Rackham’s AT-43

I’ve been watching the arrival of another pre-painted miniatures game: Rackham’s AT-43. The starter box for this game will contain 19 plastic prepainted miniatures. The factions (so far) appear to be human and an undead-machine looking race. As regular readers of the blog may know, I am a firm believer and prepainted miniatures have the potential to transform the hobby,

The key to any successful introduction of prepainted miniatures will be price. Rackham has listed in the price of this game at $80. I must admit $80 is high but one must consider that the box includes rules as well as miniatures. Given that the box contains roundabout 20 figures for $80 that means the figures will run $4 each. Is $4 each too much for prepainted figures? I guess that depends on what others charge for unpainted figures.

A Reaper D&D miniature costs $3.99

A Striking Scorpion from Games Workshop costs $5

A Judge Dredd from Wargames Foundry costs $5.25

So I guess $4 per miniature isn’t a lot to pay. Too bad the price of the box is likely to scare some people away.

6mm Success

I finished painting one of my Seven Years war Russian units composed of 6mm Baccus figures. I've decided to base them for 25mm Age of Reason so the figures are on 40mm frontage bases. Given that the Russian battalions of the period fought in four rank lines, I decided to base the figures in a three deep line. Overall I think the massed look is quite striking.



An interesting thing about 6mm figures is that from "wargame distance" which is the three feet from your eyes to the table the figures can look very good. As you look at the individual figures close up, however, all you see is a very poor paint job. For this reason I didn't take any extreme closeup pictures; but, I have decided to give you a mid range view of the figures:


In the end, this unit has 96 individual figures which is something like 1:10 scale for a battalion. I took me about the same time to paint these 96 figures as it would have to paint the twelve 25mm figures that normally occupy the Age of Reason bases. As for cost, the unit costs about half has much as the 25mm equivalent.

For my hobby I will be using 6mm figures for tactical (column, line, square) Seven Years War games and stick to 25mm figures for my grand-tactical Grande Armee Napoleonic games. I think as long as I stop looking at the Foundry Seven Years War ranges, I won't be tempted to return to God's one true scale.

Down on the Farm

I finished two buildings to use during games with my Russian army. These buildings are from Musket Miniatures and are some of the best for 15mm games.

I like the fact that the building roofs are removable and troops can be placed on the inside.

Most of their buildings come in an intact and demolished version and there are different architectures for Eastern and Western Europe. I bought a demolished Russian church along with these two and will be working on that soon.

I also stopped into my local hobby store and picked up Festung Europa: the new late war army book for Flames of War. I was curious how the late war affected my Russians and I was also interested in starting a US Paratrooper army. My Russian tank army will need two changes: first one is that the T-34/76’s will be replaced with T-34/85’s. The second change will be to replace my SU-152’s with ISU-152’s. In the end, I think I can make my Russians into a late war list by changing 9 models. Not bad!

The one thing about Festung Europa that is rather upsetting is that the book contains NO army lists for US paratroopers! These lists will be coming in a forthcoming supplement. Unfortuntely for Battlefront, my memory is good enough to remember a promise to release a single army book to cover the late war: "Our initial release for late war will be a 180 page full colour book covering every late-war list for every country as at January 1944." You can read the press release at this link to the Google cached version. Battlefront removed the article from their site; conspiracy theorists might say so they could cover their tracks.

So in the end Battlefront can manage to get US Paratroopers in their Afrika book and get Falshirmjagers into Festung Europa but now players will have to buy the "D-Day codex" to get a paratrooper list. To that I say: shame on you Battlefront! I thought you had moderated your Games Workshop like business practices with the single army books and free mini rulebook; but, I may have been wrong. It’s enough to make me say "to heck with it" and stay in the mid war period.

Three weeks till Fall-In

As of today, it is three weeks until Fall-In. I’m excited for any number of reasons: it’s a vacation and time away from work, it’s a wargaming convention which is awesome, it’s a chance to see Gettysburg again, and it’s been around 10 years since I last attended an HMGS East convention.

I’ve already pre-registered and I am signed up for a Seven Years War game and a Battle of the Boyne game. I would have liked to take part in the 25mm DBA tournament with my Perry Normans but I didn’t think they would survive the airplane trip if you know what I mean. I’ve already begun to plan the purchases. On my “must buy” list are the Trident 40mm Robin Hood figures. I also plan on picking up more Baccus 6mm SYW figures.

Speaking of painting 6mm SYW, it looks like my third attempt at painting 6mm figures has met my satisfaction. I don’t know if it is the uniform or if I just needed to take another run at it. Rules are still up in the air with Age of Reason on the short list. I’m going to be basing the figures on 40mmx20mm bases over the next couple of days and should have pictures shortly. The 40x20 basing remains compatible with 25mm Age of Reason and I suppose I could always write Seven Years Warmaster once I get familiar enough with the period.

AllAboutMiniatures Co-Host Dan (aka The Lieutenant) had been even more evil lately. Not only did he push me to try the 6mm SYW figures but he also got me a Baccus War of the Roses army for my birthday and I plan on basing them for 25mm DBA. I think there will be a lot of 6mm painting in the future.

Objective Achieved!

Well, it took me a couple of weeks, but my 600 pts of Germans is finally finished. As I said in my last post I was considering some revisions to the list. This was my problem. As I had originally designed my force I had nothing in it to deal with the SU-152's I knew John was working on. Not even the PZ-III's could hurt them, even when firing on the flank. This would make for a pretty dull game as my tiny force would be obliterated for no return. To make up for this, I reluctantly dropped the PZ-III's from my Order of Battle and replaced them with Priority Air Support (JU-87D's) and 1 section of 10.5 cm artillery. John already had Stukas for his air support, so I figured I would be different and got JU-88's instead. According to reading I had done they served as Dive Bombers as well as level bombers as the number of Stukas began to dwindle. Here then is my 600 pts of Germans. The miniatures are all Battlefront except the JU-88's which are from the Model Power postage stamp collection.



Yes, that's the whole thing! In the foreground we have the Company HQ. To the left is the Panzergrenadier Platoon and to the right is the Heavy Platoon (1 MG section). The whole lineup across the back is the Artillery Battery with all of its trucks, observers, and command elements. The miniatures were all block painted and then washed for shading with Kel's Magic Sauce. Personally, I really like this stuff. This was the first time I used it and was pleased to find that it was easier to use than the Minwax stain style "dip". For those of us whose painting skills are not the best, or who don't have or don't want to spend the time doing 3 or 4 steps of shading, this is a great way to improve the quality of your miniatures in very little time. Here is a closer view of the artillery.

For you armor fans, don't worry, I didn't forget about my Panzers. They will most likely make a comeback in my 1500 pt army. Here's a look at them.

The next step is to take my force to 1500 pts. I plan on finishing up the Panzergrenadiers next, then filling out the artillery to a full size battery. I'd also like to add a Tiger and some anti tank guns to the force for variety. Only time will tell where I go from here. I suspect it will have something to do with how my 600 pt force performs. I'm sure you will see something about that in this space soon.

Trying something a little new

Some time ago I wrote about my problems with 6mm figures. I’ve always liked the look of the units when finished but I feel so soiled after looking at the poor paint jobs that usually end up on the figures. Well Dan, being the evil man he is, planted the idea of doing Seven Years War in 6mm. So I figured, what the heck and I bought a Baccus 6mm Russian Army Pack.

I’ve gotten a pretty good start and I’m using a “staining” technique that I started using when I was building my Warmaster armies. With this technique you black prime the figure, drybrush it white and then block paint the colors with a slightly thinned paint. The black/white contrast will form a natural shade and highlight. So far the technique seems to be working. Time will tell if this third attempt at 6mm figures is a success. If it isn’t, I’m likely to swear off 6mm for ever more.

Before starting on the SYW figures, I finished the SU-152’s for my 600 point Soviet army.

I also finished the Tank Battalion HQ tank that represents my start on the 1,500 point army.

It’s going to be a prepainted hobby

Mongoose just released pictures of some prepainted figures for their upcoming ultra-modern/near future skirmish game. In addition, em-4 is planning on releasing prepainted ACW figures. I firmly believe that within three years we will have prepainted figures for all the major periods: Modern, WWII, ACW, Medieval, and Ancients (well, Early Imperial Romans any way).

Wargamers have been dabbling in prepainteds for a while. Many people bought the Micro Machines Star Wars toys for their space fighter battles and the Hasbro Titanium line is allowing me to do that again for both Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica. I also know many people who bought the common Star Wars Collectible Miniatures for their skirmish games. Even I picked up a lot of those figures (especially Stormtroopers and Rebel Troopers) to use in gaming; being older, however, I limited myself to miniatures from the original Trilogy. I finally decided that prepainteds were going to work when Heroscape came out with a set of Romans and you almost had enough different figures that a few packs could make a DBA army.

What effect this will have on the hobby remains to be seen. If the prepainted figure companies keep the scales the same as unpainted figures, then you are likely to have both types of players (the prepainter and the painter) playing games side by side. I can see scenarios where a painting miniatures moves toward something like what static display plastic modeling is today. A similar phenomenon exists in Model Railroading where you can buy ready made snap together track or you can stain your own ties and hand-lay your own rails with individual spikes.

Most likely, hand painted miniatures will be considered the ideal and people who like to paint still will; but, only because they like to paint not because they need to finish hundreds of figures to begin playing. We will have the best of both worlds when hand painted and prepainted army owners can play each other in their games.

Back on Track

The friendly mail man delivered my replacement track for the SU-152 today. The replacement took 3 weeks to arrive which isn’t too bad considering it came from New Zealand. The track almost didn’t make it, however, as the rigid track and paper envelope did not survive the automated postal equipment. The remains of the package came in a “body bag” of sorts. The track arrived just fine being the toughest thing in the parcel.

During the three week delay, I remained very productive in the painting department and had time to paint the CSO Troopers from Rezolution Shadow War

I also completed the last of my Klingon ships for Federation Commander Klingon Border. These are the models from the Border Box

Now that my track has arrived, I’m going to return to painting my Flames of War army.

A Slow and Steady Advance

Ok, it's been a while since I have updated the site on my progress on my 600 pt German force. I have been working on them slowly, one item at a time (paint all the jackets, then all the pants etc.). I am not a slow painter when it comes to the act itself, but I AM an infrequent painter. Nevertheless, I am almost done with the 600 pts I am starting with. I plan to finish them off over the weekend most likely. I am using Kel's Magic Sauce for my shading. This is the first time I have used it, and am anxious to see how well it works. I'll give a little review when I am done, and hopefully John will be able to get some pictures when we game on the 14th.

At this point the force consists of a Company HQ, a Panzergrenadier Platoon (2 squads), a Single section from a Machine Gun Platoon, and a platoon of 3 Panzer III J(early).

As I have been painting, and in light of some things I recalled and learned during our Flames of War game for the All About Miniatures podcast, I am considering revising my 600pts. Stay tuned for more developments......

The Thrill of Shopping and the Agony of Defeat

With my 1500 point army list and credit card in hand I went off to my friendly local gaming store (FLGS). This store carries a big selection of Flames of War and is usually well stocked. They also carry a nice selection of supporting items: JR and Musket Miniatures buildings, Miniature Building Authority, Vallejo paint, etc. So I start looking through the racks for my Heavy Mortar Company and…they had none! This was quite a disappointment to say they least.

Then, I was going to purchase one more T-34 tank to be my Battalion HQ. I wanted the Stalingrad turret variant since it would look different than the 5 tanks that come in the box. After looking through all the racks (again) all I found were the T-34’s I already had or the ChTz and up armored variants. Foiled again! Then I started thinking that the Mariya Oktyabrskaya "special character" tank would make a nice Battalion HQ. When I was playing GW games, I would often use special character models as non-special commanders. I figured, why not do the same here? In the end I left the store with Mariya and some Soviet Stowage. Can you ever have too much stowage?

Disappointed, I decided to drive further and go my next closest FLGS. This store doesn’t have the selection of the first; but, I really wanted the Heavy Mortars. Sadly, this store also did not have the Heavy Mortars. At this point, I didn’t want to leave empty handed so I bought the Afrika handbook. I think my final purchase for the army (the 8 light tanks and mortars) will be via mail order because of the discount and the selection.

Once I got home I started assembling the Mariya tank and I noticed that one of the dismounted crew members comes with a map. YES! I can do another vignette, this time the tank crew will be resting and figuring out why they are lost. I plan on painting the tank when the replacement track for the SU arrives. I will post pictures when it is finished.

The Road to 1500 Points

Well, I’ve spent a lot of time with my Ostfront book and have decided how I’m going to take my 600 point army to 1500 points. In working through this process, I had two parameters that I needed to work with: one was keeping in mind what was already painted; and, the other, was to keep in mind that I already owned two Strelkovy company boxes and a T-34 unit box. I didn’t relish the thought of painting yet another Strelkovy company so I had been leaning toward a Tank battalion using the painted infantry as tank riders.

There are two tank battalion options: the regular tank battalion and the mixed tank battalion. The biggest difference between the two is that the mixed tank battalion cannot have multiples of the same tank unit (so that rules out having two units of 5 T-34’s). In exchange, the mixed tank battalion has access to the heavy KV tanks. Another admittedly “gamey” advantage of the mixed tank battalion is that the Battalion HQ tank is taken from an existing tank unit and you don’t buy the HQ unit separately. Interestingly, it is cheaper in points to buy an extra tank for a unit (which is then turned into Battalion HQ) than to buy a Battalion HQ tank. While reading tactical advice online, it seemed that players who rely more on numbers fare better in their games. This means that a lot of light tanks would probably be better than 3 KV tanks.

In the end, here is the 1500 point army I have selected.

Battalion HQ	(taken from T-34 unit)
6x T-34 tanks	490 points
8x T-70/42 light tanks	230 points
Tank rider company with 3 platoons	320 points
Komissar	5 points
2x Maxim HMG	40 points
Heavy Mortar Company with 2 platoons	135 points
Forward Observer	30 points
2x SU-152	245 points
Total	1495 points

Having three platoons in my tank rider company means that I’ll have to paint up half of my second Strelkovy box and this is intentional! It will make finishing the entire box at a later date seem like I’m heading into the home stretch plus I could always buy 4x KV tanks as a substitute for the SU’s and light tanks at a later date.

So it’s off to the gaming store to do some shopping! If anyone sees problems with my list, please comment before I buy and paint too much of this army.