How to make: WW1 Trenches

Greetings everyone!

Hope you are all well.
In my previous post, I mentioned that I was preparing some terrain for our wargames club, based on some WW1 Scenarios we are interested to play.

I have managed to prepare some trenches, based on some photos I've collected through the web and my books and also for Sidney's blog that is full of wonderful, wonderful, wonderful models.

Below you will see (through a very basic video I had just prepared) how I begun with this:

And ended up to this:

And this is Youtube's link (It cannot be uploaded through blogger, don't ask me why...) 

I hope you like it!

Have a good Sunday night everyone!
T.

Flying Lead on a sunny Sunday

Ok, it’s been four months since my last post, I know that, but when you don’t feel in the mood to paint, when you're out of focus, you simply want to hide yourself from everything that’s hobby related.

At least, that was the deal until yesterday afternoon. The weather was nice (I live in Greece after all), I had a nice cup of coffee in the morning with my SWMBO, and by the end of the morning I had an invitation by the fellow modeler and wargamer Dimitris of the Complete Greek Geek blog, for a WW2 skirmish game – you can imagine my sense of excitement, since I’ve never played anything related to WW2, EVER! And yes, I mostly paint WW2 models – I know, and yes, I don’t feel proud about that. But, that belongs to the past now! First blood was drawn, and boy….it was mine to spare. Well, I guess that should be the ritual for a noobie like me. J

 

Taken from Dimitris’ blog:

World War II skirmishing, using Flying Lead from Ganesha Games. If you don't know them, visit their site. Andrea is an awesome guy to deal with and his rules are ALWAYS great fun. Flying Lead is a generic skirmish game that can be used for WWII, pulp adventures, cops and robbers, science fiction and probably more types of wargaming.

So, the rules came out, two forces of 600 points each were assembled, the battlefield was laid out, and battle was joined.

 I got the Americans and he got the Germans…

 The Battlefield

 Rules, army list, QR sheet, dice, measuring sticks. Ready to rock and roll.

The Yanks. Heroic sarge, corporal, BAR gunner, 4 privates, 1 veteran in CQB, 1 veteran with hand grenades.

 The Krauts. Heroic unteroffizier, gefreiter, MG-34 gunner and loader, 4 grenadiers, 1 veteran grenadier with rifle grenades.

Ok, the aerial reconnaissance showed no movement or enemy presence in the area. I had to cross the field and occupy the area, waiting for the reinforcements to come, for the big push. That was the plan, that was what my men heard in briefing. ‘’Same shit, different day’’ they thought.

I split my force in two. One part (Commander and BAR team) would get cover in one of the derelict houses (great terrain pieces btw), providing suppressing fire to the stone house across the dirt road, where I thought that most of the Jerries would be. The other team (Sergeant and riflemen) would move through the woods and flank the stone house. A reasonable plan you say? Just wait and see….

Movement was done without too much hassle. During my movement phases, the Germans moved behind the stone wall and started loading their weapons – among them was a ‘’sewing – machine’’ a.k.a MG-34. I had to move as quickly as possible.

 The support team occupied the derelict house and the men on the two sides of the dirt road started exchanging bullets, wishes and gifts. Oh wait, I need to clarify things a bit for you. Dimitris was using his weapons very efficiently - grenades, 7.62’ rounds - you name it, were decorating the derelict house with splinters, bricks and fumes…also, to spice things up, the inhouse decoration was consisted of blood spatters on the walls alongside with some broken limbs and materiel of my men – as you might have guessed, my men were pinned by continuous fire and my Commander was out of action, at the very early stages of the game.

 What I gave back in response? Lots of “1”s and “2”s… and then another man (BAR) fell. More “1”s and “2”s….and grenadiers trying to flank my position – and then another man fell. No need to carry on writing the same thing over and over again. You might have guessed the outcome of this mini battle. To make things worse, hand to hand battles between my men and the grenadiers took place, and apart from my inability to get some decent die, my men guns jammed and one of them was killed during the melee.

The other team after a few turnovers – due to my good dice, delayed in reaching the stone house – the outer wall to be exact, near the tree. I managed to throw some grenades and fire some shots, pinning some Jerries down, but the Dice Deity, came to my ‘’rescue’’. More “1”s and “2”s, and the pinned Germans managed to get cover behind the house walls – from which they fired with everything they had against me, with the expected results – more Yankees wounded and out of the action…

 Outcome: One dead, four wounded/ out of action and only three men unscathed by the battle. After that, I started yelling: «είναι κλοπή κύριε Κοτλέμπα»!! – Sorry, I cannot translate this in English, Blogger will ban my blog, if I do so. J

 Dimitri's tactics were clever, his die was decent and my reaction was feeble to the least.I had to call for retreat. It was obvious that I had lost the field against a worthy opponent. Next time Dimitris, next time…Next time I will bring my plucky Brits and restore the Allies reputation. After all, we have to win a war…  

 I must confess though, that I enjoyed the game very much, even though I lost. :-)

Have a good Monday night everyone!

 T.

Last weekend's work and a new adventure!

Good day and good week guys!

In my last post, I was telling you about the preparation of my newly arrived kits and figures for my WW2 armies. On the photos below, you will see that I painted the figures (after the basic priming which was done with sprays - in colours as close as possible to the uniforms colours I wanted to paint) with the first colour, which is usually the flesh. 

As you will see, not much is done, but, late last night I managed to paint the basic uniform colours for all figures (which was rather time consuming - and boring, in terms of painting almost 60 figures with only two colours, VMC 70.879 Green Brown, and VMC 70.873 US Field drab). Unfortunately I don't have any photos related - I will make it up to you in my next post! :)

What was really interesting from last weekend though (and the main reason I didn't paint much), was an invitation that I got from a friend, asking me to participate in a ''Wings of War'' board game, even though I didn't have any previous experience (imagine how well I deceive people, that they think I can actually play a game).

The game by itself was simply fantastic, each player would choose a 1/144 (scale) WW1 plane (don't ask me which was my choice, I don't have a clue, I chose the ones with the funniest colours), and the basic strategic plan was to give your opponent a ''hard landing''....The game is played with cards and without dices and the rules are really straightforward. What more could a mere clueless wargamer (such as my self) ask for??? :-)

For these reasons, and of course my beginner's luck, I managed to win the first game, and lose the second (but not without bleeding the nose of my opponent)! All in all I was very pleased with the result.

It was a nice experience to find people who share the same madness with me (it's like in the movies, where there's a moment in which the actor, with the help of some musical accompaniment, feels like he's in heaven, and everything falls into place...).

If you guys care to join this club (I am referring to my fellow Athenian Greeks - or anyone else, discrimination is  out of our vocabularies, that are searching for meeting new people with the same interests) this is the link: http://wgc.wargamer.gr/ . You could either email me if you need any further information. It will be my honour to get to know you in person (as long as you don't ask for money, you won't find any I'm afraid...). :-)

Have a great week guys (and keep on smiling)! 

T.