Fist Full of Kung Fu: Yakuza

I am sorry that I haven't posted much recently but I have been a bit under the weather. I am on the mend now and I wanted to kick off with these- Dixon Miniatures Yakuza gangsters I painted up principally to play Fist Full of Kung Fu, but I can see these bad guys getting a lot of use for many settings, such as hired thugs for the Jade Oni in Pulp City or battling suave British intelligence officers in SpyFi 7TV.

I bought these cheep in a bargain bucket at the Wolverhampton wargaming show...£6 for all 8! It would have been rude not to buy them. They are fairly simple 'old fashioned' sculpts compared to the new ones by North Star (the official ones for Fist Full of Kung Fu) but then again they are £17.50 for 7, so I got a bargain. Wargames Foundry makes some nice ones too, but they are £12 for 6, so I still got a good deal- but I do like their sumo wrestler body guard!

My Yakuza are a bit more colourful than the traditional black suited bad guy, but that's because sometimes I like to go a bit bright to jolly my mood up a bit. I think the will look smart with my Kiss Kiss Bang Bang figures, and if I do any more I will use some of the Foundry or North star guys and do those in the sharp suits, and use these Dixon ones as street level thugs.

Gang Boss (Oyabun)

Couple of bad guys

Serious bad guy who likes knives. A lot.

Who brings a sword to a gun fight? These Guys. 

Burma 1943: Bolt Action Battle Report

My son Charlie and I managed to get a game of Bolt Action in during the holidays. We kept things simple, about 500 pts each. I took the Japanese Imperial Army- with a couple of regular infantry section and a section of veteran jungle fighters backed up with a sniper and a MMG. Charlie took the British Chindits, with two infantry sections, a MMG and a mortar (all veterans).

The plot was a Chindit patrol had located a Japanese supply dump in a small village in the depths of the Burmese jungle, well behind the Japanese lines. The supply dump seemed lightly guarded, and so the lieutenant in charge of the patrol ordered a surprise attack. Unfortunately for the Chindits, at the time of the attack there was a squad of jungle fighters and an experienced sniper team making their way through the jungle back to the village to resupply. 

The attack got off well for the chindits, as their Vickers MMG opened up on the Japanese MMG in a sandbag redoubt, catching them napping and killing one of the crew. The Japanese scrambled for cover, and the jungle fighters took up positions along the tree-line to cover the approaches to the village. 

Meanwhile the Chindits advanced towards the village, using their fire and manoeuvre training to effectively suppress the Japanese as they advanced. The Chindit 3" mortar zeroed in on the squad taking cover in the village house- it seems that bamboo and woven palm leaves don't provide much cover against mortar shells.

The Japanese Jungle Fighters tried to slow the Chindits down, but they were outnumbered, and soon they began to fall to the relentless and accurate fire of the Chindits. 

The Japanese sniper took out a Chindit NCO as his squad advanced into the clearing around the village, but his squad pressed on relentlessly, spraying fire from their tommy guns and rifles to suppress the Japanese soldiers in the village. 
The Chindit lieutenant spotted the sniper and made his way around the flank, using what cover he could, until he was close enough to charge the sniper. 

The Japanese, seeing their position desperate, fixed bayonets and with a cry of "Banzai" they bravely charged the Chindits. The Chindits opened fire, scything down three of them as they ran across the open ground, then met the Japanese bayonets with their own Kurkri and machetes. Two of the Chindits died, but in the end they wiped the Japanese out. 

The Japanese officer was cut down in a hail of bullets as he prepared to follow his fellow soldiers into the charge, earning himself a honourable warriors death.

The Japanese sniper team and the remnants of the Japanese MMG team melted back into the jungle, abandoning the supply dump. They Chindits took what they needed and could carry, and burned the rest, before carrying out a force march through the dense jungle to be well clear of any counter attacks the Japanese Imperial Army might mount. It had been a text book raid for the British: using surprise, overwhelming fire power and manoeuvrability to overcome a numerically superior enemy. The Chindits had just seven men killed or wounded, and the Japanese had lost a whole platoon.

If this battle report  lacks drama or seemed like a white wash for the Brits then you can blames Charlie's fantastic dice rolling, which saw him gunning down my soldiers with ease, while my own inept rolling was barely more than a minor irritation to his Chindits. Chindits, being all veterans, are a solid and reliable force, and their ability for fire and manoeuvre is very effective. 

All in all, a great battle...thanks Charlie. 

Burma: Imperial Japanese Army

As promised- my Bolt Action Imperial Japanese Army is now finished- so I have completed my Chindit and Japanese forces in 12 months- no mean feat, especially given that I have taken a great dislike to painting Japanese.

These models are a mix of Bolt Action (Warlord Games) and The Assault Group. I reserve a special dislike of the Bolt Action Figures, which I found to be poorly cast, difficult to assemble (they have separate heads- lord knows why) , and badly sculpted- except the Jungle fighters, which where OK.

I would like to add a few soldiers to bulk up the command sections, and one of the infantry sections needs an MG, but on the whole here it is complete. 

Artillery FOO and Radio operator

Snipers!

HMG Team

Jungle Fighters

Light Mortar

Burma: Japanese Support Weapons

Although it might seem a bit out of the blue, I have, for some time, been preparing to do a campaign set in Burma during World War 2. Most of the WW2 games I have seen are focused on Normandy, as if that was the sum total of WW2, but there were many other theatres of war. 

I picked Burma for a number of reasons. The first was pragmatic, because I was offered a chance to buy a lot of Chindits for next to nothing and I jumped at the chance because they were lovely models. I have to confess that when I bought them I had no idea what the Chindits even were. The more I read about the brave men who fought the Japanese in the jungles of Burma, the more I knew I wanted to honour them by painting a whole load of them. 

My Father-in-Law served in Burma, although as a RAF radio operator he was in the rear echelons  so was spared much of the hardship of the troops fighting in the jungle. Never the less, that personal connection with the campaign made me want to represent it even more.

Finally, I bought the Bolt Action rules, mostly to see if it would be any good for VBCW, and liked the look of the game. I have never really done a true historic wargame before, so I wanted to do it right- cue lots of reading around the topic and research- not least form the Ospray books. 

Now Mr Pulp Citizen, my regular gaming buddy, and I have always had an agreement we call "You paint it, and I will game it." meaning that if one of us is interested in a period or game, if we paint both sides in the conflict, then the other will game it. Now Pulp Citizen has little or no interest in historic gaming, WW2 or Burma, but in accordance to our agreement, he has consented to play the game when I get the figures  and scenery together. 

Here is a taster of the Japanese figures I have been painting, a MMG and a light mortar (or knee mortar to give it it's correct term). For the Japanese I will be using Bolt Action and West Wind. For the Chindist I will be using Wargames Foundry, Bolt Action and The Assault Group (TAG).