...More soon(ish)

OK, it was a race against time but the 90+ Italian Wars Venetian Condottieri army was completed in the proverbial nick. Of time that is, not the police station.

I have always wanted a Condottieri army and have had the figures for a 15mm army stashed away since buying them in Rome about 12 years ago. Imagine how surprised I was when my wife and I stumbled on a wargames shop when on holiday there!

Nevertheless for the l'Arte de la Guerre competition I had entered at Beachhead Show last year I needed a 25mm/28mm army. I had stupidly enntered the competition before finding out what the period was going to be and then found myself committed to a competition for which I had no suitable army in the scale. 

I still needed to finish a 15mm Classical Indian army for a competition in Oxford on 9 January. Undanunted, I decided that it was possible to get a whole army in the 4 weeks after Oxford.  For this project I was fortunate that I already had about 8 boxes of Perry's Wars of the Roses plastics that I was originally going to use for what it said on the box. 

That was towards the end of November 2021 and with a birthday and Christmas ahead I was able to do a bit of planning with the gift list. Stradiots and spare Italian heads  duly arrived and put in the painting queue to start as soon as the Indians were finished.

I made a start with a couple of stands of knights and kitbashed a stand of LC Crossbow from the Mercenaries and Light Cavalry box.

Perry's knights and some light cavalry crossbow

Starting the pikes

Slowly gathering in strength

First pike block completed apart from the basing. Lovely flags found on eBay from Pete's Flags

This is a 1stCorps Italian Wars Command group - well the standard bearer. I used another of Pete's Flags rather than the one supplied. The barding is a transfer - I was almost successful with this but the 6th and last section split.

My three command bases.

And that is it ready for the Beachhead Competition in Bournemouth.

 Happy New Year

I'm not doing very well at this blogging lark. It seems my last post was in 2019. A lot has happened since then but it really is no excuse for somebody who spends much of his time writing for a living; or maybe that is the problem. Too much writing and too little painting and gaming.

In summary, 2019 saw the continued growth of my 6mm Vietnam project and also in 20mm with the inspired idea on the run up to my birthday (a bit before Christmas) in that if I asked everybody who is usually kind enough to buy me a present to consult a list of desired items it would stop the usual donation of something that I'd never use and be destined for the charity shop some months or years later. So my decision was for a 20mm US Vietnam Fire Support base from Grubby Tanks.

Gate defences of Fire Support Base

VC Sappers approach the wire - you'll just have to imagine it is after dark!

VC Advance

I have enough base defences to make a FSB about 3'x3' and quite a lot of buildings for inside the base and villages outside. Razor wire is another matter, however. 

I did run a weekend game using an unofficial varient of Chain of Command rules: Chain of Command DMZ

 We ran two games over the weekend - one was the standard 'downed helicopter' and rescue the aircrew before the VC/NVA could get to them and the second was an infiltration to an unfriendly district in search for a senior NVA officer who was rumoured to be in the area. This has a sub-plot of the officer having been cut off during a US air attack on a village and the officer having to make it across the table without being seen and killed. This was done by hidden movement and me acting as an umpire for both games.

My 6mm output continued and we even had a US company level game at the club one Sunday. We used the rule set From the Delta to the DMZ with great results. We knew we got some things wrong and will rectify that at some future point.

Not part of the company level game but a small skirmish I set up on another occasion. All 6mm from Irregular Miniatures or Ros Heroics

February 2020 saw my last l'Arte de la Guerre competition game until Novemner 2021 due the Covid pandemic. I had quickly cobbled together a Sicilian Norman army and got stopped on each game as my medium elite knoghts were just no match for the heavier metal being fielded. It was a good fun weekend in Plymouth enhanced by a friend of mine from Chicago was able to meet me down there. Beer, rugby, curry and gaming made for a memorable weekend.

l'Arte de la Guerre v4 was released in 2021 and my armies keep expanding in size as well as nations. The lockdowns meant I had more time to paint as I was not leaving the house for work. I have been fortunate to work right through the various lockdowns and the extra time saved travelling meant I could paint up extra units and finish some armies off so I had more choice and start on some new ones.

Palmyrans have been expanded, Ghaznavids have appreared in 15mm form and 28mm Classical Indians have doubled in size so I really do have choices and not just the army I took to Warfare in 2018. 

Irregular Miniatures 28mm 4 horse heavy chariot. There was no proto on the website which is a shame as this is a really nice model.

Heavy Chariots and more bowmen and swordsmen added to the Classical Indians. 

The expansion of the Indians was to compete at a small competition in the Devon seaside town of Brixham. Not somewhere I had been in about 50 years but I won't be leaving it that long again - not that I have 50 years left of life anyway! The Devonian Seaside Classic was organised by Tim Porter aka the Mad Axeman. It was a great weekend away and not a complete disaster for my Indians and a surprising 36 competitors who came from London, the Midlands, across the SW and one player from Finland!

In preparation for the weekend a fellow club member had asked for a practice game (a form of cheating in my opinion) but I obliged on the understanding that I would have to subsitute figures as he only plays in 15mm and my Indians are all 25/28mm.  Hittite chariots, Ghaznavid cavalry, Sumerians and a few actual Indians came together to provide an opposition to Hannibal's Carthaginians. 

I won't bore you with the game details but my Indians had an incredible run of luck at jus the right moment and won the day. 2 weeks later another friend wished to practice with his Late Romans so he came to the club and faced off the Carthaginians - but not for long and his army was broken in enough time for him to have a second game against my Indians. Another wind for the Indians, so guess who has been building another Classical Indian Army? The first competitive outing will be in Oxford on 15 Jan 2022.

My next painting adventure is for a l'Arte de la Guerre competition in Bournemouth over the weekend of 12/13 February 2022. It allows for any army post 1071 AD until the end of the rules period. Having learned my lesson in Plymouth about Heavy Knights I have just started prepping an Italian Condottieri Ventian army. All I need to do is paint 2 figures a day - it's 3 January and I am already 3 days behind on the painting schedule. However, I have managed to assemble the Perry's plastics I will use for most of the army. Fortunately I have box loads of them for an abandoned Wars of the Roses project.

I hate sticking these togther! More metal to come in the post to complete the list.

I may be 3 days behind on the painting but all these are now undercoated and ready to go and I even found some painted bowman that I can use so maybe I have caught up with the painting with that find?

More soon...

Companies based

Today I had a catch-up morning to flock and base a number of figures that have been finished for some time; 28mm ancient Indians, 15mm Middle Imperial Romans, 28mm Normans and the first two companies of 6mm Americans for my Vietnam project.

Two companies of US infantry for Vietnam

The next company is nearly finished and will be ready for basing soon. I have also completed some civilians and made a start on some M113s and mortar teams. The PBRs in the background are almost finished too. All figures are from Irregular Miniatures.

I love the smell of Bostick in the evening

After another day caring for my 90 year old dad, I am having an hour to myself to get a stalled project back on line.
If all the stalled projects were put in line I dare say I would have had enough money to buy a week's holiday in the sun; not that I have had the time or opportunity for a holiday in the sun for ages.
The project that I wish to get moving on is for the Vietnam War.
Being a wargames butterfly - no that is the wrong image completely - more of a Death Head Month being drawn to the light, I have had an idea at the back of my mind for a long time. It has involved painting Vietnam figures in three different scales - 6mm, 10mm and 20mm. And of course no army is yet finished.
So today, the Bostick, magnetic sheets and mdf bases have come out and progress is being made.

All figures have come from Irregular Miniatures 6mm Vietnam range. They are robust figures cast onto a base that is of an irregular shape. They don't have the detail of some makes but at 36" away it makes little or no difference.
After some consideration I have decided to use half size Flames of War bases, mostly as it makes storage so much easier. It has meant a fair bit of trimming of the metal bases.
Despite the decision to use the FoW type bases it is not my intention to play the Battlefront 'Nam rules. In fact I have been collecting Vietnam rules for decades and each has its own merits. However I have certainly not found anything that is a one size fits all - or more to the point three sizes fits none that can be used for them all.
I have more in mind a series of campaign style games where different activities or types of action may be played in any of the three scales I have. 20mm for small scale skirmishes, 10mm for company actions and 6mm for much larger games.
Recently I discovered Tacspeil - The American Army's wargaming rules for the Vietnam War 1966. This book is published by John Curry and the History of Wargaming Project.

The rules themselves are complex and not ideal for my purposes but they are rich in information that can be adopted for a simpler campaign system.

One of the joys of rummaging around the Irregular website was the discovery of PBRs in 6mm. I have bought several to go with my Amphimods brown water navy vessels. This gives me the chance for a true tri-service campaign that I can put on the tabletop.

I am making steady progress and will provide updates soon.

Attack! 2018 is coming soon - 21/22 July

Napoleonic weekend in Devizes

Making woods for wargames

I recently decided to spend a bit of time making woods for my 15mm l'Arte de la Guerre games in a new way. I have seen many variations on the theme and decided to have a go myself.
I set the following up as a pdf but cannot find a way of including that on here so have converted the three pages to hires png files.

Godendag the return

I was looking to test some new video software and decided to use some of the photos I took at Godendag.

Godendag 2018 - Veni, Vedi...er, um...

Godendag 2018 was another exceptional weekend at Firestorm Games. There were several competitions running - l'Arte de la Guerre, DBM, Mortum et Glorium and FoG Renaissance.

My partner in crime for l'Arte de la Guerre doubles competitions is Ralph Ashdown and once again we (OK mostly me) decided that a new army to be finished the day before the competition was just what was needed.

Palmyrans, as mentioned in an earlier post, would be the army of choice for the weekend. Not having anything to fit in with the designated competition period a new army would be required. After all, why use Ralph's Macedonians that are already painted and ready to go when you can buy a paint a completely new army in under a month? Practice games - that's almost cheating!

So I turned up (complete with a speeding fine on the six lane wide Newport Road into Cardiff  - that is allegedly 30mph limit - I must have missed that change due to the high degree of concentration needed to navigate due to most of the road signs not having many vowels in them), and proceeded to put the troops on the table and play.

Palmyran cataphracts and light cavalry advance on the enemy

The first game was against Warring States Chinese. We came second but did a reasonable amount of damage to our opponents before they broke our army. Unfortunately I neglected to take many photos.

Palmyrans against Warring States Chinese - the eventual winners of the competition.

Our second game was against a Late Imperial Roman - we knew something strange was happening when we actually won. Huzzah our first win in our second year of the competition. Next year we are going for two wins.

Cataphracts face off the Late Roman Cavalry

My Saturday evening was spent in the company of the Midlands contingent celebrating Mark Clarke's half century that was looming on the next day. The l'AdlG umpire had arranged a surprise presentation of gifts and cake and a less than tuneful rendition of 'Happy Birthday' by the competitors.

Even a cake was provided on Sunday after the first game with gifts and a song

A birthday gift from Tercio Desperrates

Game 3 on Sunday morning found us facing Southern States Chinese. Heavy chariots and lots of infantry with 2HCW. The whole game hinged around the field in the centre of the table neatly positioned by our opponent. We diced to move/remove it got a 5 so moved it into our deployment area. Just right. They then diced also got a 5 and put it back where they originally had it - right in our way. Even our attempt to narrow the table with a waterway didn't help as the Chinese were boxed up tight on their left flank.

That wretched field

Game 4 saw us facing a Patrician Roman (the army of choice for  a lots of players over the weekend) and the inimitable Tim Porter. Tim and his partner had not been having a good weekend with three losses and all to play for in the last game. Lack of terrain and poor positioning of our troops led to our rapid downfall.

Tim Porter prays to the dice gods for anything but a one

Tim Porter's detailed account of our last game. Opinions are his own!

We had some outstanding die rolls on our right flank and were wearing the Romans down but they outnumbered us and the rest of the battle was already lost.

Overall it was a really good weekend with four interesting games and friendly opponents. We are already planning for next year.

Another New Year and painting resolutions

There is nothing quite like a deadline to focus the mind when it comes to painting a new army. The trouble is I seem to have four on the go at once. Nevertheless, Godendag is looming at the end of January so a new 300 point 15mm army for l'Arte de la Guerre in needed at the double.

Over the Christmas break I have managed to paint six stands of cataphracts and two of light cavalry towards a new Palmyran army. All figures are from Irregular Miniatures.

Hopefully the rest of the army will arrive in the post this week, leaving me around three weeks to paint the other 24 stands plus generals needed.

One interesting thing I uncovered at my parent's home today was an old press cutting from the Evening Echo (Bournemouth) dated 29 June 1974. Hard to believe that after 44+ years I'm still painting figures.

I hope I am still painting figures for another 44!
Happy New Year

Six months is nothing...

Ok, so I must try harder at this. It seems to have been 17 months this time and so much has been going on. New armies, new rules and some painting - but not as much as I would like,

In terms of new rules i have started playing l'Arte de la Guerre ancients/medieval rules. Armies have been re-based, new armies built and competitions entered and mostly lost. I am enjoying the rules though and find I now have armies in both 15mm and 25/28mm.

Early Imperial Roman commanders to lead my first ADLG army

The Early Imperial Romans didn't do too well in their first outing at Thormbury in Bristol during August 2016.

As I will never play War & Conquest nor WAB the long term Republican Roman Army project is being turned into a new ADLG army. First outing was at a 100 point competition back in Thornbury in August 2017.

Oh dear! Is it really six months?

As someone who mostly writes for a living I am not doing too well at writing my own blog.

I suppose it is a case of so much to do and so little time. Since my last post things have gone fairly slowly on the painting front but buying models and terrain pieces has progressed steadily and thus increasing my personal lead mountain.

I have however gone small - 6mm is making inroads into The Bunker. There has always been 6mm or 1/300 lurking in quiet corners. Last year I 'finished' - yes finished my 6mm Prussian Napoleonic army for Polemos rules. I say 'finished' as I took one look at all I had painted and decided that more cavalry was needed..maybe some more Landwehr? Definitely more officers and artillery and that box of Austrians could do with some attention too. I bought more Prussians and made good progress with the Austrians and then came to a halt about November time.

20mm Valiant WWII had become a priority for some Chain of Command games and a box of 60+ Germans took the field with British infantry close on their jackbooted heels. Americans next.

For Christmas I left subtle hints by making shopping lists of wargames items and leaving them around. It was an unnerving time on Christmas day as presents were revealed and nothing on my lists had appeared - note to self more lists and weblinks next year. However, the last present was on my list a copy of the Team Yankee rules. I was particularly keen to look at these.

Team Yankee was a book about a WWIII scenario set in the early 1980s, written by Harold Coyle. I was lucky to meet Harold Coyle (or HW as a prefence) in 2004 when I went to the Seven Year's War convention in South Bend Indiana and played in his game.  I subsequently bought and read the novel Team Yankee.

Reading the rules over the Christmas break made me realise that Battlefront had made some smashing figures and models but in the wrong scale to my way of thinking. I've never liked the close packed tank formations of Flames of War and although Team Yankee is based on FOW but some different mechanisms the look and feel of the games are similar.

So last weekend I went to Salute and played a game of 15mm Team Yankee - it was quick and fun - but I also picked up the Sabre Squadron rules for modern warfare. I have yet to play these but they have come highly  recommended. I already have Cold War Commander and others have mentioned Fistful of Tows as a good modern set of rules.

So whilst considering which direction I will go in with rules I have been building up 6mm Russian, US and Chinese forces for the 1980s using models from Heroics & Ros and Scotia.

 Today I printed out the Sabre Squadron supplement 'Seven Days to the Rhine' that I bought as a pdf. There are 138 pages of company level organisation for the Warsaw Pact in the 1980s. Yet more reading and more to write about soon...

A SAGA of beginners luck!

It has come to that time of year when the DDWG is once more scheduled to elect or re-elect the committee for the 2015/16 year. The AGM is rarely more than 45 minutes but it means that gaming time will be short; on the plus side my good friend for over 40 years, Paul Martin, will be there for the meeting.
Paul lives in North Dorset and is one of DDWG's affiliate members (a discounted rate for living over 20 mile from Devizes) and only come to the club on the occasional Sunday. The gaming is usually preceded by a curry and it makes a great opportunity to catch up. Yesterday was no different; curry and gaming but what to play?
Not having played SAGA for some time I decided to dust off my Vikings and Normans for a couple of hours of fun. I have almost finished the new huts and fences for my Dark Age village so they made a first outing to the table top.

My Dark Age village is a mix of mdf buildings from a number of manufacturers and scratch built buildings. Wattle fences are from Renadra

Paul opted to use Vikings so I had the Normans and had worked out two matching forces of 6 pts each: 1 general, 1 unit of 4 Hearthguard, 3 units of 8 warriors and one unit of 12 strong Levy bow each.

The fearless Normans deployed for the Viking onslaught

The  Viking raiders prepare their advance

Paul took the initiative and advanced into the village pushing his Thrall bowmen to the fore. The Normans had a fortunate first roll of their Saga dice and managed to fire double their normal range with an ability that killed two of the Thralls facing them. After that it all went downhill for the Normans!

A nice view of the scratch-built huts - maybe the Normans would have been better off hiding in them?

It should not be that difficult to roll high numbers on a D6...but it was yesterday. As for Paul who had brought what he laughingly calls his 'lucky dice' as he normally has dreadful die rolls; well he couldn't throw much below a four for the whole game.
Two Norman units melted away in two moves leaving just four Saga Dice for the Normans to use. The Viking luck held and although two units were down to one man they managed to keep out the way and therefore retain the Saga dice needed to keep the Viking steam-roller coming forward.

Erik the Pink (illegitimate son of Erik the Red and Snow White) leads his unit of Bondi forward to smash the Norman cavalry. The Viking ship grave in the background would not be needed for this game!

It was a fun game and even though the Norman general issued a personal challenge to the Viking leader, deployed as many abilities as he could with four Saga dice he died horribly to the Viking axe.

As it was only Paul's second game of Saga in two years it was a worthy win...or beginners luck? And that is how Sagas are made.

DDWG Chain of Command weekend

Today is day 2 of the DDWG Chain of Command weekend. At the end of a hard fought Day 1 the British had won a minor victory by achieving their objective. We had to break through the German defences and get at least a section off the German side of the table (at the top of the photo).

The White blobs are smoke laid by he British 2" mortars to block the Germans' line of sight. The red round poker chips are the British jump of points and the blue ones are the German jump off points.

The White poker chips in the centre of the picture covering the woods and fields mark the barrage laid down by German off table heavy mortars. These caused considerable damage to B platoon, pinning them for several phases and killing the Company Commander - lots of bad things happened as a result.

A Platoon was to the right of the road and came on as a our reserves once the Germans had committed troops to capture the right hand jump off point. They then continued to push troops into that flank whilst our 

C platoon pushed forward on a left flank Attack on the weaker German flank - most of whom couldn't see much due to our accurate deployment of smoke.

Today the table has moved such that the British advance will start amongst the fields and over the river bridge towards a German held village. 

We have been having a lot of fun with this set of rules.

God Save the King.

Exploring l'Arte de la Guerre

Last Sunday I played a new(ish) set of rules called l'Arte de la Guerre for ancient and medieval games. Figures are based as per FOG/DBM so I could also use my 10mm Warmaster Armies to play these rules.

However, for this first game I played using my 15mm Khwarizmian (some are over 20 years old!) against Paul's Sassanids.

The terrain system is quite straightforward and as I was to be the attacker  I had the chance of moving some pieces or removing them totally depending on a die roll. We drew deployment maps before setting out our troops. This is done by placing one corps (you split your army between three corps) at a time with the defender placing the first and then the attacker and so on.

To find out what would happen within this rule set my tactics were basic and simple: advance, shoot and charge. That was about it other than the rout after the first three! Well not with all troops. Charging the Sasssanid elephant is not really the sensible option in most rules but I managed a shot before I closed to attack and I managed to pin it for a second round of melee when I managed to kill it. Fortunately the elephant randomly rampaged through adjacent Sassanids rather than my cavalry.

It was a bloody and relatively quick game all to be lost or won hanging on one melee - the victor would win as we were both within two points of breaking our opponent. I came second! The game was great fun and can be played on a relatively small table so contact is quick. A second game is planned for a few weeks time but using 28mm figures.

Unfortunately I did not take any photos but the official web page is here  http://www.artdelaguerre.fr/en/index.php

There are some video guides on YouTube that give a good insight to the game  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZGlPFIv4g8

It's this weekend - Attack! 2015. 18-19 July

We are looking forward to an exciting weekend running our annual club show Attack!
With over 30 traders, 15 participation games and six competitions there is something for everyone.

Siborne's Waterloo diorama

If you read the June 2015 issue of Miniature Wargames there is an interesting article on the Waterloo diorama created by Captain William Siborne at the Royal Armories in Leeds.

This article and some of the photos in it took me back over 40 years and reminded me of the generosity of a lady who lived in the same village as I did.

I lived in a north Dorset village called Pimperne and there was to be a village event one day called 'Pimperne can do it'. Friends of my mother convinced me to take part and give a demonstration of making jewellery - something that had become a lucrative sideline and addition to my pocket money allowance. I dutifully did as I was told - despite being 16 years old.

My display showed the various stages of polishing stones and making mounts and I was quite pleased with how it looked between the cake-makers, button-makers, wood carvers and any number of people who were demonstrating their hobbies. I was caught out when a local man who knew of my military modelling interests asked where my models were? I ended up running home and bringing some back,

The models generated more interest than the jewellery and I ended up on the front page of the local paper holding a model Polish Lancer in 54mm from Airfix. However, a lady who had recently retired to the village with her husband asked me lots of questions about my hobbies and the next day arrived at my parent's home with a box.

The box contained her father's mineral collection - he had been a geologist and worked around the world. It was a great addition to my own collection as I once had aspirations of being a geologist myself. However there was a smaller box too.

The smaller box contained four lovely looking French Napoleonic figures about 25mm scale - 1" from sole of foot to top of the head and they are based on thin brass sheet.

The four figures that I have had for over 40 years were old when I got them

The lady, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, told me that she had inherited the figures from her grandfather and all she knew was that they had come from a large diorama of Waterloo that was displayed at an exhibition. Could these figures have come from Siborne's display? Maybe we will never know but the similarity is certainly there.

Advance of the Austrian cavalry

It has been a busy work week - four evening meetings and Friday night out with friends for dinner, so painting has been slow.
I've caught up a bit this weekend and finished off a couple of units of cuirassier that I had started and finished two units of hussars from scratch.

The foremost unit CR2 is from Adler Miniature and everything else from Baccus

I have been working my way though the Baccus Miniatures Austrian Napoleonic starter army but found I had an old unit of Adler Miniatures cuirassier that I had never finished. Not sure why I had these as my Adler armies are Napoleonic French and Bavarian.

As you can see from the picture above the Adler figures are quite a lot larger than the Baccus. I like both makes but don't think they sit well together in the same army.

Austrian hussar regiment no7 to the front

I have another two units of hussars to paint but need to buy more dragoons and cuirassier at some stage. So next will be more hussars before returning to the infantry.

One for the woad...

Not Napoleonic but I umpired a great game of Warmaster Ancients at the Devizes club yesterday. It was an Ancient British civil war using 10mm Pendraken and Magister Millitum figures.

Neglecting the small guys...

Yesterday I met up with the recently retired Will for a quick coffee in town. We talked about the forthcoming Waterloo game the club has planned to help commemorate the 200th Anniversary of the famous battle. They intend to use the Age of Eagles rules, a spin off from Fire and Fury.

Will is furiously painting his Prussians for the game whilst I am taking my Prussian painting at a more leisurely pace because I am not going to be playing in the game. Whilst comparing notes on our progress, figures used and many details about uniforms and equipment, I looked to show Will a photo on my iPad and stumbled on a couple of shots I'd forgotten taking over Easter.

I have finished all my 6mm Baccus Napoleonic Prussians and based them up for Polemos rules; having finished them doesn't mean that I don't need more!

Anyway here are a couple of shots of the recently completed project.

The garden is looking good in the background!

Whilst talking about the 6mm figures we are working on - Will is building both French and Russian and I have French with Bavarian allies (Adler Miniatures), Prussians and I am currently painting 6mm Austrians when I am not getting sidetracked by 15mm Prussians and many other projects - the subject of rules raised it's head once again.

Rules are a very subjective matter. We have one club member who wants to change rules as soon as they are published regardless of if he has played them or not and others like me who are still looking for the Holy Grail of rules in each period. Polemos Napoleonics are OK and possibly we just need to play them more to get the best out of them? To me they seem a bit slow.

I mentioned to Will that I had been reading a bit about the Blucher rules by Sam Mustapha and found a video on YouTube that had piqued my curiousity.You can see the Blucher Introduction Battle Report Video here:

Will, however, surprised me by saying he already had them and fancied giving them a try with our 6mm armies. So we need to set a date to meet at the club one Sunday and set to. So watch this space for our own battle report in the not too distant future.