Operation Overlord

So, back on the 6th of June - which should give you some idea of my turnaround for this blog, we at the Bristol Vanguard had a game day focussing on the D-Day landings.

We had three boards, one representing the airborne landings, one the later battles in shore, and one, the landings themselves.

Normandy, where the beaches are fine...

A bridge. Pegasus not included

Meanwhile, in the future...

I, obviously, got tasked with kicking the sleeping Germans out of their billets very early in the morning, and to this end played a Seize and Hold mission from the Normandy Battles book.

I don't have many pictures of the battle itself, but it was a very close thing. I had to advance against Fearless Veteran SS occupying the only buildings on a mostly empty board, after most of my force - against the laws of probability - decided to turn up on the opposite side of the board from my pathfinder.

I moved quickly in the darkness and launched what I thought were some prudent assaults under the cover of night, quickly gaining a foothold near one of the objectives.

Setup on the right. My forces forced to attach the more heavily defended strongpoint.

On the left, a single platoon left to handle the 'weak' strongpoint, which none the less had two MG's in it.

The actions quickly ground to a halt as my troops were stopped in the open by machine gun fire, and unable to assault such heavily defended positions (even under the cover of darkness) dug in (or in one notable case, failed to, repeatedly).

My opponents heavy armour turned up and made a nuisance of itself, until wiped out by some lucky fire from my 6pdrs.

In the end, I wiped out all his support elements leaving him to fire at my dug in troops with small arms, while my artillery dropped barrage after barrage on his positions, until one objective cleared...

Seriously we must have played 30 rounds or so just trading small arms and 75mm howitzer fire...

... and the Tetrarchs rolled in for the win

Despite my uninspired victory, things went even less well for the allies on the other two tables. In the future, some British armour was junked by Panthers, and some very lost Soviets, unsupported by specialised landing equipment, and carried by the worlds worst landing craft (it took something like 3 turns for them to unstick) got machinegunned off the beachers. 

Overall a 2-1 victory for the Axis.

Everyone had fun though and the proceeds went to charity, so in the end are we not all winners?

It was especially great to have an operation specific theme event that worked so well. The organisers are to be congratulated, and indeed have been, profusely. They probably don't need any more...

Thing a Week 8

More things!

This time it's the Renault R35, which means that I finally have a legal minimum strength Early War army.

I think they're a slight improvement over the Char B1's, mostly because I thinned the Devlan Mud I used for "detailing" at the end.

The plan is now to accelerate through the Across the Dead Earth band, in order to get them to a playable state.

Here's some pics.

 

The company command vehicle

Thing a Week 7

So I've finally cleared the yari rabbits and the Char B-1 bis' off the painting table. I even got some decals on them.

Have some pics.

I have no current use for these guys. Furry mutant warband?

So if you know anything about the marking scheme for Char B-1's you'll notice that I screwed the platoon markings hard.

I only read the paragraph regarding special markings for Char B-1's after I'd marked them up and applied the melty decal overcoat. The only way to get them off now would be the take the paint off too, and to be honest, platoon marking debacle aside, I'm really quite please with the way they turned out.

Yet more Across the Dead Earth Goodies

So the latest set of figures from the boys at Across the Dead Earth just arrived (and by just, I mean about a month ago, but I've been busy!) and they are great.

I'm not joking, these are the best yet. The details great, the moulds are clean, and overall they really square a lot better than the vaguely cartoonish sculpts being produced at the start. Even the old guy with the assault rifle is pretty nifty.

So yeah, no complaints whatsoever... Nope... None whatsoever...

Pfft! Who am I kidding? What is that thing on her head, the cow lick from hell? Can you imagine the metric tonnes of hair gel it must take to keep that think up? She looks like Wakka from Final Fantasy!

Luckily, the one blemish on an otherwise spotless group is easy to get rid of. Now if only I could find my cutters...

Paintathon

So the weekends over, and while it was fairly relaxing and productive I can officially pronounce the Paintathon a miserable failure. All I managed to so was put detail on the Tanks and the rabbits, and I'm not entirely sure that I'm happy with either of them.

Et voila...

The rabbits in particular were supposed to be a gift for someone, but they're simply not good enough. I've never painted anything like them before, and while they're tabletop standard, they're certainly not gift quality.

I'll post some close up images of the tanks once I've got decals on them.

No progress was made on the AtDE band.

I think it's just time to accept, once and for all, that I'm a phenomenally slow painter.

More Across the Dead Earth goodies and Paintathon

Some more Across the Dead Earth goodies showed up yesterday. For a moment I thought it was the remainder of my Spectre: Operations Kickstarer, but then I clocked the lack of dinky boxes.

These ladies are very different to the first three gangs that turned up. Either the sculptors style has evolved or there's a new sculptor in town.

New figures compared against the old ones.

They're so different, that if I showed them to a third party I'm pretty sure they'd say they were from different ranges. They're much finer (for lack of a better word) sculpts than their forerunners. I'm not a scale nerd, however, and I'm not complaining, I like the new figures. They have a more realistic aesthetic, especially when it comes to the guns (there's a couple of what I think are really well realised M14s) and there's some great detail, except on the faces, which seem to have lost some detail when compared to previous figures.

From left to right, Fetish Nurse, Lady Thor, Cara Loft, Random Corset Woman and Handless Sniper

Unfortunatly the women seem to have swapped cartoonishly large guns for cartoonishly large breasts - not that Skylar was under-endowed... They've also contracted my least favourite post-apocalyptic trope, that thing where the apocalypse happens and suddenly everyone without a Y chromosome suddenly feels the urge to get their kit off and survive the harsh environment in hot pants and crop tops. Fetish Nurse is even wearing heals.

Mind you, if this is your thing, then these are the best figures of their kind I've seen. Not only are they actually more tasteful - most of the girls and gun figures around seem to just plump straight for bikinis - as I mentioned earlier, they're better sculpts than those I've seen in their genre. Lady Thor is also my favourite miniature from Dead Earth so far.

Onto what I am terming Paintathon. I've got tomorrow off, and I plan to spend as much time as possible clearing my painting queue.

Here's what it looks like now

 I've got all of tomorrow - gym and food aside. I'll also do some painting over the weekend, but the main challenge is to get as much done tomorrow as possible.

Challenge 1 - The 15mm Char B1's at the top right. Everything except decals and varnish - the decals are on their way.

Challenge 2 - The yari rabbits at the bottom left. Everything.

Challenge 3 - As much of the AtDE band at the top left as possible - clothes and flesh base colours

I think this will be as far as I can get, but if not:

Challenge 4 - The 15mm R35's at the centre right same rules as the Char B1's

Challenge 5 - Finish base coats for the Urban War Syntha in the centre

Bonus Round - Sculpt a flag onto the bonnet of the 15mm half track (it's been captured - they don't want to be bombed by the RAF)

Bonus Round 2 - Put base coat on the 1:144 Hurricane, centre top

See you tomorrow!

Everything wrong with Across the Dead Earth's Riot Shields (In Five Minutes or Less)

I mentioned in my original review of Across the Dead Earth that riot shields contribute a fair amount of cheese to the game. In fact, if abused properly they can really break the game.

Let me lay some groundwork first. The rules as written appear to confuse riot shields with ballistic shields. The former are strong but lightweight plastic shields used by riot police to hold back protesters and deflect missiles such as bricks, bottles and petrol bombs. They are not, by and large, designed to stop bullets, especially not rifle rounds. Ballistics shields, on the other hand, are less shields in the traditional sense, and more like mobile cover.

The rules appear to confuse the two, leaving us with a shield large and strong enough to stop bullets, while light enough to be wielded effectively in melee. And at 10 points its a steal.

This is mostly because of a convergence of several rules.

1. Weapons may be switched freely at any time
2. You can dual wield shields
3. The bonus vs range attacks stacks with cover

Admittedly, these are less rules, and more omissions on the part of the designers, but again, unless you come to a gentlemans agreement with your opponent, the game can quickly become broken as follows...

At range: The Normandy Beach Pillbox

Take 2 riot shields and a ranged weapon of your choice. For the authentic effect take an LMG, but a sniper rifle or missile launcher will do, if you want range or to impersonate a tank. Sit yourself in heavy cover. During your turn blaze away at the enemy. When you take fire, switch to your shields for a +7 cover bonus. You don't even need the Touche* feat, as it only applies to defending with two melee weapon, not gaining passive bonuses from them. This will make you practically untouchable. As there doesn't appear to be an 'automatic hit on a 12 rule' as there is for wounding, this means that you would need a base to hit of 5 or less, which basically no weapon has, and even then, the distribution curve would keep you safe.

If you feel like going mobile you can up sticks and saunter around the battlefield with a still potent +4 modifier vs ranged attacks.

In melee: The Boss Battle

Again, take 2 riot shields and whatever melee weapon takes your fancy. I'd suggest 2 Saw Edged Swords and the Touche** feat if you feel like cheesing to the max, a chainsaw if you cant bring yourself to work out exactly what a Saw Edged Sword is supposed to be.
 Find yourself a victim, hammer them with your melee weapons, the switch to riot shields to take the return attack with a whopping +10 parry modifier. Pretend to be Pyramid Head as you invincibly render your opponents down to their constituent body parts.

The Quick Fix

Luckily these situations can be houseruled fairly easily:

1. Shields cannot be dual wielded
2. The bonus vs. ranged weapons does not stack with cover
3. To claim the bonus vs. ranged weapons from a shield you may not use a 2h weapon in the same turn (unless subsequently engaged in melee)
4. At the start of melee choose your load out. You may not change weapons until the melee is resolved (i.e. your figure is no longer in base to base contact with any standing enemy models)

The above should fix the egregious cheese. I would personally add the following rules

1. The bonus vs. ranged weapons granted by shields does not apply to firearms

This makes shields more realistic as any shield light or small enough to be used as a shield could not protect against any serious small arms fire.

If I was feeling adventurous, I'd separate out riot and ballistic shields, creating the latter as a new rare item, with bonuses in buildings and enclosed spaces, but that limited the wielder to one handed weapons.

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time, when I will have done some bloody painting for a change!

*AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!
**AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!