Team Yankee - Tale of Four Gamers

Hello All

With the new Team Yankee rule set coming out we decided to have a painting challenge to get us to paint up our armies as fast as possible, But this challenge won't be as ridged as previous challenges.

There won't be a "paint X points or X number of units in a month", as this is a new game and we don't want to worry about release dates we are going to paint up the units at our own pace but with the goal of having a 100pts army painted in three months (around the end of January). So expect regular updates over the next few weeks and months. So lets see what everyone is planning.

AIW Painting Challenge Month Three - Ben's Israeli's

Hello All

Welcome to the last part of the AIW painting challenge, you have already seen Winner's and Adam's month three of the painting challenge this week and now it's my turn. This month I didn't have much left to paint, just four Anti-Tank Jeeps and a Heavy Mortar platoon.

I was looking forward to painting the Jeeps as they were part of the reason I wanted to collect the army, they just look cool. I'm thinking about a Jeep army if we revisit AIW just to get more of them!

AIW Painting Challenge Month One - Ben's Israelis

Hello All

As you may remember we start an Arab-Israeli War painting challenge thanks to the sale Battlefront did a month or so ago. After much chatting and swapping of sides I ended up with Israelis and decided to paint up an infantry company to be different from the mainly tank heavy forces the others would be collecting.

My original plan for the first month was to paint up my 4 M51 Isherman's and the jeep squadron, As you might tell from the above photo I didn't get to do this as my Isherman's were delayed (I should have guessed the tanks would be popular!). I ended up buying two Sho'ts off ebay and painted them up instead.

AIW Painting Challenge Month One WinnerDave's Jordanians

As I type this, it's the 23rd July and I've only just started the painting challenge.  In my defence, I couldn't afford to stop painting the 144 figures you get in a Strelkovy box, otherwise I'd never pick them up again.  Also the delay in shipping means I didn't receive my tanks until two days ago.

Sneek peek at the end result

So 500 points worth of miniatures, is not going to happen.  Then again it never was.  Points in game terms don't translate well into painting effort. So I'm going to focus on getting the infantry done (A Moshaa Mekaneekey (Mechanised) platoon, which is only 190 points and hope I can catch up in months 2 and 3.

AIW Painting Challenge Month One - Adam's UAR

So it appears unlike winner and Ben almost all my stuff arrived.

You've hopefully seen the AA I did earlier, and winner gave me some great feedback - which I of course ignored until I compared my modulated T-55's to the fully finished AA - I then realised he was right!

Fez's Road to Art of War Too Part 1

Hello there!

Having a busy work schedule has meant that I've not been able to get many games in or make it to the tournaments with the other guys, so I've been a bit quiet on the Flames of War front. I was then pleasantly surprised to see the announcement of 'Art of War Too', a late war weekender at the Sanctuary gaming centre! After playing so much Early war, it was interesting to go back to late.

But what to play? Jagdtigers? Nachjager Panthers? One of the other 100 lists I've got on forces of war/easy army?

To be honest, the answer came from another of my latest past times - World of Tanks Blitz!

So much bling!

Arab Israeli War Painting Challenge

Hello All

With the The 'Battle of An-Nakhl' Arab-Israeli War Sale Ben, Winner Dave and Adam decided to finally take the plunge and get into AIW. We are picked different nations and so the fitting thing to do seemed to be a painting challenge.

We are keeping it simple, 500pts a month for three months and then some gaming. A couple of other guys in the area have armies already so expect the after action reports to come think and fast. But before all of that lets hear from the guys about their projects.

Tale of Four Gamers Month Three - Andy

Hi All,

Its the final day of the challenge and its pretty late but I did it. Well 99% done. I haven't finished in style like Ben having painted loads extra too but I have done what I set out too do and finished an army in three months. For me thats unheard of! It's been quite tough, especially right at the end and in some ways it has taken a little of the fun out of it, but overall its been good and at least now I can look forward to some gaming and adding more to the army.

Tale of Four Gamers Month Three - Ben

Hello All

So the tale of four gamers is coming to an end and I have completed my objective of getting my British army painted. In-fact I have painted more than I needed to with extra Shermans, Stuarts, Comets and currently on my painting table a battery of Land Mattresses. Plus I'm hoping to get enough blisters of SAS for my birthday to run the new SAS list and I'm looking forward to the new plastic Cromwell when that hits the shelves.

You might be able to tell that although I have finished the challenge and I do feel the achievement of having done so, I also feel as though I'm just starting to get to the half way point with this army. Anyway back to the focus of this post, what I have painted to finish the painting challenge. This month I have painted up 4 Archers and 6 6 Pounders.

Tale of Four Gamers Nachtjer Challenge - Month 3 and Goal - Alex

Well it's been a long three months of busy modelling and painting but it's done. This month everything has come together and I received all of the stuff I had ordered and after a monster session of armoured vehicle painting everything is finished.

So at the end of last month I had some mostly based infantry for dismounted motorcycle teams. After a bulk buy of textured paint, they're done:

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.

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.

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:

PAVN Local Forces Company all done (for now!) for Vietnam!

Hi everyone (James here):

A year ago, Ben and I started 1250 point Vietnam army projects and recently we both completed them. If you like ‘Nam then you've probably seen Ben’s Americans and a post I put up at the start of the project as both appeared on the Battlefront website too and can be found here searching under Vietnam tags but I've been lax on doing posts as I've painted so here… is the finished force!

(check out the end of the article for a proposition if you're interested in getting into games of Flames of War Vietnam! I’ll also put up on the Battlefront Forums for Vietnam!)

Snapped at our local store before a game!

Nachtjager Tale of Four Gamers Month One - Ben

Hello all

Month one of the Tale of Four Gamers challenge is in the books and I don't mean gloat but I knock this one out of the park! Not only did I finish this with three weeks left of the challenge, I also painted up 6 extra Shermans so I can use them as a tank company.

The Shermans are all the new plastics Battlefront have been recently release (which Adam reviewed here). They are really nice and so so so so much better than old Open Fire versions.

Nachtjager Tale of 4 Gamers Painting Challenge

Hello All

With the new Late War book around the corner we thought it was a great chance to do every hobbyist's favourite challenge - a Tale of 4 Gamers. This will be based on Operations Varsity and Plunder with all of the armies from the new book. This also links in nicely to Ben's new years resolution.

The plan is to do three months of 600pts chunks with a legal army and games planned for month two. We will also be taking the armies to a tournament and we are looking into the possibility of a campaign as well.

Ben and Andy will be focusing on the Allies while Fez and Alex are going Axis.

So here are the guys to talk about what they are planning.

The Definition of Madness (US Armoured Rifles Painting Challenge)

Hello All

From the title you may have guessed I'm doing another painting challenge. As I start typing this it's the morning on the 30th June and I'm planning on painting an Armoured Rifle Company for Devizes Attack 2014 on the 19th/20th July. As I have no painted models for the army yet that's 19 days to paint 1750pts of Mid War US! I do have two weeks off during the 19 days so I do hopefully have the spare time to be able to hopefully do it, but just to add a little extra pain to the whole thing I'm also painting up a few extra bits so I can do the army for Late War and as a standard infantry company.

Now you may ask why I would want to do this mad challenge, well that's not an easy answer. I have always wanted to do US Armoured Rifles as I love the platoons being so big and being almost a complete combined arms force in themselves. Add to that I have come to the painful conclusion that I'm an infantry player and not a tank commander, I felt I needed a new army. The final reason was I wanted a reason to use the new plastic Armoured Rifles as they looked great on the Battlefront Website (the guy how painted them shuld have his hands cut off).

Call me Charlie!

Hello Everyone, 

It’s Jersey James here today, but instead of talking about my Italians… today, you can call me Charlie! I've swapped breda machine guns and black feathers for sandles, straw hats, RPG's and AK47's!

I’ve been army list crunching, building and painting a PAVN Local Forces Battalion for Flames of War Vietnam and it’s all I can do not to run through the jungles and elephant grass or crawl through tunnels to get into the mind-set when painting and planning! I might have watched twelve Vietnam or Vietnam themed films and ordered a few books about the PAVN too; as I mentioned on the Breakthrough Assault Facebook Page the other day… Forest Gump alone made me head online and buy more models!

The Domino Effect - US Forces - Part 1

Hello All

As James Spoke about in this post The Domino Theory Lives On... James and myself are getting into FOW Vietnam. James picked the new Local Forces PDF for his force (my favourite option too!), so I went for the Free World Forces.

I decided to go for the US to begin with as although I love the ANZAC models the US are the iconic Free World Force of Vietnam and so seemed to make more sense to focus on, but a few emails and phone calls to the gaming stores I normally order from returned no US infantry... but I was able to find some ANZAC infantry, so it was onto plan B! Now at this point the title of the post and the 11th Cav badge might be confusing you so I had better round out the story.

The Domino Theory Lives on…

Domino Theory was a political tool used by Cold War America to justify its intervention on behalf of the capitalist, free world in countries where it was feared that the influence of communism would take hold. Its proponents aimed to prove that one event would lead to another and that through the fall of domino's and cause and effect communism and conflict would spread from one nation to another, however; as the Cold War progressed Domino Theory was largely thought to be debunked after the events of the Korean and Vietnam wars when neighbouring nations failed to topple as domino's as predicted…

Depiction of the Domino Effect
Picture copied from: http://apmodels.wikispaces.com/Political+Geography

However…