SAGA - Byzantines Complete



It's been a few months since I've posted...not because I haven't been doing anything gaming-related, I've just been busy (and a bit lazy when it comes to this blog).  Anyway, I just finished up a 28mm Byzantine force for SAGA.  All of the figures are Gripping Beast, which are great figures IMO.  The banners are from LBMS; this is the first time I used their products and they were actually pretty easy to work with once I did the first one and realized how I messed up :-) !  Note to self, follow the directions!  Anyway, the force consists of 4 units of 8 warriors (one with bow), 2 units of mounted hearthguard, and the warlord.  The hearthguard can be ran as all bow, or if I want one unit of bow and one with kontos, I can just adjust accordingly.  For some reason the picture of the warlord is a little washed out; I have no idea why this happened since the camera settings were all the same. 

 

Warrior Unit 1



 Warrior Unit 2

 Warrior Unit 3

 Warrior Unit 4 with Bows

 Hearthguard Unit 1

 Hearthguard Unit 2

 Warlord

As you can see by the tracking on the left-hand column, I am a few hours behind on my 1/2 hour a day goal for the year.  With summer coming I hope to catch up as there is only so much time that you want to spend outside in Arizona in the summer!  I have gotten in a lot of games, and have plenty more scheduled including a 3 game SAGA "non-event" run by Tim K over at "Cursed Treasures", and a late war Flames of War tournament in late July.  In the meantime, I'll keep playing various games and having fun.

With the Byzantines finished up, next on my painting cue is a 15mm Polish skirmish force for By Fire and Sword.  I had actually started painting on those figures before finishing off the Byzantines; having an event planned for SAGA gave me the motivation to finish something off which is good since now I have one less project to worry about.  I'm not sure what I'll work on after the Poles; I have lots of possibilities...right now I'm leaning toward picking something with minimal work needed to finish so I can feel like I'm making progress on my mountain of lead.  Anyway, that's all for now...happy gaming!

February Update - A Good Year So Far

Just taking a few minutes to give a short update on what I've been doing on the gaming front so far in 2015...

I've played a good variety of games so far with Flames of War, Pathfinder - Skulls & Shackles, Hail Caesar, By Fire and Sword, and GMT's Great Battles of the American Revolution: Saratoga all seeing table time so far this year.  I have more games of each of those lined up in the next few months, so I will not be wanting for gaming opportunities in the near future.

I've also been doing well working toward my 182.5 hour goal for this year.  So far I'm at 22 hours invested and I have a pretty decent return to show.  I've got 31 new figures painted which definitely puts me on a pace to beat last year's pathetic total; and the 141 figures I've based up so far have surpassed last year's basing total by a large margin.  I have also done a lot of reorganizing in my hobby storage which accounts for the majority of the non-prep/paint/basing time.  The 22 hours isn't too bad considering I was out of town for work for a week.  I need to try to bank some time though because I have another trip coming up in March.

The biggest accomplishment so far is getting the last two painted regiments of 28mm ACW Confederates based up; the 7th & 15th South Carolina from Kershaw's Brigade. This brings my total ACW Confederate infantry count to 280 figures!   I also rebased all of my 28mm ACW artillery onto multi-figure bases with the gun.  Originally the crew figures and guns were all individually based and that was just a pain when playing.  This definitely has me looking forward to getting in another big Black Powder game...maybe in April sometime.

7th South Carolina



 15th South Carolina

 Confederate 12-pounder's

 Extra Confederate Regimental Command Stands

 Confederate Rifled Artillery

 Union Rifled Artillery - first lot

 Union Rifled Artillery - second lot

 Union 12-pounders

 

Up next I'm working on prepping a large 15mm Jordanian force for Battlefront's "Fate of a Nation" Arab-Israeli game to be followed by finally starting on a 15mm Polish Skirmish Force for By Fire and Sword.  I will try to remember to give a recap/AAR of my next By Fire and Sword game.  Well, that's all for now...take it easy.



2015 - The Road Ahead & 182.5 Hours

Every year at this time I look back at what I had hoped to accomplish, and what I actually did accomplish.  Invariably I am disappointed at what I actually get done.  It seems that when I have the motivation to paint and work on gaming stuff, I don't have the time - and when I have the time, I don't have the motivation.  Also, it's probable that I set unrealistic goals as I want everything done "yesterday".  So this year I am going to take a bit of a different approach for my goals for 2015.

As you can see by the sidebar, I certainly have made time for plenty of games in the past 2 years with 53 in 2013 and 72 in 2014.  Granted, the number of board games I'm playing has grown which bumps this number, but they are still games played and time committed to the hobby so I count them.  My goal for 2015 is to play an average of 1 game per week, so 52 games.  I think that can be accomplished and is a reasonable goal.  I'm pretty sure I'll get in games of the following:  Flames of War, Might of Arms, Hail Caesar, By Fire and Sword, CAV, SAGA, Bolt Action, Pathfinder: Skulls & Shackles, Fistful of Tows 3 and various board games.

Now on to the more difficult part.  In the past I've put up a laundry list of what armies I'd be painting up and basing and what game I'd use them in.  Needless to say I have a ton of projects...some started, some bare lead, some just ideas in my head...and I never finish a fraction of what I hope too.  For 2015, I've decided that instead of listing and being disappointed, instead I'm going to set a time goal for myself.  I'm setting a goal of 182.5 hours throughout the year to work on gaming hobby "stuff" (this does not include actual playing time).  This could be painting, working on this blog, building terrain, etc.  I'm simply going to track my hours and when I finish stuff I'll post it on the blog.  I don't know if the 30 minutes a day average is too high or too low, but I have to set my baseline somewhere to see if this works or not and whether I can get more accomplished than in years past or not.  So I've included a new sidebar to track the time I'm spending.  So far I have 2.5 hours spent...that includes 2 Blog posts and a couple of hours reorganizing my book shelves, supplies and storage (still more to do on that so I can find things easier) - it's amazing what you find when you go through stuff!

So that's my plan for 2015.  Will it work and will I have a better sense of accomplishment at this point in 2016?  Who knows...but it's worth trying!  Happy New Year to you all!

Tom

2014 - What Happened?

Well, 2014 is just about over and I feel I've regressed and accomplished very little on the hobby front compared to the goals I set for myself at the start of the year.  Oh, well...we do this for fun, so I'm certainly not going to lose any sleep over it!

2014 was a busy year for gaming at least as I got in more games than 2013, so I do consider that an accomplishment.

Late in the year I also had a major philosophical change in my gaming perspective.  After thinking long and hard about it, I decided to switch scales for the bulk of my ancients, medieval and renaissance gaming from 25/28mm to 15mm.  I had armies in both scales, and the games I played most often, Hail Caesar and Might of Arms, just play better in 15mm than in 25/28mm IMO...largely due to the size of the tables that are available locally.  I also have limited storage space and can easily fit 2-3 15mm armies in the space that it takes to store a single 25/28mm army.  As a result of this decision, I've spent a lot of time trading and selling and buying figures with good results IMO.  2015 will be focused on getting the 15mm armies I've acquired up to playable condition as many are a combination of painted and unpainted figures at the moment.

I'm not entirely done with 28mm.  I still have 3 forces in that scale for SAGA, 2 for Bolt Action (though the Poles I have are unpainted), and of course I kept my 28mm ACW collection as I enjoy the big battles we have using Black Powder. 

So, that's what's happened this year for the most part...next up will be the "crystal ball" edition for 2015...I hope I have some glass cleaner and can do a better job on predicting than I did in 2014!

Bolt Action - Painting Motivation and an Update

It's hard to believe that it's been since the end of March when I last posted.  I've kept up on my game totals on the side bar, but that is all.  It's not that I haven't been doing anything...I've actually been getting in a lot of games...it's just that I haven't been motivated to paint anything or do updates here; maybe I'm just enjoying playing to be bothered?  I don't know.  Anyway, I finally got a bit of motivation; last week I played Flames of War and we agreed to play Bolt Action this Sunday.  I've had the last two units for my 28mm Italian Para's sitting around untouched for sometime.  I figured now was as good a time as any to knock them out.  So in the past 5 1/2 days I prepped, primed, painted, washed, drybrushed, based, poly-coated and dulcoted an AB41 armored car from Warlord Games and a Breda 20mm AA gun with 3 crew from Company B. Hopefully this has knocked me out of my painting funk! 

Here's one view of the AB41.  The camo is a variation on a pattern I saw in a color plate online.

 A second view of the AB41.  The resin was pretty clean with only minimal excess to be removed.

 Rear-view of the AB41 with the rear-facing MG and rear-driver position.

 The Breda 20mm AA gun with crew.  The models come in shorts; I had Tim K "green stuff" pants on them and I think it came out OK for the most part.

 The Company B models are nice and in scale with the Warlord Paras that make up the rest of this army.

 The one "fiddly" part of this model is the crew seat; very thin metal holding the seat and crewman up.  I may have to fabricate something in the long run if that doesn't hold up.

Well, next up is to finish off some Vikings I've been painting for Mike for some time.  I hope to keep my motivation going and have a good rest of the year.  I'm ahead of last year's pace in both the number of figures/models painted and the number of games played with a full 6 months to go in the year, so I'm optimistic at being able to do so.

653rd Schwere Panzerjagerabteilung

I think a lot of gamer's are drawn to unique forces of one kind or another, and I'm no different.  When I spotted the Flames of War list for the 653rd Schwere Panzerjagerabteilung a while ago I thought that this force would be a great chance for me to have something very unique.  The trouble is, I'm not much of a modeler.  I like painting, though I'm slow, but I've glued my fingers together on more than one occasion when assembling models!  Enter Tim K at Saguaro Painting Service who enjoys modeling and unique challenges like this.  I figured the best way to do this would be to use some 15mm Plastic Soldier Company  vehicles as the base since Battlefront resin vehicles would require filling in the turret rings for some of the vehicles.  Battlefront vehicles were used for some of the models though.  This force will be used in the next late war game I play in.  Now, on to the models:

Tiger I (P) VK4501 Battalion Command Tank - 

Battlefront Model which Tim sculpted the zimmermit on using "green stuff"

Bergepanther with a stationary Panzer IV turret -

Both the Panther chassis and the Panzer IV turret are from Plastic Soldier Company

Bergepanther with a quad 20mm AA gun -

The Panther chassis is from Plastic Soldier Company and the AA Gun and crew are from Battlefront

T-34 with quad 20mm AA gun - 

T-34 chassis is from Plastic Soldier Company, AA gun and crew are from Battlefront, 

turret armor is plastic card converted by Tim (the Germans used armor off of half-tracks)

And finally, the Elefants - stock Battlefront models

Thanks to Tim for putting this together and getting it painted for me!  I look forward to using it soon.

28mm Italian Paratroopers - Bolt Action

Like my gaming, my painting has also been doing ok for the year.  Just today I completed my first force for Bolt Action - a 28mm Italian Paratrooper force.  Completing this puts me on a good path to getting more painting done this year than last; quite an accomplishment in my book since it's still February.  Though I've only played one real game of Bolt Action, and I've never used this force before, I'm going to use it in a 1000 point tournament this weekend.  I figure it will be a good way to learn.  I've painted up more than I can use at 1000 points, but it does give me flexibility to configure the army several ways.  I have a commander with 2 riflemen, a medic, a forward observer team, a sniper team, a flamethrower team, 5 squads of 8 men, a medium MG team, a 46mm mortar team, an 81mm mortar team, and a Semovente 75/18.  All of the infantry are from Warlord Games; these are metal figures that painted up quite nicely.  My only criticism is that a few suffered from mold lines down the middle of the face...that's something I never can understand, no matter who makes the figures.  I am modeling the force after the Italian Para's that stayed fighting with the Germans after the invasion of Italy.  The Semovente is a model I purchased years ago as part of a collection and sold to Drunken Samurai only to get it back recently in another trade.  It is a resin model from NZWM, and I believe it was a limited production run as it is numbered "6" on the bottom.  I believe the NZWM line was sold to Army Group North, but I could be wrong.  It is a nice model that was basic grey; I've added the camo and some more detailing.

Up next for me on the painting front is some more 15mm WWII along with some 28mm Ancients and Medievals.  I hope to keep my painting momentum going and posting more frequently here too!