Missing In Action

There's been a bit of  a lull in the blogging activity over the last month.  No special exciting reasons I'm afraid, just a  combination of work going slightly manic and a trip away to Glasgow.

Since I've been back I've squeezed in another  game of Black Powder, this time using my 6mm armies for the Franco Prussian war.  We played out a game loosely based around the battle of Borny-Colombey, a fairly minor battle from the FPW in which the French were able to claim a victory [kind of... it's a bit debatable] but strategically dealt themselves a crippling blow by ending up with a sizable chunk of their army bottled up in Metz and out of the war.

The game itself was equally indecisive with Dave's French mauling the Prussian columns but taking an equal pasting, leaving both armies fairly battered by the end... fairly historical I think!  Dave did manage to make very effective use of his Mittraileuse [more than the French ever managed in real life] but did eventually manage to break them!

I've been working my way through the card buildings from Stoezels structures [see earlier posts] in preparation for our first game of In Her Majesty's Name at Guildford....more shortly.

Bookwise I managed to get hold of a copy of General of Fortune: the story of One Armed Sutton by Charles Drage. 

For anyone with an interest in the Back of Beyond theatre, Sutton is one of those totally larger than life characters that would seem unbelievable if you came across him in a film.  From rail and bridge building in South America, a spell in Gallipoli [where he discovered he could throw Turkish grenades back before they exploded...erm... until one went off, hence the name!], developing the Stokes mortar and gold mining in Siberia and the Russo-Chinese border, just as the revolution rode into town.  He then carved out a career as an advisor to assorted Chinese Warlords, leading armies and evading capture on a regular basis.  His fortunes rose and fell and he sadly ended his days in a Japanese POW camp.  A really unbelievable life and full of inspiration for any BoB gamers,


We've also begun to catch up with Season 2 of Game of Thrones and I'm trying to keep ahead of the game by reading book 3,

Anyway.... more regular blogging is promised soon.  I'll try and get an account of the IHMN game up soon and we have a Force on Force game planned for next week.

Painters progress...

Well my resolution to try and actually paint something this year has got off to a reasonable start.

2 months into the year I've completed the batch of Gripping Beast Saxons that had lingered around since last year.  I've also now painted up some Peter Pig artillery to accompany my French troops in North America for Musket and Tomahawk.

I suspect that there are limited opportunities for a cannon to actually be effective in M&T and the crew are likely to be scalped before they can fire a round but I quite fancied the idea of having some.  I just need to engineer a scenario now where the brave French are defending a village which happens to be devoid of surrounding woodland and has clear lines of fire marked out!


I've also painted a unit of Russian Sailors from the excellent Copplestone Back of Beyond range.  I know they weren't on my schedule but I came across them in a box and decided they'd be fun to paint.  I haven't used my BoB figures for some time and quite fancy trying to resurrect them.

In the past I've used Chris Peers Contemptible Little Armies rules for this period and have a few other rules tucked away in the great rules box but I've heard very good things about the Triumph and Tragedy rules distributed by Empress Miniatures so will have to see about getting a set.

Cavalier is on at Tonbridge in Kent this Sunday and I should be going if all goes to plan [dependent on what time my son makes it back from Berlin on Saturday night...he has a considerably more exciting life than I do!!!].  It's a show I've always really enjoyed... not too big but usually a good spread of games and traders.  I'll update on the show next week.