Kerching!

A quick one this; I painted up a unit of Italian infantry over the weekend; made up from various oddments in my collection of plastics.

Simple enough chaps with a neat but basic black wash technique. 35 models in total.

Sold within hours of going on ebay to a regular client for £35. Pretty satisfied with that.

Especially as there is another unit, this time US infantry in the Pacific, in the pipeline.

If this does show anything though (other than, look I sell stuff!), it's that you can take up this hobby fairly cheaply. One box of the Waterloo 1815 Italian light artillery, married with a pack or two of their Italian infantry (I'd suggest one each of the Folgore and El Alamein sets) for example will provide enough pieces for a couple of battalions of Rapid Fire troops, plus support. Enough to get an army started for about £12.

Of course there are plenty of options when you go down such routes; and your chosen rules may have an influence. But in these days of excellent plastic figures, and wargame specific models for a few quid each. There is no reason why you can't assemble a small army of 20mm WW2 models - perhaps a hundred infantry and two to four tanks - for the price of one box of Games Workshop* plastics. It's not as if the free rules aren't out there, and there is no need to paint anything at first; or ever in the case of some gamers ;-)

In short, this little project got me thinking. Maybe it should you too?

*Other overpriced fantasy gaming companies exist, and they could all be tarred with this same brush.

1812 – The Bluecoats are Coming.

Next off the press is a unit of American infantry for the War of 1812. This s only a small unit, intended for skirmish gaming and so they aren’t based in multiples and don’t contain the more obvious command luxuries.

The unit is the 17th US regular infantry, who saw service in Ohio on the shores of Lake Erie. The information on the uniforms came from the excellent Blandford Press ‘The United States Infantry – An Illustrated History 1775-1918’, which features loads of information and of course illustrations.

The figures are of course the Perry plastics, but to take on the role of American troops they needed a number of modifications. Firstly their packs all needed amending. I cut off the blanket rolls and re-cut the straps across the tops of the packs; then the rest was a simple repaint to represent the blue cover over the blanket. The Shakos were basically the same as the Peninsular War pattern, but are always featured lace, which the Perry’s do not. This was a simple fix however, using thread and superglue to construct. The biggest job however was the work to create and officer from the spare sergeant; lots of trimming to avoid belt straps leading nowhere.

Slightly out of focus there, but you get the idea.

The painting took a fair while too, the variety of details were interesting but meant that every time you thought you were finished there was a bit more to add. Of note are the very dark coats of the regiment, achieved by over-brushing deep blue over pure black.

So now there are opponents for the riflemen; and next up, aside from an actual game with them, is this little group of figures; with a very particular role to fulfil.

60th Royal American

"When Wellesley landed in Portugal in 1808 5/60th was the first unit ashore at Montego Bay and at the start it was brigaded with the 95th to form a brigade of Riflemen. Wellesley`s standing orders laid down that these two units should always form the vanguard when the army moved. The rifle battalions fought in this formation at the opening battles of Obidos and Rolicabut shortly afterwards the Light Brigade was re-formed and Wellesley ordered the 60th in the 3rd Division to provide a company to cover each of the other brigades of his force. It was in this role that they fought the remaining battles of the Peninsula campaign, sixteen of whose names appear on the 60th list of battle honours."

From: Origins, History and Campaigns of the 60th Rifles

So, this is my first unit of Napoleonic troops*. The 60th Royal American Rifles. The uniform is based on contemporary illustrations reproduced in various books, and was painted as they would have appeared after a period of time on campaign; i.e. somewhat worn.

The Dark green is German Camouflage Green in the Vallejo range; the unit was issued deep blue overalls, but often resorted to the local brown cloth when wear and tear made items unusable. Note all the little details, which I'm quite pleased with, the regimental no on the knapsacks, the silver buttons, water canteens and so on. Fiddly, but worth it.

The models are the excellent Perry plastics, though with only two poses and ten figures I felt it necessary to produce a command element. The left over bits from my American Civil war troops came in very handy here, providing the parts for a bugler and a cavalry sabre for the Lieutenant; now who would that be reminiscent of? Lt. Blunt here would certainly not know!

One fiddly aspect of adding the weapons was the switching of the rifles to the other hand, a job that required some careful trimming and a neat glue job. Definitely one for syringe based glue applicators. In doing this though, I've noticed the hand on the bugle is absolutely gargantuan. Some sort of mutation, not up to perry standards, tut tut ;-)

So what is up next? Well I hope to be able to do some little skirmish games to build up the inertia towards bigger battles in the future. To that end I've divided the rest of two boxes of Perry British into three units; two will be regular British line infantry units of 24 models. The rest of the figures? Here's a preview of what some of them will look like:

*Actually, back in about 1986 I painted a Battalion of Portuguese infantry, as the start of a Peninsula war army; and also at that time the finish. My painting skills as a spoddy teenager, who should have been going out drinking cider and chasing girls instead, were not upto the task; and they ended up being rather charitably bought by someone on a bring and buy stall.

The lake war of 1812

Somewhere on Lake Erie the two forces made headway towards one another...



Actually it was at the Leeds Nightowls; My original game fell through, but as I'd brought a backup plan, we gave the Trafalgar rules an airing.

I quickly knocked up a couple of small fleets, though this is not a speedy task of course when you have to copy out the profile sheets by hand. A small American fleet of 250 points would face a similarly sized British fleet. Broadly speaking the forces were:

America: a 5th Rate Frigate, a Ship-Sloop and an overgunned Brig

Britain: two 6th Rate Frigates and a Cutter

Ross, my opponent, took command of the British; whilst, the day after Independance day I led the American fleet. I sent out my light ships ahead, knowing they had pound for pound more firepower than any one of his frigates. I hoped to lure at least on ship into a trap. As with any game based on warfare of this type though, the wind had the biggest influence on our manouevres.

My brig was able to move behind and savagely rake the enemy cutter with fire, ending it's involvement in the battle. My Sloop however was unable to slow the Frigate on its' own and instead found itself boarded. The short boarding action saw the Royal Navy capture the ship; but choose to leave it uncrewed so they could focus both their vessels on my larger frigate. My Brig came under fire from the trailing frigate and was soon also out of action. I had to commit my flagship therefore, and in a brutal exchange it left one Frigate burning.

Commander Ross decided to concentrate on fighting me rather than the fire and paid the price, when his frigate's powder room (rolled a one on the blaze table and) exploded. The ruins of the ship were no longer a fighting force; had he fought the fire the ship would have been saved.

His other vessel now found that wind and inertia took it away from the fight, and so the battle ended. On the grounds that I could at least retrieve my sloop, I was considered the victor, though it was a bloody victory for sure.

As to the rules, well, they are simplistic, but they are also fast and pretty clearly written, sailing is realistic enough, though shooting seems too generous and brutal at times. This game was followed up by a second one featuring the Americans against Barbary pirates (though not featuring any photos); so we managed two games, with beginner players in four hours. What's more the rules seemed to turn several members of the club onto the period. No bad thing.

Incidentally, as nice as real models would be, I think the 'Pirates' card models look absolutely fine for this sort of game. As their a cheap way of playing too - especially as the club had a box of twenty or so ships in the bottom of a store cupboard!

Final Dwarves

Yep, these are the very last unit I will ever paint for my Warhammer Dwarf army. And that I am rather happy about. It's a unit of Iron Breakers, made entirely of classic metal miniatures sourced from eBay. Some of those chaps are twenty years old!
Lots of great character, though I'm a little disappointed with how the shields came out, not my best work; but as I'm glad to be finished with them, they'll do!

Also I had a Bloodbowl figure from some joblot or other, whom with the addition of a (rather crude) axe, became a Demonslayer, should I ever fell the need to field one of them.

Lastly, for today, a sneak preview of my next project. Can you tell what it is yet? Suffice to say the painting versus buying totals took a big hit recently...

Pickett's Charge Reversed

So I finally got to put my ACW troops to some service a week or so ago; getting myself into the regular monthly Civil War game at Leeds Nightowls.

The rules used were Fire and Fury, which under the guidance of Mark (the clubs de-facto historical gaming numero-uno) seemed pretty straight forward, giving a balance between simple mechanics and command and control nuances.

As the title suggests, the scenario was based on Picketts Charge at Gettysburg; but due to figure ratio's and such like, we had the Union as the ones on the attack instead. Here we can see some of the Confederacy on a slight rise behind lines of abatis.

The layout was actually tiny. Rather too small to my mind, but then I'm used to big tables, and in a busy club environment you get what you can. Still 4'x4' meant that the entire field of battle was packed with troops, my boys taking up the left flank of the attack.

So myself and a young guy called Tom, on my right, set out to achieve what the Confederates historically could not. A tall order I think. We had only 5 turns in which to get across and remove the South from the hill; and so we set off at a breakneck pace, buoyed up by our ignorance of the rules and the belief that so many of our troops being identified as elite must help.

Here Neil, our opposing commander, consults with Mark on the situation as the Union weathers his variable artillery fire to advance:

Somehow, My flank avoided the slaughterous fire of the Napoleons and reached the abatis intact; from there we prepared the enemy with fire for the assault.

In the distance, despite horrific losses, Toms men were still closing with the enemy, and feeling outclassed at range in big guns, Tom was even attempting an 'Artillery Charge' with his token battery; he was determined to get it to canister range!

In the photo above it's literally 'Blue on Blue' fire, there were too few confederate models so we improvised!

Within three turns we were both managing to assault the flanks of the enemy position, and we both managed to hold parts of the hill momentarily. But nowhere could we make the critical penetration; the enemy were too well supported to be moved. For my men, some of them had begun to waver, a regiment can be seen quitting the field below:

And so the attack began to run out of steam; the Confederates began to get cocky and started advancing off the hill, impatient for some action of their own. Tom's artillery charge resulted in one rushed firing of canister before the battery was overrun by greycoats. On my flank the Texans began to enfilade my lines, making my position untenable, and beginning a fighting withdrawal. Neil had every right to a small grin at our expense; his losses were negligible, whilst we had suffered casualties in excess of a third of our men.

All in all a great little game; whilst the American Civil War may only remain a 'side project' for me, the rules made this historical refight excellent fun, and the sight of 300 or so painted figures crammed onto a little table was most pleasant.

Here's to the next one!

June painting totals

Well, I’ve pretty much reached a stage of having painted everything I had to hand modelwise. I don’t know whether I’m happy about that either, as I will end up kicking my heels without painting to do, or worse, spend money I haven’t got – except in paypal.

The latest items to be completed though are two more units of Union infantry; the 5^th Maine, and the 16^th New York in their characteristic straw boaters.

I’m glad I re-did the hats in the end, as they look both a lot more like the one photograph I found of them wearing the hat, and they ultimately look much nicer on the models. In general compared to the first two units I painted, these figures are more accurate in terms of how their kit is prepared, with grey or blue covered canteens, brass plates and for the 5^th at least, darker uniforms.

So the brigade as it looks now, a tidy little army!

After these I knocked up another unit for my Dogs of War. I managed to get some old Empire plastic spearmen off eBay last summer, though they were not in a great state, they were only about a fiver.

I had to remove their shields and find a way to extend the spears into pikes. The varied thicknesses of the extensions looked horrible so I added the ribbons to the pikes to mask the join. I also had to fill numerous bits of damage to the shield arms, and in one case pretty much rebuild a figure in order to make up the numbers. Only the standard bearer was stock, he looks suspiciously like the army’s paymaster too.

Maybe he’s his twin brother. Anyway, the results are pleasing given the condition of the models.

So the running totals for the year so far are thus:

Bought: 14

Sold: 0

Painted: 134

The problem is I have only around 40 figures left to paint, and many of those I neither need to add to armies, or care to paint.

What next then?

Post rant fallout

Well, I've had several responses to my post about the LWC; I've put them all up as I consider it only fair that it be a balanced argument. I'm not looking to make any enemies here, but I would contend, unlike one of the respondents, that I am entitled to my opinion, in public if I so wish it, as that is the point of the blog.

I also accept that what was written in one sitting, based on the experience of a couple of recent visits is probably not representative of the club over a long period of time. I did go overboard, but I still hold to my own opinions; which I did express rather excessively. I also recognise not everyone will agree with them; clearly most of the LWC are perfectly happy with their club. It would seem I should try visiting one of their Sunday games which sound like they'd be more to my expectations.

Still I hope that my post has got both sides thinking, and that is never a bad thing, is it?

As for insulting club members; well yes that certainly could be taken personally. But the 'American Football' fan observation is one you can see at most any gaming club, I've been to 5 different wargames clubs in the last few years and there was at least a couple in each one... Still it was a bit overboard. To that end I've chosen to remove the specific paragraph.

War is back, and this time it's waargh!

It wasn’t my first game of the year, but the dubious honour of that went to an encounter with Epic Armageddon which was so one sided it was really only an opportunity for me to take my models out of their box briefly before putting most of them away immediately. So my second game of the year with another opponent is what I discuss today.

And a little gem of a game it was too; 40k using my Orks, against a nice young chap called IIRC George and his beautifully painted Tyranids.

It was a close run thing too. I tossed a coin and went for the heavy armour choice of my two army lists. With a Battlewagon, Warbike, Warbuggies, Killa Kans, Nobz, and lots of Boyz. As it turned out, the Tyranids didn’t seem to have any heavy firepower, being geared up instead for close assault. So in a rarity, my Battlewagon rolled around with impunity all game.

Elsewhere I got the drop on the Tyranids very early on, and George later admitted to thinking it was all over. Several of his smaller units were wiped out with ease. But then his big stuff got embroiled in the assaults; my luck seemed to fail at this stage, whilst his rallied, In particular a Hive Tyrant – called Mr Gribbley – survived four turns, eventually routing two units of Orks, despite suffering around ten wounds per turn, it saved all but one!

So after two turns I was up, after four it was fairly even, but when his reserves arrived the gig was soon up. I had no available reserves capable of stopping them seizing their objective. Whilst my reserve – the Nobz – were deadly effective, but simply too far away.

So when it ended I had lost, but it was a darned close run thing, I occupied his objective, though he could contest it; but he had secured mine. It was a great little game though, in which the report was not really important. Here’s to a few more like that.

Elsewhere in the club - The Thursday night one this time, in Leeds - it was a very busy night, with about 8 games of 40k going, along with some Warmachine, Bloodbowl, boardgames and DBMM ancients. Lots of lovely looking 15mm ancients in implausibly perfect lines marching towards one another over geometrically orderly terrain.

In many respects the complete antithesis to games of Warhammer/40k. Though that is no bad thing.

Apologies for the rant, but...

This is not what a wargames club should be like is it?

I’ve been to one of my local gaming clubs a couple of times since getting back to the Bradford/Leeds area. I have to be honest; it is not inspiring. One of my old mates goes there regularly, so I don’t see me not going, simply as that is where I can get a game against him. But really, the point of a wargames club, should be to put on wargames; shouldn’t it?

Maybe I’ve been spoilt by the club I used to go to all those years ago, the Grimsby club, I guess the fundamental influence on my gaming. It was not the sort to put on display games, prior to blogging, I doubt it was even that well known; but it was the sort that had high quality scenery, painted figures only on table, and a preference for easy going games that got as many figures on table as was reasonable.

So what is wrong with what they’re doing in Leeds?

Nothing, I guess; if what you want is sports games, out the box system, board games and the like. To me, a Tour De France board game with paper models does in no way make me want to grab the dice, or paint brushes and get joining in. That was the focal point of gaming on Wednesday night; other than that there was an American Football game with a handful of cribbage pins on a board, with all the visual appeal of a 1970’s accounts book, A board game with wooden blocks for pieces (and with two habitual rule quibblers playing, a little tedious to watch), and a game of Warhammer 40k – which at least had nicely painted models, but still had tired old scenery, and attracted no interest from anyone but me.

OK, I have high expectations; true, but the club scene can be a little frustrating to say the least. I don’t see why clubs Like the Leeds Wargames Club, who run a major wargame show for crying out loud, can have such a low opinion of actually having decent games on; it’s as if they’ve convinced themselves that it is impossible to do so in an evening; in fact, I’ve heard as much said in the club. Yet in the past I and others have tried to put on grand games there, with plenty on table and the offer to involve others. Usually to no avail.

I’ve nothing against club games, but in a wargame club, shouldn’t they be, you know ‘War’ games; there’s a board game society in Leeds already, two so far as I know. It’s not a time thing either, as the other main club in Leeds runs for shorter hours on a Thursday and yet its’ members see no problem with playing proper games. Ultimately I think it’s an issue of effort, and who directs it, and in this club in particular those who direct it would rather play quick to set up, low commitment games rather than anything that requires putting brush to figure.

I can level different criticisms at the Nightowls (Thursday club), a place where unpainted figures, fantasy and overly competitive games rule the day, but at least they are wargames; which is what I’m really after! And they are much easier to communicate with too.

So is this a rant with no point, well not entirely; a warning, or a challenge if you will. If you go to a club, or if you want to set on up. Consider how it looks to people; is it welcoming, is there a centrepiece game going on that will make people think ‘cool’? You are very, very unlikely to have people who’ve never played a wargame before come through the door, so if you are going to win someone over nothing beats, welcoming attitudes and a table of glorious scenery with masses of figures.

It’s only my opinion, but I think the point of a club should be for it to offer what you can’t get at home; and that may seem to be just opponents, but for most gamers in this day and age, it is also, the visual impact. Most people can’t build great scenery at home, so a club is the one place they ought to be able to do so. They shouldn’t have to make do with a bit of green chipboard and some scraps of felt; or just be offered a game with cardboard cut outs.