Dust Warfare: Silent Death

These Steel Guards models have always been some of my favorites. Mutilated veterans given a chance to fight again for the glory of their Motherland. Encased in the heaviest of armor and given the most powerful "infantry" weapons they would go and avenge themselves.  Some people like these models others don't.  I think they are awesome.  This is the Steel Guards sniper team and they are armed with man portable semi-automatic cannons.

Target sighted and annihilated.

Hope you enjoyed.  I did have a bit of trouble with the white balance on the last image, but I think it turned out okay.

Dust Warfare: KV-3 Heavy Walker

Here is the Soviet heavy walker KV-3.  Along with the Wotan it is one of my favorite units in the game, both visually and in use.  It's a hard hitting and survivable unit, and it looks good doing it.  As usual with the Dust kits they come pre-built.  However you will spend the time you would have been putting it together to fill, file, and clean all of the mould and seam lines.  Kinda a pain really.  A lot of it would be easier if you built it yourself. The primer that it comes pre-coated with usually works out well though.

Also, they don't include any decals other than some stenciled markings, which I paint over anyway... So, I got some Soviet markings and lettering/numbering from my favorite hobby shop Section 8.  Below you can see the version with the dual 152mm cannons because if one is good two will be better.

"Matrioshka"

I used AK washes and grimes for the weathering. Had to buy more of their white spirit since other thinners don't seem to cut it for the streak marks.

I kind of regret not putting a star on the front, as I had with the KV-47 Aero.

I did not add any extra stowage as I do with my German walkers.

Though this scheme is simpler than my German camo, it does involve color modulation.  So, it takes about as long as painting the camouflage.

Here is the other version, with dual heavy Gatling cannons.
"Babushka"

"For the Motherland!"
This picture also shows off the texture I added to the front portion of the hull.  I gave it a cast look with some Tamyia Mr. Surfacer. It's great stuff.

"Repaired April 1947"

Hope you enjoyed the view.  You may notice these pictures are a bit better quality than the earlier posts this year. This is because I finally got a daylight worklamp and added it to the photo setup.  This shows the colors much better with little to no retouching on Aviary. Before I had to tweak the contrast, saturation, and brightness to get a decent turnout. This had varying results. The new lamp is great, so expect much nicer photos going forward.

Just check out this reshot picture of the Panther from my last post and I think you can see the difference this light really makes. Brings out the truer colors and details much nicer.

KV47 AERO

A New Year, a new blog post.  I was pretty lax on updating this blog through the latter half of 2013. Furthermore, I was pretty lax in painting and hobby work.  I was spending my free time doing other things. I started playing some more video games, playing airsoft, and in the last month or two I started playing Magic The Gathering for the first time in a few years.  This year I am going to do my best to update this blog at least every two weeks and have something new to present in every blog post. With the new IG codex due to drop in the next few months I feel I will have plenty of motivation to finish working on my Guard army this year.

Anyway, a few months ago I went to Millennium Games for an X-Wing tournament and had decided beforehand that I wanted to start collecting an SSU army for Dust: Warfare.  When I got there I saw that all of the Dust stuff was on clearance since sales were not doing that great.  For me, this is sad since I love the miniatures and it's a pretty solid tabletop game.  However, it also meant that the models were 50% off...  I ended up winning the X-Wing tourney and spent my store credit on a KV47 Aero kit and a few squads of infantry.

I finished painting this model in I think November.  But with hunting season and other stuff going on I would get home and not feel like taking photos at all.  I have been sick the last few days and had some free time, so today I set up the camera and finally took some pictures.  I've been using Flickr to host the pictures for the blog since they allow up to 1TB of free storage and the in-site photo editor, Aviary, is rather nice indeed.

The KV47 Aero is transported in game by a helicopter, which was also included in the kit.  I did not yet paint it, but it will probably be the next Dust model I work on.  I painted all of the greens with my Badger Anthem airbrush using a Russian Green paint set made by Vallejo which I picked up at Section 8 Hobbies.  It includes 5 different shades of green which I used to do a lot of color modulation on the surfaces of this model. More after the break.

Not dead, but I am in Mordheim

My brother and I have not worked on much in a while, so tonight we got the balsa planks he ordered out and made up some terrain for Mordheim.  I made the stilt bridge in the middle and the barricades beneath it and he built all the crazy boardwalks.  We use these to connect terrain pieces while we place, usually buildings and usually only when we play Mordheim.  It just needs some wood stain and it's all done.


The week before Christmas is the last time I worked on anything.  I painted my Recon Grenadiers for my Dust: Warfare Axis army.  These are my first completely finished troops which include basing.  I also chose to cover up the large cross on their chests and just go with the one on the shoulder.  The groundwork really doesn't look so uniform in person, plus I got some assorted tufts in the mail which I put on some of them.  Really breaks them up more.

Here's a shot of the backs.  You can see the little bushes better.  I think they look cool, but they are a bit brittle so they may not be a featured when I base the rest.

To a new year, and to more consistent posting!

New table, new terrain! [Part 3]

Okay, so we've had these ruins for quite some time, so they are not technically "new" but they will seem like new when I get through with them! Step one is basing them all.  I think we have a total of 12 plastic buildings.  So this will be no small feat.  So we collected most of them here for viewing.

Next we had to cut up the hardboard which was purchased with the rest of the table supplies a while back.  My brother did not come with us today so I was forced to have Andy and Kevin help me maneuver the sheet over the table saw.  As a result, some of the edges are not the straightest possible though they will do fine for terrain.  Kevin also had a knack of pushing the material into the blade and pinching it, of course he would not admit to it.  The problem mysteriously vanished when Andy held the outside edge. Hmm...

Once I had the strips of a couple widths cut I could manage most of the further cutting on my own and measured and cut out the pieces for each building.

The next step was to take the buildings off of their old cardboard bases, clean them up a bit, make any repairs, add any extra details, or anything else that needed to be done.  So in letting Andy use my hobby knife he decided to use it to block a smack for some wise talk.  Absent mindedness is not a good thing when handling sharp objects.  There's a reason I used all the power tools.  So, I get a nice 1 in wide gash in my wrist.

After I tended to my wound I finished what I could on our chapel.  It needs a roof still, and the second layer shall be removable so that the interior can be accessed.  I will probably also make some pews and an altar and such for it.

The buildings got glued down to their new hardboard bases and that was pretty much all the work there was to do.  Of course we had the Stanley Cup game playing on the laptop, if you could call it a game...

So, we finished up with a game of Dust: Warfare.  150 pts Andy vs. I, Axis Vs. Axis.  We played corner deployment, secured area, and the one where you get to the enemy deployment.  In the end it was a draw.  We each killed one enemy unit of Battle Grenadiers with neither of us making the enemy's deployment with any units.  Mostly due to the lines of minefields we laid everywhere.  It was still fun, the fortifications were an interesting addition, and we caught a mistake or so more in how we have been playing.

Next time we're there I will be cleaning all of the buildings, as they are rather dusty.  I will also try to do most, if not all of the groundwork and flocking.  If I have time I will add any extra details and to the base coats of spraypaint.  We'll see.  I think painting all this terrain is going to take even more time than building the table.  I still have other terrain to finish, like the sentinel piece and a ruined land raider.  Some of the older pieces need a retouching as well and we still need more scatter terrain and barricades.  A lot of work to finish, so stay tuned!

Dust Warfare: Update

So, got two more games of Dust in last week.  One was 150pts against Andy's Axis.  We played an objective based game,  by the end I had a handful of troops left and held on of my objectives, the bridge.  My dice were not with me again and I could not do much harm, whereas Andy shot me all over the place.  We caught a lot of things we missed in our first game like blitzkrieg is only for move orders.  We used medics and engineers properly,  radios issuing orders out of control range and a few other minor things.  They sorta came out over the course of the game and we were both still sorta learning as we went.  Andy read up on the rules beforehand while I was working on the table.  The second game was also 150pts but we did a 1v1v1 game with Andy, Kevin, and I deploying on an edge each.  We played objectives again, but it saw that you can just kill everything and win in these smaller games.  Speaking of killing, it's something that my dice actually allowed this game. This game was really fun with units and walkers dying spectacularly left and right.  Turn 2 I believe it was, had my Ludwig maim Kevin's light walker then his other light blew up the Ludwig and my Battle Grenadiers reacted and blew up the light walker.  Meanwhile some of Kevin's Rangers grenaded Andy's Lothar to death.  This left my untouched Hans and Kevin's light walker with 1 hit left as the only two vehicles left.  In the end I had part of a command squad and some grenadiers holding the bridge and Andy had 2 partial squads left and finished me off.  I think he had 6-7 models left in the end and he won it.

All in all my original opinions of Dust remain.  Though the things we forgot are really important and really added to the game in a great way.  Reactions are great and really useful at times.  I can't wait to play again.

On the hobby side I got my three camo colors for my walkers.  There they are, flammable and everything.  I really like Tamyia for airbrushing, especially when using the Tamiya thinner.  You can really thin them down and they still cover extremely well.  I would say they are much better suited to the airbrush than regular painting where they sometimes pull off with additional brushstrokes.

Here we see the disassembled walkers have received their first coat, they look like they belong in a desert at this point, but I'm going for a camo scheme I really liked on some German tanks I've seen.

Next I added the brown to everything, I was really liking where it was going at this point and all was going well.

This continued as I finished with the dark green.  Here's a pic of the Ludwig.

And one of the Hans.

Still a lot of work to do on these two, but I had the time to use the airbrush and had to do so today.  They need all of the metal and details picked out, weathering and damage done, and finally some decals.  I may get those from the dust game website.  I have finished painting the Kommandotrupp as well as a squad of Laser Grenadiers, one of the Battle Grenadier squads is also base colored.  Just took a break from them to do the airbrushing.  Some pictures of them later on.

Thanks for stopping by.

Dust Warfare: The First Fight

The following is a recap of my first game of Dust Warfare.  It was my Axis against Kevin's Allies.  We played 150pts.

Our lists were as follows:
Axis Sturmgrenadiere Platoon

Command Section: Kommandotrupp
1st Section: Battle Grenadiers
2nd Section: Battle Grenadiers
3rd Section: Heavy Recon Grenadiers
4th Section: Laser Grenadiers
Support Section:  "Luther" Medium Panzer Walker

Allied Combat Platoon

Command Section: Ranger Command Squad "The Boss"
1st Section: Combat Rangers Squad "The Gunners"
2nd Section: Combat Rangers Squad "The Gunners"
3rd Section: Assault Rangers Squad "BBQ Squad"
4th Section: Heavy Ranger Tank Hunter Squad "Tank Busters"
Support Section: Medium Combat Walker M2-A"Mickey"

We decided to use the table to make our mission as opposed to using one of the pre-built missions.  If we're going to try out this game, we're going to try out everything.  Going through this process we came up with the deployment type "Close Engagement" with the objective "Eliminate the Enemy" and no special conditions. We deployed between 6 and 18 inches from our respective board edges and rolled to see who would go first.  I ended up with 2 hits and Kevin with 3.  So I started the game with 2 orders.  Here is our deployment.  Not having much idea how this was all going to work out, or how to play the army we both started with pretty much everything in cover and mostly out of range.

For my command phase I gave a Blitzkrieg order to the Battle grenadiers by the bunker and advanced them behind the laser grenadiers.  I have my command squad move up as well and they get a reaction token.  Not knowing too much since I did not have the rules to review I placed my command poorly and not all of my units fall within its influence.  Oh well.  Another he

I missed a picture here for Kevin's command phase.  He had three orders.  The first he uses to try and call a "Long Tom" Artillery strike against my command squad (because it contained my painted officer).  It missed.    
The last was used on the Mickey to take a shot at my Luther, he missed.

In my combat phase I advanced the Blitzkrieging Grenadiers to behind bunker I and shot my Panzerfausts and Panzershreck at the Mickey.  The Panzershreck scores a hit and does 2 damage!  Causing an external fire.  Next I move up the Heavy Recon Grenadiers towards the bottom of the screen.  They fire at the BBQ squad in the emplacement there and manage to kill 3 of the 5. I then move up the Laser Grenadiers and fire at the Ranger squad below the Mickey.  They manage to Kill 1.  The Luther Shoots at the Mickey but misses.  The second Grenadier Squad moves forward 3".

Kevin begins his turn by taking out some hardcore vengeance on my Grenadiers which shot his Mickey.  His command squad shoots at them and takes three of 'em out.  The Mickey puts out the fire.  The Ranger squad near it removes a suppression marker and shoots at the Laser Grenadiers with their UGLs and rifles, they fail to cause any kills.  The Tank Busters fly out to behind the wrecked scout car and blow up my Heavy Recon Grenadiers.   This leaves the remaining infantry with nothing to shoot at.

This initiative phase I roll 2 hits and Kevin 1.  He gets to go first.  He again attempts to Long Tom my HQ, this time he succeeds.  The strike takes out one of my Kommadotrupp.  It also hits against the Grenadiers near Bunker I and suppresses them.  I Blitzkrieg order the Panzershreck to take another shot at the Mickey, it misses.  I then order the Laser Grenadiers to shoot at the nearest Combat Rangers and manage to pick one more of them off.
The Combat Phase brings me more pain.  The Mickey begins shooting at my command squad killing another member.  His HQ finished off my Battle Grenadiers near bunker I as well.  I lose a Laser Grenadier to the Ranger Squad they just shot at.  Worst of all the Tank Buster roll up and destroy my Luther with a single salvo!

My combat phase is pretty uneventful as the tide has really gone against me now.  My Laser Grenadiers manage to pick off a single Ranger.

Turn 3 sees Kevin and I both roll 2 hits and so we reroll and I get a 1 to his 2.  I use my one order to have the Laser Grenadiers Blitzkrieg and shoot at the Rangers again.  They manage to pick off 2 more.  Kevin calls in a Long Tom strike on my Grenadiers near the Luther Wreck and kills 1.  His other order is used on the Mickey which continues to pummel my HQ. Leaving only my Radio guy alive.  The autumn cover of his helm blended in with the blood of his fallen comrades.  Really it's because the Mickey did not have LOS to him and you can't kill what you can't see.
The combat phase sees the Laser Grenadiers kill another Ranger, leaving one alive.  I move the remaining Battle Grenadier squad back into cover.  Kevin makes a general advance.  The lone Ranger is suppressed enough that he is forced to fall back.  The BBQers move up and smoke a Laser Grenadier and the Tank Busters enter close combat with my Battle Grenadiers.

 
Turn 4 and I am all "Game over man!"
The fight must go on until the last man has fallen though.  So we roll for initiative.  I roll no hits and Kevin gets 1.  My order is spent telling command that the Obereutnant is dead and the radio man is in command.  Kevin calls in the Long Toms on my Battle Grenadiers but it does no harm this time.

Combat phase sees kill a single Tank buster as I move out of combat and not much of anything else as I try and hold in cover and just survive a little longer.  Kevin takes the laser Grenadiers down to 1 man with the BBQ squad.

Turn 5 and Kevin rolls 1 to my none.  I Blitzkrieg my radio man to the back of Bunker II.  Kevin Long Toms the Grenadiers.  Combat phase sees me shoot my radio man at the Tank Busters and try to Laser a BBQer.  It also sees Kevin wipe the Axis forces from the table and sweep on to victory.

So, that's that.  I lost this game of "Dust Warfare"  but that's not to say I did not enjoy it.  It's rather fun and I enjoy it more than I did Warmachine.  Here's a list of some things I liked and did not like.

Pros:
-Can be played rather quickly at this point level if you are more familiar with the rules than we are.
-The hit system simplifies shooting and helps speed things up
-I like the phases and rolling for initiative each turn.
-The allied and axis special orders Long Tom and Blitz Krieg seem to be balanced. With the arty strike having great reach and firepower, but Blitzkrieg allowing you to really put a good unit to extra use at a key point in the game.
-Pretty cheap to get into.


Cons:
-Cover feels a bit wonky to me.
-There's no such thing as durability, things die pretty easy.
-Warfare should have unit cards.
-Moving only 3 inches in terrain is rough.

Overall I had a positive experience and we have ordered the started set for yet more models, expect a table update and another Dust Battle next week.  I did work on the table last Sunday, but it was mostly just spraying on a several coats of clearcoat to protect it during use.  Not very post worthy.  I also had to fix the water, but you can see that next time.  Also look for a post on some more painted Dust models!

Dust Warfare: First Impressions

All this talk of Dust: Warfare has got me interested.  So,  I decided to start it up.  I began by ordering an Axis medium Panzer Walker.  So,  I talked a couple friends into starting it with me and one of them started by ordering the rule book.  First impressions on the background, models, and the rules all seem rather positive on our end. I did decide to modify the base models somewhat considering the time saved on construction and priming.

So, once we read a little bit from the book I started getting a list together.  To start we chose to make 150 point armies.  Below you will see my first platoon which is of the Sturmgrenadiere variety, the jack of all trades for axis platoons.  All this was purchased for under $100 through amazon.  Nice!

First up we have the command section, the Kommandotrupp squad.  There's the officer, a radioman, machine-gunner, rifleman, and an engineer.  You can see the universal modification that I made, adding stocks to all of the StG 47 rifles.  I also lowered the angle at which the officer is holding his rifle.

Next up is the first of two Battle Grenadier squads.  They are the basic troops of the German forces.  Not much to modify on this first one.  Just the stocks and lowering the Panzershreck  on the guy second from the right so that he is looking over it.  I also made some leg swaps for better posing.

Here we have the second Battle Grenadier squad.  Made some more leg swaps and switched the Panzerfaust in the sergeant's hand for his StG 47.  On all of the troops who are shooting their rifles, I cut off the  fronts of their necks and glued them so that they appear to be looking down their rifle sights.  I then had to fill in the back of their necks with some greenstuff.

This squad is a Laser Grenadier squad, there was not much to do here so to break it up I changed up one of the guys.  The leader, in the center, used to have his left arm positioned on the laser rifle, similarly to the troops on either side.  So  I cut this arm and hand loose and made it so he, like all the other squad leaders, is pointing forward.

The last of the troops are Heavy Recon Grenadiers.  Pretty intimidating in their heavy armor.  This squad did not take too much either.  I had to strengthen the combat knives with super glue since the plastic is sorta soft.  I also re-positioned the guy on the right so he is not leaning so far forward.  He looked like he was slipping onto his face before if you ask me.

Lastly we have the Medium Panzer Walker.  First we have the Ludwig, which is armed with 2 8.8cm guns.  You can see the front piece of spaced armor, the gun-shield I added, and the antenna.

Here's a view of the side, where you can see some of the stowage, and the spaced armor covering the engine compartment.

Here is the rear, again showing the spaced armor as well as a rack of Jerry cans.

On this side I added some steps for climbing  into the vehicle.

Second we have the Lothar, which has a pair of rocket launchers.

Lastly there is the Luthor, armed with a claw and a Flak Cannon.  All three of them look pretty cool in my opinion, and I cannot wait to check them out in game.  The model had minimal flash and did not take too long to clean up.  Some of the parts did not have adequate glue and broke, so I had to re-glue them.

This picture shows a test of the camouflage pattern I was trying out for the infantry.  It's based on late war German camo patterns.  I decided I liked the way it looked, but I switched the base color from German Fieldgrey to Catachan Green.  I was originally going to paint them as Afrika Korps, but the models are wearing heavier clothes and gloves not really suited to North Africa.

Having decided to use this type of camo I decided to do a full test model using the officer.  His hat and trousers are German Fieldgrey from Vallejo, his armor is a dark green from Tamiya, and his camo smock is as shown above.

On his chest and left shoulder is the Balkenkreuz, a stylized version of the Iron Cross and symbol of the Wehrmacht.

His right shoulderpad displays his rank of Oberleutnant, or 1st Lieutenant.

I am very happy with my decision to start this game so far.  I like the models, they had little flash and very little cleaning.  The only dislike I had was the softness of the plastic.  It means that thin things like rifles and knives are easy to bend and most of them came warped.  You should go through and add thin bands of super glue to harden them and position them as they should be.  Other than that all that I really had to do was glue the torsos and the heads.  I chose to do more because of the time saved due to pre-assembly and in all it still took less time than if you would have had to clip sprues, clean flash, and glue everything together.      They're in 1/48 scale meaning there's a load of historical kits out there waiting to be used and converted or whatever.  I like the WW2 setting and I think that they did a good job in how they got rid of the Nazis.  Stuff has to be PC these days...

  Sunday night, I will be facing my friends Allies, or my other friend's Axis.  My brother is still undecided but we're trying to swing him to play the SSU.

Look for another table post Sunday or Monday if I get enough done, then a review of how I felt about finally playing Dust.