Fred - 2021 Painting Bits

[fred.]

Thanks chaps - these are great little figures, nice sculpted detail which is easy to paint, and lots of fun bits too - particularly the artillery crews who all seem to have their beer mugs at the ready! The paint jobs were fairly basic, with just a wash over the hair and skin.

[fred.]

Japanese Buildings

I picked up a few extra Japanese buildings to add to the ones available from Pendraken, a Temple, a large Warehouse and a Torii Gate, plus a couple of the Pendraken range.

[mmcv]

Those are very nice

[fred.]

Thanks - one of those fairly quick bits that give a good result for the effort!

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Cewertainly look the part.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Very impressive

[Techno II]

Zippy, or what ?

Cheers - Phil.

[fred.]

Thanks chaps  

[fred.]

Dwarf Gyrocopters

Finally some Pendraken figures! 4 Dwarf Gyrocopters which have been hanging around waiting to be painted for ages - so got them done today. 



Ghosts
These are intended to add a supernatural / fantasy element to my medieval/ renaissance  Irish force. Any other suggestions for fantastical elements to add?

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Those are great Forbes! 

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Looking good Forbes

[Techno II]

What they said ! 

Cheers - Phil.

[fred.]

Thanks chaps. 

Anyone got any thoughts on mythical / fantastical units to add to an Irish army?

[fred.]

We played a late war WWI game using If the Lord Spares Us (ITLSU)- with a British attack on German trenches, which are fairly lightly held, with a counter attack force available. 

We've tried this game a few times over the weeks - as we get to grips with late war vs early war - and finally I managed to get the balance of the scenario right, and the game played out very much as you read from accounts of WWI. 

The Germans started fairly lightly deployed in their two trench lines - with these defenders suffering a low amount of shock as an abstracted representation of the barrage. The British attackers where on blinds - representing them advancing behind a barrage and the general obscuration of vision. 

The British fairly quickly took the first trench line, due to overwhelming fire power, not least from their 18pdrs on the start line. But due to their orders being very focused on this trench line, suffered some casualties from a gun gun deployed in the remains of the wood behind the trench. One of the key bits to these rules is that units must conform to one of 4 basic orders, and these orders need command points from the CO to change. Feels very WWI, where troops take an objective then get rather bogged down. 



The German reinforcements stared arriving and got a company into the ruined village who put a lot of fire into the flank of the British battalion - more new orders required to send part of the British force to deal with this threat. The German reserve artillery deployed at this stage too. But the British artillery stuck in their own trench line no longer had targets. 



The British started to advance on the second (empty) trench line. But another German company and an A7V tank arrived (a rare occurrence but one of the players was keen to try some tank on tank action...) Who blunted this attack - the British infantry in the open suffering heavily - and although they had two tanks in support, they where significantly out gunned. 



The Germans did manage to kill one of the Mark V tanks - they are very durable in these rules. But can be slowed down a lot (the left most tank, just behind the hill in the above picture had suffered a lot of shock from a lot of firing so hasn't moved that far at all). The tank vs tank action was rather limited though - with some poor dice rolling on both sides. The main damage was from close range MGs and AT rifles as well as from the 7.7cm guns. 

An enjoyable game for all 3 of us - not sure how many turns but 6-8 - ITLSU being card driven means turns can be quite short or quite long. We had two turns where all the cards came out before the Tea Break. 

I do need to do some more work on terrain - to add more types and to finish what I have. We have found with remote games its much clear for the players to have the hills above the cloth, rather than below it - less good on photos but you can at least see the hills on camera. 

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Looks good.