A quick report of a club night game of I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum in 20mm from Iain Fuller, taken from his excellent Tracks & Treads blog.
See whether the Germans can smash through the British defense by clicking on the pic, below:
Our last game of IABSM was set in the Tuchole Forest in Poland, right at the beginning of the war. Today’s battle would directly follow on from that encounter, and represent the stalwart Polish defense of Grudziadz. Both scenarios were taken from The September War, Part One, one of the TooFatLardies scenario packs that I have written for I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum!
Grudziadz was a strategically important town as it housed an officer academy, a cavalry school and the several army staffs directing Polish forces in the Polish Corridor region. It was, however, only lightly defended, with its garrison made up of infantry and border protection corps (KOP) along with supporting artillery. The German attack was launched from East Prussia by 21st Corps, mainly infantry and the reserve 10th Panzer regiment (mainly Panzer I and II).
Click on the pic below to see what happened.
A couple of days late, I’m afraid, but been very busy despite the fact that I’ve just been made redundant!
Here are this week’s entries:
Andy Duffell drives in a handful of 15mm desert Cruisers
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from John Haines, but his entry this week is some lovely Japanese-themed terrain, and an AWI colonial house
And even longer since we’ve heard from Owen, who finally send sin his first entry for this year’s challenge with some odd cavalry
Mark Luther continues to grow his 1st Seminole War collection
Carole has been hanging with the good guys this week
There’s more from Andrew Helliwell: more knights, some space marine types and some lovely looking Prussians
Joe McGinn sends in his summer painting: some great looking Napoleonics
Treadhead’s latest entry is 6mm Soviets and 28mm sheep
And last, but by no means least, Matt Slade has Germans from 1940 and lots of WOTR figures for us to admire
As usual, clicking on the name of the person above will take you straight to their gallery (opens in a new window).
Here are today’s pictures:
And the production line of sci-fi dwarves continues as I am determined to clear all of them from my lead mountain.
Today we have the Hearthguard from Boontown Metals:
These are slightly better cast than the Shaker Cannon teams I was complaining about a few days ago, but still of the rough-and-ready variety instead of the clean-crisp variety I prefer.
No matter: must collect all sci-fi dwarves, no matter what!
Played my first game of Quadrant 13 for ages today: an encounter between the Hura (four-armed aliens from ClearHorizon Miniatures) and the Dwarves in Space.
Well you can probably guess what happened from the title of this post: just a pity I was playing the Hura!
Click on the picture below to see all…
Things are all a bit scifi at the moment: mainly because that’s what tends to accumulate in the lead mountain. Figures for all the other periods leapfrog to the front of the painting queue, with poor old scifi left lingering behind.
But, as we all know, I’m trying to clear some of the lead mountain at the moment, and look what I’ve found and painted today: it’s the landing pad from Warbases 15mm scifi terrain range.
The pad is a laser-cut kit consisting of the ramp and the pad itself. It comes with no instructions, as Warbases assure their customers that the build is “intuitive”.
Well that may be so…but it still didn’t stop me putting the legs together incorrectly first time around. Note that the leg pillars have a top and a bottom (wider gap at the bottom) and that the feet go at the end of the legs not built back up to create a little moat around them. Confused? Look at the picture as you build the pad, and things should become clear.
Painting the pad was fairly easy: a grungy brown for the supports that was then scuffed with black paint, washed and then drybrushed. The pad itself was dyed black-ish with black ink, then highlighted with a grey colour. The red edges are because I couldn’t be bothered to paint every edge with black and yellow warning stripes. I’m sure you can buy thin hazard tape somewhere, but a quick Search gave me 25mm as the thinnest I could find.
Recommended.
You’re probably all sick of my painting, so here’s a quick Painting Challenge update.
As we move into the Autumn, and the final months of the Challenge, good to see that there are still lots of entries coming through.
So today, in no particular order, we have:
Steve Burt with an Assyrian chariot
Some amazing 15mm modern vehicles from Egg. Don’t envy him that camouflage!
Mark Luther has filled in a few gaps in his gallery with a couple of shots of recent French Indian Wars games
Carol’s been hanging out with vampires
Loads of 15mm Napoleonics and a few 28mm SYW command figures from Sapper
A tank from Travis
Lots of tanks from Lloyd Bowler
Huge amounts of re-basing from Stumpy…and a few figures he’s painted himself
And last, but by no means least, Mervyn with some Napoleonic British infantry
As always, clicking on the name of the person in the list above will take you straight to their gallery…and there’s still plenty of time for the rest of you to send in your entries as well.
Here are today’s pictures:
Beautifully painted 15mm US troops from Egg
Mervyn’s Napoleonics
Char B-1’s from the Hat
One of Mark Luther’s FIW shots
As you can see from my last few posts, I’m on a bit of a painting jag at the moment.
I’d like to say that this is gradually clearing my lead mountain but, of course, every time I complete a unit, I check the range it comes from and usually end up buying more figures to either fill in the gaps of what I’ve got or to cover new releases.
This is certainly true of this last week. I painted the Onslaught Miniatures engineers and promptly ordered the new Iron Lords. I painted the figures below, and promptly ordered the previously-out-of-stock battlebikes. And don’t even get me started on the boxes arriving from Battlefront as a result of their 25% off Arab-Israeli sale! I think I’ve just go to come to terms with the fact that for every figure I paint I add a few more to the lead mountain…but at least it means that I’ll live for ever!
So on to today’s offering.
As I’m trying to collect every type of 15mm sci-fi dwarf out there (I know: not a good way to reduce the lead mountain), I duly ordered a couple of units of the Boontown Miniatures range as soon as it launched.
Good service, but not the sort of figures I usually buy: I like my figures very crisp and clean (but hard to paint well, especially with my rudimentary skills!) rather than the more normal Boontown range. Leaving that aside, however, I eased myself into the range by painting the artillery (Shaker cannons) and the walkers (T-26 walkers).
Very shaky!
The Shaker Cannons are typical of what I mean. I didn’t like these at all. You’ve got a hi-tech rear end (looks a bit like the front of a VW Beetle complete with headlights and bumper) then an awful wooden chassis, awful crude-iron wheels, and a screen that looks like it’s been knocked together by orcs!
I quite like the idea of a hedgehog-like piece of artillery, but none of the four barrels are the same. Add in a couple of crew members that are not of the crisp and clean variety, and you have…yuk!
Anyhow, I’ve done my best and decided that these are knocked-together mining tools (presumably for lobbing explosives somewhere when strip mining or something) hence the reason for the crude construction and very bright white and red warning stripes.
In my humble opinion, these would do better as part of a low-tech sci-fi range, and don’t mix very well with the walkers:
These I like much more than the Shakers. Not quite sure why half the firepower points backwards, and why the gunner is unprotected in any way, but I do like the basic shape and stance, and the decided “chicken” look about them.
As I’ve decided that the Boontown dwarf base colour is brown, these are sprayed Mournfang Brown, then washed and highlighted, and with certain bits of equipment painted separately. I then added some decals I found in the bits box and off we go.
These are much more the thing, and have inspired me to have a go at the Hearthguard platoon, now drying after it’s undercoat.
This is really a post about the latest units that I’ve painted, but a post that also comes with two bits of advice.
The first piece of advice is “always buy those miniatures when you see them…as they might not be there later”.
This applies to the gruntling range from Cactus Games: space dwarves in 15mm. The standard infantry are okay: maybe a bit crude by some standards but at least they are properly dwarvish i.e. short. What are really nice, however, are the chaps in powered armour: very cubist in nature and some of my favourite 15mm sci-fi dwarf figures.
Cubist Exo-Skeletons from Cactus
I’m using the present tense here but, alas, Cactus have disappeared, taking their range with them. I mention this because searching through the lead mountain for something to paint whilst I waited for my latest Arab-Israeli figures to arrive, I came across two packs of Cactus miniatures that I hadn’t painted when I did the basic infantry and powered armour types: a set of motor-tricycles and a set of light support weapons.
The motor-trikes are great fun: very silly but full of character. They come in three bits: the front wheel and handlebars; the main body; and the chap in the turret with the gun. It was a little fiddly to get the front to glue properly to the back, but otherwise no probs.
And why is the lesson relevant? Well because I almost didn’t buy these when I bought the infantry. If I hadn’t gone for it then, then I wouldn’t have had these…ever.
The second lesson is “always put all your spare parts in a ‘bits box’”. This is because the light support weapon packs came with two crew figures but a very weedy-looking LSW on a very flimsy bipod. No matter: a quick dip into my bits box and I came up with enough meaty looking weapons to outfit the three teams. The guns are spare turret-mounted weapons from sci-fi vehicles, but I can’t remember the manufacturer. They do nicely as mining lasers adapted for combat.
The stands for the guns, btw, are hama beads. Always good to raid your children’s hama bead collection: they make very useful stands, dividers etc!
So there you have it: two more units for the space dwarves and two important lessons for wargamers everywhere.
Let me hear you say them again:
always buy those miniatures when you see them…as they might not be there later
always put all your spare parts in a ‘bits box’
If I played my sci-fi in 6mm, then Onslaught Miniatures would be my first port of call. A nice variety of figures with some quite deep ranges i.e. more than just one type of infantry and a support weapon: most of their ranges have got 20+ codes in them.
But I don’t: I play in 15mm…which is why it is so great that Onslaught have now expanded their collection to include 15mm versions of a limited number of their 6mm ranges.
Although I really liked the 15mm Sisterhood range (big women with big guns), they never really got going with it: releasing only a couple of codes and then seeming to go no further.
One 15mm range, however, that does have more than a couple of codes in it is their Grudd range. Whatever the official background, it’s obvious that these are normal-human-sized space dwarves.
The four-squad platoon above is a combination of their Grudd Clansmen, Siege Breakers and Demolishers and looks pretty spectacular, especially with all those outrageous power tools.
What I’m now hoping is that they expand their entire 6mm Grudd range into 15mm…
the grudd range in 6mm so far
I only had time for a quick visit to Colours this year: a couple of hours first thing on Saturday morning.
Travel to and from Newbury was enlivened by the traffic caused by the Newbury Show, but I still made the trip in under an hour. The work on the racecourse/flats on the racecourse must be just about finished by now, as getting to the carpark was much easier than last year: no problems in parking and only five minutes walk from the stand where the show was based.
I got there at about 9.45am for the ten o’clock start and joined the back of what looked like a sizeable queue, but once it started moving, just before ten, it moved very quickly, so no complaints there. The price was only £6 to get in, so very reasonable.
As I was in nice and early, I had time for a look around before the crowds. The show followed the usual format of, broadly speaking, trade stands on the ground floor; food/drink and more tradestands on the first floor; and then competition games, demonstration games and the bring and buy on the second floor.
There were three Lardy games that I could see. The first was a What a Tanker! game set in the Western Desert:
This looked very well attended for all the time I was there, so kudos to the chaps putting that on.
The second was a large General d’Armee Napoleonics game recreating Plancenoit. There’s a full report on the game available here.
Finally, there was a very nice looking Sharp Practice game set in 19th Century Japan (the Boshin War):
There were also two other non-Lardy games that caught my eye:
Lots of beautifully painted tanks
Cold War turned hot!
The trade stands were, as always at Colours, excellent. I wasn’t buying anything this year (too much to paint as it is) but would like to mention one trader who did get some of my money: ABCbrushes.
This was a small stand selling…brushes…but selling them at excellent prices. I picked up a mixed pack of ten brushes (all usefully labelled “medium dry brush”, “stippling brush” etc) for only £12.50. No idea of the quality, but as I go through brushes really quickly, this seemed like a very good buy. Their website is here.
So all in all an enjoyable visit. I could have done with an extra hour or so, but other appointments called. A good show that I look forward to again next year.
As it’s the Colours wargames show at Newbury Racecourse tomorrow, I thought I’d better make a point of updating the Painting Challenge: might bump into a few people asking why it’s been a week-and-a-half since the last update!
Anyhoo, in no particular order, we have:
Mr Hodge with everything from 10mm WW2 to 28mm Games Workshop Space Marines
Ralph Plowman sends in some rare Micropanzer walkers
It’s more medievals from Andrew Helliwell
Matt Slade has been busy as ever: three sets of entries including some rather fun Strontium Dog figures
Travis pops in a few more AWI militia
There’s a couple of tanks and a couple of fantasy figures from Carole
Cold War and cavalry from Mr Davenport
Mark Luther has finished some cavalry for the Second Seminole War
More Napoleonics from Mervyn
And last, but by no means least, Lloyd cries “I’m Spartacus” with some gladiators
As always, clicking on the name of the person above will take you straight to their gallery (opens in a new window) and I can’t emphasise enough how much these galleries are a source of inspiration.
Today’s pictures are below:
Just finished photographing the last of the All Quiet on the Martian Front tripods I have been working on. This last batch consisted of another three scout tripods, two grenadier tripods, seven assault tripods and a power node terrain piece.
That’s a lot of points for the Painting Challenge!
Rather than have the tripods as a separate Martian army, I’m going to use them as the AFV element of my Invaders army that uses the Khurasan Alien Invasion range as its core infantry component. As I’ve also now had a chance to photograph all of them, it means another gallery added to the Q13 section of the website: one that shows the entire force.
You can find that by clicking here, but here’s a picture of the army en masse:
Oh yes, finally, someone wrote in asking what colour the tripods were sprayed: it was Ford Neptune Green from the Halfords range of car paints.
This Saturday just gone saw the inaugural Clotted Lard games day at the Devon Wargames Group. At what will hopefully be an annual event, large numbers of fellow Lardies gathered for a fun-packed day of gaming.
You can read the after action report of the games day itself by clicking here.
One of the games on show was a superb 10mm game of Charlie Don't Surf! put on by DaveJ. Click on the picture below to see a quick AAR from Carojon, accompanied by more photos of what looks like a most impressive game:
Still working my way through all my All Quiet on the Martian Front tripods.
First up are three more Scout Tripods:
Only three more of them to go!
Next is a quick one off: the Slaver Tripod, which I will be using as the command tripod for the Invaders' AFV force:
That's a metal tripod (the Scout Tripods are all plastic kits) and weighs in pretty heavy.
Finally for this batch, there's an extra I picked up as part of the Kickstarter offer: a downed Assault Tripod.
That's it for this update: plenty more tripods to go.
Oh, and I've had a chance to update the TFL Painting Challenge Scorecard.
Played a great game of I Ain't Been Shot, Mum! at the weekend: scenario #08 from the first September War scenario pack covering the invasion of Poland in 1939, The Tuchole Forest.
The battle, set in the Polish Corridor, was all about territory and objectives, and proved a very different kettle of fish from the usual head-on clash.
Click on the picture below to see who held onto what to win the game:
Nice steady amount of entries this week, with a few people submitting the last of their "summer holidays" painting.
In no particular order we have:
As usual, clicking on the name of the person above will take you straight to their gallery (opens in a new window) and, also as usual, I'll update the Scorecard tonight.
Here are today's pictures:
Lynx Helicopters from Mr Davenport
Shieldmaidens from Carole and some rather nice engineers/medics from The Hat
last weekend's work
My current project or, rather, one of my current projects, is to add the All Quiet on the Martian Front models that I bought as part of the original Kickstarter to the figures that I've painted from Khurasan Miniatures' 15mm sci-fi The Invaders range. I spent last weekend building all the tripods, so this weekend's task was to paint up the first of them.
I didn't fancy brush painting twenty-four plus large 15mm models, so determined that most of the work would be done via spray paint...but which colour to choose. I wanted something metallic, which meant buying some new paint, as all my existing sprays are various shades of dull green or brown or desert yellow (i.e. WW2 and 6DW colours).
I was driving home, thinking about where to get appropriate sprays, surrounded by other cars, when I suddenly realised that I was looking at exactly what I wanted: metallic car paint. A quick trip to Halfords, and I bought a couple of cans of a light green metallic colour. Each can was only £6.99 as well: considerably cheaper than GW or other hobby paint.
Spraying all the tripods took up a can and a half, but twenty minutes in today's blazing sunshine dried everything off nicely. I wouldn't have time to complete all of the models after the initial spray, so settled on the small flying drones and three scout tripods.
Flying Drones
Very simple to finish them: I painted the "eye" red, any equipment in two shades of grey, any electricals or power sources in a light purple, the tentacles in black-dry-brushed-with-iron, and then found a few places to put a drop of scarlet or metallic blue for variety. Finally, I based them as usual, then used Halfords lacquer to finish them.
I'm very pleased with the result.
The first three scout tripods
Just a quick update to the Israeli lists really to bring them in line with the format/look of the Egyptian lists that I posted earlier this week.
What's changed? Well, the only real difference is that I've expanded the details on aircraft and anti-aircraft assets, and added a pictorial front cover. So worth downloading again.
Next up will be the Syrians.
Although this site is dedicated to the TFL Company Level games such as IABSM, CDS and Q13, I do like to point out what else is going on in Lardland.
That's why I'm really happy to post that the much-anticipated Early War handbook is now available for the TFL platoon-sized game: Chain of Command.
Having published the IABSM early war books earlier this year, I was also somewhat involved in the production of this work, and can therefore assure you that it is truly epic. Rich has gone back to many first hand sources and original army manuals for the information it is based on.
Here's the marketing blurb:
This 124 page handbook provides a comprehensive coverage of the campaign in France and the Low Countries in 1940. Included is an historical account of the campaign in the West, as well as whole raft of new rules to cover the events of that summer. New theatre specific rules include Assault boats and river crossings, parachute drops, glider landings, bicycles, horse mounted troops and motorcycles. We have several new armour classifications for tanks with small turrets, vehicles lacking of radios and unreliable vehicles. Fancy blowing up a section of the Maginot Line? Well, you can with our new rules on fortifications and demolitions as well as looking at Francs Tireurs, ‘Shabby Nazi Tricks’ in the form of Brandenburg Commandos, Civilians, Stuka attacks and even the odd drinks cabinet being rolled out to stiffen the stiffest of upper lips.
Biggest of all is the truly massive section on Army lists. Here we wanted to provide a really comprehensive guide to the period and in doing so we went right back to the book, or more specifically the manuals that the armies of the period issued to their troops. The French Tableau d’Effectifs de Guerre, the German KsTN lists, the Dutch Handboek vor den Soldat and Officier series and many others issued throughout the 1930s and up to 1940. These manuals tell us not just how troops were organised, but how their training prepared them for war and their doctrines. This has allowed us to produce not just Army Lists but introduce national characteristics which make each nation unique in the way they fight.
Belgium
Line Infantry
Reserve infantry
Infantry scouts
Chasseur Ardennais
Frontier Cyclists
Motorised Cavalry
Motorcycle Cavalry
The Netherlands
Line Infantry
Reserve Infantry
Mounted Cavalry
Border Infantry
Bicycle troops
Motorcycle troops
Airfield Defence forces
Marines
France
First Line Infantry
Reserve Infantry
Chasseurs
Groupe Franc
Reconnaissance Motorcycle Fusiliers
Reconnaissance Cavalry
Motorised Infantry
Dragon Portes
Mounted Cavalry
Chasseur Portes
Colonial Troops
Mountain Troops
Ski Scouts
Light DIvision Infantry
Groupe Franc Motorise de Cavalerie
British
1939 Regulation Platoon
1940 Regulation Platoon
Motor Infantry
Motorcycle infantry
Line of Communication troops
Searchlight Troops
Germany
1st Wave infantry
2nd Wave infantry
3rd Wave infantry
5th Wave infantry
7th Wave Infantry
Static infantry
Pioneers
Motorised Infantry
Motorcycle Reconnaissance
Schutzen Type 1
Schutzen Type 2
SS Totenkopf
SS Verfungs and Leibstandarte
SS Motorcycle platoon
SS Aufklarungs motorcycle platoon
Fallschirmjager Type 1
Fallschirmjager Type 2
Luftlande Glider platoon
Gebirgsjager
Italy
Infantry
Blackshirt troops
Alpini
Alongside these lists we have nearly fifty support option lists giving support choices for a huge number of unit types, so if you have a motorcycle reconnaissance platoon you can select support from the different divisions which fielded that unit type. All in all, the gamer can choose an incredible range of interesting and varied troops types and then choose supports from friendly forces and allies for forces of almost limitless variety. But that’s not all. Each nation has a full Arsenal list for weapons and AFVs as well as comprehensive notes to cover their support options.
Finally, we have five new scenarios types, Going with a Bang, Strike from Above, Swift to Support, Hasty Defence and Blitzkrieg to bring the 1940 campaigns to life. All in all, a huge addition to your Chain of Command library in both hard copy and PDF.
Vis Lardica is a website devoted to wargaming and military history, with a special emphasis on the company-sized rulesets produced by the TooFatLardies: I Ain't Been Shot Mum (WW2); Charlie Don't Surf (Vietnam); and Quadrant 13 (science fiction)
Welcome to Vis Lardica, a not-for-profit website mostly dedicated to the company-sized wargaming rules produced by the TooFatLardies, but encompassing my other gaming interests as well.
If you need to contact me, you can do so at:
vislardica@gmail.com
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