Blog Housekeeping

Sorry folks, due to infuriating amounts of spam of late, only posters with an ID will be able to post comments to the blog from now on. 

That generally shouldn't be an issue for most civilised people, but if I have to delete many more comments claiming in garbled english to find my least informative posts 'most clearly written and informational', and then trying to sneak adverts and dodgy links onto my blog; I may sack off comments entirely!

Proper posts will resume later...

Recon 2012 upcoming

This year, I'm not putting on a game at Recon.

Just as well really, I realised I'd double booked myself to some extent - I'm at a dubstep all nighter the evening before (desperate to be trendy, me!); so any game I might've put on would have been characterised by my being sleep deprived, grumpy and hungover.  At least.

Still I will probably stagger along at some stage to take snaps and indulge a little light shopping.  Besides, the various clubs I attend are well covered by games from Fiasco, so my efforts aren't needed.  Thankfully.

For all the details of the show, it's in the usual venue, see here:

http://www.wakefieldanddistrictwargames.co.uk/recon-show/

Remembrance Sunday

BREAK OF DAY IN THE TRENCHES

The darkness crumbles away. It is the same old Druid Time as ever. Only a live thing leaps my hand, A queer sardonic rat, As I pull the parapet's poppy To stick behind my ear. Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew Your cosmopolitan sympathies. Now you have touched this English hand You will do the same to a German Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure To cross the sleeping green between. It seems, odd thing, you grin as you pass Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes, Less chanced than you for life, Bonds to the whims of murder, Sprawled in the bowels of the earth, The torn fields of France. What do you see in our eyes At the shrieking iron and flame Hurl'd through still heavens? What quaver---what heart aghast? Poppies whose roots are in man's veins Drop, and are ever dropping, But mine in my ear is safe--- Just a little white with the dust.

Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918)

Saga - New Vikings

Don't you hate it when this happens?

I paint things to sell on eBay to fund most of my gaming projects; that plus selling on the stuff I don't want any more covers the expense of my hobby, which otherwise I'd have much less to spend on.

Unfortunately, there is always a possibility when you paint something, that you'll like them too much to sell.

Such is the case with this set of Vikings, ostensibly for Saga:

24 Gripping Beast plastic figures and one Foundry metal to lead them.  I used 25mm metal bases (AKA 2p pieces!) to ensure Saga was their first port of call, colour coded shields made sure each unit was easy to identified; lastly the bases were given a nice textured and grassed finish.

Obviously, the problem is now I don't want to sell them, their just so much nicer than my old models.

Thankfully, I should be able to sell my old figures for a reasonable sum.  Indeed I've already managed to get rid of 90 or so of them..  This just means I'll need to get rid of another 40 or so on top of the ones I still intend selling.

Warhammer - Orcs versus Dwarves

Well it seems an eternity ago, but I aught to at least post the photo's of my game of Warhammer Fantasy against Jason.

We played 4000 points, with my Orcs against Jason's Dwarves.  He surprised me by bringing... No artillery!  This meant my Giant might prove useful.

Initial deployments

 I had Skarsnik, in a unit of 80 goblins, and his sneaky tricks and traps kept nearly half of Jason's troops in reserve on the first turn.

As a result the Dwarven deployment was rather small:

Skarsnik's unit nearly outnumbered his whole initial force!

The Orcs and goblins as ever swept forward with the iron discipline that only mine ever seem to muster.  Except for my Chariots, who spent the entire game debating who had the fastest wagon, rather than testing them in battle!

My Giant actually made it into contact with the enemy, whilst my masses bottled in the Dwarves:

Hand of Gork was cast at one stage, and my Orcs were suddenly behind the Dwarven lines, rather catching them by surprise.  Similarly my Wolf Riders ducked around the Dwarven miners and lined up a flank charge.

The Dwarves weren't all passive, but they did have terrible luck, what should have been an easy charge on a unit of bows was hampered by two fanatics from another Goblin unit.  They ended up filling the gap and the Dwarves then had to close the door through them, resulting in 4d6 of Fanatic losses before the melee commenced!

In the centre a huge battle broke out with most of the Orc units attacking one of the remaining Dwarven units.  It held out for a couple of turns but couldn't weather the sheer volume of attacks it faced in the end.

By this stage Skarsnik had cleared his flank of beardies, the chariots had a drag race to prove who was fastest, and then stopped to argue the toss of who actually won, and the Giant was still hanging in there.

Heroically he made it to the last turn, but then tragically fell in combat, onto the Dwarves!  With this final act a handful of little men slunk off the field as darkenss fell, and the game ended.

The result on the table seemed pretty clear, but we ran up the victory points to check.  Although Jason scored about 1,000, I totted mine up to over 3,000 points - a thrashing in any terms.

A very one-sided game, in which all the luck ran for the Orcs and Goblins and virtually none for the Dwarves; but Jason is pretty much my favourite opponent for warhammer, so any game is a good game.

Besides, next time I'm sure he'll thrash me instead!

Normandy Firefight: 54mm Germans

Earlier in the year I got hold of a copy of Warwick Kinrade's skirmish rules, but other than reading them and thinking 'oh, these look like they might work' theye'd idled on a shelf.

However, Gaz at the club posted that he was in the process of painting some old Aifix 1/32nd scale British infantry, and wondered what he could do with them.  Which encouraged me to get the rules back out and think about painting some figures.

Not however wanting to use the slightly uninspiring Airfix figures myself, I looked around for alternatives.  Initially I toyed with using Dragon or Tamiya infantry kits, but I did feel for wargaming they would prove a little delicate, unless stored with the greatest of care and handled more delicately than I could expect of players.  Obviously on price and weight, metal miniatures were out; so it was back to plastic.

Fortunately, the toy soldier collector market in 1/32-35th scales is almost as vibrant as that for 1/72nd (20mm) and several specialists in the scale exist, who were completely new to me.

A little searching on the net, and some eBay action later, secured me a half pack of German infantry from Toy Soldiers of San Diego (TSSD):

What I liked about these models was the depth and dynamism of the models compared to the flat posing of most older toy soldiers.  My favourite being this chap and his ready standing pose:

The figures were well sculpted and cast in some sort of '3D' block mould - akin to the type Caesar Miniatures uses for it's 20mm plastic figures.  Sure at £1.50 each they were kind of expensive, about three times the price of Airfix models; but the jump in quality is surely worth it.

Painting at this scale led me to go for a super detailed style of my 28mm models.  Using up to 5 layers of highlighting.  To begin with I painted just half of the models:

There is you can see a little bending in a couple of the weapons, but this is after correction of worse.  Admittedly in soft plastic taken hot out of the moulds, the parts can set in unpleasant bends.  Dipping in hot water, straightening and then dipping in cold water is an effective remedial; but it has limits.

I like the overall look of the models, and their appearance is suitable for a wide period of time.  Although they wear jackboots, the rest of their uniform implying winter allows for use right to the end of the War.  I imaging they are intended for Stalingrad, but they would equally suit the Gothic Line, the Ardennes or Berlin.

Returning to the submachine gunner again, you can see how crisp the models are here, and how much detail can be put in to them.

It's all layering, except for the MP40, which had a black was added to lower the shine.  I rejected washes in general, as pooling at this scale would be a real issue...

These, despite being yet more Germans for WW2 - a topic I seem to perennially find myself painting in all manner of scales - were a great change of pace and style.

Now to get them on a table!

Board Game Victories

I've become quite adept of late at winning one of my favourite games, 7 Wonders, but a couple of weeks ago I racked up a couple of victories at other games.  First up was Ghost Stories, about which I've written before and noted the near impossibility of winning.  So naturally on my second try of the game, we won!

To be fair, we had tough choices to do so, having to decide to kill off one of the players (sorry James!) to ensure we could concentrate on what after was agreed to be a very weak incarnation of the lord of the undead.  Had we not let James die we'd have missed our chance, but I guess that's what makes it a lot like a film, comic or book, rather than a simple game.

Time allowed for another game and the one chosen was 'Chaos Marauders'.

This is a reprint of an old card game from Games Workshop's most creative period.  It has precious little to do with chaos - other than one namesake card - however, and is all about assembling your Orcish horde, and it's allies of beastmen, skaven and Chaos chaps.

Do so successfully and you can assemble a mighty array, but at any stage the other players can steal from your battle line or ravage one that is incomplete.

Anyway, like many games of it's period, before GW went all dark and gothic, it's good silly, skull-free fun.  After a few reverses, I suddenly found myself with three complete battle lines, which ended the game.

Counting up the victory points I'd four times as many as anyone else and more than the other three players combined.  Heh, heh, heh.

Chaos Marauders is now produced by Fantasy Flight Games, and well worth looking for.

First Victrix Spartans

Many readers will have assembled and painted some of these already by now, so I am not going to fully review the models.  Safe to say that they are in the Victrix style, with slightly more caricatured features and bold details than Perry or the former Immortal miniatures.  Personally I prefer these to the figures now made by Warlord Games:

Perhaps a little less dynamic, but undoubtedly attrective.  Painting wise it was mostly the usual, but I tried a wasy on the inside of the sheilds to speed up a fiddly area of the model, did it make a difference?  Not much really, but it felt easier...

The whole unit is 16 men, previously I've built units of 20-24 for my Spartans, but for Hail Caesar our default unit sizes have been 16's so this seems like the way to go.

It also made sense as a result to try basing them on 40mm square stands.  I like the results not least as it allowed me to stand back the front rank to reduce the overhang of the spears.

I think this should encourage me to finish the rest of the box.  With talk of a club campaign for this period I'm sure I can get plenty of use from these chaps.

The Action at Sabugal: 3 April 1811

So finally, after much delay I write about the engagement at Sabugal - as refought between myself James, and Martin as the fiendish French.  First of all a wide shot of the battlefield and the initial deployments of the French of Reyniers Division:

Reynier/Martin's orders were to delay any attack by Wellington across the river Coa, which was known to be fordable to their front.  He held the high ground in some force, but knew he only needed to buy time.

The orders for James, controlling Beckwith and Drummond's brigades, were to attack the rear of the enemy line simultaneously with the assault be Picton/myself across the river.  However, as in the actual battle, the weather resulted in an ill coordinated and badly placed attack by the British; Beckwith's brigade arrived alone and out of position in some fields below the wooded hills.

In the early mists only the rifle company identified targets, of a dispersed battalion of Leger, and a small firefight ensued.  At this stage the French seemed to see the attack as a minor diversion and initially were satisfied that their skirmishers could deal with the problem.  But when Drummond turned up with two more battallions and two squadrons of cavalry, he quite reasonably felt his flank was under considerable threat, and began to move both his infantry regiments and artillery to the left.

Even with Drummonds arrival the British were heavily outnumbered, and despite the weather they could have easily thrown the Allies back by exerting their full force against them.

The British began to advance across their front, hoping to catch the french before they were ready, but the cavalry failed to catch the French square on the edga of the woods off guard, and skirmishers held the infantry in the centre.  The French were no less confused, but managed to bring forward their cavalry, even if their guns seemed mired atop the hill.

In the woods, Martin - true to form - issued orders to throw the British back, but blundered (with an 11 - due to the fog) instead.  The result of the blunder saw them dash forward rashly, and although making contact with the thin red line, it delivered a savage volley at point blank range in the fog; splintering man and tree alike.  The British issued the hussar and bayonet finished the French resolve.

Elsewhere the British cavalry rashly approched the French cavalry, who outnmbered them somewhat.  Coming up short the French were able to counter charge and use their full force against only the Kings German Legion, destroying it as a fighting force.

At about this stage Picton finally arrived with the 3rd Division main force:

The Allied plan to this stage had worked, for having seen no other attack develop for an hour Reynier had assumed now that the flank attack was the main thrust, and had begun to move his other brigade to the left.  Some revision would be needed to block the larger frontal assault.

Covered by the French cavalry the line infantry attacked the Portuguese troops and sent them packing. But the Cavalry failed to achieve similar results and were not able to finish off the British.

Picton, either through difficulty with the river or reticence, failed to show any urgency in his attack, and the French were able reform, including bringing up their guns to a new position covering the woods and the river.  Beckwith and Drummond were less and less capable of delivering more than feints to the enemy.

After some loitering however, and with the weather finally dry and clear, the British marched up the hill and began to isolate the defenders, laying fire into their right flank.

This was enough to allow them to close and try to deliver the coup de grace.  The French on their part tried to bring reserves from the left.  The largest engagemet of the battle featuring three Allied battalions against one began for control of the main ridge and the route to the soft underbelly of the French army.

Viewed from the British lines the final situation was clear.  Limited success in the belated attack over the river had not secured enough of a hold on the ridge for Picton's force to brush aside Reynier.  Seeing that Beckwith and Drummond were spent fighting forces, the troops of the Left were being rapidly redployed to the right.  Although the French were bruised they were not knocked out.

And this the refight replicated the results of the historical engagement.  Although tactically indecisive, the French had bought enough time for themselves to allow an orderly withdrawal of the rest of the army, thus earning them a strategic victory.

The special rules made this game (see the previous post for details), plus the fact that Martin and James didn't know which engagement they were fighting until after the battle concluded.  I took the passive role of Picton, to allow for minimum interference, and he tried to adhere to that rather too literally to give the British a realistic prospect of a victory.  Even against better odds than history presented the British struggled.

Overall a great refight.  And one that's rekindled my interest in Napoleonics.

Anima - Black Sun Type 12 Hunter

As pretty as Anima Tactics models can be, they can be an absolute dog to build.  A couple of models have been lanquishing in the 'To Do' pile as a result.  I finally got around to building one, another undead automata for the Black Sun corporation.

This little sod has about 13 parts, and not one decent join amongst them!

Not even particularly suited to being pinned.  Just getting it to the state above took two hours of struggle.

Conversely, the painting was a breeze:

Spot the difference between the unpainted and the painted version?  The front right leg snapped off during the painting, proving how weak the joins were!  

The creature is clearly based on some form of bull or oxen, a nice change from the usual.  How it'll play in the rules will remain to be seen.