3mm Madness – DAK Panzers

Headquarters of the II Battalion / 8. Panzer Regiment

I was looking back at some of the research I had done for the Historicon Opearation Battleaxe 3mm game and realized that I had read the dates wrong for the German paint colors and that the tanks should have the earlier darker scheme for Operation Battleaxe.  So I repainted the battalion that I had already finished…

Historicon 2017 – 3mm madness

This year’s theme for Historicon is “100 Years of the Tank”.  That seemed like a perfect excuse to getting really cracking on a project I’ve been kicking around on for a couple of years now – the tanks battles in North Africa using the really nice 3mm armor from Picoarmor.  I had picked up some of these in the past to use as targets in Check Your 6! games and was really, really impressed by the detail and intrigued by the possibility of doing a unit based game where the stands really look like units and not individual tanks.  A while back I bought a bunch of German tanks and experimented with painting and basing, but the project got sidetracked by various other games.

Mustering the Wargames Factory Anglo-Saxons

A while back I posted that I had won some freebies from Wargames Factory.  I’ve been slowly getting these figures prepped to form an Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Danish warband for Saga.

Saga – Things to Fight Over

One of the more interesting looking of the generic scenarios in the Saga rules is The Escort, in which one force is attempting to escort a train of valuables to safety.  The rules provide some very loose guidelines for the baggage elements in terms of size, but after that, it’s up to the imagination of the gamer as to what he wants to include. 

Good Things Come to Those Who… Paint.

A while back the folks over at Wargames Factory announced an online contest looking for painted samples of their minis.  The contest offered a substantial prize  package with 5 levels of awards (from $100 to $20) in each of their product ranges.  As I was trying to get my Vikings finished, I put a little effort into the last of my Wargames Factory minis and did my best to take some good photos of them – which is usually my weakest link in sharing my painting efforts. 

Pico Size, Mega Quality

How do you say "Oh! Crap" in Hebrew? 3mm IDF Centurians and M3 Halftracks with Navwar 1/300 Su-7

Last year I picked up some 3mm artillery and 23mm AA guns for use as ground targets in my CY6! – Jet Age games.  My aircraft models are 1:300 / 1:285 / 6mm, so I decided to go with 3mm to get that “stuff down there below us” scale effect.  I had heard good stuff about the Oddzial Osmy stuff from Poland and the pictures on the website at PicoArmor certainly looked good, so I ordered up a few.  They definitely looked great and so recently picked up some more stuff  (painting half on commission for Scott even payed for the order).  This time I got a variety of tanks, soft skins, APCs, and infantry.

Fall is Football Season

If you are from Texas (or most of the south for that matter), fall means one thing – Football!  Yes, the time of Friday Night Lights, the NFL, and the weekly disappointment that is Texas Aggies football.  Sounds like the perfect time to play some Blood Bowl!

Trying out some new techniques on the Irish

In preparation for our recent Pig Wars game (report forthcoming), I finished off a latest batch of Crusader Dark Ages Irish.  In doing so I tried out a couple of techniques that are new to me, although old hat to many out there.

2e Cuirassiers, finally!

Some years ago, 2005 I think, my wife bought me a French tank company for Christmas.  She did a great job of it, secretly talking to my buddy Mike about what I would want, what tanks to order, how many, etc.   She was justifiably proud of herself since she totally surprised me – how often to we get wargaming presents we have not picked out ourselves.

Unfortunately, I have always felt that I let her down a bit because that tank company has sat about in the unpainted bin for years.  Shortly after that Christmas , I and many of my gaming buddies got busy trying to finish our dissertations and then we had a baby (Beth and I, not my gaming buddies) and moved to Knoxville,  so the French were pushed aside in favor of things the other locals were playing.  Eventually Andy and I started talking about actually doing some early war games and I got the motivation to actually finish up those French tanks, only 4 years or so after I got them.

Here Comes Santa Claus, Here Comes Santa Claus

Merry Christmas to everyone from the Repple Depple.

Hopefully Gamer Santa visited you all this year.  Here at the Cantwell residence, Gamer Santa brought me a whole scad of Dark Ages Irish from Crusader Miniatures.  I got one of each pack in the range (plus a couple of extra packs of mounted nobles), including the skirmishing women and kids.

This score was made possible by finding these minis on sale at FRP Games, with most packs of the Irish at 50% off.  The total is 56 foot (plus the women and kids) and 12 mounted, which will give me enough for almost 3 warband in Pig Wars plus an additional unit of mounted troops.   Hopefully I’ll have some of these ready for our next Dark Ages game.  I just need to find a good tutorial on hammering brass wire to make spearheads.  You have to supply your own spears for theses models.  I was planning to order a pack of spears from Gripping Beast, but they are closed for the holidays until Jan 4, and I am impatient…