...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.

Napoleonic weekend in Devizes

Godendag the return

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

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

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.

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 Prussians in 15mm - the scale of the problem

It sometimes comes as a shock to realise what choice is actually available when it comes to wargame figures. Like most of us I have my preferred periods and consequently figures to match. But what happens when it is something new?

In March I spent a freezing four hours at the Corn Exchange, Devizes, playing a 15mm General de Brigade game. It was only freezing because the organiser of the Toy and Model Collectors' Fair thought he was doing us a favour by putting us right by the entrance of the venue. Unfortunately the doors stayed wide open and the outside temperature was hovering around zero!

It was nonetheless a good game; Mick provided terrain, figures, scenario and an up-to date version of the rules rather than my second edition that didn't seem very compatible with Mick's.

Over Easter I finished  (yes finished!!! ) painting all my Baccus Miniatures 6mm Napoleonic Prussians.

Of course I may need more at some stage but not for the moment. Intoxicated with the success of actually painting and finishing a complete army, down to the last figure, I recalled that I had 6mm Austrians from Baccus too so I made a start on these whilst thinking that 15mm Prussians would be good to have and play with.

After considerable research I pre-ordered figures from Time Cast - Old Glory and  Magister Militum to pick up at Salute last weekend. I also ordered some sample Prussians from Black Hat who make and sell the Gladiator range of Naploeonics.

Whilst at Salute I also bought some Lancashire Games figures. Maybe not surprisingly there is quite a difference in the size of figures and I should say that I hardly do anything in 15mm these days - 6mm, 10mm, 1/72 and 28mm is quite enough scales to cope with.

So here are some photos to show the contrast between the four makes of infantry I bought.

Above: Prussian Napoleonic Landwehr and Line infantry from four manufacturers side by side. Each with its own style of sculpting.

Here is a shot with a ruler to show the actual height of the figures.

And some cavalry too. I couldn't get any Lancashire Games cavalry at Salute as S&A Scenics had sold out of Prussian cavalry just before I hit their stand.

There is far more contrast between the cavalry figures than the infantry so it will be harder to decide which way to go when I start building the cavalry regiments up.

In the meantime it is the 6mm Austrians I need to get on with before I start 15mm Prussians...OK I confess I have been tempted to 'test' some of the Lancashire Games Line Infantry in Greatcoats.

Anyone in Wiltshire looking to go to Salute on 25 April?

Good morning. Next Saturday Devizes & District Wargames Group has a coach heading to London to visit the UK's largest Wargames show at the Excel Centre in Docklands.

We have spare seats on the coach if anyone wants a low fare for a day out to London. We will leave 7am and return around 7pm. £20 fare. Send me a message or email me through the club web site www.ddwg.org.uk

Legionary 2014 - what a SAGA.

I have often felt that the best way to learn a set of rules is to play them; not just as a Sunday afternoon experiment but by going the whole hog and entering a competition.

So yesterday, I found myself leaving home at 6.55am to drive to Exeter to play SAGA at the Legionary show staged by the Exmouth Wargames Club. Despite being a bank holiday weekend the A303 wasn't too bad and I made good time, arriving in around 2 hours from my home near to Devizes in Wiltshire.  With my newly painted Vikings ready for action it was appropriate that the podcast I decided to listen too was mostly about Vikings and the exhibition currently running at the British Museum.

It was a small competition with just six of us playing.

My first game was against a very kind opponent called David who was using Welsh. He was kind as he explained much about the game after  I had told him I have only ever played three games over a two year period, using a different army each time, and losing all of them.

So how would the Vikings do against Welsh? Not an force I knew anything much about and I'd not even looked at the SAGA  battle boards for anything other than Vikings or Normans before the weekend. Normans as that was an army I have painted and thought I'd use until I spotted that the battle board required many combinations of dice to get 'the good stuff' and as the competition was for a 4 point army I would only get six dice a turn. So a hasty painting of Vikings was called for.

Here are my Vikings (mostly berserkers in the shot) facing Welsh at the start of the game.

Athough I came second it was a good game. The Welsh javelin armed skirmishers did a fair bit of damage to me - especially from uphill. They 'taunted' my berserkers making them charge uphill and all but wiped them out!
 

My second game against Mike also found me facing Welsh - but with a different troop combination. As there were objectives in each game I decided to make a rush towards two fairly early on. This was a different tactic to my first game where I had opted to go past the objectives, eliminate the enemy and return to collect the spoils of war. As that failed it was time to try some thing new.

 So charging a sheep and a monk we rolled the die to see what would happen; a six in each case! This made the monk turn into a fighting bishop with good armour and five attacks - he killed three beserkers - and the sheep turned out to be an vicious ram killing a warrior.

It wasn't a good game for the Vikings. In one attack I rolled 16 dice needing 4 or above. A 50:50 roll you would think. No I got 12 come up with  1s, 2s and 3s.

 Needless to say I came second again!

My third and final game was against Franks. Two units of mounted Hearthguard and one unit of foot warriors. OK you ask where is the other point of troops? As it happens the mounted Hearthguard were 1.5 units each (6 figures each). This game was against Ralph who was really good at explaining things - especially as I haven't bought the supplement with the rather tricky Frankish battle board. Not that it would have helped if I had.

 Here come the mounted Hearthguard..

Well, in this game I came second once again. So after three more games I still have my 100% success rate of losing at SAGA unblemished.

Did it matter that I lost? No. It was great fun, I made some new friends and enjoyed playing something different.

What did I learn? LOTS! And the most important lesson is that Beserkers may best be left at home.

Finally, the rather nice buildings are produced by Adrian's Walls. 

Byzantine resurrection

Well they may be 40 years old but they are making a comeback! Bill Lamming Late Byzantines painted with Humbrol enamel paints back in the 1970s. I'm re-basing them for War & Conquest rules.

Here are the infantry so far.

 Byzantine cavalry.

 

And here are the first Viking unit for SAGA. There are some Conquest Games cavalry behind them and right at the back are some Gripping Beast Saxons.

A good day at DDWG yesterday

As far as club days go, DDWG has mixed fortunes. Meeting weekly numbers go up and down like a see-saw depending on who is available any particular Sunday afternoon.

Yesterday there were several games being played - and one almost played but one partner had gone see whilst the other had managed to saw. Maybe next week?

We had games of  Black Powder, 42mm British Bulldogs (a quick play WWII skirmish game for Home Guard Units -soon to be available for purchase) and Deadzone being played. Only the three games but hardly surprising as the club had run a day-long Full Thrust game on the day before. Nevertheless there were still 18 of us there.

Military Vehicles Partwork

Talking of Vietnam - which I was on the Meeples and Miniatures Facebook page - how many of you in the UK have spotted the Military Vehicles partwork that came out a week or so back? 

At a £1.99 introductory price for a magazine and 1/72 US Vietnam gun truck it seems like too good an offer to miss. OK I have one already, two on order and bought another three today :-)

The vehicle is diecast with plastic embellishments and ready painted. Next issue includes a Warrior IFV but the price goes up to £2.99. Even so it still makes the vehicles very cheap for gaming.

 Or you could just buy the vehicles direct from the supplier: Amercom Hobby - where you will find 1/72 helicopters too.

15mm ECW

Here's a first for me - 15mm English Civil War. Will W is eager to play Field of Glory Renaissance rules for ECW but I can see his enthusiasm dragging me towards a long unfinished Italian States army too as the rules cover this earlier period.

Here's the New Model Army so far. However it is anything but New Model as most of e figures are over  20 years old. I have inherited the collection of a wargamer who had a part finished army; I'm keeping his painted figures as they are, other than new bases and possibly updating the flags, as a mark of respect in his memory.

I have bought some new figures from QRF - such as the dragoons at the bottom right of the shot. Most of the other figures are Minifigs.

http://quickreactionforce.co.uk/

http://www.fieldofglory.co.uk/games/fog_r

What I have been painting

Just a quick glimpse of some of my latest efforts in 'The Bunker'. Not having done any painting in a while I have decided to finish off some of the unfinished figures to clear space for the newer projects!
So 20mm Vietnam are making progress - but so are the 10mm & 6mm Vietnam too.

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.

Attack! 2013

Planning for Attack! 2013 is well underway and detail are on the club web site:  www.ddwg.org.uk

The dates are 20-21 July, open 10am - 5pm, at: Devizes School, The Green, Devizes, Wiltshire SN10 3AG.

Trade stands, participation games, bring and buy, real ale bar and light refreshments will all be available for your Wargaming pleasure plus the following Competitions:
40k (Sat),
Dystopian Wars (Sun),
Warmaster Ancients,
Field of Glory Ancients,
DBM 3.1,
Field of Glory Renaissance and;
Flames of War.