemused. I'm sure she'll soon get used to the painting lamp being on so late at night. My long suffering girlfriend walks into the room once again - "Why do you do this to yourself? I'm off to bed."

I clean my brush, look at the sorrowful brown base coated Panzersturm platoon staring back at me, and ponder on the question.

Brown platoon of SHAME

Road to Nowhere - Hotchkiss

Now another two units done! I've done enough of these little guys for an HQ and 2 5 tank platoons, though for my EW french currently I only need 9 of them - in three different ways.

The obvious one is for my HQ, and it's one of the long barreled Hotchkiss, I'm strangely annoyed I can't choose long or short, as I can see my poor CO being gun tanked easier, but with a little extra range and AT I shouldn't complain.

Nachtjager Tale of Four Gamers Month Two - Andy

Well, here we are with month two over. I'll be honest its all been a bit of a whirlwind this month, what with buying my first house, finding out my work is closing the nearby factory and moving everything two hours away and potentially being made redundant and a fantastic weekend of gaming at the Breakthrough Assault III tournament! I actually won 2 games, drew 2 and lost 1. Not bad considering my only goal was to win a game.

In amongst all that I also found time for a bit of painting. Not as impressive as Ben's conveyor belt of painted miniatures but I'm happy all the same.

If you've been paying attention you may have noticed there are no Bofors SP's pictured. That because they're still in a shameful pile of bits. I decided to focus on the Sexton platoon this time and just make sure I got them fully completed, that and I just didn't fancy cleaning up and supergluing all those fiddly gun pieces! However even the Sextons haven't completely been finished as my decals still haven't arrived. Hopefully they'll all just get done at the end but I have to admit that without them they're definitely missing a bit of character.

Giving Up Infantry For Lent!

Welcome to the first ever ramble by Jersey, normally the sort of post Adam brings to the blog, looking at branching out away from the infantry lists and platoons that dominated my tactics and games over my first year in the hobby. This was written before Battlefront explained their schedule for 2015... the project I propose in this blog will be started after Brown Water Navy, which I'm very excited about but hopefully the sentiment is of use for those of you stuck in a "rut" with an army which you want to escape!

After playing Flames of War for a year, I’ve collected and finished painting two armies; a huge Italian infantry army with tanks and guns for three periods and a PAVN Local Forces Company for Vietnam games. At the start of the year I set myself a challenge in the form of New Year’s resolutions to finish companies from four different time periods and four different company types and if possible, use them at events. The last few units of PAVN were finished after this promise so count as Infantry and Vietnam time periods… now I just need something new!

Some Mid War Italians... where it all started.

Tale of Four Gamers Month Two - Ben

Hello All

I can't believe we have finished the second month of the challenge already. For this month I painted the core of the army, the two infantry platoons with Ram Kangaroo transports and some Heavy Mortars. This gives me a 1250pts army to play some games (hoping to get an AAR or two in very soon).

I started off the month by painting the new plastic British infantry which you may have seen reviewed here. I won't spend too much time talking about them here as I have already covered them in the other post. I will say painting tartan was surprisingly fun (not fun enough to do a whole platoon with tartan or anything silly like that mind). It didn't take long to find a pattern I liked the look of, I ended up choosing dark blue as it matched the logo of the 51st Highland Division.

Beyond The Foxholes Episode 26

Hi all

Welcome to Beyond the Foxholes Episode 26, Ben and Adam are joined once again by Winner Dave! 

In act one the guys talk about what they have been painting and gaming before chatting about the news about the 2015 releases with the Pacific, Cold War gone hot, Berlin and more.

In act two the guys cover the recent Breakthrough Assault 3 tournament and some Commonly Overlooked Rules.

Rounding out the episode with act three the guys open up Winner Dave's mail bags, talk about night attack in 10.1 and then look at the up coming events they are planning on attending.

Road to nowhere - French artillery

So another unit completed, - once again I remember how much I hate painting gun teams/artillery! Why is that the case you may ask? Well to me it's because I use very different styles and techniques when painting armour and infantry - and artillery requires armour techniques for the guns and infantry techniques for the infantry...

This shows up the difficulties in painting a cohesive army, the infantry look too clean next to the guns, so I've added dust to the helmets and a brown drybrush over the boots too, just to make them fit more.

Tale of Four Gamers Month Two - Alex

So another month done and another section of my army painted. I volunteered for the first slot as when Ben asked who wanted to go when I only had to stick some infantry onto some bases I had painted and do the final touches, should take me an hour or two, tops.

Or so I thought.

Anyway, I ran out of the textured paint I use to merge the plastic urban rubble bases I'm using with the infantry models, then discovered hobbycraft don't stock it anymore and the two gaming shops I know of locally were both shut on the one day I could get in to town. The best laid plans and all that.

So, I appologise that the basing isn't complete, I'm putting in a massive order of textured paint and will show off the whole army finally finished next month. Here's what I've added this month:

T34 obr 1940 Commission

Hello chaps

This week I managed to get a second commission finished in time for BA3, where I will be able to hand them over to my client.

Even though all I seem to paint now a days is 4BO green I really looked forward to painting these fellas.  I find my painting style and techniques I want to use change and alter every time I sit down to paint and painting T34s is no exception.  Problem is, I want my existing army to look as coherent as possible, so I try not to change my style.  So a commission of 3 T34s gave me the opportunity to explore some alteration in my technique.

Great War German Commission - Blitz's Battlegroup

Hi folks

Today I finished painting the Blitz Battlegroup from the Great War commission I started this year.
This has been a very enjoyable project for me to paint and I can't even begin to add up the hours  spent painting this.  I've grown very fond of this force and it's going to be hard to hand it over.

Anyway, here it is and in a break from the norm I've made a little set up.

1st Platoon dig in for the incoming assault

Road to ETC - Team New Zealand Part 2

Road to ETC - Team New Zealand Part 2

Link to part 1

So with the list pretty much decided I had to build the damn thing.  The physical build of the army was not as straight forward as I thought with some models simply not being available.

Infantry

For the Infantry I used  Forged in Battle Miniatures  These sculpts were simply gorgeous and took paint really well.  They required minimal clean up and the poses were nice and varied.

Road to Nowhere - Panhards

Ahh the Panhard. This armoured car is one of the best looking - and most potent units available to the french, with wheeled mobility, enough armour to ignore rifle fire, and a decent AT6 gun - not to mention being recon, this is a fantastic armoured car.

Whilst I may not have gone for the 15+ that makes the fabled 'panhoard' 9 of these should be more than enough to make a sizeable dent in an opponents force. Against infantry they are able to close in on objectives quickly, though only having an MG will no doubt limit their offensive firepower - thankfully being able to lift GtG for the rest of the army to target them is a good trade off. Where they excel I think is against tanks. They may not be able to damage Matilda's and T34's head on - but side shots are very viable - and even panzer 3's are vulnerable head on to them.

Rescuing the Zvezda BA-10

First off let me say, there is a good chance this post will never see the light of day, so if you're reading this then a small miracle has occurred.

Intro
Back in my Mixed Tankovy days, I ran 5 BA10s.  As a unit they were awesome, I had to learn to use them as recce, so only shooting if they relatively safe and I didn't need to remove gtg.  However, there were times, when their AT7 was lethal and I had been able to advance them deep into enemy territory thanks to cautious movement.  These guys are fantastic flankers, they're fast and don't suffer Hen and Chicks, combine that with a pre-game recce move and you can find yourself thinking "damn, wish I had more of these fellas!"

Enter mixed tankovy 2.0.  I'm starting with the maximum BA10s I can take.  That's 1 platoon of 5 and 1 platoon of 10.  Unfortunately I'm not made of money, battlefront sell these in blisters of 1, so that's getting on for £100...not tempting.  Skytrex also make BA10s and the model looks lovely, but again I'm not parting with £7 per model.  So that brought me back to the Zvezda offering and what is possibly the worst model I have ever made...24 parts that send shivers down the spine.  If you haven't experienced it it's hideous.  When I sold Mixed Tankovy 1.0, I only charged the same as they had cost me, I was that embarrassed of the model.

So, what the hell am I doing with 15 fresh boxes of them?

Xylophones and Long Tom - The Tactical Use Thereof:

Tactical [tak-ti-kuh l]

adjective

1.

of or relating to tactics,especially military or naval tactics.

2.

characterized by skillful tactics oradroit maneuvering orprocedure:

So, if you listen to beyond the foxholes then you will know that I was given the New Years resolution to write a tactical article on how to use Long Tom's and Xylophone rocket launchers, the two things Adam got me for our Christmas secret Santa.

The FOW Centurion Challenge - February Update

In episode 22 of Beyond The Foxholes I set myself the rather bonkers New Years Resolution to play 100 games of Flames Of War in 2015! Follow and track my progress as I attempt to conquer the FOW Centurion Challenge!

Hi all, Matt here with another update on THE challenge! February is a busy month in the UK FOW events calendar due to Corrivalry and Breakthrough Assault taking place and therefore plenty of games for me to get stuck into! So how did I get on...

AAR - US 8th Infantry vs 26th Panzer - Breakthrough

So Ben and myself decided to try out our Breakthrough Assault 3 lists, we rolled up breakthrough. Ben Was using the 8th Infantry out of the Citizen Soldiers PDF, they have the option to Night Attack and in fit of near insanity Ben elected to do so! (Not really too insane, he mostly just wanted to see how it would work before using it at BA3) Having chosen table quarters Ben placed two objectives - and I deployed the Panthers in one quarter, the Panzer 4's in the other - Ben deployed artillery at the rear recce at the edges, and left an infantry platoon in reserve.

US 8th Infantry Division HQ + 2 Bazookas Full Infantry Platoon Full Infantry Platoon 4 81mm Mortars 4 HMG's + 2 Bazookas (Ben forgot to deploy the Bazookas...) Full Pioneers + Supply Cart Cav Recon Cav Recon 4 M10's 4 155mm Artillery 4 155mm Artillery AOP

26th Panzer Division 2 HQ Panzer IV's 4 Panzer IV's 3 Panzers 2 Flakpanzer 38(t) 4 StuG M43 105/25 2 8-Rads 2 Nebs

Blitz's Battlegroup Finally Finished!

Hello All

It seems like almost a life time ago I started Blitz's Battlegroup, in all fairness I finished all but one infantry platoon in a short period of but that last platoon just sat on my painting table getting passed over for tournament projects, FoW Vietnam and more recently the Tale of Four Gamers Nachtjager Challenge (don't judge me you have all done it too!).

We it seemed like I got my figure out and finish the damn army so here it is all done.