Tale of Winter Gamers - Final Report - 25th Panzergrenadierkompanie

Well readers this is it, after 5 months, I've finished my ToWG project.

My only objective this month was my Panthers, I'd changed my initial list where I had 4, to only 3 but that meant I would be able to take the Flampanzers, which was pretty iconic for operation Nordwind

Tale of Winter Gamers - 4th Month - 25th Panzergrenadierkompanie

Hi everyone sorry for the late post on this months update ToTWG Post.

This month, all I had to paint were my Hetzers, leaving me only my Panthers for next month.

Tale of Winter Gamers - US Paras - Final Report

Hi  All

So this is my last TOTWG post, I have painted everything I wanted to paint for the challenge and so I'm surprisingly in the position that I have finished something early (very unlike me)! Adam is going to contuine on for another month as he still has a few things he wants to paint. Quite honestly I'm surprised with how well this has gone! Most of you out there have probably taken part in some sort of Tale of X Number of Gamers and I dare say 90%  them never get finished, let alone finished ahead of schedule with painted armies!

Also for myself it is ending now takes a lot of pressure off of me with my other projects. I have 2 armies I'm painting up for tournaments in May and June (my Market Garden Paras and My Mid War Fins), I'm also dabbling in Vietnam and I'm struggling to find enough hours in the day!

US Airborne Anti Tank Guns

Hello All,

Ben here with another update for my TOTWG US Paras, this time a 57mm Anti Tank Gun Platoon.

This is one of my favourite platoons in the list, not only do you get the four ROF 3 AT 10 guns for defensive fire or for keeping lightly armoured vehicles away from your battle line, but you also can make a nice little anti tank assault force by sending the for Bazookas and the platoon commander off on an assault. 

US Airborne Recon Jeeps + Extras

Hello All

Ben here with a little update for my Winter US Paras and the TOTWG challenge.

I have always loved the idea of Jeeps in a Battle of the Bugle US force since I played Call of Duty on the PC (I think it was the add on to the first game). In it you started off on patrol in your Jeep when you basically run into the German offensive. Anyway it's a cool bit of the game and so I this month I finally got around to painting them.

Tale of Two Winter Gamers - Month Three - 101st Airborne

Hello All,

Ben here with my slightly delayed TOTWG update (sorry for the delay, but I have been quite ill). Anyway this is more of a recap than of the month with a terrain update.

In January I have painted up my second Glider Artillery platoon, an AOP and a LMG Platoon. I also got quite a few games in playing 5 games at the Brighton Bash and one against one of my regular opponents Kevin Perry. I was really happy with the Brighton Bash, finishing 6th in my first FOW tournament was much better than I thought I would do.

Tale of Two Winter Gamers - Month Three - 25th Panzergrenadierkompanie

Good morning everybody!

Doctor Cox here, this is more of a roundup this time than posting anything new, but hopefully, you'll enjoy the update.

I was quite lucky in that I managed to blitz my way through my painting for this month, for those who need reminding I've done my Heavy Platoon, Triples and 8-Rad's.

Tale of Two Winter Gamers - Month Two - 101st Airbourne

Hello All

Welcome to my second months post for Tale of Two Winter Gamer. For my first month I just a platoon of Infantry pianted, so for the second month I need to paint up some HQ's for my company as part of my and Adam's targets. For this I picked up the Easy Company Heroes so I added Speirs and Lipton to the list. I love the set, they really got the character of the guys from the TV series down to a tea.

Next up I wanted a little change so next up on my list was so Glider Artillery. I think these are a great little unit, you get a nice points break as the direct fire option isn't great, but I don't think you can complain about 115pts for 3 guns with a good firepower and smoke.

After these two platoons I focused on the 2nd Paratrooper platoons. I decided to use the metal US Paratroopers instead of the plastic models for this platoon and I think it was a better choice. While the metal models are a lot smaller they did suit my painting style a lot better than the plastic ones did, in my option I think the detail of stands out a lot better than it did with the plastic paras.

Overall I'm happy with how they turned out and thankfully they don't looking to out of pace compared to the first platoon I painter.

For the terrain I snowed up some Battlefront rural roads. They still need a second lot of snow flack on them but I ran out of the flock.... I'm burning through the stuff.

Well thats it for month two, my plans for the third month is a LMG platoon, some recon Jeeps and a second Glider Artillery platoon.

So until next time, thanks for reading.

Ben

Tale of Two Winter Gamers - Month Two - 25th Panzergrenadierkompanie

Good morning everyone

So month 2 has been and gone, how has it all gone?

For those of you who need reminding here are the rules and here is the first months results.

Platoon 2

This month the aim was my second platoon and their transports, and some scenery. Due to Christmas and other real life events getting in the way I actually found very little painting time, but I managed to get the guys done.

Platoon Commander

They were pretty much the same as the last platoon, my one big difference is that I swapped the side of the faust on each squad, that way I should hopefully be able to tell at a glance which bases belongs to which platoon!

The transports themselves were done in the same way as last time, and again i'm happy with the results, I tried feathering the edges, but it all ended up looking mucky so started over again.

Transports

As for my terrain, well I bought the Cobblestone roads with craters. They're well made, and though the colour is slightly different to my existing roads, it's not enough to warrant any repainting.

Some serious firepower hit here!

My biggest issue is actually using them in games! The whole reason for roads is to allow smooth transport, so having these and the bogging test and slow going nature really means you have to place them carefully, so that they have an effect, but not so that they make the roads unplayable.

How do we get past this road block?

I've recently tried using them to break up every couple of normal road sections. Either that or in the middle of a village to really encourage infantry fighting. I'd be interested on others experiences though.

Not a snow pic but shows how I've used these roads in a game

The only final thought, is that due to reading about Nordwind, I'm altering my list slightly so that there will be Flammpanzers in it, and only 1 platoon of 3 Panthers.

Until next time

Dr Cox

StuG life

So I've been a little quiet on the painting front, but I've finally managed to finish a unit this month.

These are my StuG's from the Open fire box set, I have to say that they were a real joy to put together, required very little trimming and filing during the process and after an accidental drop on the way to spray them - they hold together quite well too.

Now there's 6 of us and the chance's are one of us will fail a bogging test

Yeah boss, I'm bogged

As for painting them I followed the same technique as I did for my trucks in my tale of winter gamers. I have to say that I found it easier and think it looks even better on the StuG's than it did on the trucks

rolling through a winter wonderland

I do think that painting Camo without an airbrush seems to get a bad press, but I find it aesthetically pleasing so frankly I'm pretty happy with them. I hadn't used decals on my allied army (except my Typhoons) thankfully Battlefronts explanation of what the numbers meant led to some kind of organisation for these guys.

2nd company, 3rd platoon, 3rd tank - I think

 As for in the game, well I've faced Stug's a lot, and I quite like the StuG battery list personally. I always had the opinion that the StuG's main strength was being a threat alongside the bigger cat's. So whilst the heavy 17 pounders etc were trying to pick them off the Stug's could get close and hit other units.

does that tree look big to you?

Arsenal

Tank Teams

Name	Mobility	Front	Side	Top	Equipment and Notes
Weapon	Range	ROF	Anti-tank	Firepower
Assault-guns
StuG G or StuG IV	Standard Tank	7	3	1	Hull MG, Protected ammo, Schürzen.
7.5cm StuK40 gun	32"/80cm	2	11	3+	Hull mounted.

More recently though I've found the real problem is that they tempt my 6 Pounders to fire thus losing gone to ground - evil Stug's I hope to learn to use them well.

Anyway hope you enjoy,

Thanks Dr Cox

Tale of Two Winter Gamers - Month One - 25th Panzergrenadierkompanie

Hello All

So month one of The Tale of Two Winter Gamers, so how has the first month gone?

The objectives were the 1 and 2 ic the first combat platoon, and for my scenery piece I went for some winter woods.

The infantry themselves were very nice and easy to assemble, I by and large like the new plastic minis from open fire, but there are some odd places (on the backs where the packs and pouches are very deep), and the faces seem to have cheekbones similar to David Coultards, but otherwise the details are nice and crisp.

The only criticism I would say is that some of the ends of the guns have snapped - i don't think it's my rough handling and it is a little annoying.

For the Panzerfausts I used a mix, some of them were plastic from the 'Open fire' Box others were from battlefront - and I think the odd one may have even been from Peter Pig. All in all they work well, though there are relatively few designs to choose from.

Painting them was a pleasure, and basing them I think worked well, though adding the white paint into the flock/PVA mix worked far better than doing it underneath the flock!

Once I did the pics, Ben pointed out my historical inaccuracies, so since these photos all my Fausts have now changed to a yellow colour.

 The vehicles were based the same way, and I used this Kapiti FoW Gamer as a basis for painting the vehicles which I found a really good way to do it - especially as i don't have an air brush - but overall I was really pleased with the results.

As for my terrain, The woods were basically the same process as my ones in this tutorial. The main difference was getting the trees to look like they had been snowed on. To achieve this I dusted them gently from above with some white spray, if you do this you need to make sure the trees are not touching as that led to some weird sticking branches in one case. I've also not flocked them - that's mainly to stop the flock shedding on the floor!

Well I hope you enjoy the work, I hope to have another couple of units posted up later as well.

Tale of Two Winter Gamers - Month One - 101st Airbourne

Hello All

So month one of The Tale of Two Winter Gamers (I think we need a better title....) is done and dusted. As I talked about at the beginning of the month I'm doing a company of US Paras of the 101st Airborne from the new Nuts! book. The goal for the first month so to paint up the HQ, a complementary platoon and a piece of terrain. I was given a pass from the HQ part for a  month as the Easy Company HQ packet wasn't out until December 1st so would have been impossible to get painted in time.

For my Troops choice I painted up a US Para Platoon. I made a few modeling choices with them which I'm very happy with. Firstly I used a mix of Winter Paras and the US Paras from the new Open Fire set. I choice to do this as everything for a few reasons, the main one being everything I have ever read about the 101st in Bastogne talks about how lacking in winter equipment the 101st Airborne was. They weren't expected to be needed until March 1945 so most of the winter uniforms went to the front line troops. So to me it didn't seem right for all the models to have nice big jackets. I also wanted them to look different from the normal winter US infantry as the models are the same and it also gave me a chance to try out the new plastic Paras.

Overall I'm mostly very happy with the Paras and I'm happy with my choice to mix the models from the different sets. My only real niggle with them is I found the metal infantry easy and a little more enjoyable to paint, I feel this has shown in the overall finish of the unit as the metal infantry look better painted (in my option) than the plastics. But this is really just a small gripe as on the table top you really can't see this (I'm just always my own worst critic).

I have used the Major Cook model is this platoon to represent a Toccoa Sergeant, it's a nice model and with the Easy Company heroes set will give me 6 different Toccoa Sergeants.

I experimented with the basing a little and decided not to cover the whole base in snow to add a little colour to the basing.

For the terrain I picked up a Rural Fields and Fences set from the Battlefield in a Box range. I then added snow to make it work for a winter board.

Hindsight is a wounderful thing and I wish I hadn't added the snow flock to the fields as I don't think I got the effect of a freshly turned field I was aiming for. But I was very happy with the fences and can't wait to get enough painted to start playing some games.

So month one down. Next month is going to be a busy one for me and my US, I'm aiming to get the second platoon of Paras painted up, this time I'm trying them with metal US Para models to see if I prefer the finished look. I also have the HQ to paint up, a platoon of Glider Artillery and 2 Sherman M4A3 (but the Shermans aren't part of the challenge). For Terrain I'm have a a Rural Roads set and the Add on.

So until next time thanks for reading and Currahee!

A Tale of Two Winter Gamers : The Battered Bastards of Bastogne

Hello All,

So as I spoke about last week, myself and Adam are doing a Tale of Gamers Challenge based around the Battle of the Bulge. It was decided that I would collect the US forces while Adam would paint up the Axis (see Adam's post on his plans here). So I see about reading through Blood, Guts and Glory, Devil's Charge and Nuts to see which US lists interested me. I have always liked US Armoured Rifles and Tank Destroyers but to me the Bugle is about the PBI (Poor Bloody Infantry) trying to hold the German advance while the Armoured forces raced to the front, so they are for now out (well until April/May time). So looking at the Infantry there really was only one option for me Easy Company! I know some people out there will roll their eyes at that but Band of Brothers is in my top 3 TV series of all time (The Wire and BSG being the other two) and US Airborne were my first FOW army way back during my first failed attempt to get into FOW; so I also feel I have unfinished business (plus I can add lots of Band of Brother quotes in the AARs!).

So army decided I moved onto the models. The Battlefront Winter Paras all have winter coats which is a little wrong to me as every account I have read about the 101st Airborne during the Bugle is how under equipped they were for a winter battle. Fortunately I have a load of US Paras from a failed Market Garden project I was going to coolect, so I plan on mixing the bases up a bit have a 50/50 mix of winter clothed and normal clothed infantry.

The list was a lot harder to work out! Every list I wrote seemed to be 35pts over or under with nothing easy to take out or add in to get to 1750pts. But after a complete re think I finally got a lost sorted. I'm happy as I have included all but 2 of the Easy Company Warriors, not only does this give the list a real Easy Company feel but it would also give me alot of points to mess around with if I decided to play a non Easy list when I want to mix things up.

The list:-

HQ
-Spiers (I'm not sure he's worth the points but it's Spiers, he's to cool not to take)
-Lipton - 100pts

Para Rifle Platoon
- Extra Bazooka
- Toccoa Sergeant
- 'Shifty' Powers - 315pts

Para Rilfe Platoon
- Extra Bazooka
- Toccoa Sergeant - 295pts

Para Engineer Platoon
- 3 Bazookas - 275pts

4 M18 Tank Destroyers - 410pts

6 105mm Glider Artillery - 210pts

4 Airborne Recon Jeeps - 110pts

AOP - 40pts

1750pts

So the first month is only 17 days away as I write this. I have bought most of the list already, I'm now mostly waiting on the Winter Paras to turn up but I really can't wait to start this project.

As always thanks for reading and Currahee!

A Tale of Two Winter Gamers : 25th Panzergrenadierkompanie

So the question you may ask is why out of all the axis bulge lists I chose this one? Well firstly the deal was it had to be a bulge list, sounds obvious but other axis lists had been tempting me.

For my allies I can do infantry, recon and armour, so mechanised infantry seemed the gap to tackle, I also thought basing the infantry in snow would be more fun than constant white wash on tanks.

 The next consideration was list flexibility. The nice thing about panzer grens is that you can change a few support choices and do lists from most books in LW, again a bonus, as they could then be fighting in the snow on the Eastern front, or the freak snow in Normandy, the low countries and Italy lol!

 The other thought was of course money! I've some Germans coming from 'open fire' and they seemed a good choice of model to form the core of the army with trucks - but maybe half tracks in other lists.

I'm also keen on panthers as support, so with little money added I'll be able to do a German armoured list.

So with the above in mind I started with my two compulsory choice + HQ I'm going to mount them in trucks too for some added manoeuvrability.
 I also like the idea of them moving up with at least some company support, so I'll also be getting the Heavy Platoon, with HMG's and mortars for added firepower and help pinning/smoke.

The next option are Panthers, I like the idea of these being able to sit and shoot from a distance but also take any incoming heavy fire away from the advancing grenadiers. Due to having 2 armour slots I'll take two sets of 2.

Next some AAA, the obvious choice here is the triple 15mm mainly as they're a compulsory choice in quite a few lists from BGG so should be good giving air cover, and also hit infantry if needed.

Finally I need a little recon to lift GtG, the 8-rads are cheap so I'll take them to help with that.

 So there we have it, 6 platoons, it's small being a CV list, but the infantry have a heck of a lot of anti infantry and anti tank fire on board, add into that the panthers for more anti tank I feel quite hopeful. I would have liked a little artillery, but I think getting everything in a German list is quite difficult, and I think due to the sheer number of options available in this list it may well have more options available later!

And finally as I read up on the 25th Panzergrenadier Division and Nordwind, I noticed that they were originally an infantry division of Swabians and Bavarians. My lovely girlfriend is Swabian, and I frequently head over there, so that made the choice even more fitting.

 Ic and 2IC - kublewagons

 Panzer grenadier 3 sections all PF/MG with trucks 

Panzer grenadier 3 sections all PF/MG with trucks 

 Panzer grenadier Heavy Platoon 2 sections HMG and  1 mortar section with trucks 

2 Panthers 

2 Panthers 

3 KFz triple's 

2 8-rad

A Tale of Two Winter Gamers – Because we know winter is coming!

A Monthly Painting Challenge Starting 1st Nov 2012 

Hello All,

Adam and me have been playing with the idea of a painting challenge for a while now. We are both fans of the old White Dwarf Tale of Four Gamers that ran back in 1997 (I think, it was in the first WD I bought anyway) and so decided to base it on a similar sort of idea. We both really wanted to do the Bulge and with Blood Guts and Glory, Devils Charge and Nuts having just come out it seemed the right choice for us. After a quick talk it was decided that I’m taking on the US as I haven’t done a US since I got back into FOW and Adam would do the Germans as he hasn’t got an axis army, but we’ll both talk more about are choices in later articles.

We are doing a winter board along with the armies as we thought if you are going to do winter armies they need something to fight over! So this has been put into the challenge with the goal of one piece of terrain a month.

So the Agreement-

1)      To complete the set points or unit each month and to complete a Bulge themed terrain piece.

2)      The first month will be a core platoon plus the HQ.

3)      The second month will be the second core platoon.

4)      The target for the third month is to have at least 1000pts painted

5)      From month 4 onwards the target is to complete 250pts (with a little ley way) a month.

6)      For month 5 instead of doing terrain we are going to do themed objective markers.

7)      At the end of 6 Months we should have 1750pts to 2000pts finished, 10 Terrain pieces and 4 themed objectives.

8)      Games with AAR on the blog from month 4 with the aim to have one AAR a month.

9)      From month 7 to 12 will be a little more ad hoc with a goal of 1 platoon a month.

10)  We have a plan of a Battle of the Bugle Firestorm Campaign that I’m working on as we speak which will start once the first 1750pts is finished.

Forfeit –

            If myself or Adam fail to complete the months target then as a forfeit the person who failed must buy a 6 pack of beer for the other person to buy back into the challenge. If both of us fail then we both must buy beer to buy back in and we’ll get very drunk watching rugby or something.

So there you have it, expect to see me and Adam post up details of the armies we’ll be doing and our overall goals in the next week or so.

As always thanks for reading

Ben