...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.

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.

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

Legionary 2015

Next time I go to a convention with Mick I'll make sure I am ready really early!

Our planned departure time of 8am meant Mick arrived with 30 minutes to spare and I was still in the shower!  Just as well Jane was up and about to make him a mug of tea whilst I had a rapid rub down with the towel and got hastily dressed. We were ready to leave for Exeter on time and arrived at Legionary just after 10am.

There was already a buzz about the place with many games and traders already busy. The show is held at a livestock market on the edge of Exeter; there's plenty of space and has a good restaurant where we enjoyed the 'Farmers' Breakfast' before tackling the show .

The bring and buy had some interesting things on offer and I kicked myself for letting a bargain offering boxes  of Warlord Games 28mm British Napoleonic infantry for £10 each slip through my fingers. 

It was also great to catch up with old friends some I'd not seen for at least a week in the hubbub of Salute.

There were enough traders to provide more than enough ways to spend your money, including two from Wiltshire - Forlornhope Games (Gary Tate shown below) and EM4 Miniatures.

There was supposed to be a War & Conquest competition somewhere but I cannot say that I saw it to be much in evidence. However there were some great participation games so here are a few pics:

Michael Stokin, more used to trading as Angel Barracks, was there with his 6mm science fiction game. Michael will be running his own show Blas-Tastic in October, a show dedicated to sci-fi gaming.

I cannot find my note on this game but I admired the terrain.

As much as I enjoy playing naval games they just don't have the visual appeal of a brightly coloured army on well-made terrain. The ships above were quite fantastic though ( and large).

28mm Bosworth - figures from the collection of Gary Cookson.

Bored with Borgias by The South Somerset Wargamers Group. Nick Turner's impressive 28mm Italian Wars figures and using Pike and Shotte rules.

Legionary Show in Exeter today

Even if there is no Saga competition and it is a bank holiday weekend it is still worth braving the holiday traffic to head for Exeter and the Legionary show.

I went last year to play Saga and had a great time and it was a good show; not overly large but plenty to do and see. More photos later.

Legionary show details

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

Making progress with Chain of Command figures

I'm about half way through my box of 1/72 Valiant WWII German infantry. Just finished basing these figures tonight.

A good day at Crusade in Penarth yesterday

Yesterday I made my first ever visit to the Crusade show in Penarth. Not a good start by me as the show was celebrating its 20th year.

It was a nice show with a good mix of games and traders plus a DBA competition and some key talks on military subjects.

I had a good day bargain hunting and picked up a couple of things I was after to start my venture into Infinity and Dropzone Commander.

Shh! Don't tell anyone I'm slipping over to the dark(er) side

Every so often every wargamer gets the urge. The urge to do something different. It may not be different to you the reader or that chap lurking over there in the corner of the internet but it is different to those who have the urge.

We have all had the urge at one time or another. Some resist and others dive in headfirst. Will any of us ever be the same?

I think the urge boils down to who you gaming with at the time. I've had it before and no doubt will get it again when something newer or with more shine comes along to burst the current bubble. And that bubble is science fiction gaming. There I have said it - well written it anyway.

It is all down to a new DDWG club member, Andy. He's been with us about a year and has quietly joined in many games and gradually introduced the club to Gruntz 15mm with his own games. And very nice they look too, as you can see below.

Gruntz 15mm game in progress at Devizes & District Wargames Group

So having visited Blast-Tastic the other week and and soaked up some of the 'pew, pew' atmosphere of sci-fi games the urge has grabbed me and some 15mm figures are winging their way to me this week.

It seems that I am not alone in the need to do something different as I stumbled on this blog:
http://exiledfog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/crazy-15mm-sci-fi-urge-no-pictures-toys.html

As I mentioned this is not the first time the urge has grabbed me! Last time I was influenced by my good friend and fellow gamer Simon Phillips and that game was Space Hulk - the original version. Sadly Simon has passed on to the great gaming convention in the sky but his enthusiasm for all things sci-fi have obviously had a lasting effect on me.

This is where I paint, plot and scheme my games and armies. The 25 year old original
Spacehulk, Death Wing and Genestealer are on top of the book case

So many figures so little time

OK, so May to October is quite a gap.

Since Legionary I have played in two more Saga competitions - Gripping Beast's Grand Melee at Firestorm Games in Cardiff during June and an excellent day organised by Mid Somerset Wargamers at Wells, Somerset, in September. Despite all good intentions - and improving results with several and one win in a competition - I still have to get off the bottom of the competition table(s)!

I have used my Vikings in each competition. At Wells I made several mistakes - one was the choice of army composition and the second was playing the game one die short. I thought that first game was rough going!

The last stand of Eric the Pink (fighting yet more Welsh) in the Grand Melee

One of the most notable parts of my game against Normans in Wells.
Three Hearthguard fought of a 12 strong Norman unit of Hearthguard - some remarkable dice rolls all round!

Today I ventured over to Bristol to the new sci-fi show Blast-Tastic, staged by Michael Stockin of Angel Barracks. I would have liked to been able to stay longer but it is a busy weekend and I could only afford the time for a brief visit.
There were some great looking games and some notable traders present. Michael had worked hard to get his vision off the ground and to my eyes it worked well. Here's to next year.

DDWG AGM tomorrow so another busy day.

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.