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3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.

lilljonas posted:

The Lone Ranger is a costume drama about brotherly love during the tumultuous American Revolution. No but really, I think you would be surprised by how little most Europeans are taught about American history, especially pre-WW2. I'd be surprised in you could find a single Swedish higschool student at the average school who knows the difference between the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

I understand mixing the F&I/Seven Year's War with the AWI (especially since they're linked and in the same century), but the Civil War? Really?

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MasterSlowPoke
Oct 9, 2005

Our courage will pull us through
Not everyone cosplays the AWI like you do.

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.

MasterSlowPoke posted:

Not everyone cosplays the AWI like you do.

Which is why I said I'd understand conflating it with the SYW. Even Napoleonic warfare.

EDIT: Also it's not cosplay.

3 Action Economist fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Jan 5, 2010

FirstCongoWar
Aug 21, 2002

It feels so 80's or early 90's to be political.
uniplay

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

lilljonas posted:

The Lone Ranger is a costume drama about brotherly love during the tumultuous American Revolution. No but really, I think you would be surprised by how little most Europeans are taught about American history, especially pre-WW2. I'd be surprised in you could find a single Swedish higschool student at the average school who knows the difference between the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

more likely than finding an american highschool student at the average school who can name a single important event in swedish history

edit: or hell, who can tell you anything about european history pre-ww1

ElBrak
Aug 24, 2004

"Muerte, buen compinche. Muerte."

Lord Commissar posted:

Flames of War question:

FoW offers a battalion box of Udarny Strelkovy. I know those are basically a more elite infantry, but is there anything on them that would make them stand out? What I mean is, can I use them as regular ol' infantry?

Following that up, who else makes decent 15mm WWII models (specifically infantry) that I can get for less than FoW figs?

I bought this box for my Mid-War soviets and you can make a full 3 platoon company out of the rifle men in it if you go 4 to a base instead of the 5 four man bases/ 4 five man bases the books says to use.

Serotonin
Jul 14, 2001

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of *blank*
Nice Trafalgar write up lilljonas.

Our gaming group has the rules and we all have a fleet each (from Langton) but we are yet to bust them out and play it.
too many rules too little time. :(

Serotonin
Jul 14, 2001

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of *blank*

lilljonas posted:

The Lone Ranger is a costume drama about brotherly love during the tumultuous American Revolution. No but really, I think you would be surprised by how little most Europeans are taught about American history, especially pre-WW2. I'd be surprised in you could find a single Swedish higschool student at the average school who knows the difference between the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

Indeed. It always amuses me wheb trolls and tossers online start trying to rag on us Brits about the AWI as if people here still get upset by it. I wager as lilljonas says that 90% of the UK population couldnt even tell you when it happened, who fought and who won. I went to a good school (too many years ago to remeber) and it wasnt once talked about in my history classes. Nor was the American Civil War. Ive ony found out about what happened in those through wargaming and my only personal reading/study.

Actually thats a good point for discussion. Who needs fluff when you have history. Wargaming has taught me poo poo loads about world history. I also have a penchant for historical fiction (yeah I know most of its poo poo, but I still enjoy it) and often reading a piece of fiction gets me pumped up for a new army or rule set, which in turn gets me excited about reading non fiction to ind out what really happened.

No Pun Intended
Jul 23, 2007

DWARVEN SEX OFFENDER

ASK ME ABOUT TONING MY FINE ASS DWARVEN BOOTY BY RUNNING FROM THE COPS OUTSIDE THAT ELF KINDERGARTEN

BEHOLD THE DONG OF THE DWARVES! THE DWARVEN DONG IS COMING!
Today I played 2 games of flames of war vs fellow poster Trouble man. My 101st Airborne with armour support (D -1) vs his Panzer Company (Fortress Europe)

The first game was a free for all where I got tabled by his StuGs while most of my armour dicked around with the Tigers. My 75mm Howitzers were moderately successful and my air support was worse than late war Luftwaffe with some lovely Stukas (to my eternal shame).

Although in that game I had some atrocious dice as my opponent will attest, I did learn a few things.

1) M10s are paper tigers and really need to use their disengagement rules to be effective.

2) As Scary as Tigers look; they aren't game winning death machines and can be ignored

3) I hate StuGs


The second game was using the Hold the Line scenario with the same forces. My Airborne holed up in a village as the German armour rumbled down the hill. Starting with only a rifle platoon, company command and the artillery squad on the board. Nothing much happened in the first few turns as he rumbled forward. His artillery was soon suppressed by my air support and the tank shots whizzed harmlessly past my dug in infantry.

As the Germans neared my position my armour showed up but only provided a minor speed bump to his StuGs (see note 1 above).

It all culminated in the last turns as all the armour rumbled over my infantry in a final bloody assault. But luckily my infantry are adept and killing tanks and this left the 2 Tigers and the majority of the StuGs flaming wrecks.

This left me in control of the objectives and the victor in this battle.

I still hate StuGs.

No Pun Intended fucked around with this message at 11:08 on Jan 5, 2010

Nude Bog Lurker
Jan 2, 2007
Fun Shoe
Interestingly, each of us probably lost our respective games because of the same thing - indecisiveness. No Pun Intended's huge platoons of paratroopers were pretty well placed to just roll over my line in the first game, but he got spooked by a lucky barrage from some Nebelwerfers and a commendable early effort from the Luftwaffe, so by the time he actually put together an attack I'd managed to whittle down his platoons to a point where my StuGs could break through and take an objective (while the Tigers mucked around in the centre of the table doing nothing).

The second game, I tried an overly complex pincer strategy that just gave No Pun Intended's reserves time to show up. StuGs and Panzergrenadiers went round the flanks while I had an aneurysm and decided to "hold the centre" with my Tigers (who predictably achieved even less this time around, since they had nothing much to shoot at).

In hindsight, I should have just massed my StuGs, Tigers and Panzergrenadiers in a big blob, crashed through his thin line of dug in paratroopers and then relied on my nice shiny armour to keep the Americans off the objective.

As No Pun Intended says, against infantry Tigers aren't game winning death machines - they're slow, and they're more about area denial than racking up the kills.

lilljonas
May 6, 2007

We got crabs? We got crabs!

Serotonin posted:


Actually thats a good point for discussion. Who needs fluff when you have history. Wargaming has taught me poo poo loads about world history.

No poo poo. Even for periods that I don't plan to ever play. Between reading magazines with mixed articles like Wargames Illustrated, looking at blogs and forums and simply just looking up weird names from online stores (Ghuz? Who the hell were the Ghuz? Off to Wikipedia), I have a far better general overview of world history than any non-player I know. It also does wonders for your geography.

I listen to several historical podcasts while working, and they are good for both learning more and to get inspiration when they cover your army. One everyone should check out is Hardcore History, and Dan Carlin's coverage of the Punic Wars and the WWII Ostfront are especially good. BBC History is always good quality but usually not about military history. Finally, nothing beats the details you get by slogging through an actual history course from something like The Teaching Company.

For miniatures, Meeples and Miniatures are a bit hit or miss but their Views From the Veranda episodes are always good. D6 Generation covers a little bit of historicals now and then, but they got really hooked on Wild West historical games and have quite a lot of materials about it.

Anyone have anything good that I should add to my listening queue so my boring work days pass faster?

EDIT; to add to my Trafalgar review, that game ruined Uncharted Seas for me. I was introduced to Uncharted Seas after Trafalgar, and in comparison it just felt dumb. She ships were easy to stear, there were little need to plan your attack course since most ships shot just as well forwards, you could shoot at all sides at once without any repercussions, and the wind really didn't matter. And the amazing thing is that Trafalgar is not that much more complex, it just have clever rules that makes you feel more like commanding actual sailing ships that behave like, you know, sailing ships, not tanks. So now I can't play Uncharted Seas without being irritated and mumbling "well I couldn't do that if it was Trafalgar, but..." all the time.

lilljonas fucked around with this message at 12:54 on Jan 5, 2010

BeigeJacket
Jul 21, 2005

lilJonas, have you played multiplayer Trafalgar? I've played a few 1vs1 games and whilst it was a blast I think it would work best with teams, as the game system seems to reward big sweeping moves and grand tactics, whilst simultaneously needing a fair bit of attention to keep track of all the damage suffered by the different ships.

For manufacturers I don't believe Skytrex have been mentioned yet:

http://www.skytrex.com/

They have a good selection in different scales and are nice and cheap. It's a one man show though so you mayhave to wait a week or two for the chap to cast up your order.

EDIT: What size bases do you use for 1/1200s? Would it be the same size as the wrecked ship template?

BeigeJacket fucked around with this message at 13:14 on Jan 5, 2010

lilljonas
May 6, 2007

We got crabs? We got crabs!

BeigeJacket posted:

lilJonas, have you played multiplayer Trafalgar? I've played a few 1vs1 games and whilst it was a blast I think it would work best with teams, as the game system seems to reward big sweeping moves and grand tactics, whilst simultaneously needing a fair bit of attention to keep track of all the damage suffered by the different ships.

For manufacturers I don't believe Skytrex have been mentioned yet:

http://www.skytrex.com/

They have a good selection in different scales and are nice and cheap. It's a one man show though so you mayhave to wait a week or two for the chap to cast up your order.

EDIT: What size bases do you use for 1/1200s? Would it be the same size as the wrecked ship template?

I haven't tried multiplayer as in multiple fleet, but I have played several games where we introduce beginners by letting them either comandeer half the ships on one side, or where we play the fleet as a team. It worked very well, but I can imagine that having two actual fleets would be very nice too. However we are only two players in the club who have any ships, and seeing us do the rigging hasn't made the rest of the guys less scared.

I use resin bases from Rod Langton. He has three different sizes: small bases for sloops and such minor ships, larger for ship of the lines and one that is a tad biggger than that for first rate ships.

40x65mm (frigates)
40x75mm (3rd rates)
40x85mm (3-deckers)
20x50mm (unrated)

It works well IMHO, with enough room for them not to feel crowded. He has a naval system of his own that I haven't tried, but base sizes doesn't matter that much in Trafalgar anyway. Who plays with mortar ships?

Skytrex is weird since their website is designed like a telecom or engineering company. First time I went there I thought I had entered the wrong URL.

lilljonas fucked around with this message at 14:10 on Jan 5, 2010

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
When I bought the Open Fire! Flames of War set, the armored skirts on both StuGs were broken.

They just emailed me to tell me they're sending me two new ones.

So it isn't just Games Workshop who has decent customer support.

Serotonin
Jul 14, 2001

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of *blank*
To be honest most companies I have dealt with have been good- a couple of my Minifigs vehicles had broken incomplete bits, and I emailed the guys there and they sent me replacements by return of post. Same with Baccus. I wanted an alternate mix of foot and command strips in their packs and they were more than happy to sort out exactly what I wanted.

Danger - Octopus!
Apr 20, 2008


Nap Ghost
Cold War Commander arrived in the post.

It looks great - reminds me a lot of Games Workshop's Epic ruleset in its simplicity.

Serotonin posted:

I also have a penchant for historical fiction (yeah I know most of its poo poo, but I still enjoy it)

I'm pretty sure my current interest in replaying the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan originally stems from reading a Tom Clancy book at a tender age, and the last part of The Living Daylights film.

Danger - Octopus! fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Jan 5, 2010

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
As far as other hobbies relating to my love of history go:


(Not cosplay)

Anyway, painting question:

I usually prime in black, for Warhammer, but that's because most of those models end up with dark schemes (grimdark, even). Would I be wrong in thinking that priming white for Redcoats and even Rebels would be the best?

Danger - Octopus!
Apr 20, 2008


Nap Ghost

Lord Commissar posted:

As far as other hobbies relating to my love of history go:


(Not cosplay)

I can't remember seeing you post that much about it before - are you one of these guys who takes it super-seriously with every last button and stitch having to be historically accurate?

Prime white or grey, that's what I'd do.

Also, gently caress brass etch 1/285 helicopter rotor blades. gently caress it right where it hurts.

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.

Danger - Octopus! posted:

I can't remember seeing you post that much about it before - are you one of these guys who takes it super-seriously with every last button and stitch having to be historically accurate?

There's actually a thread about it in TFR.

I do my best to look correct, and I generally won't wear incorrect fabrics (no synthetics). But I also don't care much if things are machine-sewn, or that I'm wearing boxers and sometimes an undershirt underneath.

I've seen actual period clothing and to the average person, you'd be hard-pressed to tell that they weren't sewn by a machine (other than historical impossibility). As far as buttons go, that really only matters for coats, since small clothes were made by all sorts of different people with different patterns:



And everyone in my regiment has a coat like this (although I myself would have preferred something other than brass buttons, because we look like Santa's Army).

I imagine the British units are much more likely to have button counters, since every piece of clothing would have been issued, unlike we dastardly rebels.

And to make this relevant: Yes, I will be painting up a regiment as the 1st New Hampshire for Black Powder :)

Danger - Octopus!
Apr 20, 2008


Nap Ghost

Lord Commissar posted:

There's actually a thread about it in TFR.

Cool, thanks.

I would not have thought to look in TFR. Since I am in the UK, TFR is like a foreign country to me where people live out wild dreams that I can never hope to touch.

FirstCongoWar
Aug 21, 2002

It feels so 80's or early 90's to be political.
Historicals: Where cosplay is only slightly looked down on

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.

FirstCongoWar posted:

Historicals: Where cosplay is only slightly looked down on

Cosplay is anime poo poo.

I'm not trying to say it isn't terribly nerdy; It is. But it isn't cosplay.

Arquinsiel
Jun 1, 2006

"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Lord Commissar posted:

Yeah, get D Minus 1.
gently caress this, get Hell's Highway. Market Garden units with, oddly, more choices available to them. It also has Falschirmjaeger and Guard's Armoured and Foot companies in there, so for a 30% ish investment you can work a pretty good

No Pun Intended posted:

3) I hate StuGs

:words:

I still hate StuGs.
I love StuGs. I use a platoon of four in my GrenadierKompanie and they tend to tear around a flank and then gently caress around behind the enemy tearing poo poo up.

ElBrak
Aug 24, 2004

"Muerte, buen compinche. Muerte."

Lord Commissar posted:

When I bought the Open Fire! Flames of War set, the armored skirts on both StuGs were broken.

They just emailed me to tell me they're sending me two new ones.

So it isn't just Games Workshop who has decent customer support.

Man, mine came the same way but i just pain painstakingly glued the skirts back together. :mad:

Serotonin
Jul 14, 2001

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of *blank*

Danger - Octopus! posted:

Cold War Commander arrived in the post.

It looks great - reminds me a lot of Games Workshop's Epic ruleset in its simplicity.



Good choice. Its similar to Epic but more akin to Warmaster. Its awesome.
And yes those brass etched rotors are cunts.

Serotonin
Jul 14, 2001

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of *blank*

Lord Commissar posted:

Cosplay is anime poo poo.

I'm not trying to say it isn't terribly nerdy; It is. But it isn't cosplay.

Yeah its not cosplay. Arguably one of my other hobbies (airsoft) can be closer to that, although I do try and avoid that look.

Danger - Octopus!
Apr 20, 2008


Nap Ghost

Serotonin posted:

Good choice. Its similar to Epic but more akin to Warmaster. Its awesome.
And yes those brass etched rotors are cunts.

Looking at the army lists, might need to fiddle them a bit for what I want to play. I'm thinking the Afghan Mujihadeen could do with guys on horseback and technicals rather than just infantry. However, right now it's time to start painting some vehicles.

No Pun Intended
Jul 23, 2007

DWARVEN SEX OFFENDER

ASK ME ABOUT TONING MY FINE ASS DWARVEN BOOTY BY RUNNING FROM THE COPS OUTSIDE THAT ELF KINDERGARTEN

BEHOLD THE DONG OF THE DWARVES! THE DWARVEN DONG IS COMING!

ElBrak posted:

Man, mine came the same way but i just pain painstakingly glued the skirts back together. :mad:

I Just noticed that one of my open fire Shermans has a busted track, it has been so long since I got it, It probably was just out of general usage. Although I must say I have seen some fairly shoddy quailty from Battlefront.

Arquinsiel
Jun 1, 2006

"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady
Battlefront stuff tends to be either extremely nice and well cast or dodgy as hell with broken resin and filled-in metal. I had to spend a good two hours gouging the tracks of a Panzer III clear once. I would have complained except I knew the Schurzen would hide it and I didn't know how good they were with replacing stuff.

Serotonin
Jul 14, 2001

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of *blank*

Danger - Octopus! posted:

Looking at the army lists, might need to fiddle them a bit for what I want to play. I'm thinking the Afghan Mujihadeen could do with guys on horseback and technicals rather than just infantry. However, right now it's time to start painting some vehicles.

Yeah I was going to add technicals to my Mujihdeen- the Somali list has them in iirc. You could use hroseback guys as recce troops.

BeigeJacket
Jul 21, 2005

Do any of you modern players want to buy get some 28mm arab street fighters on the cheap ? I've 16 of them, unpainted, hanging around.

They are from Mongrel miniatures, representing the 82 Israeli-Lebanon war, and are pretty nice sculpts. Another unstarted project :smith:

BeigeJacket fucked around with this message at 10:48 on Jan 6, 2010

Shallow
Feb 9, 2005

The last bunch of guys I knew who were into reenactments was a medieval group that dressed as knights. Basically what they did was cover themselves in several layers of chainmail, pounds and pounds of plate and livery and then charge at each other in unchoreographed fights with real (blunt) swords.

Invariably they all got pretty battered and spent most of the time hacking at each other's shields. It was about as coordinated as boxwars, but I was about 15 at the time so I thought it was loving awesome.

Nobody knew what cosplay was back then, but I think if any of them did, calling them a cosplayer would have been a serious decapitation risk.

Arquinsiel
Jun 1, 2006

"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady
THere's a bunch of guys who do viking re-enactment that I know. They dress up all period and go camping for the weekend at shows and the like. To give you an idea of how hardcore they are, their two drinking games are "The Hammer Game" and "The Axe Game".

The hammer game starts with you hitting a nail into a log with one whack. Then you take a drink, the next guy has a go and when everyone is finished you start again but do it with TWO nails.

The axe game is just them throwing an axe at a tree, and every time it doesn't stick in the thrower (or everyone watching) has to take a drink.

Nutters.

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
I should get my Pendraken AWI minis today, although I won't have bases for them until Friday or Monday (GF9 has 2-day shipping, but they wait a week to ship, so I'm not sure how it's a plus).

I was hoping to have the bases earlier so I could base them at work, but I guess I'll do it over the weekend, instead.

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
Also, I priced out my FoW army list and it's actually not much more* for official FoW models over other companies like Old Glory - and unlike Old Glory, FoW has everything I need.

*Assuming you're buying from a discount online retailer with cheap shipping.

Danger - Octopus!
Apr 20, 2008


Nap Ghost

BeigeJacket posted:

Do any of you modern players want to buy get some 28mm arab street fighters on the cheap ? I've 16 of them, unpainted, hanging around.

They are from Mongrel miniatures, representing the 82 Israeli-Lebanon war, and are pretty nice sculpts. Another unstarted project :smith:

If you're in the UK, gently caress yes.

Nude Bog Lurker
Jan 2, 2007
Fun Shoe

Arquinsiel posted:

I love StuGs. I use a platoon of four in my GrenadierKompanie and they tend to tear around a flank and then gently caress around behind the enemy tearing poo poo up.

I love them too, but Flames of War doesn't really model the difference between turret and hull-mounted guns particularly well. So it just kind of feels like StuGs are sort of better than Panzer IVs most of the time.

Sometimes I daydream about baffling opponents by arriving at a tournament with a Luftwaffe Field Company and filling the table with Reluctant Trained Germans (and their StuGs).

BeigeJacket
Jul 21, 2005

Danger - Octopus! posted:

If you're in the UK, gently caress yes.

I am.

The Mongrel Miniatures site has been down for a few days now, so I can't get any pics. They are armed with small arms, can't remeber if there's any RPG-ers, I'll dig them out tonight and have a look.

I don't have plat so lemme know how to contact you and we can work out the details.

children overboard
Apr 3, 2009

lilljonas posted:


2mm Indians next to an AA battery

Thank you for posting this. They're so cute :3:

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3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
Added this to the FAQ:

What's all this millimeter talk? I build 1/48 models, how big is that in millimeters?
Wikiepedia actually has a chart on this (I know we're all shocked). Keep in mind the part that lists "mm" is for one foot, and miniatures are measured as being about 6 feet (since that's an average human height). The common wargame scales are:

code:
2mm:  ~1:1000
6mm:  1:285 or 1:300 (typically interchangable)
10mm: ~1:183
15mm: 1:100 or ~1:122
25mm: 1:87
28mm: ~1:72 (or ~1:60 if it's 28mm Heroic)
54mm: 1:9

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