Other People's Work: Mark's Board and Others.

    As I mentioned before, it is always good to inspire people to up their game. Even though, I do some commission work, I am always impressed with the talent that is out there. Besides, I get ideas from other people as well. After talking to Mark overseas about making his own fur board, I was rather impressed with the results. If anything, I encourage him to make more for the sake of the hobby as long as it was fun to make. He was basing this off of the movie "Fury". He may not realize it, but I was inspired by his work for color combinations for some off my projects.

A lot of my color ideas came from Mark's board, which I also found nature.

        Below was Mark's recent Chain of Command game.

  Next where some shots of Ross's work. I answered some question he had in the past. I can't say that I inspired him, simply because I was inspired by some other people's work. But here are some shots of his board.

I really like this shot!

AAR: Bolt Action: Dueling Wives.

       It was another beautiful Saturday as usual at our house for wargaming. We tend to have few people over to play games and such. Sometimes, this is just a reason to socialize. That is the joy of this hobby is that you have to interact with people in person. And we had a few people come over that we rarely see. In this case, our friend, Hugh brought his wife, Beth. Now at this point, Kalissa and I had met Beth once. The first time was at our local Hobbytown, U.S.A. After thirty minutes of discussing all of the interesting games that our lovely hobby has to offer, she seemed quite interested. After all, it is not she does not have an excellent painter to build her an army of her choosing. So Hugh and Beth left and that was the last time we saw her for about seven months. This seemed to bring up all sorts of nifty theories mostly concluding with evil wife plans in miniature warfare. Muahahaha!!... so to speak!
       Now, to our surprise, Beth was back and at our house, since Bill and Hugh had a game set for Chain of Command. My wife has made no secret that she does not like the Chain of Command rules. In a sense, she likes her game fast and bloody. As it turned out, Beth also found no interested in their game either, but was not playing any game. That is when the idea came up that Beth and Kalissa could play a game against each other in Bolt Action.
       As a side note, I would like to talk about first impressions and games that speak you people. Since Kalissa and I have been wargaming, we have noticed how people react to different games. Everyone is a little different about wargaming first impressions, but it is roughly the same: it has to look fun. There has been a trend for smaller skirmish games with quick action rules coming out, and I believe it is there to attract new gamers who have never played tactical game or a wargame, in general. I also believe that some games just speak to people! This might of happened on this day with Beth.
      Since I already had a desert table set up, I set up forces for both ladies as they got lunch. It turns out that Beth ended up running Kalissa's British, and Kalissa had my German DAK. There were quite a few firsts this day. It was the first time Beth played a wargame. It was the first time Kalissa played as German, since day one of wargaming. It was the first time I have seen to ladies play against each other. It was the first time I saw Kalissa not be able to assault in a game. And it was the first wife fight that was happy and friendly that did not involve pulling hair and slapping!
     The game they had had both of the them talking about future gaming and how much fun they had. Even though, my wife lost horribly; it was the best game she had in months. She talked about it a good two hours after the game. To me, it was good to see Beth play and enjoy herself. I hope she plays more in the future. Anyway, below were the game shots.

The Board in the beginning.

British artillery strike takes a toll on the Germans.

Germans are pinned everywhere!

These poor bastards keep getting hit in the open.

German tank is disabled.

Craters from German mortar rounds.

Not looking good for the Germans.

The Romanians Are Coming (Part II) and Other Stuff.

     I have been keeping busy lately. I have had quite a few commission jobs to occupy my time, which is great. I do like do commission projects, but I also have some of my own stuff to do. Keeping this in mind, I started working on other projects in "baby steps" between commission projects. I have a few things that I would like to accomplish before January's Tournament at Siege of Augusta. This is mainly more terrain. I had recently posted palm trees. This was one of those on the fly projects that is going to showcase at this tournament. I have been working on a large amount of bushes and stonewalls for the arid regions of terrain we with have there. I have been covering Christmas trees from the local Walmart to summer trees. And I found a tons of plaster castings of boxes and above all, sheep! I had forgotten that I spent five dollars for this at Historicon. I must have been really that dazed at that convention.
    Also, on the list of things to do were to finish my Romanians to be presentable. I plan on playing them at this upcoming tournament provided that there is an opening or a odd man out. Otherwise, I will not be playing, unless it is demo related. I have posted them previously, but not they have been based. And further more, they have gained armored support thanks to Blitzkrieg Miniatures. I do love their stuff, because they only do resin, and they are the easiest cleanly made models I have dealt with. It is a total of four parts to put my Panzer IV G together. I think I spent a total of 30 seconds gluing it together. The only problem I have now is finding a replacement hatch. I was not originally going to have the commander out, but the hatch I had tried to glue got pushed in by yours truly. It might have made it 20 seconds, instead of finding an extra commander. Either way, here are more of the Romanians.

          I would like to share another thing on this post. Despite doing commission work for other people and getting paid, I have answered tons of questions about how I do these boards and such. Recently, a Facebook friend wanted to see what I thought of his work on a similar project to mind. I, personally think he knocked it out of the park for his first time run. Below was his project.

AAR: Pickett's Charge: My First Game Of:

     I will not lie! I expected a "Rebel Yell" from my Confederates! Instead, I got a "Rebel Whimper" in return! This was my first experience with the "Pickett's Charge" rules that my fellow Cape Fear Wargaming friend had been recently talking about. As in the previous post, we experimented with the rules. The only real reason I was not involved was a simple hangover from the night before. This was well deserved based on a case of beer and a bottle of whiskey. But I  rarely get it so badly to not understand a new rules set!
   But in this game, the rules meant more for me, because I was playing them. I am a firm believer that a rules set is best explained by playing. Even if it does not sound that great, you can be surprised! The good thing about this game is that there were no veterans to the rules. I played against a friend of mine named Tim. He ran a bunch of Union forces against my Confederates that were owned by my friend, Danny. It was going to be an interesting match, since I have never played against Tim in anything that I am aware of  in the last five years.
    What I found interesting with these rules are that you place down your troops at once. There are no back and forth placement of troops or one side down before the other. Based on this, both opponents get a tactical surprise. It our game, it was a little closer than normal rules. We wanted to get into the action as soon as possible. This was also part of the downfall with the Confederates in the game. The Union slightly outgunned me with Brigade artillery that was more scattered. And with good die rolling, the blood and death on my side stacked up quick.
   Another note was the lack of passing orders to you various general staff. If your did not roll well for initiating a staff officer, parts of your army was not allow to do anything, because they hesitated. This can have a crippling affect in the game upping the level of tension in the game. And the ones who need to move never quite get there orders. In my case, the local drunk must have been relied on to pass out orders. He never really made it.
    the last thing I thought was interesting were the rules chaos in charges. With the various modifiers, there was never the feel that it was going to be a sure thing. One assault left my Confederates standing off unformed while taking shots by Union Troops who spent their time shooting at birds instead. The other charge I had was simply repulsed! Tim charged a battery of guns to take some serious casualties. The battery somehow survived in withdrew. This seemed like the only unlikely event in the game that did not make sense. We all thought that even if the battery fired off the guns, they would have been abandoned or destroy automatically. But in truth, if we had started the game at the further distance, there was a very good chance that these guns would have not gotten into this situation. At least, the distance the Union troops crossed might have been checked, instead of flanked. We will have to try the rules out again. First blood in a set of rules is never a defining moment when testing.

The battlefield.

Positions at the beginning.

Attacking the Yankees.

One regiment retreat through the supporting one.

The one with the cross gained an exceptional modifier for shooting.

The Yankees double-quick to attack Rebel guns. 

The Confederates left flank collapses.

AAR: Bolt Action: Sicilian Night Fight!

         Terrain? Check! Miniatures? Check! Dice? Check! And a blue light? Check! All of these things combined with a willing opponent equals a good old night fight. And since, my wife had a rough week, it seemed only natural to kill each other on the wargaming field. Because that is what marriage is all about!
    This was to be the second night fight that we have playing with Bolt Action. They have the rules for this in Warlord's Battleground Europe book. We just decided to take it a little further for the experience of the game. So like the first time, we ended up using a blue flood lamp bulb for the look of night while still being able to see. Though, I must confess that another blue lamp in addition would make it even easier to see. Other thoughts about lighting for games even includes dawn. I would have to have another lamp for that in a pink bulb or orange. I will get to that when I get to it.
    For this game, we decided to play in Sicily 1943. There were lots of hills an terrain, but why let that be a bother. Despite having to roll to see if you can shoot, a lot of that said terrain prevented a bunch of shots. This came down to one conclusion: Assaults. In this game, we had a total of 14 assaults in the dark. This may have been one of our more bloody affairs in miniature combat. Both the British and the Germans lost half of their force in the process to amount in the game ending in a "Draw". Kalissa's British seemed to have lost most all of her infantry. I lost all of my armor! Below are the photos of the game followed by the next morning aftermath pictures. Enjoy!

This was just a burning house for terrain purposes. Burning fires illuminated any unit within 6" rather than rolling for visual distance.

The board.

Another view.

Another view.

Panzer IV G's fire shots a heavy AEC armored car.

The two advancing Panzer IV G's.

A Panzer III N goes cross country.

Missed shots!

British infantry advancing in the dark.

A Bren Gun Carrier and a Valentine VIII tank drive up a road.

More British.

The Panzer III N takes a direct hit from a Valentine tank!

This German Panzer fires a round at the armored car, but it bounces off stunning the crew!

British lost a bunch of men to machine gun fire from the now burning Panzer III.

German infantry assaulted the Bren Carrier and retreated at the sight of a tank. Another explosion was a direct hit on a British infantry unit by a medium mortar shell. They took the hit after assaulting and killing the German 1st Lt. and men.

German Grenadiers flank in the dark and ambush a British infantry squad at point blank!

A flanking Valentine tank takes out a Panzer IV. The other one could not help due to a turret jamming!

Anti-tank fire everywhere!

German plow through more infantry after another assault!

A British artillery observer calls in a bombardment. No one is killed, but they are pinned down.

Now, the Valentine tank has a turrent jam!

German Grenadiers flank behind the British armored car to kill the Vickers Machine team. My wife forgot about my last unit in flanking.

More mortar rounds hit the same unit. BOOM!

Two different Grenadier squads try to tackle this lone Valentine tank, but fail.

The Germans assault a mortar spotter in the bushes with ease.

The armored car kills the last German tank, but is destroyed by assaulting Grenadiers in the rear!

A full German squad is killed off while assaulting a mortar team. We assumed they just threw a mortar round at them!

Still assaulting the tank, but one squad in killed from the machine guns.

The British here are pinned like crazy.

Germans leaving assault range of everyone unfriendly.

Next morning. 

A very violent game! But we had fun!