Posted by Brian on Jan 14, 2010 in
Miniatures 
I realized this afternoon that this battery had never got posted up on my blog. I finished it awhile ago and the basing was done with what colors I had on hand. Maybe I should have waited for greener static grass and flock, but its an interesting look.
The gun performance in game is great . It is nice to have something that really give the heavy tanks something to worry about. Pair it up with an AOP and its a very potent force. More pics after the break. Read more…
Tags: 5.5" BL, Artillery, British, Flames of War, FOW, Late War, Mid War, WWII
Posted by Brian on Jan 14, 2010 in
Miniatures 
Not all projects are a success, and sometimes you learn from your failures too. This little gem is an Auster AOP that I attempted to build out of green stuff, a Popsicle stick, and a little floral wire. First up is the wood in Popsicle sticks doesn’t shape well. It likes to splinter instead. The wing doesn’t have any cross section on it. Second up, is its almost impossible to get floral wire to go in perfectly strait lines. I should have bought brass rod and used that instead. Third up is the green stuff itself. Its the first time I’ve tried to make anything of it except filling gaps in models. What I didn’t realize is that it even really gets hard. Or at least the stuff I have still remains “flexy” I was intending to build the basic shape and then use files and sand paper to refine it and smooth it out. The green stuff never got hard enough to do this right. At least it isnt bittle I guess. All in all it makes a sad little airplane model, but at least its useable. Pics after the break. Read more…
Tags: AOP, Auster, British, Flames of War, FOW, WWII
Posted by Brian on Sep 7, 2009 in
Review,
Rule Book 
The replacement for Afrika, North Africa, came out recently. It has been a long time since Battlefront covered anything on mid-war, my favorite period. I was extremely excited for this book and hoped to get a pre-release copy at GenCon. No luck there, so I went the regular retail route. I have had a little bit of time to go over the forces and organization now and wanted to give a heads-up on what’s inside.
First of all, if you’re familiar with the newer Battlefront intelligence handbooks, they have changed the way platoon choices are laid out. Previously in Afrika it was all text based and mostly a 1 or 2 support per combat platoon arrangement. Now they are using the force diagrams from the new books like Fortress Europe. Its a nice change and quite a bit easier to see what goes into a force at a glance. The book is expanded in general, and now covers 3 separate organizational periods- North Africa, Tunisia, and Sicily/Italy. Quite a few of the forces now can take allies instead of Italians having that sole privilege. There are quite alot of changes in the book, with a tendency to enforce historical organization more. The organization groups don’t always line up with the geographical area/time period that the stated periods cover. Its a bit of a disappointment on that side, but mostly a step in the right direction. Read more…
Tags: Afrika, American, British, Flames of War, FOW, German, Italian, North Africa, rules
Posted by Brian on Jun 3, 2009 in
Army Spreadsheets 
Hot off the presses, here’s the first version of the Commandos in Normandy PDF excel sheet. It covers both the Beach and Orne forces. The fluff and italics text contradicts itself a little bit in the PDF so this is based on the italics text based on the presumption that italics are rules. If you want to check out the other stuff, read the page that covers the 1SSB and the 4SSB. I have to say the multiple beaches for support on this force were a real pain. It at least doubled the amount of work it took to put this together. If you see any errors, please let me know.
Commandos XLS file
Tags: British, Commandos, Flames of War, FOW, Infantry, PDF, Spreadsheet
Posted by Brian on May 28, 2009 in
Miniatures 
These Bishops had been sitting around on my painting table practically since I started playing Flames of War. I bought them along with a whole bunch of armor from War Web. Most of the Old Glory minis like this come 3 to a pack. Its really a great deal, but unfortunately you need 4 guns for the Brits. I ordered without bothering to look this up and when I got them I had 4x 25lb guns I got with my army box and 8x Priests I ordered at the same time so I never bothered to get that extra Bishop to complete the unit. If you look closely you’ll notice one is not like the others. I finished this unit out with a battlefront model rather than buy 3 more Old Glory Bishops.
The Bishop in the war was a bit of an odd duck. Its a 25lb Artillery piece mounted on a Valentine hull with a fixed thinly armored plated turret. It was cramped and hot to work in and had very little traverse. The Bishop had to have ramps built for it to elevate its gun enough to get maximum range out of it. It was very unpopular with its crews and was abandoned as soon as the Priest became available in numbers.
I painted these Bishops in the colors of the 6th Armored Division in Tunisia. They were service color with dark brown patches. I think I have the markings correct, and even though most of the photos of Bishops don’t have prominent camouflage there has been quite a bit of analysis showing that they were camouflaged. Pics after the break. Read more…
Tags: Artillery, Bishop, British, Flames of War, FOW, Mid War, WWII
Posted by Brian on May 28, 2009 in
Editorial 
So I finally manned up and finished the other 3 platoons of late war commandos that I have been procrastinating on. Its only half my fault it took so long though. I went to buy my 4 platoons and the FLGS only had one platoon hanging on the wall. I finished that up and then put in the order for the other 3 platoons and waited. And waited. And waited. It took about two month for them to finally come in. Its not the fault of my FLGS though. I guess Battlefront has been having supply issues. There was a run on the commandos with the release of the PDF force for them and it took awhile to cast some more up.
I do have to say the quality of the molds had dropped considerably from my first platoon to these last ones. They had excess flash everywhere and I practically had to carve one guy a new leg out of a large chunk of flash. I also received considerably less figures than before. I’m not sure if I received too many the first time, or too few the second time. Either way its not consistent. If it hadn’t taken so long to get the figs in the first place I may have sent some of it back. As a side note- With the correct composition I can actually field the 4 platoons as 6 platoons. Read more…
Tags: Add new tag, British, Commandos, Flames of War, FOW, Infantry, Late War, WWII
Posted by Brian on May 19, 2009 in
Army Spreadsheets 
I created this spreadsheet awhile ago to create lists for the British 7th armored division out of Villers-Bocage. Its doesn’t include any of the armored lists, but is complete for the infantry lists including the Desert Rats and 50th TT. Just load this up in excel and click on the names of units to get drop downs allowing you to select what unit or upgrade you want. There is minimal legality checking, so you’ll want to make sure you have a book to obey force restrictions.
7AD Infantry XLS file
Tags: 7ad, British, Excel, Infantry, Spreadsheet, Villers Bocage
Posted by Brian on May 19, 2009 in
Miniatures 
Churchill AVRE Tanks
These are a pair of Churchill AVRE tanks that I painted up to use with my late war British commandos. In the course of researching what the paint jobs looked like, I found there were very few with commonwealth or allied markings. Typically they had a 79AD logo on the lower left hull. The rest of the markings were normally just white hand painted numbers that looked like serial numbers. These appeared both on the sides of the hull, mostly on what I think are the radiator covers, and the front and rear of the hull between the tracks. I found one with “Fury” painted above the Petard Mortar, so I went with that idea. I know the mortar should be green as well, but it looks cooler contrasting. These aren’t attached to the bases, they are just there for the beauty shot.
Tags: AVRE, British, Churchill, Tank
Posted by Brian on Apr 24, 2009 in
Miniatures I painted my first platoon of commandos recently. I even modeled them sans underwear so they’ll be commando squared! While I’ve done a fair amount of infantry before, I have almost always stuck to pretty flat simple basing. The commandos are a couple of firsts for me.
Read more…
Tags: British, Commandos, Flames of War, FOW, Late War, WWII
I realized this afternoon that this battery had never got posted up on my blog. I finished it awhile ago and the basing was done with what colors I had on hand. Maybe I should have waited for greener static grass and flock, but its an interesting look.
