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 :-)

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