Villers Bocage

I have spent the last week painting Cromwell's, Fireflys, and repainting Corgi diecast half-tracks to try out a game of Kampfgruppe Normandie at the club in the first week of February. I really like these rules, they are very simple and the book is awesome (350+ pages of colour- loads of scenarios, background, etc, but the essences of the rules could fit on 2 pages...). We'll see how they hold up next week. Villers Bocage is of course the battle where Wittmann bushwacked 7th Armoured in Normandy and single handedly destroyed most of a brigade. He didn't do so well in my first solo playtest, but dice are capricious.

Cotton's Cromwell in Villers Bocage.

Corgi die-casts (Marine Corps markings) repainted in olive drab with russian green drybrush and Commonwealth decals. I see there are some details still to pick out.

This one is my favourite, Hasegawa Humber MkII armoured car:

Which one is Wittmann? I think he drove a Tiger I with 007 markings at Villers Bocage. I have here two Dragon pre-paint Tigers, one Forces of Valor Tiger, and a Forces of Valor MkIVH with schurtzen:

Ciao!

Celtic slingers

Just finished some cheap and grim looking Celtic slingers. These are the Wargames Factory models. Mixed results I think. I like the flexibility, but some stiff poses seem inevitable. Not sure if I am sold on the wash either, I used GW sepia on the flesh areas and it seems a bit overwhelming and dark. It's a good product, the fault is mine for perhaps going a bit heavy.

ECW Command

I finished off some remaining ECW command models for my New Model army. These are a mix of Foundry and Warlord metals.

There is a nice command vignette with meeting held over a map on a drum.

I experimented with using rare earth magnets to make a base for the commander with ensign, but it didn't work very well, two magnets aren't strong enough to hold the figures securely, and there were a real bugger to glue to the base because they would rather stick to each other. This stand has a commander modelled obviously after Dion Phaneuf (captain of my favourite hockey team the Toronto Maple Leafs)

This guy here is a ranter (religious zealot) to inspire the troops (and antagonize the enemy)...

The grenade-boy is very nice:

Here is the back view of the commander in chief in conference:

Up next: Celtic slingers

Spanish knights and next DBA campaign map

I worked up 15 Gripping Beast Spanish knights and jinetes, I like these figs. I went with a red/ochre/blue colour theme (very Spanish-looking) to represent liveried otherwise organized groups of Hidalgos. El Cid gaming is still a few units away, but in the meantime they will serve as two additional units of Norman knights in next week's Hail Caesar game

I quite like this sculpt:

I also assembled a new map for our next DBA campaign (1/72 classical era) using Mighty Empires tiles. This is such a great product.

Next up: some ECW command stands to finish off, maybe a DBA battle report after we kick off our campaign at EDBAG tomorrow night.

2011 recap and plans for 2012

The first completed unit for 2012 is this block of 16 dark age warriors from Wargames Factory done in kite shields and with a spanish colour scheme. I plan to use these for Spanish foot for El Cid, and have LittleBigMan Studios El Cid banners on order, but they can also serve as Normal liberi in a pinch:

To recap 2011, I painted fewer models than in 2010 (~1,000 versus like ~1,800 in 2011), but there were more 28mm and generally of better quality (hence take more time). Probably the majority were ECW but there were quite a few Dark Age Spanish and Moors for El Cid, and also quite a few GW and Mantic fantasy stuff for WHFB. I played 63 games of DBA (35W-27L-1T) and learned that it is very difficult to win consistently with a light horse army. I also played 14 games of WHFB (12W-2L) using High Elves (unbeatable now I reckon) Brettonians and Vampire Counts.

I would like to play more WHFB and WAB next year if I can coax some of me mates to play more. Saga was another favourite this year, and I ran 4-5 games of Black Powder at the club too (Zulu War, ECW and Napoleonics). I am going to run Hail Caesar next week at the club using some dark age Anglo-Danes and Normans, looking forward to trying it out. I have become a big fan of Rick Priestly rules, I like the Gestalt and simplicity. I also have quite a bit more Western Desert picoarmour to paint up for BKC2, some nice new 1/72 from PSC to try out Kampfgruppe Normandy, and there is always another 15mm DBA army or two for a break.