Review: Project Paint Station from Army Painter

 So, for Christmas, I got this:

What do I think? Looks good on the box, but not so much in real life. The big issue is in the construction. Being MDF, I was expecting it to use slots and tabs to hold itself together while the glue dries. The only slots and tabs hold the horizontal pieces to the back piece. There are no slots and tabs on any of the vertical pieces. There are grooved areas, which are necessary because no glue will stick nicely to the white melomine surface. 

From the top

I don't recall whether the assembly instructions call for clamps, but they are absolutely necessary because of the lack of slots and tabs. In particular, you need them to hold that piece with the Army Painter label, because you need to bend the piece to fit it into the groove. Not the best experience because I had to assemble it over a couple of nights to allow the glue to dry and I didn't have enough small clamps to do it in one shot.

Tip: They mention a specific glue, but I'm not buying it just for this. I used Carpenter's Glue, but really any PVA-based glue should work fine, as long as it dries clear or white. Don't use Carpenter's Glue though, because it has a yellowish colour that you can see. 

You can see the lack of tabs and slots on the sides. Note the grooves for gluing the pieces together.

Once assembled, it seems solid enough, but I'm definitely not going to deliberately test it because I have no faith it will stick together if I drop it any distance at all.

It will hold dropper bottle style paint pots, but not those Citidel paint pots. Fortunately 90% of my paints are Vallejo or other dropper style paint pots. 

It seems OK, and I will use it, but I'm sure there are sturdier and easier to assemble options.

Musket and Tomahawks at Mike's

Last weekend, Mike hosted a French vs British set in the French and Indian Wars. The British were tasked with protecting the settlers and the French were supposed to burn all the buildings. As this was a play test for a convention, these divergent goals played a huge role in the outcome.

I took the British regulars and the friendly Iroquois while Larry controlled the light troops, the militia and the settlers. I hid the Iroquois in the corn fields as a surprise for the French.

Things started up badly for the French when my regulars took a long range shot at some French lights who were deployed in the open. A kill and a retreat put them out of being a threat for a while.

Luck turned the French way as the French Hurons blundered into my Indians. But the French got another Indian activation card and managed to get into an advantageous battle. Both side's Indian massacred each other. The difference was that all of mine disappeared in the subsequent recoil while the French managed to keep a few from each Indian formation. This eventually was the turning point.

Meanwhile, Larry was having problems dealing with the French militia and regulars. Eventually, numbers counted and the British lights had to give ground, which lead to the burning of one cabin and inevitable burning of the other. On my side, after the clash of Indians, the way was open for the French irregulars to burn the largest building, which they did. The remaining Hurons slipped over to the other building and set it on fire too, despite the intervention of a second British regular unit.

But remember those civilians? We had provided them with enough time to run away into the woods, and as far as we were concerned, we had fulfilled our victory conditions. So the game was basically a tie with both sides having achieved what they set out to do.

So onto my thoughts on the rules. I'm not all that impressed with them. They have the typical problem of all card driven games in which everyone else waits for the guy who has had his units activated to do something. This isn't necessarily a killer but it has the potential to really bog down a game.

The firing seems a bit clunky to me. First you determine your base to hit. Then you modify it for terrain and range. This is pretty standard but the chart wasn't great at showing it. After you hit, you then roll for effect. It's basically modelling power or lethality. The problem is that basically all of the weapons in use were a 3+ to kill and the only units that weren't using a 3+ were some of my Indians and they never got off a shot. This essentially turned the second roll into a "restore 1/3 of your troops" event.

The melee makes the firing seem smooth by comparison, It is a huge time-suck as you resolve each set of figures one on one. So instead of taking 6 dice for 6 figures and rolling them as a group, you have to do it individually. Then your opponent rolls for his defense. Then you do it all over again as your opponent strikes back. And you keep doing this attack and defense until there's no more figures in direct contact. After all of that, you finally roll for morale to see what happens to each unit in the melee. If your units recoil or flee, you have to check each figure to see if they run away completely. This is what did my Indians in.

The morale is very volatile with a roll of a 1 or 2 on a fresh unit recoiling back or a 6 saving the sole figure in a unit from running to the hills. It's OK in effect but something to remember.

Would I play it again? Yes, but it won't be my first choice. I think there should be better games out there.

Comparison between MMG teams

So now I have a German MMG team from Warlord and one from BTD. Let's compare them.

The Warlord one is on the left and the BTD on the right. The most immediate difference between the two is the tripod mount. The BTD one is thick and heavy. This gives it some welcome sturdiness. It also makes it way over-scaled. The other problem is that the stand looks very two dimensional.

The Warlord stand is far more accurate in scale. It also spreads out in three dimensions. But it wasn't easy to get there. The legs come flat and there were no instructions. Fortunately, I found a picture of the entire stand. So it was a matter of delicately twisting and bending the legs until they were the right shape and fit with the gunner. Of course, this meant that a stand was an absolute necessity.

The figures themselves are similar in size and chunkiness. The Warlords are a little more impressionistic while the BTD are firmer in detail. The difference shows up more when you are actually painting them. You have to use your imagination more for the Warlord ones while the highly raise details on the BTD make them easier pop them.

Overall, I generally prefer BTD figures but the Warlord ones blend in pretty easily and nicely supplement the gaps I had in my troops.

Thoughts: Dropzone Commander

At Hold The Line, I bought some raffle tickets. Unusually, I won something. Specifically, a copy of the Dropzone Commander rules and a box of figures for the rules.

This isn't really a review because I haven't played the game yet. So what we are dealing with is basically a set of first impressions. My first thought was to sell the two to make some money to buy something that I really wanted.

Now that I've read the rules (how could I not when I actually have a copy in my possession?), I'm more inclined to keep them, but I realize that it means that I need to spend money too.

Anyway, so you get the book and there's about 10 pages or so of background fluff that I still haven't read (and probably won't). Then there's about 14 pages of rules. The rules engine is basically IGOYGO but it's by group instead of the whole side. Units move and shoot or shoot and move. The wrinkle is that all shooting occurs at the same time and you have to designate targets before shooting. The emphasis is on movement, but the real key is on using the dropships and troop carriers to do the movement.

The combat is very deadly. Stuff dies quickly and easily. Especially, it looks like, infantry. Yet infantry are crucial because they are basically the only units that can enter buildings. So you are forced to protect them, even at the point of sacrificing other units.

After the rules, there are a healthy number of scenarios. Most are quick with only 6 turns or so. The focus is typically on grabbing an objective. You can win even though you lose 90% of your force and your opponent loses nothing. Basically, killing your opponent is a secondary thing used to break victory point ties.

The final part of the book is a reference with lots of pictures and stats.

Overall, it's a decent package. The rules are pretty straight forward and there isn't many of them. I still haven't made up my mind about them but they are at least under consideration.

Second Thoughts: Warlord's Panzergrenadiers (30 figures and 3 vehicles) and Late War Germans (25 figures)

While I was initially impressed by these boxes, now that I've been assembling them, I'm feeling let down, especially when compared to the Soviet box.

There are a number of problems:

• There are only 5 poses so I now have 11 of each.
• Warlord compounds the above problem by repeating three sets of arms. 
• There is no prone figure so you have no choice but to make the LMG gunners into Rambo.
• The right hands of the rifle arms don't hold the weapon well, unlike the Soviet figures.
• The arms don't integrate very well with the bodies. The shoulders stick out far too much and you don't get a nice joint. Each shoulder requires some knife work to make them far more seamless.
• The one accessory that I expected was some MG ammo belts to add to the figures. The late war Germans, especially Panzergrenediers, are notorious for lugging belts of ammo around with them, but none are included. There's sort of an ammo box but it seems awfully thin. Belts would have been far more useful.

And on top of that, I cannot even borrow the extra Soviet arms I have. The Russian arms are significantly bigger.

It's my understanding that the Soviet box is a later product. The experience that Warlord gained from these inferior German figures shows up.

In the Box: Panzergrenadiers from Warlord

I traded a box of 15mm Flames of War Afrika Corps figures with Richard for a box of 28mm Panzergrenadiers from Warlord Games so that I would have an opponent for my rapidly expanding Soviet force.

Let's see what I got. First, here's the box art:

Inside, you get 6 sprues of 5 figures. Here's a front and back shot of two sprues:

Credit to Warlord here: they modeled the figures so you could load them down as ordinary infantry who need to carry everything everywhere or you can lighten their load as panzergrenadiers who leave their packs in their trucks.

Update: I bought the 25 figure Late War Germans by Warlord and they have the exact same sprues. So I now wonder whether they were helping their customers by allowing them to choose what type of infantry they could build or saving money by repackaging existing sprues, Probably both views are correct.

You also get some weapons sprues, bases, and decals:

As panzergrenadiers, the box also comes with 3 sprues to build 3 halftracks (and one gunner figure who, unfortunately, really cannot be used outside of the halftrack):

Here's one that I dry fit together:

Ruined building from 4Ground

This was another purchase at Hold the Line. I have just started with 28mm and I felt I needed to get a building or something to have an objective. J&M had a bunch of 4Ground buildings but I was feeling a bit of sticker shock with the prices of 28mm terrain and vehicles. They did have a Russian house that was interesting but I didn't feel like spending that kind of money when I really had no idea what it would look like constructed.

I really didn't have to worry. The assembly was easier and things went together well. One of the corners on the building didn't quite go properly but that is my own fault for missing the step in which you wrap the entire building with an elastic until the glue dries. Even with that mistake, the end result is a very nice looking ruin. In terms of time, I completed it over the course of a couple of baseball games on TV but this building also had a lot of fiddly parts. Now that I've done one of these types of buildings, my next one will be quicker.

All told, I am very impressed. I've already decided, once I scrape together the money, that I will be getting the three eastern front WW2 buildings from 4Ground. These buildings are perfect for those gamers who want a colourful building they can assemble and use quickly.

In the Box: Warlord's 1/56th T34-85

Since I now have a platoon of 28mm Russians for Chain of Command, I went to Hold the Line looking for some armour, anti-tank guns, or transport. I was looking for a T34-76 or even more particularly, an anti-tank gun, but all I could find was a T34-85. Good enough for me!

Here's what you get. Two spues of tank and a decal sheet (not pictured)

 The box lets you have a buttoned up tank or have the commander sticking out of the hatch. When I first looked at the commander he seemed a bit small. When I compared him to a 28mm figure, my suspicion was confirmed. Either Russian tanks were crewed by pygmies or there's something wrong with the tank's scale. Since I cannot picture more than 6 28mm figures crowding on the back of this tank, I suspect that the tank is on the small side of what it should be.

Aside from the slight issue of scale, this model assembled easily and quickly. The join between the upper and lower turret was not as clean as the rest of the model but that was the only problem area. The tracks were a bit tricky at first to figure out how to assemble but once figured out, they went together cleanly.

I messed up the "Death to Fritzes" decal so I had to fall back to the "To Victory" one instead. I think I'm sticking to minimalist decals otherwise.

Here's the assembled version:

(OK Justin, I see your Pz II and raise with a T34. Don't make me purchase a JSII because I will if I need to.)

In the Box: Warlord's 28mm WW2 Plastic Russians

I purchased this box at Hot Lead:

Let's see what's inside. You get 5 sprues with 8 figures each:

There's one prone, two kneeling, two running, and three standing poses. There's lots of nice detail and minimal flash. Because it's hard plastic, dealing with the flash is very easy. There are 13 heads for these 8 figures (8 of which are in helmets) and plenty of arms. This sprue contains some pouches and shovels that you can add to customize your figures. Let's take a close up of the some of the figures:

There is also 3 sprues of weapons and enough bases for the figures. The weapons sprues contain one LMG, one AT rifle, bayonetted and unbayonetted rifles, SMGs, pistols, and other stuff. It even includes a flaming Molotov cocktail.

Let's have a close up of some of the weapons:


Overall, this is a very nice pack and and good value. I have only one disappointment with it. Unfortunately, 3 of the 8 figures are dressed for winter and the other 5 are dressed for summer. I would have much preferred buying a full summer box or a full winter box. I notice that my MMG figures are dressed for winter so maybe my Russians will just have to campaign in early spring or late fall.