Tuesday, 17 June 2025

Cangames - Report #1 - Face of Battle

Howdy folks,

I hope all is well on your side of the internet. This post definitely took me much longer to get out than I would have liked...it is a continuation of my Cangames coverage and post-con contemplation. Of course, there has now been sufficient time past that my memories are somewhat muddled, so this will be much less substantive as an after-action report, and moreso a recap of memorable highlights from the game.

In this post, I finally had a chance to try out Michael Ball's ruleset The Face of Battle...version 2...to be honest, I had never been able to make timings meet so I totally missed out on version 1, and this con was the first time that Michael was taking this version to the Cangames crowd. The game is World War 2 focused, with player activation based on which cards you turn up. Each of the players control a force, a platoon or platoons of infantry and/or tanks, and while each player activates together (i.e. they all flip over a card at the same time), the card determines the action and by whom. 

So in the case of our game, we had 3 players per side. Each player had a deck of cards specific to their allotted force, so in my case I had an infantry squad/section and at a later point in the game I was going to get a T34 tank. Each infanteer had a specific weapons loadout, so I had stats table for them, but the determination of which individual soldier could do their actions was dictated by the card I turned up. In addition, the leader(s) had their specific actions that they could do as well as leadership actions that they could allocate to a soldier when that card was drawn. As well, each specific crew member of the tank had their own individual cards (i.e. loader, gunner, driver, etc.).

Admittedly, I found that there was a pretty steep learning curve as there were several nuances that needed some practice to go over. The overall flow of the game was really good, but given the con setting, it was tough to get the details straight…the mechanics, definitely picked up quickly…but I was fretting over getting the details right.

Anyhow, please enjoy the pics and random commentary.

Initial layout...the Sov's will come in from the top right side of the pic, German troops from the mid left side. Objective is to capture as many buildings in centre as possible.

Our platoon starts moving up. Each player has control of a section/squad of infantry (I think up to 10 troops - 1 leader, 1 light machine gun, up to 8 soldats mix of smg's and rifles). Her you can see a squad that has double-timed up to the stone fence; another squad mid-field; and third squad on left side of the field.

Different perspective as we cant the picture. The squad that was at the stone fence make it to the line of buildings. My squad is half mixed between the other field (near the blue card) and building across from that...they are holding there before double timing to minimize exposure.

Closer look at my squad hunkered down, a couple of soldats have entered the building, I have 2 others waiting to sprint across the road.

The game has progressed a bit, at some point I kinda stopped taking pics of the infantry and focused on the action on the German side of the table...we have infantry at the cemetery walls, a T34 behind the tree...squaring off against a Panther that is next to the building at the top right of this pic. The green field shows some German infantry taking cover behind a fence. There's an MG team out there somewhere, I think behind the tree at centre of pic.

T34 moves a little closer taking it slow.

The Panther taking aim...

The T34 dashes forward and tries to disrupt and ground down the MG team that is causing some hassle for the infantry trying to advance into buildings.

Not the outcome we were looking for, the MG crew get a lot lower down in their position (the crater was deeper than it looks) and the Panther connects and makes it mark. The mechanics and resolution of hits by vehicles takes a bit of time as there are multiple tables to consult and damage is boiled down to damage to each crewmember and vehicle system.

We finally reached the point in the game where the rest of our armour support shows up…3 x T34’s show up in the field and we start pushing them towards our right flank and the cemetery.

The German players score some hits on the tanks and we end up with some slight damage and one of the tanks has to fall back before taking some additional damage. At this point the game is pretty much one…the one building that I was trying to hold was destroyed by tank fire, so that was one less point available. All in all, an enjoyable game but like I said some of the nuances eluded me and the level of damage detail for vehicles was pretty intense.

Tuesday, 27 May 2025

Cangames - Random Stuff

Howdy folks,

I hope your May is going as desired. As you can see by the title of today's post, it is/was that time of year again when folk collect to Ottawa for CanGames!! While I made sure to register in advance, I was not as diligent with my game registrations…so I had to play that one from the hip…but more on games played in another post.

I thought I would post a selection of pictures I took of some random tables and games happening around me…admittedly I missed a number of tables, but here goes nonetheless.

Chris’s Force on Force, 20mm,  US Army and Iraqi insurgents 


The Walking Dead, 28mm


Star Wars Legion (?)…not sure if it was themed with different ruleset or not…forgot to ask.


Cangames standard…Rubberboots game and I think they used Silver Bayonet.


Mike’s SAGA Game


And Mike’s Dead Man’s Hand game…



Saturday, 26 April 2025

Blood Red Skies - MiG Alley painting

Howdy folks,

I hope all is well on your side of the internets! I thought I would do a quick painting update post today with the last starter box of MiG Alley jets that I had purchased back in the fall. So far I had finished 2 boxes and also received a replacement MiG from Warlord cause of breakage issues I had with the first box I received. 

So all in all, I had painted up 5 x MiG 15’s and 4 x F86 Sabres. The painting overall went really well but the decals were rather finicky. So this time, rather than paint up my last 4 jets in standard colours, I thought that I would find some alternate schemes. For the Sabres I thought I would tryout the Northwest Europe NATO scheme that the Canadian Air Force used in the 1950s. It is only 2 colours so it was pretty quick to get on the jets. For the MiGs, I found a few references with colour plates showing a fairly wide variety. In this case I ended up adapting a 3 colour pattern used by either the Chinese or North Koreans during the war…and it wasn’t metallic or silver…so, bonus!

I figure that these will work well for MiG Alley and Korean War gaming, but should also work for some smaller scale Cold War and maybe Afropia air battles as well.

Enjoy.



Running up that Lead/Plastic Hill...

Painted

1/200             4, +4 (BRS MiG Alley box)     
15mm          46    
28mm+          8

Fabricated
     
Bought        0 

Progress   +58

Wednesday, 23 April 2025

Painting Update - Fallout

Howdy everyone,

I hope that the spring is treating you well. April has not been without its Smarch weather as we were about +15-20 degrees Celsius last week and then transitioned to +2 with snow pellets a day later via a very nice rain and hailstorm. So yeah, flexibility is key with the weather this month so far.

I recently finished up the 4 pack from Modiphius that featured the main characters from the Amazon Fallout tv series. I have to admit, I've watched the series about 4-5 times so far...yes, I really do like it...I think they did a great job capturing the look and feel of the wasteland and I'm a very big fan of Walton Goggins...and his Ghoul is outstanding.

As such, I picked up the 4 pack shortly after the series came out and took my time in painting each character up. I started with Knight Titus (trying out a non metal metal approach) and 'not' deadmeat (I can't think of the dogs name right now) and just finished up Lucy Maclean. I finished the Ghoul up about a month or so ago. All in all, excellent sculpts and alot of fun to paint up.





Running up that Lead/Plastic Hill...

Painted

1/200          
15mm          46    
28mm+          8, +4 (Fallout Hollywood style)

Fabricated
     
Bought        0 

Progress   +54

Monday, 31 March 2025

Painting Update

Hello everyone,

I hope all is going well for one and all. I can’t believe how quickly the month has gotten away from me…but I also wanted to share with you folks a quick painting update. Last time I got together with Duncan and Mike, we were looking at some of Duncan’s pile of lead and I asked Duncan if he wanted me to paint up a few pieces for him…after all, I’ve been a fortunate recipient of some of his 3d prints, so literally the least I could do for him.

I’m about half-way through the figures…I’m not sure who the manufacturer is, but they are 28mm…they look to be moderns, I’d say circa 2000’s…and were fun to paint up. They’re metal and unfortunately some of the details and casting is a little sketchy. Hopefully they’ll pass the muster for Duncan.

I had to think for a bit on how to paint these up and I ended up up settling on Soviet/Russian airborne and GRU uniforms (circa 1980’s war) and private drone contractors dressed in suitable non-specific uniforms.

Enjoy the pics.







Running up that Lead/Plastic Hill...

Painted

1/200          
15mm          46    
28mm+          4, +4 (yuppers, I’m adding them here, even though they’re not from my hill, lol)

Fabricated
     
Bought        0 

Progress   +50

Monday, 10 March 2025

More BF Open Fire Grenadiers

Howdy folks,

I hope all is well on your side of the internets. Hard to believe that we are pushing into March now…the last month just sailed by. I had all the best intentions to post a couple of updates, but here we are with only one post for February.

Last month I kept working on the German Grenadiers from the Open Fire box…I gotta say, I had approached this with a certain amount of keenness…but the more of these first-gen plastic sculpts that I paint up, the more i get annoyed with them. So yeah, kinda soul sucking and maybe a little demotivating. Regardless, I decided to push through, and while I was going to base up the second batch for Flames of War, I instead just kept basing them for Force on Force. Maybe I can use them for Afropia and alt history or some such.

At this point, I’m not sure if I’ll finish the rest of the remaining figs or try to sell them off at CanGames…we’ll see how I feel. Anywho, I based these guys for FoF and while I was at it, I ended up putting together a couple of old-school Battlefront Marder III’s. These were fun to finally get some paint on…and I kinda forgot how challenging these old metal models can be. I had a hard time with paint transferring from the tracks to my fingers, so I had a few repeat applications of primer.

Hope you enjoy the pics. In this batch I had 2 leaders that I delineated using FoF classic colour coding…i.e. I painted a couple of desert yellow rocks on their base. 






You can see the 2 leaders in the front range centre-ish


Running up that Lead/Plastic Hill...

Painted

1/200          
15mm          46, +23    
28mm+       

Fabricated
     
Bought        0 

Progress   +46


Saturday, 15 February 2025

Open Fire - German Grenadiers

Howdy folks,

I hope all is well on your side of the internets. So, here we are hitting mid-February and we are fresh off the best storm of the current season…although many would ay the first actual snow storm of the season. We had an excellent amount of snow fall the other day, and in some areas with the blowing snow, we got to walk up to 1 to 2 feet of snow. Good news…we have the chance to do a repeat of this tomorrow, so I’m looking forward to that.

The year so far has been fairly steady, and I have been trying to push through the Open Fire German grenadiers…following off my recent work on the US Para’s that came with the box. I had been looking at doing 1 platoon of gren’s based for Force on Force and then another for Flames of War. If I’m totally honest, I’m not really impressed with these plastic figures…so I am having some motivational issues with getting through them.

I’ve completed a first wave of the figures…and have started another batch. In between that time, I did see a post on Reddit where this fellow said that he uses 15mm FoW figures for Bolt Action. I think I can get behind that idea and ditch my plans for making a FoW platoon out of these figures…I think some more for Force on Force or 15mm Bolt Action might be a bit of motivation that I need to help me out.

Anyway, here is the first batch of Grenadiers…I’m looking forward to getting the rulebook for Bolt Action to see how that goes…and hey, 15mm Bolt Action.

Enjoy the pics. 

The group overall…mix of leadership and grunts…SMG’s and riflemen.

A couple of MG42 crews…they’ll work as part of a Grenadier section or standalone teams.

Tried my hand at splinter camo as well…it has been a while.

Another group shot, you can see the Officers and NCOs up front…these would be a platoon HQ or company HQ stand for FoW formation.

…a little Kate Bush love…

Running up that Lead/Plastic Hill...

Painted

1/200          
15mm          23    
28mm+       

Fabricated
     
Bought        0 

Progress   +23