I guess I have found a regular article to write! These sit-reps are a nice way for me to see everything I have actually accomplished in a month’s time. November has been a pretty productive month on the hobby front. I was able to tidy up several projects and work down my mountain of opportunity a bit. I bought a few things including a custom hex aerial mat for Bag the Hun from Deep Cut Studios and the Case Blue theater book for Bolt Action. My biggest hang up for Bag the Hun is my lack of a suitable game mat. Now that that is remedied I may get motivated to paint all the 1/300 planes. Luckily, I have Evan’s tutelage to rely on for that venture.

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KNIL Kick Starter

First up the May 40 Miniatures KNIL Kick Starter wrapped up on the 4th. The end was a rollercoaster of a ride with ups and downs and a final rally to catch back up. Sander was able to make 182% of his goal and he was able to bring a bunch of fun expansions to the soon to be range. You can see the full range of unlocked goodies above. I am very happy for Sander and I can’t wait to see the minis in the flesh.

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USMC… maybe?

Early in the month I ended up starting what I thought would be my Adepticon 2024 Bolt Action Doubles army. Evan and I had fixings on some hot Tarawa themed action. I started building out some marines from Warlord Games’ plastic kit and ended up with about seven done. I also started gathering up the support we would need for the 1400 point list. Evan was to bring the armored punch with three Shermans and a Stuart light tank. I was to cover the infantry component with 40 some marines, light artillery, and a LVT. We ended up shelving the project for now. Lucky for you we are still very keen to work on some PTO armies so I think they will come out again in 2024. LVTs are too cool for me to put on the shelf for too long.

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Adepticon 2024 Plans

…And the reason Evan and I shelved our Doubles armies is to run some demos instead! The dream team of Drew, Evan, and I will be putting on four demos over the several day long Adepticon convention. Two of the demos revolve around Stalingrad’s Grain Elevator on or around September 19, 1942. The plan is to run a Bolt Action event game on Thursday and a Chain of Command demo/ event game on Saturday. Drew was nice enough to allow us to use his breathtaking rendition of the massive elevator. Drew and I have the forces pretty well covered but we will both be expanding our ruined urban terrain collections in the next few months to flesh out a 6′ x 8′ board.

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Blog!

On November 11th we hit a small milestone for the blog; 5000 views! While I write this, we actually have surpassed 6800 views. I hope the people who have visited us have enjoyed the stuff we yammer on about. We are truly lucky to have a people enjoying hobby with us and interacting with us here. So thanks for reading!

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Iron Dice Studio

Work has continued on the studio. The sound tiles are on the ceiling and we are sorting out our lighting rig situation. Teddy started working on finishing the tables which should be done and ready soon. We also removed the hollow core door and tried to make it look not like a 20 year old bathroom door. We also wanted to give it some more sound dampening qualities. I drilled holes in the door (on the wrong side, my bad Teddy) and filled it with expanding foam. We then filled the holes with Bondo and I sanded it down when it was cured. A lick of paint on it and a new kick plate will do wonders. The inside will also be getting some sound treatment tiles attached.

We also knocked out some cleanup work. Little stuff like removing a light fixture and switching a light switch out to really helped bring the room together. After I gave the trim tile a wipe down we put in our carpet. New lights and poles were ordered so we should have more news in December, possibly even episode 0 of the podcast.

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Volksgrenadiers Get Some Command

I managed to trundle forwards on one of my 2023 goals. I finished painting the HQ element for my Battle of the Bulge Volksgrenadier force. The Bloody bucket force organization follows mostly with the historical TO and E which is pictured below.

Most Volksgrenadier units didn’t recieve their full amount of STG 44s so what is historically accurate is a bit up to interpretation. The particular platoon in the Bloody Bucket Campaign had a Lieutenant armed with an MP40 instead of an STG 44 assault rifle. The fire group for the Bloody Bucket also had K98s instead of STG 44s. Both organizations have a Lieutenant who has a trio of rifle grenadiers to concentrate as a fire group or dole out as he saw fit.

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Operation Typhoon 1941 Game

Drew and I managed to play a one off game of Eastern Front Bolt Action. We had a lot of fun and good conversation while we rolled dice. We have a short battle report all written up which will be released soon. I was super excited to take the photo of the T-34/76 and Panzer III’s tank duel.

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Minis on the Painting Table

Inexplicably I haven’t done any anti-tank rifles for my Soviets. I have a pair of teams from Black Tree Designs but I didn’t like the metal AT rifles and I have plastic ones ready to replace them. They suffer from the white metal spear problem, bendy. I also had a Soviet sailor’s metal AT rifle’s barrel snap on me… so maybe I’m a bit jaded towards large caliber white metal rifles. This team is from the Warlord Plastic kit and they went together fairly well.

I finally got my Zis-3 and its gunner painted (Thanks to John’s gentle proding, haha). The rest of the Zis-3 crew is primed (after the photo was taken). I was dragging my feet as they needed mould lines cleaned up and I was feeling a bit burnt out on that particular task. But they are finally next on the paint line.

One of the other figures in the picture is a winter German crewman with binoculars and a rifle. The rifle needed a new sling so that was put off for a while until I broke out the green stuff and styrene for something else. And finally (which I am very excited for) is a BEF riflemen to do as a paint scheme test. More on that later!

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Overall I am very satisfied with how November went for hobby. Until next time!