Introduction

April was an interesting month. On one end I played no games, and on the other I did 2 rulebook reviews and a video report of Ultracombat Normandy. That being said, this was a slow month for painting. However, I feel like the quality of my work is improving and I managed to challenge myself by tackling different paints and methods. I really wanted to focus on how I visualize this blog. For example, I will refer to time periods when it makes sense over game systems, then individually call out the game systems as they come up. Game systems will be in bold and projects will be in italics. This helps me continuing the narrative of a project through the months. I hope you enjoy this entry and that you check out some of the other articles I have been working on at Paint All the Minis and my own blog listed at the end of the article.

Status of Projects: This is where I come clean with projects I have declared and left by the wayside

Project Name - Commitment Declared - Commitment Completed - Next Step

Paint All The Lannisters - February - Yes - Release of Kings Guard - Paint Non-Lannisters

Undying Dynasties - February - No

Napoleonic French - February - Yes - Paint Artillery

Fighting (Free) France - February - Yes - None

Cold War, Hot French - March - No

33rd SS Charlemagne - March - No

After building this table I really feel better about my hobby life. Not nearly as a mess as I thought it would be, and actual goals have been accomplished this year!

World War Two

I fell into a fantastically 80% painted WW2 French Foreign Legion Army which I began the process of adding washers to the bottoms and collecting the necessary paints. This is my first foray into Vallejo Model Color paints and I got to say I’m quite impressed with the control that I have using a wet pallet with these paints compared to my tried and true Games Workshop paints.

With no urgency behind my French Armies I decided to try my hand at some Warlord games Gebirgsjäger’s. Using the guide on the Warlord site Gebirgsjager Painting Guide

(Gebirgsjager Photo Squad)I was very pleased with the results and this rapidly escalated to a fully painted squad that will be used in future Ultracombat Normandy content! Here is a sneak peek:

Speaking about a lack of urgency (should be the title of this month’s blog) I fell into a very handy paint scheme breakdown for my 33rd Waffen SS Charlemagne

This of course spiraled into a test mini:

Which transformed into a five man squad:

I was really happy with how the camouflage turned out. I would be lying if I said I was confident that the orange brown would look good, but after it dried and even more after a wash it really toned down from the orange appearance in the bottle. These minis were very rewarding to paint, both scheme wise with the field grey pants adding variation to the autumn oak leaf camouflage and the detail that is in the sculpt of this mini. The goal with this force is to replicate the force described in the autobiography, The Captive Dreamer, and then move on to bulking out a late-war German force.

Napoleonic

As mentioned in the previous blog entry I prepared a Sharp Practice scenario to run at the San Antonio Game Expo. While the expo turned out to be ... not as good as we hoped. It did force me to finish my basic force for my Vistula Legion/ French Force and it gave me an excuse to solidify a scenario that I have been running in preparation for Millennium Convention in Austin, Texas next year. I was only able to run one game of this scenario but it was with a person who had never played Sharp Practice before and San Antonio’s favorite pusher of games, Pete.

A big thanks to Andrew for speed painting his lovely Prussian force to give my French a work out.

By all accounts the game went brilliantly. Rules were briefly described and explained on the go. Sharp Practice really lends itself to the “what do you want to do” “here’s how you do it” mentality of gaming which is easily learned in a game with GM. On original runs of the scenario I was allowing the scavenging player to search on the leader’s activation. This time I forced the scavenger to use one flag at the tiffin to search a building that is occupied. This completely stops the French player for using 4 cards to activate twice and really drives home the narrative of the game. The French are not there to be decisively engaged. Get what you need and go. While the Prussian player can just push as far forward as possible to restrict the French’s freedom of maneuver. While at first I thought the dice roll at the end of the game was silly to determine the winner, I’m now all in. This is fun game. Not overly competitive and creates a grand dramatic moment to end the game which is something both players remember. I personally love the friendly games that end with the comments of “if I only got this objective” or “If I only took a down order”.*

*Famous AAR Comment made by every Bolt Action player ever who didn’t take a Down order under fire.

The Ninth Age (T9A)

I have nothing but love for this game system, and statically it’s my most played game so far this year.Iit’s just getting put to the side right now for other games. I did manage to squeeze in an escalation league game in at 2k points with my Undying Dynasty. I committed a great sin and used an unpainted miniature, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. It was an excellent game, as always, and we all learned a valuable lesson about flying gargantuan creatures!

Spectre Operations

Where do I begin. I don’t even know. I’m super excited about this game I did a review for it that should be up on Paint All The Minis soon, then subsequently my blog. I really want to figure out the game and what I want to do with it before I go all in on a new project. I already have a Modern French Foreign Legion platoon for Modern Bolt Action and a box of Empress Russians. We will see where I go from there. However, I did paint the special edition operator miniature. I had a lot of fun trying the Desert Chocolate chip camouflage for the first time in a few years (I painted some Infinity the Game minis in that scheme). What is most promising about this is that I can paint 3-10 minis and be done with the project. So it can be a quick win when I need it, or a project I can pour a lot of energy to without derailing the rest of my projects.

Conclusion

Going forward I am going to put more energy against my Cold War, Hot French. I have all the minis, just gotta start plucking away. Speaking about plucking away, I need to get out my my Undying Dynasties funk. I have a Dread Colossal that needs painting but I am seriously considering using a GW Dragon Ogre mini since 1) I love that mini 2) it fits nicely into my magnetic case. I am also going to project some Spectre Operations progress once I set my heart on a project, this might all be to ambitious since May is a busy month and the weather is getting nicer!

At the conclusion of this entry I am sitting at 126 of 365 miniatures painted this year.

Thanks for reading and feel free to reach out to me at dwarner1911@gmail.com or any social media platform and check out previous articles at http://decisiveoperations.blog

Decisive Operations Hobby Blog April 2019