Asgard Aschaffenburg TableTopia 2019
Yesterday I visited the two day event of TableTopia by Asgard Aschaffenburg, a wargaming club from Northern Bavaria / Frankonia. The event is hosted in the youth centre of the Schweinheim district. The building has no parking lot of its own, but you can park you car along the street. And as you can see, the date of july 6th and 7th has gloriously sunny weather.
Bolt Action Campaign Fortress Budapest
With the campaign Fortress Budapest supplement Bolt Action opens up a new theatre of war on the southern area of the Eastern Front. And unlike some of the other campaign supplements, it wasn't already covered in one of the broader books.
Fortress Budapest covers the late war Budapest Offensive of the Soviet and Romanian armies against the Nazi German and Hungarian forces, between 1944 and 1945. So this extends the battles of the Eastern Front, including the "smaller" allied nations of the Axis and Allies. With 168 pages this campaign supplement shares the status of begin the thickest campaign supplement so far with Western Desert. Yet Warlord Games keeps the price at 19,99 GBP or 30 USD and offers as usual a exclusive miniature for customers who order directly at them, Major Edomar Tassonyi. And once again we have an updated cover, but this time the motiv stayed the same, was just updated to a more battle worn image of the same soldier.
Summer Teaser
The last Bolt Action campaign review that I published was Battle of France back in April, I'm currently still working on the Fortress Budapest book. It is massive and a part of the war, that I am not that familiar with, so it takes a bit more time of preparation. In the meantime the next supplement, Campaign D-Day: Overlord was released, along with a matching summer campaign.
And let me tell you, this book is massive. It is the thickest supplement so far and covers an incredible amount of content. The Western Desert was the biggest so far with 168 pages and just look at the difference.
CONflict Rhineland 2019
Today and tomorrow the CONflict Rheinland (Rhineland) will be held in Langenfeld near Leverkusen, between Cologne and Dusseldorf. As such it was a short and straight trip for me, 5 minutes to the Autobahn, 1 hour on it (just the A3, no changes...) and roughly 5 minutes to get from the exit to the venue.
The venue is the marksmen's club house St. Sebastianus Reusrath. Tickets are 5 EUR for a single day ticket and 8 EUR for both. Parking is free and available plenty right in front of the venue. As a club house, it has a bar counter, where drinks and snacks are available and as a marksmen's club house, it has a small shooting range, that was repurposed as an additional gaming area.
Modern Combat – Modern Tanks M1A2 Abrams
As I had quite a good impression of the Tamiya kits in the past, and the 1:48 scale vehicles fit well with larger 28-32mm models, I added to the 1:48 Tamiya HUMVEEs and Black Scorpion's Last Patrol a M1A2 Abrams.
The kit is usually priced around 26-30 EUR and casted in sand yellow plastic. The kit is spread across multiple sprues, giving Tamiya the opportunity to use them in different sets / variants. In addition to the decal sheet, there is an a lead bar to up the weight of the tank.
Blood Red Skies – Battle for Britain
Warlord Games has expanded their popular World War 2 range of Bolt Action into the skies and the sea. I've done a lot of Bolt Action coverage already here and am keen to try out other scales and settings. I have talked about both systems and their potential position on the market, but today I want to take a look into the starter set of Blood Red Skies.
The boxed set is priced at 40 GBP and comes with english rules, but Warlord Games offers free PDF downloads of the rules in German and French. The rules themself, at least the Quick Starter Rules, are available as a free download as well. Presentation is very much like a board game, with a plastic tray to hold the gaming components and miniatures them self.
Warlord Games Sprue Sales
Warlord was running a sprue sale over the last few weeks, with multiple different items on strong discounts. Oddly enough, I just ordered 5 days before the sale started, so I had two orders on the run. And the second one overtook the first one. Well, stuff like that happens.
So what did I treat myself with? As I have a bit of cavalry to base and I ran out of my favorite cav bases, I bought quite a lot of the 25 by 50 mm rounded bases. 18 sprues in total so I am set for the next few projects, including the WotR/HYW mounted troops.
I’ve ordered at Warb … Dark Peak … forget it, I bought Footsore Miniatures
After a name and brand bickering, that I first thought was an April fools joke, Footsore Miniatures - who took over Musketeer Miniatures back in the day, came back to their name. With Gangs of Rome, they went with the name of Warbanner and recently Games Workshop got in touch with them, as Warbanner would be to similar to Warhammer, and therefore not be used in wargaming to promote miniatures. As that would be a fight nobody could win in the business, they complied and renamed themself to Dark Peak Games, just to receive another letter by Peak games, that that name was off limit. So they went back to Footsore.
As I said, I thought that this was an April fools joke, if you'd wrote this as a story line, readers would tell you that its absolutely ridicolous.
Footsore adds a special miniature to their orders, if you place an order of 20 GBP or more. That model changes every month or two and I put up an order last month.
Tanks for the Spanish Civil War
I am currently consolidating my projects, among them Bolt Action. The problem in that case aren't the vehicles, but the amount of miniatures you quickly end up with. Especially with the plastic kits (and then adding sprues from the sales), 30 something paratroopers, and 30 something grenadiers, and 30 something ... you get the picture.
For that reason I decided to go with Winter Germans for late war, Afrikakorps for mid / special theme and have the Spanish Civil War as a early war German list. The Spanish Civil War is often described as a prelude to World War 2. Communist fought against Nationalists, supported by larger powers like the Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and the Soviet Union, who were testing their gear for an (possible) upcoming greater war.
The russian armory supplied the republican faction with tanks, among them the T-26 in several variants. Rubicon offers the kit with 10 variants, for those built between 1931 until 1939. But why is that interesting for me, with my Nationalist forces? Equipment, vehicles and tanks were captured by both sides, and T-26s were not a rare sight within Nationalist armies. And I got a soft spot for captured vehicles.
Old MacDonald had a farm …
Scatter terrain is an important part of any table. Most will think about crates, barrels and similar line of sight blockers. But there is more, animals for example. There are a lot of companies covering different sets and individual animals, but Warlord Games is among the first to provide a plastic kit for them. At least in 28mm, I have heard of some using Pegasus Hobbies Farm animals, but those are 20mm / 1:72 scale).
So I'll show the contents of the Farmyard Animals kit, and the predecessor blisters of small farm animals and large farm animals.





























