Back to Gaming

 I haven't managed much gaming over the past few weeks for various reasons (including 2.5 weeks away in Norfolk and Suffolk) but did get in 6 games this week!

I played a Seven Years War game using Honours of War on Wednesday Morning with my regular opponent Anthony. Prussians vs Austrians which we called after a couple of hours as Anthony had to go and the Austrians were halfway to Prussian breakpoint with no losses themselves.

I then had a friend (Ian Marsh of Fighting15s) staying a couple of days and we played the same game in the evening before and then after dinner. it was a close game with each side needing 6 kills to cause the other army to break.  The final score was Austrians 8 units lost (3 of those on the final turn) to the Prussians 5 units lost (but i just failed to break a final Prussian unit for a draw).

On Thursday Ian and I also played a Travelbattle 54mm game (slightly marred by Ian's inability to roll anything but a 1 or a 2), a game of General Orders: WW2 from Osprey and two games of Azul all whilst hiding from the heat.

Not quite sitting in a dark room playing D&D like we used to when we were at school together but close!

Is it really inertia to stick to what you like

 

There was an interesting post on TMP (which I still occasionally read) the other day about whether people have too much inertia to rebase for new rules, try out new rules, sabots, etc - even though it might make their hobby easier or more fun.

This got me thinking about my own approach to the hobby and the way the hobby seems to be going having just read the latest Wargames Illustrated who’s content bears less and less resemblance to my hobby at all with the emphasis on new boxed games with lots of supplements and new “Factions”

I have settled on some rules for all the periods I play and I am happy with them and fully intend to stick to these rules and periods. I don’t think that is inertia, I think that it is sensible and a rejection of the “butterflying” that so many wargamers seem to do, chasing the latest new rules, the current trendy game or the latest range of figures in an attempt to find something “better”.

For instance, Sam Mustafa has just released the “Scourge of Princes” rules which cover Italian Wars up to Thirty Years War, etc. There is a lot of excitement at my club to try these rules out and people queueing up to play games.

I like some of Sam’s rules – okay, I like Blucher and still play it occasionally. Scourge is apparently based on some of the Blucher concepts. So, should I splash out £37 on a new set of rules which might give me a better gaming experience or should I stick to the rules I have? There is time and effort to learn a new set of rules and ultimately many of them are disappointing or have problems so why not stick with a set of rules that works?

For Thirty Years War I will be using “Through the Square Window”. The project isn’t playable yet, so I can’t say definitively that they tick all the boxes but they look like they will provide the type of game I am looking for, will work with large singly based units and be easy enough t remember the rules.

For Italian Wars I am slowly collecting 6mm Baccus as they release their new range and I intend to use the Hex based rules published in Battlegames #7 which again seem to satisfy what I want from such a game.

I see no reason to look at Scourge of Princes if I am happy with my current choices of rules – even if I haven’t tried them out in anger yet.

The same is true with Napoleonic rules that are in use at the Guildford Club – General D’armee 2 are particularly popular but, to me, seem far too complex and I played Soldiers of Napoleon but could see no reason to adopt them rather than Blucher (which I play occasionally) and my usual set of slightly modified Neil Thomas Napoleonic rules.

I am in the fortunate position that I have now got collections (or planned collections) filling all the periods I have an interested in. I have recently acquired a 10mm WW1 British and German collection for 1914 (both the time period and the Great Escape Rules!) and that plugged the final gap in my collections to provide some Machine Age wargaming.

I have the following periods and associated rules (28mm unless otherwise noted):

54mm Punic Wars : Command and Colours Ancients
EIR Romans and Germans: To the Strongest / Neil Thomas Ancients
Dark Age Saxons/Normans/Arthurians: TTS / Neil Thomas Ancients
Wars of the Roses: Field of Chivalry / Lion Rampant
6mm Italian Wars : Hex rules from Battlegames #7
Epic scale Thirty Years War : Through the Square Window
Marlburian : Siege of Dendermonde – Charlie Wesencraft’s skirmish rules / Vauban’s Wars (Piquet)
Seven Years War : Honours of War
40mm AWI : Rebels and Patriots
54mm Napoleonic : Neil Thomas / Blucher
20mm ACW: Hot Lead and Cold Steel
FPW: Neil Thomas 19th Century / Field of Battle (Piquet)
54mm NWF: Men Who Would be Kings
20mm Sudan ; Men who would be kings / Sands of Sudan
54mm 19th Century: Funny Little Wars / Portable Wargame
10mm WW1 : 1914 rules
20mm WW2: Rapid Fire Reloaded
1/1800 WW2 Naval: Victory at Sea
1/300 Naval: Cruel Seas
18mm Martian Empires : Martian Empires

I also have a range of skirmish periods that use a variety of rules – more and more based on One Hour Skirmish wargaming. These include:

Gangsters
3 Musketeers
Ogre (Steve Jackson Games)
Superheros (Marvel Crisis Protocol)
Fantasy (Frostgrave and League of Dungeoneers)
Spaceships (Federation Commander)
Star Trek skirmish


I have sold off quite a few collections over the last year or so, as well as thinning out the unpainted figures as I realised that I will never get everything done. I have too many other hobbies to concentrate solely on wargaming.

I cannot see me adding to this list, there is enough work just getting the collections that have yet to see the table (Siege of Dendermonde, TYW, Sudan and Italian Wars) into a playable state let alone expanding on existing collections.

So if I remain as a "caterpillar" rather than blossoming into a short-lived "butterfly" and perhaps eventually become a hobby "dinosaur" I think I'll still be quite happy.

Box Inserts

 There has been a fair amount of discussion about storage solutions on blogs recently and I am no different in trying the find the perfect solution for storing figures.

In between painting houses for Dendermonde I have been printing a load of different inserts for storage. One of the problems I've got is that I want the figures for Dendermonde to be individually based so they work for the siege.  I have originally thought I would magbase them but they looked odd mounted on a base and were too high.

So, I have designed an insert for a Really Useful 4 litre box which lets you put the figures in rows and holds them in place.  You can fit 4 of these trays into a 4-litre RUB.

I am also printing a 45mm high tray which will take the marching figures and officers and you'll be able to fit 3 of those into a one half of a 9-litre box.  So able to mix and match with 4 of the other trays.

The Standard bearers I might just lie down, though I might make a 70mm high tray to take them and mounted figures with wider slots.

Also looking at trays with 25-30mm wide slots for artillery pieces.

 

House Painting...

 

The house painting has started.

I bought a load of 2 for £4 acrylics from Hobby craft to paint the houses with after giving them a grey primer coat.  They will still need two coats each to get a solid finish.

Most will be painted in fairly muted colours with a few richer houses painted in brighter colours to add some contrasts.

After these have their walls painted, I will go back over them and paint the windows different colours.  Then, I will paint a number of card sheets different colours and cut the shutters out of them.

Finally, I need to cut the beams and spray them black and then they will be attached as well as the door surrounds.

After that it will be onto cutting and assembling the roofs and adding coloured tiles from prepainted card cut into strips of tiles.

Return to Cork City (it's been a while....)

 

Dug out my Gangster collection and Cork City for a game with Anthony today. It has been a number of years since these buildings saw the light of day (possibly 10 years!)

This was the first playtest of mixing One Hour Skirmish rules with Mad Dogs with Guns to see how they worked. Verdict was encouraging...  

The rules use cards for activation and action points like OHS but I have added wounding similar to Mad Dogs to make a small 5 figure a side game last longer.

The two gangs were searching for information and money left in one of two possible locations by the dead mob boss Danny Devito.  Anthony's Lieutenant managed to find it first and despite a lot of gunfire and ramming his car with mine, he managed to get away to win the game 5 VPS to my 3VPs.

I need to do some more work on the rules for cars to cover firing from cars, ramming cars, running people over and the risks of driving too fast which have always been one of the entertaining things in the Mad Dogs rules.

Made me realise that the City needs some TLC and repairs and I might change the base from the cobblestone mat to something more modular for smaller games plus tart up some of the buildings a little - this was made a long time before I had a 3D printer so I can now easily add water towers, hydrants, rof skylights, etc.

 

 

54mm Travel Battle Napoleonics

 

Last week tried out the Travel Battle rules from the Perries using my 54mm collection.  This was on a 6' x 4' table with 4" squares, so 12" deep and 18" wide - very slightly narrower than the travel battle board.

Just set up some terrain and played an encounter game with the victory conditions being to destroy two of the enemy brigades as per the original rules.

The game was fun, moves quickly and the rules are simple enough to remember - though I did get some of the cavalry rules wrong initially which affected my left flank cavalry brigade.

Eventually, the Prussians/British broke the French for a win.

We are thinking of trying out an historical scenario next time with the same rules.

Back boards

Had a rethink over night and decided the trench pieces would look better with back boards, so I designed and cut some pieces this morning.

 

 This also means I could use the pieces as two sides of a tranch for other games if I ever ventures into WW1 in the future...