Saturday's presentation

Hello,

my gaming group plays on three locations, one of those is in a conference room in a suburban part of our capital city, Ljubljana. I like the location as the only WGS in Slovenia is in the center and I just hate parking there. Plus, to be honest, the store kinda puts me off. So, to keep the space (and maybe get a bigger one!)  we had to participate in local "meet the community" or something event. It was a picnic type of even where various associations and clubs represent themselves. It was also a good opportunity to make people aware of our hobby, new members are always a nice addition. We were representing Flames of war (my station :O) and Warhammer 40k and Fantasy, as those three systems are the most played. The club also plays Infinity more and more and few guys play Warmachine and Hordes. No love for Strange Aeons or zombies, but I'll work on that...especially SA, as zombie wargames require lots of models to be transported and I prefer doing it at home.

Apart from us, there was also a local voluntary fire brigade (we got limited professional fire brigades and every village and smaller city has its own voluntary one. As this part of the city used to be a village just some 30 years ago, it has retained its voluntary brigade). I didn't took my time to go and look around, but I saw pensioner's association, a rugby club (had no idea this is played here!), some random who-evers and even a police horse unit. They were just behind me and I got irritated by the way they treated their horses. They had two horses with them and both were in the trailer for the most of the day. I havent seen them outside once, but a mate of mine told be they were left out for few minutes. I understand there was a danger of horse doing harm to someone, but they might as well leave them in their base then...

So, back to us. 40k guys were playing the game, Fantasy had some miniatures displayed and we made two "dioramas". You can see pictures in the end of the topic. It was not supposed to be a game but youngsters got so annoying we made them play with some tanks so they could throw some dice. The public's opinion was quite pleasing (except for a mom asking "why can't the kids touch the miniatures"), it was nice to see people are interested in the hobby. The bad thing is, our target public doesn't go on such events. When I started playing FOW I was the youngest at 22. When they were on European Team Championship in Poland few months back, our 18 or 19 years old player was the youngest participant. And here the most interested public was 8-12 :D. We gave some leaflets away so maybe someone will find us!

For the tables, we used 2/3 of space we use in our normal games and we put just about everything on it, making a nice display pieces and that was about it. One half is supposed to be in North Africa, end of '42 where US forces got ambushed by soldati italiani. The second half was representing russian village and russian forces attacking the germans around '44.

The african terrain is all prepainted Battlefront's Battlefield-in-a-box sets. Russian terrain belongs to one of the guys. The church is from Battlefront, the resin log houses are from unknown source (but I can find out if anyone is interested), and so are the roads, bridges and I think rivers  as well. The forests are scratchbuild pannels with magnets, with pine trees on cents so you can take them off when tanks move trough. The fields are your ordinary doormats.

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

(Not much of) an update

Hello again guys!

I don't have much to show you regarding my zombie gaming, and I saw on other blogs people like too see something else now and then too, so today, I've took some pictures of my FOW stuff.

I've also decided, I will probably postpone purchase of ATZ trilogy, because it is simply too expensive at the moment (and Im reconsidering buying some matildas for FOW, as I don't have an Early war period army yet :P). Not knowing what to buy is eating me up, honestly, but I guess that is every gamer's problem.

So, firstly, here are some pictures of progress on my sculpts. It doesn't seem like much has changed, but believe me when I tell you, I've spent quite some time doing that.  Maybe I understood "a little blob of putty" wrong and Im putting up too little blobs, because I got this strange feeling nothing has changed! To fix that, I've sculpted some "clothes" on my first two minies, to make me feel better. And I won't do any armatures from sprue anymore, because they ain't good enough. And I should spend more time on measurments (I used my eye and "good judgment" for the lenght of the legs and torsos on those :D). I will finish them, because I've read sculptor should finish every miniature he starts, just to practice. And I agree with that 100%, so if I planned on making zeds and I will get some teenage zombies, thats what I'll have. As much as I want to sculpt SAS black kit entry team, I will probably buy some weapons with TAG order and try myself at sculpting some survivors first. Could have me done as a present to myself for a christmas, lol!

Here are the greens so far:

There you have them, all lined up:

 A close up on the first two. Keep in mind I got one leg on each one stage before the other.

And a close up on the rest, same progress with legs. Still not sure what to do with torsos. As you can see proportions are somewhat bad but well, got to make some mistakes if you want to learn from them, no?

Talking of mistakes, as you can see, I've based them on a foamcore. Dont do that. Water ruins it and its just bad. I had no cork plugs and cork I build my terrain from wasnt working the way I wanted.

As for FOW, currently I got US paras, US armoured recon and german pioneers. I haven't played much with the pioneers yet, but I really love the idea of them. Keep in mind im a lousy gamer, so I keep losing, but they're just sooo cool. As you will be able to see on the pictures, I am also not much of a painter, but I am proud of all the ideas I had, hah.

Here, I've set you some of most interesting pieces of my army.
In top row, we got pioneer supply wagon. its a horse drawn wagon and thats just nice. Next to it is company commander with his german sheppard and some dead adversaries around him. Next to him is captured KV-1e tank. You can see I left wheeles in green, dont know how realistic that is, but I wanted to make it look as if it was overpainted quickly so it could be used in battle as soon as possible.
In the bottom row I've set some of my pioneer teams. I love the models. They're moddeled as if they're assaulting in the ruins of Stalingrad. There is someting about german assault pioneers that attracts me. I admire them so much, I'm devoting my diploma to stromtroopers from WW1, if I may bragg a bit.
First stand is a flamethrower team hidden behind a wall that says something that should be (not a german speaker, that was translated for me :P) "Ivan, we're coming to get you!". Second stand is another flamethrower team, it is supposed to show flamethrower in use during an assault, so I've added a fallen soviet soldier which I modeled some flames on. The flames' colours provide a nice contrats to otherwise dark bases. My friend said they look too dark, like half-done. I made them that way to somewhat represent the grim reality of a city-fight. Almost every stand has some dead soviet laying around, as if the assault would be happening as we speak. Third stand has germans advancing with a soviet soldier rushing from corner just to get himself stopped dead. Fourth stand is just a HMG stand, nothing special here.

 A close up on a flamethrower team. Germans were painted with base colour and just washed. I am actually afraid of drybrushing them with some warmer colours as I don't want to ruin them.

 and a close up on the third stand. You can see on german throwing a grenade while other covers him and to the right, there is one with a hand grenade ready and covered by german soldier that just shot the soviet.

So, from the rubbles of once mighty city, here is an american patriotic jeep. That flag is one of my first greenstuffing attempt and if I'm correct my first free-hand attempt. Looks quite nicely...nothing like the mould line on the driver's helmet *blush*.

 Here are some american combat engineers. Yes, I've got engineers in every army I play. Not that they're over useful, but I just like the idea of the engineers. The jeep I've shown you on top actually belongs to them.  They're painted for Africa, as Im using my cavalry recon for North Afrika battles. I've made them so they make a semi-diorama when bases are put together.

And for the end, here is a picute of my paratroopers. They're my first FOW army and my first gaming army. They're based for Africa, as that  was what we were playing when I started, but I only use them for late-war games now. So, D-day and on. I've kept sandy bases so I can use them with rest of my american troops. If anyone is bothered by the bases, you could always imagine those are the 82nd' troops that missed D-day because they were busy on the beaches of Anzio.

I will probably have nothing nice to show you in wednesday, so you might prepare yourself for blabbering about miniatures I'd want to buy to represent this or that...or something.

Oh and I think I will still invest more money in zombies, to be honest...decision decisions :(