"The Black Brigade" - Better Pictures

So I ran the "Black Brigade" at a local FOW tournament yesterday for the first time.  It was a learning experiance as most of the armies there were tank-heavy and I think, though being "mechanized", I had the largest infantry contingent present.  I had 3 tough, yet enjoyable games against good opponents. The results were a 3-3 tie, a 1-6 loss and a 4-3 loss.  I learned a few things about this force in FOW:  the 75mm artillery is better in direct fire, and don't forget the "bypassed" rule prior to deployment!  I look forward to playing the army again.

I really didn't like the way the pictures I rushed taking a few days ago came out, so today I broke out my photobox, my extra lights, the tripod and took some time on getting the settings right on the camera and took pictures of most of the infantry again, and most of the vehicles for the first time. The results are much better IMO. I still need to work on getting the lighting set up better, but I think these are fine for what it's worth.

Polish 10th Motor Cavalry Company 1

 Polish 10th Motor Cavalry Company 2

 "Highland" Company

 Heavy Machine-Gun Company

 Anti-Tank Gun Platoon

 Artillery Battery

 True North Fiat 508's

 True North TKS Tankettes, aka "Chiclets"

 Vickers Tank Unit 1

 Vickers Tank Unit 2

Building this nice, themed army around a specific unit for FOW has me thinking that this is something that I will try to do going forward for new forces I build for the game.  There certainly are a lot of specific, unique forces out there to chose from.

The next thing you will likely see up here is some more 28mm Republican Romans...stay tuned...

Tom

"The Black Brigade" Marches!

The Polish 10th Motorized Cavalry Brigade, aka "the Black Brigade" had a storied history during WWII and it has long been a force that I'd like to see on the tabletop.  Fortunately for me, Old Glory purchased the "True North" line of 15mm World War II figures some time ago and when Battlefront came out with the "Blitzkrieg" book for Flames of War and this unit was in it, I knew it was my opportunity to get the figures and be able to use them for a game I enjoy.  Well, that was over a year ago...or was it two?  Anyway, I have been trying to play in the local FOW tournaments and I found out that the one scheduled for May 19th would be for the early war period I had my motivation.  I could have taken the easy route and used one of my desert forces and not had to do anything, but instead I challenged myself to get the Black Brigade done; that was approximately 6 weeks ago.  With Tim K from Saguaro Painting Service enlisted to assemble the guns and trucks (they are multi-part models with "fiddley" pieces that I don't have the patience for and Tim is a master modeler IMO and he did a great job on them) I got to work.  I thought of taking pictures along the way, but I think that would have slowed me down; instead I plowed through painting and basing (and I hate basing in case you didn't know) 204 15mm infantry, 4 75mm guns, 4 caissons, 4 37mm guns, 1 motorcycle with side car, 3 combat cars (Fiat 508's), 8 trucks (Fiat 621's), 10 TKS tankettes, 4 Vickers A tanks (dual MG turrets) and 6 Vickers B tanks (47mm gun) in 6 weeks.  That is my best painting production in such a short time in a number of years. 

The force I built consists of:

HQ - Commander, 2IC, 2 x 81mm mortars, motorcycle and Fiat 508

2 x Motorized Cavalry Company - Commander, 2 platoons (4 stands each), 2 AT rifles, 1 Fiat 508 and 4 Fiat 621 per company

AT Company - 3 x 37mm AT guns, Commander

HMG Company - 4 x HMG,  Commander (and the HMGs can instead be bought as part of the Motorized Cavalry Companies if I so chose)

Artillery Battery - 4 x 75mm guns, Staff Team, Observer and Commander

2 x Vickers Tank Platoons - 3 x Vickers B and 2 x Vickers A each

2 x Reconnaissance Tank Platoons - 5 TKS tankettes (2 upgraded with 20mm FKA) each

Piechoty Company - Single platoon with 12 rifle stands, AT rifle and commander

Here are some pictures of some of the infantry that I took quickly this afternoon.  The camera that I used for years died on me, so I'm using my wife's camera and I need to work on getting the settings and lighting right with it; these pictures aren't the best as a result.  I'll work on it and hope to have more pictures up by the end of the week.

Motorized Cavalry Company

 Artillery Battery

Piechoty Company - The majority of the figures are actually "Polish Highlander" figures representing the specially trained mountain troops; there are some dismounted cavalry and regular infantry mixed in.  I thought it would be a bit different to represent an cut off infantry force using these troops.

Motorized Cavalry Company

 Now I'm on a roll and have to keep the momentum going!

Hello 2011!

Wow...2 posts in 2 days...a good way to end the year I guess! So...having taken a bit of time to look back on my gaming efforts in 2010 I now turn to looking forward into what I'd like to accomplish in 2011. I had 10 items on my list for 2010 and I did ok, so I think I'll shoot for 10 more things in 2011. Here they go in the order I'd like to get them done:

1-Finish the freaking DAK for FOW! Ugh...this has been hanging out there for me and I just have a little ways to go, so I'm going to focus on it and get it out of the way so it's no longer haunting me!

2-Paint the rest of the 28mm Republican Roman Army for Mike. I have the velites done and the triarri preped and primed, so I'm looking forward to getting this done.

3-Assemble, paint and game with the Dystopian Wars Prussians I got. The models are very nice and the rules look good...just need to get ready to play!

4-Paint some 10mm Warmaster Dwarfs as part of a trade. This will be the first 10mm stuff I've painted in a number of years since I did a bunch of WWII (before moving to 28mm then 15mm); I'm looking forward to it because the figures are nice and should paint up quickly.

5-Base up the 15mm Mongol army for Might of Arms that Tim K from Saguaro Painting Service (see links section) painted for me.

6-I have 3 projects currently being completed by other people as parts of various trades. I'm in no rush to get them back because as you can tell I have a ton of other things to do, but when I do get them back I aim to do any completion work (namely basing) right when I get them back and not put them on the shelf in an incomplete state. Having stuff in an incomplete state is driving me crazy because I have too much of it already!

7-Begin working on the 15mm Polish FOW army I have. This army is for the Polish 10th Mechanized Brigade and is all True North figures that I purchased from Old Glory.

8-Finish painting and base up the 15mm Marian Roman army I have for Might of Arms.

9-Work on getting some of the 28mm American Civil War figures and units I have done. I'd like to build the forces for the Peach Orchard at Gettysburg eventually. I have Barksdale's Brigade and Graham's Brigade organized, now I have to get them cleaned/prepped and decide whether I'm going to try to speed paint them myself or send them off to Sri Lanka to get painted.

10-Something else that I'm undecided about. One of my big problems is that I like a plethora of time periods, game scales, etc. and I don't know how many times I've invested in a game only to have my attention switch focus and end up selling/trading stuff I've never used. I doubt this will ever change for me when it comes to gaming interests, so I figure that this year there will be a project that pops up that I will focus on and begin work on...whether it ever sees the table...who knows! That said, several gaming possibilities keep entering my thoughts including: 28mm English Civil War, 28mm American Revolution, 15mm Fantasy, 10mm Eastern Renaissance/Thirty Years War, 15mm Modern African wars in an alternate setting, expanding my Daemonhunters for 40k when the new codex comes out, and who knows what else!

So, that's what I'm looking at for the upcoming year. It goes without saying that I want to be able to play games too! That's one good thing I managed to do in 2010 with games of 15mm and 28mm ancients, 15mm WWII, Lord of the Rings, 15mm Viet Nam, 28mm ACW, Legends of the Old West, and others being played. Considering that 4 items from my list entail finishing things that are already started, and 2 other items are doing things for other people, I think I can get through a lot of the list and have a productive 2011. Oh, yea...I'd like to try to record more on this blog too...just takes time!

Later,

Tom O