Christmas Presents from Kind Friends

As many of you will realise I neither ran Secret Santa or took park in Santa Clause this year so it was quite a surprise when I received two presents from Secret Santa. Well Christmas day found me receiving not two but four presents.Words fail to show my appreciation as I just did not expect such gifts. Just shows how great our community is.

From America I received this Leven Miniatures windmill that will see use in upcoming Peninsular games with The Boy and Lee. I actually have an unpainted one prepped but waiting some paint and did want to get at least one more so a perfect present. The kids devoured the Peeps too having had some at previous Christmas's usually from my wifes friends.

I have already mentioned the £10 Baccus gift voucher which I spent on some more 6mm figures that arrived Christmas eve. These included yet more peltasts and lots more phalanx figures. These Peltasts will fit in lovely with my army for Magnesia and being troops I have been putting off for months I now can use these as a basis to copy. These will give me four units so is a real boost.

The fourth present was another four units of Gauls which again can fit right into my plans for Magnesia. 

So what can I say other than a heartfelt THANK YOU to the kind folks who have given me such wonderful gifts. 

Other more expected gifts with a wargames slant (i.e. off a list) has been the rest of the troops needed for Magnesia, a copy of To The Strongest! rules that we are planning on using at the Magnesia game at Joy of Six which I have had a quick go with Lee last week and seem to run well and hopefully will play fast enough to actually show good progress at the one day show.

I also got a book on Dunkirk that may provide a scenario or two's idea for ASL but if not be a good read. I also have had enough figures to provide me with four more Battalions of infantry for my SYW 15mm Prussians which will not help me keep up with Lee but at least gives me a respectable force to try and see him off.

So quite a haul and I am very pleased with what I received, hopefully you all will also have had a good Christmas and look forward to a good New Year. I will be posting some of my more recent finishes having done the final touches to a group that were all based at the same time.

Christmas Gifts

Well I have not posted in an age as I expected but a couple of very nice surprises have given me the desire to post. I have received to gifts in the last week. One in the form of a box labelled from Secret Santa and a second as a Gift Voucher from Baccus.

I do not know who these kind people are, but thank you very much. One is going under the tree later to be opened on Christmas day and the other will be used as soon as I work out my final list for our display game for next years Joy of Six.

It just goes to show what a wonderful hobby we have and I can't tell you how much both gifts touched me and just at the right moment as I was feeling a bit down, so again thank you so much.

Other news is that I have continued to paint and have notched up quite a tally running into November. November itself as seen me just paint up four units of Gallic infantry in 6mm, the mix of colours and more limited time proved to slow production right down but with those in the back mirror I am pleased to report that I have done about half the work needed on two battalions of 15mm French SYW infantry for The Boy. These will be finished very soon and will be added to his growing army which will grow aplenty more next year with another four battalions of figures on order from Santa.

Not that my army has not had some help, five battalions of infantry and three regiments of Dragoons have almost emptied the mountain of my SYW, just a few infantry battalions and a Dragoon regiment to paint up but again Lancashire Games will be assisting with a few more infantry battalions.

Keeping with the Prussians I have painted up three battalions of Prussian Guard infantry for my 6mm Naps, need the figures for another two battalions to be able to do the last three, these being Adler Russians in reality. These may make the blog once I have done the base work, building up a bit of a stash of basing, also including some British Generals for The Boy's 6mm Naps that Lee gave him ready painted crews for 6 guns Lee also gave him. Next up for that army is yet more infantry.

Sounds like I will be busy in the Analogue Painting Challenge? sadly no, after thinking about it for a couple of months I stepped off the roster as I felt that I would not do myself any good taking part this year. Last year I pushed hard and then going to Heroes for a long weekend of ASL really left me very fragile and thus whilst I will follow it this year keenly I will be producing at a rate far below what I can do but at a level I am happy with.

More of my time has been spent on scenario design for ASL and whilst I have just three new scenarios under test I have a bunch of other ideas going through further research. It's amazing how much time is taken up by the various stages of design but I am really enjoying it and my book collection certainly has benefitted from it. 

As for blogging I think you will be seeing a bit more of me again, I have really enjoyed the rest and whilst I thought my painting might suffer for the lack of blogging it's not and indeed I think not thinking I need to blog this has actually meant I was more at home sitting at the painting table. Well all apart from those Celts LOL.

No Secret Santa This Year

It is with some regret that I announce we will not be doing Secret Santa this year. In the last few months I have struggled to get more than a few posts together and before I knew it we are in September. Given that it's been a month since I blogged anything on this blog I really have to face facts that it would not be a positive experience if I was to try and run Secret Santa this year.

As for the blog I really have struggled since March to keep any kind of regular posting schedule. First I was not really feeling the painting so I was reduced in what to post but since then I have actually been turning out some reasonable rate of painting and played a few games but being out of the habit of posting I have failed to blog the results.

I have made real efforts with my ASL blog and have at least got a few posts out from that after that had really nose dived so I am hoping to get back to this blog sometime but I feel if I push it now I will simply get frustrated and then annoyed then gone. Hopefully a break is what I need. I will probably find my feet again when the painting challenge starts but I don't think I will take part this year as I really felt the burn last year and with me then going to a ASL show I was ill for over a month after through getting over tired, though that was more the ASL con than the Painting Challenge I still felt the strain.

Again sorry for SS and the poor showing here over this year, hope to get going again once over the hill.

Command and Colours Napoleonic Battle of Pultusk AAR

I have actually played a few various games of late most of which I have as yet failed to write up but may get around to them. This ones a bit special as I played it against my son The Boy. Habit is a terrible or good thing depending on the habit.

Me and The Boy have got out of habit playing C&C:N but as I had taken the week off work last week it gave us a great opportunity to have another go. As always I gave him the pick of module to play and sides once a scenario has been picked out. I own all the nationality sets (five) but have yet to buy the more recent additions. Unfortunately beyond the base set we have not had a great deal of play so it was good to get the Russians out.

I got the Russians and we played the battle of Pultusk fought on boxing day 1806, Marshal Bennigsen ignored orders halted his retreat and gave battle. This is quite a big game with the board crammed with units. In the actual battle the French won a narrow victory on the day but both sides suffered heavy casualties and the Russians withdrew during the night.

Battle from my perspective, looks like the Russians have the numbers! In infantry it's almost equal, I have 14 the French one less, I also have an advantage of one more cavalry with four cavalry but also have three Cossack cavalry but these are only two strength so are not expected to have a major impact. My biggest advantage though was artillery, I had five units to my sons three which historically was a big advantage as it forced the French infantry to surrender their gains when bombarded.

Each C&C:N nationality have traits that add flavour to the game, this is really well done and of all the Command and Colour series I think this one carries through the best. My Russians tend to get a Mother Russia roll that adds troops to their forces. The thought behind this is the fact that many units enter battle reduced in strength as are not fully mobilised, as such many infantry units start under strength (just three blocks opposed to the usual four). You roll dice equivalent to the number of command cards and these give you troops or emplacements when in effect. I failed to gain any infantry but managed to add two Cossack units, strengthened two artillery units and added a field works to a hill where I had one of my gun units.

C&C is a card driven system and if you use try to plan ahead you can really increase your chances of winning. The Boy has always shown the ability to plan and generally does well when we play. This scenario needed the winner to gain ten victory banners including some location ones that tend to channel the fight to key terrain. When playing The Boy I always have to gain one more than required as a form of balance. It's not unusual for The Boy to win with me still needing to get the normal required banners but it's nice when I get the normal number and he gets there before I can get that extra one.

In this game I did get a good run of the cards early. I lost all the Cossacks before the end of the game but they did more damage than expected. Their loss is not an issue as they do not count for banner gain so they are disposable.

The Boy stuck to the original script by forcing me off the first line of hills and then In turn was forced by my artillery to abandon them. However he never really got going on my left flank and as such never really threatened the woods that he really needed to gain much needed banners. I had sent extra troops into that area and both of us suffered heavy casualties but when the dust settled he had just the one infantry unit able to threaten the woods.

My left flank had also seen plenty of action but again no real threat was able to get past my first line of defence. Whilst many of my infantry units were reduced to single blocks my artillery were there to punish any units that tried to get through on that flank.

In the centre I still had a lot of strength that I could have called on if required. The Boy had lost most of his guns to cavalry attacks and his cavalry had been almost totally destroyed through follow on attacks from my cavalry when he brought these against my cavalry. Indeed he suffered many a bad roll in attack which set the tone in the centre. The fact that I still had all four artillery units on board to his one really made this so difficult for him.

In the end he just did not have the strength to push through or the opportunity to replace worn units in the front line with fresh units as I seemed able to pull the required cards whilst his units got stuck in the open close to my troops.

It was a fun game, both of us had a great time though I suspect the scenario could be a bit pro Russian. It's scenario three from the module and as we tend to play from front to back shows how few games we have played from this set. I am sure though we will be playing yet more in the near future, just from which set?

Joy of Six and Spends

Joy of Six has come and gone, I was really looking forward to this years as we were having a year off from putting on a display game. The only issue was getting to the event! Unknown to the organisers and most of Sheffield's population the vast majority of the roads around Hallam University was closed for a bike race. Sheffield Council have form for incompetence in organising events. Just the other year they had a marathon but failed to order water and only on the day realised cancelling the event!! Par for the course the people standing at the barriers did not know alternative routes nor it seemed did they care. Eventually we found the way in but I know more than one had to park miles away and walk in after trying and failing to find that one road out of many that got you in.

Regardless the attendance was good, not sure how it compared with last years but again space was all used up and plenty of games and traders were in attendance. The food remained good at prices that were reasonable, something that is getting rarer at shows making it the only show I don't take a packed lunch to.

I did not get any photo's of the show, just never got going with that sort of thing. Plenty of good looking games though, it was kind of weird seeing another Waterloo game in the same spot we had a couple of years ago and impressive it was too.

Most games were display but plenty of games were also participation. One such me and Lee played towards the end of the show which I was not really keen to play at the offset as by this point I was feeling rather tired. Turned out to be a great opportunity. The rules are based on Too The Strongest and is the ECW version that looks to be coming out in the future. I am a real fan of the ECW and so am a little difficult to please. I have to say that to this point no ECW rules have really grabbed me but these have a great feel and the mechanics whilst simple are very clever. Hopefully we will be getting our hands on playtest copies so we can try them out further. They are close to wrap up so I doubt we will have much influence on their development but I think these will be our go to rules for ECW.

They look to be able to play out medium sized games (15-20 units a side) in a short evening and should be able to handle very large games without to much trouble. We had around 15 units per side and the commands were all over the place to stimulate a confused command were neither side were ready for the battle and this came across well as you tried to make units work either together or separated by terrain or distance. We both got the gist of the rules relatively quickly and started to explore tactical options and how the game mechanics worked these moves out.

It's enough to say that when we turned up at the show we were selling our old Baccus casting s and getting new ones in the future. Now the plan is to keep the old, carry on painting them and get them on the table then get the new stuff and replace as we go. I am even thinking of trying out To The Strongest rules for our 6mm ancients because if they play as fast and have similar mechanics they could work well for next years game.

Of course a show is nothing without it's purchase. First stop was Leven Miniatures though it was mostly to drop off very late models but I did buy a few bits. Having painted no buildings for myself for well over a year I just did not want to increase the hoard too much, plus I actually don't know which buildings I need. I do know though that I will need to add to my ECW suitable buildings and the Medieval MED18 Large Manor & Stables will work. I also bought GEN18 Spanish Windmill, I really should have bought another one or two of these so will get more at a future show or post. Lastly a retired stone building that originally was in one of the American ranges but again I think I can use it elsewhere.

No one got rich off me with Baccus just getting a small order mostly because I forgot to sort out a list of what else I need for my Magnesia army. So two packs of elephants when I needed the, I bought two packs of Celts, naked fanatics and light cavalry. In both cases as the packs I wanted were sold out (buy early not late!). Again I needed more Celtic infantry than just one pack so need to add to these. The light cavalry will be OK though.

We returned home and everyone had a great time. Lee is buzzing over the ECW and picked up a raft of painted figures as well as about completing the lead required for next years display game. I have a few ECW cavalry regiments on my desk awaiting paint so it's got me revved up as well.

Talking of painting desk, two battalions of 15mm SYW Prussians are about to shuffle off whilst I have three British Dragoon regiments for The Boy's Peninsular army and another four phalanx blocks just marching on behind the cavalry. It's going to be very 6mm for a few weeks.

Baccus 6mm Cataphracts

With Joy of Six tomorrow I thought I had better show some recently purchased and painted 6mm figures. These are from Baccus and will be used in our display game next year. You see some nice symmetry goes into these posts LOL.

These were a quick paint as I am putting in less detail in the figures than I would do if they were my Napoleonic's as with these armies we are going for the mass effect rather than neat crossbelts etc.

Given this objective we need some splash of colour which is provided by the standards and cloaks. In the game I think I will be using five units so I actually have two more than I will need for that game but it's possible that we will do the game again at a later date but double up the units, a lot depends on other possible projects or if we need more for other games.

These amount to three cavalry boosters, or fifteen regiments of Napoleonic cavalry, yep that's a lot of horses. Other than some Gallic cavalry I think I have all the cavalry I need for the game, most of the rest of the painting will be another eight or nine pike phalanxes and a fair few peltast units.

Lee will also have Cataphract's in his army but not as many. I also have plenty of heavy cavalry as well so as you would expect the Romans will be making more use of their infantry. It should look rather OTT with massed pike, loads of bow and wings full of cavalry and yet more infantry whilst a force of about a third of mine faces off. Some special rules are already in progress for the game but we have yet to start playtesting so fingers crossed.

I had enough figures left over to make four command bases a couple of which will get used in the game but the others will hopefully get used in other games. At least now I have quite a few options for command.

As mentioned we have Joy of Six tomorrow and whilst I do not have a shopping list I have been looking on the Leven website and I have an eye for a few more buildings and yes I do plan to get going on painting some of the ones I already have stashed away. Indeed I am rather looking forward to getting on with it.

I may or may not buy more Baccus tomorrow. I should get the last of the pike but will probably swerve those and get the other packs I will need so possibly generate a big push to get everything finished before this year ends.

Mostly though I want to take the time to look at all the games and actually see Joy of Six at my leisure rather than the dash round I normally get when putting on a game. So if your there I look forward to bumping into you and just chillin'

As Good As Done

Finished the Zombie bust I received last week. Really enjoyed working on it and made a nice change from the usual work I do. Not that it is 100% finished yet as I have to sort out a socket to base him on, also varnish the bust and a few finishing touches I will do once that is done.

It's hard to believe that Steve the sculptor has not been at this for that long as he really adds great detail that could easily be missed out when sculpting. Most of the painting has been layered with the red as a wash. It's actually skin tone but I got the effect I was after.

The shirt was a mix of layers and an early attempt at blending. Lots of layers and detail went into the shoulder socket and collar bone. So that's the first bust I have ever painted and I do believe I will be having a few more goes. Not that that's all I have been painting. I have a few 6mm cavalry units for our ancients game and have started a couple more battalions of 15mm Prussian SYW and The Boy has added three regiments of Light Dragoons for his 6mm British Peninsular army so I have a queue.

Zombee Bust

I stumbled on this Zombie bust just the other day on Facebook. These are produced by Steve an independent sculptor and Commission Painter. At the moment he just has a bust called The Beast Handler but he also does limited run busts like this Zombie. Originally limited to about 20 models he has reduced the run still further to 15 and just has a couple left.

The cost is £18 plus postage and represents excellent value and I thought well worth a punt. Steve has real fast turnaround and I received the figure today after supplying my address on Monday evening!!

The finish is white, but this image gives a better idea of the detail which is very clear. I have already started work on the sculpt and I have to say I am more impressed than I thought was possible. This is quite a diversion for me but one I am really enjoying. So thanks Steve, top marks so far.

15mm Macedonian Phalanx or Two

These are the first figures finished post challenge that was not actually started during the challenge. I don't even know the supplier of the figures as these were given to me by a friend years and years ago now. I ended up just doing a very basic paint job on them but they look OK on the table.

All but sixteen of the figures needed the pikes adding which was OK as I have plenty of wire to snip and glue in place. These continue with the plan of putting all the figures on a single base for use with Hail Caesar which will make it far easier to move them around the table.

The shields have Little Big Man transfers on them costing £3.50 per sheet. I needed two sheets but that leaves me with enough spares to do a third unit which I will do at some point. Very fast service and low cost postage means I will be happy to use again.

The transfers went on with ease though I really need to improve on my placement as you can see from the photo's.

This unit has a mix of different helmets which with the varied positions of the pikes make them look a bit more interesting.

The second block has two different makes of figure and I have put the ones with cast pikes to the front as their shields are domed whilst the rear ranks have flat faced shields. The front rank could possibly be Essex but that is a guess.

With these two blocks I now have about three blocks more than I need. However as I have far more Persians than you would expect to see in a game it's possible for my extra blocks to be used in a monster game sometime. Of course I can always use more pike in a game and cut back on other troops.

With Joy of Six just around the corner I am starting to feel the need to make good progress on our display game for next year. As such I have the Cataphract's  on the painting table at the moment. I plan to get them done before the end of the month and either move onto some SYW or keep on  with the Ancients and get the five phalanx units I have in stock painted. I still need to buy more of these as well as plenty more figures before I have all the units required. With over 4600 unpainted figures in hand I am not exactly short of stock, just seems I have the wrong figures at the moment.

Han Chinese Persian AAR

Over a month between posts! Well whilst painting has been on an all time low I have been playing games, just not recording them. Hopefully I will get back to normal and get posting again. I have a Saga game this week and a Black Powder game the week after if all goes well. I have even started to paint more regularly again with a couple of 15mm units finished this week just waiting to be photographed.

I have had a few games of Hail Caesar with Matt recently and another with Lee. My Persians have not done too badly so maybe I am starting to use them correctly? Probably the dice have had more to do with it with two games having molten dice. This then is the other game played against Matt.

The thing about the Persians is you get a lot for your money. A lot of low cost units that is. In the distance you can see the Han whilst I have enough troops to wrap round them if the terrain would allow.

On my left flank I send in hoplites and two units of levy bow infantry. These are facing Matts only mounted force so have to be careful, I do have one of three mounted brigades just to the left in the photo that should help some.

Only trouble being that they don't much like moving forward. Matt and his group have developed a few changes to the basic activation rules giving a bonus for units and formations over a certain distance. This usually means whilst at distance you can get a few moves a turn.

On the opposite flank I charge my cavalry into Chinese infantry. In Black Powder crossbows have a few restrictions and other bonus abilities a definite disadvantage is the inability to use closing fire. As such I charged some cavalry units in his infantry on his flank. This is risky as a roll of 6 can cause you a MC that low rolls can cause some nasty effects. Also the cavalry have a 50/50 chance of becoming disordered, in this case I got lucky.

I still had another cavalry division waiting the results of the first attack before being unleashed for a clean up attack. Or they failed to get any moves!!

Back on the other flank I try to bring the Chinese chariots into melee but Matt keeps dropping them back to allow his bow armed crews to cause casualties but I have good save rolls allowing them to continue to march forwards in the hope of finally catching them.

Matt sent his bow armed light cavalry up to my right hand cavalry division in an attempt to get me to charge and in the meantime push up my casualties. This was partially successful but my cavalry are armed with javelins so it's not all one way traffic.

The centre was for the most part rather quite as I struggled to move forward. My right hand cavalry has come back from a bruising round or two of melee and needs time to get sorted out.

Disaster for my hoplites as Matt gets a open flank to charge. He went on to destroy these and move on to the second unit destroying those as well. The first time Matt can remember such good fortune for his cavalry.

However in the middle I had the advantage and was just starting to force the two wings of his army apart.

On my right I had broken some units and now can both more troops most of which were in great shape and the ability to strike from a distance.

One of Matt's brigades on my right was broken and a second flanked and bent back. All the mounted units are mine in the image above with one retreating Chinese unit in the middle. My task here was to get the most forward cavalry behind the Chinese cutting off their retreat whilst bringing the rest around the flank and the infantry to close quarters and simply attack with whichever units are presented the Chinese rear.

We called it at this point, my cavalry had managed to not only charge home against Matt's infantry but won most of the melee rounds causing Matt's position to become impossible to hold.

Persian Satrap Cavalry Part 2

The second post on my Persians is a little different. These are of course my 6mm Baccus Persians and these give me a total of eight units of Persian cavalry so enough to start thinking about playing games.

I went with mixed colours for these two units rather than mostly singular in colour. The usual 18 figures to a base to give them some mass effect.

Like their bigger brothers these were actually started during the challenge and were left with only the horses finished so it felt a bit of a drag finishing them but I was glad to finally get them finished up.

Die holders built in as I remembered to do it! These will be the last units painted for this army for awhile as I need to concentrate on my Seleucids. However some of the units will actually be used in the Persians as well so it's not all Seleucid. Nor will it all be Ancients as I still plan to blend in a few Napoleonic units from time to time.

I also finished off three command bases for the Persians. I will need more but I will also be using Greek sub-commanders as well.

This leaves me with eight 6mm figures needing finishing at some point started during the challenge. This will happen in the next month or so I guess if only to get them off the table. In the meantime I have started painting up some 15mm figures I had prepped for the painting challenge but did not get further with. A side effect of extra prep is that I have a number of units ready to paint though I will be working on others that still need prepping. Hopefully I will get more into painting again. This mornings painting certainly was enjoyable.

With that I should be back to normal on blogging, I have a few computer games to talk about so it won't just be figures etc.

Persian Satrap Cavalry Part 1

OK almost a month between posts! Still sluggish from the Painting Challenge but my mojo is returning as I finish off the figures started during the challenge. It is  unusual for me not to paint from start to finish so having unfinished work for any amount of time is not the norm and I think has really hampered me in getting at them again. I just have a few bases of Greek command in 6mm to finish, something that should get done in a single session if I get down to it. However todays post is about some old Chariot Miniatures I bought over a year ago that I needed to buy four more figures to finish off. The next post will be more Persian Satraps but with a difference.

As mentioned I had to buy four more figures from Magister Militum to finish this unit as they hold the licence to make Chariot now. I have bought quite a few minis from MM and always really happy with the service. Anyways this finished unit will give me far more cavalry than I should expect to need for a game but if I ever want a massive game I at least have most of the troops I would need.

I went with a very basic paint job as I wanted to get them off the table so missed a few details I really should have dealt with.  However they will look fine on the table. As I plan to rebase all my old 15mm to the newer basing style these could be needed just to get a game in anyway.

In reality my Persian army should really not want for anything as I have far more units that I could expect to use though it does allow me to go horse heavy or infantry heavy however I decide to build an army for a game.

I have between two and three units of hoplites worth of figures left to paint (from the same Chariot purchase) so will get these done at some point. Meantime I have a couple of phalanxes with my name on and in 15mm too. After that I will get back into doing a couple of SYW units before getting on with the 6mm Seleucids.

Talking of which I was over at Lee's a couple of weeks ago where he pointed out that I had done my maths wrong. I have ordered the required four 96 figure phalanxes but in fact I missed another FIVE off so need to get even more. That will be just under 30 blocks for the game! We will be starting the rule playtests and scenario tests at the same time. Shame most of it will be just bases for the time being.

 

Persian Chariots

I have done very little painting since the challenge finished and what I have done is not fully finished. You can blame a couple of new computer games and the kids being off school for the most part. Burnout from the challenge is far less a factor. As I am working the whole of the bank holiday don't expect things to improve by much.

I still have a couple of posts worth of challenge entries to write up so lets start with Darius King of Kings. Actually he will be used as other Persian commanders as Darius was brown bread by the time the Persians took on Alexander.

The model and the casualty are all from Baccus and comes as a three piece kit for the chariot as does the scythed chariots that follow. All were a bit of a pain to glue together.

Being the army C-in-C he gets a larger round base. This is normally done to show it is the overall commander but in this case it should be obvious. I have more Persian command on the table at the moment, just one of the bits started before the challenge finished.

Bought for my Persians these scythed chariots will also see game time with my Seleucids in the display game we will be doing next year. I have copied the crashing chariot I did in 15mm so very long ago.

These gave me the opportunity to use bright colours so I jumped at the chance. Not that my Persians are exactly dull.

I could not resist smashing one of them up. If the figure was removable I would have done something different with him.

My original plan was to have three chariots as a single unit but the width of the chariots made it impossible. I then swung over to each model is a unit but I am rethinking it to two models equal a unit. If I settle on this I will need a further three models. I doubt I will make a final decision until we have playtested a few games. The final choice will probably be down to how they play out and look in those games.