Perry Desert Rats & some terrain

Holiday is over so time to get back to the hobby and see what's everybody been doing recently to get some fresh inspiration.
Unfortunately I did not have many games over the last few months but I managed to get a platoon and some buildings done for our 28mm Chain of Command desert WWII games.


These are from the Perry plastic boxed set with some metals thrown in for a bit of variety. Now I've never been a fan of plastics but I must say these are the first I actually like (and I tried many:). Easy to assemble, good variety and proportions and a joy to paint. This can't be said of the metals though, I really struggled with those. Yes, great poses but the quality is just poor IMO. It takes longer to clean the figure than to build a plastic and you get lesser quality which was a pain to paint. The 2 pdr model was good though and my favourite of the range.

For terrain I ordered some buildings from The Colonial Steamboat company. Great models and they come with a decent basic paintjob so you can use them straight away. I actually painted the bases to match the desert mat and put a few lighter colours on them. After this I went on to experiment with the modelmates products for weathering. I was so impressed with the effects you can achieve with these liquids that I went a bit overboard with the weathering. But no problem here, I have't sealed the effect yet so with some water I can still remove it.

Original building from colonial steamboat company

and a scenery piece from The Last Valley, repainted as well

WWII 15mm desert game, IABSM3 and a bit of Crisis

Another week without painting unfortunately. With Crisis11 next Saturday most of my spare time is spent on Google investigating new projects.
About two years ago I spent several months painting a 15mm DAK army while Jake took on the task of painting the British. I had so much fun painting these but since only part of the group joined the project they never got action until recently. Jake was visiting, we had only two hours but we decided to unbox our troops to get them on the table. With limited time it wasn't much of a game. We deployed and when we started turn one we looked at each other...How does Fow actually work? Is it You Go I Go?  We had forgotten the mechanics.

IABMS3?
As a fan of Lardies rules I ordered this new ruleset. I now have the iPad version and waiting for the hardcover book and playing cards to arrive. My plan is to give them a go and replace FoW since I feel they better reflect our playing style. My only concern is if we can simply use our FoW style basing. I noticed IABSM 3 uses campaign strength sections of 8 figs while some of our FoW armies are five on a base. Anyone experience with this or suggestions?

Crisis
Next Saturday our group will be at Crisis making friends with some of the traders and bartenders. Should be good as usual with some nice demo games as well. Anyone else going?

Anyway, some pictures of our desert game. The terrain boards are from Encobertura. We bought lots of those two years ago and they got their first game as well. Nice boards, especially for 15mm. The houses we picked up from Last Valley at Salute last year. We just need some palms trees and other bits to liven up the table.

15mm DAK, 15. Panzerdivision

Once every 2 years or so we are hit by a 15mm virus. It suddenly arrives and once we bought all our stuff it's suddenly gone again. I've painted two armies and actually played Flames of War twice now. Maybe it was the force I played  (7th AD) but the game just did not do it for me then. I found it somewhat predictable. We will try again soon playing desert and see if this works for us. If not we will look at different rulesets. Next month I will give our verdict and write up some battle report together with pictures of Jake's 8th army.

For now pictures of my DAK, 15. Panzerdivision.
Miniatures by Battlefront with the occasional Skytrex figure thrown in for variety.

VIEW ENTIRE GALLERY

28mm WWII Desert. LRDG, DAK and Italians

Today some pictures of  games and models painted about three years ago. Some were on my old website but I found many others on my computer as well.

For 28mm WWII we use the the rules from Iron Ivan Games: Disposable Heroes.
Our group really like the rules and we played many games using it. Not only desert but also Early and Late War. But now we have reached some point that we are on the lookout for some new platoon level rules. I guess we played it too many times and things got predictable.
We have tried TW&T from TooFatlardies since we are a huge fan of their other rules. Unfortunately we did not feel it had the same strengths as the other games they designed and left it with one try. We are hoping now that they will soon release a version of Through the Mud and Blood, their WWI rules and maybe our all time favorite wargame rules to date.
Any suggestions?




The Italians in the gallery are painted by Rob and manufactured by Bolt Action which is now in the hands of Warlord Games
DAK is done by Jacco and these figures are a mix of Black Tree Design and Artizan.
LDRG finally was done by me. Artizan as well and being shot to pieces every single game.
All Vehicles are from Chieftainmodels. They have a new owner now and this range was sold and now available from Company B I believe. Original owner Ian Crouch specializes in 28mm Early WWII now and has some excellent miniatures and models available. Highly recommended.
And Jacco, Rob, Marc, Sam and RobvS: Get some pictures online at photobucket or some other site and we can use them in the galleries and on this site. Will give you access to post here as well if you like.

Some previes pictures now. The Gallery contains many more.

I might look tough but never win a fight

Want more pictures? Visit the Gallery

Next saturday we have a game again. WWI. Will post some sort of report next week. In the meantime I will get some more periods up the blog if time permits. Don't know which though, plenty of choice. Any favorites to start with?