The First Of Many...

...Or at least a few. A Battleground British Tommy, my first test 15mm WWII Allied figure.

Open Fire First Tanks

Took advantage of the gaming time at our local club to spend a couple of hours making a start to the tank kits in Open Fire!

Started off with the 3 German StuG III tanks.

These are the basic kits. I've not put any of the optional stowage on. Also I've not added the tank commander in the open hatch as none of the one's I have left on the sprue match the picture in the assembly guide. Again checking on the Flames of War online StuG assembly guide shows me which one to use - completely different to the picture on the included guide!

Next I moved onto the 2 Sherman Firefly kits. One of the advantages in doing the build at the club is chatting with other folk who have already experience of the box. I had been warned that the Sherman mould don't seem to line up properly, even after a good amount of filing edges down. This experience was repeated by me.

Both Fireflys had the same large gap across their fronts. The online guide seem to had avoided this, but you can see that even they have a good amount of filling needing done down the sides.

This is as far as I managed which these 2 kits. Mostly done bar the turret magnets (which are included) hatches and filling...

Next up will be the Sherman V kits - which I have been warned are much worse than the Firefly ones. Oh joy!

Open Fire Progress

After a good few hours of work clipping, chart comparing, gluing and cursing I've finally finished the infantry sections of the Flames of War starter.

I was pre-warned by various good folk about some of the potential downfalls when doing this part. One is the fragility of the PaK40 guns. Very careful cutting is needed to get the thin barrel and supporting legs out of the sprue. Using cutters I slowly nibbled away at the joins and made the final cut with a sharp hobby knife. The guns shields are also incredibly weak and I snapped both mine across the narrow bridge (one in the sprue and the other fall apart afterwards - obviously weakened by the extraction process)

The other thing is the prone American machine gunners are an absolute pain to put together! Trying to position and attach the arms and gun caused much blue language!

So any tips? First one is be happy to use liquid poly plastic glue. being more used to metal models I was plowing on with superglue, but when I moved the Liquid Poly the pieces stuck much easier. Second (now that I've had a chance to look around the interweb is to look on the Flames of War assembly guides . I wish I'd known about these sooner, as the photos there can be more useful than the included diagrams.

I'll be sure to do both these before I start the tanks...

15mm Sherman Tank Painting Tutorial

Following on from yesterdays tutorial, here's one for the tanks (although in the Fow box they are British). Done by the Painting Clinic again.



Now, I don't have all the paints, washes, etc that are featured here, but certainly food for thought.

15mm US Airborne Painting Tutorial

After a dig around I've found this handy video tutorial by The Painting Clinic:


Not only is this ideal for the new Flames Of War box (The Allied Troops are US Airborne), the more eagle eyed of you will notice that the video is made by a source I already link to (on the right), although I've never visited the you-tube channel.

It also answers my "base or lollypop stick" question. At least in this instance, if it's good enough for him, good enough for me!

Open Fire! - FoW arrives

Well, finally my willpower gave in. I've been managing to resist Flames of War for ages. Not needing a new scale, relatively unfamiliar topic, concentrating on other games and money all seemed like good reasons. Then they brought out the Open Fire starter box which dragged my interest back in, but still I resisted. But in the last couple of visits to our local gaming club have had Arabiansquire playing 40k and myself hanging casually around a bit. The first time was OK (managed an enjoyable game of the Walking Dead boardgame) but the second had me watching between the 40k game and a Flames of War game, giving me the opportunity to ask questions and have a look at the FoW books. So eventually the recommendations and the desire to increase my chances of actually playing a game had me up to the local FLGS here in Livingston.

So what do I think of my purchase? Well the box is certainly full, and it's all a bit overwhelming truth be told. This is my first "mass battle" game so the amount of small figures (remember I am a 28mm Skirmish man usually) and referring to the diagrams of team and unit organisation are a bit swamping. Adding to that is that all the figures from both sides are on 2 sprues of the same colour, mixed on the same sprue. There is a good organisation sheet, however, with good photo's of the figures.

The tank kits all look OK, and painting trepidations aside will be fine.

The "Cardboard Terrain" is a slight stretch. A couple of of sheets of push out terrain tiles is what you get (small woods, walls and buildings). They do have the cover bonus' rules printed on them, so will be useful for a beginner like me, and are better than nothing.

Overall I'm happy with the box contents, overawed by the "new area"-ness of it all. I think I'll have to clip off the figures and get them teamed up as per the handy actual size pictures for squad organisation to really muster a starting point. After that it's time to hit the web. I don't even now whether to put the figures on the bases first or do the lolly stick painting technique (which will delay any play be weeks!).

Ho-hum, the fun of new toys...