R.I.P Frank Woodruff Buckles

Yesterday the world lost the last surviving veteran of the First world war. Mr. Buckles Enlisted in the U.S. Army in August of 1917 at the age of 16, and then served in Europe during the Great war being discharged from service in 1920. During the Second World War Mr. Buckles was a Civilian POW Being Captured by the Japanese in 1942. In recent years Mr. Buckles had been an advocate for a National Monument to Veterans of the First world war.

 The world has lost a great man
Rest in Peace Frank W. Buckles

Frank W. Buckles in 1917 (image from wikipidia)

Challenge accepted

A member of my local gaming group challenged my Germans to take on his Brit Commandos. I couldn't let such a challenge go unaccepted, so out came the .78 Sturmdivision to send them back to the Tea House with their tails between their legs. Most players expect certain things in an infantry force, but they rarely account for HMG's encased in solid concrete bunkers and Infantry running around in a Trench line. I do Love a Fortification list, I have run the Sturm about 10 times total and they have suffered one defeat. Today I ran 2 games, the first was a no retreat mission and I slaughtered the commandos, That game proved how valuable HMG's are, though having half of them encased in bunkers makes them survivable enough to make them worth having. Of course on the other hand my opponent now understands just how important it is to neutralize the rarely seen HMG's. My second game ended in a draw due to running out of time though I did have another surprise up my sleeve for him. Just as he got the remnants of a commando unit onto an objective my Pioneers launched a Goliath into his midst (yes I know its cheese but I like cheese). that was all she wrote for that unit. Unfortunately we had to stop just as I had 3 Marders contesting my objective on his side of the table (free for all) at the same time he moved up 4 priests. The game ended in a draw though it would have been mine if I had time to blow away the preists. oh well.

and now for something completely different

I have been painting Russian Infantry for the upcoming escalation league and finally I decided I was going insane painting the same thing 120+ times. So today I started something a little different just to keep my sanity in check. I build 1/35 armor on occasion and decided to pull something different from that stash. I found an old box of 1/35 Tamyia Japanese Infantry I picked up at a flea market while trying to haggle over something with little success I finally got him to at least throw in the infantry. so here sits a box of infantry that I likely would never do anything with as Japanese stuff usually isn't my thing.


I opened the box and decided on the command figure, I love world war two but there is something about the eras before when men fought up close with a sword that gets me. The Japanese still using swords in combat really shows how ww2 was in some ways the end of the end of an era.

Building a city

The last week has been far to busy, trying to find time to paint much has been almost impossible. Seeing as I have nothing to show in completed miniatures I figure I will instead cover what seems to me to be the sometimes forgotten element of war gaming, Terrain. I also want to say that its funny how much alike it seems gamers sometimes think, even when we have never met. One of the guys over at What would Patton do (a great blog and podcast by the way) has begun building "Steve-O-grad". about a week before I heard of his project I had ordered some buildings from JR Miniatures to begin the same project. Of course my city will not be "Steve-O-grad" and I am not sure I like the sound of "Matt-O-Grad" (that confirms it seeing it in type its awful). I intend to use a selection of somewhere around 50% JR Miniatures buildings and 50% built myself. Here are some pictures of the current buildings either completed or close to completion for "yet to be named-o-grad" If you have a good idea for a name for my city feel free to leave a comment who knows you might end up naming a city.