Easter Front Round Up

The first two day Bolt Action tournament in Melbourne for a long while ran as part of Conquest over Easter. It was ace and a genuine pleasure to roll dice with gaming friends once again. Some I hadn’t seen since last Easter (or before)! Winners and pictures of the fabulous tables and armies can be found on FaceBook. Search for Cast Dice page for heaps of photos. Bravo to Leigh and Brad for a terrific weekend.

As you might have expected, running an army for the very first time in an actual tournament was a steep learning curve. Partisans don’t get quite as many toys as many other armies, so you need to consider how co-ordinate your units to achieve mission objectives.

A large squad of Nationalist Chinese militia. They died in droves but held on to secure an objective.

I played five of the six games, lost two and had draws in the other three. All but one was a close affair, but in the end I couldn’t do enough to pull out a victory. Very historic, I guess. Without support from regular troops, Partisans rarely fared well in a stand-up fight.

A Soviet T-26 Tank in Chinese service.

Brad used this beautiful Nationalist Chinese as a gumby army. We played a mission called Nuts!, where there are 5 objectives: one in the centre and one in each table-quarter. Up to half your army can start on the board.

Partisan Guerrilla fighters ambush veteran Chinese fighters, catching them in the open.

I gave Brad trouble early on, but they just kept coming and in the end contested or held all the objectives.I placed my bombs poorly and spread my army too thin to support each other. Lesson: make a plan and focus on the mission.

Ben’s Soviets are are terrific and balanced army. Top-notch painting too.

Ben and I fought to a draw in turn 6. A 50% chance of a seventh turn didn’t occur, which would almost certainly have been a victory to the Soviets.

The Soviet barrage falls on target

Half of my army spent most of the game heavily pinned and down, ceding the initiative to Ben on one flank. But while I couldn’t shoot, dug-in troops are also hard to shift.

Lesson: don’t be afraid to go down or take a rally order to keep unit in the game.

Elizabeth borrowed this fine looking Sherman from Tristan for the tournament

Elizabeth and I fought each other to a draw in one of two missions unveiled on the weekend. In Punch Through there are 4 objectives deployed in a cross 12″ from the table centre. Each player can move one objective up to 6″ (possible the same one). Every one starts off the table, with at least half your army arriving in the first wave.

The British kept on coming but neither of us could keep enough units together to secure an objective by the end of the game.

Lesson: use the bombs to control a fire lane or protect a flank; don’t just spread them out.

The only Axis power I faced on the weekend was Johnathon’s late war German list. The mission was No Man’s Land, straight from the rule book. His veterans were rock hard and steadily took a tally on my grab bag of inexperienced units, leading to my second loss in the tournament.

Lesson: use your army special rules or you just leave points off the table.

Supply Drop was the other new mission on the weekend, and one I think will become a favourite. It is a variation of the classic Kittyhawk Down (itself inspired by Thunderhawk Down from Australian 40K circles). No objectives start on the board. On turn four, three objectives drop from the sky. They land in a straight line through the middle of the board, with the angle of the line and the distance apart randomly determined.

I played long-time buddy Consto, who had a marvelous looking veteran US force (a mix of rangers and paratroopers, plus a Sherman).

Captured inexperienced tanks are pin magnets. The R35 made me laugh the whole weekend.

The objectives landed near perfect for me, taking pressure off my units as the paratroopers made a dash for their own baseline, leaving me in control of my own. A cannier player might have sequenced their final turn orders differently to grab a win. In the end it was another tight draw. Highlight was an IED taking out a veteran paratroop squad trying to dig me out of the centre of the board.

Lesson: Air Support can be random, including having it make a bomb run on your own units. But so sweet when it works.

There you have it: Easter Front 2022.

Maybe I’ll see you across a table one day soon.

the big guns

Big compared to the rest of the guns in my Conquest Partisan list. I will take some support options in the form of a sniper team and a medium machine gun.

The sniper team is from Black Tree Designs. I’m not sure where he obtained his scope but he is putting it to good use.

The MMG team have appeared before, but this will be the first time they will be deployed. The model is from the Australian Home Guard range by Eureka Miniatures. I guess the guy in the Aussie uniform is an escaped POW, now fighting with this partisan band.

Easter Front

Live Bolt Action is returning to Melbourne with a two day event as part of Conquest Games Convention. OK, live BA probably never left lounge rooms and garages, but it is returning to the streets. I think the last time I played was Conquest last year, so I’m looking forward to rolling a few dice again.

Triangulating a desire to take something new with least amount of effort, I have decided to take Partisans. A chance to field a somewhat unusual and fun list that only requires me to paint 6 models.

My list is motivated by the turbulent and confusing warfare in the north of Italy in late 1944. Following the surrender of the fascists in September 1943 the situation became more and more chaotic until the final armistice in May 1945. In fact, it continued to be chaotic but that is another story. Many dozens of partisan groups, made up of thousands of individuals took up arms against the occupying Germans and puppet fascist regime. Being Italians, there were multiple political camps, from Soviet-aligned communists to right-leaning groups hoping to restore a monarchy.

Most of the force will be rifles, which is not that different to most Bolt Action armies. The largest potential weakness of Partisans is not the lack of armour, as the lack of anti-armour with real grunt. Part of the solution will be some crazy-brave souls armed with Molotov cocktails.

A Partisan force can include veteran, SMG-armed guerrilla units. My desperadoes will be represented by this mix of girl-power and an on-the-run tank crew.

The models are a mix of Black Tree Design, Warlord Games, and Eureka Miniatures.

Painting them was both fun and a bit of a challenge. The main challenge was creating a coherent looking force without making their clothes look too uniform. By restricting the pallet I used and basing all the models in a similar way I think I have managed to create a force that will look OK on the table. By varying armband and scarf colours I can differentiate squads on the table.

In a straight up fight against a trained army they would be hideously outgunned and out maneuvered. But in the heroic Bolt Action world I think they will stand up OK.

Or at least not loose too quickly.

Aussie Home Guard

This is another of those projects where the minis have come first. These Australian Home Guard are a recent release from Eureka Miniatures, so new I’m not sure they’re even listed yet. They join a growing number of civilian/partisan style figures I have. A project will present itself no doubt. In the mean time check some of the lovely, characterful sculpts by the very talented Kosta Heristanidis.

I used different coloured arm-bands to keep the squads distinct

Probably my favourite unit: beer bottle molotovs! Good on ya!

A Vickers MMG as their support option.

Having put all the models together for the first time, I think I’ve made too many of the suits blue. Maybe there was a Peter Jackson sale on. Anyway, I think they have come up OK. They certainly look ready to give any assigned task a red hot go, and you can’t ask more than that from any Home Guard force.

Cheers.

zombies

Everyone I know seems to have a box of zombies at the back of their cupboard. Often there is no memory of how they even got there. This seems appropriate for zombies. These ones lurked unloved and unpainted for far too long, but have now crawled out of their toxic barrels, ready to shamble into whatever undead filled horror is required. (Most likely as totencorps for K-47.)

I had a play with a newish Citadel paint, Hexwraith Flame. Put it on a light base with a pale grey highlight and it can really glow. It behaves a bit like an ink, so my experiment of using red ink on the same models wasn’t entirely successful, loosing the bright finish. The end result is OK, but didn’t need expensive green paint to achieve. I’m looking at this as a bonus. The models are painted and I’ve learnt a bit about a new paint line from GW.

The models are Eureka Miniatures, and are their usual excellent standard with lots of different poses, which is a real plus for metal figures. From the same manufacturer are these toxic-waste zombies, emerging from mysterious barrels of goo. Good fun.

See you in the wastelands

 

Big Bunny Bounces Back

Two years ago I painted a few samurai rabbits from Eureka Miniatures. Having fallen off the painting (and blogging!) horse when I moved house about six months ago, I returned to these wonderfully whimsical miniatures as a way to get moving again.

The lighting is rubbish, but some minis are painted. I’m calling that a win.

See you across a table somewhere.

D.

Smash fascism (and the patriarchy)

The representation of women in wargaming is an ongoing discussion. That women of all ages, and children and older people (of all genders), have been victims of war is a fact that can only be disputed through a narrow interpretation of facts. However, gaming (overwhelmingly) focuses on the soldiers, the majority of who have been male.

Fantasy and science fiction have an easy fix available: create worlds where the patriarchy is consigned to the dustbin. Creations like this cannot be disputed for inaccuracy. That we do not is a reflection of our communities’ biases.

Historical gaming has a genuine challenge here, since overwhelmingly combatants were (and are) male. There are companies that are seeking to shift this balance, and being companies I guess they are doing so in response to demand. Good on them. Bad Squiddo Games come to mind as doing a particularly good job of making women warriors available, consciously rejecting the pernicious sexualisation that mars so many female figures (Games Workshop is an easy source of examples, but are typical rather than especially poor in representing women).

Given there were only ever around 1500 tiger tanks produced and I suspect far more than this in service on wargame tables, I have no particular problem with female soldiers appearing more frequently than they did (or even stretching some of their roles). For WWII gaming, the Soviet Union and Partizan forces both provide historical basis for creating armies with female combatants.

Black Tree Design

Konflikt 47 has a wonderful opportunity, being a fantasy (diesel-punk) extension to the second world war. The background story has nuclear weapons tearing strange holes in space though which the competing nations receive information about how to build new (and terrible) weapons. The new technology see the Germans hold the allies east and west, extending the war into 1947. Part of the story extends real world events and strains: the Soviet Union splits from the allies, making the war three-way in Europe and the Middle East.

A real world shift not emphasized in the story to date is the role of women in the war. In every country, women stepped into roles dominated by men: particularly in factories, on farms, transport and planning. The access to the new rift-tech still requires soldiers to wield the new weapons.

The trend in the Soviet Union was to include women, and with two potential new fronts (Japan and Iraq) and the ending of US Lend Lease, this trend will be accelerated.

The United Kingdom, except for possibly India, were under enormous pressure after six continuous years of war. Given the opportunities given to women in the quirky Operation Sealion expansion for Bolt Action, I think getting a few into khaki for K-47 makes sense.

The United States still had a lot of man-power, but the rising affluence (and influence) of women could plausibly see them not just building the tanks but operating them.

French women took up arms when they could to liberate their country. I think they would not shirk their duty given the chance in 1947.

The case for the axis is less clear. While Germany faced acute shortages of combat fit soldiers, the deeply dysfunctional and conservative regime seems to me to be unlikely to recruit women (outside of home defense units). Unlike the other nations, the role of women as mother and wife was central to the nazi regime’s view of itself. I think it is plausible that Osttruppen, Hitler Youth, and Volksturm could all include women. And armed BDM seem to be more likely than flying vampires.

The Italians have less opportunity given their lack of resources and constraints from allies, but I think for different reasons the rump of the fascists in the north (desperation), and the newly liberated nation of the south (revenge) would both allow women into their fighting units.

Rocketeers from Eureka Minatures

New possibilities for armies, miniatures and expanding representation on the table top. I can see no downside here. So how about it Warlord?

 

Eureka Rocketeers

I always enjoy visiting Eureka Miniatures, there is always something new to have a look at, often just before it appears on the web. Nic has a lovely way of getting you to walk away with more than you meant to when you walked in.  The team create some lovely, quirky and characterful miniatures. A nice example is the Pulpitations range by the crazy talent of Kosta Heristandis. I picked up a unit of the Rocketeers back in August last year:

Some of the rocketeers prior to clean-up; there isn’t a lot to do, some minimal flash and mould lines

Other projects were in the queue, so they joined the rest of my US army in the cupboard:

Eventually these guys will get to invade Italy

So, with a vague idea that I won’t buy anything new until I paint the stuff I have – hah, like we all know how well that works! – I did make a start on the Rocketeers:

In part I used it as an opportunity to test some green colours for the US. (Or is that green color, when you do the USA?)  I bought a selection of women with caps and helmets. All of the figures come with either.

They are nearly done, the bases mostly, but I think the US need to come forward in the queue so I can have an excuse to get these girls on the table. K-47 has jump troops, so I think they will work nicely to add a touch of weird science to what I intend to be mostly a Bolt Action force:

Just noticed googles and some other bits and pieces still to do. So, nearly there, but not quite

Catch you around the battle fields of 1947 one day.

D.

Fear the Big Bunny

A change of pace from Bolt Action. I found some samurai rabbits from Eureka Miniatures in a box. I mean, who doesn’t have some sword wielding rabbits in their cupboard?

One day I will get around to adding something to their banners. And, I found that while I was painting them I’m missing horns from some of their helmets. I have a dim memory of thinking, “Gee they’re small, I’ll but those here for safe keeping …”

Their most likely use would be to make up a war band for Osprey’s A Fist Full of Kung Fu. I have a Japanese princess that would work nicely as a sorcerer to lead some magical minions. That is yet another one of those games on the shelf that I will get around to playing one day. And when I do, I have a warband ready to go.

And, just like sword wielding rabbits, who doesn’t have a game (or three) on their shelf that they will get around to playing, one day.

Sayonara,
D.

Yes to sci fi content, says Inquisition

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Hi All, After much deliberation our good friends at the Inquisition have granted permission for Faith and Steel to post on such science and other fiction as world war two or so-called moderns.  This is good news as what seemed … Continue reading →