Flames of War an update.

Been a while since my last Blog, I have been quite busy with one thing or another, we managed to get a nice week away in Scotland in the second week of Sept and we are now in the middle of building work as we have an extension being built on the rear of the house. Lord above I will be glad when its finished, the mess is driving me nuts!

Enough of real life, back to the models, last Blog I had just about completed all the Germans models I had left, and so I turned my attention to the pile of untouched US models, however the models built and painted for my US forces were for the Iron Cross Painting Competition held at the Official European Flames of war grand Tournament held over the weekend of 3rd and 4th Sept. I thought that I would give the first painting comp a go, I did not expect to get anywhere and so I did not have my hopes dashed when I failed to win any of the five categories I entered, although I did not disgrace myself, so will settle for that. I will get back to them once all the German models are out of the way.

Freshly painted is another platoon of Pak 36's and a 10.5 cm heavy mortar platoon for my Falschirmjager force, a platoon of 15cm NW41 Nebelwerfers, along with three heavy weapon upgrades for Grenadier HQ and two more StuGs.

Sat glued to their bases with the filler drying is Von Der Heydte and his tank hunter teams for the Falschirmjager force, and a Grenadier assault platoon.

When those are finished, I can then turn my attention to the pile of early war German tanks, for either a Light Panzer Company or Medium Panzer Company. Although they looks to be a lot sat there in blisters, I can rattle through them very quickly so they should not take me too long to build and paint.

With the early war Panzers completed that really will be the end of the Germans, as I will have filled two entire FoW kit bags, but can now do early, mid and late war for the Germans.....

Then is back to the US models, watch out for further updates and maybe a few pictures too!!

An interesting couple of weeks!

When I say interesting I do not mean it in a positive way, well not all of it anyway!

It all started back during the third week of July with what I though was just a summer cold, nah it was proper 'man flu', the reason I know it was a bad virus was when the wife caught it, the previous week it was a case of get over yourself its only a cold despite my vigorous pleadings that it was more than that. Christine soon altered her opinion when she started with the symptoms, and after spending the better part of the weekend in bed stated that her 'illness' was worse then mine, well she is a nurse so she should know!

The really annoying part of this was that Chris had booked that week off work, typical, we do have a holiday planned, but that is not until the new year, but thought we could go out with the dogs for some nice trips out, well all of that went out of the window. Chris had berated me the week before as I had a GCN council meeting planned at GW HQ on the Tuesday, which just happened to be my birthday as well, however as it turned out my being out all day just meant that she got to sleep more with out my disturbing her.

One week on the flu was going, thankfully, only to be replaced with a chesty cough which I have now just about recovered from.

The hobby took a real hit that week and fared little better following week as well, it was a good job I cleared so much scenery in the preceding months. On the Monday I started work on the 15mm scale resin buildings I had purchased recently for the western European village/town, and then ground to a complete stop.

I had to go to a funeral for my cousins husband on the Tuesday, this is never good even when you are expecting the worse to happen. Granted I got cracking on the buildings again on the Wednesday, then I had to attend the 'speed awareness' course for the speeding ticket I picked up going to Comic Con Wales in early June, 4 1/2 hours and £92 later, or rather all Thursday gone out of the window as it turned out. The car had to taken into the dealership Friday morning as we had a recall notice as something on one of the chips need to be updated for some reason. Although I did get to spend Friday afternoon working on my buildings.

This week has proved a bit more of a productive week thankfully, I finished all of my current 15mm buildings, a row of four shops, a row of four houses, a large Cafe, a large shop with entryway and an out house for good measure. I also decided to construct some custom road sections, using vac formed plasti card that represents paving, which is glued to some thick card stock, these road sections will look better with the buildings than my other road sections which lean towards the 'rural'. I also worked on some club scenery while I was doing my own, we now have a nice selection of 15mm terrain being as we have attracted a few new Flames of war players recently, but wanted to fill it out a bit more and as Wargames Emporium owed the club some scenery, we now have a couple of boxes of the Battlefield in a Box Rural Roads and Vineyard sets all ready for use.

I am at Maelstrom Games again on Sunday for one of our COGS all day game day's, and might look at picking up a couple more buildings from the 'Total Battle Miniatures' range, I only need the odd building or two now as I have a few already.

My 15mm scenery collection is growing apace, and I now have more than enough to fill at least two 6 x4 foot boards, at a push I could probably do three!

Onwards and upwards, as I have platoon of 120mm heavy mortars to paint, and my three entries for the Iron Cross painting competition at the Flames of War GT in a couple of weekends time need loads of work on them....

Nearly finished the german FoW army, no not quite!

Well there I was thinking that I had about finished the German side of things for Flames of War.

I got pretty close it has to be said, but I had to purchase that one extra blister didn't I. Well to be honest it was three blisters I actually purchased, a section of PaK38 anti tank guns, a section of Pak 36 anti tank guns and a section of Fallschirmjager PaK 36 anti tank guns, which were all assembled and painted in quite a quick time frame it has to be said.

I had made a bit of a start on the six infantry bases I am using from the Infantry Aces blister pack, but real life kept getting in the way, then a bout of flu, which was diaganosed as 'man flu' by the wife until she caught it, then is was proper flu, typical.

The illness may have slowed down the painting, but it did not stop me from going on-line to buy more stuff, so I now have a blister of Fallschirmjager heavy mortars to get cracking on, not too bad a build job and as the boxes are getting very nearly full to bursting, I am definitely slowing down with the Germans, although I have now worked out what I need to purchase to have an early war force. The list of early war tanks is not that long and so I am going to build a Light/Medium tank company which I will be able to use for mid war as well, and with those tanks purchased, all space in both my German carry cases will be used, so a good place to stop.

Stop with the German that is, I have also bought a few more bits and pieces recently for the US army, although the blisters I have bought this last week are for building to enter the 'Iron Cross' painting competition at the Official Flames of War European Grand Tournament in Nottingham on the 3rd and 4th September, where I will be all weekend long as I am helping out at the event.

I feel the urge to enter some models at this competition, to be honest I think this will be my one and only shot at this doing something like this in this scale as the old eyesight is not what it used to be.

I will write up a blog of what I intend to build and enter in a couple of weeks when I have finally decided, I have a few idea's I am just not 100% on them yet.

The final push...

Now that the last of the current batch of scenery is finished for the Battlefront Miniatures Official Flames of War GT, and ready to be taken back to head office in Nottingham later this week, its time for a final push to get the brushes going and get the last of my German models painted and packed away. Or at least get them all finished before I have the chance to buy anything more!

I have been so busy doing the scenery for Battlefront this last week, and with all the other work and meetings for the GCN over the last couple of weeks, it has really eaten into my time, so my own model work ground to a full stop, granted I did 'refresh' the straight out of the box paint jobs for the new 'Battlefield in a Box' sets, the Monastery and Vine Yards last week but that was the sum total.

I plan to have a session or two this week which will see all the part painted FoW models completely finished, although there are now two new additions, 'groan', not more models bought, afraid so, but only two blisters this time, a Bergpanther recovery vehicle and a Russian T34/85, nope I am not starting a new Russian army, this is a one off model for use in one of the Panzergrenadier lists for a 'looted panzer platoon', cool doing only the one tank is easy.

Although when I get the rest of the scenery finished for Battlefront, assuming that I am given some more that is, and when the last of my German models are packed away I need to get cracking and get back on track with some other work that I have either to finish or to start.

There is the Airfix Saturn 5, which has been sat assembled, sprayed gloss white and awaiting all the detail painting since last February, that model is ready for the masking to be applied for all the metallic and black area's to be spray painted, the old Aztec airbrush will need agood clean as its not been used in over a year now.

Following on from that, I have a few 1/6th scale vinyl kits, these are 12 inch tall figures from various films, Klaatu and Gort from the old 1950s movie, The Day the earth Stood Still, a Darth Vader from Star Wars, an old vinyl kit, (in actual fact two of them), of Captain America, this kit has peaked my interest again because of the new Captain America First Avenger movie, and 'cap' has always been one of my favourite comic books characters. There are a couple of other Marvel and DC figures to build and paint that are to be for display in a local comic/model/collector shop here in Chesterfield. Plus several other injection plastic kits that I need to build of various craft from Gerry Anderson series, Thunderbird's 1 and 4 at the top of the list, among many others.

This is of course not counting any of my other war games models that need attention, its going to be a busy time between now and the Christmas holiday.

As I said its time for a final push to get some of that lot finished......

Flames of War and more....

Well I am very nearly out of German Flames of War models to paint, granted I do have several models yet to finish, a couple of SDkfz 250 half tracks, two Wespe's and a half dozen Opel Blitz trucks, all of these are more than half done, plus the six small bases of infantry from the new Infantry Aces blister, and my latest and quite possibly last purchase for a while on the FoW front a Bergpanther recovery vehicle.

Unfortunately I have been a rather busy over the last couple of weeks with other things that needed priority on my attention and time. I had a load of scenery to complete for Battlefront Miniatures, thirty feet of various river sections, with another thirty feet sat in boxes in my workshop awaiting attention, in addition to that little lot I cut up a 6 foot by 4 foot door mat which makes excellent 'wheat fields' for 15mm scale, unfortunately for me I picked the hottest day of the year to carve that mat up, so I was drenched in sweat by the time I was finished, however there was a large box of fields all boxed up and ready to go back to Battlefront.

My time over the last two weeks was not going to be my own either as I also had several articles to write up for both Wargames Illustrated and White Dwarf magazines, its surprising where all the time goes when you start doing jobs like that. Although last Friday I did mange to get a bit of painting done for myself first thing. I had to take my youngest daughter Kirsty for a medical assessment at lunchtime on the far side of Sheffield following a car accident she was involved in a couple of months ago, which meant that I was not able to get much time in the workshop.

However the time I had available in the morning meant that I could do a little bit of work on the two new 15mm scenery pieces I picked up from Battlefront on Thursday, a ruined Monastary and Vineyard set from the new Cassino ranges. They are very nice straight out of the box for the price, they are only priced at £15.00 per set which is great value for money, but I wanted to add another level of detail and weathering to them, so they were duly drybrushed and painted slightly differently to the boxed versions, however I am quite happy with the finished result and they now 'tie in' much more with my other small (but growing) collection of 15mm Western European buildings and ruins.

This week will see another thirty feet of river sections completed and the 8 foot by 4 foot roll of door mat currently sat in the workshop, cut up into 'wheat fields', hopefully it will not be quite so hot when I start to carve that roll up. Variations on a theme will be the order of the day for this roll of mat, with burned and scorched sections of fields rather than just plain fields.

Mind you, its not just been scenery and assembling of FoW models I have looked at this last couple of weeks. I managed to get a game of Warmachine in at COGS two weeks ago, one of my club mates has a tourament coming up at Maelstrom Games and wanted a practice game, so out came my Menoth army. I have concluded that I am not totally satisfied with some aspects of my Protectorate army, and so I am looking to sell some of them, I do not want to get rid of everything, but I want to hit the 're set' button and start again, get rid of models I never use, (there are quite a few), and maybe get some infantry type units that I have not looked at so far, I am not completely 100% decided which way to jump and will 'wing it' as I go along.

I also managed to dust off my collection of Circle Orboros models though, These have been assembled and primed for about three years or more, but I never got around to actually painting any of them. I plan to revisit this Hordes force and add to it in the near future, as I love some of the Warp Wolf models and hopefully get some games in too.

This coming Saturday (9th July), sees me at the Mantic Games open day in Bulwell near Nottingham and I shall be at the Festival of History in Kelmarsh North Northamptomshire on Sunday 17th July in the war games marquee, manning the GCN stand.

Nearly finished the german FoW army, yeah right, pt2.

I really really have very nearly finished the FoW German army, honestly.

The five early war Panzer 4s and the five mid war Panzer 4s from the Plastic Soldier Company are fully assembled, primed and as of today fully undercoated with early/mid war German Grey, and ready for detail painting and weathering, hopefully these tanks will be finished by this weekend.

However while putting together a mid war army list for a game last week I realised that I was short a few models to complete platoons, and for transport.

I required a radio truck and two SDKFZ 250 half tracks for the Wespe motorized field artillery platoon, and I also needed two more Wespe's to make up two full sections.

I was also short six 3 ton Opel Blitz trucks for my other two motorized grenadier platoons, and as we are talking about doing a campaign using the new infantry aces campaign rules in the new Casino source book I also wanted a blister of the Infantry Aces figures.

So armed with my list I obtained the required blisters from Battlefront Miniatures on Wednesday when I returned the last batch of forty hills that I had refurbished for Battlefront ready for their Official European FoW GT in September.

So I have a small pile of vehicles to assemble and paint, but that is it, done and dusted.

The above should just about completely fill both my bags for the German army, and all I now need to buy is one box of Henschel HS 129B ground attack aircraft.

When this little lot is done I look at can getting to work on the US army I am building, the 2nd Armoured Division, 'Hell on Wheels' and the 82nd Airborne Division, unfortunately the list of models I need for my US army is getting longer and longer, ain't it always the case......

Nearly finished the german FoW army, yeah right...

So with the eight Panzerwerfer 42s safely tucked away in the carry case, all I had left to finish painting my German army was the additional crew bases for the rocket launchers, and one large base with tank ace Mikael Wittmann, another tank crew member and a Schwimmwagon and I was done, well apart from the flight of aircraft I still require, (need to buy those first though), and the ten Panzer 4s from the Plastic Soldier Company I picked up at Triples I was done.

In fact I was so convinced that I was about finished I started to buy some 15mm scenery, I picked up a small selection of ruins and ruined buildings from Triples last weekend. Being as I needed to do some work at home I did not go down to the workshop on Monday, so I started painting the buildings, by tea time Monday, I had two of the buildings finished and packed away and the third, a large western European garage/warehouse type of thing was ready for drybrushing and detailing/washing, and I got all the work done that I need to do, heh you cannot beat time management!

Tuesday/Wednesday evening saw the dry brushing done on the large warehouse building and most of the figures for the additional crew. By Saturday I had everything completed but the Mikael Wittmann figures and vehicle, looking good.

Then of course I went to Partizan on Sunday to run a Flames of War demo, I went with a small shopping list of scenery and paint that I wanted to get, I managed to get what I wanted and a bit besides. I came home clutching about 5 feet of fully painted river sections, six feet of unpainted road sections, (I did not like the very dark colour of the pre painted road so I decided to do it myself), and two further 15mm western European buildings. I am now getting respectable amount of 15mm scenery, I still need a bit more but they will wait for the next war games show, whenever that is!

The demo games went quite well, we had about eight people playing over the day, but by about 2.00/2.15pm the show went quiet, so I had another wander around the show, which was fatal for the wallet. I had been musing about maybe increasing the number of tank hunters in my German army as was still lacking for Mid war vehicles, and had been pondering what if anything to get to rectify the shortage. So sat fully assembled and ready to be primed, (well it has rained heavily here all day) are three Marder 2s and two Marder 3s both useable for both Mid/late war periods.

This I mean it, when those five tank hunters and the plastic Panzer 4s are done, my German army is complete, apart form the aircraft that is.....

Ah well its back to the workshop tomorrow as I have sixty large and medium hills to repair and/or repaint for Battlefront Miniatures.

Even more Flames of War pt 3.

I have not done too much on my FoW models recently, been pretty busy with other stuff, most of it 'real life' and not model related. I got the Tigers and Hornisse's finished the other week and had eight Panzerwerfer 42's along with four bases of additional crew sat part painted.

Anyway after all my other running about and taking my mother to and from hospital earlier this week, I have gotten off to an absolute flyer repairing and painting 40 hills of varying sizes for Battlefront Miniatures.

In addition I also got all eight of the Panzerwerfer 42s camouflaged on Tuesday evening, I could not finishe them as planned on theTuesday evening as the GCN council meeting we had booked on SKYPE took up a fair old amount of time, however I did get all the camouflage finished before going to bed. So Wednesday evening the Devlan Mud wash was applied and Thursday evening saw the 'dirt' drybrushing applied, the decals added and a protective coat of varnish sprayed on when the decal softner was fully dry. I then proceeded to fill up more slots in the second of the German FoW army cases, its nearly full, now but not quite as I still have space for a few more Opel Blitz 3 ton trucks etc. I also need to find space in that box for the ten Plastic Soldier Company's IP Panzer 4 kits, along with a wing of German aircraft that should be that box full. My Battle Foam, FoW bag only has one slot left in it, so that will be pretty much it for the German's.

Being as I had completed all forty of the hills for Battlefront in the first batch, I took the finished scenery back to their offices in Nottingham and collected an even bigger batch of large and medium sized hills, sixty of them are now sat in boxes in my workshop awaiting attention from Tuesday onwards of next week.

All being well most of those will be finished by this time next week too.

Next job for this week is the Partizan war gaming show in Newark on Sunday where I will be running a FoW demo game, thankfully Monday is a bank holiday so I will get a lie in bed all being well.....

Busy few weekends coming up.

I am going to be a bit busy over the next few weekends, with a show per week to attend.

First up we have Triples in Sheffield on the 21st and 22nd May, where along with a couple of my COGS club mates we will be running a participation game all weekend. We are running a small fantasy skirmish game called 'Blood Feud' played on a 2 foot x 2 foot board where each player uses a small group of models, between four and six models per team. Blood Feud is a new version of a game we used to run at show's a few years ago called 'Grave Wars', its quite a manic game although I do have to say its lots of fun, and uses teams of psychopaths, lunatics and monsters, along with a variety of other more 'sane' teams. The Rule set has been written by my COGS club colleague Dave Wise (who is the GCN project leader for the Hammerhead show) and myself. Hopefully it should be a good weekend.

Next up we have the Partizan show on Sunday 29th May at Kelham Hall in Newark. At this show I will be running a demo game of 'Flames of War', late war period for Battlefront Miniatures. This will be the first time that I have run a demo game of this system, although relatively new to the game I have managed to play loads of games over the last couple of months and I am seriously getting into the system.

Final show is on the 5th June, this is Comicon in Wrexham in North Wales, where along with other GCN council members and GCN club members were are putting on three tabletop games for the organisers. There will be a 40K game, Warhammer Fantasy Battle game and the game I will be running is a Lord of the Rings SBG game. I have not decided on a scenario yet, I need to get something sorted soon. Part of the event celebrates the 10th anniversary of the release of the Fellowship of the Ring movie, however apart from 'The Last Alliance' prologue of the movie there is not as much scope for larger battles, so I may opt for doing something from The Two Towers, the battle of the Fords of Isen, or I may just resurrect/rewrite a scenario that I put together for a Games Day game I did a few years ago for Games Workshop, I need to give this more thought, but i need to get Triples out of the way first.

Its looking like its going to be a busy few weeks, not withstanding all the scenery and terrain that I have sat here in boxes to be worked on for Battlefront Miniatures for their Official FoW GT in September, and the pile of parcels I have to pack for Fanderson Sales, to be honest I just do not have the time to go and do a 'proper' job.

Hey ho better get on as I have a pile of orders to process and pack.....

Even more Flames of War pt 2.

The new batch of Flames of War models are coming along nicely, although they are taking a bit longer to paint that was previously the case.

The reason for this is that I have no Army Painter Late War German Armour spray left, I ran out on the last batch, it would also appear that not many other people or stockist in the UK have any either, as everywhere you try is out of stock waiting for deliveries, even Battlefront themselves have no stock ATM.

Which meant that if I wanted these models to use any time soon that I would be reverting back to the old undercoat by brush system to do this batch of AFVs, so out came the Vallejo Middlestone bottle and I got stuck in.

This is where my earlier comment comes to the fore, had I been able to spray the batch of models it would have taken me no more than twenty minutes to do the lot, as it turned out, undercoating the fourteen vehicles by brush took me the better part of three hours! Painting the odd vehicle here and there by brush is one thing, but using the spray saves so much time, granted its more expensive to spray when compared to brush painting, but boy does it save you a lot of time.

Anyway that was Tuesday afternoons job, I gave all the vehicles heavy dry brush Tuesday night and so they were all ready for the detail painting and camouflage.

I had an hour this morning so all the metallic parts, tracks, tools etc were painted on the two Tigers, the two Hornisse and the Wespe. Not started the Panzerwerfer 42s yet though, I think that I will finish the tanks/tank hunters first then drop back onto the others.

I had a break for lunch and to write a couple of Blogs! and I now have a load of merchandise to pack for Fanderson Sales, then off to the post office when I have finished packing, I might be able to get another hour on the tanks in later on this afternoon if I am lucky and hopefully get a bit more done.

Off to the alternate Wednesday evening COGS session tonight at 7.00pm, so no more painting tonight either. I am playing a 1750 points mid war game tonight, its a practice game for my COGS buddy Richard who is taking part in a Mid War GT at Maelstrom Games in June...

Even more Flames of War.

Well the last batch of Flames of war models were all finished, hooray!!! Packed away safely in their cases and ready for use on the table top.

Well that is that for the German army or so I thought at the time.

Unfortunately for me, I had a meeting with Battlefront Miniatures on Thursday 5th May in Nottingham, well when I say unfortunate, I actually meant for my wallet and credit card, sigh, trust me to go with cash and credit card in pocket and a list of models that I wanted. ; )

Anyway sat on the table assembled and sprayed with grey automotive primer ready for undercoating are two more Tiger 1Es, (one of them being the Michael Wittman box set), two Hornisse tank hunters, one Wespe 10.5cm self propelled gun, (to go with the three I finished last week), and eight, yes eight Panzerwerfer 42 rocket launchers, for those times on the battlefield when you just have to have the biggest of the artillery templates, ( and it is a big one), and re-rolling misses, mind you the platoon is bloody expensive if you use all of them.

Heh my club mate at COGS with his huge Russian Strelkovy Infantry army is in for a bit of a shock, I can tell you.

Once this little lot is done is that it, no way, I need to get some aircraft and I am looking at getting some Panzer 4s for the early and Mid war periods, although five of each should do me there, then both my carry cases will be full to bursting. Which means I can address the mounting US 2nd Armoured Division that is sat in boxes and blisters awaiting attention.

Flames of War German army.

The Mid/Late War German army for Flames of War is expanding, which is a bit of an understatement.

From humble beginnings in late Jan 2011 when I assembled and painted my first platoon of Panzer 4 Hs and a platoon of Panther As, I was dreading starting the infantry bases.

Having tentatively started assembling the infantry bases, I was really not looking forward to painting them, but starting form the base up I gave it a go, After a relatively slow start I began to get faster and faster, and actually started enjoying the painting experience, I hjad painted three platoons of Grenadiers. When I looked at starting my Falschirmjager company I was a first a bit daunted, 26 medium bases and 10 small bases, all infantry, however I was able to paint them faster than I thought. I assembled the figures Friday evening, textured the bases Saturday morning and then primed them Saturday afternoon, I started painting them on Sunday morning and I had the whole lot finished by Monday! Definitely not doing that again though due to the back ache!

From mid Feb onwards I got my second wind and flew through the models, infantry ans vehicles alike, they are not too bad when you have a system. I have just about filled my 'Battlefoam Flames of War' case and have very nearly filled the overflow 'KR Multicase' too.

I am currently working on a platoon of 3.7cm static AA guns, two sections of Wespe 10.5 cm self propelled guns, and a section of Panzerwerfer 42s.

I still need to buy a few more bits and pieces tank wise to finish off the army, and some aircraft for good measure, which should fill both bags completely.

I can then look at going back and starting my 1st choice army and first FoW purchases, my US 2nd Armoured Division 'Hell on Wheels'.