I did it again...

Yes I've done it again (see here).  I honestly went in just for a paint pot (the one perched precariously on the bog pile of awesome). But a 50% off sale? A man can only do so much...

Happily, mistakes were made...

Painting Challenge Week 9 Submissions

This week saw me complete another dozen Woodland Indians for our FIW campaign.  Alan routinely fields two dozen of these bloodthirsty braves in our Sharp Practice games and seeing them bear down on my loyal Colonials gives them the heebie jeebies - hopefully my having a reciprocal amount will give his French equal pause!

These are really lovely sculpts by Bob Murch from the Flint and Feather range, aimed at early contact/pre-contact period, thus the myriad of traditional weapons.  Again I spent a bit of time on authentic warpaint as I think it really makes them look savage!

To command my 2 units of Native Allies I have added a Sachem leader and I really like his commanding pose.  This is another figure from the Flint and Feather range. 

Next up, this beast is the M8 Grizzly Assault Walker from Warlord's Konflikt 47 range.  As this Allied walker is fielded by both US and British forces, I have pained it in the colours and insignia of a British Armoured Division and added a British tank crewman; so now it can support my British paratroopers when I want to weird them up a bit!  I really like this sculpt and had a lot of fun painting it, but putting it together was rather a pain and it required a lot of cleaning up and some parts needed work to bend them back into shape.  Regardless, I'm happy with the overall outcome.

The Grizzly is quite a sizeable beast and dominates the tabletop. Accordingly, I wanted something imposing for the base and agonised over that for awhile.  I've tried to convey it smashing through a small forest and crushing everything in its path, both natural and manmade obstacles with the barbed wire.

A panzergrenadier's view - rather imposing!

Added to my Russian Spider Mechs from the Armour Bonus Round, this makes three Weird War walkers I’ve completed during this challenge – time to order some more!

This entry is at the AHPC blog here: https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/from-paulog-even-more-indians-and.html

These submissions netted me 85 points, pushing me almost to the 800 point mark with a pleasingly consistent productivity line:

And just because Miles hasn't done this spreadsheet analysis yet (actually he probably has but just hasn't advertised it), here is what my average points per week look like over AHPC.  Soon to dip as some work travel takes a bite out of my time:

And so I have now officially upped my AHPC VII target to 1000 points - this will be a personal best for me and I will an attempt to avoid "abject failure in all aspects of life" as infamously decreed by the Dux last year before the challenge started...

Click here if you missed it...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxd3rhwHuBthSE5Yc3JMaHRub2M/view

AHPC VII 'Armour' Bonus Round: Soviet Spider Mecha

Presenting a pair of Spider Mechs from the Soviet 1st Guards Mecha Division, as seen on the Eastern front in late 1947 while operating with the 3rd Shock Army, 1st Belorussian Front.  

Russian doctrine is to field Light, Medium and Heavy Spider Mechs within a Mecha Division, deploying them in role oriented pairs to work in close cooperation for shock effect. This is a heavy "Hunting Pair”.  

The Hammerjaw class Medium Mech, while well able to take care of itself with it short barrelled 90mm, flushes big game for the larger and less mobile Nayk class Heavy Mech asks flanks the enemy while the bigger duel is underway.  With accompanying infantry support, this has been found to be highly effective in difficult environments such as urban/rubble, marsh and mountainous terrain not well suited to tracked and wheeled vehicles.

Hammerjaw Medium Mech

The Mecha pilots are dressed in distinctive uniforms with cooled padding, chest plate armour and communications equipment.  Shown dismounted is the famed Soviet Mecha Ace Konstantin Samokhin, Hero of the Soviet Union (limited edition figure)

Nayk Heavy Mech 

Characteristically, this Bonus round became quite an enjoyable distraction from my intended main push, but I’m very happy with the Result. All models by WestWind from their Secrets of the Third Reich range.  Putting these mocha beasties together was extremely challenging and they are probably the most frustrating things I’ve ever built, though it is nice to have them done after a few years of languishing in the garage.  Perhaps I need another Hammerjaw mech (which was my favourite) to complete the platoon though.  Maybe one transferred from the Naval Infantry bridge, all decked out in black and with Soviet Marines as Tank riders.  Thats would be cool...

I’ve swapped the crewmen around because, well I think they look better this way. All painting and weathering was by hand, including the turret markings which say “Crush the Facists!” (on the Nayk Heavy mecha) and “For the Motherland!” (on the Hammerjaw Medium).  If that’s not what they say…I don’t want to know :-) 

To Berlin Comrades!

This AHPC entry can be found here:

http://analogue-hobbies-theme-rounds.blogspot.com.au/2017/01/armour-from-paulog-soviet-spider-mechs.html

UPDATE: This entry won a Runner-Up for the round.  Very pleased with that outcome!
http://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com.au/2017/01/the-votes-are-in-for-armour-theme-round.html

A Weird Month

This month's release of Konflikt '47 has sparked a wave of Weird WW2 enthusiasm around the Hobby, no more so than in my Man Cave.  Naturally, my box of alternative, super science and straight up strange WW2 stuff needs expanding despite being rather weighted towards the unpainted/unassembled side of things...

New Weird WW2 Shiny

Thus far I have a German PanzerGrenadier styled force, a Russian Mech force (NIB) and I think could bring my British Airborne (here) into the post 45 environment by adding a few extra goodies too, like some automaton 'bots, Combat Chaplain, a Druid for some supernatural support, or even some Dalek "allies!"  Inspiration for the upcoming AHPC perhaps...

If you are a WWW2 guy, you may be interested in this new FB group here, which is Manufacturer/rules/scale agnostic and just a bunch of guys sharing their pics and other inspirational WWW2 goodness to get you in the mood.

KONFLIKT ‘47

I've been trying to limit my posts this year to reflect my own games and modelling, but this forthcoming Warlord release has me excited to get back to my WWW2 gaming.  Sounds like its more science based vice occult elements, but you can get your trusty Nazi Zombies into the fray!

Being based on the popular Bolt Action rules, it might also be a good catalyst to get some new blood into the Weird WW2 genre.  It available for pre-order now for an August release- see here

EDIT: Warlord have now also posted a Designer's Commentary here

Book Review: My Immortal - The Vampires of Berlin

I'd been looking about for this book for ages (since 2011 - see here) but without success.  Then recently it popped up for free - or maybe I just found it - on my Kindle Unlimited account; got to be happy with that!

The book starts out in modern Berlin, with an American scholar/author about to announce some shattering revelations about the final days of the Third Reich.  He is murdered quite quickly once he begins his announcement and in the course of the investigation the story flashes back to the final days of the Battle of Berlin.  Rag tag bands of survivors, German veterans, Volksturm and angry Russians  struggle in the ruins of the Reich capital.  Then the Vampires made an appearance - shadowy at first and then building to a conclusion with some nice occult bits. 

Unfortunately, my impressions of the book were not good.  It reads very much like self published fan fiction.  Readable (at times barely) and without the style a professional author brings.   That said, I persevered and about half way through the book the pace and quality picked up significantly.  

Overall I give it 2 stars - mostly because its a Weird WW2 fix and there aren't too many of those about.


PS The author is clearly a fan of Game of Thrones - so don't get too attached to any of the characters! 

Cancelled: Secrets of the Third Reich 2 KS

Three minutes ago the KS page was updated with...

After an initial surge the project was plagued with issues and challenges.  Clearly West Wind are going to rethink their entire campaign.  I'm looking forward to hearing something more official from them soon.

Perhaps its for the best.  An improved and more effective campaign later is better than a failed project now I guess.  Disappointing though

EDIT - here is the broadcast from Westwind:

Good afternoon everyone, and thanks for jumping onboard and supporting our Secrets of the Third Reich II project. We were off to a good start but as you know, over the last few days, things have been more or less at a standstill. 

We always knew, to complete SoTRII it was going to be a costly exercise. We brought this project to Kickstarter in the hope at we would gain the support to be able to take the game where we wanted to take it, as financial backing for a small business such as West Wind is an absolute must to undertake a project the size of Secrets. All our finger have been well and truly crossed that enough backers would come in to make this possible.  
 
So to conclude, it greatly pains us to say that we have reached the following decision. After long consideration, number crunching to try to make this fit, plus a great deal of soul searching, it is with great regret that we have no alternative but to cancel the project. We have over the last few days looked at all the options to try to work around this to make it financially viable, and please believe us, this is not a decision that we have taken lightly. This is purely a financial business decision that we have had to take. We are very very sorry.
 
We will not be able to take the project to Kickstarter again in a different format, however, we will be looking at other avenues as a possible way forward outside of Kickstarter, together with John Bailey and Ian Hill.
 
We know you are going to be disappointed that we are not able to take this project any further here, we too are very disappointed, and we thank you all very much indeed for your commitment and support of ourselves and the project since launch.
 
With very best regards,
 
Andy & Wendy Cooper, West Wind Productions 

------

EDIT 2 - Andy later posted on the KS comments section:

Thanks everyone for taking time to post your kind words and also your views. This is by no means a fail, just not in the current offer which was not viable with the number of backers. 

We are in talks with John Bailey and Ian Hill and looking at a good way forward for both rules and miniatures. So at the moment it's business as usual for West Wind and Forged in Battle. We will keep you posted as we have more information. Thanks again for your superb support.

Secrets of the Third Reich 2 KS now live

Got to be in it to win it and its 50% funded in less than a day!  The mechs have been redesigned and some of the stretch goals are very interesting, including the Japanese and USMC forces! Note that its only a 20 day campaign...
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/832150598/1949-sotr-ii-the-weird-wwii-miniatures-game

Whats not to like about 3-headed werewolves?

X-7 Rotkäppchen anti-tank missile

A piece of technology I did not know was in use as early as it was.  Of course, now I want to put a few of these on my Weird WW2 German Vehicles.  Here is a great mockup of a turret mounted launcher on an E-100 Maus

from: http://kswong8d.blogspot.com/2011/08/e100-tiger-maus-henschels-heavy-tank.html

The Panzerabwehrrakete X-7 "Rotkäppchen" (Red Riding Hood) was a anti-tank missile. Designed and developed by Ruhrstahl AG in 1943. 

The X-7 was shell shaped body had two wings at its aft end with parabolic leading and trailing edges and two small pods for the wire link spools were attached to the wing tips. The wire link control system was employed for the X-7 Rotkäppchen which used Düsseldorf FuG 510 transmitter and the Detmold FuG 238 receiver, also a radio controlled system was planned for the X-7 Rotkäppchen using the FuG 203/230h. Detonation was achieved by use of an impact fuse.

 trials were undertaken on September 21st 1944 with seven X-7 missiles. Because of the unusual and unfamiliar flying characteristics the first four weapons had ground contact after some distance and therefore crashed. On the next two the rocket engine exploded on the way to the target. The last Rotkäppchen flew all the way and hit the target tank at a range of 500m dead center.

Only about 300 X-7 Rotkäppchen were completed; mass production was planned and had already started at the companies Ruhrstahlwerke in Brackwede and the Mechanische Werke in Neubrandenburg. Many almost finished weapons were captured by the allies (which the French continued to develop after the war).  There were unconfirmed reports of the X-7 being used operationally on the eastern front, and it appears that this missile was extremely effective even against the heavy armoured Stalin tanks.

Type: Anti-tank Missile

Guidance system: Wire Guided / Radio Guided (planned)

Length: 0.95 m

Wingspan: 0.60 m 

Diameter: 0.15 m

Weight: 9 kg

Engine: 2 × WASAG 109-506 solid fuel rocket engine producing up to kg of thrust

Maximum speed: 360 km/h

Range: 1,2 km

Warhead: 2.5 kg

Fuze: impact fuse

Operators: Luftwaffe

(Data from: http://www.wehrmacht-history.com/luftwaffe/missiles/x7-rotkaeppchen-anti-tank-missile.htm)

More to be found at the Weapons and Warfare blog here:
http://weaponsandwarfare.com/2015/11/04/panzerabwehrrakete-x-7-rotkappchen/

Brian has already made up some rules for a Stug variant with an X-7 launcher at his great Weird WW2 Blog here.  Great minds think alike I guess!

From http://www.weirdwwii.com/2012/10/battleground-weird-wwii-panzerjager-ivr.html

You can certainly see older, small chassis getting a new lease of life with this small launcher fitted.

"1946 Racket AT Misile tank" Late WW2/'46 German AT Guided Missile vehicle. Based on a Panzerjager IV chassis and using the X-7 Rotkappchen Missile.  From http://www.modelblokez.org.au/othermodels.html#prettyPhoto

And here is the Pz.IV Raketenwerfer: Missile tank on Panzer IV chassis, armed with four wire-guided Х-7 Rottkapptchen AT missiles".   A single prototype was made.

From Achtung Panzer: "It was also planned to arm Panzerkampfwagen IV Ausf C/D/E with four 280mm or 300mm rocket projectors mounted in a special turret, which replaced the standard one. Turret consisted of forward mounted cabin with machine gun and rear mounted hydraulically operated launching frame. A single prototype was produced and tested although full-scale production did not take place. It was designated as Raketenwerfer auf Fahrgestell PzKpfw IV."

Model version - lots more profile pics from the source site here: http://www.militarymodelling.com/news/article/raketenwerfer-auf-fahrgestell-pzkpfwiv/3844

Secrets of the Third Reich 2nd Edition

Excellent news on a recent edition of Meeples and Miniatures podcast (Episode 145 - see here) that West Wind Productions will be starting a kickstarter to fund the long awaited 2nd Edition of Secrets of the Third Reich very soon...next week in fact!  Lots to look forward with this one I think, with the rules split into two books from the outset and the inclusion of Imperial Japanese forces.

Does buying updated rules that I already have (with figures) count as a full 'ohhh shiny' moment? I don't think so either...

There is a little more over at Beasts of Warm with a couple of concept art pics:

http://www.beastsofwar.com/secrets-of-the-third-reich/west-wind-unveil-cover-secrets-reich-ii/

Doing some research, I stumbled across this great blog with a wonderful collection of WWW2 gaming and models.  If you are a Weird War guy, check out the wonderfully thematic offerings from this Hong Kong gamer:
http://wargamesinhk.blogspot.com/search/label/Weird%20World%20War%202

Iron Sky 2

You may remember the Moontruppen from Iron Sky: a wonderfully flippant movie about the resurgence of the Reich...from the Dark Side of the Moon.  Well they are coming back...on Dinosaurs...(Awesome)...from the centre of the Hollow Earth (Even more Awesome).

OGRE Mk 0.1?

The KV-VI is actually a hoax, started by somebody photoshopping a column of KVs so it looked like one giant tank. But that doesn't mean its not cool of course, or that I don't want one on my WWW2 table!
From: http://xmb.stuffucanuse.com/xmb/viewthread.php?tid=4693

The Russian land battleship - KV-VI Behemoth tank

A fascinating tale of state power over commonsense military design. Stalin wanted a land battleship, and he was going to get one no matter how impractical it was.  Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, new facts have surfaced about the secret weapons developed by the Red Army during WWII.

One of the most fascinating of these was the KV-VI Behemoth. In July 1941, Stalin learned of a single KV-II that had held off the entire 6th Panzer Division for more than a day. With the incredible success of this single tank, Stalin ordered a crash program for a land battleship based on the KV-II design.

It was to have three turrets and be very heavily armed and armored and able to defend itself against all types of attack.

The project was given to the joint team of Kotin/Barkov. When the designers complained to Stalin that the insistence on three turrets made the vehicle too long to have an acceptable turning radius, Stalin's answer was: "It doesn't need to turn, it will drive straight to Berlin."

The final design became known as the KV-VI "Behemoth". The KV-VI was a multi-turreted tank using components of the KV-I and II, Bt-5, T-60, and T-38. The use of existing tank designs was necessary because of pressure from Stalin and the strains put on Soviet industry by the German invasion. Because of its massive weight, the tank was equipped with wading devices permitting it to traverse rivers up to 9 feet deep

The team also designed a removable observation tower that could be used to direct the fire of the howitzers and rockets while the tank was in a turret down position.


Operational History
The first prototype was completed in December 1941 and was rushed into the defense of Moscow. In its first action during a dense winter fog, the rear turret accidentally fired into the center turret. The resulting explosion completely destroyed the vehicle.

The second prototype was completed in January 1942, and was sent to the Leningrad front. This one had indicators installed to show whe another turret was in the line of fire. In its initial attack on the Germans, the tank broke in half when crossing a ravine. A spark ignited the leaking flamethrower fuel and the resulting explosion completely destroyed the vehicle.

The third prototype, shown here, had a reinforced hull and was also sent to the Leningrad front in early 1942. It did manage to shoot down three German aircraft. In its first ground engagement, the KV-VI was firing on German positions when coincidentally all of the guns fired from the 3 O'Clock position a the same time. The tremendous recoil tipped the tank into a ditch and the severe jostling set off the 152mm ammunition, which completely destroyed the vehicle.

After these failures, Stalin cancelled the project, and many of the design team members spent the rest of their lives in the Gulags of Sibera. The KV-VI was nicknamed "Stalin's Orchestra" by the few Germans that encountered it because of the variety of weapons it deployed.

KV-VI Specifications

Crew: 15 men and one Commissar Length: 51 feet, 4 inches
Height: 15 feet, 3 inches Width: 10 feet, 10 inches
Height/tower raised: 37 feet, 8 inches Weight: 138 tons
Engine: 3 X V-2 at 600 horsepower each Max Speed: 13 mph
Max Range: 98 miles road; 43 miles cross country
Armor: 160mm maximum; 7mm minimum
Armament: 2 X 152mm; 2 X 76.2mm; 1 X 45mm; 2 X 12.7mm DShK; 2 X 7.62mm Maxim; 14 X 7.62mm DT; 16 X BM-13 Rockets; 2 X Model 1933 Flamethrowers

 http://forums.filefront.com...

Picture below of the mighty KV-VI Behemoth land battleship as a model, and a rare photo of the first version of the land battleship (note the track covers on the early version that were removed because of high track maintenance needs)

 

Herr Flick of the Gestapo

When not searching for the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies by Van Klomp, Herr Flick of the Gestapo (who is a in reality a member of the secret Thule Society) along with his assistant Helga (shown here before she joined the Army) frequently investigate paranormal activities and looking for Cthulu artifacts for the Reich Spezielle Projekt-Abteilung.

In Strange Aeons, I intend to play him as a Renegade Threshold Agent, which makes him a Boss Badguy.  I'm doing up some henchmen Brownshirts for him next.  Or of course they will fit directly into any Weird WW2 game as special characters.