LittleWars1913

 I have had the really bad cold/flu thing that is going round so haven't done much for the last two weeks but I finally had the energy today to tidy and sort out the Painting Bureau.

 

 

 Anthony and I played our second game with these new Osprey rules last week.  In our first game we got a lot of rules wrong ad misunderstood how the unit sizes worked but felt they were worth another try.

The second game went much better and we only got a few small things incorrect (Tiny units failing a morale test are removed, morale tests for units nearby if a unit runs, etc).

The rules seem to me to combine the best bits of Pickett's Charge and Black Powder while allowing you to play much larger games than Pickett's charge with several brigades a side.

They use a similar order system to Black Powder, but if you fail to roll enough for 3 moves, but pass the 2 move roll you can still move 2 moves with a brigade.  This makes the game move along as you don't fail to do anything that often.

Firepower is VERY bloody once you get close and units remove a base for every 6 hits which drops them down a size, so Large->Average->Small->Tiny with a similar drop in their abilities.

This means that the game moves quickly and you get a result with Brigades breaking at 50% losses.

Units can be rallied and come back to the fight but they don't regain bases (something that the Neil Thomas ACW rules have which means the game never ends!).

I like the use of ADCs to let you bid for the initiative roll and to help with brigade orders and I like the fact that units can return fire when fired on during the opponent's turn.  This stops the problem with initiative based games where one side can potentially fire twice before the other side returns fire.

Like most of the Osprey Blue Books they need several read throughs to make sure you have understood all the rules and found the exceptions, etc in the places they are mentioned.

I have typed up a QRS which steps through the stages of a turn in order which should stop us forgetting things next time.

So far they seem a very promising set.

 

Managed to finally finish 5 Hovels 15mm ACW buildings for my 20mm ACW collection.

I prefer the smaller reduced footprint of going down a scale for buildings in mass battles.

They are based to fit in with my Hex terrain.

 A couple of quick photos of 2 units of 40mm AWI Militia for Rebels and Patriots.

I need to paint 36 more Continentals for the Americans and then I can play a game.

 First Austrian WSS unit for the Dendermonde project - 25mm Minifgs. Just need flag adding and bases tidying. (Figures from a very generous Alan Gruber).

 I spent two days over the weekend at Warfare running the Guildford Club Demonstration game  "Guildford 1940" - a sealion game in 20mm using Rapid Fire Reloaded rules and (mostly) my 20mm early war collection (including a lot of Airfix figures).

The game board was 2' by 12' and represented a slice of surrey countryside very close to where the club meets and was brilliantly put together by Martin Burford. It is based on an attack in on the GHQ line in a book about the sealion invasion that sees the germans coming up through Guildford.

We had a force of germans entering from the south, a recce group coming through middle and paratroopers landing at the far end (opposed by home guard).

We won the Most Innovative Demo Game award and talked to a LOT of people - my voice is quite croaky today.

Here are the very few pics of the game I managed to take first thing on Saturday.

Warfare seemed well attended and they had more through the door on the Saturday then last year.  I spoke to some traders and they seemed happy with takings. There were a few of the normal trders missing such as Colonel Bills (Stu is no longer doing 2 day shows). Plastic Soldier Company, Peter Pig, etc but I think this is a reflection of traders getting older and attending fewer show, and people's mail order picking up and staying strong during and after lockdowns.

There were plenty of newer traders who I hadn't seen before - mainly scenery and 3d printing companies - there does seem a lack of new figure companies breaking into the market.

The only comment I would make is that the demo games could have been better spaced out with larger gaps between them for people to move and stop and chat.  It all felt a little cramped at times.

But, all in all, an enjoyable weekend. 

We have been asked by a couple of other shows if we would take the game to their shows next year and we are discussing that at the moment.

 

 

 

I finished the first battalion of 24 British this morning.  Block painted, some shading on face, black lined and then glossed.  All unbased as they will be used for siege games.

I am planning on starting the laser cutting of Dendermonde later this month and have 2 Austrian battalions on hand to paint (thanks for Alan Gruber's generosity) and need to order a few extra figures for another British unit.

After that, I will move onto the French.  Iam still hoping to find someone who has some 25mm Minifigs Marlburians they no longer want for a cheaper price than from Minifigs themselves...

 

I have finished painting all the components for Swashbuckler.  Everything made by me except the tankards which were bought from an ebay seller.

I will add walls at some point but the game is playable now.

It all fits into one box with rules, dice, figures and everything you need for the game.

 I played Swashbuckler when it came out in 1980.  It was one of the "Album" style games that Yaquinto produced where the board contains the game pieces.

I picked up a copy on ebay a few years back on a whim to see if I could convert it to a figure game to use with my Three Musketeers collection.

A random discussion over a boardgame a couple of weeks ago led to us trying the game out at the Guildford Club last week.

It was great fun and all 4 of us enjoyed it. You plot your moves for the turn over 6 phases and write them down in advance, so things inevitably go wrong.  There was a lot of mug throwing and chair tossing and Ray's character eventually died from being kicked after I got fed up with missing him with a sword.

The other players' were keen when I mention a miniatures version and I spent some time this week thinking about it.  I sketched up a board layout yesterday and spent today laser cutting the pieces.



Encouraged by the look of the board which uses 40mm squares, I started work on the other pieces and added:

Tables, Chairs, Carpets and the Balcony and Stairs.




I have drawn up the shelving units and just need to cut them.

Then I need to decide on tankards - I might 3D print them but experiments with using some files off Thingiverse and scaling them down haven't worked that well.

Once I have mugs it is pretty much ready to play - I will paint it at some point  and I will eventually add walls and might redo the Balcony as it isn't quite right.

 I finally have enough terrain 3d Printed to fill a 3' x 3' board for Frostgrave.

Now, if it stops raining I can get the last bits undercoated and painted.

Using LOTR figures to make up the soldiers I think I also have enough figures for 2 bands for a playtest game as well...

 

 

The Guildford Club are running a Sealion style game at Warfare in November in 20mm and this has made me finally put some paint to some new figures.  I am about the only person in the club with early war 20mm ww2 so it looks like we will use quite a lot of my collection.
 
I have almost finished the Raventhorpe Home Guard characters set and knocked together a van from a Frontline Wargames Delivery Van - its a bit rough but will probably pass muster...

Just need to tidy up, varnish and then properly base them

 I caught Covid for the first time shortly after my last post in April and it made me fairly ill for a couple of weeks.  it also knocked my rhythm out and I really lost my "mojo" for doing anything on the hobby including painting or terrain making.

I did managed some more terrain just before I got Covid.

This shows a 2' x 2' board with the terrain so far.  I have since painted a couple more ruins so getting close to having a 3' x 3' board ready for a game.



I also added some initial roads to the hex terrain - as I realised I needed some roads that could go over hills.

I finally played a game on the hex terrain last week - a One Hour Wargames FPW game.

I have been doing some commission work and have been making some Toy Soldier style Zulu Wars terrain of a fort and a wagon laager for Anthony as well as working on some movements trays, etc for people at the Guildford Club.

But I have struggled to get on with anything of my own.

The painting table as a bunch of 15mm ACW buildings to be finished, 40mm AWI and some 25mm Marlburians that need blacklining but I can't raise the enthusiasm at the moment.

I didn't go to Salute unlike a lot of people.  I last attended the rather washed out 2021 running a particiaption game and couldn't raise the enthusiasm to go this year.  There isn't much I wanted to buy and it is impossible to talk to traders at Salute which is the main reason I go to shows nowadays - to catch up with friends in the industry.

 Currently on a terrain painting kick and haven't managed to get any figures finished for a week or so.

I bought some XPS foam tiles from Firedragon Games which are pressed with a flagstone pattern.  Good service and tiles are £2 each and will save hours of etching foam with a biro!

The tiles are 11" across (285mm) so I am using that for my tile size with the intention of making 9 tiles initially and then expanding to 16 for a 4' x 4' (ish) table.

Here is a test painted tile:

Which has been washed with Supershader Black and then drybrushed in various greys up to an almost white.  Really brings out the tiles quite nicely.

Also shown are repurposed LOTR Balin's Tomb scenery as scatter terrain which have been drybrushed lighter and had snow painted around them.

So, 8 more tiles to paint and 9 to stick to lasercut MDF tiles, then I can layout some terrain and see how much more I need to do.

 I found this temple in a box while looking for some other things.  I made it over 20 years ago for a Dinosaur Hunting participation game in Darkest Africa run at Valhalla...

I've sprayed it and snowed it up a little to use in Frostgrave.

 

A quick test of drybrushing and snow effects on the ruins for Frostgrave.  Has come out okay, I think.

 I have always been interested in fantasy gaming having played a lot of RPG games in my teenage years and the desire to play Dungeon Crawling games has never really gone away.

I have tried a few different boardgames and have Heroquest whch is painted and I have nearly finished a 3d board for it, but it is a little too simple and nothing else has grabbed me.

I have collected a lot of Reaper Bones figures over the years from various Kickstarters and managed to paint very few of them.  I think part of the problem with deciding on a games system is that most systems are so open-ended that I don't really know where to start (or end) and I have never quite managed to get things together.

I was idly surfing the web when I came across some Frostgrave reports and scenery builds.  I was aware of the game and had not bought into it when it came out as it seemed a little too limted - being based around a single wizard and his party of an apprentice and 8 soldiers.

This time, however, I realised that this limited nature could be a good thing!  It gave me a basic framework of a very small number of figures to start gaming with and Frostgrave now has supplements that cover dungeon crawling and solo gaming.

So, I have bought the rules and a couple of supplements and dug out the Bones figures I had painted and rebased them.  

As you can see, I haven't managed to get many painted over the years since the first Bones kickstarter!

I am also intrigued by building a 3' x 3' board to play Frostgrave with other people as I have never built a winter scenery collection and it strikes me as an interesting challenge.

I have discovered the Ulvheim 3d files on Thingiverse and have started printing out a number of the ruined buildings and second stories - they are really nice models and cost about 90p each in materials (but can take up to 9 hours to print!)

 

 Two of the buildings with 2nd floors and a Bones figure for scale.

I have also ordered some flagstone sheets and  an Amera Moulding pyramid and river sections to add to the board.

I'll document here how I get on, but I think painting a couple of fantasy figures between other stuff will make a nice change of pace.