Army Planning For FlamesCon 2018

FlamesCon is just around the corner, which is to say it is still a few months away but I need to nail down which army I am taking and then finish painting it. I have at least nailed the very first issue which was Flames Of War, or Team Yankee.

Right now, I have two competing options (plus a 3rd wild card) that I am debating

1. Canadians: lots of Leopard 1 tanks, supported by some infantry and anti-tank guided missile vehicles. This army is almost finished and I just need to paint some crews, apply decals, paint machine-guns and do final airbrush dusting and varnish.
2. Czechs (masquerading as East Germans): lots and lots of T-55AM2 tanks, with plenty of in Formation support so they won’t break, and plenty of high altitude support. This army is largely assembled but otherwise not yet started.
3. French: these are my wild card as the army is assembled, but otherwise not started. Given the fact they would be significantly easier to finish than the Czechs I am not sure why they are relegated to wildcard.....

The Canadians:

Simple list, as many Leopard 1 tanks as I can fit in (given the points level), some infantry, recce and plenty of M150 TOW and ADATS. The Leopards can rush the enemy and either flank them or just try to overwhelm them, whilst the missile carriers do much of the heavy lifting as the Leopards 105mm gun is a little underwhelming.

I am keen to finish the army, but I have built it as a 100+ point force so cutting it down to 75 points hurts my soul. 

Click the image for a bigger version

The Czechs (East Germans):

Best way to beat MSU spam is to play it and see how it works? Also, I am thinking of using part of this force next year at Panzerschreck where Casey and I are going to team up again so painting this up kills (or wounds) two birds with one paint brush.

Plus, it is a pile of cool models... and I am being cunning and using my Syrian infantry that I carefully based up on a fairly brown/grassy basing style to be my generic Warsaw Pact infantry teams. So, painting these means I get to progress two projects at the same time. I know the figures are not quite right but they are close enough.

Click the image for a bigger version

The French:

I've been chipping away at this project as a fun, spare time, when I want too project. Other than infantry and AMX-10RCs I have no idea what the force might look like other than having lots of wheels!

Where to from here????

Short answer, no idea! I will be getting the Canadians finished in the coming weeks (stay tuned for photos) now that I have some extra decals to complete them.

The Czechs have been progressing as a relaxing evening hobby project. It is too cold to paint out in the garage but assembling some tanks in front of the fire whilst watching some TV has been nice.

For now, lets assume the Czechs are option 1, whilst the Canadians are a fantastic back-up option when I inevitably run out of time.

Stay tuned.......

More Plastics At FlamesCon!

At FlamesCon this year Battlefront had a little teaser of the some of the plastics that you can expect to see soon, including some serious teasers for next year!

A new frame with both StuG G and StuG G (late) options

Pre-production rapid prototypes of the Cromwell and Comet tanks due out next year

A British infantry frame. Two frames for a full strength platoon with some figures left over for your HQ

Best of all, after a long break I dusted off my EW French and took them out for three games today, winning two games (both 5-2) and loosing one (2-5) I even managed to take out 3rd place on the back of some pretty strong sports votes and a number of the other generals timing out in the last round and bringing home low scoring draws!

The 2nd day of the Late War GT is on tomorrow and with three games to go the top spots are still hotly contested. Meanwhile I'll be bringing out my SSU to join the Dust players in a 1 day tournament.

I'm Back... and I've been busy!

I've been a bit slack (I say that a lot) on the blog front over the past few months. Between work, home, hobby time... and some World of Tanks I have found it difficult to get act together.

Hopefully over the next few weeks I am going to get caught up as I have a pile of photos on my camera and a quickly fading memory of what I have been up to over the past few months. But to help jog my memory here is the short version:

• June - The Tauranga Open Warhammer Tournament with my Orcs and Goblins.
• July - Panzerschreck Flames Of War Doubles Tournament in Palmerston North with Jagdtigers and friends.
• August - no tournament but a lot of painting for a web Dust Battle Report (my intro, part 1, part 2).
• September - Lords of Ruin Warmachine Tournament in Wellington with pMorvahna.
• September - Wayne-Con - the Battlefront Staff Early War Tournament and my French infantry.
• October - FlamesCon (okay so this one has not been yet but I am painting for it...).
• And... we have been playing quite a bit of X-Wing at lunch recently.

First up will be the Tauranga Open and my first Warhammer game in probably five years, but in the meantime here are a few photos from the past couple of months...

Tauranga Open - high tables, no post event sore back!

Stopping at the Army Museum on the way to Panzerschreck

Road tripping in the big van to Palmerston North

Sean Lincoln (Lords Of Ruin organiser) and some seriously cool trophies!

Work in progress Somua tanks for FlamesCon

Post Battlecry Hilarity!

With Battlecry 2012 done and dusted (and me almost caught up on sleep!), I thought I would steal a few photos from King Dan, as well as show off a few photos of my finished army. In terms of my experience I have to say I had a blast! This was my first EW Tournament in about two years (i.e. before the release of Blitzkrieg) where I played zee Germans at a NATCON in "the Hutt". Thanks to Gav for organising, thanks to my opponents for the games (wish I could have been a tougher opponent for a few of you!).

In terms of my overall performance.. it was not as good as I had hoped, but half of that blame lies with me being a little asleep at the wheel, and a little with some poor list choices! I really should have found a way to wedge in the Sapper Platoon, as well as some R-35s so that I had some maneuver elements.

Very excited about filling out the French, but I am also concious that I have many tournaments over the next couple of months and much painting to do!

Games in process photos

Sam's Panzers dismembering me

75mm SP AA about to deploy

 Battlecry 2012 French Legionaire Company

Company HQ

Infantry Platoon

25mm Hotchkiss AT Guns (only 1 platoon was in the Battlecry list)

Self Propelled 75mm AA (Dion de Bouton 75mm)

75mm mle 1897 Battery

75mm Staff Team

75mm mle 1897 gun

155mm C mle 1917 S Heavy Artillery Battery

155mm C mle 1917 S gun

The Defences!

The Rest of the French...

SA-37 47mm AT Gun Platoon

One more sleep to Battlecry!

If you saw my post on the Flames of War site this week, you would have seen that my EW French were looking dangerously close to being finished, but still needing a lot of work. Well thanks to Red Bull and 6am starts the army was finished at 6.30pm tonight with the last two HMG nests flocked and varnished!

To celebrate I took a quick shot at work of the last couple of weeks efforts!

I'll take some better photos next week of the entire army, in the meantime I need to win a few games in the weekend and determine what I will paint next for the army!

Early War French WIP

Thanks to a couple of long weekends I have managed to make some serious progress on my French - of course with Battlecry 2012 only a couple of weeks away the pressure is on. I have completed all my gun crews which cover two batteries of artillery, a platoon of 47mm guns, as well as finishing up my 25mm Hotchkiss crews. 

25mm Hotchkiss AT Gun Platoons

SA-37 47mm AT Gun Platoon

75mm mle 1897 Artillery Battery

155mm C mle 1917 S Heavy Artillery Battery

I still need to complete my De Dion et Bouton SP 75mm AA trucks, as well as my HMG nest (not to mention the guns to go with the crews - as you can see they are still very much unpainted other than a little primer). Hopefully my plan to resolve that issue will take shape over the next couple of days.... More photos later!

On the Road to the EWGT (BattleCry 2012)

With the NZ Early War GT (at Battlecry) only two weeks away I thought this would be as good a time as any to cover my plans for it, and where I am at.

As with all tournaments I started with a hiss and a roar, planning an army to take along... and for once I even managed to make a serious amount of progress getting my French together for a Compagnie de Chasseurs Portes - thats lots of French infantry in super sexy Lorraine 38L carriers "zipping"" around the table. I say zipping because in Flames of War they are Slow.... However with 1 Front Armour and a pair of passenger fired machine-guns they are the business when it comes to delivering infantry to the front lines safely.

Lorraine 38L Carrier

Unfortunately life has been a little more complex than usual in my household with a very pregnant wife - seems to be quite in fashion at the moment round the office!

So I quickly started looking for a new plan, where I got to use the infantry I had already painted and also use as many of the figures I had already put aside for the project. I initially looked at a number of lists out of Blitzkrieg, primarily the motorised infantry but also the more traditional options as well but I could not come up with a list that I really feel in love with.

Luckily for me, in stepped Burning Empires with the Vichy French list. This offered me much of what I was looking for but fell short on the tank front. However with V3 on the horizon and French tanks about to get a huge lift (after Battlecry) I thought why play the tanks using V2 rules, when they will be much more fun later in the year. After a bit of too-ing and fro-ing (and a lucky bit of Wiki-foo) I decided on a French Foreign Legion company. How can I be playing Legion you ask... when all my guys are painted for Europe?!?!?! Well, that's where the Wiki-foo came in! 

Enter the 97th Group Reconnaissance Infantry Division. Cutting a long story short, the 97th GRDI was a French Foreign Legion force formed in France, using men from the 4th Cavalry Depot in Tunisia and the 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment. They used a mixture of horses, trucks and motorcycles to get around - now I will be representing them on foot for Battlecry but maybe if I can convince Mike or Phil to do a little more work they would whip me up a specialist list some day... They were unfortunately over run by the German armour and suffered terrible casualties, but fought like an elite force, grinding the attacking Germans down.

For more info on the history of the unit check out these two links:

Wikipedia Link - translated from French as the English version does not contain anywhere near as much information.

ATF40 Link

So, how am I choosing to represent them on the tabletop?

Legion Troops

Compagnie de Tiralleurs HQ

Tirailleurs Platoon

Tirailleurs Platoon

Anti-Tank Gun Platoon (with 3 25mm Hotchkiss guns)

75mm Artillery Battery (with 4 guns)

Divisional Support

Heavy Artillery Battery (with 4 155mm guns)

Self-propelled 75mm Anti-Aircraft Platoon (with four De Dion et Bouton 75mm AA trucks)

Machine-gun Nest

with Minefield

with two Barbed Wire Entanglements

De Dion et Bouton 75mm AA truck

My theory is that I have tried to stick to common Legion troops as much as possible. The Heavy Artillery comes from the 7th DINA (which the 97th was part of). The MG Nest and fortifications are a little harder to justify - primarily they are in there as they do not require much to paint and tack up over 100 points!

The De Dion et Bouton trucks.... well they are just super sexy! I also needed a maneuver element and whilst they are not that resilient they give me some good mobile punch.... did I also mention that they are super sexy looking!

Tomorrow I'll have another round of WIP pictures of the army - its coming along nicely however I need to hope that my cunning plan to airbrush the 3 colour camo works, otherwise I have a lot of brush work to do this week and I really only have lunch times and a few hours next weekend to dedicate to it... so as Tim Gunn would say "Make it work!

Early War French Infantry Company

With the break over Christmas I have not managed to finish quite as many things as I was hoping, however I did get the first 20 stands of my Early War French Infantry finished, with another 6 just needing the AT guns painted and they will join the ranks! Of course I still need to paint up a pair of artillery batteries (although only 1 is needed for Battlecry 2012) and another platoon of AT guns.... and a massive pile of vehicles. Buts lets celebrate knocking off one milestone, at least now if I don't get the Lorraine 38L Carriers done (the infantry armoured personal carriers) I can at least use the force as an infantry company and not feel like I have wasted any painting time!

Company HQ and 2iC

First Platoon

Second Platoon