World Of Tanks Match Maker IS broken.

     I am not going to start this post whining about this or that with WOT match-making (MM) enough of that goes on in matches.  I do think that World of Tanks match making has some definite issues.  I  want to state that I am not a programer nor do I want to be, just the thought of that as a job makes my eyes water and my skin itch.

     I played a game recently and the opposing team had 13 tier X tanks or artillery.  They also had one tier VII tank and a tier VI scout.

    Our team  had 11 tier X tanks or artillery.  We also had 3 tier VII  tanks and one tier VI scout.

     Now I am going to rant a little bit about  the match maker.  My first question is, Was it national tier IX day off?  WOT MM could not have found some tier IXs?  I guess they keep important information like that from the tier VIIs,   I am sure the tier  IXs  are saying, "it is so fun to see the tier VIIs disappointed faces when they see all the tier Xs."   In all seriousness I am going to state this again, WOT MM could not find any tier IXs?  I know MM has come along way.  I know when I was first playing world of tanks, the MM was worse.  I just want it to get even better.

     Is this going to stop me from playing WOT, no.  Does it make certain matches less than enjoyable, yes it does. 

Thank You for reading.

Mike



    

World of Tanks Fail Team

I was playing this game on a wireless keyboard.  The batteries failed at the beginning of an assault game on Siegfried Line and I was defending.  As a side note, never trust a wireless keyboard.  I have taken care of that keyboard, it is now singing with the choir invisible.   So back to the main thrust of this story, I can only move my turret and fire my gun.  I am basically a pillbox sitting in the middle of the spawn point.  So here is the end plate, to be fair the the players on my team that scored higher did what they could, however there are many people on my team that were not so good.  It is sad that I got the third  highest score and I could not move an inch

Sometimes I hate this game.

Thank you for reading.

Mike

Drums at the Rapids

I have the pleasure of playing at this convention every year.  It takes place at Fort Meigs historical site.  It takes place in the visitors center.

Drums has a wide variety of games offered and it is pretty neat to look out the windows and look onto a Fort.  I am not going to post every photo I took, but here is a link to my set on Flickr dedicated to  this years Drums.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33016873@N06/sets/72157633532851732/

I played in two games, the first was a CY6 Jet Age game run by Dan Joyce.  It was India vs. Pakistan and I was on the Indian side.  Let us say that India did not do herself proud on that day.  Dan always puts on a great game.  I always play in his CY6 games.

The final game was a Black Powder Game run by Ted Bender.  It was a war of Spanish Succession, French vs. British.  All the figures were painted by Ted.  I am going to talk about Ted's ability to paint, it makes me sick.  He can paint a 16 man unit in about three hours, that is 13 minutes per figure. They are very well painted too and did I mention that it makes me sick.  In all seriousness it is great to play with such well painted figures.  He also does a lot of commission work .

Now everyone has a weakness, I mean Superman has Kryptonite and all.  Ted has a weakness too, it is dice, they are not his friend at all.  Ted has been known to destroy whole divisions with his poor dice rolling, never mind the divisions are his own. Up until this point, Teds dice were hot, I knew this could not keep up.  In fact in our group, we call poor dice rolling by anybody as "Ted Dice".  Here is an example of Ted's poor dice rolling.   Ted gave orders that his unit should move up and deploy in line.  Ted's first mistake was not to deploy in line and then advance, but I digress.  Ted's second mistake was that he assumed he would get two actions from his order dice roll.  He only received one command, so the unit advanced in column. The following photo is my subsequent turn, I charged into his infantry in column and he could not disengage.  That flanked crumpled in two more turns.  The British were victorious.

In closing if you are in Northwest Ohio in May, check out a great convention.

Thank you for reading and good gaming.


Mike

Khurasan Miniatures' 28mm Federal Army finally painted

Here are some photos of the finished miniatures.  I want to emphasis that I am an average painter at best and not very good at basing.  I also included a couple of photos for comparison of the GZG Japanese Mercenaries  and the Khurasan miniatures. There was a request for that.

Thank you for reading and good gaming.


Mike

Music to paint miniatures by.

I know on many occasions I have seen posts on various forums that ask these two questions, "What music do you listen to when you paint miniatures?"  The other question is, " Any suggestions on what music I should listen to?" 

I generally listen to martial music.  I have made several CDs, here are some of the pieces that are on my CDs

Panzerlied

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEIm3pe5wbA

Erika

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc-DgRO1SrQ

Garry Owen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaaBN4Mm0Ok

The above are on a WWII disc, I have several others, one for Napoleonic marches and another with American Civil War music.  I was painting to my WWII disc and it occured to me that I might be able to listen to more music than I have on these discs. 

I have free versions of Spotify .  I have it on my computer, Kindle and i-Phone. It is a downloadable program that has hundreds of thousands of musical pieces from Heavy Metal to Baroque. The other nice thing is that the artists receive royalties.  One has the capability to create radio stations by artist or song.  It occurred to me that I might have an endless supply of  martial music, I was right.  I do not know if anyone else uses Spotify this way, but I do now.

Thank You for Reading and good gameing.

Mike

Khurasan Miniatures' 28mm Federal Army

In a previous post I mentioned that our group was going to start a RPG campaign using Battlelords of the 23rd Century.  I was in need of some 28mm bad/good guys that I could use for the group to fight against.  The reason I stated bad/good, is that I get to play them as NPCs.  Hence the good and I am sure the group will not like them, so the bad reference.  I was looking for some specific attributes and even asked the question on The Miniature Page where I could find some miniatures that would fit my criteria.

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=302241

I got a lot of suggestions, but low and behold there was a article in the "Hobby News" on The Miniature Page and these miniatures were what I was looking for.

http://theminiaturespage.com/news/1572166703/

They are the Federal Army range produced by Khurasan miniatures.  I liked the poses, I liked the equipment and I especially liked the price.  So I ordered them the evening of May 1st and they arrived May 6th.  I was very pleased with the turn around.  I presume it is a very small company or even a one man show.  They were all well packed, virtually flash free and free of mold lines.  The only thing I had to do to prep them was a few guns had flash at the end of the muzzles and I had to trim a little flash off the base to let them stand flat.  I am glad, because prepping a miniature is one of the aspects of this hobby that I loathe.

They are now primed, sorry for the photo is not very good. I always prime in black.  The reason for this, I used to use white.  Of course when I was painting and then saw white where white should not be. Of course I missed a spot and I am sure you all have never done that.  Now if I miss a spot and black is showing, it looks like shadow.

  I did not realize that it was poor or I would have taken a better one.  It is too late now to take another photo, because I have given them their first coat of paint.

I will make periodic updates on the progress of the painting and basing.  I do not know how much painting I will get done in the next two weeks.  This week I am moving my Mother into different living arrangments.  And the next weekend I have to move my daughter back from her apartment at CMU.

Thank you for reading and good gaming.


Mike

Cosmographer 3

Our Gaming group, we generally play historical miniatures, is going start a RPG campaign in the fall. We all started out playing RPGs. I started out in 1976 playing D&D bought through the Sears and Roebuck catalog and progressed into a lot of different RPGs.   I went to Gencon and discovered historical gaming.  I guess I am going full circle.

  We are going to start a a Battlelords of the 23^rd Century campaign. It is a rather obscure game, but we have a lot of fun with it.  It has tons of weapons and armor, just right for the gaming group that takes a very direct way to solve an adventure.  I am not saying that they are not cerebral, but solving a problem with firepower is ultimately more satisfying for them.

 The real reason I am writing this entry is the product Cosomographer 3, which is an add on to the program Campaign Cartographer 3 (CC3). 

 I am going to be running this campaign.. The last time I ran a campaign, the only easy way to map out a ship or an area was with graph paper.  So I started looking around and I found both of the a fore mention products .  Let me tell you, goodbye graph-paper, ruler and pencil.  These are very powerful CAD programs.  In fact I think the learning curve would be way too large if I had not found these videos on YouTube.   

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6YZiP9vTmt8rEpraPEfrIg

 These videos are a how to guide on using all the software produced for CC3.  They are very easy to use and help immensely on bringing the learning curve down to a manageable level.  I have had the software for a week and I am producing, what I feel are pretty nice maps.  Of course there is a lot of room for improvement, but that will come in time.  Here are a couple of screen shots of two maps I have done.  The space ship took me less than thirty minutes.

CC3 has many add-ons for dungeons and so on.   I think that is a great addition to any RPG campaign.  As a side note, once that campaign starts I will give updates on occasion.  What they have blown up, body counts and if someone does something incredibly stupid.

Mike 

 

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A quick review of: Panzer Gunner: From My Native Canada to the German Osfront and Back. In Action with 25th Panzer Regiment, 7th Panzer Division 1944-45

  I bought this on my Kindle from Amazon's suggestions, you know you read this book and you might like this book.  The suggestions are generally right, which translates into me buying more books.  Though that it not such a bad thing  as I might not have read this book. I enjoyed it immensely. 
  
A short synopsis is that his parents were ethnic Germans that had settled in the Ukraine and then his family immigrated to Canada.  In the Author's early teens, his father wanted to be part of a greater Germany, the father listened to all the propaganda and wished to be part of the Third Reich.  So they immigrated to Germany in 1939   He then was drafted into the Heer in 1943.  He served with the 25th Panzer Regiment, 7th Panzer Division and was a gunner in both PzKw IVs and Jagdpanzer IVs.

 I am sure we have read about combat encounters and large/small unit actions before.  This book certainly deals with small tanks battles, which easily could be used for creating miniature scenarios.  though what I most liked was the day to day narratives.   He wrote about the process of being found fit for duty.  All of the training was fascinating too  One has read about boot camp experiences through the eyes of the GI, but this was the first book that I had read from a German soldier's perspective.  I do not want you to think that this book is not a combat narrative, because it is.  There were aspects of the German soldier that I now know more about because of this book.

I would highly recommend this book, especially the Kindle version.  It is $21 cheaper than the hardcover.  I always like a good deal especially when it involves a good book.

Mike

World of Tanks Leichttraktor

First of all I like this game and I play it way too much.  A friend of mine describes it as a TSA(Time Sucking Abyss), I think that is an apt description.  The only thing wrong with that description, is that it also so darn fun to play.  Here are a couple of end plates of a game I played with my Leichttraktor.  I have a lot of fun going back and playing  a tier I game and one can make a ton of credits too.  I was very pleased with this game.

Thanks for reading,

Mike