15mm WW2 European Terrain

I've been beefing up my 15mm WW2, both individually based models and Flames of War based models. As I've mentioned, I'm enjoying the scale immensely, and have turned the corner with FoW.  So in order to enjoy games in this scale, I need terrain.

A lot of the guys I game with have excellent terrain collections in both 28mm and 15mm. So historically I haven't had to worry about playing on a table where cat toys represent trees and a pile of books is a hill. But, at least in 15mm, their collections are limited to desert landscapes and buildings.  So here's my opening to contribute something new to the battlefield landscapes.

I'm building up European themed terrain in 15mm.  JR Miniatures recently had a 20% off sale, and I picked up a bunch of stuff.  Combined with pieces I already own, I now have the basis for a bombed out European town.  Let's have a look at a sample layout.

Here's a quick arrangement I made for taking pictures. I've got detail shots to follow. This is roughly 4x3 area.

The JR Miniatures stuff includes 4 ruins, a concrete bunker, and six stone fences. I still have some high stone walls and a stone bridge to paint up, and they are not shown here. Additionally, there are blast craters from Rebel Minis, escarpments and rural roads from Gale Force 9, and my favorite Woodland Scenics trees.  All together it makes a nice setting.  Now here are some close ups.

This is a nice ruined house. But what the hell is going on with the base? It's so flipping thick! The house itself is also a small for 15mm figures. You can stick a small FoW base in it, but the guys look huge. Oh well.

The Sherman tanks come rolling into town, passing the devastation along the road.

Both the green and blue buildings scale OK with figures. The second floor of the blue building is out of scale with the bottom floor. The blue building has a removable top floor to place units inside. But the floor is so tightly fit, it may as well be permanent.

Here we have some US riflemen checking out the intersection and investigating the abandoned bunker and ruined cabin.

The bunker has a removable top and you can place a good number of models inside, or one medium FoW base.  Here's the riflemen inside the bunker.

Overall I'm very happy with this collection. It's a good start. I'd like additional buildings and will probably go back to JR Miniatures for more. But I also need to beef up standard terrain like hills and trees.While I have a number of hills, they are more like cliffs and they're painted in desert schemes. I'll have to fix that. I also own the Gale Force 9 river system and swamps. So I can fill a table with terrain. I'd just like more buildings.

That's it for now. I'll be getting back to painting figures this week, once I finish the bridge and other walls.

Mighty Armies: Amazons

I've finally got around to snapping some shots of my first force for Mighty Armies. This is a 15mm fantasy battle game which has multiple models per base. I've played a few test games, and it's a fun and quick-playing rules set. I already have three forces for the game (technically four, since I bought enough Dark Elf minis to make two forces). I ordered from different places, and the first to get to me was my Amazons force.

Here's an overall shot of the entire army, eleven stands total.

Here are some details of what you're looking at above.  First is the Amazon Princess, the army general. At first I wondered why she was so much smaller than all the others. I think it's because she's supposed to be younger, maybe?

Next is the Amazon Queen, who acts as a spell caster in the Amazon army.

The boxed set I picked up had a single stand of "Blade Dancers" which looked like girls in sun dresses. I've no idea what their back story is in the game. In terms of mechanics, they're good fighters and resistant to magic as well as unhindered by terrain. That's some special dress the girls are wearing. I'll need more than just one stand for them to be effective.

Finally here are the main body of troops, warriors and archers.

Despite the small size it took longer than expected to paint these models.  There's a lot of detail on each, and totally I used 7-8 colors. While this is a standard sized force, I'd like to have other options. So I'm going to pick up Spear Maidens (light infantry), more Blade Dancers, Panther Riders (cavalry, probably heavy cav), and even some gryphon riders for flying units. Everything you see above, including the bases, cost me $23. This is not an expensive game to buy in to. So adding all these additional units is not a hit to my wallet.

I've got Lizardmen (or more appropriately, Salamander men) on popsicle sticks now. The Aligatormen mounted on wooly rhinos look awesome!  Once these are done I'll probably switch back to my Flames of War stuff.  There's a bunch of stuff for my Americans that I want to get done.

Fate's Needle

It took me years to get here, but I finally wrote that novel. These last few weeks have been busy with formatting it, getting it on the major sites, and doing a bit of promotion.  Actually the amount of promotion could also be called "not much" or "non-existent."

Unlike a lot of other self-published crap you will find out in the world these days, this e-book has been professionally edited and proof-read. You're not going find sentences about the most best Viking worrier in all of norway.

You can find the book on Amazon.com, B&N.com, or Smashwords. Any of these fine places will put a tidy little eBook adventure into your reader, phone, or PC.

So what's the book about?  Let me ask you a few things first.  Do you like Viking stories? Do you like Vikings killing each other with swords? How about with spears? Do you like fun, escapist stories that don't drag on for 600 pages?  Then you'll like this!  Go get it now!

To document my foray into the world of publishing, I've started yet another blog. It's my authorial platform to multimillion dollar stardom.  Apparently I cannot sell books unless I have an author's website. My novel will somehow malfunction if I don't do that.  So join me at www.jerryautieri.com and keep my books from exploding.

I'll be back to blogging about minis and my gaming stuff very soon.