ACW in 20mm

 Played an ACW Game this morning with Anthony, my regular opponent, using the Osprey With Hot Lead and Cold Steel rules and my 20mm collection. Enjoyable game - we had to call time but the Union were slightly ahead at that point.

We haven't played the rules in quite a while so it was slightly slow as we remembered exactly how they worked, even with the 5 page synopsis I had typed up after our last game.

We both like the rules - they had a fairly easy order system, use initiative so it isn't quite Igo-Ugo and have the ability for units to fire back if shot at and they haven't fired that turn.

The units shift down in size and abilities as they lose bases and the morale tests are fairly tough so once stuff starts to run it can be difficult to rally and it can sweep the rest of the brigade along with it.

Playing with hills

 

Spent some time today playing with hills and how I want the hex terrain to work with flowing hills rather than occasional lumps on the battlefield.   I have been cutting extra tiles to provide unpainted supports beneath the flocked surface.

I recently added some stream tiles to go on the surface.

I am quite pleased with the way it is looking.

I have enough basic hex terrain cut to cover an 8'x 5'table which was my eventual aim. I need to cut a load more "support" tiles to build the hills up and more edge supports so that the hills can start right on the table edges.  But it is coming together...

Field of Battle 3rd Edition

Played an FPW game on Tuesday morning using the Field of Battle 3 rules - I have had these quite a long time but have never got around to playing with this edition.

Field of Battle comes from the Piquet stable of rules and uses a similar style of rolling for initiative and turning and acting on cards.  But, it has ironed out a lot of things that people disliked about the original Piquet rules and provides a very interesting game.

You both roll for initiative and the difference in the rolls is the number of cards you can turn. The winner of the rolls decides whether to go first or second.  Turning a card costs an Command Point, but all units can act on a card without using any further Command points.

All the cards have the detail of how you use the card, what the opposed roll is (if any), the result of rolling even, etc

You use polyhedral dice for rolls and having an advantage moves you up a dice size (so a D8 becomes a D10) or a disadvantage moves you down a dice size (D12+1 becomes D10 if you are down 2).  This becomes pretty easy to calculate after a few turns.  D12+3 is the maximum dice and D4 is the minimum.

It makes the game move quickly and is relatively easy to follow.

We both enjoyed the game despite me getting a number of things wrong and completely forgetting the disorder rules.

The game resulted in a crushing victory for the French, mostly due to my inability roll anything but a 1 on a D12 - every time I picked it up!  Managed 4 1s in a row...

Will definitely be playing a game with these rules again soon.

Unit labels

 

I am playing a game using Field of Battle 3 rules next week - for the first time.  I've played FOB2 but not FOB3 and I decided I needed some way to mark the stats of each unit.

So I spent last night designing and a small tray which will take a label and sit under the unit.

These are 3d printed with a strip of ferro sheet on them (my bases all have magnabase on the bottom).

In Situ :

Quite pleased with how these turned out.  There is space to put a separate brigade label on one side if I decide to, but I'll probably just use simple labels for the first game.

Minifigs 25mm Seven Years War

 I haven't managed to do much painting over the last 3 weeks due to other calls on my time - managed some gaming.

I have been trying to work out how to organise my 25mm Marlburians so that I can use them for sieges as well as the occasional field battle.  I tried basing them individually on 2mm bases so they could fit into movement trays but they looked "odd" on the battlements. Also I would need to add a fair amount of cavalry that wouldn't be any use for the Dendermonde project.

While mulling this over I remembered that someone on facebook had offered a collection of 25mm Minifigs SYW figures for sale a few weeks ago.  I got in touch and they were still available so after some haggling I now have a Seven Years War collection that worked out around £1.20 a foot figure painted and based.

The collection is missing some items so I have topped it up with Artillery and some cavalry from Ian Hinds - also Minifigs.

I am in the process of rebasing everything so the whole collection matches.  progress for far:

Prussians so far - some have had the bases finished and flocked.

Austrians so far.

The collection is being based for Honours of War which we use at the Guildford Club and should end up with 10 infantry units, 3-4 cavalry and 4 gun batteries for the Prussian, Austrian and French forces.

32 Austrian cavalry are up next, followed by the rest of the Prussian cavalry and both sets of artillery.

There are then all the French units to sort out.

I am slightly short on some things and will probably add more Prussian Cavalry, some Austrian command and some more medium artillery in the short term.

The french will need artillery, cavalry and commanders adding as well.

I am pleased with the figures, the level of painting and style and the look of the armies for what was a very good price.

Woking 54mm Games Day 2025

 After skipping a year in 2024 the Woking Games Day for members of the Little Wars Revisited Forum was back and held on March 8th.

The venue we used before, Christ Church in the centre of Woking, is closing for a major building project so wasn't available and the costs have gone up over the years.  While I ran Imperial Miniatures I subsidised the day as we never managed to get enough attendees to fully cover the costs of the room hire.  Now I am retired I can no longer do that.

So, instead, the Games Day was held at my house.


We had 7 attendees (1 just for the morning) and 3 games.

In the Games Room we had Anthony's Battle Masters game using a mix of 54mm Lord of the Rings Figures and Britain's Deetail and Patrick's Songs of Blade and Heroes Norman skirmish Game.

In the adjoining hobby room, I put on Waddington's Little Big Horn using Britain's Deetail figures and a neoprene mat blown up to 6' x 4' and printed by Deep Cut Studios.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the day and we were able to have lunch in the garden thanks to the wonderful weather. After we finished, Patrick and William left to battle the traffic while Anthony, Dave, Alan and myself chatted for a while for heading into Woking for a meal

Photos of games:

General shots of the games room and players

The Battle Masters LOTR game.

 

 Battle of Little Big Horn

The Norman skirmish - all the terrain is scratchbuilt from Plywood, towelling, etc.

Command and Colours Ancients with 54mm

 

 

 A very long time project has been collecting 54mm Punic Wars figures to replace all the blocks in the C&C Ancients boardgame with figures; using one figure per block.  I had managed to collect a fair few figures and then become stuck as the Hat figures were no longer in stock anywhere and I struggled to get things like slingers.

Eventually, I found some metal slingers and some other figures being sold off by Rupert at Drum and Flag and then the Hat figures came back into production and I was able to put together all the figures I needed.

The effort of painting everything was a little daunting, but then I hit on taking a leaf out of Norm from Battlefield Warrior blog and undercoating each side a different colour and playing with them like that while I worked through painting them...

I undercoated the Carthaginians white and the Romans grey and finished all the bases to make all the figures look consistent.

The edges of the bases are painted the appropriate colour for the block type - green = light, blue = medium, red=heavy.  Things like auxilia and warband have a white stripe down the middle of each side as their blocks have a white edge around the colours.

My regular opponent Anthony and I played the first game last week using Trebbia as the scenario and it worked well and looked good, even with unpainted figures.

The game was very close and I lost 6 to 7 as the Carthaginians, not helped by the ambush by Mago not turning up.

The game has certainly inspired me to get on and paint another set of figures...