Desert Rats in Normandy

Over the weekend I got to head to my second NOVA open. And, much like the first, it was a total blast.

More awesome? I won best painted with my RV Desert Rats Cromwell Army. I got a full new set of Windsor Newton brushes and a nice plaque among other cool prizes.

So, I thought I'd show the army off here.


HQ:

More after the break!

Historicon Top Pics

H-Con is done and I'm still hungover.

But, I put my carcass into drive and cut 1200 pics from the weekend down to the top 30 or so. We've got Steve's last News From the Front podcast, army pics galore and all sorts of other bits.

Come on in and enjoy the pics.

We start with the Tale of the Suicide Chaffee's:

Round 2 of the double tournament, Ben and I face off against KV-88's, IS-2's and a horde of tiny little Russian tanks. Knowing there was know way we could take out the big boys from the front and only sporting 3 Priests for arty support I decided to go insane. Noticing that one of our opponents had to double time the IS-2 platoon command to get up to the rest of the platoon I zoom a platoon of Chaffee's around the flank, assuming that I'd loose the platoon, but knowing his was way more valuable I decided the trade was worth it.  

I kill 1 and bail 2.

Next turn he kills 2 of those plucky little light tanks then I take out another of his IS-2's. 

I take out a 3rd and he does the same. He's down to 1 tank and I'm down to just one and a bailed. His fearless dudes fail their morale check and run off the board. VICTORY! 

More after the break

Last round!

Ok I lost 5-2 in free for all against Romanians.  I didn't really feel like sitting back and drawing the tie like you can easily do.  And me and my partner were both middle of the board so wet agreed on just having some fun. 

I just happened to be on the short end of the fun. :)

I had a great time at the tournament. And blogging for the 5 of you that read this.  I'll be posting a bit more tomorrow and then it's vacation time.

Bruce and the Battlefront crew run a great tourney and kudos to them for hosting an excellent shindig.

Nationals round 1, win!

I picked up a 4-3 win in a pinwheel of death encounter mission. It came down to the very end when a final assault by some Indian pattern carrier recce teams failed an assault and were pushed back just a hair away from my objective.

Phew!

Played against Cassino Gurkas

Round 3, win!

OP  Sherman makes the winning kill against a jadgtiger on turn 6! That was epic. (check the last picture)

Well we did it. We went 3 and 0, last round was fighting withdrawal work is on the attack and captured the 2 outside objectives both on turn 6.

We won 4-3 as Ben  couldn't seem to keep his poor little Stuarts alive vs. a jadgtiger and 4 Pak 50's.

They were running a jadgtiger and 2 sturmtigers and a mix of fearless and reluctant infantry.

Attackers must be aggressive in this scenario so we charged right up and the game went our way.

Best part is we played two really great guys Jessie and the dude who makes all the terrain for the store we love up in Philly. Well and gentlemanly played good sirs.

I don't think 14.9 will put us at the top of the table but it was a fun tourney and I'll let you all know how we did.

Round 2, win!

5-2 versus Rota and extremely heavy Tankovy. In part our dice rolled extremely hot and we got to defend,  but that was one of the worst possible match ups we could have faced.

That was a tense game from start to finish with some epic sweeping movements and clutch saves.

Ben played well and I followed his lead,  to victory!

Suicide chaffees

Who wants to live forever!

Chaffees! And my first go round with pigments.

(EDIT: The original pics I posted were actually from before the binder and varnish dried completely apparently and boy what a difference it makes. Now updated with the "dry" pics)

Historicon is coming up and me and my homie Ben have brewed up an insane doubles list.

As part of it I finally got a chance to paint up some Chaffee's. I really think these tanks are the coolest looking American tanks of the war and I've been looking for an excuse to paint up the big Reccee box of them I bought a while back.

So, I painted up 12 of them. MUAH. I'm only showing off five of them today. Why? Because I've also been looking for a good excuse to play with the Mig Flames of War pigment set. I'm not sure how they turned out as I don't really have a frame of reference.

I think they look pretty darn cool, but I'm hoping to get some more opinions on this as well.

I took the instructions WWPD forumite and fellow blogger SonBae put up on his awesome blog which essentially comes down to: Matte varnish the tanks, apply pigment binder (I used Vallejo Pigment Binder), tap on your pigment to taste, apply another layer of binder and then varnish to lock it all down.

My goal was to go for a platoon of 5 Chafee's that looked like they had been through some serious urban combat ala Metz.

Let me know what you think!

I got a new phone and while the camera is far better than my old one in terms of spec's I'm still figuring out how to get it to take good mini shots. Bear with me as I re-calibrate.

As always, way more after the break.

Giant stupid Hold Until Relieved Fight

This July 4th a few friends and I got together and do a reprise of one of those huge battles, like we did last year with overlord.

This time around we went with 4,000 points or so a side. We Germans are running 21. Panzer Div and Panzer Lehr while the Allies, joining up in this scenario to try to break through German Defenses where Omaha and Gold beaches meet, will be running a 1st ID Assault Company and a British Rifle company.

The Allies took a whopping 36 guns, which I think might be all of the guns, including full on Naval Gun support with rerolling hits and all that goodness. It hurt, it hurt real bad. Read on to check out what happened!

We ran hold until relieved, where they get everything and I get half my stuff in reserves. We had limited time to play so we went fast, but I did get some good snaps. Just like the previous report I decided to go with the action instead of the play by play. So here we go.

German Deployment

British Deployment, SO MANY DUDES

I mean... It's just a lot of guys. I fear

For some reason they decided to put all their reccee in the center (and that is indeed bocage)

 More after the break!

Assault on Sword Beach

Couple of quick bat reps for you today.

First up, an assault on Sword Beach where British Commando's seek to link up with glider and para troops operating around the Orne river area.

I'm running a 1780 point festungskompanie and Ben is running a 1780 beaches commando list.

Much thanks to our local FLGS for helping out with terrain. Sadly, we had no thing to work as a beach so we just went with blue felt. It's a little jerry rigged but it'll do.

This was a 9 turn fight. Long and bloody, instead of going blow by blow I've decided to make it a bit quicker. Focusing on key points of action instead of every roll, every move and every turn.

The Board, we're running a breakthrough mission (in retrospect I think this was a poor choice for a beach landing mission, but whaddya gonna do?)

German's mighty deployment

British step off the boats and onto the beach!

 More after the break!

First In Last Out: Pathfinders Lead the Way!

In darkest night of June 6th, 1944 American and British pathfinders landed at locations across Normandy in order to set up visual and radar beacons to guide in the paratroopers and glider borne soldiers who were soon to follow.

In some places they saw success, but across the region misdrops, equipment failures and other problems were the rule of the night.

As part of our Operation Overlord global campaign kickoff bat rep's Ben and I decided to recreate one of those attempts to set up beacons that would later guide troops into the fight. Ben is, of course, playing the Brit Pathfinders and I'm playing a Garrison of German grenadiers bivouacked in the region.

This is a bit of a special scenario we brewed up. So here's how we broke it down:

~We're each running 3 platoon of infantry. Me: 3 Platoons of C/V MG teams plus 1i and 2i. Ben: 3 Platoons of F/V Paras with 1i, 2i and 2 beacons.

~To replicate the scattered nature of both defender and attacker we rolled randomly for deployment for each half platoon.  First by long table half, then by the two tables quarters on that half of the table and finally by 1 of 4 quadrants in that table quarter. Essentially, on the 5x5 table we were playing on this created 16 possible landing sites.

~All half platoon start pinned. For Germans because they're oblivious and for Brits because they've just landed and are re-organizing.

~Half platoons must either move towards an objective, their nearest command team (Platoon, 1i or 2i) or, in the case of the brits, towards one of the two beacons.

~The entire game would be played using night rules.

~On first contact with an enemy unit it must be identified by a skill check.

~To win the Brits the must pick up each of the beacons and place one on each objective. To tie they must place one objective and they will lose if they fail to place a beacon or the Germans over run both beacons.

The Board

The deployment and fight after the cut!