AVBCW: Big Game 2015 03 14 Part 1

15/03/2015

Yes, JP, Roo & I held another AVBCW Big Game – we’ve now been doing this for four years. We had two tables (each 6×10′) set up. I’ll concentrate on the table I was playing on for the first couple of postings.

Breinton Bridge

At the northern end of the Golden Valley control of this bridge was being contested between the rebels and the Royalists, as it is on the way to the market town of Hay-on-Wye.

Roo did us up some new river sections, rest of the secenery is the stuff I have churned out over the last few years.

My Malvern Hills Conservators (led by Sir Ed Ward-Glear) set up, along with Captain Arrowmsith’s (Richard) BUF tank and…pepperpot…
Our third ally was Tym’s forces.

More BUF infantry deploy. As the table edges qwere split in two, the three of us loyalists opted for the MHC and BUF to deploy on the western edge of the river, with Tym deploying pretty much alone on the eastern river bank. Our goal was to seize the bridge ASAP, occupy the cottage, and block both of the road junctions.

Gavin (as the Reverend Captain Verity of the Anglican League), deployed his Anglicans on the eastern bank of the river.

Clive (as the Bishop of Ludlow), deployed his forces including the awesome scratch built rocket launchers.
Both sides advanced.

The Bishop of Ludlow’s forces advanced with trucks pulling hand break turns to act as cover ! Behind the trucks, the rocket launchers prepareed for their first salvo.

Meanwhile the BUF forces, raced towards the bridge – the BUF’s tank ignored the Bishop of Ludlow’s forces leaving them to the pepperpot and the MHC. Arrowsmith’s cavalry occupied the road, whilst his infantry and command squad occupied the cottage and bridge.

Verity’s Anglicans move through the woods aiming to flank the bridge.

Meanwhile, Sir Gilbert’s LDV roar forward in their trucks and improvised contraptions !
(NB: Doug’s last game was hampered when he pulled a random event card reducing everything to mud and his vehicle column got bogged down for virtually the entire game – this time he was luckier)

And Sir Gilbert’s supporters the WI mounted the crest…of the hill…

Tym’s Royalist column arrives – lots of Crossley’s filled with…more women !
Is there something we don’t know about the women of H’ford ?

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AVBCW: LDV Bicycle unit

16/12/2014 2 Comments

Finally, some half decent light allowed me to photo the finished LDV on bicycles.

Foundry British Home Guard figures (WW2014, unavailable at the time of writing this post). They come as a two part model with the arm/handlebar separate.

So a fair amount of greenstuff was used to build them.

I used GW liquid greenstuff which seemed to work well.

I chose to flock the bases to make them look like they are on a road – I don’t think 1930’s bicycles were exactly capable of much off road capability ! I mixed black (tarmac) flock, and fine grey flock both by Jarvis scenics.

Which reminded me of Queen’s Bicycle Race…NB: the video is a bit racey…

And somehow, I don’t think that there will be many such lady cyclists featuring in any AVBCW games any time soon. 😮

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AVBCW: Motor Quadricycle of Death !

27/11/2014 1 Comment

For my barfday, Byakhee Rich got me a present, though I suspect he had ulterior motives as he dropped some hints.

Yes, a Motor Quadricycle of Death ! From Zinge Industries. They seem to do a lot of WH40K inspired bits, but as they note on the page this vehicle is inspired by the WW1 German A7 tank.

Rich had built it for me and undercoated it black. Hmm now which AVBCW faction uses a lot of black ? And does that faction have a commander who has a reputation for lots of tanks, armoured cars and stuff ?? 😉

Rich had built it with rotating wheels, moveable HMGs and moveable hatch.

This popped into my head for some reason ! 🙂

Here’s a second one I bought afterwards, in its basic kit form. It turns out a bit of work had been done to allow all the moveable parts, as Rich commented:

If you bought wheels rather than tracks, that’s heavy engineering so you’d better let me do it. Holes drilled through the hull sides, brass rod axles, milliput and grinding tools for that bit !

So I have dropped it off with him.

To encourage him to complete this task of engineering, I painted the present green and slapped on some MHC transfers, so the MHC can go zipping round the Malverns in this strange vehicle, no doubt built at the Morgan Car factory in Malvern Link.

The MHC logo is a transfer, and is about 5mm wide, so a perfect circle isn’t going to happen and looks fine when placed on a table and observed at several foot’s distance with a Mk1 eyeball.

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AVBCW: Painting Challenge

07/09/2014

Well hopefully it won’t have escaped some peoples’ notice my mate JP & I are hosting another one of our Big Games on the 27th September. So we’re busy gearing up to organising it, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.

As usual, I am providing armies for delinquents who don’t know better and haven’t got their own little toy soldiers.

A recent review of the detritus, found a load of Foundry WW2 Home Guard cyclists.As one of the things JP & I are pushing in our latest game is the lack of fuel and ammo, bicycles are an ideal anitdote to lots of tanks and armoured cars.

As you can see, there’s a fair bit of greenstuff to make the arms meld in with the bodies, otherwise excellent models, so I planned to have a new unit of them to deploy on the battlefield – in accordance with my plan to get a new unit on the board with every single game I play !

In addition, my review found a number of other units to put together…

Luckily, Byakhee Richard is one of them so as Chief Engineer for many of the larger more complex items I build, he has been busy building new armoured vehicles for me. These (Musketeer) Lancia Armoured Trucks were used in the 1920’s not least in the Irish Civil War.

There was a fair amount oif blue language used whilst Richard built this Austin Morris A/C, however the outcome is very good with an excellent crew including one of Paul Hicks’ tank commanders – a bren gun, BOYS anti tank rifle and smoke bombs and this makes an excellent addition to the mechanised arm of the MHC.

Richard did however send me his list of mobile BUF….including a request for more cavalry, and even dismounted cavalry.

Good job I have some on the painting table. Again Musketeer BUF…

Looks like I’ll be busy over the next couple of weeks painting this lot up in time for the ganme.

Good job I almost finished the command group for the socialists for Mike then isn’t it ? 😉

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AVBCW: Local Defence Volunteers’ HMG

19/08/2014

Having rummaged through my AVBCW collection of LDV troops, I found I was short of command and support weapons. Preparing for the game on the 27th September, so I asked on the AVBCF for models to fill in these units.

Luckily, my mate Mort responded with offers of customised units. One of the items I bought from him was the HMG unit – though I added a Foundry Home Guard to replace the third figure.

Now I already had a Foundry Home Guard HMG, and the Musketeer LDV HMG, but I wanted more as I am providing at least two armies for the Big Games, I need at least four HMGs, and more support weapons !

Of course, you will see in Mort’s post, I have also bought some Mortars for my LDV forces – and yes they’ll be posted shortly as they are nearly finished.

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Bandits, Cats and High Five Commanders

18/07/2014 1 Comment

The Copplestone Castings collection for Bob is pretty extensive, except for the mounted commanders, which ended up in the rather comical high fiving incident between two opposing commanders at the big game. So, I let Rich loose with a suggested simple conversion.

I’ve tried cajoling Mark C to no avail, to produce a separate set iof mounted commanders.

So it was a quick hand swap with a Circassian Cossack. Rich pinned and greenstuffed the hand into place (thanks). The Circassian got the hand in return (!), so a unique command figure as well.

Now the next lot of figures that Rich brought round on Sunday deserve an entire posting in their own right, and will get one, but for now here they are:

Yes, Copplestone White Russians with Great War Miniatures German heads. This will be a unit from the Baltic/NW Russian RCW theatre, or indeed could be used for Bolshevik International brigades in Central Asia.

Simple head swaps using the German stahlheim heads from the mortar crews I’m also working on.

Having done the shotgunners for the MHC, I also found the bandits – a unit of 10 with rifles, some assortted assault types and their leaders. So having actually enjoyed painting the individualistic shotgunners decided it was high time to do the same with the similarly disparate bandits.

Again by coincidence JP sent out a calling note for our planned AVBCW Big Game on 27th September, so I thought it timely to get another unit sorted for that game as I know several players will be coming cap in hand to borrow figures.

The cats weren’t impressed with any of this, and played dead because its really hot, and I don’t blame them….

It’s hot – The March Violets:

I’m gonna tell you a story
About love about love…c’mon

Living with a family that ate rock and roll
I discovered hunger
Discovered the rise and fall
Of going under for the third time

Obsessed with nails
And leather shades and lizard scales
And maybe Hades looked this good
But I don’t think it’s good enough to eat
Real cheap Jesus
Leatherhead incinerator
Nail head try to break the atom

Head head

It’s so hot in here it’s running down the walls
And it’s dripping in my eyes from my hair
It’s hot it’s so hot

Living with a family that ate rock and roll
I discovered the golden rule
That big brother wasn’t watching me at all
Watching me at all

It’s hot it’s so hot

Living with a family that ate rock and roll

More to come on the WHFB game, and the AVBCW Big Game tomorrow.

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AVBCW: The Malvern Hills of Madness

18/07/2014

Our second game of the day. (Again all photos by JP some muppet forgot their camera)

After lunch we set the table up again, using H P Lovecraft and other pulp horror books to create a ridge across the middle of the table to represent the hills above Ham Green. We upped the points value of the forces from 300 to 450. JP’s black shirts deployed two regular units of 10 troops, an HMG, and 10 militia along with an HQ unit.

I deployed 2 x 5 shotgun armed militia, 10 Regulars, an HMG, a mortar and an HQ unit. Both of us opted to take a Medic. We were after all testing the rules out.

Both sides approached the ridge on opposite sides, and it was a race to get to the crest of the ridge first. So we were expecting a shoot them up session.

BUT, that suddenly changed. JP’s BUF moved up their HMG to some cover on the ridge, less than 6 inches from my shotgun armed militia, so in order to test the rules, I charged them in in an assault move.

OUCH ! The Bolt Action rules are pretty messy in close combat – I wiped the HMG crew out entirely.

Meanwhile his regulars advanced and shot my mortar spotter team. My mortar fired at them, hit and knocked off a couple of them. Our two regular units then did the expected stand off shooting session.

Then I got a dose of my own medicine when JP’s unit charged my HMG, with the same results.

Then I charged and wiped out his HQ. We now had units behind each others front lines. In the end the swirling melees lead us to include we had a draw.

Lots to chew on in terms of the rules, and the games added to our ongoing narrative in Herefordshire. Looks like the MHC and BUF emnity continues…

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AVBCW: The Battle of Ham Green

17/07/2014

The Malvern Hills Conservators were the attacking force trying to secure the western flanks of the Malvern Hills. We were using Bolt Action rules for the first time – and deployed forces worth 300 points given the size of JP’s table (about 4′ x 3′). All pictures by JP !

Expecting a rag tag set of bandits occupying their territory on the western flanks of the Malverns, the MHC encountered BUF forces in Ham Green complete with a light tank ! The MHC armed with a Lanchester A/C, and a large humber of shotguns decided to move forward anyway.

My new shotgun armed unit moved into the scrubland to avoid the BUF tank.

The BUF march down the road.

First turn the light tank brewed up the Lanchester leaving the MHC in an impossible situation.

Advancing through cover the MHC. LMG, SMG and rifle fire whittled down the MHC before they closed in on the BUF.

The BUF confidently marched down the road, whilst their tank stalled.

A firefight ensued. The MHC and did a couple of casualties before the inevitable withdrawal.

A good game, and for me it was great not to have to drag loads of scenery over to JP, having donated to him lots of stuff and his own efforts.

It quickly became apparent that under sustained fire, units quickly break down (the red and black markers). Unsurprisingly my new shotgun unit broke down and ran. The shot on the Lanchester was lucky and did spoil my plans straight off. I think JP was a bit guilty about his luck on this one as he didn’t move his tank in the best way.

After this game we broke for lunch provided by Mrs JP.

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This week’s challenge completed !

10/07/2014

So I set myself the challenge at the end of last week, and have completed it today.

I’d actually finished off the MHC Shotgun section yesterday bar their moustaches, and the Lanchester bar the MHC markings. However, I had a community meeting to attend at 7pm, so had to rush my cooking/eating, and inevitably the meeting went on until 9pm and by the time I’d edited the documents it was way to late to finish things off and post them.

So here they are in their finest facial hirsuteness. Hopefully not too bland, without looking like a rainbow of colour out on the hunt. Having rooted round in my collection, I’ll now be looking for another 4 or so shotgun toting nutters for my bandit force that has also seen a lick of paint late yesterday whilst I was waiting for the washes to dry. Bitten by the AVBCW bug again, just as well as it will give me enough time to sort out loads of stuff for the September Big Game JP & I are planning.

Here’s the Lanchester. I’m glad I didn’t try and rush it yesterday. This morning I tried daubing it with the simple slogan “MHC” (Malvern Hills Conservators), but it looked like a ham fisted 5 year old with a 1′ brush had done it. So I dug out a sheet of transfers I did some time ago and used them. Of course that takes a lot longer as you have to wait for the various washes you apply to dry. As of course these are roundels about 1cm in diameter, trying to cut a perfect circle is impossible, and even touching the edges up with paint still leaves a far from perfect circle. The pictures are obviously larger than life, so on a wargaming table its ok. Its something I’ll have to work on though.

As mentioned I had also done a quick couple of Objective markers as well and these were finished off.

Some more simple objective markers for AQMF.

So a total of:

  • 10 Shotgun weilding LDV – as they are all unique, this is going to count for 15 points on the paint log.
  • 1 Lanchester A/C – 5 points
  • 6 Objective markers – 6 points.

Total so far this year painted: 411.

I’ve set my next Objective for the w/e already and started.

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AVBCW: A Week’s challenge

04/07/2014

Byakhee JP and I are planning a game of AVBCW next Friday. Having had the unit of (10) shotguns on the painting table for ever and a day, plus a built Lanchester A/C, I will now use the next week to complete these figures and vehicle.

So I’m seeting myself a challenge to do these figures. They’re a mixture of Gripping Beast and Musketeer miniatures. Civilians, so will all need unique paint schemes which is probably why I’ve procrastinated over painting them for so very long !

Then there is the Lanchester (Copplestone Castings). As I intend to play the Malvern Hills Conservators, the Local Defence Volunteers, they only have A/Cs and other light vehicles save for one tank (Tanks and the Malverns don’t get on well together).

Having done loads of tanks for AQMF, I’ll be using the same schemes for painting this so I can get this on the table ASAP.

Updates of scenarios and paint progress over the next week.

I’m hoping this self imposed deadline, will also spill over into finishing off the BUF dismounted cavalry unit I also have half completed on the painting table. I’ve not done enough figure painting for AVBCW (and Warhammer) for some time…

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