“Fugit inreparabile tempus…”
In the past 3 months I have painted 76 20mm and 8 28mm figures, finished 2 1/72nd kits and read 34 books.
Good on the reading but not so high on the figures and ket side of things.
Here’s to the next three months.
Cheers,
Pete.
In Elhiem Figures (ultra)modern* Russian ranges there are some very nice packs labelled Pro- Russian Militia/ Russian SOF that are great for representing those forces doing the Kermlin’s work in areas as diverse as the Donbass in the Ukraine** or Syria or even using them for modern what if? games. The interesting thing from a painters perspective is that as the Russians (or their proxies) use such a wide range of camouflage patterns see here you have a lot of choice.
The first batch I painted in the ‘Paritsan’ pattern, oddly for a country that suffered so badly from the depradations of the Waffen SS in WW2, it is based the SS ‘Oak Leaf’ pattern but with a different palette of colours. A search of the web will show it being worn all over the place so these figures should be useful for militia in the Ukraine or Wagner PMCs in Syria.
The second batch have been painted in plain white and have appropriate winter basing to join my small, but growing, winter collection.
Cheers,
Pete.
* There seems to be a standardisation in table top wargaming to call anything post WW2 up to the turn of the millenium ‘moderns’ wheres as 2001 forwards is deemed ‘ultra- moderns’ both are a bit clumsy imo but it is what most people know so it is what I go with.
** It is with interest that I’ve spotted an upcoming Osprey book on the subject by Mark Galeotti.
I’m still on my Sci- Fi/ Cyberpunk nostalgia trip at the moment (current TV series is ‘The Expanse’ and I’ve got David Drake’s ‘Hammer’s Slammers’ on my bedside table) so I thought I get these figure from Bad Squiddo clicky painted up from the kickstarter last year.
They are great sculpts, loads of detail and I’m sure I’ll work them into a game at some point soon. Bad Squiddo do some great figures I’m definately going to add more to my collection soon.
Cheers,
Pete.
Evan was kind enough to gift me this Airfix ruin a good few years back… it had been sat in my shed for ages with me looking at it thinking I should reaaly gt round to doing something with it.
I was a little put off by the very square looking blast hole but it is a lot less pronounced now it is painted.
Detail was added with filler, cat litter and match sticks.
I decided that the lower levels were too small for my fat fingers so filled them with rubble.
Painting was done with acrylics as usual.
It will be a nice addition to my NW Europe terrain set up.
Cheers,
Pete.
Given I referenced Come and See in my last film review it makes sense to make it the subject of this next one.
When I heard that this film was the late J. G. Ballard’s favourite war film I knew I had to see it. Ballard has long been my favourite author and I knew that his recommendation would mean that this film would be something special… I wasn’t disappointed, but I wasn’t expecting such a powerful visceral gut- punch reaction to a film like the one I got from Come and See….
The film opens with a young Byelorussian boy recovering a rifle from the site of an earlier battle, so he can take it to join the local Partisans who have a base in the forest. Leaving against his parents’ wishes he makes contact with the Partisans and their solemn but charismatic leader.
His age prevents them from taking him seriously as a fighter and much to his evident disappointment they decline to take him with them when they go on their next mission. As he is left alone in the camp he makes friends with a girl, also left behind, who is a few years older than him. They play in the forest, children having space within a respite from the horrors of the war to act as children.
This is cut short by the bombing of the camp by the Germans. With several near misses the boy is left disorientated and with a permanent ringing in his ears that renders the audio slightly garbled as the film is told from his perspective.
Making his way back to his village he arrives just as an SS unit is conducting a reprisal/ massacre of the village. For the next half hour or so the boy wanders through the scenes of near unimaginable horror as the SS men go about the atrocities that so characterised their behaviour throughout the war. Given that very little dialogue is said directly to camera and so no subtitles are present, and the audio is still distorted as a result of the effect of the bombing on the boy the part of the film has a hideous, near surreal tableaux that is more horrific than anything Bosch has come up with for the events and action perpetrated by the SS men and their locally raised auxiliaries are wholly representative of the reality of the time.
The senior SS Officer during the massacre is shown with a pet monkey, this is a very clear nod towards the SS men being from the infamous Dirlewanger Brigade led by Oskar Dirlewanger; it is with out hyperbole that he can be described as once of the nastiest and most abhorrent men in WW2. biography book link
The Partisans do return and ambush the SS men as they are leaving the destroyed village and take the boy with them, the boy is forever scarred and broken by what he has seen happen to himself, the young girl and the whole village. Finding a portrait of Hitler, the young boy shoots in repeatedly, the film at this point showing a montage of photos of Hitler’s life in reverse ending with him as a baby…
… the film concludes with the young boy, hardened and no doubt embittered as a fully-fledged Partisan.
Come and See is a difficult watch, it is hard to say you ‘enjoy’ the film in the same way you’d enjoy a normal film, but such is its power and vision you can’t help but engage with it on a deeper level. Well shot it draws you in to those terrible days and makes you confront the reality of it. A reality that is today being lost by it fading from living memory as people die, anodyne history books that fail to do justice to their subject matter and worst of all those deniers who try to say it never happened. It really deserves a wide audience in my opinion.
Cheers,
Pete.
The final game of the Necromunda campaign promised to be something special and upon walking into the club the first thing I noticed was the massive ‘L’ shaped table Mark had put together, the height discrepancy being bridged with stairs and walkways.
The impressive table as viewed from where I deployed.
The Genestealer reveals itself and the game begins.
Marcus’ scenario to finish off the campaign was that all of the gangs in our section of the hive had put their recent differences aside and joined up to clear out the Underhive of the Genestealer menace once and for all.
The gangers of Tech Noir take the high ground as usual.
Pipes make for a nice bit of cover on my right flank.
Four of us started the game: me with Van Saar, Niall with a different set of Genestealer Cultists, James with Venators and Mark with Escher, J (Goliath and Joe (Venators) would be arriving later so were coming on as reinforcements, in scenario terms they were fighting in the tunnels to prevent the Genestestealers infiltrating in.
A sump monster goes for one of the Venators…
… whilst a second goes after my Rogue Doc.
Once our gangers were spread out across the huge table the game began with a purestrain Genestealer appearing at a random location and beginning the assault, fortunately this was by Mark’s Escher at the opposite end of the table to me. Unfortunately, every other ganger on the table had to take a shot towards the scream uttered by the unfortunate victim of the surprise attack. This meant there was a risk of gangs firing on other gangs, thus breaking the truce and even friendly fire between the gangs as your own team mates get in the line of shot. This happened to both Mark and I. Shooting, and then taking your own ganger out of the game straight away on turn 1 was an inauspicious start for me and really set the tone for my game.
A Rad Cannon armed Champion looks towards where all the nasty shouting is coming from.
The sump monster moves on more Venators.
I started fighting with James and Niall straight away as our deployment areas overlapped in the first turn, by turn two however J and Joe were ready to enter the game. Their deployment was to be randomised to one of 8 tunnel entrances, J arrived right in the middle of Niall and Mark as well as by a sump monster and suffered accordingly.
Joe’s Venator gang- a very well appointed gang it has be said as he was never short of money all campaign – appears right in front of me.
Joe, who has to be fair been my Nemesis throughout the campaign – I have fought him more than anyone else- appeared right by me. He did have the disadvantage of having all him men set up bunched together with several of my gangers in position to shoot down on them. However, my gangers were already involved in a 3-way fight with Niall, James and the NPC Genestealers and weren’t in great positions for mutual support.
J and Joe consider their next moves.
Somewhere down their Eschers are battling Genestealers….
Still a nice group of Joe’s Bounty Hunters made and excellent target for my Rad Cannons, so I tried to pour shots in, more than a few grenades were thrown too. Joe’s tough gangers stood up to it well, even though he suffered many flesh wounds, and he fighters shot back at me with a vengeance. At this point we were pretty much ignoring what was happening in the rest of the game as we just wanted to settle the score in this, our last chance.
Half Horn moves on my Rad Cannon.
My leader is tempoarily inconvenieced by a flamer.
A two way combat becomes a three way…
Servitors with heavy stubbers and Ambots were a worry to me so I tried to take them out with a Plasma gun armed Champion whilst my Melta gun armed Leader tried to get into the fray. Whilst I was dealing with that the noted bounty hunter half- horn was heading up the gantries to take out my Rad Cannons. To make matters worse, Niall and James were still taking shots my way, I began to feel a little persecuted (even more so when one of the wandering sump monsters took out a juve…)
… which becomes a four way.
All of this made for a wonderfully chaotic bloody and memorable end to the campaign, I lost 9 of 16 starters having got the highest loss of this finale… the Genstealers although defeated rigged the hive with explosives, with us gangers being double crossed by the Lord so he got rid of Cultists and gangers together….
I’ve got to say thanks to all the guys, Mark, J, James and Niall for being great opponents and Marcus for running such a great campaign and all of them for making me so welcome. I can’t wait for the next one and I’ve lots I want to try out when I get another chance. One thing the campaign has done for me is rewarmed my love for 40k… something I didn’t think would happen….
Cheers,
Pete.
I thought I’d do a quick post as something of an update…. Especially as I’ve not posted in 3 weeks.
Long story short the black dog has been visiting… nothing I can’t deal with as I’m used to his company these days but it has knocked my productivity a bit.
As some of you may or may not know I’ve been trying to get my history PhD up and running, I (thought I) had funding in place (for Plan B) to start in January but due to an admin balls up it got pulled. I’ve been working on a Plan C recently and I can see a way forward now so things are looking up.
As such I’ve not done a ‘plans for 2019’ style post. I guess I’ll just continue on as I have been, there is no new projects I want to start and lots to do with what I have got on the go. So keep watching the space.
Thanks for reading so far on what is a rather self- indulgent post….
Cheers,
Pete.
