Hello,
The curse of the wargamer has struck again!
I had my wargamming year all sorted out. I had finished my Bloodbowl team ready for the league starting this year. I had painted up enough Gaslight VSF stuff to keep me busy playing for a while and I was slowly building up my ECW parliament forces.
My other project planned for the year was Zulu war. I picked up a couple of boxes of the Wargames factory zulus at the Little Wars show and with the new Army painter leather brown primer spray and dip, I should be able to churn out plenty zulus for a Rorkes Drift game later this year.
So I had a bit on, but totally manageable.....really?
It started as a few emails between fellow wargamers and then the show Band of Brothers rescreened on TV, and then came The Pacific, a fantastic series (although IMHO not as good as Bof B).
Our emails of course moved to the subject of WWII. Before I knew what had happened people were buying miniatures and discussing rule systems. It was uncontrollable; my nice ordered world was crumbling around me. I had no choice but to succumb to the curse of the wargamer.... another period to game.
WWII is a foreign country to me. I had always been a "Horse and musket" man. My early days spent playing Napoleonics, ACW and colonials. After a break from wargamming I have dabbled in Ancients/medieval with DBA and its cousin HOTT and I guess dogfighting is WWI which is the 20th century but I have never played land wargamming in the 20th century.
After many discussions we settled on a scale... 15mm; and then a ruleset.. Crossfire. So what to paint first?
Some of the guys at the club had already bought some Old Glory 15mm WWII stuff and I was able to buy some of their late war Germans. I had no reference material on WWII but there are plenty of people at the club gamming WWII and I got hold of info on painting up my late war germans. I was painting camo!! I have never painted camo!
The good thing about crossfire is that you only need a company to start playing, which is about the same number of figures as a DBA army approx 40-50 figures, so I have managed to get my first army finished in pretty quick time.
Here are my late war germans i.e 1944 -45
The company arrayed
Company HQ
The First platoon equipped with Panzerfaust antitank rockets.
2nd Platoon
3rd Platoon
Heavy Weapons HMG
Heavy Weapons 81mm Mortar and Forward Observer.
Heavy Weapons 120mm Mortar and Forward Observer.
The miniatures are all Old Glory Command Decision WWII with the exception of the 81mm and 120mm mortars which are Peter Pig figures. The figures were base coated in black and then painted with GW,Tamiya, and Vallejo acrylic paints, followed by the Army painter strong tone and matt varnish spray to finish.
I have never used Vallejo paints before, but they have a large range of correct colours for WWII camoflage. I think these paints are terrific. They have a lot more pigment than the GW paints and covered black undercoat easily. I will definitely get more of these paints as my GW stuff runs out. They also have a fantasy range as well.
So there you have it! The curse has struck again! I am very happy with how these guys have turned out. Now I need to give them an opponent. At little wars I also bought a bunch of Peter Pig British Paras. Airborne operations have always been the one thing about WWII that has appealed to me. I also read Pegasus Bridge a few months back so I am keen to do some glider actions.
Oh and then I need some WWII terrain for Arnhem scenarios and some Marines and Japs for Pacific games....Aaaaaargh the curse! The curse!
Bye for now :)
Oh and I just realised today is the 66th anniversary of D-Day!!
