The Battle for Ranuigrad - Part 2

Lara and her Panzers were sitting high in the ruins overlooking the remaining standing tenements and could hear movement in the floor overlooking their position. She looked toward a window and saw a face peering out at her, definitely not one of her battle brothers.... "Elf uhr! Feuer frei!!!" From inside the building, the sound of dying Fakyeli fills Lara's ears...and a wry smile crosses her lips as she is blasted to oblivion. The Allies have struck...

The aircraft were now starting to come into play. The Allied Pelican pilot makes his move over toward the Axis power weapon, the Wotan sitting back and lasering the crap out of anything coming into range. A single bomb under its fuselage...its one shot for glory. It releases and strikes....Wotan is no more. Caught in the blast is also the Axis Faceless Death unit...their numbers now diminished despite their DR saves.

Winter Child now makes himself known. He moves into a lower level tenement and is quickly followed in by the Flak Boys who open up with a Full Salvo at him...the blast and smoke clears and there is Winter Child, hovering...unscathed. "...übermenschlich...!", the Flak Boys utter as he leaves their presence...he is hunting more important prey. 



Over on the hamlet flank, the Gorillas and other infantry start moving forward, taking advantage of the terrain to move into positions to make life difficult for the remaining Pershing with Rosie piloting it.

With some air support at their disposal, they started strafing the Pershing and trying to whittle down its effectiveness, as well as trying to dislodge and destroy Andrew's command team to prevent him bringing reserves in.

The monkeys surround the tank, but their numbers are quickly diminished by reactive fire. They only get one punch in before they're reduced to hair and mush.

This could be a blessing though. Back toward the middle of the battle, both Winter Child and the Pelican have converged on Rommel's position to try and destroy the Supreme Commander once and for all. The Pelican shoots the Desert Fox's Hanomag out from under him and he rolls free...but is vulnerable now. Through-out the game, the Axis players have struggled to bring on reserves, but now we need them! And get them we do, Damian's Gorillas come on to try and remove Winter Child...they strike and hit, but not enough.He strikes back and their gone. The Pelican now opens up on Rommel....and the Fox is dead. And with him, the hopes of the Axis forces.



With no remaining command teams, we cannot call on reserves. Our last hope for points is to return the favour and obliterate Patton. Our air support moves in and shoots away his transport. Patton rolls away and soon comes under fire again...but he survives just.

With time running out, we decide to call it. The Allied/SSU forces have won the field and the day, 10 VP to 7. 

From all accounts, this was a great game and definitely something worth repeating, although there has been calls for one-on-one games as well....for vengeance!

The Battle for Ranuigrad - Part 1

The sun rises over the shattered remnants of the old SSU city of Ranuigrad. The tenements left standing eerily loom over their destroyed neighbours, casting shadows across their blackened walls.

Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, from his command Hanomag knows that a fight is coming. The SSU and the Allies have banded together to bring him to account and get him to reveal the secrets of the Axis war machine. He can hear the Pershings of Patton in the distance and the faint buzz of a radioactive disturbance in his earpiece announces the imminent arrival of Winter Child....

Today...will not be a short day...

In the final club meeting of the year, Damian came up with the idea of a 5 on 5 DUST Battlefield mega-battle which many of us quickly signed up to. Showing up on the day, we find both sides short a player, so it turned into a 4 on 4. 4 tables were set up with the remains of a large city and its surrounding hamlet and forests dominating either ends of the 12 x 4 table. The sides were as follows:

Axis: Damian (CiC), Francis, David and Greg
Allies/SSU: Andrew (CiC), Matt, Alex and Peter.

The Axis side, all seasoned DUST campaigners. The Allied/SSU, a rules writer and a few newer guys. We should have this in the bag!

75 points per player to spend as fit and each side would have a character leading the overall force and could issue orders to any unit on their side. Rommel for the Axis (using the soon to be seen Babylon rules) and Patton for the Allies/SSU (using the Red Banner rules).

So, the sides were set and forces had already been determined over the previous week, so we were set. A good mix of infantry and tanks/walkers on each side meant that this should be relatively balanced. The Axis had 2 aircraft while the Allies/SSU had one. I've never played a game where planes were involved before, so was curious to see how they went.

 So, with everyone set and ready to go, Damian and Andrew rolled for initiative and we started on our way toward finding who would control Ranuigrad. 

No-one really wanted to start exposing their valuable walkers and tanks early, the infantry started moving on to the battlefield but with the ranges still long and terrain intervening no shots rung out just yet.

Once the big guys started coming on though, that was a different story all together. Andrew, having only tanks left brought his first Pershing on and preceded to decimate my unit of Ghosts who had moved toward the centre objective. The favour was soon to be repaid as I brought my JagdLuther on and fired....dealing 4 damage to the hull of Andrew's tank which puts it over halfway damaged. But he wasnt finished yet. During our next activation, Supreme Commander Rommel rolls on and reactivates the 'Luther...who opens up on the limping Pershing, finishing it off.

One big hull down and a couple more to go! Units were now starting to manouever into their positions to get shots of at the enemy with the big guys starting to do a lot of work.

Over on the hamlet flank, David and Damian push their monkeys forward to start flanking and removing command units as well as securing objectives.

The Allies and SSU werent content just sitting back and waiting though. In the broken city, Bazooka Joe and his mates were heading forward tentatively but with purpose. With the support of flame and grenades they started cutting down all that stood between them and their objective....Lara and her Panzers. Sitting high in a ruin, they started raining down shells on anything in their sights and refusing to roll over and die. DR saves just rock!

And then the tide started to turn...

Part 2 of The Battle of Ranuigrad will be told tomorrow....for now the Axis hold the upper hand but how long will they hold?

Tune in tomorrow...same TCOW time, same TCOW station...

Last TCOW for 2014 - hashtag sadface

So this Sunday will be the final club meeting for the year and it looks like there is something pretty massive planned! 

THE BATTLE FOR RANUIGRAD WILL RAGE!

This is going to be a 5 x 5 DUST battle pitting the mighty Axis forces against the combined power of the Allies and the SSU over the once formidable fortress city of Ranuigrad. Phaser, laser and tesla fire will fill the sky and many a Ghost, Ranger and Fakyeli will meet their maker. Who will prevail and hold the ruins and their position on the battlefield....you'll have to turn up on Sunday to find out...or maybe check the AAR next week, whichever is best.

SAGA

Lots of people have been making a heap of progress on their SAGA forces and there have been some shots on the Facebook page to keep others going. I managed to get a 4 point game in on Tuesday....and I can attest to the fact that Dane Axes suck ass. Stupid bloody Danes.

FLAMES OF WAR

On the FoW side of things, a little quieter post-FlamesCon as we play a few other things, but I have heard murmurings of a Vietnam focussed campaign....time to break out my Airmobile I think!

Keep an eye out for details of THE GREATEST FOW TOURNAMENT in the Southern Hemisphere. DanCon 2: Electric Boogaloo is coming....

So, we shall see you Sunday! DICE ON!!!

Meet the founders.

We here at T.C.O.W like to stay grounded and not forget where we came from. Every tree started off as a seed and every Westies Holden started off rust free, good things often start of small and take on a life of their own.

So I would like to introduce 3 of the 4 founding members of T.C.O.W. Damian (other one, not me), Dan & Paul who without their efforts Aucklands most awesome club of diverse gaming would not exist.

Cheers guys the rest of us appreciate the time and effort you put in and lets make the last club session of the year on the 14th a massive one.

DAMN YOU LIFE!!

As is always the way, life tends to get in the way of the hobbies and the blogs that we write about them.

So, a few things happening this weekend by the looks of the murmurings on FaceBook is that this weekend is going to be a Malifaux weekend, which sounds like a heap of fun!

Malifaux is a Victorian steampunk gothic horror skirmish game. Its 28mm in scale and relatively easy to get into...just pick up a crew and a deck of cards and you're good to go...as long as you have a set of rules and know how to play. The random card cheating mechanic makes this a bit different from your normal dice rolling mechanic, so if you're interested in something a little different, its worth a look! The models are damned cool as well!

Also, a couple of us are attending Snapshot on the Shore (affectionately known as SteveCon). Its a 1600 Late War Flames of War tournament and is looking to be a heap of fun. We'll have a full report on that on soon.

Christmas time is rolling around as well, so if you're looking to get yourself a hobby related present, dont forget that we get a bit of a kick-back from Mighty Ape. Just use the link below...

Sunday is Coming.....

It's been a fortnight since the last meeting of the TCOW'ers. So, what have we got on the schedule for this weekend, I hear you ask?!

From the talk I've been hearing (words I've been reading?) there is definitely going to be some Big Cats stalking around...of the 15mm variety of course!

If you're interested in seeing how Warmahordes works, I have it on good authority that we've got a couple of bunnies lined up for some teaching. March is quickly approaching so people are going to be wanting practice...

So, shall we play a game....

Club Meeting - 2nd November

It seems like an AGE since we had a club meeting and that would be because it's been a month. With people on FlamesCon duty a fortnight ago, no-one was able to run the show.

So, a heap of talk on the Facebook page about what games were going to be played and it seemed like we were in for a full house. Were we ever! 6 tables set up for varying games and about 16 nerdy/beardy types involved in all kinds of shenanigans! 

I'm not sure on what Gav is asking Mike with that finger?

The count of games over the course of the afternoon was:
3 x Flames of War 
2 x Warmahordes
1 x Kings of War
1 x Infinity
1 x Dropzone Commander
1 x SAGA

I managed to get a few shots through-out the afternoon of a few of the games and have posted these for your viewing pleasure!

The last game of the afternoon drew a bit of a crowd as Jonathan and I grabbed Mike's Viking and Norman SAGA forces and Mike walked us through an intro game. I have a Saxon army on the way and I believe that Jonathan is considering getting one as well. The rules are pretty simple to learn with only a few basic concepts needed to start playing.

I was a bit daunted by the Norman cavalry heading toward me a twice the speed I was moving but there was one thing they didn't count on..... BERSERKERS!!!!! Once they'd all but decimated the Warlord's Hearthguard all that was left was my Hirdmen to stroll in and get enough kills to send him to Norman Valhalla...where ever that is....

Great game! I'm really looking forward to getting some models and starting to paint them up.

So, that was another club meeting done and dusted (although, we didn't actually play any DUST). 2 more weeks until the next! 

Warmahordes in action!

Kings of War - Men vs. Abyssals

Dropzone Commander

Infinity

Otto and the Tigers. 

US Armour (Armor for the Yanks) and German Grens.

Painting Tips

In my usual Saturday morning with the kids, I tend to do a quick browse of some of the Wargaming sites I have saved to my favourites bar. Things like Flames of War, DUST and I also have a good browse of www.wwpd.net/ to see whats been happening in the last week or so over there.

This morning has an article from Dirty Jon which is bloody awesome:

Dirty Jon's Basic Tips For Painting Miniatures

This has some great tips and even if you've been painting plastic/resin/metal crack for years, there are some really good ideas and little tricks of the trade which can make life easier.

So if you have 5 minutes, give it a read. Careful though, you'll end up spending half an hour on the site reading other stuff!

A Dirty Jon Tiger....because who doesn't love Big Cats!

SAGA Drama!

Well, I don't think that anyone could call the members of TCOW slow on moving once a decision has been made! What started as a post of Monkey's Jordanian tanks on Facebook ended up being a quick decision for at least half a dozen of us to start playing SAGA which is something that had been talked about but never moved on.

So, what is SAGA I hear you ask? SAGA is a Dark Ages skirmish level game where you (as a Warlord) command a band of troops against a similar band. Featuring groups such as the Normans, Vikings and Scots, there is plenty of room for diverse forces to do battle and with new expansions coming out pretty regularly (the latest one covering the Crusades), you can do almost anything. As you only need about 20-30 figures, its pretty cheap (relatively speaking) to get into.

There is a series of videos (link below) from some Aussie guys called Knights of Dice showing how to play the game, so if you're interested, have a look before committing and then join us in the SAGA!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ3wfiPbNx4QfnYNekveODsZXCBNDc7lZ

Market Garden - The Final Battle!

As many of you will know (and if you don't, where the hell have you been?!) we've been running a Firestorm: Market Garden campaign at the club with the intent of concluding the campaign with a MEGA-BATTLE at FlamesCon.

Rather than regale you with memoirs of how we (Ze Grrrrrmans) pushed no fewer than 30 burning wrecks of Cromwells into the Waal from the bridge at Nijmagen to allow the glorious advance of KG Hummel and the 107. Panzer Brigade.... our campaign hand-holderer Mike Haught has done that for you over at his excellent gaming blog. Here's a link:

http://www.scarybiscuitsstudios.com/2014/10/highway-to-reich-dramatic-tcow-fsmg.html


I'd like to say a huge thanks to all involved in the campaign. Not a bad effort! Roll on the next one!

ICH!!!!

Official FlamesCon 2014 Results

With the regular Thursday update to the FoW site, the official results are in! You can read all about it in the link below and there's some great photos capturing the action.

http://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=4650

So many games, so little time #3: Simple painting to good effect - Part 3

Here we are back for part 3 which I will go over the picking out the detals & leg armour plates. Decals & weathering will follow in another part shortly.

So the main body of the walker is done but there are armour plates on the legs which have not been given any love as yet.

For these I did the same technique as the the main body where I sprayed them with the Red Brown all over, put in a large Green Grey area, thin line of Yellow Ochre to separate the 2 other colours then a final touch up of any over spray.

Next up I needed to define the details on the miniature as looking at it from any distance you just see a mess of colours from the camo. I know this was kind of the point of camo BUT this is a scale model remember and you do want to be able to make out what you are looking at.

The method I decided to use is called pin-washing, instead of slathering wash over the entire mini with a large brush which I have tended to do in the past I applied the wash just to the recesses with a thin brush. This was far more time consuming having to work around every panel joint but the colours of the model remained far more vibrant than if the mini had been bathed in a wash.

The paint I used was the Army painter ink "Dark Tone" which is just amazing and the Army Painter Inks are now my go to washes.

Here you can see the first part of the walker that I pin-washed vs the other arm which has yet to have it done. Hopefully you can spot which is which!

Here is both of them having been pin-washed.

Next up I did the same pin-washing to the main hull.

Which when you put them together you get.

Lastly I finally attached the leg armour plates that I talked about right at the start and the mini is looking nice and factory fresh, ready for unit markings and some wear and tear added (but keeping that new walker smell).

The final part where I do the decals and weathering will be up soon.

FlamesCon 2014 - TCOW Rides High

This weekend saw a lot of TCOW members pack their toys and make their way to the Mt Eden War Memorial Hall for this years FlamesCon, Battlefront's New Zealand Grand tournament for Flames of War. This year also saw the introduction of DUST to the mix and we had members across pretty much everything there was on offer.

Day 1 had both Early War and Late War (1 day and Grand Tournament) on the cards and there was a lot of interest in both periods with 6 tables for EW and 9 tables for LW. A variety of different forces were on display, everything from Czech tanks to JagdTigers and everything in between.

Day 2 showcased the remaining LW forces as well as some love for MW. The inaugural FlamesCon DUST tournament was also held with 12 players in total, a great turn out!!

This was my second FlamesCon and I'm always amazed at the varied and interesting forces that people take to competitions. I try and take a look over all the lists on tables just to have a few new ideas in my bag for future tournaments. 

So, rather than doing a write up of all my games which isn't really very club-like, I thought I'd just add a heap of photos and you can form your own picture of the event....which I might add was bloody awesome!

In terms of awards and winning and stuffs, over the course of the weekend TCOW members managed to secure:

EW Best Sport, DUST 1st Place, DUST Best Sport, LW GT Best Sport and, most importantly, both the DUST and LW GT Wooden Spoons!

So, without further ado, an Imgur album for your viewing pleasure!

http://imgur.com/a/aAyGT


One final note, the Mega Battle for Market Garden....AMAZING! Everyone had a heap of fun and made it an amazing event. After all was said and done, the Axis forces were victorious! ICH!!! Many thanks to Mike for taking us through the campaign and to all the players involved!

FlamesCon Weekend

Afternoon TCOW'ers!

As you're all no doubt aware, this weekend is FlamesCon weekend and a lot of club members will be heading out to the Mt Eden War Memorial Hall to push toy soldiers around. FUNSIES!

As a result, there's isn't going to be anyone around to facilitate a club meeting so we're postponing for a fortnight. All complaints can be directed to our complaints officer, Damian Reid.....

If you're in the neighbourhood and in need of something to do, why not pop into FlamesCon and say hi! There will be a heap of demo games going on that you can try your hand at as well as previews of Battlefront's up-coming releases.

Have a read about last year's event as well:

http://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=4195

http://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=4188

FoW Poll

Morning TCOW'ers,

Last week at club we were talking about what should our next FoW challenge be  once we've finished Market Garden. A couple of options were thrown around and given that TCOW is a great dictatorial democracy, we thought we should give you the choice.

I've added a poll to the top of the blog and if you choose the 'Something Else' option, add your comment below as to what you think that something else should be.

- G

So many games, so little time #2: Simple painting to good effect - Part 2

Onward and upwards with this little project.

Now we have paint down on the entire mini its time to block in some camo on the main hull and guns. I have used my airbrush to put down some soft edge camo but there is nothing stopping you using a brush to do hard edge camo or some masking to do splinter/dazzle style camo.

This is the basic soft edge camo look I went for, except I went for bigger areas in a more stripe pattern.

Without an airbrush you could easily do a hard edge camo like this instead.

Or be adventurous and go for dazzle style camo.

So this is where we left the project at the end of part 1.

I first started off airbrushing some big Green Grey areas to break up the shape of the walker.

Once that was done I ran a thinner Green Ochre line where the Red Brown & Green Grey meets to give my my 3 tone camo that matches some other vehicles in my army.

I had some pretty bad over spray on the Red Brown at this point due to being only new to airbrushing myself so I went back over the Red Brown with the airbrush to fix that up. Red Brown from the Modelair range is also a specific airbrush paint so it comes out of the brush nicer and easier to control than the other 2 so leaving that till last was always the plan.

At this point I also painted the ammo storage magazines on each gun arm the P3 colour Traitor Green. 

So that is where I am at now. The big areas of the mini are all done so that just leaves the leg armour plates, picking out the details, decals and some weathering to go.

Stay tuned for part 3 in which I will sort the leg armour and go over some of the details I pick out.

Club Meeting - 5 October

Oh yeah! Another Sunday rolls around and that means its TOY SOLDIER time!

We had about 15 people all told yesterday, which given the size of the space, makes a pretty full house! A lot of guys had arranged for testing games of both FoW and DUST with FlamesCon just over the horizon. As we're still in the middle of our Market Garden campaign, Mike decided that all FoW games would apply to MG results. This means we should be in a great space for the final battle during the after-hours gaming at FlamesCon.

A quick run-down of the games were:

Dave vs. Damo - Early War, Japanese vs. Italians

A really fun game here. Dave's Japs heading at Damo's Italian tankettes....BANZAI!

Jonathan vs. Greg - LW - Germans vs. Soviets

I'm testing a list for FlamesCon having decided that I don't want to take Germans this year. Needs more tweaking!

Ryan vs. Mike - LW - Germans vs. Brit Tanks

I didn't get any photos of this one....it was over pretty quick!


Damian vs. Andrew - DUST - Axis vs. SSU

This one looked like a fun game...some heavy tanks on both sides and Winter Child flying around causing havoc and radiation...

Ryan and I also gave Monkey a run with his Rangers against our respective Axis forces. Monkeys Rangers definitely led the way there! Heaps of infantry can definitely sort out walkers.

We also have a group trying out the new Relic Knights game. I understand this Kickstarter shrouded in mystery as it took years to deliver. Looked like fun though...

So, another club meeting in the bag. There won't be a meeting in a fortnight as most of us will be attending FlamesCon....expect a big write up for that one!

- G