ACT GT Fashion On The Field

At the ACT GT this year I took some snaps of the armies on display. There were as usual a high level of painting on display with some players presenting very nicely turned out forces.

I have had these pictures for a while and have been slack in getting them up on the blog! Still, here they are in all their glory.

If you are interested in the event itself, you can find my report here.

DAK and Italian Tanks

Crusaders and Grants.

British Motor Rifles and Crusaders

Crusader Company ready for battle.

US post battle

Ken's DAK with Display Board

Robert's Brits

Yank Tank.

Every Armoured Car and a Tiger

All the Crusaders

Germans

US on display

Stephen's US forces.

Review: Battlefront 17/25 Pdr Pheasant (BR520)

17/25 Pdr firing in North Africa

This blister has been sitting in the lead mountain for an age. V4 and my desert Rats force was exactly the inspiration I needed to dig this out and put it together.

Blister contents

These are old metal models. I suspect they are at least 2 generations behind the current plastic version. The final generation before plastics typically included a command team. This blister didn’t. Given that I am going to be using these guns for a v4 army, this is far from a problem. Another good clue to the age of the models is that it includes an assembly guide.

Assembly:

I typically lay out all the parts from blisters before cleaning and assembling. The 17/25 pdr blister is packed full of pieces. There should be 34 in total made up of the limber, gun, crew and bases. Mine was sadly missing a few. I was missing the 2 wheels for one of the guns and one of the limbers was missing a set of doors, a wheel and a yoke. For the list I was working on (see my Cancon post here) I needed only 3 guns. I would only need one of these 2 metal guns to go with the pair of the new plastic ones I already had.

Whilst I worked on this one complete gun, I sent off an email to Battlefront Customer Service. I got a quick response and a package arrived a short time later. Thankfully, the introduction of plastics, at least for popular items, should greatly reduce the blisters in circulation and therefore the chance of blisters missing pieces.

I made the decision to just paint up 3 crew for each gun (there are 5 in the pack) and leave the limber off. Whilst the limber looks terrific and the extra crew would be nice, it was all a little busy. In addition, given the size of the gun barrel and the length of the gun carriage, I would need to place the gun right at the front of the base. This leads to issues with storage and transport. I.E bent barrel syndrome.

Included instructions

I went ahead and glued the gun, carriage and turntable together. If you have glued a metal Battlefront gun together before, you won’t have an issue with this one. The gun fits to the carriage and the shield is glued to the front. I then attached the wheels. These old metal kits are the basis of many of my armies but really are yesterday’s technology. The models need a little clean-up from the casting process and the fitting points for the gun shield, wheels and gun barrel all needed trimming, drilling out or filing. That said, we are talking minutes and not hours.

The crew are the typical high quality and dynamic casts we can expect from Battlefront metals. Yes, there are mould lines to clean up but they are otherwise well cast, have a real depth of detail and well represent their function. Each gun came with 5 different crew figures – all of them good.

I glued the crew to the base along with the gun ready for painting.

Painting:

Not much to say here. I followed the same process on the gun and crew that I did on some of my earlier units. You can find the method and colours I used on my earlier review here.

When I painted up my earlier models, I didn’t add any flock or tufts. At that time, I was still unpacking my modelling stuff and hadn’t yet found all my hobby boxes. Now that I have, I used some standard tufts in 3 different colours along with some straw/sand coloured flock. Contrary to popular opinion, there is vegetation in the desert and some of it is even green.

Summary:

These old blisters are still out there. There are still lots of them in lead mountains and retail outlets the world over. Yes, some popular models (UK 6 pdr, 25 pdr, USA 105mm, 37mm, German Pak 40 Pak 38 etc) are being replaced with plastic, but not every gun will be. They still serve a purpose, are well made and look good on the table.

In my instance, I managed to pick up a blister with some missing parts but BF customer service are terrific at organising replacements. What I did get was free of imperfections, goes together well and best of all, paints up well.

Tournament Report: ACT GT - V4 MW

It seems that every competition in Australia at the moment is a GT, a Nationals, a Masters or a Championships of some kind. For my first visit to a FOW event in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) outside of Cancon, I was lucky enough to attend the inaugural ACT GT.

I wanted to use my newly updated Desert Rats force. You will have seen that I have painted 10 Crusader Tanks, 4 6 Pound Anti-Tank Guns, some Bofors and (spoilers) a 17/25 pound gun. I wanted to use all these in the competition.

The weekend was a good opportunity to take the family down and spend a few days in Canberra being a tourist. We planned to visit the War Memorial, the Zoo and a few other attractions.

The event was held at the 3D6 store at Tuggeranong. The store is located in a small retail complex just off the main road in Tuggeranong. There is a large gaming area, a retail space and a bar! This was definitely a surprise.

The event itself was well publicized with both the store and Ken (the TO) spruiking the event.  21 players lined up for 5 games of 100 points MW V4 fun. Players could select any formation or formations from Fighting First, Desert Rats or Afrika Korps and include up to 10 points of cards. There were 10 German forces, 7 British Forces and 4 US lists.

The terrain was a mix of store tables and player supplied tables. The level of terrain overall was very high and the tables were well spread out with spare table space, all making for a very comfortable environment.

It was clear that the British lists dominated the weekend with 3 of the top 5 places being taken by the Desert Rats. The lists were different but they all had Crusaders with the Scout Tank card. I have said it before, I think this card is overpowered. I personally only ran 10 Crusaders but the lists at the top had full companies of Crusaders. For 1 point, the benefits provided to a whole force of hit on a 4+, skill check on a 4+ and GtG when moving and not shooting, far outweigh the reduction of tactical move of 2 inches. I believe the card should be either 1 point per unit or simply changed to be 10 points.

The event was well supported by 3D6 with generous prizes for the place getters and every player walked away with an objective marker. I think the store and the TO, Ken did a great job putting on an excellent weekend and tournament. Overall, I really enjoyed the event and hope there will be another event like it next year in a different location. Sadly the 3D6 store announced it was closing the doors shortly after the event. 

Here are the results from the event provided by Ken:

I hope you enjoyed this article.

V4 MW Event at Rebel Outpost

I took a drive up the coast to the Rebel Outpost in Wyong. I hadn’t been to the store before and it is located in an industrial estate just a few minutes from the center of Wyong. It was a good 90 minute drive from home but what is 3 hours in the car compared with the prospect of a day of toy soldiers?

The store was offering a FOW Version 4 MW 80 point competition where players could bring an additional 10 points of cards. There are a few events popping up with this format but this is the first one I have played in. Cancon 2018 will have the same format.

I arrived early and had time to wonder around the store which is pretty well stocked. There is a good selection of a variety of Table top games. FOW and Bolt Action appeared to be most represented.

The store is well laid out. On the bottom floor is the shop with a separate dedicated table area. There was lots of terrain and lots of space for card games. A side from the FOW tables set up for the day was also an X wing table with games going all day. There is a quite role-play type space upstairs too.

There were 4 nice tables setup for the event with a mix of desert and European tables. I played on three different tables, each well thought out with different challenges presented to players.

The store is offering a slow grow league so there were a few pieces of unpainted kit and proxied figures on the tables as players build up their forces. This event was a bit of an introduction tournament organised around players learning V4.  

I packed by Crusaders for the event as I am currently enjoying playing them.  I am busy painting up a US force but that is not ready yet. The 80/10 format is interesting. I would like to play some more games before I can be sure if I like it or not. 10 points of cards can provide some pretty big changes to a list. Aside from the characters that buff a big portion of the list, there are lots of re-roll cards and opportunity cards. Mostly though, I think Scout Tank is the card I am most worried about. It continues to provide well more than a single point of value. For a full company of Crusaders of Stuarts, I think this card would still be good value at 10 points.

The day ran really well with a nice mix of fun games and some good chatter. I will defiantly come back to future events at the store. I rounded off a fun day buy buying a box-set for a future project for myself as a Christmas present. I highly recommend Rebel Outpost for a visit. It is a friendly, well stocked, well organised store.

 I hope you enjoyed this article.