The Second Front

The deadly battle for the outskirts of Nouvion continues!  When we last saw the intrepid defenders, they were attempting to push forward into the German line of advance to blunt their progress.

Despite the presence of the Panzer 38T and the anti tank rifle, the Lorraine transport drove right into the teeth of enemy fire and dropped off the veteran squad into the nearest building, obviously at the direction of the officer nearby!

The German forces now saw the convoy of Laffly transports coming up behind the Lorraine, and the deadly machine gun mounts on each of them...

Each of the transports had to canter to the right in order to take cover behind the buildings and reposition to outflank the tank, Hanomag with its own passengers.  They could only go so far at this point, since the light howitzer had still not been dealt with!

You can see what was waiting for the French troops here.  Not only was there a squad in the half track, another one was waiting in the Opel Blitz.

The howitzer had moved a bit to get out of the line of sight of the heavy French artillery.  This also gave it an improved line of sight to the street, preventing an easy advance by the Laffly transports.

As the light began to fade in Nouvion, the French officer decided that he must gamble anyway, and drove the trucks into the street to pour fire into the waiting howitzer.  Even if it could not be destroyed, they could at least keep the crew cowering behind their gun shield!

The Germans saw their opportunity to counter strike, and attempted to blast the Laffly WTC15 from point blank range!  Apparently auto cannons are designed to be used at much longer ranges, because each shot flew past the very relieved crew of the anti tank truck...

The Panzer 38T and the Opel Blitz moved well into one of the neutral sectors to score victory points and to machine gun the exposed French veteran unit.  A few managed to survive this barrage of fire, however.

The Opel Blitz drove as fast as it could to get past this maelstrom.

PinaPalooza continued, with the French units getting hit multiple times.  However, they were now well ensconced in both the neutral sector and even the German deployment sector.  

The enemy would be forced to kill them outright to tip the balance...

Even the mortar observer joined the march forward!  He could not see past all the advancing French units, so he almost had to move past them.

It was a very unusual method of spotting, as he essentially pointed to the howitzer just yards away and said, "laisse tomber ici, les gars!".

That's "drop it right here, lads!" to you Anglophiles.

As darkness began to fall, deadly hand to hand combat ensued as the Wehrmacht forces attempted to drive the French back.

But there were simply too many targets to remove all at once!  As night fell, the action fell silent, and both sides slipped away to regroup and recover.  For now, Nouvion remains in French hands.  Will it remain so?

Perhaps as daylight returns, new reinforcements on both sides will be thrown into the battle!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we are hoping to make more regular "paint and play" trips to Grognard Games.  We think it will be a mid week thing, where we arrive early to play a game and then paint afterwards.

Once we get that settled, we will announce that on Facebook, etc

First, we have to do Reapercon, which is very close!  We will have Fort Wappel up and running, with plenty of live demos and mayhem!!

A New Battlefield

It's been a very long time since we have been to a game store.  A very long time in fact, close to 2 years!  There are many reasons for that, not the least of which the closest location is at least 45 minutes away in zero traffic.

That's not to say that there are not some very nice locations, such as Games Plus and Draxtar.  Since Cathy needed some new cards for Warhammer AoS Champions, we thought we would make a spontaneous trip to Grognard Games, and pick those up in person!

Lo and behold, a familiar face greeted us at the door, and it was a little like being back at the old GW Battle Bunker!

The layout was even more expansive than the last time we were here, with plenty of tables laid out with a great variety of terrain types.

I had brought along the French and German Bolt Action armies, along with the new buildings for Nouvion, which are still in the process of being finished.  It was really different to be setting up a table for us in a location that wasn't the basement!!

We thought this might be the appropriate time for Cathy's first genuine game of Bolt Action, with a real scenario, and an official army list.  She would take the German forces, since there were so many unfamiliar French units and rules to worry about.

The mission was Sectors, and right away the fixed artillery pieces set up across from one another.  The French seemed particularly interested in the grounded Stuka!

The French deployed an observer in the top floor of one of the buildings.  After so many games set in the Ardennes forest, it was quite different to be working with terrain this "tall".  Also, I had to start getting used to windows again, and just how many things can 'see' out of them.

It didn't take very long for people to start showing up.  In fact, by 6pm, every table had one game system or another in action.  The store remained full until we left not long before close at 10pm.  

It was kinda nice to see that much activity on a regular Wednesday evening that was not Magic related!

While the French had brought in a lot of artillery to guard the 'neutral' sectors, it would really be the German mortar team that would get off the most shots during the game.  Most howitzers and anti-tank rifles spent several turns in Ambush guarding key corridors of advance.

Knowing the Germans had the only tank in the field, the Laffly WTC15 Tank Destroyer waited patiently for its quarry...

However, the Germans did not oblige, and kept the armored car and Panzer 38T well hidden.

The Lorraine transport with its deadly cargo strode right up to the waiting anti-tank rifle and Panzer 38T, dropping them off into a freshly wallpapered building right on the edge of the Axis deployment zone and 3 points!  

It was still quite early yet, so time will tell if they will survive to claim that sector.

I have a how to article on the way to show how I created the wallpaper, so stay tuned for that!

Speaking of staying tuned, the second episode of this first Battle for Nouvion is coming up.  Can the French drive the German invaders from this village?  

Bird Watchers

This Big Bird from Mierce Miniatures is pretty huge.  As an example, the base is the size of a DVD!

I did a lot of work in advance on this with the airbrush, using the Badger Stynlrez primers.  This allowed me to do a good portion of the "hard to reach" areas, and meant that I didn't have to handle it as much during painting.

Most of the follow up layers were glazes, where I could tint things a different hue or drop down the value a bit.

As usual, the Secret Weapon weathering paints and the Reaper Liner paints were ideal for this task!!

More from the Deep

We return to the unusual combination sea creatures once more!  This was also the first figure that I tried to use much more saturated oil colors. Up until this point, most of what I had done with the oil paints had been earth tones and more muted colors.

That turned out to be very helpful on a much larger creature such as this, where there were so many color transitions to carry across the entire figure.  The extended drying time meant that I could work my way around the figure, blending along the way.

It was particularly important to have that ability here, since those transitions between very light colors (which are normally considered opposites!) would have been much more difficult.

Here's a review on the basing:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2018/06/bark-and-branch-under-sea.html

This blog post has some links to the original kickstarter where this series of figures was released, and to a live session where I painted another these large creatures using oils:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2018/06/what-lurks-under-sea.html

Winter Warrior

I have had a lot of fun working on these winter armies for the last few years, and lately I have been experimenting with some more snow combinations.  These original German figures were done using the Secret Weapon crushed glass method, but I have started to add in other materials as well.

Here's a link to that Facebook Live experimental session:

https://www.facebook.com/james.wappel/videos/vb.1056181987/10212572308356784/?type=2&video_source=user_video_tab

I do like the Secret Weapon materials, as they allow you to create many different types of snow, especially that which is partially melted or slushy!

I am also doing a tutorial series on the winter figures, from the basing through the painting process, followed by the snow effects!  Those will be available to the patrons that subscribed to the $15 Army Painter level:

www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

Jurassic Dead

This set of miniatures from HellDorado  was really unusual, and had some unexpected sculpting details!  I had started painting them as standard Lizardmen, but the more I worked on them, I started to realize what I thought was torn fabric or leather was skin!

Yes, they were shedding their skin.  My guess is that they might be undead lizards?  I was certainly caught by surprise, and I was forced to switch gears about 30% of the way through the process.

This is something that I have been emphasizing a lot on both my live sessions and the YouTube/Facebook live sessions.

It is also something that I have been demonstrating in the new "Army Painter" pledge levels on the Patreon page.  The idea is to construct the framework of  your lights and darks as quickly as possible, so that if you need to make some changes (especially significant ones like this adventure!), you don;t feel like you have lost a lot of working time.

That means that you will be more willing to make those adjustments, and end up with a better overall result.  You can find the Army Painter pledge on the patreon page here:

www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

Music Man

To those who don't already know, a good portion of this Chaos Knight unit was painted with oils, with the final details completed with acrylics once they were dry.

When you are working on a large number of figures that have very similar colors, using the oil paints can be very handy!  The ability to still be able to wet blend new layers of paint into those applied one or two days before is a tremendous advantage when trying to match colors!

I have said this many times before, but now that more people are seeing this idea of oil painting, there are some misconceptions about why you would use this medium.

When people ask me how to get oil paints to dry faster, I always say: "I use acrylics instead".  The whole point of these is the longer drying time, and that ability to turn each of the figures themselves into a wet palette!

I was even seeing some people claim that I wanted them to have a different look, etc., which is definitely not the case.  To make that point, I painted the last one of this unit entirely in acrylics, and it looked just like all the others.

The process itself is not all that different, since I still use glazing when I am working with oils.  I may not remove as much paint as I do with the acrylics, where I am wiping away layers of glazing with a sponge.  For obvious reasons, that is just not possible with the oils, since the underlying layers are still wet.

I hope this all makes sense!  Now that we are back from GenCon, I can start diving back into my oils again!!  Stay tuned...