Saturday, January 8, 2011

Review of 2010

As it seems the popular thing for authors of wargaming blogs to do, I sat down to look back on what exactly I did during the last year. Unfortunately, some projects are still unfinished and are doomed to sit on the back-burner until I feel like painting them.

-Warhammer Fantasy Battles: This was the first large scale (and by large I mean non-6mm) project I undertook. While I began painting these models in late 2009, much of the work carried over into the earlier part of 2010. I still have quite a few models left unpainted. By few I mean over 50. All in all, I currently have more then 2000 points worth of figures done, which is quite a feat for I, being that much of this was painted in the space of 2-3 months time. Right now I just can't summon the will-power to pick up the brush and finish what I have.

Why? I really have nobody to play with at the moment. The local gaming store does have a regular WFB night, but it happens to fall on the same day I have sports, so I'm unable to attend. This may change as one of my good friends, and fellow RMC club member has been toying with the idea of starting an army. He already is quite engrossed with Warhammer 40K and spaceships, but feels he has the time to paint up some Lizardmen for my Ogres to squish.

-1/2400 IJN Coral Sea: In the space of a few hours I painted and based all of the 11 ships in my current fleet. Quite a few games have been played with them and have proven to be a good purchase. I plan on rounding out the whole Or Bat in the next few months. They are not all that taxing to paint (actually, they are just as easy as 6mm) and they are more of a "paint fast and get on table to play" kind of project.

-15mm Russian Continuation War: This has been the main focus of my painting over the last 5 months and I had gone from 10ish test stands of infantry to almost an understrength company. The idea of basing two figures to a stand has made for some quite interesting game developments. This project is currently standing at 95-98% completion. Only problem is that my two opponents (the Hoyt brothers) do not have a large enough force to oppose my horde of unwashed ones, so I have yet to field the entire collection in one game.

-Spaceships: Ah, another project that is relatively easy to paint up. My fleet stands at 18 ships with other various scenario elements. This one is pretty much done even if I have yet to paint up the fighter contingent. For our club here at RMC, playing Full Thrust (or as we now like to call our super-ruleset, Extreme Thrust) has been almost a full time commitment. A campaign is current being run and involves at least one space battle every week or so. On top of my GW ships, I picked up a pack of Firestorm Armada ships to experiment with and have been in the process of scratch building a "Bio" fleet.

So to tally up, in 2010 I did not fully complete any of my four main projects, but are very close with two and can finish off the other two within a few months at most. I am reasonably happy with what I have done. I do wish I had not gone into a painting funk for about 6 months, but that is now water under the bridge.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

15mm Russian horde

I originally set out to paint up a platoon of Russians for a fire-team scale skirmish game, but like other projects I start, it was hard to stop painting more figures. I still have enough models stripped and cleaned to make another rifle platoon, but I think I will put that on the back-burner as I want to move onto another project. All in all, over the last the last four months I have painted 200 infantry, 28 vehicles and 5 artillery pieces. Not bad considering I'm a full time student (oh and officer =/ ).

Breakdown of the "platoon":

-2 Platoon commands with 1 spotter team each
-1 Politruk / Commissar
-1 SMG section of 16 men
-3 Rifle sections of 16 men
-1 NKDV SMG section of 16 men with attached HMG team
-3 50mm mortar teams
-2 82mm mortar teams
-2 HMG teams
-4 AT rifle teams
-2 Recce teams of 6 men on 2 motorcycles each
-2 76mm Regimental / Infantry guns
-1 47mm AT gun
-1 76mm AT gun
-1 122mm howitzer
-3 T-34 / 76mm tanks
-2 SU-76 SPG
-2 T-26 tanks
-1 KV-2 tank
-4 Stalinet tractors
-4 Jeeps
-4 Trucks
-1 BA-10 Armored Car
-3 BA-64 Armored Cars

I would have to say that is is more of a understrength company then actual platoon. I've devised this force to be modular and have a great deal of variety in equipment as to create many types of scenarios.

A few things still need to be done before I can call it a completed project. It stands right now at about 98%. I have to paint up the two T-26 models and have a couple more vehicles on their way. The vehicles need bases (I've decided to base everything, just looks better on the table) and I have to order magnetic sheeting for all the bases.