World War II British Paras - The curse continues...

Here is the latest addition to my World War II forces. The airborne operations in Normandy during D-Day and the Operation Market Garden in Arnhem have always interested me so it was the next obvious force to make to oppose my late war germans.

The miniatures are from Peter Pig and I picked them up at Little Wars back in May. They are excellent figures with good poses and attention to detail. They painted up pretty easily followed as usual with the army painter dip which I am pretty much addicted to right now.  The denison smocks look particularly good.

Here is the company arrayed.

Here is the company commander with radio operator. During the Market Garden operation the British paras at Arnhem had great difficulty maintaining radio communications. The Cromwell IV tank is a prepainted miniature from the Axis and Allies collectible game. I picked it up in a bargain bin along with a Russian T34/76, German Panzer III Ausf. F and US M4A1 Sherman for a few bucks and surprisingly they are correct 15mm scale and will be good for the crossfire games when we start using tanks.

1st Platoon. In the Crossfire organisation list for a Para company they give one 2"mortar. However a bit of digging on the net showed that each platoon had a 2" mortar team which was directed by the Platoon commander. I therefore decided to add two more mortar units to the company along with a HMG section. The added points cost brings them up to the same as the late war german company.

2nd Platoon

3rd Platoon

Forward observer.

 Heavy Machine Gun section.

I now have my opposing forces done. I need to start working on the terrain and plan to have my first game this weekend.

Cheers

Neil

The Curse of the Wargamer - Dawn of a new age!

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!!

Little Wars Gaslight demo game photos.

Hello again,

This weekend was the annual Little Wars Wargamming show here in Melbourne. The venue was the German Tivoli club so there was some excellent beer and sausage to be had on the day. It was a great day with some great displays covering a diverse range of periods and scales.

I was running a demo game of our War of the Worlds on Mars game that I ran last year at the NWA club open day. The display proved very popular with lots of positive comments. The day before, I changed the way the Martian Tripod legs were attached to the Tripod head. The finished product is now much closer to my original designs for the Tripod.

In the afternoon we had 5 people playing a fun game and hopefully we may have some new members for the club.

Here are the photos taken on the day.

We were using the Gaslight and Battles by Gaslight Rules for our games.

The Martian Tripods with their new design legs. They look a lot meaner now!

The British and Prussian Figures are from Eureka Miniatures.

The HMLS Dauntless Landship is Scratchbuilt by me. The Flags say, " England Expects Victory!"

The British advance on the left with the Prussians on the Right. At the fore for the British was the HMES Hermes and a platoon of the Queens own Skywalkers resplendent in their Union Jack wings!

Spot the Tardis!

The Hermes into attack against the Tripods.

Prussian Gyrocopters fire Rockets at the Tripods on the right flank.

The Skywalkers fire down on the Red Martian Lancers inflicting heavy losses.

The Hermes takes a direct hit from a heat ray and comes crashing down. Miraculously Captain Henderson walks away from the carnage!

Queen Victoria (Gaud bless ah!) gets up close and personal with the Martians. Tea anyone?

Queen Victoria will cast out the green devils!

Prussian Spider (Converted GW Chaos defiler) destroyed by the heat ray.

The Tripod comes crashing down after a direct hit from the Dauntless' heavy main gun.

The Red Martians are from Parroom station. They are excellent figures.

On the day I had some time to do some shopping and I picked up some army painter primer spray cans, some more wargames factory zulus, and for something new I got some 15mm British Paras for WWII  Crossfire games that I am just getting into.

Bye for now.