What do you mean 'Wargames Butterfly' ?

Although I haven't been doing the social-media.. and actually not been playing too many games.. a moment to reflect this afternoon, and I realise that I have been keeping the hobby juices ticking over. Is that a thing? Can you keep juices ticking? Whatever.

One thing is clear though, is that I have no focus! not only have I been making a bit of a start on a new HO switching layout, (which is now wired and running and entering 'testing' mode).. but I have also unapolgetically been butterflying wargameswise.

Tom and I had a game of Dan Mersey's 'Armoured Storm' using a bunch of 1/285 tanks that I've 3D printed.. I've basically taken the excellent Bergmann models and done a bit of tweaking and shrinking in Tinkercad to create reasonable little tokens that vaguely resemble the right tanks.

Dedicated Measuring sticks for next time!

The game was good fun, and certainly got ideas flowing.. I think scenarios are key to making this work, and as there are no lists or anything, making sure that we pick forces that aren't too unbalanced too. (Tom had outnumbered Crusaders up against a mix of Pz 2,3 and 4 and didn't really stand much of a chance).

We've also played a bit more Xenos Rampant.. I spun up a list using some figures that I've been painting for 'Five Parsecs' - mostly 'Light Infantry' and we played two games last night.. where they were pretty outclassed and outplayed by Tom's Orks.. back to the drawing board! Although I like the theme of this detachment.. a cobbled together force of ship's crew, local starport guards and miscellaneous civilians, supported by one unit of Heavy Tangermarines.

mostly Stargrave crew from Northstar

Wargames Atlantic 'Cannon Fodder'

Sergeant Satsuma steps back as the barrage from orbiting escort falls on his pursuers!

Lightly armed civilians unable to stop the Ork convoy

Lastly (for now) I've also just finished off a long term project, painting and basing 10mm 1848 Danish and Schleswig Holstein armies for playing Neil Thomas 19th Century wargames. I've already got a dedicated fleece cloth that I'd painted up and played before using 6mm 1866, so all set to play some battles!

4'x3' fleece painted up for these rules

A little Cold War 'warming up'..

 

Phew what a scorcher! Turn to page 3 to see why Sam Fox loves the British Summer. In other news, the Kommie Krauts ambushed our boys in Germany in a minor skirmish and the Kremlin fat cats are calling it a victory.. watch out Ivan, bulldogs bite!

Ahem.. enough of that nonsense! 

On Saturday, I trundled over to see Scrivs, newly (ish) returned from the colonies, to have our first game of 'Seven Days to the River Rhine'. During lockdown, and corresponding via satellite or transatlantic cable , we've been building up some forces to give this set of rules a go.

I'd made a modest start in 1/144 .. or around 12mm scale, as I thought at first I'd be playing this solo, and I made use of the Plastic Soldier Company's Northag range, as well as finding this a good scale to use my 3D printer to create some vehicles too. Scrivs doesn't do things by halves, and within a few weeks had bought up the stock at Timecast to build a soviet force!

I have no previous experience (and indeed very little interest in) of playing 'moderns' and learning a lot about formations, equipment etc as we go. I had the WRG rules, and TTG 'Challenger' set, but they were amongst the many rulebooks collected and never played. 

It's a sobering thought that 1984 is now nearly as long ago as WW2 was in 1984.. perhaps not so 'modern' after all?

I won't go through the game in detail, as Scrivs does that very thoroughly over on his blog here.

Despite some truly awful dice rolling which really frustrated my efforts to turn things around, I enjoyed the game.

The rules played very well.. we felt that 600 points was probably about right as it gave us enough to think about and some reserve too. The use of event cards was a nice touch and not too powerful either. Although I learned early on that it was really good practice to hold on to command chits in order to react to enemy actions, I also learned that it's not always possible when you're having to throw them at units which refuse to co-operate with your orders! We played around 6 turns before the BAOR breakpoint called a merciful halt to proceedings.

We played a 'meeting engagement' game across the diagonal, which worked okay, it will be interesting to see how different scenarios play out. There is even an interesting campaign that's been shared on the rules Facebook group that may be worth a try.. Suffice to say, more armies are being planned!

The objectives were placed a little randomly, in future certainly something that would warrant some thought, as I had none anywhere near me at the start of the game.

general routes of movement, the Saxhorn team on the hill (circled) sipped vodka as random mortar rounds dropped ineffectively around them.

scrap one (more) Challenger

What's round this corner? (3D print challenger, PSC FV432 and Timecast FV438)

Many explosion markers were used.. on British units

The battlefield was quite hilly, not something immediately evident from the overhead pictures

I did hit something! T64B hit by MILAN team

Like falling off a bike, or something.. (a return to the blog)

I'm at that age now when any event marking the passage of time prompts me to declare "Blimey!" .. for example, apparently it's 25 years since Alanis Morissette released Jagged Little Pill ?!

Conversation in recent months about wargaming blogs made me realise that it's almost five years since I last posted here!

Blimey!

So, I've been sitting on my typing hands for a fair bit of 2021, wondering whether I ought to start this blog up again, and where to start etc, as the realisation dawned upon me that this really is a 'first world problem' and considering that nobody is likely to read the thing anyway.. why not just pick it up again as a way of recording and encouraging myself to keep up hobby momentum!

I won't try to recap the last five years.. games have been played, new shiny projects have come and gone.. but in fairness, playing with trains definitely took precedence up until around 2019.. and Youtubing became very much my route to 'share' hobby stuff, rather than using a blog. (See my channel here by the way, I've even posted a couple of solo Dragon Rampant games, which hasn't pleased the model railroad followers!)

I got talking to Tom and James at one of the shows, rolled some dice.. and we started organising games..Tom's covered much of it on his excellent blog. 

Lockdown happened which has obviously had an impact on all of that, although like many people, we managed to get some virtual games done too.. including a fun Muskets and Tomahawks campaign set in the French Indian wars played out on Zoom.

Tom and I are planning a Chain of Command 1940 campaign (we've even built terrain pieces and painted armies!), so looking forward to that.. as well as trying out some cold war gone hot with Scrivs, newly returned from the colonies..

So.. I'm going to try to post regularly again.. even if it's brief and rubbish.. I think it might be a good exercise.

A super-brief highlight reel of some stuff that's passed over my table in 2021 so far (excluding Zoom games):

Painting up Perry Wars of the Roses army.. 3D printing stakes for archers.. starting a 'Bag the Hun' collection for the Flying Tigers.. building, painting and rigging 'Black Seas' ships.. building and expanding fantasy Dragon Rampant armies for my own 'Nordmark' setting.. getting some HeHe based and realising how many more I need to start playing 'Death in a Dark Continent'.. building up a British BAOR force in 1/144 using Northag plastish models and 3D prints (and 3D printing Soviets) to play 'Seven Days to the River Rhine' with Scrivs any time soon! .. rebasing some ancient 15mm 18th century stuff for some ImagiNation solo games...

Playing some solo 1866 games using 6mm armies and Neil Thomas 19th Century rules.. starting a big project to rebase and re-arm my Arthurian armies back to WAB.. 3D printing tanks from 1/300 to 1/48.. more Dragon Rampant.. scratch building and kit building real estate for 1940 games.. and painting up gorgeous Aventine EIR romans for Infamy Infamy (which I will probably never play)

(the buildings are all actually the right way up in real life, that is to say, with roof skyward.. but I thought I'd get you to tilt your head to one side, just for fun!)

From Afghanistan to Denmark?

I've had a hankering to collect and game around the 1848 Schleswig Holstein War for a while. I've always been drawn to the European mid 19th Century conflicts.. maybe just because they are a little different from the wargames norm. Also - I have some 'blood' in that area.. it's where my ancestors on my mother's side come from.. NordFriesland.

Anyway - I reckon 28mm is likely to be rather expensive way of scratching that itch and I found that Pendraken to a range in 10mm for this particular conflict. I've played with 15mm figures before, (still have boxes full of unpainted) but no experience of these. 

I was thinking of ordering a couple of packs, just to paint up and see how I get on with them , when I remembered a show purchase from many years ago. I have a North West Frontier 'Army Pack' which has been lurking in my drawer for ages. So,  I've rummaged through and picked out 24 British regulars from this pack to use as a test unit. I know it will be khakis rather than reds and blues, but hopefully will give me some feel for painting and basing these little fellas.

Step One - stuck on coffee stirrers. next up, black undercoat.

Black undercoat done.. I was tempted to drybrush these in khaki, then pick out 'details' . However, it can look a bit rough, so I resisted the temptation and blocked in the colours instead, leaving a fair bit of black showing as 'shadows';

1. Flesh - Vallejo Flat Flesh
2. Uniforms - Vallejo Iraqi Sand
3. Rifles - Coat d'Arms Wood Brown
4. Puttees - Vallejo Khaki
5. Straps and kit - Coat d'Arms White
6. Some kit - Vallejo Flat Earth

Finally I gave the figures a dilute wash of Games Workshop (Citadel) 'Gryphone Sepia'. I have no idea of GW still make this, as I'm not a regular customer, but it's a really useful wash, especially for whites and pale colours.

So, overall from gaming distance (ie a couple of feet away).. I think these look okay. (The pictures aren't great but there is no daylight at the moment). Took me about an hour or so to paint the whole unit and once based up, they should be fine. 

It's certainly given me encouragement to look at the ranges for the Schleswig Holstein war.

Now.. do I paint the rest of the pack? (including hordes of Pathan?)