More Thrust.....Islamic Federation

A couple of months ago I painted my FSE (Federal States Europa) Full thrust intro fleet. At the time I could not find my second intro fleet. Well as you can see it has now turned up and managed to stay still long enough for me to paint it. Some of the smaller ships were already painted, but the larger ships being multi part had simply flown away. However here they all are, all in one place and all painted. I wanted to offer a strong contrast to the other fleet which is mostly cream in colour, so I have painted these a rich regal blue as the main colour. Given that all the ships have crescent shaped wings I felt s most appropriate to paint the wings several shades of gold. Against the blue the wings really jump out. Which was the effect I wanted. Each ship also has a light yellow accent stripe about a quarter of the way from the front. This was done purely to make them look more interesting and to break the blue up along the hull. Overall I think the colours work and contrast strongly with the FSE which is something I wanted. Having enjoyed painting both intro fleets I am almost tempted to get another two or expand these two at a later date.

That's today's post. I shall finish some more painting today so the next post will be on Sunday. I do plan to run a 7ombie game at the club NEXT weekend and will need to make a little scenery for that. next week. Nothing too complicated as I am waiting for my neighbour (a builder) to drop off a bag or two of off cuts from a garage he is building locally. Which will keep costs down for that and a few other projects.

All the best folks, Thanks for reading and I'll post again on Sunday (Assuming I get what I have started finished!!!)

Nil Points!

Well I finally finished a leader for SAGA. This is supposedly a welsh warband leader. I say supposedly as it could be any faction. It is easy to think that we have to have the "correct" figure as supplied by the manufacturer. Obviously that is not the case where we are dealing with a dark age force. As mentioned in earlier posts there was no uniforms and all equipment was used by everyone. Given the "gifting" of items from battle fields (Taken from the defeated force) anyone could be wearing items of any origin. Some times things might need to be adapted, for example a side split Hauberk "gifted" to a Norman knight would need to be front split. For those not in the know it's hard to ride a horse in hauberk that is not side split.... I know I have tried. You end up sitting on a really uncomfortable fold of metal chain link. Which is unpleasant for both rider and horse. Additionally your legs are exposed to the danger of the battlefield.  Not the idea of armour! 

Anyway back to the figure. In addition to the two axes and shield he carries a sword as well. I would have given him a spear instead of the axe in his left hand if I had any spare. But I have taken a liking to the additional axe so I will not change it now. His shield carries a stylised Raven. Having repainted the shield 3 times now this will be the final solution. I am not totally happy with it feeling that is should have been "Crisper" but I can't be bothered to have another go just yet. So it will do! While all the others in the warband have two colour geometric shield designs. All his clothes have a contrasting colour stripe as well. From what I know this was fairly typical on garments which would have been decorated with embroidery or Tablet weaving.

I am not sure which manufacture makes this dog, it was an eBay find. Relfie at the wargames club also wants a dog for his leader. Relfie said it out loud before me, but when he said it the dog was already in the post. The breed of dog is also correct for the period not that they had breeds as we would think of them, but a certain well known tapestry has dogs which look similar to this at least in proportion.  The last thing that identifies this as a leader is the size of the base. All the others are on 20mm square bases, so a larger round base should give this enough impact on the table that it is clearly something different.

Given that in Saga your warband leader is free I still only have four points of Vikings ready to play with. Until the majority of other players reach that level I feel justified in taking a break and working on other projects!

That's if for today. I'll Blog again on Friday, Thanks for reading and I hope to see you all soon. All the best Clint!

Stargrunt

Yesterday at the Rainham Wargames Club we had a game of Stargrunt. Having not read the rules for more than 2 years I was not at all familiar with what I was supposed to be doing. Ok that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. The scenario was that a senior officer's vehicle had broken down in an insurgents area and the NI (New Israeli) forces needed to rescue him from the Islamic Federation (IF)insurgents. The officer and bodyguards decided to stay inside the vehicle rather that take cover in any close buildings.

All other troops had a random start location (both direction and distance. The long and the short story of this is that some of the IF forces started in more favourable positions than others. All  the IF insurgents moved and where able opened fire on the troops inside the hover jeep. My troops just got to a position at the end of the 2nd turn and the NI rescue force turned up.

They were veteran quality and the IF were raw/green. Which for those unfamiliar with the rules meant that I was rolling d6 and the Israelis were rolling d10.  As can be seen on the right my squad was caught in the open. They continued to suffer "Double Suppression" for the next hour and a half (real time, probably 5 minutes to them) which ment they could do nothing at all, not even dive run away until the suppression was removed. Being green troops that was not as easy as I would have hoped. SO that just stood in the open getting shot at. Eventually they paniced, went first to Shaken and finally routed of the table, having done nothing all game apart from move twice.

Elsewhere in the town other NI troops had come onto the board. Having already lost one section of troops El Kev gave me another unit to control. These at the time were completely exposed in the open and caught between the officers in the vehicles and another NI squad. I moved them as soon as I could into a walled garden. And managed to fire at the NI squad.

It did not last long, fire was returned and they were "Double Suppressed", Triple Suppressed and first "Shaken" then "Broken" to the stage they could do nothing for the rest of the game. Don't get me wrong the game was not one sided. The IF did (well I did not but Ian and Kev did) manage to put up a fight. Ian in particular managed to keep his militia alive for the whole game.

Finally the Insurgents were allowed to start rolling for reinforcements, regular quality.. Yippee! Mine arrived after everyone elses! But at least they turned up in a place where they could not be shot for a few turns! The other guys arrived straight into the action. Brilliant victory was now possible!

Well actually no it wasn't! Both lots of reinforcements were shot to pieces starting out in the open and with no real chance to become combat effective. They did get a few shots back, and did manage a few NI Casualties, but realistically to little too late. Overall they died horribly out in the open.

My reinforcements did benefit from the massacre. Not being seen as a threat the NI forces did not attempt to target them straight away. As they did achieve a couple of shots at the Officers vehicle, and did manage to wound 2 of the crew, but not the senior officer. All in all the IF were just targets in a NI shooting gallery.

It would have been over much sooner if the dice had not gone against the New Israelis. With an armour value of d4 against a NI automatic rifle firing d12 for impact/penetration it was surprising just how often the d4 beat the d12.  Still it is a good set of rules and even just being a target was OK as all the guys are nice to play against!