Mr Markus!

After I used the Sturmaffe in the last battles I discovered that they were very brittle. They are hitting their opponents very hard, but they will have problem surviving a round or two after contact with enemy.
So what to do?
Give them a Hero to lead them into battle of course! The only ape hero is Markus. A very good and smart one. Is he worth his cost? I don't know, haven't tried him yet (will do it tomorrow), but I get good vibes from him. The extra health and attacks are of course good, but he does also have the Charge skill! And the Sturmaffe has Fast. Combine them and they will charge from a "long" distance and still hit hard!

What about the miniature? As most I have painted so far it was very nice to paint. No big problems with mold-lines or anything like that.
Final verdict: Must buy for all ape lovers out there!

My first house!

I have to confess, I don't like doing terrain. I'm very bad at it. I have tried a few times and always gave up pretty soon. So this is actually the first time I finish anything terrain related.
The house is the one that are included in Operation Cerberus. It can also be bought separately. The difference between them is that the Cerberus house is three stories high, while the separate two.
The house is made up of elements so by combining them in different ways you can build many different shapes and heights.
I started building the first house from the Victory Bridge scenarios. I will next paint up a few more elements so it will be the second and larger house.
The colour Raspberry is very common for house like this in Sweden.

The roof was not included, instead I built it myself. I think it shows very clearly my lack of modeling skills. The inside of all elements was painted light grey.

Here you can see all the elements that were needed to build the house.

Desert bases

I bought GW's new paint Agrellan Earth, it is for painting bases. I was extremely impressed by the result; it was as good as they said it would be. I re-based some cowboys for a friend. I did it like this:
1) First I painted the base with dark brown and Stirland Mud.
2) Then I painted on a thick layer of Agrellan Earth.
3) After it had dried for an hour or two I glued on one (1) turf of grass and a few small rocks. Very easy and fast.

It is marvelous! I will re-base my Indians, but it could also be used for Dust Operation: Babylon.

Sturmaffe!

I bought the new Axis apes, Sturmaffe. I needed some good close combat troops that could kill SSU trash cans so I bought these and a few Zombies.

These are much better casted than the figures that I got with the starter box, which had a lot of mold lines.

The apes are nice sculpts and you can choose between two different head, which I think is excellent. I hope we will get more of that in the future. I did also get two datacards, but the only difference between them was the picture. They missed an opportunity two sell two different units in the same box like GW are doing nowdays (for example Dark Elves Executioners and Black Guards).

So who are best? Axis Zombies or Sturmaffe? They cost almost the same, but are a little bit different. Since I love statistics and probabilities I have made two charts for you so we can see how good they are at destroying targets. I have calculated the probability that a unit of Sturmaffe will destroy there opponents if they use all their weapons.

So how do you read it? Blue line is for Close Combat and Red for range 1-2 from each other.
The first chart says that if the Sturmaffe attacks, with both flammfausts and jackhammers, an enemy soldier with armour 3 and health 3 they will have 62% chance to kill all three enemies!

I will use the statistics for comparing units to each other and understand there strength and weaknesses (or at least start to understand them). :-)

Forward, Men! Victory Bridge scenario 3

This scenario was a catastrophe for me.
I knew as soon I read the scenario description that it would be hard. I was supposed to charge over a bridge with my Germans. They are tough, but can't shoot longer than 4 squares. The SSU on the other hand could shoot 6 squares.
Without any good ideas for a plan, I just tried to charge over the bridge, hoping that any would survive. They didn't. They started dying and the last died when they reached the end of the bridge. Those few brave killed a few of the SSU before they also died.

Tomas started by positioning a tesla cannon i hard cover at the end of the bridge.

Then he did also position a walker there.

And some more troops.

Without anything that could shoot longer than 4 squares I started the charge. The first to fall was the Heavy Laser Grenadiers. That is the fate of those that don't take the sacred paint in the sacred ceremony. If you are not painted you will be sacrificed first!

But the paint didn't make the Ubertot invulnerable. Four out of five died.

And next to die were the Sturmpionieren. Only the flamethrower guy survived.

And he reached the enemy! And killed a SSU Trash Can! A hero at last!

And the last to die was my walker (ok, I know it is a SSU walker, but I had forgotten mine at home so Tomas was kind enough to lend me one).
The carnage was over. There were dead Germans all over the bridge. I wanted revenge!

What a terrible night (in a fun way!)

Tomas and I played three more games three days ago, Victory Bridge scenario 3-5. They were great fun. I lost 2 of them. Tomas deployed his new and shiny heavy infantry in trash cans (SSU infantry with armour 4). My poor Axis soldiers had no good counter against them, except for my zombies that shoot at them with panzerfaust and then charged them. So today I bought a lot of Sturmaffes and Zombies to counter them.

AARs are coming soon so all of you can see my horrible defense of the house in scenario 5.

This was the second time we played Dust Tactics and we only missed one rule once this time (entry). Next time we will be perfect! Then we shouldn't have any problems with any rules.

Lena and Kate

The second (and third) miniatures I painted were Tina and Hyena. They are made in resin. The sculpting and casting is almost perfect. Painting them was extremely fun. The chain, which were included, was a nice detail.

After finishing them I showed them to my girlfriend. She really loved them. Normally she don't like my figures, mostly because of their cartoonish proportions, but these were approved by her. :-)

So I have now renamed her Lena after my girlfriend, and the Hyena is now called Kate, because it looks like one of our cats.

Lena and Kate (aka Tina and Hyena)

By the way, does anyone know where I can get a datacard for her?

And don't forget to answer the survey on the right about the figures!