ACROSS THE WIRE AND INTO THE BREACH!

Not much painting, but did get some games in over the weekend.

This particular photo is of a game with Yankyaeger. He's a pro and generally schools me. This match was no exception. It reminded me of the times I'd generally sweep the board in Battletech and Magic. Only now I'm on the recieving end.

He kept a whittling amount of machine gun fire down that alley by the buildings that kept nearly everyone pinned (hence the red markers). I contested the objective (a winning point) for about a turn before being repulsed and never really recovering.

This was the only win of the game (of 3 games) against another fellow whose name evades me for now. I had the option of making a night assault since it was a British thing to do and I took it. After sending a diversionary force to the right to tie up and anchor the right flank, I sent the engineers, led by McCormick himself, into the left flank to breach the wire and assault the bunkers.

The right flank was incredibly successful in tieing up reserve assets from the Germans. I played aggressive on that flank (and the platoon eventually broke morale and ran) and it paid in droves. It argueably won the game by forcing a disproportionate distrubition of German firepower.

However some of the troops had trouble crossing the wire on the left and would have been whittled to nothing by machine gun nest fire had it not been for the night and heavy supporting fire by way of smoke from a 4.2" mortar battery. They proceeded to make the last pivotal battle on the hill as dawn crept over the horizon and a German pioneer platoon began a desperate assault that quite nearly took the hill and put victory in doubt. Bloodied and below half strength, they repulsed the huns in wave after wave.

All in all, I was pretty excited to get a decisive victory for once. Though some credit goes to Yankyaeger since he was giving some incite on how to use the rules to best effect.

Workbench: Changing Gears

For a little change of pace we'll go step by step of a batched painting of a Humber IV recce group.
Here they are primed and painted in the mass produced and monotonous olive drab that nearly every Normandy British equipment was in.
We'll first paint the tires. A lot of people make the mistake of painting them black, and while tires are "black" a keen eye might notice that where the light shines it tends to be a little more gray. So we'll mix up some paint for the purpose and give use some color depth to make shadows in the creases of the tires later on.
Here they are painted and already looking nice. A lot of people stop here. We're going to do better.
Scuffing! What self respecting recce company stays on the road all the time? With a little off gray dabs and streaks where the armor might have been scratched we can create an undertone for lost paint.

Now some heavy (but diluted) black ink goes a long way in making our off gray tires look more realistic.

Now with a thinner black ink you can wash the whole mini, but I prefer to just bring out the paneling like so.

Now here was a fuax pas on my part. The rattle can spray primer green I was using... I could not exactly recreate. Nonetheless you don't really need to for this stage. Normally you'd take a shade lighter than the undertone and lightly drybrush the miniature to bring out the edges. Instead, I got a close green and then brought it a shade to brown.

Now we throw on some mud. For this, I just used a roughly close but different brown and applied it around the wheels where mud would fling and across the front of the Humbers.

Add the blue/green markers of the 15th Recce Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps as attached to the 15th Scots. I should have done this earlier, but now is good too. Just have to dirty them up after painting them.

???

Paint details, use a little brown makeup powder to simulate dirt in recesses, dullcoat/seal, and enjoy 2 more infantry stands.

That is an in scale Panther tank in the background (I didn't paint it)... those wacky Germans and their ridiculously huge production tanks.

Commando: First Paint

It's hard painting at this scale. This right here is a prototype and I will be formulating the paint/basing process in the future.

Complicating this is the heat/humidity. It's really difficult to get a good spray primer job that won't bubble in this atmosphere. And I failed to some degree on that front.

Work Bench: Starships, Freighters, etc.

The arm isn't completely busted now, but its still being laid off of. It's the advice of many others I've consoled over it. Even though it's "ok" it still needs time to heal.

It's a reprieve of sorts then since the MR2 was slowly turning into regretful work more than a hobby of sorts. And in the interim I've attended other hobbies, interests, and labors.

Among them, is Company of Heroes. I have a hard time believing I completely overlooked this gem of a game when it was released. At its heart, it's Dawn of War but with WW2 as a setting.
Still, it's good.

The other is miniature painting. It's mostly exploratory now, since the current subjects are something I'm unfamiliar with. Light moves differently on starships and since these GZG minis are remarkably absent of details, it's compounding that difficulty.
Doubly so with the freighters since I added some rare earth magnets to make them detachable. And, as you can see, they aren't on straight at all.
I'm really disappointed by them.

The color schemes and painting techniques on the warships are exploratory as well too. The light destroyer has a sort of anime Gladius fighter theme going on in addition to some white base coating to get the colors to pop. I don't like it.
Though it's not done by a long shot, I tried for a Chris Foss sort of color thing with the cruiser, but it too comes up short. It looks vaguely like a Smurf command carrier. Interesting to note, it was done completely without a brush.

Both are likely to be stripped and repainted at a later date. I will however, continue experimenting with the airbrush techniques I used on the cruiser.

Now if I could only decide on a color scheme, I'd be set.

HOLD THE PASS! Capps Vs. Canopian Highlanders

This was my first game of Battletech in... 10 years? The other 2 players (MemphisMark being one) (fielding just short of a combined 2 lances of Canopian Highlanders) were about as equally foggy over the rules. But like riding a bike, we all got back into the rhythm of things pretty quickly- and had a complete blast.

The setup was a friendly pickup game/re familiarization of the rules. I fielded around 7000pts of Cappie goodness vs. 14000 of greedy Canopian Highlander mercenary filth. I got to deploy on board and 'defend the pass' (presumably the only avenue to the local orphanage) while the mercs walked on board.

I'm not biased at all... really.

The "good guys":
ASN-21 "Assassin"
VND-4L "Vindicator"
LGB-12C "Longbow"
OSR-4L "Ostroc"
4x Po Heavy Tanks "The Door Stops"

The Canopians: (Forgive me if I'm not entirely clear on the unit designations)
Modified LGB-12C featuring C3 "Longbow"
Modified Atlas with targeting computer "Atlas"
KGC-001 "King Crab"
Behemoth
Masakari(Prime)
Annihilator modified to feature 4 RAC5s (and enough ammo casings to fill a parking lot).

The situation after the first turn: (any area with green 1 "level" above the ground is trees)



The Po's fire into the Annihilator scratching the armor while the Longbow makes use of the terrain and pummels the Masakari over the tree line. This proves to be a problem as return fire in the form of pot shots from nearly everyone is too much. He will turn around and get off the hill. The RAC5 Annihilator begins to motive crit the tanks and cause issues.


The Po's flush out to take advantage of the hill and deny half the Canopian assets a valid target while whittling away at the behemoth and annihilator's armor. The Cappellan lighter assets make a move around the flank behind the trees to slow down the assault group. The Masakari continues to fusillade the Longbow for the LRM insult the turn before and the Cappellan LGB pilot learns a valuable mistake in turning its back armor to the crowd.

Nearly everything on the board takes a pot shot at it. Though nearly everything wiffs, it does core out the left torso rear armor and all but one internal structure point.



He wiffs the piloting roll to withstand the onslaught.

The Annihilator climbs to the top of the hill and begins to unload his ammo on the tanks below in a fashion not dissimilar from a scene from Hot Shots Part Deux, completely disabling the main armaments of one tank. The rest of the group unloads what they can on the Annihilator hoping to hurt the resale of the assault mech... or something. Anything.

It is a grim time for the Cappellans. I'm still nearly out matched 2 to 1 in an attempt to save the orphans protect the pass. With no appreciable damage thus far against the Annihilator, the Longbow takes a shot at it. Nearly everything connects with the cluster rolls being somewhat lousy.
The last 6 point LRM groupings are allocated... the dice are cast.

Roll for 5 points...

2; Crit chance

Roll for last point...

2... crit chance

Could this be? A potential turn around? Unlikely as it was, I was already pressing my luck, I rolled the dice for the crits
"come-on box cars come-on box cars come-on box cars come-on box cars" *dice roll* I had to stare at the dice for a second before I realized it.

***BOX CARS***

And like a Brazillian Soccer commentator announcing a goal, I screamed 'Yes' and quite nearly did a victory dance. I was completely unaware of myself for a moment, and followed up with a quick sorry and moved on to the next crit. A 10, 2 more crits.

And with a sudden halt, the XL engine on the 100 ton monstrosity whined to a halt and (presumably) fell over in ankle deep water.


The Cannopian's assault stuttered for a minute. The Behemoth stopped to whittle down the opposition at range, the King Crab diverted to take care of the light assets threatening to flank them while the Cannopian Longbow began making shots at the Assassin clearly running into their flanks. The Ostroc came out of hiding to completely miss and overheat firing at the Behemoth.
The Behemoth, in one turn, started generation crits on the Ostroc in kind.


The glory of the Confederation still relying on risk, slowing down/distracting his assets, and denying him the ability to concentrate fire, the Vindicator leaps from the woods to Death From Above the King Crab. The crab nearly knocks the leg off the Vindicator in defensive fire (taking out a leg actuator) while it successfully executes its DFA.

One of the Po crews, previously stunned and otherwise out of action, sprints into the assault group hoping to absorb some fire and buy time for the rest of the combat team.



The flanks successfully threatened, the assault group (Atlas, King Crab, Longbow) stops and turns around to deal with the Assassin, Vindicator, and brave Po crew with one working machine gun. Another Po charges into the fray at an opportune moment hoping to force the rear armor on something. The group manages to puncture the rear armor of the Longbow and generate some crits, damaging the XL engine.

The Ostroc charges attempting to make a difference but just loses an arm, leg, and pushes 24 heat.

In return, the Cappellan Longbow finally succumbs to the whittling of armor and loses a torso to the Masakari. The Vindicator also goes down to the impressive firepower of the King crab and the Atlas.

The game was called at this point (and rightly so, i had the black knight AKA Ostroc barely conscious and offensively making the ground hot and a collection of tanks in various states of operation). MemphisMark called it a pyrrhic victory for the Cappellans since they never made it to the pass. It was a good game nonetheless.

The real winners here were the Vindicator and Assassin.



These 2 little guys managed to tie up nearly an entire assault lance for almost 4 turns and gave the rest of the team time to even the odds against the other 3 mechs... And one of them survived till the end.
...and the Cappellan Mechwarrior dice I used for the game that I got as a gift. Can't over rate some lucky dice that pulled through at the right moment. =D

Other observations:
The Po tank is individually just a decoration. As a lance, they can't be ignored. They accounted for nearly half the damage I was doing.
The RAC/5, when fired conservatively, is incredibly effective mid range crit finder.


Great game... Good guys... And a great place to game. Check out GamerzDepot outside of Memphis if you guys ever get a chance.

Post 4th Cappie Reinforcements

An unfortunate truth of the Cappellan Confederation immediately after the 4th Succession War is the frequent use of stop gap measures to restore combat strength to its units. Although the Po is effective yet cheap tank, when not considered an insult, they are seen as little more than sloppy and inexperienced peasant army by the Mech unit that they are attached too. It doesn't hurt the crews morale however as they try and earn the respect of their peers through frequent trials by fire. They've been bloodied on more than one occasion as witnessed by the patchwork unpainted armor panelings.



Taking pictures of these things in highlight really points out the things I can improve on. However what these pictures doesn't show is the turrets held on with rare earth magnets.

I had to hollow out a small recess on either side of the turret. Ever take a dremel to a turret of the Po? It's scary.
It's so worth it though. I can pick one of them up by the turret and don't fear losing the small little guy.

Beam Ship

I'm kinda proud of this one. It's a mini for Full Thrust that I made after reading the rules. The rules are cash I assure you.

These photos were taken right before I tried to make a cast of it... and subsequently melted the forward sections with a hair dryer trying to cure the rubber mold.

I've repaired it, but it's not the same. I intend to make others, however I find myself squandering my time too often to really do it.

MAD-5L

Ostroc

I'm working on the lighting for these pics...

I really don't like how the Ostroc came out. I toyed with some inking steps to help highlight and bring out the details... and I think this is an improvement... but over all... I just don't like it. I'm not sure why.

Liao Catapult