Bloody April

The month of April 1917 was known as Bloody April by the Royal Flying Corps. The RFC suffered particularly severe losses — about three times as many as the Imperial German Army Air Service  during the spring offensive in support of the ground assaults. 

This year at the club we decided to get out some of the 1/72nd planes I have been building and have a game using a set of rules I threw together for conventions, a sort of a play test before I run them out to the public in June.

We played 5 games in four hours (with two coffee and one lunch brake in between) we tuned up the game mechanics a little as we played, the game was on a six by five table with four players and was normally over in 15 minutes although one did last less than three minutes. The game basically has a card activation deck for initiative with three coloured cards each (hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs) and three jokers which allowed someone to step out of  initiative, 3 lengths of movement, stall, average and top speed, and five maneuver turns, sharp, drift, half, full and a  Immelmann loop. Interrupt fire was permitted at close range if someone flew past in their turn, and A D10 damage chart, with another D6 dice roll for engine and rigging. 

We had a good day out, the Germans however had the worse of it and this April ended up very bloody for them!  I was happy how the rules played, the key to convention rules is simplicity and speed so you can churn players through the game. A big thanks to Ryan, Boyd, Ian and Greg for helping me fine tune the game mechanics and to Greg for the pics!

cheers
Matt

Spearpoint

Painted these for our clubs latest painting competition "spear point"

I will be using them as markers I think for my late Romans and Foederati!

Battle of Asculum

At the March Club meeting Tarty and Ralph came down from Sydney for my Birthday and to run a intro 500 plus  point game of Impetus Romans under the command of Consul Publius Decius Mus Vs Pyrrhus of Epirus . The game was quite impressive and I watched for about two hours after I had completed my game. I was so impressed by the ruleset I will be basing my Late Romans, Sassanian and my Republicans to the the Impetus system and possibly a few more of my ancient and medieval armies, I am thinking of working the bases so I can continue to play WAB and Impetus, not sure yet!

cheers

Matt

Clones of Dirz

Andrew asked me to paint some Confrontation Dirz for him after Cancon, and I have finally got around to putting up some pictures, I am quite happy with how they turned out.

Clones of Dirz

Crossbowmen of Dirz

Crimson Servant of Dirz

Dirz musician

Keratis warriors

Tigers of dirz

Khauriks guard

cheers

matt

Club meeting Feb 2012

The Valiant Stormer's first club meet of the year was quite well attended with three games running, the two Chris's and two Dave's played  Might and Reason using Dave W very fine 7YW armies, Greg, Leigh, and Ian played a Pulp VBCW game and Boyd and myself ran out his recently completed Brunswicker's.

                                                             Might and Reason game

Very British Civil War

Napoleonic

cheers

Matt

The Franks are coming

Off the desk for the "Aftermath" competition on the clubs forum some foundry Franks, I will be using them for markers for games.

Pontic slave skirmishers

Digging though my lead pile the other night looking for some suitable figures for my entries into the "Wargaming Australis"  'Aftermath' a came across these figs which I started some time last year, so I dug them out, based them and painted on a simple cloth uniform, and added some mixed shields and javelins all in one night!

 I wanted them to depict the freed slaves from  any of the former roman cities when Mithridates freed the slaves who had killed their roman masters when he invaded Anatolia.

The figures are mixed Gripping Beast and a single Foundry.

cheers

Matt