A new Caenpaign begins...

Armed with some new terrain pieces, it was time to continue the breakout of the Allied forces in northern France.  

This time, our neighbors to the north would be heavily involved.  Oh, Canada indeed!

The board prior to reserve rolls.  The Germans are heavily fortified in Caen.  Sandbags and wire, which are a pain to deal with all at once... even more so in buildings!

The first battle would involve Commonwealth combined forces of British and Canadians.

Looking out from the wooded jump off positions to the nearby town.

Reserves!  Some Desert Rats appeared to spearhead the charge into town.

Waffen SS and some Panzers were brought up by the desperate defenders.

The initial card set was balanced, which is good.  Advancing on the left would be hazardous, since there were multiple anti-tank units waiting for armored pushes. That meant that the infantry would also have to advance equally to take away some of that threat.

Also, the town in the center had valuable objectives, but the only way to get there would be with infantry.  Since only one unit was elite, the prospect of getting all the way back there was daunting.

I had mobile artillery on the right, which was a good counter to the fixed guns of the Axis.  I would have to use those two Recon 1 cards to try and boost my hand in that sector.  That also meant sneaking units from other areas towards the right.

I used the first Recon card to move the Desert Rats towards the first town.  Flush with victory in Tunisia, they were eager to get to grips with the enemy.

The Germans chose to fortify their positions even more!

The other Recon card was used to bring up the mobile artillery.  I was able to get some nice cards in exchange for these two.

More reshuffling by the Germans... the dust of tank units could be seen in the distance.

Charge!  The armor clears out the barbed wire for the subsequent advance by the Desert Rats.

A counter advance by the German infantry weakens the Armored unit, but the way is cleared for the British elite!

Monty himself orders the Desert Rats to claim the outer structures of Caen.

But a dastardly counter attack turns them into dessert for the waiting Panzer units.

It's up to the Canadians now... will they avenge their Commonwealth brethren?  Will the breakout be thwarted once again?  Wait and see!!!

The difficult made easy

Once again I take to the photo area to take advantage of the giant photo backdrops from Hangar 18.  This unit is another one of those darn near impossible units to photograph without having to do all kinds of Photoshop work to clean up the pieces of drawing paper I was using as a backdrop!

First we begin with a few very fun Reaper miniatures, from the Warlord line.  These were the Reptus figures, and they made really neat Kroxigors!  The Champion is a favorite of mine.

And on a different Hangar 18 color...

Look at how much space is left over, even with the giant Skink Tank!!

It made shooting the images of the unit a "snap".  Ouch.

I love how the fades go in an out through light and dark, so some of the weapons are more of a silhouette, and others are light.

And I certainly could not snap this view!

I have noticed that I can back the lights off about 3-5 inches from the old setup, which means I can actually get the camera in here without bashing into one of the lights!

These angled views are also much easier, as I don't have to rebuild the upper right hand corner in photoshop with the smear tool.

At times, there were 44-48 skinks in this unit, with a champion and a chief with a sneaky surprise.  Also a skink priest hid in another corner.

The back rows and the side columns needed a lot of conversion on the skinks to make them rank up and fit.  I used a lot of the old style plastic archers there... cutting off that stuff and giving them javelins.

Of course, making the sculpey bases and the movement trays was BLAST!  I have a number of posts in the Lizardman section of the blog showing the various methods.

The last view.  So many more things to put in front of the camera on these backdrops!  Yea!