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

Five Parsecs.. solo SciFi fun and speedpaint fun

I mentioned in the last post (Xenos Rampant game) that I never really played any SciFi games.. and that's true. Although, in recent weeks that has changed just a tiny bit. I came across a game called "Five Parsecs from Home" - a bit late to the party I know.. but the fact that it is predominantly a solo campaign game appealed. 

I won't review the game itself, as there are plenty of good reviews and play-throughs out there. I've enjoyed rolling up my first crew, led by Dash Herand, and playing the first game in their campaign. (They came up against three 'Rage Lizard' mercenaries and completed that mission successfully). The game has definite RPG elements, with character backgrounds and sets of skills, really fleshing out the crew.

As well as my crew, I need random enemy dudes for them to fight against..I considered 15mm Lazerburn but was persuaded by Northstar Nick to pick up a box of the Stargrave miniatures at the last Partizan, and grabbed a sprue of the female crew, along with some other figs online. I've since also received an Army Painter Speed Paint starter set and I think you can tell which of these minis received those !

(I've also picked up some Space Marines for future Xenos games, so looking forward to getting some speedpaint on them too!)

Stargrave crew figures (Speedpaint)

Wargames Atlantic lizardmen

Wargames Atlantic 'Cannon Fodder'

Trying out Speedpaint on more Stargrave figs

Dash and some of his crew

A few more 'crew' figures