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.

The DDWG Salute trip on 21 April 2012

It hardly seems like a year has past since we were all stood sleepily beside a coach early in the morning on the day of Salute.

Off to Salute 2012 - some 23 members of the Devizes & District Wargames Group

We hardly been going any length of time before I heard strange sounds coming from the rear of the coach. A wheel bearing going? A hole in the exhaust...no, just the Big Sleep:

While the others were having to join the long queue to get into the show, Will Watson and I strode past with our exhibitor badges. We were joining the Evesham Wargames Club - which I think was only Dane Stevens,  as the other participants in the re-fight of Antietam came from London, Oxford and three of us from Devizes.

The game was using Kallistra's new 10mm American Civil War figures on their hex terrain with some simple rules (two sides of A4). So here are some pictures:

Kallistra's 10mm Confederate infantry

Union Infantry advancing

View from the union side

Confederate left flank

We had great fun and a lot of interest in both figures and terrain. Beasts of War came over for a look and Dane and the game are seen (briefly about 90 seconds in) on the Salute Tour feature.

It seemed a long day and my feet were aching by the time Will and I were headed back to the coach at 5pm. The downside of playing in a game is that you don't get to see much of the show. Fortunately Gripping Beast were very near to us so my pre-order was simple to collect and find more things too. I topped up with 28mm Norman crossbows for my new Saga force, the new War and Conquest Ancient Rules by Rob Broom (looking very good to me as I read through them), the new Saga supplement Northern Fury plus some Saga dice.

I also picked up some 28mm plastic Norman Knights from Conquest Games who were selling the boxes at a bargain £15 from their stand. They had also released their crossbowmen and I thought they looked very nice. I've started making the 12 knights up and hope to be painting them sometime this weekend.

Apart from that I bought bases from War Bases, some desert sand weathering paint for my 15mm 8th Army vehicles plus a couple of magazines. I also picked up an order from Warlord Games for my friend Gary Walling; I enjoyed looking at the copy of Pike & Shotte he had ordered and may even buy it myself in the near future. It has some great photos and illustrations and I know the rules work well as I had a play test last year at Triple Helix Wargames one weekend.

Roll on next year.

An Easter Saga part 2

I have just found out that the the stand next to the one I am on at Salute is Gripping Beast!
(I'm helping Wyvern Wargamers run a 12mm Antietam game using Kallistra figures and terrain)

An Easter Saga

Having not done any painting for ages I decided that I would get the brushes out this weekend. This is partly prompted by my recent purchase of the Saga rules from Gripping Beast.

 So after I finished some work on Friday I felt justified in popping down to Triple Helix Wargames in Westbury. I had in mind making  a start on a Norman warband by buying a box of Conquest Normans. They didn't have any! So it was Gripping Beast Norman bow and spear instead.

I had also bought some Gripping Beast Vikings off eBay in the week - except I'm not quite sure that they are from Gripping Beast. But they still look the part.

Here are a couple of progress shots. More to follow sometime soon.

It seems to me that whenever I mention these rules other people tell me how great they are. Warbands are either already being used or about to be built. Salute may see lots of Dark Age figures being bought.

Austerlitz 1805 re-fight

Spending the day refighting the Battle of Austerlitz round at a friends house. We are using 20mm figures and Grande Armee rules by Sam Mustafa on a 12' x 6' table.

It has been a real see-saw game with each side launching attacks and counter-attacks. I've not taken many photographs of the game as it progressed  as they would have looked quite similar.
The rules have been around for a number of years but I've not played them before. So my nominal appointment as Napoleon was a bit wasted. I was pleased that Nigel, one of my co-players, was well acquainted with them.


Grande Armee are a tactical set of rules with bases representing whole brigades. I suppose this is quite a common concept these days but it is unlikely to appeal to everyone as the visual appeal is limited due to the basing all being the same. It did appeal to me once the game got going.

The variable length turns also appealed to me. Turns are taken in 'phases' and after each phase in which each army will have had an equal opportunity to skirmish, shoot, move and fight a six sided die is rolled; a score equal to or less than the phase number means that the turn has reached an end and you then get a chance to rally troops. I was told that it was rare for a turn to go to six phases but I managed to keep rolling sixes and we had several 5 phase turns. They took the die off me in the end!

As you would expect each brigade had variable strengths (SP) but there were also different capabilities in terms of march speeds between the French, who were faster than the Austrians and Russians, and skirmishing abilities. You will notice the use of 'death caps' in the photo above to help record casualties.  This method was the choice of my host for the day but you could equally use casualty figures or even dice. You would just need to do what is best for you.

Once a brigade had reached a number of casualties equal to its SP it is removed from play. However, when a turn ends (regardless of how many phases it may have lasted) there is a chance to rally lost brigades. The ability is easier for a Guard unit than a Raw unit and if you fail the test the brigade is lost for good. Brigades that return will still have casualties and be recorded as having broken thus reducing their effectiveness in subsequent rounds.

This made the game most interesting; as you thought you had created a gap the turn would end and you would be facing more brigades albeit weakened ones. I've not played a game that ebbed and flowed so much but there again I've not played a game that started at 11am and finished at 10.20pm. Not that the game really finished - we just needed to get back to our respective homes. So some of the players will be continuing it next Tuesday but I, unfortunately, won't be able to due to a prior commitment.

On the whole it was a very good game indeed; excellent company and a generous host who fed and watered us all. So thank you Peregrine.

I shall look forward to trying the rules again on another occasion.