Showdown & Showcase Comics Battlefront Team Tourney AAR

Hello Philly!

This weekend Ben, Mitch, Jim and I headed on up to the fabulous Showcase Comics in Philadelphia for a hot helping of Flames of War, team style.

A few months back Battlefront posted up on the Flames website that they'd be hosting a team tournament. Mitch invited Ben and I to join him and Jim for an epic multi-day throw down. And boy howdy did we have a blast!

Here's the set up: 6 teams competed over 5 rounds of 1750 late war games, 1 fair fight, 2 mobile battles and 2 defensive battles. The team with the best score wins eternal glory, and a neat plaque. Each team could only be made up of 1 army per nationality (commonwealth Brits were different than "mainline" and all the small countries were available as well) and you could only double up on one list type (mech, tank, inf etc...).

After some tough negotiations our team decided to run the following:

Me: Panzergrenadier Lehr (Earth & Steel)
       HQ with 2x Panzerschrek
       2x Full Panzergrenadier Lehr Platoons
       Panzerpio Lehr with 5 tracks and 2 stuka zu fuss tracks
       Full Lehr Heavy Mortar Platoon
       3x PaK 40's
       6x Puma's
       3x Nebelwerfers
Ben: 51st Highlanders (from the PDF)
       2x Cmd Rifle
       2x Full 51st rifle platoon
       Full 3" mortar
       2x 4 team 6 lbr platoons
       3x Churchill Crocodiles (of righteous fire +5)
       Recce 3x Diamler 2x Humber
       8x QQF 25 Lbr. Arty
       4x BL 5.5 Arty
       AOP
Jim: Tankovy (Red Bear)
       HQ T-34 '42
       10x T-34 '42
       5x T-34 '42
       3x ISU-122 w/escorts & Rat
       4x SU-85M
       6x Hvy Mortars
       4x Katyusha's
Mitch: Canadian Armored Rifles (Market Garden)
       HQ Rifle Team
       2x Rifle Platoons w/Kangaroos with .50 cals
       3x Uni Carriers 2x .50 1x Piat
       3x 6 lbr
       Landmattress battery
       2x Sherman V 2x Firefly w/.50's
       2x Sherman V 1x Firefly w/.50
       Heavy Mortar Platoon

I'll talk through the tourney and show you a ton of pics if you click on that link!

Quick Update.

Hey team, been busy doing that whole tournament thing the last couple of weeks and will be doing more this weekend. As now, I'm off to Philly for the 4 man Battlefront Hosted 6 round team tournament of doom! Hosted at the awesome Showcase Comics.

If you're in the neigborhood and want to stop by to check out the madness well, you should!

And to all my competitors, I leave you with this:

I promise I'll try to take pics I PROMISE.

Market Garden Madness!

Yesterday my friends at Eagle & Empire (now with facebook page!) in Alexandria, VA hosted a massive Operation Market Garden refight.

Sadly, I didn't get to play due to some other obligations. But I did get to drop by and take a peak, and some photos, of the action

It looked like everyone was having a blast, and got to put tons of toys on the table. Including an incredible 14 .88's!

That's huge. Some one is going to catch those full in the face! 

Here, have some pics!

It all started one sunny afternoon...

WAAAAY more after the break

Infinity. Yes, Infinity

Cause... It's Infinite I guess?

Third one down! So, one of my gamer homies has been preaching the gospel of Infinity as the bestest most awesomest skirmish game that ever happened to a table top. Now, I'll admit, my first experience with the game was less than optimal. In fact, it was so bad I thought I'd never come back to it.

However, the models are sweet and you only need 10 to 15 of them and the rules are free. So I said what the hell and had him run me through a second learn to play. This time around I liked it. I liked it at least enough to pick up some models to round out the ones I bought originally and start putting paint to lead.

That, by the way, is a monkfish.

Now, if you don't know anything about Infinity it's set about 175 years in the future, we've found wormholes and many countries have come together to form just a few human factions. America, I think because this game was written by Europeans  sucks and plays very little of a role so far (like 5 models for one of the factions). I kind of think of it like Shadowrun the miniatures game in space with your crew going up against the other guys crew, and then the aliens attack. Stupid aliens. So now you've got the human factions fighting each other and the aliens.

I won't go in depth in to the rules today (cause I'm tired and it totally deserves an article of it's own) but for a quick break down: The thing that makes this game unique is that even on the acting players turn the other player gets a chance to react to moves. Like if one of my guys saunters around the corner, your dude gets a chance to take a pot shot at him. The other thing that's a bit different is that, instead of activating each unit once, you get a pool of orders equal to the number of units you have and you can (pretty much) distribute them how you like. Thus, one dude could end up acting 5 or more times in a turn if you so choose.

The faction I'm starting with is Haqqislam. A humanist, focused greater islamic state that acts in some ways like the bio-technological backbone and mercantile powerhouse of the human space territories. They've got some sweet models (most of the factions have amazing models actually, except for nomads, I just don't get them at all) and the great thing about the game is that you can pretty much choose the models you like and build an effective army out of them. The mantra on the Infinity message boards is "It's not your list, it's you" an attitude I admire.

Now, I've only knocked out 2 models so far. But because of the level of detail on these guys it feels like an achievement. So here they are!

An Odalesque, essentially beautiful bodyguards wearing special makeup that makes them hard to hit in close combat... The Future is weird... But it kind of turns me on.

More after the break!

SAAAAGAAAA

Number 2 post on the night! Recently I got the Saga bug, even more recently WWPD held a most excellent fundraiser for veterans. I was offered a dollar for every Saga fig I painted in a week. I got through 16.

WOOF! That, for me, is a serious speed painting success! And it also knocked out 3 of the 7 points of dudes I have for my Anglo-Dane/Saxon army.

First up will be the warriors which are armored Saxon Theigns by Wargames Factory from the Hammer of the Gods line. The good thing about these mini's is that they're cheapo! It's like 36 mini's for 20 bucks. The bad thing about these mini's is that they don't come with bases, the swords break quite easily and the shields don't look like the ones from the gripping beast lines. The good thing is, it's Saga, so it doesn't really matter, my dudes with axes will attack your dudes with axes and much fun will be had by all.

The second set of images, with the long (Danish) Axes are my Hearthguard. These are the big beefy dudes in your army. You buy them in sets of 4 and get twice as many attacks per model as the warriors. The 8 warriors I chose to paint are 5 from the Anglo-Dane starter set plus Harold Godwinson (Of 1066 fame) and his two brothers. Gripping beast makes some great mini's and I had fun painting the shield designs on these guys. However, I will be using decals for the 36 levies (weak line troops) I'll be painting up. I like painting shields, just not that much. Natch.

Now, on to the pics!


Harold Godwinson, King of the Anglo-Saxons

More after the Break!

French. Finished.

Can you guess where I am?

I'm on the road! So I thought I'd post a quick trifecta of blogs this evening covering some of the work I've done over the last month or so.

First up, my early war French. With which I got 5th place a recent tournament, not bad if I do say so my self. The only dude who beat me was the illustrious Scott from Itty Bitty Soldiers and WWPD fame. I'll get you next time.

As my internet is crap in the hotel room and it'll take some time to up load these I'm going to keep it short and sweet. I'll just say the Panhards and Somuas were a joy to paint. Infantry is always a bear though. But, i think everything turned out quite nicely.

A note on the pics, it appears I had a crappy color correction going on so it's a bit blue shifted. I'm going to try to get some cleaner pics when I get some gumption but I think these will work for now :)

Constructive Criticism always welcome. Now, on to the pics!

More after the break!

GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! French Arty in Early War

Boom.

French Arty for tourney next weekend?

Check.

These fine 155mm howitzers were a key part of the defense of France (snicker).

All pieces and parts here are BF and are for the most part quality. The single trail on the cannons makes them a much easier build than the dual trail versions.

Although I retain my hatred of most faces sculpted for this line. I mean... Is it something with the mold that makes most of the faces look like formless blobs of hate? I know you can do this! The command figure wearing the shako has a great grumpy look on his face! Why can't you replicate similar human looking features on other models?

Two modeling painting notes. First, I've continued the tree theme on the staff team and the observer but I just couldn't conscience putting trees on the arty stands, it didn't really make sense. Second, the shako worn by artillery officers was dark blue with gold braiding (thank you Osprey books) so I did my best to replicate that here.

Off to the pics!

The Battery.

More after the break!

Baguette Bearing Bastards, EW French Infantry

Tamiya images, always great for inspiration. 

Hey ya Soldats. In pursuit of painting up a full EW French army by ohhh... next weekend I finally decided to tackle the infantry platoon.

It's been a little while since I knocked out a platoon of infantry so it was slow going to start. And the French EW infantry are of mixed quality, so it was a bit of bear.

But I also totally love a well based infantry platoon. It really does add something to the table when you play. For this group I decided to go a bit bigger than I did with the Germans. These dudes are hanging out in a forest. Or, at least, a copse of small trees.

BF had some issues with models, some of the faces are just awful (a recurring theme I'm noticing in the EW stuff) and the legs on some of the models are flat, oddly shaped and pock marked, blerg. But I will always take the chunky style BF dudes over the smaller, more properly proportioned PSC ones because I think they pop better on the table and there's more "space" for me to work with on each dude.

This is also the first infantry platoon that I painted that lacked either camouflage or winter bits. So on that level it was both interesting and a little boring. Probably why I put more effort into highlighting them and putting together the bases.

Well, that was all the exposition I had :) Enjoy the pics:

Awww yeah trees.

Way more after the break!

Laffly's and Panhards (French Early War Painting)

The worlds first Technical? Brilliance.

Laffly's are sweet.

I mean, it's an armored truck with a giant gun on the back. Not like Bunkerflak big or anything, but still this little guy got more than his fair share of tank kills during the invasion of France and the low countries so it simply had to go into my army.

Also, it's a great piece of kit on your gaming board as well. It's speedy (but wheeled, so be careful), has a solid gun and an MG for when you need to focus on those squishy infantry dudes. In combination with Panhards, for lifting gone to ground or putting additional pressure on those lightly armored targets, this guy really sings.

Today I bring you a unit of 5 of these guys, along with 4 Panhards I just painted up as well. They end up looking like this:

And this:

For more glorious full color images (and some more historical ones of the Laffly's) get past the break!

Bat Rep! Kradschutzen v. Panhorde (Our first early war game)

My homie Ben "Loon" and I are hard at work on putting together our early war armies. As you've seen from the blog I'm doing French, and he'll be joining with a German list.

Yesterday, we decided to put the paint brushes down and get in a game.  Our first in the Early War era (well, I played a few at NOVA last year but not with an army I'd want to play :) There had been much smack talk around the hacienda recently so we decided to put our money where our mouths are.

Ben is bringing his motorcycle gang (Aufklarungschwadron to you historically minded folks) while I'm throwing down the always loveable Panhards in a 1625 point hold the line scenario with the Germans on the attack.

First off, the lists!

Weighing in at 1625 points with 8 platoons, including the fearsome Bunkerflak, Loon brings the Nazi's on motorbikes.

And in the very very French corner weighing in at 1620 points with 8 platoons are the gentlemen in their armored jalopys!

Now, on to the game! (After the break)