Breakout from Ville de Williams-Sonoma - Chain of Command

 Hi All,

Found some time to work on the next game. It was about a month after the previous one and I still didn't totally have a handle on the rules. It was the same match up as last time, but this time CJ played the Germans while I played the British.

The terrain and figures were again supplied by Fantastic Legions who GM'd our game alongside Brendan and Adam playing Sovs vs Americans on the other end of the table. The magic of 15mm.

CJ did a great job of laying out the terrain for the game.

Again my memory of what actually happened is pretty foggy. I feel like I pulled out a win, or at least a minor victory at the end with some sniper fire, but they were hidden and so didn't appear in the photos. Doh!

One thing I think I forgot to mention in the last comic is my use of the clone stamp in photoshop to clean up extraneous stuff in the pictures. I used it more heavily here to clean up table edges and game aids/dice so that they didn't distract from the action. I may do a side by side comparison post at a later date.

Any way, please enjoy.

Short and sweet.

I've been looking at more digital art techniques and videos on youtube. So I might be getting crazy with some backgrounds, who knows?

I'm thinking the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game: Battle Companies stuff is up next, but I haven't migrated it over to the new computer yet.

I also need to get back to actual hobby, not digital hobby. The important thing is I'm having fun, I guess.

Keep finding joy in the process.

Later.

Expand the Beach Head - Chain of Command

 Hi All,

Still alive, just not been in much of a hobby mood. Still working through old games. This one was again with Fantastic Legions back in September of last year.

Again all of his terrain and figures.

We played in 15mm.

I left this one too long and don't have a clear memory of all the events of the game. Hopefully it is an enjoyable read none the less.

Enjoy.

It's an interesting system and I think it produces a good game. My 15mm Sovs are still half painted, but we moved on to Middle Earth so there's no rush.

I'll have another game of this next before we get to that.

Happy hobbying.

Vassal, VSQL and The Guards Counter Attack

Well I got the first Squad Leader Scenario set up.

For some reason the picture I saved from Vassal is showing a lot of extra white space around the game board. Next time I'll crop the image better or play around with it some before I upload it.

You can download the Vassal Squad Leader Module here, they just came out with a new version on Jan 1st.

I had a minor freak out when I opened my Squad Leader and Cross of Iron Boxes and couldn't find the game boards. Further delving in the games closet found that I had stuffed the boards in my ASL boxes, Yanks and Beyond Valor. I'm not sure at present where my ASL rules binders are.

The biggest impetus to getting a game in is that I have no recollection of the rules. Once that is done we shall see. I've also done some quick math and it looks like one could play this scenario on a roughly 5ft by 3.5ft table if the hexes are 4" across. My impulse 1/72  order came in and I have some PSC Germans and Russians whom could be pressed into service shortly.

One thing I still need to sort out for SLiM is if the boxes I have will be enough, and how to differentiate between light, medium and heavy machine guns.

That is a subject for another post I think.

Cheers.

In memory of John Hill

As I am sure many of you already know, John Hill passed away on January 12th.

He may have been best known for authoring Squad Leader and Johnny Reb. I have to say that, although I played quite a bit of Squad Leader as a teen and twenty something, I never paid attention to who the game designers were of the various games I played. Reading through Mr. Hill's titles is like reading through a history of Wargaming in the US.

Through my interest in ACW history and gaming, which has suffered greatly from my short attention span, I was made aware of this tribute issue of "Charge!" magazine. It's free, by the way.

I had already decided that I wanted to push Squad Leader, and Squad Leader in Miniature (SLiM) to the head of the gaming queue. After skimming the tribute issue I also ordered Across a Deadly Field and received it the next day.

So far it looks pretty good. Impressive photos and illustrations that one comes to expect from Osprey. Another feature of these rules is that they try to give you tables for scales from 6mm - 28mm and ways to play with either rectangular or square based troops, taking two or three bases as a regiment.

Anyway, I hope that you will find the tribute magazine interesting and perhaps rekindle your interest in one of Mr. Hill's classic games, or even try out his latest.

I'll have more about the painting challenge, and maybe my review of 2014 and plans for 2015, coming up.

Follow up on Valiant WW2 1/72

Well I did a search for "valiant miniatures review" and a bunch of stuff came up. The three most relevant to this discussion are The Miniatures Page [TMP], Elianto e i Mondi Alterei, and Miniatures.de

The TMP posts started in 2007 and it is pretty long (3 pages). The comments start by saying they are BIG! and talk abut 23-24mm. flakmaus gives a pretty in depth comparison with 20mm ranges that I am not familiar with. He says these are all around 21-22mm. {I will note here that when I buy figs I try to stick with the sets that are reviewed to be 24mm on PSR}. christot has a link to a photobucket gallery here which I missed on the first read through and I think may be pay dirt for this discussion.

Fantassin - Valiant - Elheim w/ slotta, from christot

Further on towards the bottom of the first page is a reply from Julian of Valiant Miniatures that basically states that they feel 24.3mm is the scale average height of a man in modern times. I totally agree, but fat lot of good that does me if my other figures are not that height.

Mondi Alterei is basically a review of the German boxed set. A good description of the contents and picture of the sprue. The box art is different and, although good, is not as enticing as the painted figure art I saw yesterday. This also seems to be a review of an item he was given by the manufacturer, for what it's worth.

Lastly miniatures.de. This is very in depth, down to the scale of the individual weapons for the British Tommy box. Basically they state that Valiant is incompatible with ESCI, Hasegawa, Italeri and Revell. They say that the weapons range from 1/60 to 1/50 in scale and the heads are more like 1/27.

ESCI - Valiant - Revell from miniatures.de

So here is my take on it. If you are getting into Rapid Fire and don't have any figures it looks like it would be a good solution to get some nicely detailed and inexpensive figures that are in preset amounts you need for the game. If you already have any other 1/72 figures it looks like the Valiant figures will dwarf them. You can do basing tricks to match the height but I think the girth issues bother me more. Unless you don't mind having a significant portion of your forces look like Jaws from the Bond movies (Richard Kiel).

So a shame really because I think that they are quite nice looking, but the incompatibility issue has me holding off for the moment. I have some IMEX Billy V US and Germans. Does anyone know anything about the Plastic Soldier Company 1/72 figures?

[EDIT]

Der!? Found the plastic Soldier Review listing for Valiant here, most sets get high marks but are listed at 25mm and up for size. Not sure why I didn't see it the other day. Plastic soldier company here get high marks as well but are sized at 23.5mm. So fit in with ESCI, Revell etc.

New (to me) WWII in 1/72

As I was eating breakfast this morning and trying to avoid real life by, what else, surfing for 1/72 plastic figures. I came across a manufacturer I had never heard of before, Valiant Miniatures. They seemed to be made for Rapid Fire, a rule set that I've stumbled across previously but don't really know much about.

Anyhow the sculpts look really nice but what really got me was the box art. It's of painted figures! Who'd of thunk it? Very close to impulse buying from one of my suppliers, Mega Hobby here.

(Whoa! Major freak out as a bug was crawling on my neck while I typed. Blood pressure back to normal.)

So I'll check over at Benno's and see if anyone has the 411 on these. There is nothing at PSR.

From http://www.valiantminiatures.com/

Just wish they had Soviets.

[Edit]

A search on Benno's here didn't turn up a whole lot of information. The posts start around 2010 and the main comments I can see are that they are "large" and of "cartoon" proportions. I'll have to delve further.

Make your own Hogan's Heroes set up.

Some one on the solowargame group for yahoo was asking about some set up that they had seen at a convention showing a WWII German POW camp. They were looking to use it for some Post Apoc buildings.

Turns out they are a free download of paper buildings from Ebob Miniatures here.

Nice buildings with some good detail. I think they are in 28mm scale, but not 100% sure.