Battlegroup Tokens (WW2 gaming aids!)

Adopting a new wargame...I ended up of, as always, designing up some game aids.  I've assembled some cheat sheets and I designed some tokens which will come in handy.

Battlegroup requires a bag of 104 "Battle Counter" tokens, and I added in 30 small status tokens for the most common uses in the game.

I decided to put some together for the most popular factions, namely those that my buddies and I would be playing!

WW2 Tokens: Germany

WW2 Tokens: Soviet Union

WW2 Tokens: United States

I will be doing some more in the future, namely British, and some specialized token sets for friends.  I have already done one; the 4th ID for my buddy who served with them. 

Potato phone pictures of the Russian horde!

While moving stuff around on a shelf, I took these minis out and snapped a few poor photos.  I finished another rifle platoon today and an additional sapper squad and a second 50mm mortar.  I also snapped a pic of my completed infantry, and then my whole current force sitting in its "waiting" tray!

 New recruits arrive from the train depot...

 The assembled collection thus far...

All of my current infantry.

Overall, pretty happy with the results, and happy that I'm at the stage as a wargamer/hobbyist that I can envision something and make it happen with decent results, in a planned and methodical method.  I was able to find a solution to numerous problems and I'm right where I'd like to be with regard to being able to play Battlegroup (minus needing some proper terrain!).

As with all of my projects I always try to do the most boring stuff first.  In this instance...a company of Russian infantry and some assembled officers and support teams.  While I have a bunch of additional infantry left to do at some point (various communications teams, etc.), my bulk infantry are done.  Everything else will now seem like a joy to paint by comparison!

15mm Entrenchments from Flames of War

Starting to assemble/build terrain elements for 15mm, I picked up a box of Entrenchments from Flames of War.

Product as advertised - box of eight pieces, six large and two small - made to fit FoW bases.

 

These were nice, and while I forgot to take pictures, the colours were a bit off - even from the actual cover of that box.  The barrels were a light blue/grey, the wood was all painted dark brown with a minor drybrush and some of the crates were a weird bright orange/red.

 

Regardless, the casts are nice, the details are plenty good for 15mm, and I wasn't hating the price (around $18).  An hour spent re-painting the wood and rocks and barrels...and crates...basically the whole thing and I'm happy.

 

One minor gripe - they're almost laser-perfect fit for FoW bases, meaning you may scrape the paint off the edge of your bases.  A spare 1mm would have been nice (the smaller two have some gaps/room and don't suffer from this).  Overall, and easy 4/5 product!

 

 

The Soviet Storm arises...

Some more progress on my Soviet force for Battlegroup (starting with Kursk).

Where did he go? He went to Moscow.

I know the blog has been borderline nonexistent this past month or two.  I'm just doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes which doesn't translate into actual hobby stuff.

Still working on the latest revision of the dungeon crawl decks, and been designing tokens for WW2 Battlegroup.

To that effect I've actually been working on something new; a 15mm Soviet army for Battlegroup.

I rarely show off stuff in progress, but this has been my last couple of weeks slowly accruing the materials to do 15mm.

 First stands of FoW "Storm Group" Soviet miniatures - painting 16 at a time on a couple of sticks of sintra.

 The FoW "Storm Group" box has some little 50mm mortars, some AT rifles, etc.

Overall I am finding painting 15mm to a "reasonable" standard quite fun and relaxing compared to 28mm stuff.

The Plastic Soldier Company crew for their 45mm guns are pretty boring/flat/poor by comparison, but at this scale they work fine.

While I'm not running hordes of vehicles yet, I opted for the occasionally simple Zvezda kits for my initial vehicles.

Before priming my bases, I used a drop of wood glue inside each place, allowing for easy removal afterward - saves time over carefully scraping off paint to allow miniatures to glue nicely to the base.

After priming, the tabs of wood glue pop out quite easily.

Tada!  Bases with clean plastic for gluing.

Using Vallejo "Dark Earth" gel paste for the basing material, quite handy, quick, and thus far looks good.

The vehicles painted up nicely and easily...if not beautiful, at least functional at the tabletop level.

The Zvezda kits were great...with the exception of the BA-10, which was a fucking nightmare and I cannot recommend it.  Whoever thought 25 pieces was appropriate for an inch-long tiny armored car...should be shot.  In addition to being fiddly and easily broken, they show large gaps I wasn't able to fix.

The infantry were dispatched quite easily and quite quickly.  Playing Soviets I know I have...a lot more of these in my future, but it's not awful painting them, so I'm confident it'll be doable.

A mix of support units from the "Storm Group", and the PSC "45mm" gun pack.  I've got a 50mm mortar, two AT rifles, two Maxim machine gun teams, two 45mm "long" AT guns, and two 76.2mm infantry guns.  I have more crew/AT rifles/mortars ...but don't need them just yet and I have no spare bases to mount them on.

Using spare crew I made up two "loader teams" for optional use in Battlegroup.

My initial batch of Soviet models - waiting on static grass and some tufts to "finish" the basing on the infantry and support weapons.  Very happy so far with the results - now to order/buy/build some actual terrain to fight over!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2020 Slow roll...

Been distracted lately with a lot of working going into some retro 2nd edition support files for Warhammer, and a lot more role-playing remotely via Discord.

However, still putting the occasional paint to some miniatures.  This time it's a sorceress....siren(?) and a metal reproduction of the classic Hero Quest Chaos sorcerer.

Some NPCs and some crapboys.

Really not happy with these two cowboys I did recently (may strip and re-paint them), but some Reaper Bones Black NPCs and a halfling thief turned out okay.

In a real hobby slump as far as painting these minis lately...

Sounds in the deep...

No miniatures in the past few days, but an order from Dwarven Forge showed up and has been painted.

Gotta say...not overly enthused with this Dungeon of Doom stuff.  It's one of the later Kickstarters, and the quality on the pieces is pretty underwhelming.  Compared to the original KS stuff, the walls and corners have more bend/bowing in them.  The doors are chintzier, the basic floor tile is less detailed (and picks up paint worse).  A lot of these pieces are simply "trying too hard".  I can see some points of failure if used heavily.

Don't care for the recessed base (which is why they're bowing from what I can see).  The magnetic stuff is a waste of money but was included in the "Encounter" I purchased.

The floor pieces are extremely "okay", and were likewise bowed quite a bit, but I expect they might flatten if I simply stack stuff on them.

The walls, when lined up, leave much larger gaps than the original KS stuff.  Overall, I think they simply tried too hard to be clever, and I give this stuff a B- from a quality perspective.  Sadly it's much more expensive than the original KS material as well.  Not the best experience.

I also had to wash these with dish soap, which is the first time I've had to do that with any DF plastic stuff.  Paint was pooling and wouldn't hold until they were all brushed.  Another knock, but that could be simply the plastic mix, or an error.

Overall, it's nice to have more stuff to make a versatile dungeon, but it's probably the first time I've ever been rather disappointed with the end product.  I'll have to be more careful about what I buy going forward.

Some Dungeon World resources (warning: RPG content!)

Like everyone else, my tabletop gaming has been limited as of late.  As such I've been doing some role-playing over Discord, etc.

I've been really enjoying learning Dungeon World, and have assembled the following cheat sheets for my own use.  I've also included some excellent 3rd party character sheets which are less ink-heavy than the official ones.

Just some resources if you're new to Dungeon World like I am:

Dungeon World: Alphabetical Bestiary 1 of 3

Dungeon World: Alphabetical Bestiary 2 of 3 

Dungeon World: Alphabetical Bestiary 3 of 3 

Dungeon World: Quick Reference Sheet 1 of 2 

Dungeon World: Quick Reference Sheet 2 of 2 

Dungeon World: 3rd Party Character Sheets 

Hope someone gets some use out of these.  They're handy to have printed out, making it easier than thumbing through the book.  

A little role-playing diversion...maps!

Been doing some D&D lately and not loving it.  I have however been playing around a bit with Dungeon World which is far more my style.  Looking forward to doing more of it in the future.  It's also a good stand-in right now with current events - being easily played over Discord chats.

To that effect I've been screwing around with map-drawing lately.  It's something that has long appealed to me, so I finally picked up some proper pens and some decent paper.  Been enjoying drawing random fantasy maps.  Hopefully these'll come into play later in various role-playing games, or maybe the dungeon crawl game.

 First attempt at a proper map...made some errors, learning some stuff.

 The third map, based around a crazy coastline.

 My little dinner-desk covered in maps...

 The second map which may sneak its way into a role-playing session soon.

I've purposely left names off the last two maps I've done - going to see about scanning the maps and maybe digitally assigning names, so that the maps can be used by people without worrying about my names and decisions.