Band of Brothers

I painted a small test-figure for my WW2 US Paratroopers. It's based on the M1942 uniform during the time of the Normandy landings. Chain of Command will be the rules to play and all figures will be from Artizan Designs.

Although they didn't fight the Panzer Lehr, they are waiting in my cabinet to have a go at them :)

Hope you like them!

Reboot and some new things

Let's reboot this sucker..., not much to say tbh. To summarize some random things;

• Painting in the last months (years) was on and off but my drive is coming back.
• The more you play, the more you paint.
• Stopped playing Flames of War.
• Started playing Battlegroup (great rules btw!).
• Wife got fired from her job after a long serious illness.
• Started playing modern (still looking for the best rules).
• Started on my WW2 US Paratroopers.
• Dead Man's Hand is a pretty funny game.
• I painted a Dropzone Commander army and i've never played it.
• Kickstarter is evil, very evil!
• Got my own 14m² gaming room with a 2.4m x 1.2m table.

Now let's talk some "Modern Wargaming".

We're still looking for some decent rules that include Squad mechanics and decent Armoured Support. Played Oscar Sierra Charlie which is nice but only the Skirmish part is available atm. We also played the FUBAR one-page rules for a couple of times and where it shines in speed and the amount of blood on the table it also lacks in depth and is in desperate need of rules clarification. Not everything can be solved with the throwing of a D6. Spectre Miniatures had, until recently, some beta rules to download which played also very fast and had some great ideas but after some playtesting it became obvious that point values were out of wack and some special rules, and even normal ones, were a little head-scratching (enormous amounts of suppresion anyone?). I heard there will be a full release soon. I recently bought Black Ops from Osprey Publishing, haven't tested them yet but according to some mates is also a skirmish game, with lots of stealth. Soon to find out...

Oh yeah, painted my 28mm Empress British mini's recently, great sculpts! Don't mind the camo uniforms, i took some artisitic freedom to paint these. 8 more in the queue but first some US Paratroopers to fight my Germans.

Enjoy!

Fire in the Sky!

Platoon of Panzerwerfers finished :-)

I'm also working on my British Desert army. For the moment i'm painting about 3 hours a day average and not getting tired of it. I'm not speedpainting, just enjoying the evenings behind the pencil.

keine schlacht ohne Panther...

Just in time to squeeze another post in for February...

I like Panthers, as a matter of fact, i LOVE Panthers.

They're very pricey, they are arty & ambush magnet, they die first (at least in my games, damn M10s) but they are so good looking! I don't care if they take up alot of points, i don't care it's just too little for 'too much', it's just too damn cool to play with Panthers.

Panzer Lehr - Panzer IVs

I'm continuing to work on this wonderful division. I'm getting more and more intrigued by it. I'm at the point of buying all three books about it's commander Bayerlein.

The Panthers are 95% finished, only need some weathering and netting.

This is a Panzer IV platoon, the numbering is not quite correct as there was no 3.company fitted with Panzer IVs, but there are pictures of a Lehr Panzer IV with the numbers '333' so its all a bit strange. I numbered them before i found any good reference on the order of battle so it's too late anyway. Tbh, this is there 3rd paint job after stripping them 2 times with Aceton...

I got some help in photographing these tanks :-)

My son, he did well...

Modular Gaming Board

Hi all,

Just posting some pics of my modular gaming board i recently made. Currently painting my Lehr Panzer IVs, they're almost finished, only need the numbering and some weathering and then it's on to the Panthers or either the Panzerwerfers.

The gaming board is designed so all the pieces can be rearranged according to my needs, there's gonna be 3 more pieces so i can make 2 gaming tables for our monthly 'Battle Days' as we like to call it (Battle Days is our monthly get together where we play wargames all day, there's about 8 of us and it's big fun!). 1 piece will have a river running through it, another will have a western European Village and another one will be ... i don't know yet, suggestions are welcome :-)

Each piece measures 120x60cm and is made with 'being cheap' in mind. A how-to can be found here.

To be honest; i've stolen all of my ideas from BigGav.

For the European town i'm gonna go with houses from a Portugese blog called 'Orange Scenics'. I've found a solution for my cobblestone roads and for my church. It's gonna be awesome!

Oh yeah, almost forgot, i played my first EW desert battle last weekend, it was great... i have some more expansions in the pipeline for my British Desert Army. And before i forget... i kicked some Italian ass!

Going strong!

Finished up my Lehr AA platoon. Did have some problems with basing but everything turned out okay i think...

Total Battle Miniatures

Making good progress on my 7/2 Half-tracks. Almost finished now. I decided to put them all 3 on a seperate large base, dunno why, i saw it somewhere and it looked nice. Ordered some Panzer Lehr decals from Dom's Decals. Best decals ever...

Like i wrote in a previous post, i ordered some Total Battle Miniatures houses a while ago. 6-7 houses including the big Orthodox chruch. That thing is huge!

Massive Orthodox Church

That one is already painted up and flocked to go with my tables. The rest is waiting in a black basecoat. If you order some after seeing these pictures, make sure you wash that in warm soupy water or you'll be smearing paint all over the place and nothing sticks :-)

Church painted up. Don't mind the Wehrmacht stuff in the background... ;-)

In the picture above you'll notice the green board beneath the church, consider it a teaser for the upcoming posts. It's one part of my gaming board.

All i need on that Russian church is some AK Interactive Green Slime to mimic wood-rot (or how the hell do you write it).

They look darker now...

Getting ready to play a 2000pts battle tomorrow. there's alot of discussion on the official FoW-forums about the Russians not being powerful enough. We'll i'm about to find out. I'll be playing a Heavy Tankovy against, of course, a Panzer Division with everything going from Panther's to Stug's to a Tiger II.

Curious how that one is going to turn out :-/

A new year... a restart

Hi all, i took a while but i'm slowly getting up to speed again. I finished alot of stuff in the last months but I didn't had the time, patience, mood, (fill in), etc... to put in on the blog. I have to apologize for this to those who care(d).

Played alot of FoW, still not finished painting 28mm ACW but this year i should put the finishing touches on my two brigades, bought the Dropzone Commander rulebook, haven't looked at it tbh :-( Dystopian Wars came to a standstill, not good but don't really care :-) I received a 15mm Republican Roman Army which is on the painting que (read somewhere 2014). My SS-Panzergrenadiers are finished which is a good thing.

Currently reading Tigers in the Mud from Otto Carius and The Forgotten Soldier by Sajer. Both are very good reads, heard alot of bad things about the latter about not being 100% historically accurate but i don't care, it's a good book nevertheless.

I have a few projects to share with you, couple weeks ago i build myself a 180x120 modular gaming board which is quite nice to see. I have a couple more extensions in the pipeline for it. I bought alot of Total Battle Miniatures eastern front houses (including the uber-church), which are also very nice btw.

Painting is going at a steady pace atm, currently painting up my 1750pts Panzer Lehr for the new updated Normandy books due out in June 2013. Next will be an addition to my Mid-war Panzer Grey Germans so i can use them Early War too (read Panzer IIIs and Mortars).

I'm also in the process of buying a complete French Town from a Portuguese guy. Already bought 1 house for it. It looks very, very nice!

That's all...

Panzeraufklärungs-Lehr-Abteilung 130, Normandy '44

After a long break... a Konigstiger

I don't know what happened, i just got tired of painting. The house needed alot of work and the garden needed (and still does) alot of work, my son needs alot of work, i just didn't have the energy to start something, let alone finish something. Until this week...

I finished the second of 4 King Tigers. This one in a more Normandy 44 kinda-camo and you know what? I used Vallejo Middlestone for dunkelgelb on this one and it never looked better. Those 6 Panzer IV's will be sprayed in the same manner. Pictures below...

Second, I also finished my first Eight Army infantry platoon, still need to base them. Shouldn't be to hard to do, it's "just" sand :-)

And third, i finished my SS Heavy Platoon. So my SS-army is 99% complete. Pictures of those will be posted later. I'm getting good feedback from my gaming buddies, i sense a little jealousy there :-)

On with the pictures! Panzer March!

Argh! It's him again! and he brought his baby-brother!!