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@GItsplitta: Thanks!: )







Ha, finished my Soviet Tank Riders platoon! And an anti-tank rifle team to boot. Now I can field a rifle platoon or an SMG platoon. Models from Black Tree Design (their Soviet Infantry range is great. Don't be fooled by shoddy pictures on their website) along with come complimentary Warlord Games plastics. I got two sprues of those when they were on sale. They're alright I suppose but I prefer the BTD guys by a long shot. They also were hell to put together without the instructions.

The painting is nothing too special but at least I got them painted.

So now I can field either a tank riders platoon or a rifle platoon. As far as support goes, I've got a Maxim MMG, a sniper, a section of scouts, a T-34/85 and an anti tank rifle team. Not bad. You know, I actually think that CoC plays better at 15mm scale but the crazy thing about 28mm stuff is that it's just so goshdarned tempting. Next on my list: T-70, T-34/76 and some anti-tank guns. Oh, and an M5 Half-Track which I got for some reason.

Instead of painting Space Marines and such as I should, two nights ago, right before going to bed I had a funny idea and got to making a mission objective for feudal Japanese/ slightly samurai or ninja themed games across the ages.



And once the fella was done I thought that nobody would want to touch the statue AND the scenario I had in mind requires two models for the objective to be moved so I built this little ....litter:



Okay, it's a little rough, but you can place models between the handles to depict them as carrying it around.

Hope you like it!



Last night I played a little 40k! Really, really little. Mr. Eldar wanted to learn the rules, so we set up two little "tutorial style" games. First: Infantry things. 20 Orks vs. 20 Eldar Guardians with scatter laser.






Look how happy da boyz are to get on the table again! (some of them dancing and spinning in place. In the picture this looks like I set them up facing the wrong way).

Second round was about vehicles. Baal Predator vs. Eldar Falcon (Bright Lance):



Guess who won? Yup, the Baal Predator. :p Mr. Eldar was really unlucky that night. But he did have fun.

By the way, what do you guys think of the Eldar terrain pieces? Those may well be available for purchase in the very near future.

I love those orks!! Classic.

The eldar terrain looks really good. Maybe the gems need to be more glossy but otherwise they look great!

1. I just love those old-school orks painted in a "modern" fashion... really brings them up to date. Beautiful.

2. The terrain pieces are fantastic. Where do I sign up?!

3. Nice to see you getting a little 40k in around the edges. Much as I love your historical batreps, it's nice to see you toiling for the Emperor once in a while.

Very nice Eldar terrain, Sigur. Old work or new?

@ckig: Cheers. The terrain won't come painted, just the casts if you buy it. I didn't paint the stuff myself but yeah, I too think that some gloss varnish might add to the look.

@Gitsplitta: 1. Main thing is that they're not painted in any of the "new" colour schemes. I love my old Orks.
2.) I'll let you know when they're available.
3.) Yeah, well... I don't get to play all that much these days anyway and if I do it's usually not 40k simply because it usually amounts to looking up rules in this gigantic tome that is 6th edition (don't own 7th edition rules yet). But yeah, last night we realized all over again that the 40k rules are perfectly fine rules. You can be of two minds of fliers and I still got this deep hatred of 3rd edition 40k, but as I said in my review of 6th edition 40k two years back or so: It's a water-tight, well written ruleset with a really good index and well done quick reference sheets. I really like the way wounds are allocated now, I like the randomized charge ranges, I like that you can measure everything now... it's a solid game with a worse reputation than it deserves.

@Dysartes: Thank you. It's really, really new. As I said, casts of it will be available soonish.


Almost finished Iron Hands, to get our fill of 40k in here:


Need to get a little detail sorted that jumps out in the photos with the flash a lot more than in real life but I guess I should smooth it out before I can call them finished. Funny thing about the guy with the "10 pole" on his back: The top half of the cogwheel rim around the "10 plate" had come off and part of the job was repairing that. So I resculpted the rim, cut out the cogs out of plasticard and so on. Fiddly stuff. Hope you like the dudes!

The Iron Hands look very nice Sigur, Sevrin Loth looks really good in black.

@GiraffeX: Thanks very much.

Now working on a freehand banner for a DKoK army. I decided to take the picture from a really gakky angle to annoy myself:




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Moar proper picture of the Iron Hands:





Especially for youI took some pictures to better show the force axe:






What do you think, Sirs?

Success! not only has your angle annoyed yourself i'm now suitably grumpy! well done :-)

Great! Now let's get out there and smash something or correct people's spelling on facebook!:

Okay peeps, let's take up right where we left off with Freebooter's Fate. Here are some new WIP Batattori(?), giving mixed signals:

Wow that force axe is quite stunning, looking forward to more Freebooter minis.

Not massively keen on the face of the model on the right, Sigur, but that looks like an issue with the sculpt rather than your painting.

@GiraffeX: Thanks!

@Dysartes: Yar, maybe I need to touch up that eyelid a little.



Okay, seeing as Warlord are actually going to release that TYW supplement for Pike&Shotte, I was "inspired" (as they say) to paint stuff up for that. The two missing units of musketeers:



...and three bases of dudes with petards.


...and three bases of dudes with petards. What's a petard then?



Basically it's a kind of bell shaped, massive cast iron container filled with black powder (like a short mortar), sealed off with wax, hemp and a plate of wood or lead. The idea is to create a shaped charge with the explosive power directed against the surface the petard is affixed to. Usually it was used against havy gates (such as city gates) but they were also used against fortifications, palisades and ships. The Petardiers were especially trained guys who would carry or otherwise transport via wheeled devices the petard against the enemy's fortifications, firmly (to get the full power out of the explosion) attach (usually by screws and additional buttresses) the petard on the surface they wanted to blow a hole into and trigger the explosion. First via a fuse, later on by wheellock automaton. Running through enemy defensive fire right up to their positions carrying a huge and heavy explosive, then taking out some big screws and start attaching said heavy explosive device to a game or somesuch and THEN get this big explosive to go off without blowing yourself up of course doesn't sound like the most fun job in the world and I'm sure it wasn't. Losses amongst petardiers were comparatively high.

Petards were used from the 16th to the 18th century, from when on they were replaced by more modern weapons.


I decided to base those guys on round bases (two on five euro cents pieces, one team on an english penny) because they wouldn't really work as a unit per se. In Pike&Shotte they are a unit upgrade for storming parties/forlorn hope formations. Not sure I'll ever use them. I guess I would have to build a section of city walls. But I've been hoping to do something siege-like with my TYW figures some day because sieges were a really, really big thing back then (and quite a lot more popular with commanders than open battle. Lower risk and much, much higher reward) and they worked out some fascinating techniques for laying siege and of course for fortress building at the time. And I just like the idea of having additional scenario layers by not only having to fend off an assult but also taking care of several petardier markers closing in with the plan to blow up your gates.


Also finally started putting together the baggage train bases.


Maybe it would have been more clever to keep a few of the wagons and such for making a camp but oh well. I'd rather have a bunch of proper bases of baggage train than a few of that and a half-decent camp. These seven bases also should be enough for both armies. I also sculpted a 10mm woman and a kid and they look really, really bad. So no pictures of those for now. :p Would look weird though having a baggage train without any women.

Cheers Sigur thats my interesting fact of the day, I would't want to have been a petard sounds pretty dire.

@GiraffeX: Cheers. Wouldn't pass up on a chance to be a smartarse and bore people with details about not-quite-important stuff.




Some more Brotherhood. the guys in the left are still rather WIP of course.

Also did a horse holder for my wee TYW dragoons (at last):




Saddles, bedrolls, gun holsters and bags and such on the brown horses I sculpted meself.

Happy first Advent Sunday too!

WIP shot of those armoured assault engineers:


Hope you like them!

Very nice Sigur. Boy, there's a lot of fire-power in that little unit.

@Gitsplitta: Thanks very much. Yeah, seems like the sculptor went for "city fight assault troops" rather than with a full engineer theme.


Okay, now for that little battle report. As our camera guy dropped out and I'd left my own camera at home I only got some cellphone pictures of the game.

Anyway, here is the basic information: The game is Ronin, 150pts, two Bushi Buntai facing off in a Capture scenario.

The backstory:
Clan Takeda henchmen stole one of two ancient statues from a temple, The statue is said to hold immense dark powers which might be the decisive factor in the bloody struggle between clans Takeda and Uesugi, so the group carrying the statue is eagerly awaited at the closest fortress. As the statue is overdue the two Samurai, Kobayashi and Maru,and their retinue are sent out to look what's holding up the delivery of the statue. When the retinue arrives at dawn it seems like the whole group of people has vanished and the statue just sits there by the side of the road.


It was dawn(so no shooting beyond 18" for the first two turns) and rainy (no shooting beyond 24" in general, Teppo[Arquebuses] may only fire once per game) when Kobayashi and his men arrived. From afar they spotted a number of shapes moving towards the position of the statue at high speed. It's a band of warriors of the accursed Uesugi clan, without a doubt out to steal the righteously liberated statue! With them they had one of the statue's trek's guards who was able to flee the scene as what ever happened. On his mindless flight he ran into the Uesugi patrol and they made him lead them to the statue. [I was short of non-Takeda Ashigaru so they got this traitor to fight on their side].

It was on and stuff would be going down. The game would last for 8 turns or until one side routs or until one side manages to carry the objective off the table. It requires two models to carry a heavy object at regular speed and one model could carry it at half speed. Unfortunately the rulebook does not state whether or not the models carrying a heavy load were allowed to run during the movement phase. We decided to let them but I wouldn't suggest it for future games.

Disclaimer: You see, this is more of a "relaxed" approach to the whole theme. It was an introductory game for yeld and a friend of ours to see the rules and whatnot. Neither I, nor the other guys are amazingly good with feudal Japanese history so if you are, bear with us. I'm not one to enjoy mixing fancy fantasy stuff into historical wargaming and this is not what we did. We just took a casual approach. The game's rules are unaltered and nothing depicted in the game is supernatural stuffs. Just fun references and such.


This is the table setup (roughly. Unfortunately there is no photo of the setup so I masterfully recreated it in MS paint):


Uesugi (blue) were played by yeld from the former page on this plog, I got to command the Takeda (red) retinue.


Uesugi retinue (numbered as in the picture above):
1 Samanosuke - Hatamoto (leader), armed with Yari (Spear)
2 Jean Réno - Samurai, armed with Yari (Spear)
3 Sub Zero - Unarmoured Samurai, armed with Katana and Wakizashi
4 Ryu Hayabusa - Ashigaru Gashira (Ashigaru officer) with Naginata
5 Ark - Ashigaru (Takeda traitor, caravan guard), armed with Yari (Spear)
6 Old Muramasa - Ashigaru, armed with Teppo (Arquebus)
7 Ashitaka - Ashigaru, armed with Yumi (Bow)

Takeda retinue (barely any names. Couldn't think of anything and time was short anyway):
1 Kobayashi - Hatamoto (leader), armed with Naginata
2 Maru - Samurai, armed with Katana and Wakizashi
Two archers, one Ashigaru with Teppo, one more Ashigaru with Yari and one Ashigaru with Naginata

Some of the "lists" aren't "legal" as per the Bushi army list. It was "balanced" enough I'd say. My two samurai also had points spent on getting an attribute each which I forgot about choosing at the beginning of the game. At turn#2 I remembered but I decided to forego that then.

As you can see from the arrows in the picture, Old Muramasa and Ashitaka ran towards the fence to take position and give covering fire whilst the Samurai Samanosuke and Jean Reno ran straight off to the demon statue (sounds good, doesn't it?) to claim it and possibly carry it off the board. Sub Zero, Ark and Ryu Hayabusa moved towards the bamboo forest to cover their flanks. My own guys moved the archers and Teppo-gunner in position to get a good shot at anybody who would attempt to claim the objective, but without getting into range of the enemy missile troops.

Soon both Uesugi Samurai had grabbed the objective. I moved up my Teppo-gunner to close range towards the enemy leader (Samanosuke), but he missed his shot. Darn. My archers kept on peppering them with arrows but to no avail. At the left flank my Samurai and their Ashigaru friends charged the flank guard. After some shouting, hacking and slashing Ryu Hayabusa, Ark and one of my Ashigaru had gone to the ground. Sub Zero decided not to advance from zero to hero and legged it towards his pals.



In the mean time the Uesugi Samurai Samanosuke and Jean Réno had grabbed the objective on its wooden thing nobody quite knows a name for (please let me know if you know a fitting term. I asked around and while surprisingly many people came up with 'wheelbarrow without wheels' I'm not entirely convinced that there aren't any better terms) and dashed towards their table edge. Shouting orders at their missile troops to do the honourable thing and hold the line until they'd run to safety.



....with my missile troops and the retreating Sub Zero hot on their heels.



The rest of my retiune split up at this point, which probably wasn't the smartest of moves. My Samurai leader Kobayashi ran off to cut off the way of retreat. As my missile fire against samurai so far had ineffectually bounced off their heavy armour I was sure that nothing could harm him, despite running in front of enemy missile troops.




A little overview at this point:


Of course that lucky Uesugi archer managed to wound Kobayashi, at which point he decided it's better to run back to the road (before he got into close range of the Teppo gunner) and along with Maru and the Ashigaru followed suit.

They finally cought up with Sub Zero and he was quickly cut down.




Fuelled by this quick victory over another samurai, Kobayashi and Maru stormed onwards. Seeing as there were no more warriors between them (carrying the objective) and the Takeda force, the leader of the Uesugi warband sent off his pal Jean Réno to continue carrying the statue to safety while he would stay and face the force.



My two samurai, along with one of the archers, charged towards Samanosuke, but he swiftly retired from Kobayashi and the archer to face Maru alone.



The odds were stacked in favour of Samanosuke and after a quick exchange of blows Maru went down.




Meanwhile old Muramasa and Akitasha had left their firing position to help Jean Réno carry the objective to safety. A desperate charge of my archer was quickly fought off and Uesugi had won the day. Who knows though what terrible curse the mysterious statue bears?


Victory points:
Uesugi: 12
Takeda: 7

...or something like that. My Samurai leader refrained from committing seppuku. :p

A fun game was had and it lasted for estimatedly 7 or 8 turns. As I said, I don't think that running with a heavy object is intended to be permitted. I asked on the Ronin facebook group and most people seem to disallow it but as there was no indication that it wouldn't work we just tried it with the option to run. Missile weapons once again proved to be a bit of a 'wild card' in the game. One of the main things about this game is that there are no down times due to alternate activation. Which is pretty nice. The combat pool system again proved to be much fun. Good, quick little game, that Ronin. Hope you enjoyed the report!

Great batrep Sigur, enjoyed it very much. Just not Takeda's day... that's all.

You did quite well, but you need more training to defeat me!

Lol.

Nice work on the army dudes.
Brotherhood are coming along nicely too.
Great work on the rest also.

I was going to look up a petard, but then I didn't need to. Always good to learn new things.

I shall return shortly with lotsa updates in the near future. For now I'll drop these WIPs here as well as my best christmas wishes to you guys!








...and of course a pretty horrible christmas card of our flddling sqirrel next to Giant Baby Jesus(tm):

Good work on those flyers, will be waiting for more!

The Christmas card, on the other hand, not that much

Merry Christmas to you too!

That's a very eye-pleasing scheme on the flyers, and they're nicely done so far! Merry Christmas to you, too

Those are amazingly beautiful paint jobs on those flyers Sigur.

Merry Christmas to you as well!

They are looking really nice Sigur, not sure about the X-mas card either lol

@Littletower: Thanks muchly.

@RTides: Cheers, it's based on the colour scheme I used on some Aeronautica Imperialis fliers I did for the guy a few years ago:



@Gitsplitta: Thanks muchly, mate!

@GiraffeX: Alright, alright.


So, I guess the christmas card wasn't all that great. I'll get something better done next year!

Hope that everybody had some glorious holidays, full of cheer and laughter and good food and family and friends and all of that.

Here are two pictures of stuff I built over the past few days:



Basically one more order from Britannia models. I got another chieftain (for good measure) and two more Scimitars. On top of that I got meself a cheapish 1/72nd Airfix Scorpion. That was a very cool thing in itself. It's a combied kit for Scorpion and Scimitar from 1974 just when the two had entered service. It was still in original packaging and all. So the kit itself is older than the original tank I use it for on the table (early-mid 1980s). Interesting situation. (Disclaimer: If you don't find it interesting you are well along the lines of 99% of people I told this fact).

As always I added some stowage made from Green stuff and plasticard. Didn't have any fitting gauze at hand, only some weird kind which has very fluffy bits interwoven with the gauze. But I'll add that too. The reason why I got all these light vehicles in the first place was the immense difference in "in-game usefulness" between a BMP-2 and the old british FV-402. I became awfully aware of this when we played the first game in which we just switched sides because my opponent hadn't gotten himself and BMPs yet. So it was my platoon with their APCs versus remnants of a soviet platoon trying to get off the board. What they did was basically just laugh at my puny support fire, blew up my FV-432 left and right, shot up my two squads (I'm a nimrod and misread the instructions form thescenario and only set up two squads) and then happily walked off the board. Oh well. Now, depicting a medium recce formation, I am more flexible in switching sides, adapting all kinds of scenarios and so on.

Just ignore the thing in the left, that's some MDF cart I got from 4Grounds and built the same day.

{img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v145/Lexandro/2nd3rd4thday.jpg[/img]

I got myself a whole lotta tanks this christmas. Above you can see some 28mm stuff.Stug III G by Die Waffenkammer, GAZ-AA Truck by Comany B, Panzer III by Rubicon models, T-34/76 (with the funky UMTZ turret) by Die Waffenkammer. Reviews of all of that stuff coming up.


Chain of Command battle report: Attack and Defend

Over the past five months or so I didn't get much gaming done to be honest, which is a shame. However, I did get ONE last game of the year in last night, another one in our Chain of Command campaign which was on hiatus for way too long. Very, very good experience, everything fell into place that day: new episode of my favourite podcast out to listen to on the drive back and forth, even the latest Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy magazine arrived on that day. Beautiful.

Anyway, on to the game. As you might remember our campaign takes place in mid-1941, the German war machine is on the prowl at all fronts, pushing back British forces in Northern Africa and heading for Tobruk. Amongst Rommels Afrika Korps is Leutnant Lechner's platoon of Panzergrenadiers who by now had met 2nd Lieutenant Fitzpatrick's Rifles in battle time and time again. Our campaign is kept as simple as possible. Using Chain of Command's excellent campaign supplement At The Sharp End for working out character backgrounds, changes in morale, how the men regard their commanding officers, how well regarded they are with their superiors and so on. The way we play is just playing through every single scenario from the rulebook one after another, with British being on the defensive by default.



This time it was the scenario Attack&Defend. As per the scenario, my (the defender's) patrol markers were set up up to 18" from my table edge, the attackers' patrol markers then would "enter" the table anywhere from their table edge with a randomly generated number of bonus moves. The objective was to force the enemy to retreat either voluntarily or by reducing their force morale to 3 or less. We both rolled for force morale and ended up with 10 each. In terms of support the German attackers got 7 levels of support whilst my British defenders got 6 points. We keep our support choices secret because it makes games more interesting and of course makes the most sense.

After the end of the patrol phase each side set up three jump-off points and the situation presented itself as such:



As you can see the table looks rather different from how we are used to playing: Much more vegetation, no buildings, no palm trees. This time there would be much more cover or places to hide. Just to shake things up a bit.

The British got the first phase, but I didn't do much, as I thought it would be unwise to deploy anything and give away our positions before required to. So the Germans deployed and advanced across the field. True to his character, Lt. Lechner was the first to show up on the battlefield. But very early on two of his three Panzergrenadier squads showed up, advancing in cover to get into good positions. I only set up Platoon Sergeant Graham and the 2" mortar team behind a sand dune. Relatively safe from enemy fire the mortar started lobbing smoke grenades to hinder the enemy from bringing their infantry squads' formidable fire power to bear.

Along with them the Germans brought their main support: a Panzer III. Very, very scary indeed, especially as the British rifle platoon does have a dedicated anti-tank team, but they only got the rather ineffective Boys anti-tank rifle!



Here is an overview of the game early on:


So I was very glad to have chosen a Bofors 40mm anti-air gun (which in times of need was used very effectively against ground targets) for my main support choice. After lengthy consideration its position was revealed on the central hill in a fortified position. The gun opened fire at the Panzer III and the surprise attack killed the driver and put two shock markers on the rest of the crew.

It's not too easy to see in the picture, but the German squad in the right (the ones with the blue triangular Overwatch marker) got a cotton smoke marker in front of them. This 2" mortar is an incredibly useful thing (especially if you roll well too so the smoke rounds land roughly where they should).




A few phases later I had deployed two of my rifle sections, one at the left flank (with the gun team in fortified positions and on overwatch), the other one behind the hill on which I had positioned my Bofors gun, just in case the Panzergrenadiers considered storming the hill. Some of them got in some lucky shots off at the most forward Panzergrenadiers team.The Bofors gun kept firing at the tank but to no great effect.

The light mortar kept throwing smoke rounds left and right to keep the Panzergrenadiers' MGs from firing at the gun emplacement in the centre.

Given how the assault had come to stop in front of the British positions, Leutnant Lechner did the clever thing and sent out his third squad of Panzergrenadiers to flank the enemy, making full use of the wider setup of his jump-off points (in the right you can see the two more Panzergrenadier teams being set up). They opened fire at the reserve rifle section, but did not cause much damage:



What resulted was pretty much a stalemate situation:


All these blue triangular markers are Overwatch markers, the direction indicates the field covered by the unit on overwatch. The Panzer III's crew had cooled off enough to take a shot with its hull MG and 50mm gun at my fortified rifle team in front of it, but luckily without much effect. As a reaction to this my mortar fired a slightly unnecessary smoke round in front of the tank to stop such nastiness in the future, unfortunately it landed a bit short and blocked the Bofor gun's line of sight to the tank.

At this point the gun's crew had taken two casualties as well from enemy MG fire from the Panzergrenadiers in front of them. This earned them a smoke round as well. Thus, the stalemate situation was conjured. Nobody could see much, either due to smoke or vegetation, lots of units of overwatch. The Platoon Sergeant had run over to the other hill to cool down the infantry section and the gun crew after they had taken quite a bit of shock.

The Panzer III maneuvered around the pillar of smoke to get the assault going again, missed their shot at the gun on the hill which in return landed a hit on the Panzer's front armour. This was enough for the crew and the radio operator, in his role as stand-in driver, kicked in the reverse gear and the vehicle retired off the table. Seeing as his main asset in this attack had gone, Leutnant Lechner ordered his men to retreat. The attack was repelled, the British had driven off the enemy.


Above: The Panzer III had retreated (and was swiftly replaced by a measure tape for some reason), one of the Panzergrenadier sections had also voluntarily retreated at this point.

Very fun game. I think one of the main strategic assets i exploited on that day was the ancient art of "Glücksbrunzen" (quite literally "pissing luck"). I had some rather nice activation rolls during the game I have to admit. The Bofors anti tank gun is a great, versatile little thing, especially along with field fortifications. The British at this point in time are chronically short on powerful anti-tank guns with the overrealiance on the outdated 2pdr gun which served as the main gun on most tanks and as pretty much the only anti-tank gun available (and of course usually not even equipped with HE rounds!). So the Bofors is just tremendously helpful as a get-by solution to this problem. It's not very powerful, but at least versatile enough to fight soft and hard targets alike. With each game I grow more fond of the 2" mortar as well. A great asset to the platoon.





All in all the game was very enjoyable to both of us and we were impressed with how easily the rules came back into mind, even after a hiatus of over half a year. The thing is that Chain of Command just makes sense. If you're not sure on something you do what common sense tells you and it usually is what the rules said to begin with. This may sounds obvious and simple but for a wargaming rules set it really is an achievement. Highly recommended.


Hope you liked the little report!


Oh, by the way, http://skirmishwargaming.com/ is up and running. It's a group effort site/blog to which I was asked to contribute. My first article ("Why Skirmish Wargaming?") is up on there too now. This site, other than Tale of Painters or my own site, focuses more on the gaming aspect rather than the painting side of things. This is a thing I had hoped to do for a while now - a place where I can ramble on about wargaming trends, experiences, stuff I like, dislike and so on. It's great writing about miniatures painting and showing pictures and such, but it's very cool to have an outlet for the gamey side of things (which really has no place on my site or Tale of Painters). Skirmish Wargaming.com has mostly contributors writing about one specific system (we got a Batman guy, two Saga guys, got an X-Wing and an Infinity guy confirmed and so on). I'm the odd one out because I'm writing about pretty much everything. As you may have noticed, my tastes in wargaming are as widely spread as they are eclectic and to me there are few greater things in wargaming than diversity. So I'll introduce and review lots of different rules sets. Last but not least because I'm just not the kind of guy who plays ONE set of rules all the time. Life's too short for that and I'm too much of a hobby magpie to do that. So feel free to check out the site, feel free to submit your own articles too and let me know if you have any feedback to give!

I shall see you all next year! (well, or shortly before that)

Flying Lead Battle Report: Artifact Hunt

As of late I made it a habit to armtwist my brother and a friend of ours into playing miniatures games which I umpire. A few days ago we played some Flying Lead (that game by Ganesha Games which I reviewed about a year ago: http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2013/12/rules-review-flying-lead.html). So today I present you with pictures and a little summary of the game.

Other than my WW2-themed test game, this Flying Lead game is set in the 40k universe. The Forces involved are Sisters of Battle and Space Orks. I sat in front of the (very useful) Flying Lead points calculator tool, trying to work out stats and points values for Space Orks and SoB.

Here are the forces involved

Space Orks


1 Boss (Quality: 3, Combat: 5, Leader, Strong, Poor Shot, Fearless; Large Calibre Pistol)
5 Shoota Boyz (Quality: 4, Combat: 3, Strong; Carbine)
1 Shoota Boy (Quality: 4, Combat 3, Strong; Carbine, Frag Grenades)
4 Slugga Boyz (Quality: 4, Combat: 4, Strong, Poor Shot; Large Calibre Pistol)


Sisters of Battle


5 Sisters of Battle (Quality: 3, Combat: 3, Elite, Armoured; Assault Rifle)
1 Sister Retributa (Quality: 3, Combat: 3, Elite, Armoured; Light Machine Gun, Drum-fed with Select Fire)


SoB add up to 638 points, Orks add up to 637 points.

The mission is lifted directly from the Mutants And Death Ray Guns set of rules, which is a more out-there, Sci-Fi version of Flying Lead, just a adapted a little for my collection of terrain.

Artifact Hunt

Sisters of Battles and Ork patrols advancing though no-man's land discover several supply stashes strewn across a small area. Obviously they must contain some much welcome supplies, artifacts or equipment. Unbeknowst to the beligerents TELEPORTING MUTANT WASPS had started nesting in some of the supply crates....


Whenever a model gets in base-to-base contact with any of the supply stashes and spends two actions on searching the crates the player rolls a d6. On a 6 the model finds a valuable artifact. If the player rolls a 1 a swarm of irritated mutant wasps teleport into the model's body and gnaw at it from within. Each turn the model has to pass a quality check or die. The model's Combat score is reduced by 1 until the end of the game, the model leaves the table voluntarily and return to camp for medical assistance or the model dies. Each stash can only be searched once The side which has the most artifacts in the end (= when we'd have to stop due to time) or who retreat with the most artifacts wins.


Here is the table and the models set up:



The SoB player got to choose sides and the Orks had to set up first. They also got the first turn though.

One of the boyz was set up right next to a stash and as fate would have it immediately found an artefact!



While the Orks had some trouble activating (despite their leader), the Sisters of Battle briskly advanced to a line of trees which would give them a pretty much clear field of fire at the Orks' position and would give them some cover. Their accurate long-range fire killed one of the Slugga Boyz even before they were able to do anything. This was a wake-up call to the Orks though and they advanced.



The shoota boyz decided to move up to the flank behind cover.


The three remaining Slugga Boyz went for a more direct approach, but due to some abysmal dice rolls all but one were taken out (or at least were pinned and dealt with later on) by the combined efforts of one of the Sisters and the Retributa with the heavy bolter. This (or the fact that she's hauling around this huge gun) earned her the name Heavy Duty Lucy.

The one Slugga Boy who was left still stuck to his plan for now...


...but looking at the massed enemy fire power he was facing he decided to return to his Boss and ask for further instructions.


In the mean time the one Shoota Boy with the artifact approached the pump control station, taking a few shots at the Sister who had set up on the platform already. The only effect he got out of it was his weapon jamming so he hid against the outside wall to unjam his gun. A second sister moved up to the platform to support her comrade in case the nasty Ork would make a return. In the lower left you can see the last of the Sisters of Battle searching the supply stash at their table edge...



Wasps! The battle sister died two turns later, leading to the first casualty on the sisters' side. In the next picture you can see her in the top right, with the "death by teleporting mutant wasps" marker placed on her.


Meanwhile the Orks had taken another casualty (the Shoota Boy with the Frag Grenades of all), but they would not give up. Two of them had managed to advance to one of the central stashes, well hidden away from the sisters' deadly Boltgun fire whilst the Shoota boy who had stayed back gave some largely ineffectual cover fire.



Heavy Duty Lucy and the two other sisters who were the base of fire had moved up behind the trees to cover the flank.



As soon as the Orks arrived at the crates they started digging for the goods. They were well safe from the sisters on the platform, and the flank guard couldn't get a proper line of sight on them due to the dense vegetation. However, the searched proved to be fruitless. No artifacts, but at least no wasps. As the two sisters on the platform didn't get a line of sight at the two Orks, they both went into Overwatch, so if the Orks would dare to peek out either to the left or the right of the crates they would be met with a hail of Boltgun shells.


(the markers indicate the Overwatch target points. Flying Lead puts an interesting spin on Overwatch, in that there isn't the usual cone-shaped area which is covered but a spot is chosen and a certain area around t is covered by the Overwatch).

The two Shoota Boyz were effectively trapped while Heavy Duty Lucy and one of her friends started crawling through the undergrowth to engage the Orks behind the crates.

In the right you can see the Shoota Boy who prior covered the advance of his comrades, but his weapon had jammed and he just wasn't able to unjam it. Not even running back to the Boss to ask for help was of any use. He spent the rest of the game trying to get his gun to work again. You can also see how the last remaining Slugga Boy, after having endured some bad punishment from the hands of the Sisters on the platform, had jumped up to his feet again and he took a mad dash across the board and to a patch of wood at the left flank of the sisters.



Shortly thereafter you can see how he had almost reached the safety of the trees, but it was too late. The Orks behind the crates were under fire and due to bad rolls were only able to lightly scrape one of the sisters. In return one of the Shootaz was killed, forcing the whole Ork patrol to roll morale checks. The first to retreat off the table immediately was the Boss who hadn't moved an inch for the whole of the game, forcing the models to roll for another morale check. This sent some of the Orks running out into the open where they swiftly were dealt with by the Sisters on the platform.

The single Slugga therafter was pretty much stuck between a rock and a hard place as the sisters again made use of their proven tactic of pinning the opponent down behind an obstacle with covering both sides with overwatch and the third sister to move in for the kill. This Ork was a tough one though, so he managed to slip away and back behind the fence. Things looked as grim as ever though for the Orks at this point. The Boss and another boy had run off, most of them had been killed or gravely wounded. Only three of them were left and the Shoota Boy still hadn't managed to get his gun to work again.



Seeing how things were looking very good for the Sisters, one on the platform started rummaging through the stash in the pump control tower and found an artifact. Immediately she ran towards another stash to look for more (probably with a greedy look on her face).

At this point the Orks, despite their indomitable fighting spirit thus far, realized that there was nothing to be gained from fighting on and retired off the table. The Sisters of Battle had won the day.




Overall I think that Flying Lead, after about a year since my first test game, proved to be a very solid set of rules with more depth to it than one would expect it to have at first glance. I especially like the way how Pinning and the effect of fire in general are handled. The core rules themselves are easily learned (at least I think so) and players can concentrate on what is going on on the table. It's pretty impressive how much these rules achieve with so few variables (Quality, Combat and just three different range bands).

There could have been more terrain or at least I should have shortened the table length by a third or so so I could have concentrated the terrain a bit more. As much as any squad-level shooty skirmish game, Flying Lead requires a lot of terrain, and Line of Sight blocking at that. The Orks' deployment was a bit unlucky (as was their dice rolling), and it always is a little harder playing the not-elite-side of the game. This is why I like games in which the different sides aren't too different in terms of rules and/or tech level/power level/combat ability and so on. Last but not least I think that the Orks were a bit harder to play with their leader playing a pivotal role in activation, them relying more on short-range fire and close combat, group orders and so on. Not to diminish the Sisters of Battle's victory. They did everything right pretty much. Establish a fire base (or a Position of Power(tm) if you will), keep the enemy at bay, react to any flanking maneuvers, take the pump control station, bring the superior fire power to bear and don't get cocky. The Orks' fighting spirit has to be pointed out. Especially the advance of the Shoota Boyz and the last Slugga Boy who spent a lot of time on the ground, but just wouldn't die or stop running around.

If anyhting it gave me a reason to get out my Sisters of Battle (painted in 2004) and of course my Space Orks. I wanted to have some different armies on the table, because I think that this is what the players like rather than very similar warriors on both sides.

Very enjoyable battle report Sigur.

Thanks, glad you liked it.

Here's a WIP shot of the Exorcists I've been doing a little painting on in the new year:



As I'm taking up doing proper stuff again tomorrow they'll go back in their box. Exorcist#1 had been in primed state since the model was released pretty much (which I think was in summer of 2003), the other one I bought when it became appearant that GW would get rid of the model some time sooner or later. Got it for myself for christmas two years ago, managed to half build it. At least now they're on their way to maybe getting finished some time around 2025.


In case you don't get your dosage of Sigur(tm) through this plog and my site, the article in which I introduce myself to the readers of skirmishwargaming.com went online recently:

http://skirmishwargaming.com/sigurs-introduction/