Sunday, July 8, 2012

Soviet Spetsnaz Platoon. More painted FOW units.


I'm in a FOW painting Mood recently so I spent some more time painting up more soviet infantry.

This time I focused on the soviet Spetsnaz platoon. They are the most elite warriors within the Red army. Think of it as the SAS special squad of Russia. Only with even more tenacity!

And more importantly they are a recon unit, and in my tank army they will be able to make a free 16" move as well as pull along another tank unit with them. This effectively gives that one extra tank unit an additional 16" deployment. Very vital especially in Version 3 Flames of War where the soviet tanks are seriously nerfed with the new "Hens & Chicks" rule.

And yes, the platoon moves around in captured German Halftracks. Making them move around undetected. Sneaky bastards indeed!

Painted up more SMG Russians for flames of war.


Been using unpainted infantry stands in the past few months of gaming and it certainly did not feel proper!

Finally got time to finish up the important SMG infantry to use as my Tank Rider Company.

Quick look & review - rural church from battlefront


You've got to love a great piece of terrain on the tabletop. And no other game needs it as much (ok in exaggerating here) as flames of war.

I ordered this rural church as soon as it was released as I wanted to collect all the new terrain pieces from battlefront this year onwards.

When it arrived my heart broke as I saw that the packaging was destroyed. But upon opening up the miniature I'm glad to say that the styrofoam packaging inside the actual product protected it thoroughly. Unlike the previous rural farm houses, which came in a million pieces.

As you can see in the pics this is a huge building. Complete with space for an observer team and many units to hide within the confines of the walls.

Another great terrain lot from the makers of flames of war. Definitely worth the £19. Preprinted terrain at its best Value : quality ratio hands down.

Super Dungeon Explore completed Spawning Points & WIP monsters


Picked up the great board game super dungeon explore recently and my what a fun game it is!!!

I also went ahead to make full use of my airbrush to try and paint as much highlights as I possibly could with my limited experience.

The monsters had a large area of skin therefore it was easier to try airbrushing them first.

I also sprayed the highlights for the spawning points with dark grey and light grey. All paints used were Vallejo Air Model series.

Dust Warfare: Easy Tokens


We have been playing Dust recently and those play it know that tokens feature quite heavily in the game. And although there are not many different types of tokens. Keeping them properly represented certainly helps keep the game flowing smoothly. So today I am showing how I did mine and how I use them. 

There are many types of tokens that have already been created, namely printing out the official token counters provided at the back of the core rulebook. As well as many other more fanciful types that make use of the small plastic pieces found under all Dust miniatures. Some even combined for a great effect! However for those without the luxury of access to printers or those who do not wish to fiddle around with paper counters. I have some suggestions. 

In this post I only have tokens that represent the 2 most frequently used counters in the game. The Suppresion & Reaction Token. I have not played enough games to fully utilize the Camo & Blind tokens but those will probably be addressed in a future post. For today lets see how I approach Suppression & Reaction. 

Like I mentioned I have opted to use the small plastic pieces which I removed from the bases of all my Dust miniatures. I have using fiddly and easily crushed paper counters. The small plastic pieces come printed on one side a nice Dust: Tactics logo. And I'm planning on using them as "Reaction" counters. Since the reaction counter is officially represented by a running figure (not idea why as a reaction does not necessarily mean a running action in the game) I figured using that would work without a hitch. After all we just needed a token to signify that the unit had reacted to something. For the suppression marker, I replicated the "Blast" icon which is shown in the official tokens. I opted to simply use red paint rather than print it out and sticking it like I mentioned above. Here they are.

Like I mentioned the counters work both ways. Flip it over and its a reaction marker!
Let's see how it looks like in game terms shall we?
Here we have a unit of Grim Reapers being Suppressed and Reacted. 
And here we have a Walker with a Suppress token. Note that Vehicles cannot be suppressed so this is to remind us that we need to roll on the vehicle damage table and remove it shortly after. Notice the die there? Since Dust Warfare does not use D6's. I figured it would be easier to use them as wound counters rather than stacking a number of vehicle damage counters and having to lug around so many counters (and having to count them) each time it moves or gets damaged. This also effectively negates the need for making any wound counters for both troops and vehicles. Just simply use dice!

I'll try to see what solutions I can come up with for the other tokens to be used within the game. But in the meantime I guess this will do while we try to get more games in.

I hope that this provides a quick and easy way of getting those mandatory suppression and reaction markers into your games of Dust Warfare!



Completed PSC soviet Decoy units.


Got my airbrush compressor back from repairs last weekend. And decided to finish up some captured German vehicles for my Soviet FoW army.

As always PSC plastic models are an absolutely joy to work with. And the details and "clean-ness" of these models never fail to amaze me.

Should I start a German Panzer Kompanie? Hmmm....