Category: Uncategorized

Imperial Guard Painted

D Challoner

It’s been far too long since I actually put some paint onto some figures, yes it was in the old house.  I’ve finally sat down and finished 11 Imperial Guardsmen (sorry Astra Militarium figures).  Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of them before putting them away.

There is a story about these Guardsmen however, back when I was stil at NKS GW came in and got the boys assembling some figures, well the boys left them and when I left so did the figures.  As they were assembled by 11 year old boys they are not particularly well thought out, a number have two left hands (one on the rifle and one doing something else) heads are not well thought out either.  Anyway I’ll get a photograph up soon.

I did challenge myself to paint 365 figures this year, well given the several months without painting I can’t see me making it.

State of Challenge:

  • Days down = 291
  • Figures complete = 97

Bolt Action Summer Offensive – Week 6

D Challoner

The final week of the Bolt Action Summer Offensive saw my fourth wargame of Bolt Action in 6 weeks.  This week I joined forces with Darryl’s son, my Commonwealth (Australian) forces combined with his American force to take on Darryl’s Japanese force.  Below is the result of the combat:

The stalwart Japanese defenders were looking in a lot of trouble early on, attacked as they were by a combined Australian/American task force. Following an underwhelming preparatory bombardment the weight of fire from two artillery observers and a forward air observer soon began to tell. However, the tides turned when the Australian artillery strayed onto their own main attacking forces, causing several casualties and more importantly reducing morale. Japanese reserves poured onto the board late on, and mauled the attacking Chindits especially badly. In the end there were insufficient Allied troops to take even one objective.

I even tried taking a Matilda Frog on this one (a flamethrower varient), but it got hit by the short artillery strike and left with too many pin markers to act in the rest of the battle.

A Matilda Frog tank of the ANZAC 1st Support Battalion, image from Tanks Encyclopedia.

And the next batch is done.

D Challoner

Got some more figures finished off this week, although it was too cold and too wet to varnish them.  One figure is varnished as I have a paint on gloss that I have used.  These have generally been a tidy up and finish off, mind you I have a lot of that having gone through a phase of starting to paint something then shiny syndrome moving me onto something else.  So the finished figures for this week:

Batch3A mixed bag this week.  Slimmer has been finished to join the Ghostbusters and is the gloss varnished figure.  We then have a Stryker in grey to match the rest of my Cygnar.  The next four are all for my Circle army for Hordes with a Woldwryd, two Mannikins and a Blackclad Wayfarer.  Another six figures down.

State of Challenge:

  • Days down = 17
  • Figures complete = 13

The next batch are sitting ready to go.

2014 in review

D Challoner

Well not a brilliant year really, not much posting is there.  I feel a challenge, although it should be achievable, so I’m going to try and post once a month at least.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 480 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 8 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Reading so far in 2013

D Challoner

Well not much gaming and not much reading until recently.  I’m not normally one to have more than one book on the go at a time, but recently I have.  Actually I blame Jonathan who when I bought the book I was reading in bed downstairs told me off as that was a bedroom book!

So what was I reading, A Memory of Light and Armed Action, two rather different books (well ok they were both about warfare) by two completely different authors.  Armed Action by James Newton, provided me with an insight to being a helicopter pilot during the invasion of Iraq, the guys flying those Navay Lynx helicopters with there fly-by-wire missiles were about as crazy as you get in modern warfare.  Although James Newton, still in the Royal Navy, always shows how brave the guys in the ground were, particular the men of the Queen’s Dragoon Guards in their light tanks fighting the Iraq tanks outside Basra.  He explains in detail his own contributions to the conflict and leave you in no doubt of the impact on him and the men he served.  If you haven’t picked it up yet then I would recommend it, if you are interested in warfare or wargaming.

So A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson – at last the Wheel of Time series reaches the Last Battle and the end of the series.  I wont spoil it for those of you who haven’t read it yet, but it was worth the wait.  The multiple heroes slowly come together for the various battles and the main fight is well worth reading through.  All it is really missing is a map of the area, although you are left with an excellent description of what is happening sometimes it gets too complex.  I was left at the end wanting to know more – what happened after the Last Battle, where did our heroes end up?  I guess a good series always leaves you wanting more.

Back to blogging

D Challoner

So back to writing my blog, it’s been a long time since I last updated this.  My last post was on May 5th 2012, well at least it was this year.  What has happened since I hear you ask, well it’s a long story, but the short of it is that some of the lads I was teaching at NKS found my twitter feed and then posted some silly comments on this blog – hence I made it private but then lost the desire to blog away.  Since then I have moved to a new school, and blocked this from posting to my twitter feed.

My four resolutions from the New Year were:

1) to keep a record of games played – failed due to stopping blogging.

2) Painting figures – well I’ve completed all the tanks for my 8th Army, so I’m moving forward on this one.

3) Loose weight – maybe.

4) Leave NKS – completed.

Games wise I’ve played more Flames of War with some wins and a few draws, many lost matches though.  We went to Legion and Broadsides with the Tomorrow’s War scenario that Paul wrote and we put together the armies for.

Other things of note, I’m writing this on the new Microsoft Surface RT, touch type keyboard, which is a little strange to type on, but not too bad.  I’m enjoying the surface at the moment, as is Jonathan (with the piano app one of his favourites).

Anyway more posts now that I’m back up and blogging.