40K terrain - stage one

Personally I'm 99% sure I'm selling up my Warhammer 40k collection; at the weekend I retrieved it from storage and looking at the amount of unfinished stuff and associated clutter just filled me with despair. The first act was to pass the terrain from my collection on to the club.

Independently of that though I had been given some of the recent terrain sets to assemble as I saw fit, and prepare for the club. Potentially an onerous task, but the models went together well and you can't argue with them for a sense of scale:

The larger ruin is fully 30cm tall, whilst the almost intact building is more than 15x20cm in footprint. The smaller building moreover was built from a mix of spare panels and walkways.

Both importantly will block lines of sight, which in the present rules are a major problem. Any line of sight allows a unit/figure to be targeted, and there is no area terrain for visibility. So solid walls are good.

The plan next is to paint these with the minimum of fuss; so the club is paying for a nice can of black spray paint; over that I'm thinking some blue and metallic dry-brushing, some dust and job done...

Up on ebay now:

OK, so after considerable delay and a fair bit of inactivity on the blog and gaming front (haven't even painted a thing this month so far) I've finally got as far as banging my little BE W@W army on eBay.

At the time of writing the blog entry you I can't add a link to the blog for it directly; but you can look up the seller dean_AKI_UK and it should be there if you are interested in them.

Normal service, may be resumed soon, I have a contract, and some club painting to be getting on with, and a game (gasp) of Napoleon arranged for next week...

[Update - They sold to a regular customer within the day!]

Into the Maelstrom

So our little trip to Maelstrom games proved pretty successful, the site itself is about as easy to find as any anonymous shop in the middle of a business park has any right to be, and after a few last minute wrong turns and several chances to see the same roundabout from many interesting angles, we finally arrived.

Thanks to plenty of space, and a huge leaf taken out of the Games Workshop book of presentation, the site was airy and comfortable; with a large shop on the ground floor and a total of ten 12x4 foot gaming tables upstairs. Along with a licensed bar; get in.

As for the actual games on, well at first it seemed pretty quiet, though there was a painting club along too (I wasn’t hugely impressed by their work to be honest, a lot of it was done solely with army painter techniques, and to my mind that does not constitute a high level of painting technique!). We came personally for the Blackpowder demonstration, but this had already begun once we finally arrived. However we were assured there would be a second round in the afternoon, so it was a case of waiting.

Main Gaming Room

Some silly fools were playing Warhammer English Civil War, but you know, it takes all sorts to make a world. Perhaps they enjoy it, but having read the rules and considered them in the context of the period, I was unconvinced by them. Warhammer was never an ideal choice for that period.

Warmaster, by another name, and highly modified however, it seems; is. Blackpowder is based in the Warmaster game engine, but with a lot of changes. The core of the rules are very simple however, easy enough to pick up within a very short period of time.

Neil and Gav (2nd and 3rd on left) watch the earlier demonstration

The game was again English Civil War, with a simple scenario played lengthways down the table. The reason for this mainly being that as initially designed a four foot wide table really is too small for the rules. Units may move up to three times during the turn, dependent on their command roll, and this can mean that infantry move up to 36 inches in one go, cavalry 54 inches. One limit is that regardless of the result, the unit can only move and act as far as your stated orders set out. So if you tell it to advance to keep the line it will not go any further even if it’s move allows it to.

Shooting was straightforward, and so too with morale. Once a certain number of casualties are caused on a unit they have to make a test, modified by said number of casualties. The higher the result the better.; though both sides showed a proclivity for rolling low and having units quit the field after a handful of losses (except for my gloriously brave forlorn hope, which saw off two thirds of the royalist cavalry – 6 units, on it’s own more or less).

The Parliament lines stop the massed Cavalry (apologies for the rubbish camera phone photo's)

Overall Blackpowder aims to produce a fast and fluid game, with a minimum of record keeping and a style of play that favours refights and scenarios over competition play. I must admit to being impressed, and I think I will be buying a copy at some point soon.

As for Maelstrom’s set up, well I can heartily recommend a visit to that too. The gaming is good and the shop is even better, just don’t take too much money with you!

(Personally, I only spent £15, but that’s another story…)

In praise of the 'Daddy'

Compared to my rant about 40k the other month, of Warhammer I can only say, "Oh, how do I love thee, let me count the ways..."

Possibly a bit overwrought, but by comparison to 40k, it remains a peach of a game. Not least as it works well across all sizes of game, and makes a much better fist of applying tactical doctrines.


Like all wargames, it isn't perfect of course, and as with it's Sci-Fi bast**d (and I use that in the truest sense) offspring, it can suffer from endless rule tinkering and an arms race special rule mentality. But the core of the system is far more predictable and the armies are not nearly so unbalanced; they can be made to be, but also it is easy to exercise some restraint. Play a 40k Space Marine army and you are already bringing a gun to a knife fight!

Last week I had a small 500 point game against a fun little Dwarf army, for example. The dwarf copter ruined any chance I had of a win, but at no point did it feel like it was robbing me of the joy of a game. To be fair, when you mainly play Dogs of War, losing is second nature.

I just know in a 40k context, it would have firstly took twice as long to play out, secondly involved endless rule book referrals, and thirdly, felt utterly joyless - to me anyway. With Warhammer, I at least know the rules well, even if I regularly transpose WAB rules to WFB, and vice-versa, and there are elements of each turn that involve both players, helping keep you involved.

As an aside, there is a lot more activity in terms of painting in our club with WFB armies. And I do like a nicely painted force, whether to play against or just photograph.

An attractive little 500 point Empire army above, and two shots of elements from a Beasts of Chaos army below.



So the up shot of this musing? Well I think at least one of my two remaining 40k armies is for the chop, which remains to be seen, but not for the first time in the last twenty years I've fallen out of love with that particular game, and it may be time to let them find a natural home.

And I suppose the space it would free up would at least allow me to get my other two WFB armies out of storage...

It's that 'BE' Feeling Again

Definitely my favourite set of rules at present, it's been a long time since I've played a game so frequently. A couple of weeks back it was a match up against Marks Germans. Another river crossing thanks to a random choice of tables.

The Germans had limited resources on table, whilst my Americans lined up in force on the launch point.

Nearby Bob and Steve clashed with Brits and Germans too. A radio controlled Tiger tank harasses a Die-Cast Churchill tank...

Marks Germans are done with the 'Army Painter' shading system; and it certainly produces reasonable results easily enough:

As for the game itself, well the Germans in the village proved impossible to extract, but their limited reserves allowed the Americans time to do some damage. However the restraint the American armour showed compromised any real chance of winning.

The German Brumbaer tank flattered to deceive with a short ranged and weak gun and only average armour, it looked a lot more fearsome than it was, both Shermans could have taken it in short order.

The other trump card Mark had was a Henschel 139 ground attack aircraft, but in three turns on table it managed only to kill two men and made a very poor account of itself. Mark's best weapon was his mortar which did modest, but well targeted work all evening.

And that was enough to stop the American attack and secure a Phyrric victory of sorts.

February Pledge

As mentioned, I've not painted in quite a while (though tonight may be a quiet one so who knows), but my out put for February was a good high volume, thanks to choices of easy or small subject matter.

The ACW figure have already appeared on the blog, and they were followed by a commission job for a club member: The 92nd highlanders in 15mm:

Lots of base coat and highlight to give them some depth, but not at the expense of a long paint job; I think they look really nice.

The only other product for the month was a fairly ambitious one; a full 1500 point Battlefield Evolution - World @ War Russian army, complete with armour.

The biggest beef with this lot was the terrible difficulty I had getting the acrylic paint to adhere to the Italieri infantry; even after a soaking in soapy water they fought long and hard. Some needed three coats of paint. Next time I'll spray undercoat first (not black though, unsuitable).

The tanks and the rest of the infantry are Pegasus Hobbies models and delightful stuff. The tanks are supposedly easy-build wargames models, but with thirty parts each are in fact very realistic little models. The running gear in particular is nicely done.

So in total I scored 86 painting points for the month. Well over the target of sixty, but it'll have to be to compensate for the fact I've not even bothered to start a project this month.

Still, it's a marathon, not a sprint.

Quick updates

The blog has been ticking over on old posts of late, with very little current news. Those who know me on a more personal level will have a good idea why, suffice to say real life has been getting in the way of toy soldiery in an often pleasing fashion.

As a consequence I haven't so much as put brush to paint in the last week, an eternity for me. However after a Shaky start Pledge targets were met for February, though mostly on commission and sales work. More details at the weekend.

In other news, myself and a few of the lads from the Club are going to drive down to the 'Eye of the Storm' in Nottingham for the BlackPowder gaming day on 13th March, anyone interested can find out more from their website:

http://www.maelstromgames.co.uk/

Click on the Events Forum.

Given I will have had maybe four hours sleep before driving down it should be a fine day of Red Bull consumption, fatigue-skewed humour and bad dice rolling. I'll be the skinny guy dressed like a new raver in a lurid orange t-shirt...

40K - Some days I just wonder, why?...

Having not played Warhammer 40k since last summer, and wanting to get a little practice in for a tourney (I committed myself rather rashly to) in April. I’ve arranged a couple of games of it in the last two week.

Increasingly I find 40k a frustrating experience.

I like the way the core of the rules work now, yes they are cartoony, and simplistic compared to other games, but they function reasonably well at a basic level; there is nothing wrong with the core rules. The problem is the armies.


And it is a problem that GW doesn’t seem to be able to resist making worse. Every army in the game has to have a vast set of special rules to make it distinctive. To be fair it is a problem common to Warhammer Fantasy too, and most fantasy wargames in general; but 40k seems to take it to extremes.

This is bad enough when the rules are army wide, as most of my Ork army rules are, a player knows that they operate differently to most other armies, but at least in a consistent way. The situation is even worse when it is different for every unit in the game, and different from one very similar army to the next.


My two recent games for example were against a vanilla Space Marine army and a Space Wolf themed SM army. Ostensibly the same troops, and in the first game I knew what to expect. The game was a tough slog to a draw against an enemy that has been written to always have the upper hand.

But in the second smaller game against Space Wolves, nothing was familiar, every time I did anything my opponent was having to refer to some or other special rule buried in his army list. This slowed the game down no end, and so a 1000 point match only reached turn four in three hours. In fact based on the scenario conditions I won, but it was without any pleasure, being less of a case of moving things around and rolling dice and more of referring to rulebooks and arguing the toss of definitions.


It’s this that puts me off the game. If the armies were less ridiculously tuned I’d find it easier to trot through game or two on a regular basis, but it is like I have to re learn the entire game every time I play it.


I know that any amount of learning the core rules will make little difference, if I play in this tournament I’m going to face super tuned and beardy armies, that I probably don’t know at all; and spend half my time asking what the other guy is doing and the other half being stuffed by what the other guy is doing!

To be honest, that is one of the reasons I prefer simpler games, and historical games. They don’t depend on having the latest release to out play the enemy, or the smartest selection of special kit or characters. They depend on tactics and a bit of luck.

More Rescued Rubbish

Whenever I have a need to break from painting figures, I have a rummage through the club terrain boxes, find some discarded piece of junk and turn it back in to great terrain. Going in to the darkest recesses of the club stores, I found a bunch of cardboard and balsa models that I was assured were over thirty years old. Most of them looked it but at least one was salvageable.

In its original form it was simply a flocked model with a square of balsa walls. Of course thirty years of daylight had left the flock faded out and balsa form was simplistic. With a handful of terrain scraps and a new base I was able to modify the model enough to give it a more believable shape. I then sanded the new base and painted the lot, flock and all.



With a unit of Parliamentarian foot for scale one can see that the building itself, which needed no real work, is a little small, but the impression is nonetheless right. A 12-15mm scale farm, suitable for battlefields from about 1600 to 1900.

About the same time, one of the members brought in a stockpile of old 20mm Airfix tanks and model railway buildings. After I sent him home with the rare polystyrene tanks that were worth enough to sell on, I rummaged through the box for some useful bits. The result was, with a little rescaling and a lot of repainting, a German munitions factory, suitable for games of Flames of War, or any other 15mm modern setting.



Notably, I used the texture of the hardboard wooden base to my advantage, to give the effect of cobblestones. Rather a small area of the base was textured as grass, and some areas of paving were added. The doors were recalled to suit 15mm models a little more. The German sign is not ‘true’ German, though apparently the language bit of my brain remembered enough to cobble together something that broadly means something factory related!

At nearly a foot square, it makes for a grand little centrepiece to a game, I hope.

First New Jersey

There was always a fear that I would start expanding my tidy little American Civil War army in to a larger project. I’ve said already on the blog that it wasn’t the plan, but being a wargamer these things tend to happen, and lo, not long after I declared the project concluded, I was traded some union troops for painting services.

The figures as a result will form the start of a second brigade, one I can pick at as and when I get tired of Napoleonics or WW2.

These models are part of the Foundry range so I understand, you can tell from the style of the castings and the fact that only the heads are different on the poses. The models provided were eight each of three poses plus a drummer and a spare rifleman in a different pose. Fiddling around with them I found that this set up looked most plausible – a unit at the ready in two ranks.



Another oddity is the headgear, The troops wear what was known as a ‘Havelock’; in essence a Kepi with a neck cover, styled after British uniform worn in India – doubtless a practical piece of headgear in the hot summers of Virginia, but how common they really were in the field is another matter. Still they help make the unit distinctive.

I have a handful more models which will make some skirmishers, but now feel that another artillery piece would be useful. Sigh…