PSC Great War Infantry

Another Borg system spin off: The Great War 

(click on the pix to enlarge)

As sexy as she is, this is not that Borg...

A long awaited game, I couldn't wait to give it a try

Everything you need to get that WWI flavor
Commands and Colors-style!

The Brits

The Huns

Painting production in full swing

Hard lesson learned: do not use hot glue gun on plastic soldiers 
because removing them from the nail after painting becomes
problematic and difficult ("Arrrrgggghhhhh!" I yelled in frustration)

Unfortunately, the glue adheres to the plastic and
is difficult to trim. This was not an issue
with metal figures. DOH!

Consequently, the bases aren't flat as intended. Luckily
these figures stand up well on a Hexon tile because of
the static grass

The Brits - nice poses and crisp figures

Ditto for the Huns

A little test on how they stand up on the Hexon tiles

Nice detail on these Brits

First Scenario Map to be replicated on Hexon 

I decided to go the easy route and just used sand to
outline the trenches. A quick, down and dirty
alternative to get that miniatures feel

An entrenched Hun machine gun team

A Hun mortar team

A Brit MG team

Standard Brit infantry with Grenadier ready to go 'over the top'

OwlCon 2012

Last weekend was our local gaming convention here in Houston: OwlCon. Held in beautiful Rice University this annual event is named after its mascot. This has been going on awhile and just celebrated it's 31st bday.

This year I decided not to work the con and sponsor an event. I just wanted to attend and play, play, play. So I walked around snapped a few pix and enjoyed myself tremendously.

Friday night was opening night where I got to play a Western skirmish game: Gut Shot.
They were testing our the latest expansion called 'Night of the Living Deadwood'
where humans and zombies went head to head with each other. Last thing standing.
Sorry, no pix of the actual table and minis. 

Meanwhile in another room of the con, a great game was being held in the
same time slot . I couldn't be in two places at once, gol darn it! Great table and minis.

Using Gaslight  rules this was a VSF (Victorian Sci-Fi) table filled with lots of eye candy. On the eve of WWI, it's a city fight circa summer 1914 where the Mahdist clash with Euro powers.

And walking thru the dealer's area I spied some Dungeon Stone. Pretty good stuff and made in Texas.

 

Aerodrome

Another great event GM'd by Brian Weathersby.

He never disappoints and I always love playing on his table. 

From the con catalog write up:

"It is April 1945, and Berlin is in ruins. As the Red Army advances into 

the heart of the Reich's capital, it is finding that the German defenders 

may not be numerous, but they have no shortage of determination and courage." 

Ambushed T34-85 by a Panther. 

Sunday was a major fleet action. The Battle of Calabria was brilliantly put on by
Stephen Kastensmidt using War At Sea minis and rules.

I did spend some time in the Steve Jackson room where I played and bought my own copy of Frag!

Sigh... Back to work.

Biplane Shoot

Last Saturday, my gaming buddy, Willy aka LTL Dad came over with his whole collection of Wings of War (WoW) to continue my campaign. Read all about it here on his blog: http://tacticalminiaturesgaming.blogspot.com/2010/08/wings-of-war-campaign-jasta-jil.html


Since he had both Allies and the Central Powers, we decided to lay them out on my table along with his 'to scale' hangar buildings (paper). Well, one thing led to another and voila! a photo shoot happened.

Allied Bombers and Fighters

Germans next.

Bolsheviks

A while ago I acquired some excellent Copplestone Castings of Bolsheviks for the purpose of gaming WWI (another romantic era I dabble in). Initially, I was captivated by Warhammer's Historical rules.  

Warhammer Historical Wargames: Rules for The Great War

I mean what's not to like? This is a beautiful rules book filled with great colored photos and maps that's truly inspiring and scenarios I'm itching to try. It's also a great painting reference and a must for any collection. 

However, I haven't tried this game since I've only completed a small unit without opponents. Now I'm thinking of using Flying Lead from Ganesha Games because of their simple but effective mechanics for skirmishing with no book keeping. But first I need some opponents (Germans, White Russians, Turks), a few additional units (I'm thinking 10-15 rank and file) and armored cars/vehicles (Copplestone has excellent models) for a small skirmish. 

From their Back of Beyond line: Bolshevik Officers and a Bolshevik Elite MG Team.

Dasbedanya!

New Kids on the Block, Part 3: Soviet Paras

A few years back I got into skirmishing after a much needed break from 15mm WW2 combat on the Flames of War (FoW) rules. I've been chomping at the bit at all the beautiful sculpts to be had in 25-28-30mm scales.

Bolshevik HMG officer by Copplestone Castings

Not to mention my aging eyes needing a break from the smaller scale. Of course, all this goes out the window since I've been immersed in micro if you've been following my recent posts. But then again, since I am a gamer, I tend to seesaw back in forth in terms of scale, genre and period. Which is another way to say that I'm ADD.

*SQUIRREL*

Boy, did I get my train of thought derailed in a hurry. Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah... back on track again regarding skirmishing in the larger scales. Guy at Montag's has a cool table layout of a generic middle eastern town complete with streets. This layout could be used for all sorts of large scale gaming and skirmishing. See my earlier post: http://thehistoricalminiaturist.blogspot.com/2010/04/al-qaeda-fedayeen.html that features this very table with my Al Qaeda. He's been adding more buildings, wrecks, concrete road blocks, the works.


They were doing all this to game with Dogs of War (DoW) who also has a line of figures by Devil Dog Design for Modern conflict in most settings but primarily urban: http://www.pacificskygames.com/products.html. Just scroll down to Devil Dog Design for their full line. 

I immediately gravitated towards the more colorful units: Soviet Paratroopers and Al Qaeda Fedayeen. My Fedayeen was featured in my earlier post: http://thehistoricalminiaturist.blogspot.com/2010/04/al-qaeda-fedayeen_16.html. So now it's the Paras turn.


Since DoW is played with four man fire teams or squads it seemed relatively simple to collect multiple nationalities and still be manageable with all my concurrent projects. Sound familiar? At any rate, here's my 'first' four man team.

Clam shell blister comes with torsos, assorted heads, arm and weapon sets for good variety.

One of my favorite and logical pick was the balaclava head reminiscent of ninjas.

My commander.

Support weapons: RPD and RPG

Black primered fire team.

The latest additions: 6 more figs! This time I added 3 more balaclavas.

The new pack of Paras came with only 1 type of head sporting an old style padded helmet from that WW2 tankers wore shown on the figure on the left. The other two figs were from a pack of generic forward observers. They are loaded for bear and outfitted really cool with Oakley sunglasses. I couldn't resist. 

To be continued...