The Russians are coming...The Russians are coming!!!

Yep.  The Hungarian in me is cringing in fear and dread.  I have been very busy lately.  Since I have been out of work due to a car accident I supplement  that desire to work with painting and modeling. 

I have some of my DbA Greek Athenian stuff done.  The beauty of this game is that you only need 12 stands to have an army.  I suppose I need to add a few camp / stowage bases.  My goal for now is to finish these hairy, oily Greeky guys.  When I finish we can all have a big barbecue with food and ouzo liquor.  
So far I have a stand of light horse and a Psiloi bowmen stand completed.   Psiloi is a fancy word for a group of Skirmishers.   Those horsemen will double as a horse archer stand in my DbMM Athenian force.  I know they have javelins.  Bows were supposed to be rare in this Era of Greek warfare.  I will try to use a suitable archer stand for the other units. 
I actually had a stroke of inspiration with my Greek cavalry.  The Athenian force uses Regular Cavalry Inferior.  It is abbreviated Reg Cv (I).  The game de bellis magister militium (DbMM) has a unique rating system for the 15 or 20 units in the game.   The are rated as regular or irregular.  It has to do with command and Control issues.
Units range from Spears, Pikes,  Blades, Bowmen, Psiloi and many more.    Some units cannot be irregular or regular due to type.   An example of this is warbands.  Warbands HAVE to be irregular.   Think of a bunch of frothing Wisconsiners screaming "We're going to dairy queen!".  That is the amount of control you could have over a warband.  There are different quality ratings for each regular or irregular unit.  They range from superior, ordinary,  inferior and fast.  They each have different effects in combat.  Fast moves more quickly but fairs worse in Combat.  Inferior are even more brittle and while cheap tend to crumble in combat.  Commit them at your own peril.  Superior are well, superior.  These guys know what matters most in life.

             "Crush your enemies.  See dem flee before you.  Hear de 
               lamentation of de wimmen".

I got a bunch of these Greek horsemen with the floppy hats and the spears.  The Athenian is able to take Reg Cv (I).  I did not have enough of the more heavily armed Greek cavalry for a Thessalian DbA force.  I decided to use the light horsemen as Cv inferior!  Greek horsemen in this period were rare and not Hungarians in the saddle.  I see that as the horsemen being unarmored and not well motivated.   They are not willing to commit to an engagement and are fairly skittish.
I got so many light horsemen in the army pack that I was afraid I would never use them.  Now I can field a Thessalian DbA force with 3 cavalry units and proxy them as Light horse (you get to pick 3 Cv units or 3 Lh units).  One unit gets to do triple duty.  They are light horse and cavalry units in DbA.  They are also Reg Cv (I) in DbMM.  Hooray.

I also have the first batch of Hoplites finished.  I am waiting to do the shields because I want to do all of them at once.   I have around 120 guys to paint.  This batch before you is 21 strong.  It took me all day to finish.  I should get faster once muscle memory sets in.

I have finally gotten around to painting my 3mm ww2 stuff.  They are mounted on 30mm x 40mm bases.  I find the shape of rectangular bases to be more pleasing to the eye than yucky old square bases.  This batch represents an almost complete early war Russian independent tank brigade.  I am missing a KV1 stand and the brigade command teams.  Each battalion had a kv-1 platoon, a t34 platoon and two platoons of t26s or bt-5/7 tanks.  Bear in mind that some units were in short supply of vehicle at the start of the war.  Some units had no tanks at all.  I would hate to have been one of those tankers.  I could probably substitute the kv1 stand for a t34 stand. 

I want to dispel the myth of German tank superiority.  When Germany launched operation Barbarossa in '41 they were deficient in the armor department.  The KV 1 tank was a monster for the Germans to handle.  The tank was almost unstoppable against the guns the German tanks had when they crossed the border.  As time went on German tanks were continually up gunned and improved.  In '43 the Panther was issued to front line units as a response for the t34 problem.  I consider this thr first real heavy German tank.  There were some Tiger tanks floating around in the early war but I think there were not enough of them to make a huge diffrence.   The workhorse of the German army was the Pz III.  It started the invasion with 37mm gun and went up to at least a higher velocity 50mm gun.  I think I went higher but for me I ignore the tank after the pz III J.  This was a good tank that accounted well for itself.  In the early war the Germans had to employ better training and doctrine to defeat the Russians.  Stalin really hurt the officer corps by purging all the good officers.  They were replace with politically sound but untested officers.  He also did away with vehicle radios.  Soviet tank doctrine was to button up all your hatches and watch the lead tank through the view scopes.  I guess they fired as they had time.  Tanks were seen by Stalin as nothing more than metal cavalry.  They drove across the field in giant waves hoping to overwhelm thr enemy.  This might account for why there were so many soviet tank losses. 

I do want to add some labels to more easily identify the units.  I feel like the stands pop.  It always helps to have quicker IDing of units. 

I also painted some 3mm trucks on 25mm circle bases.   Spearhead allows infantry platoons to be carried in trucks.   Once the infantry reaches a certain point they dismount and continue on foot.  In the rules the trucks go to the rear and the infantry is on foot for the rest of the game.  Instead of making infantry with trucks based together and stands with no trucks I decided to make the trucks attachments.  An infantry battalion has the trucks piggybacking on the infantry bases.    They give the infantry truck movement until the infantry takes Fire or dismounts.  Infantry mounted in armored fighting vehicles will have the half tracks mounts on the stand.   Those vehicle linger in the rear giving support with machine guns, etc.
I have not decided whether to mount support teams with trucks or do the attachment thing.  Their transport does not go away like Infantry transport. 
I am waiting on more bases.  I have a lot more 3mm Russian models to base.  

Thanks for watching.  I hope I was not to boring.  Please feel free to nicely correct me of any of my facts are wrong.

The last pic is my work cart.  I found this in the dumpster.  It was taped up.  I think someone moved and decided to toss it.  I wiped it down and use it all the time.  The misses likes it because i do not clutter the table with my stuff.

The Taiping rebellion "T 'uan Lien" part 2

This is the next installment in my Taiping Rebellion project.  These guys are local groups of militia that defended their specific region.   I believe that this would be the main enemy of the Taiping rebels early in the conflict. 

I imagine them as having some flags that they have hung on to for decades.  The flag with the character is the leader's banner.  Some units had a banner with their officer's first initial on it.  The first commander of the ever victorious army had his own banner with his first character in chinese.  Since I do not speak chinese this may not be a first  character.  I hope that a Chinese speaker will correct me before I make to many mistakes. 

I realize I may have set the bar to high because the peasant unit has three flags.  How many flags should an Imperial Chinese regular unit have?  I am in luck as each unit is battalion sized.  Each unit is actually 4 stands large.  This painted experiment is actually a quarter of the peasantry.  I think the "leader" unit can have an extra flag.   The other stands will probably have one or maybe two flags.  
The regular units will have more flags...maybe 4 or 5.  The more flags the better.  The Chinese loved flags.  The main tactic of the period was to wave the flags,  scream, bang on musical instruments really loud in order to spool the oppositon.  Apparently whole battle lines clashing in a bloody Melee was considered reckless.  The general rule of thought was that if you do not die you can fight again tomorrow.   It sounds cowardly to western minds but it made sense to the Chinese of the time.  It is considered better to be cautious then to throw lives away in futile assaults. 

That was not always the case.  The Taiping rebels had special black flags.  When these banners were flown the Taiping rebels would fight to the death.  This terrified the Imperial forces and they usually gave up the field. 

Even with the reluctance the projected casualties were only beaten by the ww2 scale of death. 

I plan on adding more stands in the near future.  I just need to finish my baccus 6mm Greek DbA army.  It is only 12 units but those Hoplites take time to paint. 

You can see them looming in the background base coated and menacing. 

The Taiping Rebellion "T'uan-lien" Part 1

I really find the Taiping Rebellion an interesting period of history.  This war occurred after the Opium Wars.  England went to war with China to ensure that the Chinese stayed addicted to Opium.  The Chinese government realized that England was doing that and tried to resist.  It ended very badly and caused unrest amongst the local peoples.  In 1846 a man by the name of Hung Hsiu-ch'uan claimed to be the younger son of Jesus.  He started writing and speaking about his visions and God's plan for China.  In 1850 his followers started fighting with the Imperial forces.  By the time to war ended 1866 it was estimated that 20-40 million people had died.  If this is true the Taiping Rebellion was second most bloodiest war being beaten by WW2.

I find this period interesting due to the unique weaponry and tactics involved.  There are masses of unruly Chinese mobs clashing wielding old rusty swords and spears.  There are black powder weapons that were antiques to the critical Western eyes of the time.  The British sponsored a mercenary company called the Ever Victorious Army.  It was led by an American until his death and then a Englishman by the name of Gordon.  This unit was trained in the Western way of fighting.  It did not always live up to it's name but the unit was generally successful.  The Imperialists and the Taiping forces gave no quarter to the enemy.  There is a lot of colorful uniforms and the Chinese love flags.  It allows for some great modelling opportunities.  Since this is a period that is not gamed very often I will have many opportunities to convert existing models.  And I have already started this.

Here is my first attempt at Taiping Infantry.  These are my T'uan-Lien soldiers.  They are common farmer militia.  My osprey book says that the soldiers wore coolie hats in the summer.  These are Vietnamese style coolie hats.  That detail will be really hard to pick out at 6mm.  I want to use Japanese Ashigaru for C'hin Dynasty troops.  They look very similar to the terracotta men that were from that period.  6mm is a great scale for conversions because some details can be covered or obscured.  That means more creativity for me!!!
I used GhQ's Viet Cong individual infantry.  I trimmed away the ak47's and the m16's (What?  Yeah, some of the guys had m16s) and the grenades from the soldier's belts.  It was a little tricky to do some of soldier's arms.  I believe that as I keep doing this I will find more creative ways to make the guys hold the spears.
For the spears I clipped a straight pin down to spear size and glued it onto the model.  I wanted to add some Ji style halberds but it was to hard to do with super glue.  That will have to wait until I get a sauder gun.  This unit has three flags.  One will be a dragon banner, another will be the leader's banner and a third one is there to round out the flags.  I just primed the models.  I look forward to painting them!

Dorothy's House....no curled up socks to be found!!

I have a lot of stuff to cover today.  I want to start with my 15mm terrain projects.  These two pieces sat around for a few months unfinished.  Nothing annoys me more than partially completed projects.  It seems lazy and impulsive to dive into an idea without completing it.  This first picture is my pig pen.  Wait a minute.  I am getting a head of myself.  I need to give credit to matakishi's teahouse.

http://www.matakishi.com/

He is strictly a 28mm man.  I took some of his stuff and converted it down to 15mm.  I also used a different medium for creating the pieces.  I believe it is unique enough that I am not copying him.  The first set of pictures are of my pig pen.  I do not have any pigs to put in the pen.  I guess the rebels have taken all the livestock away on previous raids.  I will be using this for my pseudo African conflicts.  If you look in the back ground you can see some other 15's and some of the colonial governments tanks.  I will do more with that in another post.

This is the barn house.  You can see the outhouse in the back where the colonial farmer drops deuces.  You may be wondering why I have American style buildings in Africa.  Well, I changed theaters after I made this stuff.  My colonial farmer studied in the US in college.  He was so struck by the rustic qualities of the South that when he got home he built a farm based on of that influence.

The next bit on the list.  I wanted to make some unique suppression markers for Spearhead.  When a unit is fired upon there is a chance for three things to occur.  It can be one of three things.  It could be nothing, a suppression or the destruction of the platoon's combat ability.  If a unit is suppressed you have to mark the unit.  This will cause to unit be unable to move or return fire until it rallies.  I made a bunch of explosion markers using circle bases, wire and tree flock.  I sprayed painted it black and then painted them to look like big explosions.  I am wary that the suppression markers are a little on the big side for 3mm.  The next few sets I make will be smaller in size.  I think these will be big 155 artillery barrages.  

My next thing is a very tiny side project.  I have some 1/6000 scale ww2 warships.  I love all things Italian about WW2.  The battle of Cape Spada is a small cruiser clash that occurred in the Mediterranean.  Two Italian light cruisers (Bartolomeo Colleoni and the Giovanni dalle Bande Nere) were chasing 5 British H class destroyers.  The destroyers lured the two cruisers into the range of the HmAS Sydney and a destroyer.  When the smoke cleared the Colleoni was sunk and the Bande Nere withdrew to safer waters.  I went out and picked up the ships for less than $20.  I am going to use the free rules Seekreig 4 to play the engagement.  Here is the scenario if you are interested in reading more http://www.ghqmodels.com/pdf/wwii_micronauts_scenarios/2.pdf.
At some point I would like to own the entire Italian navy.  It was on the smaller side in terms of numbers.  These ships paint up extremely fast.  If you look at the Sydney you may be able to see the naval camo on the hull.  The two Italian cruisers are in the last picture.  Italian ships were interesting with their top deck recognition.  I usually do not like to show models that are half painted.  People want to see painted models and not primed stuff.  I am moving this up the list for painting because it is a small side project.  I also plan on doing the Battle of River Plate.  It is a engagement of the German pocket battleship Graf Spee against 3 British cruisers.

This class of Italian light cruiser is called the Condoterri II.  There were 4 ships in the class.  The ship model had 4 series.  Each series were slightly different from each other.  In terms of guns they had 6 6" guns and 4 4" secondary AA guns.  These ships were fairly fast but were severely under armored.  I think the Italians based their ship designs on the premise that they would be attacking the French.  It would be neat to do a few hypothetical battles with French and Italian ships.

I have also started painting my DbA Athenian Hoplite force.  I am really happy to be getting started on that.  Stay posted for more news next week.

Athenians and Sumerianianianianianianianians

I have the start of two of my projects here.

The Sumerians were painted earlier in 2014.  The pikemen's spears were clipped off and replaced with cut down straight pins.  I used a thumb tack and poked a hole in the hands of the models.  I then stuck the pin into the hole and used super glue to hold it in place.

After the accident the pikemen had some of their spears knocked loose.  As you can see in the photo about half of the spears survived the collisions.  That proves to me the technique is pretty durable.  Notice the loose spear bits in the middle of the cutting board.  The models are Irregular miniatures.  I am missing the blade unit that the DbA 3.2 list requires.  That will have to happen in a later miniature purchase.  I will do either Assyrian Auxilia with spears or Hebrew Light/Medium Spearmen from Irregular.

Here is my Athenian force.  It is ready to be primed and painted and flocked!  I used Baccus 6mm Greeks for this.  I bought a Greek army pack for $40.  The pack will give me this Athenian army AND a Thessalian force.  That book the models are resting on is the DbMM army book #2.  

I clipped the 4 man strips that Baccus casts their models on to make the Irregular spear units that are listed in the army book.  You can see the thin metal bases with a few figures glued to it.  I always put a few figures onto the base and the rest of them are on wooden sticks.  After everything is painted I will glue the hoplites to the bases.  I like DbA as it gives you a little taste of an army without breaking the bank.  The other nice thing is that I have a decent start on a Later Greek Hoplite Athenian (or Thessalian) army.  

Plans are starting to take shape... 2015 painting goals!

I am still recovering from the car accident we suffered from in December.  I have made some more solid wargaming plans.

I am doing Spearhead WW2 in 3mm.  My addiction for 1:1 scale wargaming has taken over.
Speaking of that I decided to do 6mm WW2 with the Schwere Kompas set of rules.  The designer is a nice guy.  I am modding the rules so that each base is a team and the teams link up to for a squad.  The rules usually call for a stand to be a squad.  One inch is 100 yards in the game.  I want to make it 3 inches for 100 yards.  The focus is much more of a platoon scale than the company level.

DbA is still the same.  I have my Greeks and my Sumerians need their spears re-pinned.

I have a little set of modern rules called no end in sight.  I am going to do individually based 15mm models.  My theater is a pseudo African country at some point in the 60s or 70s.  I am taking a lot of artistic licensing with my unit choices.  I am excited to see how it all turns out. The rules are great too.  Check them out at wargames vault.

And finally my last project is historical in nature.  It is the taiping rebellion that took place from 1851-1866.  I am still in the research phase because I know nothing about Chinese history.  I could go into more detail but I will refrain.  It is very interesting.  I will say that most of the armies involved used hand weapons and a smattering of old Matchlocks.   compare this to the civil war going on in North America at the same time.

Here are my painting goals for 2015 in order of priority:

3mm Russian early war (this should be fast as 3mm paints quickly. It is really the basing that is time consuming).

DbA Sumerians
DbA Greek Athenians

6mm DaK platoon w/ support

15 mm African cold war

Random 6mm and 15mm terrain projects
(Terrain making never ends)

Backburner=
Converting GHQ Viet cong soldiers into chinese infantry in coolie hats with bamboo spears.

I will try to post at least every other week with updates.

PS  I am not paid to plug any of these games.  I just like them!

Rules, rules and more rules

I have become a rules caddy.  Life has prevented me from really getting any gaming in.  I did almost finish painting a 6mm SumerIan DbA force.  The car accident I was in messed up the pikemen's pikes.  I fractured my right hand in two places and sustained a traumatic Brain injury.  My wargaming hobby has been put on hold for the last month.  The only thing I can do is read rules.
It has given me some perspective on gaming goals.  Typically I have at leat three gaming ideas at once.   One of them is always ww2.  I have gone through several government sanctioned streamlining programs.   I made a corporate decision to only deal in 6mm models.  I gave myself some political breathing room by allowing some kick backs in the 15mm arena.  But for the most part I am solely a 6mm man.

DbA is going to be a keeper for me.  I was introduced to it by a really nice guy at a hobby town UsA.  I loved the simplicity of the rules.  I had plans for a Mongolian army in 20 mm but we parted wayS.  The great thing about 6mm is that you can build a force for $20 - $60.  My 6mm SumerIan army pack from irregular was about $35.  It gave me enough models to make the SumerIan force and a good start on an Elam force and a Zagros highlander army.
I also have a baccus 6mm Greek army pack in the mail.   That will hopefully give me a later hoplite Thessalian and an Athenian army.  I have plans for a Theban and Spartan force.  I want to eventually branch out into DbMM.  That is a great set of rules.

Ww2 has several options. I have some 15mm plastic soldier company American infantry.  I also have some ghq German DaK infantry, heavy weapons and a few half tracks.  I could go the bolt action rules in 15mm or Crossfire in 6mm route.  I have gotten into the close combat pc game model lately.  I used to play close combat 3 all the time back in the day.  Naturally I want to reflect that in my wargaming endeavors.  The 1:1 scale is definitely what i am into.  I saw someone do flames of war in 6mm.  It looked really cool.
The more i consider this decision the more perplexed i becoMe.  I like Crossfire but bolt action is a really nice system.  All of the rules and the supplements are pretty cheap in the Amazon Kindle bookstore.  I bought the Italy and Axis supplement.  I consider myself a Italian ww2 history buff.  The interest started when the original Flames of war italian army book came out.  I am not sure what intrigued me but i have kept the fires burning.  I do not know everything about Italy during the war.  I just enjoy it aS a subject.  The supplement has a infantry squad based on the  Italian navy'S marines.  I had no idea Italy had these San Marco marines.
I have to decide to do Crossfire or Bolt Action.  My basING plans for 6mm are on the team level.  One small FoW base would have 3 DaK infantry and one LmG gunner.   6 bases of these guys and three pennies with 2 models on them is a platoon.  the penny bases are squad leaders.  So two bases of 4 men and a penny base with two men make one squad of 10 men.
Bolt Action is based differently.  One model would be mounted on one penny.  The BaR team is a bigger 3 man base.  My bazooka team is mounted on a team base too.  My 2nd Lt is on a 25mm base.  This is to set him apart on the table.  The general rule is infantry men are on single bases.  Weapons teamS are based together.
I wish I had photos. Given my injuries I am unable to do photos.

To be honest I like both rule sets for different reasons.

My next (and final) rules decision is Sci fi.  I like epic  Armageddon and dirtside 2.  I am leaning more towards dirtside 2 because the basing is by team and a unit of infantry is a squad.  Epic'S units become more brittle the smaller they are.  I always wanted to leave a detachment behind to defend something.  Anything separated from the main unit body is destroyed. You could house rule this but the fact is a four stand unit will be ripped to shreds.  Dirtside 2 lets you leave a squad behind with no loss in combat power.
Epic has no system to make units.  Dirtside lets you design every unit. One thing I look for in a Sci fi or fantasy game is the ability to create your own units.
I have created my own Sci fi universe.  I based all the factions off of the epic army lists.  I will say they have no comparison with their 40k brethren.  I looked at the army lists and made up my own stories.  I think it is fairly unique.   That will be for another post.

There you have it.  I really like ww2 and ancients as wargaming eras.  Secondary eras include Sci fi, fantasy and black powder / horse and musket (30 years war, American War of Independence and the French and Indian wars).  I am glad I came to terms with wargaming periods.