P-47 Thunderbolt

You may recall about a week ago a post about stripping my Flames of War Thunderbolt because I was unhappy with the paint job (you can read the post here). Well now I have finished my second attempt at painting her up. Throughout the paint job I felt unhappy with it as I found the model quite hard to paint. Perhaps it was because there isn't much definition making it hard to paint from dark to light or do an effective wash. I later found out that there are useful ways to do washes for such models like using a pin. However after a paint job which took to long I decided finally to call it complete. After a day the paint job grew on me but I would still say its a pretty shoddy paint job. However warts and all here it is:

The writing below the aeroplane reads DEATH FROM ABOVE which I copied from the film Apocalypse Now, a real classic. Anyhow, as mentioned above I am not 100% happy with this, more like 55% however I got sick and tired of painting it so it was time to move on and call it a day. After all it still will blow up german steel no matter how bad it looks doing it, right? 

First Gaming Table

I'm feeling pretty chuffed. After years of playing games on the kitchen table I now have a dedicated gaming table. We decided a month or two back to get a bed for the spare room which is a king single however a trundler fits perfectly underneath. The trundler not only makes two beds for guests but also raises up to the perfect hight to make the bed into a superior king sized beds for couples. We now have a new flatmate however who had a bed so we set the guest bed up in the second lounge for guests. That was when the idea came to me, if we put the spare mattress under our bed we can put a piece of ply and felt on the guest trundler to pull out for games. One of the great things about the idea is now being able to leave games set up hidden away under the bed. Fortunately my flatmate Zac is a builder so cut the ply into shape and came away with a result.

We initiated the table with a game of 2 player Eclipse. We both played combat focused race. I played Rho Indri Syndicate (effectively space prates) and Zac the Orion. Zac lost and I won my 3rd 2 player game in a row, score. In the photo you can see Zac recounting his points to confirm his defeat. 

In the background you can see some of my board game collection. 

As you can see I still need to get the felt but it is on order. In the end I am pretty stoked about all of this. It is nice to have a dedicated gaming space even if it has to be hidden away, just one step closer to a gaming room... I guess my only complaint is due to the table being a single bed its long and narrow so a odd size but it works. 

Now all I have to do is make some terrain for wargaming. I have some wood to make hedgerows following a method that I got off Big Lees Miniature Adventures here and trees from Scotts Wargaming here. Who knows I may even make some buildings with the left over MDF. 

Hell on Wheels gets its First Outing

Steve's American Armoured Company saw its first action last week.  Work commitments (otherwise known as four days of fishing in Golden Bay) have got in the way of this being posted, so my apologies for it being a little dated.  But last Wednesday Steve was able to put together a 1300 point American Armoured Company known as "Hell on Wheels".

We played "surrounded" with my Fallschirmjargers holding the middle of the table.  I was using a Bridge by Bridge list of Ersatz FJ, with Panthers in support and those rather handy panzerfaust teams that Colonel Von der Heydte comes with.  Here's some pictures:

The FJs in the centre:

The American armour lined up:

 Panthers lie in wait:

The view on the right flank:

The aftermath:

 After some initial gains, the American armour was dealt a heavy blow from the panzerfaust teams in the woods.  We muddled through the rules a little on them, but they hit a hard blow against the Shermans.  The Panthers took care of another platoon on the far side and Steve soon called it a day.  He had taken out two of the pak 40s and a number of infantry teams, but was on the brink of having most of his platoons destroyed.

It was all played in a good spirit and Steve was a good sport despite my panzerfaust guys being a little too strong it seemed...  He has plans for next time, which include a better terrain arrangement.  On that note, the eagle eyed of you will see that there are the new Battlefront buildings there - the corner store, the large house and the Bastogne Church.  All looking good on the table top.  The paint job on the church is a bit average but the others are all very good.

Stripping thunderbolt

That was as raunchy I could make that title sound. As you probably guessed this post is about paint stripping my battlefront P-47 thunderbolt. After multiple attempts of trying to paint the panels white unsuccessfully I finally made the decision to strip the paint and start again. When I made that decision, instead of feeling like I wasted hours it felt good knowing that I had accepted defeat and could start afresh. Unfortunately I did not take photos of my failed paint job so you will just get some pictures of the stripped model.

The first choice I had to make was what to strip it with. I read some pretty mixed thoughts about using nail polish. One forum had some guy saying...

Whens the best time to use nail polish to remove paint? Never! 

So what do I do? Tempt fate and use nail polish on my ?resin P-47 Thunderbolt because I couldn't be bothered getting anything else. Here is the chemical ingredients full of nasty things that may ruin my model.

I believe I read some advice that dipping for short 5 second period then scrubbing with a toothbrush did the trick. So that is what I did. About 10 minuets later this is what I got: 

Not bad. I didn't get some of the paint off, not sure why but it just wouldn't budge. I believe there is some definition missing but nothing noticeable. I guess I would recommend for those who are planning on doing this. Dip the model in nail polish for about 5 seconds, then scrub some paint off the repeat till its all shinny. 

I think I will do a paint scheme along these lines...

Except for with teeth and:

DEATH FROM ABOVE

Quoted of course from Apocalypse Now, brilliant film.

Hell on Wheels objective markers

In preparation for my Hell on Wheels companies first outing this Wednesday I have whipped up a couple of objective markers. I had a spark of creativity, 'I know lets use newspaper to make it look like top secret information'. So I stuck some cardboard together, used a bit of sand and painted the Hells on Wheels patch to get this:

Well I think in the end it looks alright, but just alright. I guess my main concern is it doesn't really fit the theme of the game, unless the ol' man likes his morning news paper. I can't say I knew what I was expecting yet this will do the trick until I make or get some new ones. A advantage of these is I prefer flat objective markers as it stops the confusion of the markers not being terrain pieces. 

M3 half tracks

Finally after much procrastination I have finished my American armoured rifle platoon. A few weeks back I completed the infantry and now I have completed their rides! Without more to do here are the pictures.

I numbered these to match up with the infantry squads

Now for some close ups.

There are a few more infantry models I need to paint up and glue into place however these are good enough for now. It was a real mission painting up the armoured rifle platoon due to the share size of it but if feels great having it done. Now I am moving on to an armoured mortar platoon with M4 81mm half tracks.

I am taking these suckers out for their first spin on Wednesday with Dan. I can't wait to see how they get along, it will likely end it bullets and explosions.

Gateway Games

More recently I have been trying to add board games to my collection which are more accessible to a wider audience. I have finally come to the conclusion that not all wish to sit down for a 3 hour game of Eclipse or Agricola. After reading a post on Will Wheaton dot Net I found out that the games I have been trying to add to my collection are called gateway games. On the post he gives a list of the top 10 gateway games as rated by board game geek, here they are:

1 Ticket to Ride/TTR Europe
2 Carcassonne (all)
3 King of Tokyo
4 Dixit
5 For Sale
6 Diamant/Incan Gold
7 Can’t Stop
8 Pandemic
9 Love Letter
10 Settlers of Catan

I copy and pasted directly from his website and the links to the episodes of Will Wheaton's episodes of tabletop came too, hence the links in the list. 

Will then went on to say this...

different games work for different people, and someone who loves Ticket To Ride may not like King of Tokyo at all, so ask your non-gamer or tabletop-curious friends questions, and choose their gateway game carefully. All of these games have a high ratio of luck to strategy, which makes it a lot of fun for experienced and new players alike to play together.

I feel like that makes a lot of sense, by having a decent diversity of 'gateway games' in your collection ideally there will be a game for everyone. This has an added bonus of playing more games!

As this has been something on my mind for the past while I have accumulated some more games which are easy enough to pop out and work for most audiences. Some of these games are admittedly not on the list above but still they seem to do the trick and I would consider to be gateway games. Here is a list of my new gateway games

1. Saboteur
2. Galaxy Trucker (although it doesn't work for the easily frustrated)
3. Tsuro of the Seas
4. Bohnanza. 
5. Coup (as seen in a previous post) 
6. Twilight Imperium... I kid. 

Anyhow I am planning on doing a post now and then about some of these games, probably quite sporadicly, to give you all some ideas. I will create a label for gateway games to make them easy to navigate for those interested.