Popped into our local WH Smiths this afternoon and nabbed a copy of the latest Wargames Illustrated which, this month, has a free rule set included... Here's the Ruckus.
As the title suggests this is an addition of sorts to the excellent Never Mind the Billhooks bit focused very much on the skirmish level with forces of a dozen or so figures per player. I haven't had a chance to read through yet but I can already see these have lots of potential for all sorts of games and periods.
Still no gaming to report due to family health issues... I'm hoping this will change in a few weeks (mind you I said that a while ago!)
In the meantime I've been cracking on with more painting. Some additional Covenanters have joined the army (photos to follow once I've added some dragoons) and a few more 2mm Strength & Honour units... a couple of Legions for the Romans and Light Horse for the Parthians and a unit of Elephants for when my Parthians evolve into Sassanids.
On Sunday my son and I made a trip to the British Library to see the Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibition. I'd been meaning to go for ages and when I finally got round to booking tickets a few weeks ago, discovered there were only a few left on the very last day.
The exhibition brought together books and manuscripts documenting the development of fantasy literature... everything from Beowulf to Neil Gaiman, via Swift, the Brothers Grimm and Studio Gibhli
Despite living in London since 1987 I've never actually been to the British Library... can't think why, and I definitely need to go back for another visit. The exhibition was, not surprisingly since it was the last day, really busy. There were a few confused looking small children who I guess had been dragged along by parents who expected to see a lot more Harry Potter, rather than Lord Dunsany and Susanna Clarke! It was a fascinating look at some real foundation stones of the genre and an excellent day out. I've come away with a long list of authors I hadn't heard of that I need to go and research! There was a small Warhammer display which I thought was surprisingly low-key... especially as the exhibition was sponsored by Wayland Games.
Here are some highlights of the exhibition...
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| Sir Gawain & The Green Knight |
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| Notes by Tolkien for the 1955 BBC radio adaptation |
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| Gandalf's staff |
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| Beowulf |
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| Michael Palin's notes for Monty Python and the Holy Grail |
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| Illustrations by Piranesi |
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| ...and notes by Susanna Clarke for her novel Piranesi. If you haven't read it, you really should! |
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| Gormenghast |
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| Lovecraft |
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| Alice in Wonderland |
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| Neil Gaiman's Coraline |
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| Lewis' Map of Narnia |
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| The Colour of Magic |
Partn3 of my recent painting update....
More additions to my Covenanter figures... these started with the freebie sprue that came with Wargames Illustrated last year and, thanks to some donations from friends and some cheap buys on eBay, I now have a decent army with around 9 or 10 battalia plus some artillery, cavalry and dragoons, all for a bargain price.
They're very nice to paint and the blocks of 10 figures on a base gives a good impression of depth. The 'Epic' scale works well and is apparently a good match for Peter Pig figures. I'm working through the sprues, as well as a box of ECW cavalry and some more generic ECW infantry who will do for opposition . Unfortunately the Highlanders that I'd need for Montrose only come in the rather expensive box set but I understand these will be available separately later in the year, and possibly another WI freebie
As well as painting large 40mm figures for the 3 Musketeers, I've also been painting at the other extreme and adding more 2mm units for my Strength & Honour project. I've been putting together armies for Romans and Parthians/Sassanids and figured they'd need a decent number of light horse units to match the legions. The figures are all from Antonine Miniatures (via Warbases). Next on the list are some teeny elephants for the Sassanids...
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| Roman Legions, auxilia and cavalry |
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| The Parthians/Sassanids... a core of cataphracts and lots of light horse |
Still no gaming here due to family health issues (hopefully normal service will be resumed sometime soon), but at least that's let me catch up a bit on painting. I'm a notoriously slow and half-hearted painter and tend to have little fits of painting and then long lulls so the upside of all the turmoil at home has been a bit of focus. Incidentally if you want an example of the opposite to me, take a look at Eric the Shed's huge painting output at Shed Wars!
I have 3 projects on the go ( I never seem able to focus on 1 thing at a time!), and all very different.
First up at the big scale end, I've made a bit of progress on the 40mm 3 Musketeers figures from Steve Barber Models.
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| Musketeers including Athos, Porthos and Aramis |
I realised that I needed a few more Cardinal's Guards to match the Musketeers
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| Cardinal's Guards including Rochefort (booo!) |
I probably don't need much more in the way of figures as this was always intended to be a small skirmish game, but of course I do need some civilians as well. These are from Eureka Miniatures... a little smaller than the Steve Barber ones but pretty close. I'll also have a look at Irregular who do some 42mm Musketeers... maybe some mounted figures...
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| A 'hired blade' who will do for a pre-Musketeer D'Artagnan, Constance Bonaceiux and Planchet, armed with club (or possibly a baguette) |
Since I picked up a couple of the old Steve Jackson Games Metagames range from the 80s last year (Battlesuit and Olympica), eBay keeps tempting me with more suggestions which of course are hard to resist. Some of the Metagame range go for silly prices, or at least the sellers are asking silly prices... I doubt many of them actually sell. Being a frugal Scot I tend to ignore most of the expensive games but a couple of real bargains came along recently which I couldn't resist.
First up is Fury of the Norsemen from 1980. The cover art is... erm... very much of its time... I'm not sure a game would feature the same illustrations today unless it was in a knowingly ironic way! The game looks interesting and focuses on raiding and pillaging a village which is depicted on the map.
While the Viking player gets to raid and pillage, the other player has some relatively inferior infantry and militia to guard the monks, livestock and treasure which is scattered across the map. With rules for setting fires, random livestock events and pillaging, it's a bloody but fun game which looks eminently convertible to the Tabletop.
And as if one nostalgia purchase wasn't enough, along comes another one!
Ram Speed (1980) is a 'bronze age' naval game of Mediterranean sea battles. The map comes with a bizarre, and quite annoying, watermark design of a coin for some reason. The game also comes with 40 counters of various ships and markers for damage, fires etc.
Attacks can be made by missile fire, ramming or shearing off oars, and boarding. There are also rules for ship mounted catapults etc which, I suspect, might be a bit of a stretch historically but sound fun. I don't think it's the most complicated or strictly accurate set of ancient naval rules but, a fun portable game and again probably very adaptable.
