Undercoating the Germans

We're currently battened down bracing ourselves for the Storm of the Millenium [or something like that] which is due to hit the SE any minute now... currently we're under Amber alert which seems to mean it's a bit rainy!

I've made a start on the Early War Germans which I picked up at SELWG a couple of weeks ago.  I'd splashed out on some of the Plastic Soldier Company sprays which supposedly give very good coverage.  I bought a can of the German Field grey and a Khaki spray [I think it's British uniform] which will be used on the French/Belgians which my son is painting.

The verdict so far is pretty good.... the paint covers really well and looks pretty much on the money in terms of the right shade of grey.

The vehicles are from Zvesda's snap-together, very affordable kits

So far I've only got as far as applying the base coat but I'm quite impressed with the effectiveness of the spray.... anything that shortens the pain of painting is good news for me!!

SELWG

SELWG's one of my favourite shows... not least because it's only a few miles from home, but also because the venue and atmosphere is always good.  For those that haven't been, it's held at Crystal Palace Sports Centre in South London.... it's always a very incongruous site, lots of healthy swimmers and squash players rubbing shoulders with the svelte, lissome figures of the cream of the wargaming community.

I arrived an hour or so after the opening and the hall was pretty busy... I hadn't been sure if the rain was going to keep everyone away but it didn't seem to have put people off.  By 2ish in the afternoon however it did seem to have quietened down a lot.

The ground floor, mid-morning

The event takes place on 2 floors with games and traders fairly well interspersed.  I'd already placed an order with Peter Pig for some 15mm WW2 figures so I headed straight there and picked up my Early War Germans and French, all set for Chain of Command.  I later came across some very cheap 1:100 WW2 vehicle kits at a low price so snaffled a few of these.

I also braved the Bring and Buy which was mainly piled high with GW 40k figures, but I did pick up  cheap copy of one of the Force on Force supplements... Bush Wars. I've been toying with the idea of rebasing my AK47 armies which would let me use them with FoF.  I nearly succumbed to buying a copy of Tomorrow's War as well [not in the Bring and Buy sadly] as I think this could have potential as a Star Wars skirmish set but I resisted.

I also picked up some Perry Japanese villagers to adorn my Ronin games  and some paints... not a bad haul!!!

Game-wise there were some very nice looking games going on.  I played in the Staines Wargames Clubs Gettysburg game in which everyone plays the Confederates, trying to reach the top of the hill first, usually at the expense of your comrades...excellent fun.

The game cunningly fits into a fold up box so it can be easily transported to shows.  I tried skulking at the back and allowing the other players to be shot up but it didn't pay off!

I was then talked into playing a rather daft but very enjoyable Balloon themed game put on by Maidstone Wargames Society.  Each player was piloting their balloon back across the Channel to deliver the first batch of Beaujolais Nouveaux while dodging the police balloon and taking potshots at each other.  I'm only slightly ashamed to say I won at the expense of another player whose balloon was about to reach the White Cliffs when I shot it to pieces and coasted to victory on a strong Southerly breeze.  Both of these games were ideal Show games... not too demanding in terms of time and effort but highly entertaining.

 

 

Some photos from the show... apologies to the clubs whose names I couldn't remember!

Ronin

Now that I've completed the 2 factions... sorry, Buntai... that I'd bought for Ronin, I've finally had a chance to actually try the rules.

Given the similarities in presentation and in the alternating figure activation, I wasn't sure if it was going to essentially be a far Eastern version of In Her Majesty's Name.  There are quite a few common features... single finger activation, equipping each figure with a range of skills or attributes etc.  Combat and turn sequence are quite different however.

Once Priority for the turn has been decided each player takes turns to activate a figure: although this is the Move phase, figures have the option to fire instead at a penalty. Combat follows [of which more in a second] and then there is an action phase.  This is where figures can do a range of 'other' thngs, ranging from removing heads [...giving bonus victory points to one of the factions] to firing again.  This does mean that bow armed troops [...sorry... Yumi...] can fire twice, albeit with penalties in each phase.

So far, so similar to other rules such as IHMN.  Hand to hand combat is where the game introduces some more specialised rules.  Each figure involved in combat adds a number of tokens to a combat pool... these can be used to enhance attack or defence or to try and gain initiative.  Players choose the combination of attack or defence secretly and then reveal their hand.  This allows figures to make multiple attacks, make fewer powerful attacks or to fight defensively.  It can make combat quite time consuming, especially if you end up with a mass brawl which does seem to have been the result in the games played so far.

The addition of a range of skills and attributes [eg acrobat, fast] or specialised weapon skills with suitably Eastern names [tetsubo-jutsu anyone?] mean there are a few extra things to bear in mind but not too many additional factors...  I find that we often forget these in the heat of battle if they become too numerous or complex.

Both games we played featured a skirmish between the local warlord's Bushi and some monks.  We decided that the Bush had turned up to collect some taxes from the local temple and had been met with armed resistance from the allegedly peaceful monks.  Scenery comprised the temple and Torii Gate from Sarissa Precision and some cherry blossom trees I found on line from a Chinese company...nice trees which were cheap and delivered surprisingly quickly. 

The Cherry trees

The Sarissa buildings were pretty easy to put together [even for me] but do need painting.  I haven't painted MDF buildings before... my only other ones from 4Ground came ready painted.  Undercoating seems to be the answer here as the MDF soaks up paint likes nobody's business.

The Sarissa Buildings

I played the game through twice... once with my son and then repeated at Guildford with Keith and Anthony playing and me umpiring. Both games descended into a hand to hand bloodbath with missile fire proving pretty ineffective... except when one of Anthony's musket [...sorry...Teppo...] armed troops ran up to point blank range and blasted away...definitely the way to use muskets! In both games players took to firing into hand to hand combats, taking the risk of hitting their own side without any compunction at all!

The Bushi advance on the Temple's prized vegetable patch!

 

 

All in all another really nice set of rules from Osprey.  I do like this size of game as it means I can actually get something on the table fairly quickly and then build on it rather than feeling daunted by the amount of painting etc. needed in advance.  The rules would also lend themselves to other periods without too much work.  They'd certainly suit other Renaissance periods, Pirates etc. but could be tweaked to suit Medieval or Fantasy games too,

Colours and more....

We went to Colours on Sunday, dodging the forecasted gales and downpours as we headed along the M4.  I've always liked Colours... the venue at Newbury racecourse is light and has plenty of space and there's always a good range of games and traders.  It's a bit of a trek but not too bad with a reasonable selection of CDs in the car.

The planned shopping list was quite modest... I'd hoped someone there would be stocking the Sarissa Precision building range.  I was hoping to get a couple of their Japanese buildings for my Ronin factions but sadly couldn't find any (more on these later).  My son and I have also been debating changing tack on our WW2 project...we'd bought some of the Warlord Games figures ages ago and have built them but not painted them yet (actually he's further ahead in the painting stakes than I am).  Lately though we've been thinking that we need to downscale to 20mm or 15mm.  With 28mm there is no scope really for introducing vehicles or armour which we're both keen to do, so we spent some time at the show pondering the ranges available and the relative merits of each.  I think we're tending to 15mm...now we just need to agree a period.  I think we're both keen on early war and my son spotted the Early War Miniatures Belgian range which took his fancy!!

Our purchases did include the Empire of the Dead rules and a faction set of Werewolves.  The rules look very nice but there are lots of pictures and lots of fluff with relatively little content.  Looks fun though!  Nice werewolves which would fit into IHMN as well.

I also bought figures based on Inspector Le Brock and Detective Ratzi from Bryan Talbot's lovely Grandville comic book.  This is a steampunk themed strip set in a world filled with anthropomorphic animals.  I've always really liked Talbots comics from Luther Arkwright to the brilliant Tale of One Bad Rat and Grandville is fantastically drawn and great fun.  When I saw the miniatures I knew I needed them... I've no idea what I'll do with them though!

...what the finished figures should look like [hopefully!]

They're made by Crooked Dice and are excellently sculpted..  They told me they're planning some more animal characters from the strip as well so worth looking out for.

We'd checked out the bring and buy with no joy, but a later inspection revealed 10 nicely painted Samurai so my Ronin forces are growing faster than expected


Ronin

It's pretty obvious I'm a fan of skirmish level games and as I also love all things Samurai the new[ish] set from Osprey, Ronin were very tempting.  I haven't played a game as yet but based on a couple of read throughs the rules look pretty good.  In presentation they're very similar to In Her Majesty's Name... fairly concise with lots of pretty pictures and a range of factions to choose from as well as a points system to build your own.  Combined with a series of Buntai [Samural 'gangs'] from North Star it all proved too tempting.  I bought the Sohei monk buntai and a Bushi Buntai [regular Ashigaru and Samurai].  There are also rules for bandits, ronin, ninjas etc as well as Ikko Ikki, Chinese and Koreans so plenty to choose from.

The rules look fairly straightforward: opponents choose between attack and defence points each turn to determine how they'll behave and there are a host of special skills and abilities to help the lowliest monk defeat the most impressive Hatamoto.

the Sohei Buntai



...and the Bushi

Some of the Bring and Buy bargains

I've ordered a couple of buildings from Sarissa since I couldn't get them at Colours and some cherry blossom trees from Ebay to give some authentic Japanese flavour.



Game updates....

Charlie Don't Surf

I dug out my Vietnam figures a couple of weeks ago as Andrew at the club wanted to try out Charlie Don't Surf, the Too Fat Lardies rules.  I umpired as Andrew's US troops swept though a valley towards a village and walked into the inevitable NVA ambush.  The US troops were fairly well shot up until they were able to get into cover and begin to concentrate fire.  Kevin's NVA tried charging the US troops and were pretty well hammered for their pains. 

Both sides dug in in jungle cover and the US eventually managed to call in artillery [after several rounds of trying] which actually proved only mildly annoying rather than the devastating strike Andrew had been hoping for.  It did force the NVA to pull back and allow the US to drive on through the jungle.  By the end of the game the US had edged the win but at a heavy cost.


Chain of Command

Last night I played my first game of Chain of Command, the new Platoon level game from Too Fat Lardies [again... I think there's a bit of a theme here!].  Thanks to Keith who supplied everything we got to try out an encounter between US and German troops.  The game feels like a modified version of IABSM with Patrol markers replacing blinds.  These lead to the early stages of the game being a bit cat and mouse as each side tries to get into a good position.  The markers then form the deployment [or Jumping off] markers.  The mechanics are similar to a lot of the TFL games but... no cards!  Instead commands are determined by dice rolls which can activate sections or commanders etc but can also trigger the end of the turn.

The game played really well [not least because I won!!] and is ideal for this level of game.  Fairly bloody, although that might just have been Keith's unlucky dice rolling and good mechanics to reflect command and control and friction etc.

There are already additional lists appearing on line to complement the US, British, German and Russian ones in the rules.... including Belgians which neatly brings us back to the beginning of the post!

A double helping of IHMN....

I've had a few weeks break from gaming apart from the new Star Wars RPG and a game of Kingmaker  which took place over several nights on holiday (and about which the less said the better!) but we've made up for that with 2 games of In Her Majesty's Name in 2 days!

Game # 1 

This took place at Guildford and pitted my opponent Anthony's British rifle company against Professor Moriarty and his steam powered automatons (automata?) backed up with my shiny new steam tank from Ironclad Miniatures.

The very thin red line
 

 

One of the illegal Prussian Automatons

 

The British company was pretty much straight from the rules.  Moriarty was beefed up with martial arts and mesmerism and was 'inspirational'.  He was accompanied by 2 fanatical humans [one equipped with a couple of hand grenades... presumably with 'bomb' written on them] and the steam automatons.

The British gallantly lined up in the street, hoping their skilled rifle fire would provide enough cover for a couple of them to make off with the objectives... a tactic which came unstuck under heavy machine gunfire from the robots.  The redcoats were quickly mown down by the tank and the robots...Moriarty skulked around in the shadows until he emerged and tried to use his Mesmerism on the last soldier...sadly this wasn't a success so we had to resort to shooting him instead!

Messrs May, Clarkson and Hammond inspect the
latest Armoured Steam Carriage

I have to confess here that I'd made an error and my machine gun toting robots should have cost more points than I'd calculated... I should have paid extra for them to be "strong" which would have allowed them to carry the MGs in 2 hands, or perhaps downgraded the lethality of the guns. Anthony could therefore claim the moral victory despite his Redcoats running away like a bunch of girls!


Game #2

Having unloaded the scenery and figures from the car today, my son and I decided to have a game this evening (a last hurrah before school resumes tomorrow for him!).  He hadn't played before but that was no guarantee of an easy ride!  This time I took the Servants of Ra while he fielded the Scotland Yard squad backed up with Holmes and Watson.

The carbine toting Special Branch officers sensibly took up a position behind a wall and some barrels as the Cultists charged down the street at them, led by their Mummy.  The cult leader Akhenaton and Professor Abir hid behind the leading wave.  Sairah, the mystical assassin daughter of the Professor used her magical talents to appear on the warehouse rooftop (using the Path of Shadows ability) and then mystically "blinked" again, appearing by the Chief Inspector!  A flash of her daggers hit him but he managed to pass his Pluck roll (despite the poisoned blades) and he promptly came back with a stiff upper cut, laying her out cold!  I should have taken this as a sign of things to come...

Special Branch and Holmes take cover behind the wall

The cultists continued to fall to some smart shooting from the police before everyone managed to get close enough for a massive bundle.  The magical professor tried to hypnotise one of the police but only succeeded in giving himself a migraine and falling over.  He managed to clamber to his feet next turn only to be picked off by one of the crack shots behind the wall. 

 

The two sides advance

 

The game then descended into a mass brawl with everyone proving surprisingly rubbish at actually finishing off their opponents, even when the Police tried mobbing the Egyptians and trying to swamp them with superior numbers.


 

Police brutality!!!

The final brawl

.  The very tough Akhenaton and the equally hard Holmes looked to be set to slug it out all evening but I suspect the Police numbers would eventually have told and won the day had we not run out of time and drawn a veil over the ending.