Shifting Sands 2014 - Kursk

My posting has definitely been slow this year, but my game playing certainly hasn't.  I've been playing a ton of Flames of War, starting with "Shifting Sands 2014 - Kursk"  that was in January.  "Shifting Sands" is a great event put on by the Arizona Desert Rats Flames of War group and this year focused on Kursk.  It was fun playing in an event where it was Germans vs. Russians (no blue-on-blue) which isn't something you always see when it comes to Flames of War.  I took a balanced Russian force with two companies of T34s, a tank rider company and a battery of heavy mortars; I ended up finishing 2-3 and well out of the running but I still had fun.  One thing I noticed (sadly) is that with the exception of a couple of StuG companies and a few Panzer IIIN's supporting Tiger's, there weren't any forces based on Panzer IIIs or IVs for the Germans.  There were German forces with Panthers, Tigers, Ferdinands and Brumbars a plenty.  I did manage to kill a Tiger in I game...when my best AT can only bail it from the side/rear, I consider that a huge accomplishment.  Thanks to TJ and crew for running this year's event & I look forward to participating next year.

One of the tables I supplied...

 The other table I supplied...

 Robert's table (Drunken Samurai)

 Tim K's table (Cursed Treasures Blog)

 I think this is Cliff's table...

 I think this is Mark's table...

 The first army I faced...SS T34s!

 Nice large venue...

 Another shot of the venue...

 The rest of these are shots of some of the armies.  I took more pictures, but some didn't come out so well.

A few weeks after Sands I participated in another themed FOW tournament, Market Garden, and used my 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade force.  I ran it as all infantry and hoped that the Night Attack rule would help me out; no such luck as I got swept...I have to stop bringing knives to gun fights!  Mercifully, I didn't take any pictures so I don't have to relive the drubbing I suffered.  Themed events are a fun way to get in some historical based games and I really enjoy them; the next one on my "to do" list is the D-Day event for Fortress Las Vegas that's happening in June...I love Vegas, so I'm definitely going to be there.

Looking Back & Looking Ahead

It’s that time of the year again…a time to look back on the year that was, and a time to look forward to the new year ahead…

Looking back, I have to say that 2011 was a “mixed bag” on the hobby/gaming front. It had several positives like:

Finishing 2nd in the Gathering In The Desert LOTR tournament which earned me an invite to the GW sponsored Throne of Skulls event in Vegas

Getting in a lot more games than the previous year. In 2011 I played a lot of Lord of the Rings and also a significant amount of Flames of War. I also played 15mm ancients using Might of Arms, got my feet wet with Clash of Empires using 28mm ancients, played some 28mm American Civil War, played Warmaster fantasy, 15mm Napoleonics, and a fair number of Command & Colors Ancients and Combat Commander board games.

Playing in my first Flames of War tournament using the 2nd edition rules (and now 3rd edition is on the horizon), and actually finishing 2nd which qualified me for the US Nationals; I will be going to Adepticon in Chicago in April to play in the Late War Nationals.

Contracting out some painting work to help clear up some of my pile o’ lead resulting in me having a large 15mm Mongol army as I posted on this blog and a really nice 10mm Orc army for Warmaster, both painted by Tim K at Saguaro Painting Service (with pics of the Orcs on that blog), as well as a nice 15mm German Panzer Company painted by Robert as documented on his Drunken Samurai Painting blog.

Clearing out some armies and misc. hobby stuff that I know I’d never use again.

On the negative side of the “mixed bag” for 2011 are the following:

As of yet not finishing the 28mm Republican Romans I’m painting up for Mike; the good news is that I’m working on the last of the infantry and have the cavalry all prepped & primed and ready to go.

As of yet not finishing the 17 chariots for the 28mm Mitanni army I’m working on; I had Tim K at Saguaro Painting Service base paint the chariots and horses for me and now I just need to go through and add some extra detail and color, mount the crews and do the basing and they will be done…after years of languishing…

Throne of Skulls LOTR tournament; as I previously posted, I like seeing a lot of the regular LOTR players, but really was disappointed in the scoring, the scenarios, and some of the cheese-ball army compositions that were there.

Not posting as much to this blog as I would like to; I would like to do more battle reports and post more pictures of stuff I have.

Not deciding upon a “Tom Project”. Let me explain this one…at one point in my gaming life I had a couple of projects that were mine…I could bring everything needed for the game from terrain to all of the painted figures needed to play, and I could host multi-player games in doing so. I can still supply both sides and terrain for games like Flames of War or LOTR or 28mm & 15mm ancients, but none of these are unique to the group of guys that I game with most frequently. I spent quite a bit of 2011 looking into various projects such as Eastern Renaissance/TYW, 10mm or 15mm WWI, 10mm or 15mm Russo-Polish War, and 15mm modern “what-if” or ”imagi-nation”. Maybe I’ll finally decide on one of these in 2012.

As for the year ahead, I think it’s going to be a good year. I hope to continue to game on a regular basis like I’ve been with the games I’m going to focus on for the first few months of the year being: Flames of War (with the new edition coming out and having to get some practice in for the Nationals in April), Clash of Empires in 28mm (I want to play more often and get some more of the locals interested if possible), Command & Colors Ancients – Miniature (several of the guys are giving serious consideration to doing 28mm forces to convert the board game to miniature and I’m jumping onto this and will be doing a Greek army for this project), and 28mm American Civil War (once I get the Rebs based up and ready to go I plan on getting in more games of Action Front and give Black Powder consideration too). After spring has come and gone, I’ll see where I’m at and take it from there; I have a lot of armies started that I need to finish as well as armies that I haven’t started that I would like to, and then of course there is always terrain to do…it never ends. As for acquiring new stuff in 2012, I’m sure I’ll pick up figures for at least one more project with the leading candidate right now being 28mm Napoleonics; I purchased the Waterloo set of rules and want to give them a try. Another possible candidate is doing some smaller fantasy games using 15mm minis with a set of rules like HOTT or Basic Impetus - Fantasy or ??? Only time will tell what I end up accomplishing in 2012, but I'm fairly confident it will be at a minimum the same amount as I did in 2011...

15mm Late War German Panzer Company Finished

A while back I worked out a deal with Robert from the Drunken Samurai Painting Blog http://dspaintingblog.blogspot.com/ where he would paint up a Late War German Panzer Company for me in exchange for a bunch of dwarfs for Lord of the Rings. He did a great job in painting up the force and documenting it on his blog. I picked up the Germans last week and they look better in person than on the 'net. I look forward to getting them on the table. I did have one little piece of work to do on the army and that was to base up the infantry that he had painted for the Aufklarungs Platoon. Eventhough I hate basing because I find it so tedious at times (probably because I always seem to end up basing entire armies instead of just a few stands), I dove right into this because I wanted the force done. Below is the infantry for the force all finished!

This force consists of 10 PzKw IVh's, 3 Panthers, 2 Tiger I's, a 2 squad Aufklarungs Platoon and 3 SdKfz 10/5 AA halftracks. I will use it primarily for Flames of War but can use it for other rules as well.

I seem to be getting back into the groove when it comes to working on miniatures. I've almost completed 48 more Romans for Mike's army and I'm going to start work on basing some other stuff up and getting some samples painted so I can send some figures off to get painted; so stay tuned, hopefully the next update won't be far off.

Warhammer 40k Stormtrooper Conversions

OK, so as anyone can tell you (especially Robert from the Drunken Samurai Paiting Blog and Tim from Cursed Treasures) I am not much of a modeler, nor have I done a lot of conversions. I have a rather large Warhammer 40k Daemonhunter Army that I've been wanting to add some Stormtroopers too for quite some time, but I don't like the standard GW ones. I saw some various posts up on the 'net somewhere that inspired me to do the following conversions. I used plastic Cadians to which I added WHFB Knights of the White Wolf capes along with heads from the West Wind Secrets of the 3rd Reich range; the heads are French Adrian helmets with gasmasks and they look ok on the models. I also converted a couple of flamers into meltaguns as you can see below. I'm hoping these guys look better once they are painted...now I just have to decide on a paint scheme!