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...

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.

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...

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.

Napoleonic Progress

It has been a productive week or so painting Napoleonics. The intention to finish my 6mm Baccus Austrians has slipped a bit as I have been tempted to just 'test' a few 15mm Prussians that I bought at Salute.

The first of the 6mm Austrian Cavalry - Dragoons

The 6mm Austrian cavalry has been started - it makes a nice change after 5 infantry regiments. Prussian cavalry and infantry on 15mm were also 'tested' and I was quite pleased with the results.

15mm Prussian cavalry - command figures are from Warmodelling and the troopers from Black Hat. On the right is the first stand of Prussian line in greatcoat from Lancashire Games. I'm trying to decide how I want to base this army.

What I was less pleased with were the Warmodelling figures I bought from Stonewall Figures at the Legionary show. Notwithstanding the fact that I accidently bought three packs of command figures instead of troopers the quality was very poor. As you can see from the pictures below one of the two packs had a figure missing and both packs had badly crushed horses.

Brent figures and one rider figure missing

Bases and legs bent at almost 90 degrees and difficult to straighten

I have already painted some of the other pack as a command for the dragoons shown above. The horses however were so badly bent at the legs that even with the best and most careful  of straightening they still looked as though they had a really bad case of rickets! Luckily I had a few spare Old Glory horses to replace them with.

On the painting table I have some Old Glory Landeswehr Cavalry and some more 6mm Austrian dragoons.

On the painting desk tonight - 11 May 2015

Time to paint

Having awoken before 6am yesterday and not being able to go back to sleep, I did something I've not done in ages. I went into the Bunker and did some painting. In fact I did a fair amount of painting; trying to finish off some if those figures and units that have been gathering dust whilst waiting for a few finishing touches.

You know how it is. A new book, film, podcast, rule set or enthusiast at the club means a new project. Current projects are pushed aside; older projects get put so far aside that they are offside and abandoned projects get relegated back to storage boxes. This 6mm AH-1 helicopter for Vietnam is for one of the latest projects. It is from Heroics & Ros.

Iain Dickie visited last weekend and commented that I seem to have three painting tables. Not so. One is for painting, one is for preparation and the other is for basing and finishing. You'd think that the former editor of Miniature Wargames would have cast his experienced eye over this and known immediately what the set up was. But no! All he did was spot the 'secret army' figures I'd carelessly left out half painted.

For several years thee of us at DDWG (Devizes & District Wargames Group) have been painting 10mm Qin Chinese for a Warmaster Ancients game against the Bournemouth-based Purbeck Brotherhood of Ancients (my old club from when I was first starting Wargaming). A 'secret army' as we wanted it to come a complete surprise to our would be opponents who have a huge collection of armies to choose from.

Then, about 18 months back, Iain announced at a competition that he was starting his next army - The Qin! He said that he just had to build an army that included cavalry called the Wo Hoo. The three slow working painters of Qin rolled their eyes and gave an inscrutable smile.

Our intentions of putting a spurt on lasted briefly. Iain finished his Qin and was losing battles before the paint had dried on our little men. I still have at least a dozen units to paint - about 360 infantry figures. Will has his 4 horse chariot units and generals to paint and Steve...well he took a diversion and painted a whole Korean army from the Warmaster Medieval book before finishing more than three units if Qin.

It's amazing how complicated painting can get when you simply need to make the time.