Well here it is in all its unpainted, disassembled glory. My Flames of War army, and as I type this I wonder how, why, what? Hetero-lifemate Andy really fanned the flames (no pun intended) of enthusiasm when it came to getting me hooked. My biggest drawback was always claiming not to know anything about the historic setting of WWII, well, everyone's been there at one point. I just had to pick a point and start from there. I went with the 1977 classic, A Bridge Too Far. That single, awesome movie really put my army here on the map.
Sherman Fireflies
This post might be one of the more boring ones I've ever put together...in terms of pictures anyway. As you can tell, everything's still in the bags, sealed up. For gamers though, there's something about opening a ten pound of minis, and seeing it en masse.
Troops, troops, and more troops
So my unexpected love came out of nowhere in the form of armour. Misspelled on purpose! So for my foray here into 15mm historicals, I'm going to build the 3rd Battalion of the Irish Guards Armoured, led by none other than JOE Vandeleur, late war period Europe.
Sexton 25pdr Self-propelled Guns...x8 of them!
x4 m10c Achilles Tank Destroyers
Lots of armoured cars; Daimlers, Dingos, and Humbers
Scads of Sherman V's, x18 of them in all
A pack of Stuart Honeys and bonus goods!
Thanks to Skytrex Models, I was able to get a pack of decals specific to the Irish Guards 3rd Battalion. This is obviously going to be handy. Also, on the far right is a bonus pack of figs from Peter Pig that Bob gave me last game night. It's British officers and soldiers, literally standing around enjoying mugs of beverages. Tea time anyone? Perfect for markers when all those freshly painted tanks you've got end up being bogged down! Thanks Bob!
Click the graph to enlarge. I'm not the most computer literate, so I couldn't figure out how to convert an Excel file to a .jpg image for the life of me. I just ended up taking a screen capture pic and cropping it down. As you can (hopefully) the overall list is pushing almost 3,000 points! Thirty eight of the models have treads, and of those, a solid twenty seven of them are straight up tanks to boot. So I think I got the armour I was looking for!
Just paint a unit a week and you'll have a fieldable force in no time.
ReplyDeleteLooks like a nice little haul.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to seeing your progress. I have a horde of 15 MM stuff ... I'm talking about 3000 or 4000 bucks worth of the flames of war stuff. That was never assembled or played ... its in totes in the garage. Its a side of gaming that saddens me personally. The reason I don't have it assembled and painted ... well the gaming group never got into FOW. At that time we had some gamer tragedy with the four guys in our group who were really into FOW moving away all in a about a 3 month span ... so the few of us who were left shelved our FOW projects and returned to 40K. Here I am several years later in another state ... I could never bring myself to ebay off my horde of German, Russian and American 15 MM wonder. I now have a renewed hope for one day assembling, painting and playing ... a few people in the new gaming group are expressing some interest in 15 MM WWII!! I didn't even prompt it ... it just came out of the blue ... so ... with luck maybe 15 MM stuff will be a reality at some point. Anyway good luck man! I look forward to seeing your progress!
ReplyDeleteDip Man! Oh and FOW War Paint can speed things along nicely. Here's a nifty link...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=1718
You should be able to get some of that into a playable shape pretty quickly. The Sherman horde is pretty darned easy to paint up - no camo or anything like that to worry about. base color + tracks, shade of choice, pick out a few details like tools and MGs and you are done. Add the decals and hit the table.
ReplyDeleteAnd as incentive, you know my policy on FOW troops here - if you paint it, I'll write a scenario for it. So get crackin' before I turn into a pumpkin...
Agreed with bcantwell. You should be able to get the armour painted up quickly! This will make a GREAT starting army! I think Brit Armour is great and having just watched A Bridge Too Far myself, I am more than a little jealous at that mountain of lead :P
ReplyDeleteMy blog is 95% Flames of War stuff, feel free to have a looksee at how games tend to play out.
Dude, that is a lovely bunch of lead.
ReplyDelete-Eli
Thanks guys, and to Brian for the encouragement! Stay tuned for Sherman paintin' goodness. Now I need to find some 'grafitti' decals, and 15mm stowage and gear/netting and what-not...
ReplyDelete@indierockclimber: Yeah dude, you've got a great blog, I've been following it for a few weeks!
Since seeing the 15mm Extended Arnhem Bridge set from JR, my resolve to not get sucked into FoW is waning.
ReplyDeletejust an fwi - bols just posted a FoW starter article. have fun =)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.belloflostsouls.net/2010/05/fow-primer-starting-off-right.html
Shelexie, thanks for the tip! I don't follow those guys, so I had no idea they were dipping their toes in the FoW waters!
ReplyDelete@Flounder: Dude, it's here, it's no joke, and it's no flash in the pan. 15mm WWII is here to stay in our zip code. Not just the FoW rules either, Battle Front is another one. Make the plunge!
Flounder, come on, I've got US paras and Germans, Gyro with Brits, could definitely use more Germans! We'll have everything we need for Market Garden and plenty for Normandy and the breakout.
ReplyDeleteNot really interested in fielding Germans, but maybe some Brit airborne or airlanding troops would be cool.
ReplyDelete