Hohenstaufen- 9th Reconnaissance Battalion Part I

Adepticon 2016 is right around the corner but due to some personal issues I have had to seriously scale back my participation  this year. This means  No Pirates, No Battle of Kursk , and even the Bolt Action Team Tourney is up in the air right now.  What is happening  for sure is, I will be there gaming Saturday and Sunday for the Bolt Action Nationals,  Hohenstaufen in hand.

Learning my lesson from my defeats at Operation Sting in the Fall and my success at the previous Adepticon  (where we went 2-1 in the team and I went  3-0 in the singles)  Its quite clear about what works well in Bolt Action and what doesn’t , One thing for sure that does not is a 400 point Tank hogging up all your points when most of the time is only  firing 8 MMG shots, which you can get from infantry for about 1/5 of the points…while it sure looked cool, playing it was a real bear.

Fast forward to my current list focusing on my other favorite WW2 force, Viktor Grabner’s, 9^th SS Recon Battalion. Who charged across the Bridge at Arnhem during Operation Market Garden, went down in a blaze of glory and accomplished what I think Grabner  really wanted out of that mission, That we are still talking about him over 70 years later in 2016 and what a huge pair of balls the guy had.  As the story goes, After reconing the British air landings between Arnhem and Nijmegen , Graber was informed of the British capturing the northern end of the Arhmen Bridge,  His unit had been recalled for a reorganizing of forces and a correlated counter attack. However,  Grabner  wanted to take that bridge back very badly, personally.   He cooked  up a plan that by regulation only “serviceable vehicles” had to report back to HQ, so he temporarily disabled   22 of his units best vehicles and sent the rest of force  back the where they were recalled.  Grabner  stayed behind with about half his force, and the following day at dawn quickly put his vehicles back in working order and led them across the Bridge into the famous firefight, in which they suffered a 50% casualty rate, and were forced to retreat,  Grabner losing his life in the exchange.

There is a lot of information on “Grabner’s last ride”, including records of  what all the 40  vehicles present in his unit where , so that is what I drew my list from,   My 1250 point list is  made up of 5 Vehicles , Including Grabner is his Captured British Humber MkIV , and 3 Motorbikes. The entire unit is mounted in vehicles and dismounted it comes to 32 foot models.  Considering the house rules for the Nationals even like Vehicles can still fire, once troops dismount, The force is even better that when I originally came up with it.

The photo above is my Panzer II Luchs and my Kradshutzen Squad of Bikers, , The Luchs is a Recce Vehicle , as well as Grabner’s Humber,  and the Bikers are a small outflanking squad.  Then there are three transports,  a standard Hanomag 251, my SdKfz 7 I made for last year's TT and my new 251/10 Command Half track which sports a Pak 36.  I’ll plenty of pictures up probably the week before Adepticon or earlier as I am in the finishing  stages of the other vehicles now and then have 10 infantry to detail and I am good to go. So I’ll be back for more on Grabner’s Last Ride  soon.

base10studios is Live!

While I actually have been working on various hobby stuff of late and still have quite a bit to do for my Bolt Action Germans for Adepticon (about 6 weeks out!) This took precedence for me. No surprise if you've followed the blog at all for the last decade now, I have a tremendous amount of "stuff" while I downsized considerably when I moved, I still have several closets of product I no longer particularly want or need and so base10studios was born.  when I say "live" in the title here, I boringly mean I started another blog (heh)

I'd be lying if I said my work situation the last couple years, has if anything, been less than ideal. It has certainly prevented me for doing alot of things I would like to do with the Hobby, But one thing I have had is success selling collectibles, both reselling things I've found that I know are worth money as well as selling my own painted models and then just things I never got around to, but bought on the whim that "I somehow thought I would".

As a result I thought I formalize the process, changed my ebay user ID to suit , started a wordpress blog to discuss things and use as front end for people who either dont want to use ebay. and then I started selling away. The first thing I am selling under the new moniker is my Warhammer collection. Specifically my huge (4000 something points at last count in 8th ed rules) Empire Army, a lot of notable pieces are already gone but there are like 25 listings happening and more coming.

I wont just be selling old miniatures here but new items I am painting just for sale in certain markets
and occasionally rules, terrain, other things of mine that I've found or just decided to let go.

I''m not doing commission painting, just think of this as venue to for selling my own work.

So please if you have any interest take a look at the first couple posts and my current ebay auctions
and please follow the blog, even if to recommend it to someone. Its not ideal that I'm using my hobby to help "pay the bills" but the time is right and I am having fun moving alot of this stuff.

Things here wont really change, other than I hope to post alot more this year, base10studios is really just about what I am selling and talking about what I am selling at thats it. No need to clutter up thing here with that.

Well, that's whats up, Ill be back soon with some shots of my German Kradschutzen Motorcycle Squad, a fiddly, total  pain in the ass, I almost bailed on a couple time but in the end they are in my Adepticon Nationals list.