The corner of the painter - ModelExpo 2019 painting competition

Last week end Aurelian, one of my club mates, participated to 2019 ModelExpo Turin. 

It is a local exhibition in which Aurelian participated to the painting competition winning a gold metal with the miniature below

Aurelian paints miniatures for commissions and ... as I told in other posts ... with Maurizio, Ivano and other my club mates is a very good painters ... for this reason I decided to insert in this post not only the miniature that granted him the victory but also some dark age miniatures he painted time ago for another club members. I hope that you find them a great work as I think

15th Panzer Division - Bolt Action/Rapid Fire - Sept 2019

This summer I started to paint some tanks to complete a Bolt Action Ww2 Italian desert army so … Why not to buy some new stuff to increase my DAK armoured division too?

During the Ww2 two German armoured divisions were involved in the African theatre: the 21th and the 15th Panzer division … I've decided to concentrate my attention on the 15th panzer division.

The first time I saw the original picture of the panzer III below … I found a kind of inspiration and thanks to Caesar Miniatures I tried to replicate it

I used to paint German tanks the “Vallejo Iraqi sand” because the sun lightened the hulls during the war. I have to point out that the colours of these vehicles was different based on their seniority and the different period in which they were used.

For example in this photo when the first tanks arrived at Bengasi in 1941 their colour is a pale grey-yellow …

… but in Tunisia the Americans had to fight against grey-green tanks

For this reason I asked to Maurizio to paint for me some vehicles with a grey-green base using his airbrush. In a second moment I add some weathering and damage effects.

The idea was to create a mix of tanks with different seniority to be more realistic 

The 15th panzer division took part in all major German operations in North Africa. It participated also to the successful German actions during the battle of Gazala and suffered severe loses at the second El Alamein battle.

When I’ve taken the photos below I imagined the division passes through a Lybian village executing one of Rommel’s order

I painted also some tank destroyers as the Marder in the photo landascape ...

... because I bought time ago this Kfz 15 horch that I painted at least three times before to decide to add it to Afrika Korps with an panzer AT artillery officer 

The 15th panzer division took part to the battle of Kesserine Pass and, after the retreat of the German and Italian forces in Tunisia, the remaining of this division surrended in May 1943 and it was not reestablished.

Bolt Action Vietnam – Jungles fights July 21, 2018

Last week end Antonio and Maurizio prepared a great scenario inspired to Vietnam fights.

In the last months they worked hard to prepare a version of Bolt Action that can work for this kind of setting, and, as it is possible to see below, their work had a good result.

Below a Bell AH-1 Cobra in preparation and…

… the same model finally in action during the game

but also the Viet player prepared his secret weapons

The mission they prepared was easy to better test the rules …  and now a short battle report

During a recon mission, some US troops found a significant concentration of Viet not very far from a little village

After the recon starts the real game

Viet forces were under the control of Antonio, Enrico and Eugenio while US troops were deployed by Maurizio and Giancarlo. All miniatures are 20mm and they are painted by Maurizio (USA) and Antonio (Vietcong).

Viet forces have to evacuate the village using the street at the bottom of the photo

The first Viet move is an escape and…

… the American players try to stop them with the armored forces

Unfortunately, the first platoon that leave the M132 is heavy attacked by the Viet veterans hide into the village

and also the American tank is hit and destroyed after some turns

Viet forces continue their advance

and Us units slow down them with the artillery

And with a suicide attack of M132

it is time for the Americans to show their military power

but the American losses are too high and they have to go back

To conclude a cameo prepared by Maurizio inspired by "Apocalypse now"

Double line October 2019 play test

After publishing their book on Castelfidardo battle Paolo, Alberto and my club mates continue with their play test to create a new rules set of ACW period.

The wargame wrote by Paolo is a collaborative wargame designed to let a group of person to play an Acw game at divisional level. 

Every General (or CiC), after reading the scenario objectives, must create a strategy with his Sub commanders and to give them his orders. For example … if the objective is to take the control of an hill … the Cic gives to the his subordinate the order to “reach and conquest the hill in 3 turns. Starting from 4^th turn you must wait other orders”. The problem is that the sub commander must execute the order even if he can see the other sub commanders are in trouble. The CiC can change the initial orders to his subordinates only during the battle and he cannot be sure that the new orders reach the Sub commander every times.

It is difficult to explain … easier to play … but the idea is to recreate the mess that during the American civil wars, General's orders sometimes created.

In the last year … my club mates painted a great number of miniatures to test the rules they wrote at the best