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

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

Going underground.. Greeks, skeletons and giant wurms!

This Sunday saw the 'chums' gather at the Sherwood soldier shack for another game of Midgard, the upcoming heroic battle rules that James has been writing and we've been playtesting this last year or so. See James blog for far more detail on the battle and the rules.

James and I lead the undead forces of Hades against Paul and Tom, who commanded Basil and his Greek forces.. their mission was to escort the captured Cerberus out of the underworld. It was a nip and tuck affair, the undead almost losing the day, but being sneakk sneaksters, managed to recapture the pooch just in time. 

It was a thoroughly enjoyable day, and great to get my old hoplites and newly painted skeletons out on the table for a bash in the underworld. I was a bit brain fogged so handy to have the rules author on your team!

Next blog post I think I'll post some better pictures of the skeleton army (which I thought I'd 'finished' but now want to expand further!)

Tom and James setting up

skeleton archers (Oathmark minis) with some Celtic undead

all very noir

One of the skeleton champions (Reaper Bones mini)

Orpheus with Cerberus on a leash!

Hades arrives and looks decidedly unimpressed

Fiery horsey skeleton champion

The Greeks

Parthenios dropping in to slay Hades. Cheeky blighter.

Deianeira, casting mist about the place

Undead champions 'inspiring' the legions of bones

the forces clash and many bones are crunched

Parthenios eventually finds his end, swallowed by the Wurms

On the Greek right, the undead make some headway

And finally recapture Cerberus, who turns on the Greeks

Not so quiet on the Western front.. WW1 28mm game

Despite not playing many games with actual people of late, I've been painting quite a bit and just thought recently that perhaps I ought to update this blog with some Skellies and Prussians.. but before that, a brief report of this weekends actual face to face game.. I have to say it was great to meet up with old gaming chums and roll some dice again. We even got in a summer stroll around the local graveyard, seeking out Rorkes' Drift defenders, and a nice shared tapas lunch at the 'local'!

On Sunday, I drove over to Scrivs 'wargaming annex', picking up James on the way. I had nothing to bring to the day, not having played any WW1 stuff for a very long time, and sold the few figures I had in the last millenium! The chaps have a combined excellent collection, of course, of figures and terrain, which were laid out for a game to try out the 'Bello Ludi' ruleset. None of us had played them we were  interested to see what kind of a game they would give us. We were conscious that we've been playing wargames for 30-40 years and these rules are stated to be aimed at beginners, so we expected some abstractions. (Not a bad thing, just a thing).

The scenario pitted three German platoons (each platoon consisted of a CO and four 12 man sections, a mix of LMG and 'bombers') against a slightly less numerous French force holding a defensive position around a village and local wood - both pretty well bombed out (I believe James set this scenario in the Verdun area, but I'm afraid my WW1 knowledge isn't great)

The rules were certainly easy enough to pick up.. we came across some things that we thought we'd rather tweak.. toning down the effectiveness of VB gunners for example, and refining the rules around cover.. a brief reset and phase two played after our pub lunch tested these ideas satisfactorily. James had also picked up the cards which added a lot to the game, but we were firing off ideas for some much more WW1-specific cards which we thought could really add some period flavour.

I enjoyed the game. The rules worked okay.. I struggled to imagine the scenario where a WW1 tabletop miniatures game would be used for a 'team building' exercise as described by the rules authors intent.. I'd imagine 'shiny' classic toy soldiers, or something like SYW? I was also surprised that an introductory ruleset was dependent on a quirky order dice (even thought these worked very well) and a deck of unique cards, rather than sticking to D6 or similar, but that's just idle head scratching, and not a criticism. I can see me trying these out for some 1866 or 1870 games when I've got enough figures painted up!

Oh, and the Germans won in the end..despite some very stiff resistance against the odds.

French reserves move up

a view across the Germans advance

French machine guns pick their targets

The woods are heavily defended

late arrival of artillery supported the german assault

Heroic action from the French bombers!