The long Overdue update post!

Hello Internet land,
Sorry once again for the delay in posting, in all honesty I've had a spike in back pain from the bike accident, which has affected me more than I had realised. Until the beginning of this week, when the physiotherapist gave me a new stretch which as taken all the pain away - this week I've really been feeling more like my old self again!

I've got half of the Gen-Con review finished, I hope to have the rest this weekend. I'm also off to Essen in two weeks, so will have more gaming goodness for you then.

Good news and bad news on the hobby front really, I've had to cancel my Warfare Reading ticket, as an important gliding exercise has been re-arranged to the Sunday - I'll have a chance to visit and report on the Saturday none the less.

However, I'm busy preparing for the Breakthrough Assault Mid-War Oner Dayer next Saturday!

Here's the list (Not looking forward to Easy Army going away, have been saving lists as PDF's like crazy!)

Its the Xmas Matilda list!

Remember this picture last Xmas?

Well, I've had to do something about the Pledge and the pile of un-built models (The pledge currently stands at -780 figures.... oops!).

Having read too many Commando comics about the desert war, I wanted to have a mid war Brit army, and fell in love with the stout Matilda.

Yup, they still print them. And they're still awesome/wizard!

I must admit that I'm rather rusty at FoW, so not holding much hope other than having a fun day playing - although the BTA one dayers seem to attract players of the same mindset. The lack of HE, and only one machine gun means I'm actually scared of Infantry companies! The 25 pounders might make up for this, however I really should take the Hurricane with bombs to deal with dug in infantry, but the Cannon equipped one is so much cooler! Still, those guns should give tigers something to worry about.
Some universal carriers to lift GtG, and an infantry platoon to sit on objectives and we're at 1650 rather quickly.

With some BF ones for CiC and the CS variants

The Zvesda Matilda is a great model for the price, you just need to be extra careful of the barrels - lucky the one I snapped I was able to replace with the CS barrel.

The rest of the list - although the Pegasus aren't included, as there is no bridge.... :-)

 The support platoons were all bought second hand from the Guildford Games Club (Cheers Rob!), but have been mostly painted in European colours, so a quick repaint is in order. I'm aiming to get these all done over the weekend, so no more last minute painting required. I'm torn with applying the (much debated) Canter pattern, or just sticking with a flat desert base colour, with airbrush weathering - which with the Doms Decals I have kicking around should actually pop ok by themselves.

I'll post updates on these soon.

The flying front is taking a little longer, as I've got some more exams to pass, I've already managed my first Solo on the Super Cub however:

While I prepare for the remaining exams, I was treated to a go at the controls of a £70 Million Golfstream biz-jet last weekend:

On approach...

Flying selfie!

Although I must admit, we didn't actually leave the ground!

It moves and everything!

We (my gliding squadron and I) were invited by an ex-squadron member to test out their latest kit, a £50 million flightsim - yes, its 'only' £20 million cheaper than the real aircraft, but you can do things that you can't in a real one, like control the weather, or spawn multiple conflicting aircraft at the push of a button, and the reduced running costs make these sims in high demand.

The instructors station - he's about to set the left engine on fire....

The motion is extremely realistic, and as you can see from the first post, the visuals are phenomenal, with great depth effect - you really don't feel like you're looking at a screen. Also, the sound is amazing - hearing hail hitting the roof of the cockpit really immerses you in the situation.
The sim runs at close to £5,000 an hour for the courses, and as a lot of commercial flying is about procedures, so they have special class rooms set up to teach you the systems:

Its not an inception machine, but a touchscreen computer for running checklists

One of the classrooms

A flightsim with no control stick - that stick on the left doesn't move, and is just a fancy mouse!

The air planes auto pilot is amazingly good, and the multiscreen displays can be set to display whatever information you request - the stick on the picture above is fixed, its just a fancy mouse that sits to the side of the cockpits. As nice as all the bells and whistles are, I still prefer my Piper Super Cub.

Back to the world of Hobby, and the Mars Attacks Boardgame has landed - It's a lot of fun, more on that soon!

Ack Ack Ack!

I also treated myself to a KR Case for my Wings of War/Glory airplanes, that thing swallowed models!

From this...

To this!

I'll review the carry bag I bought with it soon as well.

One last item, I've pledged on another kickstarter, but only because its something (in my eyes) truly special: SHARKTIPEDE

Hes. So. AWESOME

Really looking forward to this, going to proxy it into a 40k army, I've gone for the unpainted one of course.

Well, that's a super long blog for you, little and often from now on!

Glad to be back, thanks for reading!

Fez

Fez-man Needs you!

The new Fez!

Hello all,
one of the joys of planning and running events is overcoming the problems that are thrown at you - such as having your venue suddenly say they are refurbishing for two months, and can't guarantee that they will be finished before your event date. As such, I've put 'Flames of Fez' and 'Bolt Action Fez' back to December,

A full weekend of wargaming:

Saturday:
'Flames of Fez' - Kursk 1945

Event page here!

Is now on the 13th December 2014, and is a Flames of War mega tank battle - Have you ever wanted to field an entire T34 company? Or a full platoon of Jagdtigers? Then this is the event for you! With no points limit, and all the players on one board, it promises to be a great day, I hope to see you there - I'm looking forward to breaking out all the big cats (and some Maus as well!). With prizes for the longest range, highest number and underdog kills, its promising to be a great fun day.

Don't play Flames of War? Then come down and play on the spare Bolt Action boards, and make a weekend of it! The gaming hall will be open for all to come enjoy the atmosphere.

Only 5? I'll have the other two painted up for the event!

Sunday:
'Bolt Action Fez' - Kusk 1945

Event page here

Is now on the Sunday, 14th December 2014, and is a Bolt Action mega Tank Battle - With the release of the new 'Tank War' book, everyone has lots of tanks - why not bring them down for this mega battle? I'll have my entire company of Panthers, and Paul 'Tuffskull' Townsend will have a company of T34's, but this is just the start! Bring your tanks down and lets set a record for the largest number of 28m tanks in a single game. We've also got amazing prize support from Warlord Games, so it will be a great day!

Want to see these built and panted and blowing up T34's? I know I do!

Don't play Bolt Action? Come use the spare tables to play games of Flames of war!

Tickets are £10 for each main event, and £5 for open gaming - all proceeds are going to the Guildford Games Club.

What are you guys going to bring?

Fez

So much happening in so little time!

Hello again,
Looks like I owe you guys another apology, two months with no posts...

But what a two months! I've been taking physio to recover from the accident, although the repairs on the bike have taken forever.

I also attended the Breakthrough Assault one-dayer, and should have a AAR for that up shortly. Then I went to the craziest 4 days in gaming on the planet - Gen Con. I'm putting together the report for that as well.

Breakthrough Assaults one dayer-including levitating tables!

My 1780pt Bridge by Bridge list

Combine that with starting my pilots license proper, my dad turning 60 and I've not had a whole heap of time to blog.

My 'First Solo' Picture

Some where along the line I also became the owner of 23 Warlord Panthers, for my 'Bolt Action Fez' Game.

So... Many.... Tanks.....

That concludes the sneakpeeks of the posts to come, along with my 'road to Warfare 2014'!

Thanks for reading,

Fez

Road to BAOD - Pt.1

Hello again!

Time for some more Flames of War goodness - August 9th is the Breatkthrough Assault One Dayer or BOAD as I will now call it. I believe all the spaces are now gone, however more info can be found here:

http://www.breakthroughassault.co.uk/p/breakthrough-assault-one-day-tournament.html

It started off as an East Front late war 1650pt comp, using only Grey Wolf/Red Bear, and any approved 1944 east front PDFs. Great I thought, a chance to break out the Estonian SS again, with all their Fearless Trained Goodness. Or I could get the Armoured Train finished, or the Tigers/Hetzer list I wanted, or the Sturmtigers - there is a lot of good hobby waiting in the wings.

Then the event changed to 1780 Late War. Now I really was screwed! Too many great things to choose from. Then it hit me. I can use Remagen! Finally my Jagdtigers can get to Jag!

Bovingtons Jag. She's not small!

 Now, I already have 4 Jagtigers. Add the new Carius model, that makes five, so I started from there. Then I knew I would need some infantry to hold the flanks and such, and the Volkssturm 'Bloodbags' filled the spot nicely. Not counting towards reserves, and always having prepared positions, these guys will really help hold objectives and securing the flanks for the Jagds. Having a way of stopping them getting to the side armour easily, I need to stop aircraft - two Wirbelwinds would come in handy. That left enough points to add some template goodness of my own, in the form of 3 15cm Nebs.

Will take a better camera next time, but good reference for the mud guard mounts

512 Schwere Panzerjagerkompanie
		R.T
1 Jagdtiger			270
2 Jagdtger			535
	Plus carius		85
2 Jagdtiger			535
Volkssturm	4 sqd		105
Volkssturm	4 sqd		105
Wirbelwind	x2		75
3 15cm Nw41			70
				1780	total

Originally I had two 3-  squad strong Volkssturm, with no nebs and a sporadic Arado bomber. The issue here is that it drops me down to three platoons when working out reserves, which is painful. This way I can choose what platoon will help best when starting - the AA if they have AoP/Aircraft or tons of infantry, or the nebs to pin and smoke.

If I wanted to get the Arado back in, I can by moving the Jagdtigers into one platoon, and adding a 2ic:

512 Schwere Panzerjagerkompanie
		R.T
2 hq Jagdtiger			535
3 Jagdtger			805
	Plus carius		85
Volkssturm	3 Sqd		85
Volkssturm	3 Sqd		85
Wirbelwind	x2		75
Arado			110
				1780	total

5 Jagdtigers, one of which is Carius. Its either going to win big, or loose big. I'm betting its the latter, but at least it will be fun!

All I'm worried about is Battlefront getting the new release stock to stores in time for me to paint it before the tournament!

A crazy piece of engineering. The Jagdtiger is mad too.

Thanks for reading,

Fez

Three steps forward, and one step back!

Hello all, sorry again for the lack of Bloggage, although this time it really isn't my fault!

My poor Tiger!

Having been accident free for over three years on the bike, I guess I was due to suffer the poor training and lack of skill of other road users - Long story short, I stopped for traffic, and the woman behind me didn't quite manage the same. I'm ok, with nothing serious broken, and my back should be all right after some physio.

1250cc. All of it wasted in the UK!

While the Tiger is off getting fixed, I've been loaned a Bandit 1250, a nice bike but lacking the comfort and shielding of the Tiger, and makes riding fast all to easy - its not license friendly!

On the wargames front I've hit a bit of an impasse, as although the guys at the Guildford Games Club are enjoying the Infantry Aces, I've become stuck in a rut with regards to settling on a new project. I'm looking forward to the next Breakthrough Assault one day-er in Aug, along with the Art of War too, so I'll have more FoW goodness for you soon I'm sure. Keep swapping between US Paras, Jagdtigers, Normal Tigers and a load of other lists for Breakthrough.....

The day before my accident, I managed to convince the bank people to help me re-finance, along with a little extra to kickstart me towards acheiveing another life long goal of mine - My Private Pilots license! I've booked up my first trial flight with Cub Air out of Redhill, so I'll keep a track of my progress here as well. Don't worry, its still a hobby blog, but having a little extra content couldn't hurt.

Cub Air have few different aircraft to choose from, however the main one I'm interested is their namesake - the Piper SuperCub, G-BMKB, which is in a rather familiar paint scheme:

AoP Time! Will make sure I've read the new 'lessons from the front' for the latest AoP rules before flying....

Anywho, thanks for reading, more soon!

Fez

Update time! Liebster award, UK Games Expo, Roller-coasters, Castles, Airshows and Valhalla

Hello all,
Sorry once again for the delay in posts, its been a busy month with the UK Games Expo, then a uber holiday has left little time for hobby, let alone blogging.

Starting off, I'll be posting a separate report of the FoW Tournament at Expo next.

Before the Expo, I had the great surprise and pleasure to be nominated for the Liebster Award not once but twice before the weekend!

Dog of War was kind enough to be the first, I really enjoy his writing style, even if his latest post has started dangling new Saga Hobby Crack in front of my eyes...

http://reddogofwar.blogspot.co.nz/2014/05/private-liebster-reporting-for-duty.html

Crac des Chevaliers then popped his nomination on again, his blog is always inspires me to paint harder

http://cracdeschevaliers.blogspot.com/2014/05/liebster-award.html

For those who don't know, the Liebster award is a chain letter type award given to blogs, who then award other blogs and answer a set of questions (that changes as it progresses like Chinese whispers)

I'll put together my nominations in another post, but for now, here's my questions:

1. Why did you start blogging?
To give some direction to my hobby, and develop my creative writing skills. It also gives me motivation to finish my projects!

2. If you could change one thing about the wargaming hobby, what would it be?
To put people with real business sense in charge of the major hobby companies. While they are making better and better products, the decisions on the business side are often bewildering (looking at you G.W!)

3. What is best in life?
Hobby. Flying. Motorcycles.

4. Do you read Battle Reports and what makes them inviting to read?
Yes, and seeing people enjoy the hobby and share that with others.

5. Fame or fortune?
Fortune. To spend creating the greatest living history museum ever....

6. What miniatures are you most proud of having painted?
None yet. I've done some nice pieces, although it has been batch painting armies to get them finished for events rather than to look pretty. There are many techniques I want to apply before I think I can be proud with the results.

7. How do you deal with burnout?
I often just take a break and get on with another hobby. A day out on the airfield often fires my motivation 

8. Whats better; Gaming at home or at Cons?
Both. They are very different animals, some games work with people you don't know, others need you to know the people you're playing with.

9. Which Front do you prefer to game; East or West?

West I would have to say. I like Jagdtigers too much!

10. If you could only buy from one miniature company from now on, which one would it be?

Probably Battlefront. They seem to offer a wider and wider selection!

11. Could you limit your gaming and collecting to one period and one size? If so, what?

Nope!

That's the questions done!

I had the great fortune of attending the UK Games Expo at the Hilton Hotel in Birmingham last month, working on the trade Friday. I had planned to get work out of the way on the Friday, then play the Flames of War tournament on the Saturday, and head home for some rest on Sunday before it all starts again on the Monday. Well, that was the plan, until half the people I needed to see for work didn't turn up until Saturday, and the Expo was three times bigger than I expected....

The Expo is a great experience, the best parts of Games Workshops Games Days, Salute and conventions all rolled into one.

There are pictures, click here!

The entire hotel gets taken over by a horde of hobbists of varying interests for the weekend, from Star Wars storm troopers, to Darleks, Bronies, even a furry or two. Plus Games. With a capital G as there were so many. The trade halls were full to the ceiling with piles of games, and the playing halls were never empty. And I mean never. Even at 4:30 on the Sunday morning, people were playing games, having a great time. If you love games, then it is well worth a trip. All the people from the industry are there in one form or another, meaning my one day of work became three, with three games of flames of war stuck in the middle! Like I said, I'll write the games up in another post.

Giant Star Trek Attack Wing game!

Met these guys too at Expo. Great Card terrain, keep an eye out on KS for the Dungeon theme soon!

The Sci-Fi stuff is SWEET

Would love to play infinity on this stuff....

After the Expo, I had a week at work and then a week of adventures with the misses! We spent a day a Thorpe Park, then two at Alton Towers. Good way to keep up the G-tolerance while I'm not flying. Anyone who enjoys these kind of things I really recommend the 'smiler' at Alton Towers.

The cue is underneath the coaster - what an intense experience!

After all that fun going upside down, we headed over to see Roland at Stafford Games!

Gateway to Hobby Joy

 Its a shame I got carried away with buying the new GreyWolf and some Wirblewinds (for Reimagen) that I didn't take any more pictures. With a great stocked shop, and a large gaming area with lovely boards, I really wish I lived in Stafford!

On the way home, we swung by Warwick castle. By this time, our feet were rather sore so we saved the best of the castle for another day, although we did get to see the 18m Trebuchet firing, which was something else entirely.

HUGE!

So, to round off the weekend, Saturday was the festival of flight air show at Biggin Hill. Despite taking two hours to get in (and nearly three to get out) it was a great display of flying. Much smaller than the previous international offerings, the quality of the displays was no less impressive. Well worth a trip next year if you are local!

Sunday was the Farnborough games club annual wargames show, Valhalla. Again, no pictures as such, other than the impressive WW2 bombers game:

A nice show, worth a trip again.

And finally, what was awaiting me at my desk at work on the Monday. Brits for Bolt Action!

Stay tuned, our usual service will resume soon!

Thanks for reading,

Fez

Anarchy Airbrush lessons and SnM Stuff shop

Hello internets!
Sorry for the long break in posts, I've had a rather manic month, and hope to catch you all up with my adventures in due time.

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to get a space on a day long Airbrush course, run by Brian of Anarchy Models. The course is run in the back room of SnM stuff, my local 'hobby crack' merchant.

The first part of the day is all about the basics, involving dots and lines on paper - Airbrushing is a skill, that needs solid core techniques to build upon.

Lots of practice!

Brian is a great teacher, passing on his extensive hobby knowledge with humour and patience. Our group managed to progress quickly, so we moved on to how to use Anarchy Models stencils, then progressed to learning whatever techniques we asked for.

So many dots.....

Four bays, all well equipped

We also covered cleaning and caring for your airbrush, and selecting a set up that works for you.
I would seriously recommend the course to anyone who has or wants to start airbrushing.

Sean also offered a discount on hobby supplies bought on the day!
SnM stuff has all the paint you could ever want. Sean offers a professional friendly service that I would recommend to anyone.

Outside of the store

So much hobby!

Need paint?

PSC Hobby crack!

Comic store and Kebabs next door... winning!

On a random note, here is the new Greggs in Woking - looks more like a wine bar!

I mean, its a Greggs!

Thanks for reading!

Fez