Tanks for my 28mm WWI French project

The WWI French project moves on again slowly but surely. This time some 3d printed tanks that I got on TMP.
Almost time to look for rules.

My new Ork ride for 1page40k

Got waxed in my second game of 1page40k by 2 Landraiders, decided it was time for some new wheels or tracks. Used some of the parts from an Ork truk kit that my wife got me and a SSU Dust vehicle.

New terrain for the New store

28mm WWI French finally based

These guys have been a work in progress for the last 2-3 years. Only 30 more to finish.
And then the Germans and finally I'll be able to try out Trench Wars.

25mm Steam Padddleboat for my Tarzan project

Okay so the new Tarzan movie really inspired me. So I pulled out an old issue of Wargames Illustrated and followed Gary Chalks plan.
Now it's time to order me a Tarzan fig.

2 More Hail Caesar games

So over the weekend and into Monday, we ended up playing a total of 3 Hail Caesar games in all.
First two games the Romans won pretty easily. Hard to beat the pilum and hv armor. By the third game, I had the Celtic villages hidden and ambushes scattered through the table. The villages would continue to produce warbands till the Romans put them to the torch. This was suggested by some of the players in Sundays game. Essentially it would keep the Romans moving rather than allowing them to just sit and take on all comers.
Worked well, Mondays game was a bit of a draw.
I really like Hail Caesar for big games especially at the smaller figure scales.
Some better pics of the figs.

Roman Road

Auxilia

 

Hail Caeser testdrive

So with the success of Black Powder among the group I decided to give Hail Caeser a whirl. Spent the last week rebasing a huge army of 10mm Gauls that Rick and I got from Bob Henderson a few years back. Ended up with some 22 Roman bases/units and 26 Gallic bases/units.
3 Roman Commands:
6 Vet Legionaires 2 Lt Allied Gallic Cav
6 Raw Legionaires
6 Auxilia ie Med Inf.

3 Gallic commands which would split 20 Warbands, 2 skirmishers, 4 Gallic Lt Cav
(each commander was in a village and would roll each turn for forces)

Roman goal was to destroy the villages, I modified the scenario from the Hail caesar rulebook.

Romans had some tight moments, but the Veterans held out long enough for the newly raise legionaires to get their act in gear. Roman Victory
Hope to run the same scenario tomorrow at a little get together  and get some better pics/

Team Yankee

So how long does it take you to get a game onto the table? Team Yankee, considering we got our stuff at Christmas, made it in pretty good time. Only 6 months. Of course it helps to have a fellow player who is  methodical in his painting and always finishes his projects. That's right Eli, I'm talking about you! It helps because that player can egg you on to focus and finish your part of the plan.

Thus 6 months later we finally get in our first game of Team Yankee, with 192 points per side.
And it was a blast!

American Tactical Victory

Lessons learned,
a) you can never have to much AA
b) 192 Team Yankee points is a lot, go to a bigger table
c) A-10's are a major pain

Soviets cross into Germany

Looking good

Americans! Americans!

We shall overwhelm them

A-10's????

 

Bloody Town battle

Armor on fire everwhere

Finally the Maximillian Adventure with Black Powder Rules.

A week or so a few of the guys and I got into a chat about doing ACW in 28mm, and of course the topic of what rules came up right off the bat. Fortunately Eli had mentioned the new ACW supplement for Black Powder a while back. A few of us had the rules but had yet to try them out. So I decided that I would pull out my Maximilian in Mexico figs, which had been gathering dust for years, and run a few games for everyone.

Over the next 2 weeks we ended up getting in 5 games. With 8 players getting in one or two games. Of course in between I was painting and basing more figs for the game. By the end I had some 16 units per side.

In the end, everyone like the rules and the ACW project was given a green light, And I got quite a few games in with figs that I had painted over a decade ago.

Davion vs Liao, Alpha Strike game

I got the week off and it was time to play Alpha Strike! This would be my second game since I bought the rules last year. Troy and I both finished off new companies for the game. Neither company has been officially named yet. But mine as usual is House Liao and Troy has declared for Davion (Boo Hissssss) We decided on 450 points for the game. A meeting engagement, with an instant win if you could take out the enemy command mech. (commander secretly noted down)

Troy ran a pretty heavy company, which included 2 Banshees, 2 Awesomes, 2 Grasshoppers, a Stalker, Rifleman, Longbow, Bombardier, Catapult and Dervish all at quality 4

My Company: Battlemaster(who performed terribly most of the game), Cyclops. Cataphract, Enforcer, Catapult (co), Jagermech, Dervish, Vindicator, Whitworth, Quickdraw, Grand Dragon, Grasshopper.
To up my points all but the Enforcer were rated quality 3

So troy had more firepower but I had better shooting skills. So were he would need an '8' to hit I would need a '7'.

We rolled initiative each turn and the loser had to move a lance, then alternate. Needless to say whoever got the last move usually had a chance to exploit the situation. And of course all fire is simultaneous at the end of the turn.

We played 2 games but only did a play by play of the first game.
Game One. The Davion forces wasted no time coming across the field, except for the fire support team on the hill.  After the Liao Jagermech went up in fire, the Liao support forces gave up our hill and tried to take on the advancing heavy mechs. I figured that 5 on 4 and 6 on 4 should work. Bad idea! On the Liao right the Davion Heavies tore up the Liao medium and light mechs. On the Liao left,  fire support was set up by the  Cyclops, Battlemaster and Cataphract, while the medium mechs danced with the Davions. But the Davion mechs were so close that I had to constantly jump so that my mechs would be harder to hit, unfortunately that made my shots harder as well.
Troy used his fire support on the hill and Awesomes/Banshees to great effect and systematically crushed all my medium mechs. Of course 3 rolls of snakeyes for crits, exploding 3 of my mechs did not help in the least.
My commander survived to flee with 2 other mechs, it was a Rout!

Game Two: Went totally different. I won initiative for the setup, so concentrated my 3 lances vs Troys 2, one of which was the fire support who had come down to play. I tried to stay at medium range and used all the cover I could to allow my better gunnery skill to take effect. Fire and withdraw, fire and hide. Concentrating one one lance at a time we cut the Davions down. In the end it was a great victory for Liao. Lesson learned.

Both games were great fun!, The first took about 2 hours and the 2nd only 1.5 hours, by the second game we had become more famliar with our mech stats.

Hoping to play the Alpha Strike campaign from the book next month.

450 points of stomping power

450 points all but one mech has skill 3

Poor JagerMech blasted right off the bat

Liao abandons the hill

Anybody's fight still

What went wrong?

Very bad

Called the game at this point

Hold the line! Men of Liao

Liao outflanking maneuver ends in disaster

Second Game Liao Victory