Across the Dead Earth - Wave 2 Biographies

Charlie and Jaeger are long term civilian associates of the rump of 8th Battalion MI. For obvious reasons the military group picked up its own band of camp followers. These two are all the remains.

"Jaeger"

Jaeger has insisted on being called Jaeger ever since joining the Battalion in it's declining years. No one knows what his real name  is, except possibly Tavitok, who claims it's "Clive". This, along with his trench-coat, sunglasses and katana all help disguise the fact that he has no real personality.

Stats
Grunt, Scimitar - 33pts

Charlie

Charlie was the irritating child of one of the men of 8th Battalion MI and got swept up into the camp followers as the formation settled into its new role as a sometimes mercenary group. Her parents were killed shortly thereafter, an event she seems to have recovered from fairly well. She has grown into, what Tavistok, at least, considers an irritating teenager, but one seemingly well adapted to the Post-Fall world.

Stats
Grunt, Pistol - 30pts 

Thing a Week 11

And here is wave 2 of my Across the Dead Earth band; here the two civilians who were already associated with the remnants of the 8th MI Battalion.

Biographies and stats to follow.

I'm actually quite happy with the flesh on the figure on the left. The figure on the right got pretty badly botched, but I think I managed to save it.

Across the Dead Earth - Wave 1 Biographies

These three men are the core of the Across the Dead Earth group I am assembling for our putative campaign. No doubt it has been replaced of late for obvious reasons, but hopefully, Xander and I will be able to return to it once All That Remains is in a good shape.

Military Intelligence 8th Battalion (reserves) was one of the last units to be called up to police the streets of Fall Era Britain. While many men did not report to their posts - for various reasons - these men heeded the call to arms, for what it was worth, and were in uniform as civilisation as we knew it went through its final death throws.

During the aftermath, as other men made their way home to loved ones, a motley collection of men found themselves alone and coalesced under DC's command. Following their military instincts, they did what they could to survive, living off the land, providing protection for other survivors, raiding groups they found to be... acceptable targets. As the situation stabilised they found work hiring themselves out as mercenaries to the new settlements, again usually as a protective force, but sometimes to break up raider gangs and other assorted malcontents.

These three are all the remain of the original cadre, others having died or settled in the new communities of this new world.

DC, Starling and Tavistok find themselves at a crossroads on their new lives - twisting in the wind - unable to settle and unable to let go of the past. So they agreed, one last contract, and then, something different.

"Captain" DC

DC - formerly Captain - when not commanding his men in the field, is a quiet, withdrawn man, a far cry from the imposing figure Tavistok remember stalking the corridors of the barracks. Something seems to be driving him, however, the face of a man in an ageing polaroid he keeps in his breast pocket.
Now in his late forties, DC finds the melancholy of his existence settling heavily upon him. 

Stats
Grunt, Leader, Pistol, Contract - 65pts

"Lieutenant" Starling

James Starling - formerly Lieutenant - is a gentle soul. Two tours in Iraq and the crumbling of civilisation failed to crush him, but his attempts to lift the souls of his comrades since The Fall have not been well received. These days he sticks to heeling peoples physical, rather than psychological wounds.
Now in his late thirties, Starling is thinking of finding a settlement that might benefit from skills and appreciate his less pessimistic view of this new world, and hopefully persuading his companions to settle with him.

Stats
Grunt, Shotgun - 35pts

"Lieutenant" Tavistok

Richard Tavistok - formerly Lieutenant - rounds out this triptych of thoroughly dysfunctional ex-military survivors by displacing his feelings with copious amounts of sarcasm. Those who remember him from before The Fall say he hasn't much changed.
Now in his early thirties, Tavistok lives from day to day, trying not to think to much about the future, and what it once held.

Stats
Grunt, Rifle - 35

Painting British MTP

I'm quite proud of the camouflage I painted on the first wave of my Across the Dead Earth band.

I wasn't able to find a guide I completely liked, but I was trying to replicate the simply gorgeous paint job found here.

I used the paint colours found there, with the exception of the Dark Sand.

I actually tried three slightly different styles; the below is the scheme I followed for my favourite result.

The figure was based with Russian Uniform and then had 'reverse patches' painted onto it with Military Green

Streaks - rather than patches - of English Uniform were painted on top

Patches of Khaki were added, then little squiggles of Iraqui Sand,trying not to overdo the latter.

Finally squiggles of German Camo Black Brown are added

Probably better seen from the rear on this figure

The others were approached in slightly different ways.

My commander - the first attempt - started with 'splotchier' base colour patches, and I attempted to find a place for the Dark Sand, which I think made his trousers too light.

With my sniper, I tried a scheme reminiscent of my Flames of War Para's, in that three main camouflage colours were all painted on top of the first, which itself covered roughly 75% of the base colour.

Like so

Like I should be writing painting tutorials anyway. If you have a good tutorial for British MTP, please share it in the comments.

Thing a Week 10

I have spent the last two weekends in the Deep Nerd.

Last weekend I spent having the first "project meeting" for All That Remains then the next day I was at IPMS Thornbury, where I picked up some spikey death worms and some 15mm ruins.

This weekend was spent doing basically nothing but painting, and my output was so prodigious that I completed a whole 3 models that I'd already started and completely painted 2 others.

I just had to get something out of the paint queue. The thing has been completely inundated by Highland Spring Water Clansmen and something has to give.

So have a pic of my first wave of Across the Dead Earth warband.

This photo is perhaps a little over exposed, but I'm fairly happy with these guys, apart from the flesh. I think I really need a good tutorial for flesh.

I'll post individual biographies for all the characters later this week, as well as the scheme I used for the camouflage, as I never found one I particularly liked.

The figure in the middle has a coloured base due to a comment made by a friend I was playing an introductory game of AtDE with. He said that it would be a great help if the different classes had some way to distinguish themselves.

Here, I've coloured my Leader's base yellow; running on Star Trek rules for now - not that I know much about Star Trek.

All That Remains - Big Reveal!

Time to let the cat out of the bags methinks. I'm putting some actual effort behind trying to make the post-apocalyptic rule set formerly known as Aftermath, a reality.

I've got a project blog and have teamed up with Xander to put this together and hopefully take it to Salute next year.

I'm not going to give many details here as I've given a pretty good summary in the About page on the new collaborative project blog, go check it out!

I probably won't do much cross posting, if any, so if you want to stay in the loop, you should follow All That Remains.

BAOR driven back by Soviet armour

MoD Spokesman: Challenger not as OP as previously thought.


NOTE: This post might make more sense if you've read this thread.

Today, Challengers and support elements from the BAOR were driven back by a division strength Soviet armoured formation.

The local commander was apparently overconfident in the ability of the new tanks and broke from the standard doctrine of waiting in a gunline, and went "for a cheeky T-72 hunt."

British troops are said to be regrouping at a second phase line.

Images have been coming through from our European correspondent.

Soviet armour is reported to be advancing in force

 

The local commander was, unfortunately, surrounded and destroyed by surprisingly nimble T-72s

 

Rear echelon units were also caught up in the Soviet advance.

I had to tun these photos through 3 filters to get this effect. First they were taken with a programme called Camera 2 using it's 1980's setting, then the top two were run through a programme called Glitchr and finally through Androids own photo editor to add the frame. It's not exactly a slick process, and I may not bother in the future.

As for the game itself, both Stu and I had fun, Stu no doubt more-so because he one. I definitely made some grave tactical errors, but a turn of appalling shooting should have salvaged things for me, id my return fire hadn't been equally appalling.

Challengers are not invincible and Stu's rapid advance and quick gamble with his T-72B's placed him behind my front armour in 2 or 3 turns.

A few metagame elements probably also helped. At this scale the units are much smaller but the terrain footprint (especially buildings - admittedly we used Epic buildings) is the same as 15mm. This meant it was relatively easy to hide entire platoons behind a single building in the centre of the board.

The rules need a review, and possibly a few hotfixes, but I think they'll certainly tide us over until Battlefront stumps up Team Yankee. It certainly will be interesting to see how thing stat up in the official rules compared to this homebrew.

For the record we used normal distances, so we were essentially playing Flames with smaller units. We agreed that this felt natural.