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

Tangermarines!!

Tangermarines!!

So, had my first play of Xenos Rampant just about two weeks ago, and look what happened! This must be one of the quickest 'armies' I've ever painted!

I enjoyed that first game so much that within a few days I'd ordered a bunch of second hand space marines off ebay.. all built and mostly primed grey. They arrived pretty quickly (especially considering the current postal chaos, and I quickly set to work fixing up small repairs and giving them a fresh prime of grey and white. 

Whilst I was doing this, I was trying to decide which of the new Speedpaints from my starter set I was going to use as the main colour for this lot.. not really interested in doing it 'properly' (ie GW space marine chapters or whatever they're called), and pretty randomly settled for the 'Fire Giant Orange'.

These were really quick to paint and although they wouldn't win prizes, I'm loving the overall look of the unit. They are mostly painted using the Speedpaints, with some black and silver 'normal' acrylics used too.

The boss, not Captain Jaffa as I'm trying to avoid any more puns!

fighty jump-packy types.. Assault marines?

The 'tangermarines' name came upon me late at night and I thought it was hilarious.. I don't think it's that funny now, but I'm truly worried that it has stuck.. hardly the most terror-inspiring name for a unit of fighty shooty space soldiers.

Fifteen marines, so maybe two or three XR squads

Anyway, it also occurred to me that XR allows you to field vehicles, and a stompy fighty thing might be fun (as evidenced by Tom's stompy fighty orcish thingy), so an internet search found me the STL files for a suitable 'kit' and a few hours later we have this! Do these things normally have names ?  Not sure, but I suspect that this may get shade of orange too.

Anyway, I suspect that this lot will be far to pricey in Xenos Rampant points to field all at once in a standard game, (I hope to get the book at Christmas and I'll point them up), but I don't care, not exactly a problem having too many tangermarines :-)

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

First play of Xenos Rampant

Last night I joined Matt and Tom for a go at Xenos Rampant, the latest of the 'Rampant' series from Dan Mersey and co.

I haven't yet got the book, it's on my Chrimble list.. and apart from some recently acquired crews for Five Parsecs, I don't really have any scifi stuff. (I once had a 40k starter box.. painted it all and sold it all when the son wasn't actually interested)

However, I enjoyed the nostalgia that Tom and Matt shared and can see me scouting fleabay for space marines!

It's fair to say that we're fans of the Rampant rulesets, and we had a great couple of games with Orks and space marines having a go at each other on Tom's jungly table.. There were some subtle differences to the Dragon Rampant game I'm most familiar with, with free activations in particular giving a little more nuance to troop types, but it was mostly quite intuitive and honest dice rolling fun.. which was matters really!

Ork stompy thing and Space marines bashing each other to a standstill

Ork Nobs in the Fart Cactii

A 4x4 table is plenty for a game of Xenos

The remainder of two units after combat!

brutal hand to hand in the jungle

scouty types, sneaky beggars

solid shooty fighty space marines (normal sized)

Not thousands.. but Lots of 'em!

Tom has made the most of the aquarium plants

Great jungle terrain pieces

"The Other" Partizan Wargame Show October 2022 - Mortimers Cross

A couple of weeks ago saw the second Partizan show of the year, and as always, it was a cracking show. I may be biased as it's my 'local'.. but honestly I think I'm just very lucky that my local show happens to be one of the best?

The 'Morris and Chums' game this time was 'Mortimers Cross' .. a fun Wars of the Roses bash using James' upcoming Midgard rules. Chris (Winston Ab Rees) and James did the planning, and the armies were made up of our pooled collections again. I painted up some extra horse especially for the day too, these formed Owen Tudor's mounted wing.

I even got to use a couple of really old scratchbuilt buildings, which received a little tart-up before taking to the table.

Full accounts from Tom and James here:

http://tomstoysoldiers.blogspot.com/2022/10/mortimers-cross-at-partizan-pt1.html

https://mogsymakes.net/2022/10/10/the-battle-of-mortimers-cross-at-the-other-partizan-2022/

So, I'll just share my brief slideshow video (which annoyingly has the battle titled as 1460 ?!)

Dragons and Lions Rampant

On Sunday, Tom and I decided to have a game of Dragon Rampant. We haven't played for a while, but knew that it would be easy on the brainicles! Tom joked that I had posted a 'tutorial' video on Dragon Rampant, so should know the rules..I hadn't thought of it like that, but watching it again, I see what he meant! 

In our pre-game texts, we agreed to take 30 points and to go 'old school'. Tom has GW history and still plays WFB regularly.. I've never really done more than dip my toe, but recently was gifted a rather lovely collection of vintage Wood Elves, which I've been in the process of 'refurbishing'. So, Wood Elves vs Night Goblins it was! *The experts will no doubt spot that the mounted Elves are not GW, but still of a respectable vintage :-)

Tom has written up a nice Goblin-centric account of the game on his blog, so just some pics ..

Love these Troll figures!

Then, on Monday evening, enthused by our Dragon Rampant game, and my recent purchase of the new edition of Lion Rampant, I set out a little solo game on my dining table using some Wars of the Roses figures - I used the standard armies from the book*, and played the second scenario 'Gladiators' - where a pre-battle duel gave each side some extra dice. I played Bourchier, who was 'Rash' with Wild Charge, against Stanley, 'Blessed', which allowed him to reroll a set of dice (he picked the wrong ones as it happens!). This was by no means a historical match up, just what I had available.

It was a very quick game and ended by the untimely demise of Thomas Stanley, one of the commanders, but gave me a taste for more Rampant games!

(*One Elite Foot, One Veteran Heavy Infantry and Two Veteran Archers)

Men at Arms clash, bringing down young Stanley