Buffalo Calf Road Woman and other mounted warriors, plus Trumpeter Salute report.

 I was pleasantly surprised to learn that one of my mounted plains warriors is a woman.  She looks pretty similar to a Cheyenne warrior called Buffalo Calf Road Woman.  Read more about her at the link.

I tried to paint Buffalo Calf Road Woman to match this image of her.

Although you can see that I didn't match the sketch precisely.

For the other warriors, I went with a bit of creativity inspired by best guess.  Don't imagine that these are based on any proper research!

This warrior was packaged as Crazy Horse, but I got a bit creative with the warpaint on both the horse and rider.

Last weekend, Arthur and I went to Trumpeter Salute, our local wargame convention.  We managed three sessions.  By coincidence, they all were variations on a WWII theme.  Lots of Nazi bashing!  

Our first session was Kevin's Eat Hitler game.  In a vain attempt to escape the Fuhrerbunker in 1945, Hitler and his closest companions managed to escape into the past in a time machine.  Unfortunately, it dropped them in the time of the dinosaurs, resulting in a competition by several Tyrannosaurus Rexes to 'eat Hitler'.  Here is Adolph with Eva, Blondie and co, emerging from their time machine.

Ultimately, Arthur's Rex was the most successful in running down the Hitlerites.  He managed to chomp Hitler, Eva, Blondie and a few more, far more Nazis than any of his competitors.

On Saturday afternoon, Arthur and I hosted a WWII Special Operations game.  Using a heavily modified version of Osprey Games' Black Ops, the scenario saw several competing bands of Italian Partisans attempting to rescue a scientist from the Nazis.  Or possibly abduct him, depending on your perspective.  The partisans acting cooperatively until the German guards were defeated, then promptly turned on each other!  The scenario was based on the playtest game from a few months ago.  The scientist is being held at the villa.  The Top Secret cow was again made available, but again the players didn't take the bait.

Brothers Brian and Corey took the communist Brigate Garibaldi and the competing communist Bandiera Rossi.  Here the smoke markers represent noise that the partisans made attempting to sneak up on the villa.  Needless to say, the alarm was raised!

Here, the republican Brigate Giustizia e Libertà (Justice and Freedom) and the monarchist/catholic Brigate Fiamma Verdi partisans cooperate to defeat the Germans inside the barracks on the left.

Inside the villa, there is a bloodbath on the second floor as the two communist brigades battle the German guards and 'rescue' the scientist.

Bandiera Rossi escape the villa, as the German reinforcements arrive to eliminate the other partisan groups.

Our last game was Sam's Weird War Two game, where Arthur and I took the Germans, defending against a Red Army attack.  The Reds attacked ferociously, with their conventional forces of infantry, T-34 tanks and self propelled assault guns supported by microwave tanks and combat engineers with power armour.  Just as it looked like the Red Army was about to overwhelm the Nazi defenders, we activated our secret force, reanimating our dead as a zombie force. Sorry for no photos!  It was a near run thing, but the Germans were just barely able to stop the Soviet onslaught. 

To wrap up, Bella Caio, amici!