Lorraine Campaign Day 2

A few weeks ago (I am getting caught up on my battle reports) we had the second round of the Lorraine Campaign at the Ottawa Miniatures Gamers. I did not have the figures I wanted to use painted (though it does turn out that I do have more German infantry than I could find on the day) so I broke from my plan to only use lists from the Blood, Guts and Glory book and go for a German Heavy Tank list (or Schwere Panzer if you are that way inclined) because I had a King Tiger and some Tiger Is that I had painted up a few year back and had never used. My list consisted of a Tiger in the HQ platoon, a King Tiger in the first platoon, 2 Tigers in the 2nd platoon and a biggishy batter of armoured rocket artillery. I had hoped that the firestorm troops of one Grenadier, one Panzer Grenadier and fortifications would provide the bulk that this list was lacking. (I was not feeling confident, heavy tank lists are odd at the best of times and generally terrible in lower point value games)

As usual we had a pretty good turnout and lots of tables got set up

I was playing against evil Duncan who had a reasonably balanced (if somewhat tank-heavy due to the 2 armoured fiirestorms he had) US list. I don't remember the exact mission but I had delayed reserves. After much consideration I decided to put the infantry on the table and keep the tanks (except the HQ) in reserve.  I thought it possible that the infantry could hold for the 3 turns. I didn't put anything in Ambush as I was concerned that a rush up on the part of the Americans could keep me from appearing on the objective.

I set up with one infantry platoon on each objective and the HQ tiger hiding (I thought) behind the building. The Americans rushed forward en masse (my artillery was in reserve) and the tanks began to pound the infantry.

The US artillery ranged in on the Tiger on the first turn and it was bailed for the whole game (3 turns!) That was pretty much the game there as the infantry was killed. If I ha put my tanks on to start, I still would have lost but might have had more fun (not that it wasn't an enjoyable game but I didn't get to do much)

Since that game was rather quick we did play a second game with the free for all mission which was a bit more dynamic (but I still lost!)

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My laptop died as I was typing this in, I managed to finish it on my tablet but my Cangames reports will have to wait until I get it going again

Roll Call: PAVN

I should be sorting out my Cangames reports but my conversations with Ed and Stan left me curious about how many North Vietnamese troops I have both painted and unpainted.

It turns out I have the HQ unit with 3 HMGs, 2 AAMG units, a 6 tube mortar unit and 5 gun recoiless rifle battery (which should be 6 but one of them ended up being painted as Iraqi for a Force on Force game!) all painted and 2 Infantry Companies each with 2 platoons unpainted (but based). I am not really sure if there are enough to make an interesting Flames of War game (though I could add in lots of Tanks in Egyptian colours!) but it could be enough for Force on Force.

For some odd reason, I am feeling that I should paint the rest of these up (I recall the heavy weapons guys painted up quite quickly) -- Perhaps it is because I want a reason to buy the Brown Water Navy stuff and if these were done the chance that I would actually use them would be greater than 0!

Cangames Recap and the Big Brush

Cangames was this past weekend and I am posting my summary of how it went for me this year (as well as some pictures of Eds "Big Brush" 15mm tank technique). I will post more detailed AARs of all my games (as well as the most recent club game) in the next week or so.

This was the first year in quite a while that I managed to make it for the Friday. I played in Mike's Rus game and it was quite a lot of fun. The modified Lord of The Rings system makes for a good skirmish game without being to complicated. There wasn't too much else going on on Friday afternoon.

On Saturday I ran my Hail Caesar "Stop the Romans" game and it went very well. The game came down to wire with the Romans finally emerging victorious. In the afternoon I played in Ed's Louisburg game and it also was a lot of fun and came down to the wire (and was very good looking).

Sunday I ran Force on Force "Elements of Destruction". That was its usual blend of chaos and mayhem.

Overall I had a good time and it was nice to play some games, I think for the last 2 I have only run games and not played in them. The selection of games was good (but seemed to be really concentrated on Saturday) and they all looked good. There didn't seem to be much Fantasy and Sci-Fi this year.

The dealers area was not really all that exciting for me. I was looking to satisfy my completist bent for Descent but no one had anything for that and my painting queue is full up so I wasn't really looking to get any minis. The guys selling the laser cut stuff looked interesting (though I have forgotten their name!)

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On Friday evening after the con, Ed demonstrated his "Big Brush" tank painting technique. This is basically taking a really big brush and painting and highlighting a base colour and then inking or washing. The results are very good for the effort involved.

 It only took a few minutes to get these 14 tanks to this level. The German tanks were painted the yellow-tan and then inked with yellow and the Sherman Crabs were painted brown and then inked green.

I used this technique for my Fate of a Nation tanks and was pleased with the results but it is hard (for me at least) to get the colour correct.

With some detail work these will be ready for the table in no time.


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Update: Here are the brushes that were used for this: