Finally played my first game of Rapid Fire Reloaded.

On By diablocrusadeIn WW2Leave a comment

I started painting miniatures for this project this time last year and after a lot of painting I decided it was time to get some of the miniatures on the tabletop and roll dice.

I threw together a quick scenario. Somewhere in France late August 1944 Kampfgruppe Steiner a mixed bag of Fallschrimjager and Luftwaffe A/A units is tasked with holding rearguard position at a small village to give other German units the chance to retreat further west. In the meantime 7th Battalion, Hampshire Regiment, with tank support from Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, have been ordered to seize the village and its crossroads in preparation for further advances. Victory conditions were a German win if they still held the village after 10 turns anything else was a British victory.

I threw together some scenery from what I had ( I need to work on my 20mm scenery collection) and had at it. The Germans fought very badly (so many poor dice rolls) and broke on turn six. The only real highlight for the Germans was their 75mm A/T gun ambushing and destroying a Sherman on their first turn after that it was down hill all the way. The 88mm was the biggest culprit despite having plenty of shots it didn’t even manage to damage a single British tank.It was a really fun game though and once I got the hang of the rules the game flowed really well.

The Duke of Wybourne’s Winton Lancers.

On By diablocrusadeIn A Very British Civil WarLeave a comment

My first Royalist unit for my VBCW project. The Royalist army of South Wessex is based around regular military units based in barracks at Winchester ( KRRC and the Rifle Brigade) while these give the Royalists a core of well trained infantry they lacked cavalry for scouting and raiding. The 13th Duke of Wybourne a rich cad, and firm Royalist, offered to raise a unit of volunteer cavalry to support the Royalist cause in Hampshire. The Duke has designed a special, and very flashy, uniform for his cavalry unit. The same cannot be said of the men the Duke has recruited which are a mix of sociopathic aristocrats and the scum of the earth. In general the Duke’s men prefer raiding undefended Hampshire villages and robbing unarmed civilians to actually fighting for the Kings cause.

The miniatures are basically kitbashed from some left over plastic Napoleonic French lancers from Warlord Games. The heads, rifles and the officers pistol coming from a Warlord Bolt Action sprue and wargames Atlantic plastic WW1 British.

A Very British Civil War Project.

On By diablocrusadeIn A Very British Civil WarLeave a comment

It’s been a while since I lasted posted I haven’t been idle on the hobby front I’ve just been remiss on posting updates. After my Birthday haul from Entoyment in August I’ve been in full on new project mode. The new project being A Very British Civil War (VBCW). For those not in the know VBCW is an alternative history based around Edward the VIII choosing not to abdicate, marrying Mrs Simpson, the subsequent political fallout then sees the Government resign, the Archbishop of Canterbury split from the King and eventually Edward installing his friend (and Fascist) Oswald Mosley as Prime minister the resulting chaos ends in a late 1930s British Civil War.

I plan to use a modified version of Neil Thomas’s one hour WW2 rules (with some units from WW1 rules imported in) which means I need around 6-8 units per faction. I’m hoping to paint up three factions to represent local groups in Hampshire taking part in the Civil war. Royalists based in Winchester, Socialist/Communist forces in Southampton and Anglican forces under the bishop of Winchester in the countryside of eastern Hampshire.

The first faction I’ve been painting up are the Anglican league under the Bishop of Winchester and loyal to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Anglican forces are made up of 4 militia battalions forming two small brigades, a number of independent cavalry troops, an independent artillery company, a company of Ex royal navy sailors, some armoured cars, and the 4th company of the Canterbury Rifles sent by the Archbishop to protect the Bishop of Winchester. In addition every village and town in the area controlled by the Anglicans has set up Local Defence Volunteers (LDV) to defend their local area.

Below we have what I’ve painted up so far.

1. Command stand

2. Canterbury Rifles

3. Canterbury Rifles A/T section

4. Anglican Militia

5. Anglican Militia

6. Anglican LDV

Old Orcs

On By diablocrusadeIn Oldhammer2 Comments

A ong time ago I started a 2nd edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle Oldhammer project. The idea was to collect the original pre-slotta Perry sculpted Fantasy tribe/early C series orcs. In the end I had to add a few newer Kev Adams sculpted C series orcs and a few new oldhammer style orcs to finish the army.

This weekend I finally finished up the last miniatures for the Army and I’m calling it done. These last miniatures were three armoured orcs to add to a unit of armoured orcs, a unit of Orcs with crossbows and two wolf chariots (modern miniatures from Old school miniatures but with old citadel orcs as crew) two add to one I had already painted up.

At some point I will hopefully take pictures of the whole army together but for now here are the latest miniatures I’ve finished up.

Birthday Treat.

On By diablocrusadeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

It was my birthday recently, which happened to coincide with a short break down in Dorset with my wife. After spending a lovely couple of days around Dorchester I managed to convince my wife to stop off in Poole, on the way home, allowing me visit the New Entoyment store and spend my Birthday money.

When I was a wee lad, just starting out in wargaming, I could visit at least three model or hobby shops, that were within a bus ride of my home, as well as a Games workshop store and the factory shop of the venerable Miniature Figurines Productions (Minifigs). Sadly these days other than Games Workshop (sorry I’m not calling them Warhammer stores) I rarely find such shops and when I do they are normally small, musty places with limited stock. I miss the days of going to a hobby shop. Online shopping has it’s advantages but it doesn’t have the same thrill as going to a bricks and mortar shop. Given that when I spotted Entoyment in my goggle maps, and with birthday money burning a whole in my pocket, I thought it was worth checking it out.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Entoyment but turns out this place is pretty amazing. Without trying to sound like an advertisement if you are a gamer, and happen to be in Poole, you should definitely check this place out.

The shop is based in a warehouse type facility on an industrial state and it’s big. In the shop they have a gaming area full of tables, a card game area, a roleplaying room, a painting area, a cafe and a very large retail area.

in the retail area you can find historicals, Fantasy and sci-fi from all the big names Perry, Wargames Atlantic, Warlord, Gripping beast, Victrix, Games Workshop plus a whole load of others and a book corner full of historical and Roleplaying books.

Basically I was like a child in a sweet shop. After buying my wife a coke and KitKat, to go with her book, to keep her entertained, I set about spending the next hour blowing my birthday money. I got some Epic Hail Caeser to go with my Wargames Illustrated free sprues of celts. I also invested in a bunch of Wargames Atlantic and Bolt Action stuff (for a little VBCW project I want to do) and left a very happy lad. If I’m ever back in the area I will definitely pop back in.

Breaking my Painters Block with Some (very) Old Lead

On By diablocrusadeIn OldhammerLeave a comment

For months (seems like years) I’ve been painting WW2 Germans I was on the cusp of finishing them. I was halfway through the last models, a couple of artillery limbers and crew, when I just couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm to see them through. They just sat there on the painting desk glaring at me for a couple of weeks. On a whim I picked up some old Citadel miniatures, from the early 1980s, on eBay, among them were some Fiend Factory monsters. To get my painting mojo back I cleared off the last of the Germans from my painting desk and painted some nostalgic old lead. I had a blast painting these and now hopefully I can start to be a bit more productive in my painting again. Sometimes I think you just need a change to get the hobby juices flowing again.

As for the miniatures I don’t really have a plan for these guys yet they were more about getting some paint on something fun. Just for reference we have a Manticore, a Wyvern, a Chimera and two Harpies all from the Citadel miniatures early 1980s Fiend Factory range though a number of them later ended up in Citadel’s early C series Range. Below is one of the early Citadel catalogue pages with hand drawn images.

More Germans and Some Reflection

On By diablocrusadeIn Uncategorized, WW2Leave a comment

Its been a while since I lasted posted. A combination of really life issues and not having much worth posting. A lot of my time has been taken up on re-landscaping the back garden and the recent hot weather has put a really dampener on my hobby out put. I find it really hard to paint productively in the hot weather a combination of tiredness and agitation do not make for a good painting session. On top of that work dropped the redundancy word on my team so it has been a rather stressful time lately. Going through pooling with all the meetings with management and HR that entails all while competing with your work colleagues to try and keep your job. This has finally been resolved and my job is now safe after my work colleagues and I put forward a proposal to keep everyone’s job by all of us reducing hours from September.

The new work situation means I will have more time on my hands but a lot less hobby budget to buy new toys. This has prompted me to look at my unpainted hobby stash ( six large storage boxes of miniatures and scenery) and start a process of deciding what projects are feasible and what should be sold off to help fund the feasible projects. On the plus side I probably have enough unpainted miniatures to keep me going for some time and with only working a four day week, for the foreseeable, more time to hobby.

In the mean time, despite everything,I have managed to paint more Germans for my Rapid Fire Reloaded project and now have an almost finished late war German infantry regiment with just a few small bits until the whole project is completed.

so here are some Ready to Roll resin Marders with some Raventhorpe crew from the the Divisional A/T battalion to support the regiment.

And here is some regiment transport to tow the regimental A/T and infantry gun companies. These are again metal Raventhorpe and a resin Ready to Roll truck

last up the Regimental HQ Valiant miniatures and Britannia resin vehicles.

All I have left now is a A/A truck for the Regimental HQ and a battery of 105s from the Division artillery battery to paint up and this project is done. After that it will be time to really dig into my hobby collection and decide how I proceed with my future hobby projects.

German Flak

On By diablocrusadeIn WW22 Comments

I’m still working my way very slowly through my late war German infantry regiment for Rapid Fire Reloaded things have slowed down a lot due to undertaking a rather full on relandscaping of the back garden project which has been (and will be taking up) a lot of my spare time. I have everything I need for the Germans built and ready to go it’s just painting everything up that is proceeding at a snails pace. In the mean time I realised I hadn’t shared a couple of German self propelled 37mm A/A guns I finished a while back. Again these are cheap Chinese 4D puzzle vehicles they didn’t come with crew so I added some Britannia miniatures gunners from a variety of German packs. The vehicles are sdkfz 7 half tracks. The Germans apparently gave a number of these vehicles armoured cabs and 37mm guns to provide mobile A/A for panzer divisions and Luftwaffe A/A units. As I had two I’ve painted up a Heer one, for a panzer kampfgruppe, and a Luftwaffe one to support my Fallschirmjäger Kampfgruppe. Here are a few photos plus a couple of my garden that are blocking my hobby time 😀

Buildings for my Napoleonic Project

On By diablocrusadeIn Napoleonic1 Comment

Most of this year’s hobby time has been spent on working on my WW2 Rapid Fire project. I needed a bit of a break from that so I took some time out to build these 28mm MDF laser cut Prussian cottages from Warbases. For my Napoleonic games I’ve been using some paper buildings but the intention was always to build something more permanent at some point. Under my rules a unit occupies a built up area (BUA) so I’ve added a base board to define the BUA. The buildings and base boards are seperate to ease strorage. I have a few more buildings, that I will do at some point, and each group will get their own base board so I can combine two or more base boards for a large town or place them separately to create villages and hamlets.

More German Armour

On By diablocrusadeIn WW21 Comment

My Rapid Fire Reloaded project is coming along nicely but I really need to knuckle down and paint up the Poor bloody infantry which make up the bulk of any force. The original plan was a British Brigade of three battalions and a German infantry regiment of two battalions and supporting units for both. The British started of well with a battalion painted then, because I had already started them I painted up a battalion of Fallschirmjager, which were never in the plans. I’ve also painted up quite a few vehicles.

I’ve realised that I really enjoy painting WW2 vehicles but I’m not so keen on painting the infantry. For that reason I’ve been getting easily distracted by painting vehicles. I’ve recently had a mammoth building session of Valiant plastic infantry and I’ve just started on a massive batch painting session of German and British infantry. It’s going to take a while to work through the infantry but once they are done I’ll have usable RFR armies and then I can pick and choose the smaller and more fun vehicle and artillery support units to paint.

In the meantime time here are some more distractions that I’ve painted recently. Two Jagdapanzer IV made from odd 1/72 Chinese block puzzles (seriously the bodies are built from a bunch of different shaped and sized blocks that clip together like a puzzle). I also painted this Airfix Tiger 1. I found three of these in Lidl, of all places, being sold in starter kits with glue, paint and a brush for £7. This is a new kit and unlike the older Airfix vehicles I/72 not 1/76.