Some new painting projects

The last few months have seen one of my regular slowdowns in painting with nothing for months, but in the last few weeks I've made a bit of an effort to re-start a couple of projects which I'd bought figures for.  I posted about these at the end of April so for me this has been really speedy work!!!

The first was inspired by my visit to the Little Wars Revisited games day (LINK) back in the spring.  The range of bigger figures on show reminded me that I do like the larger scale and inspired me to have a look at starting something new in a larger size than 28mm.  My only other figures in larger scales are my 54mm Northwest Frontier figures.  After a bit of pondering and hunting around online I settled on a setting that I'd always wanted to do and which wouldn't require a lot of figures... The Three Musketeers.  It's one of those settings that lots of gamers seem to dabble in, judging by the number of blogs and posts that I came across.  I settled into that pleasant part of a new project... perusing figure ranges and working out combinations of figures, before eventually settling on the lovely range of 40mm figures from Steve Barber Models.  These are really lovely looking figures although the range isn't huge,  I picked up 4 Musketeers to start with although I now have some Cardinals Guards on order.  I also added some figures from Eureka... these are a little smaller in some cases (Constance and Planchet are a bit weedy although Rochefort is a good match) but they should work well alongside the Steve Barber figures.  There are also some 42mm figures from Irregular which I may check out for a comparison at some point...

In terms of rules there are a few options... Osprey's En Garde is designed for exactly this setting but I also have a set of Donnybrook which I bought years ago and have never played, and my old copy of GW's Legends of the High Seas which I think would work well.

The other project is another one that just about everyone seems to do at some point.. Mythic Greece.  I guess most of us are of an age where Ray Harryhausen is a big influence and everyone loves Jason and the Argonauts, right?  I'd been looking at this in a larger scale as well but eventually decided that the Foundry 28mm were the best option in terms of the sheer amount of stuff that was available.  A lucky check on eBay showed up someone selling some of the Argonaut range as well as a few other figures so i snapped them up. 

I also bought a set of the Tales of Men Myths and Monsters rules which are designed for exactly this setting although, again, GW might be a good option with few tweaks to their Lord of the Rings rules.  

For inspiration I borrowed Stephen Fry's Mythos from the library as an audiobook... I've been doing a lot of long car journeys recently so audiobooks have been ideal.  I've now ploughed through all 3 of his books... Mythos, Heroes and Troy.  I can highly recommend them all, especially the audio version although this does seem to hinge on whether you enjoy Stephen Fry's style of writing and delivery or find him annoying.  I loved them but reviews seem very split  on this point.

Long lost treasures

A recent venture in the loft uncovered a  few long-lost treasures which haven't seen the light of day for many years (certainly not since we moved to this house back in the mid-90s)

The loft is a terrifying place full of chaotically arranged boxes of figures and games as well as years if accrued junk that, for some reason, we decided to put away... just in case...

So here are the excavated treasures...

Ogre... doesnt really need an introduction.  Giant robot/tank faces off against a range of more conventional troops and usually crushes them all mercilessly.  Like a lot of my early games, these games all came from the long-gone Games Gallery shop on Glasgow's Great Western Road.  This was played to death back in the 80s

Black Hole... another game from the Metagaming range. A great concept, these pocket sized games were a bit variable in quality but the range contained some real gems.  This game is set on a doughnut shaped asteroid with a black hole at its centre (probably best not to think about the science too much!).  Missiles launched off one side of the map reappear on the other edge circling the play area which always caused chaos.

Car Wars... another one that doesn't need an introduction.  It's gone through lots of evolutions since this first version.  I loved the ability to design your own cars and probably spent far too many hours doing that back in 1981.  Having played and enjoyed Gaslands more recently it'd be interesting to see how this hold up today.

Valkenburg Castle.  This one's a bit more obscure.  It was published by Task Force Games in 1980 and is very much in the Metagaming style.  It comes across initially as a dungeoncrawl but at its heart it's really a tactical wargame, exploring and fighting through differently levels of the titular castle. There are various scenarios and a campaign game.  I have a memory of mainly playing this solo.

It's interesting to look at the maps and counters in these games in  light of the quality components we now expect as standard... some of them are really quite rough and ready (definitely Valkenburg Castle!), and yet I had hours and hours of fun from these.  And all at a bargain price!

Ravenfeast

 There haven't been any blog posts for few weeks.  We had a blissful week away in North Norfolk (so good we immediately booked to go back again in September!) but returned to lots of shenanigans at work and some tricky family issues which have absorbed all of my time and energy.

Game-wise I played in an excellent ECW game at Eric the Shed's.  Incidentally if you haven't had a look at it, Eric has now launched a brilliant wargaming event business.  His blog post about it is here and the link to the Shed Wars Experience site is here.

Last night I played a fun Viking skirmish game using Ravenfeast... these rules are available as a free download here.  

The game is very much at the small end of skirmish gaming and our scenario challenged my Viking Jarl and his warband to break through to the coast and their waiting longship, while the Saxons were intent on stopping them.  I tried racing for the safety of the coast and avoiding a fight if possible (not very Viking, I know).. each player has a bonus card and mine gave me a turn of unrestricted movement in rough going so I'd planned to slip into a nearby wood and leave the Saxons in my dust.  

Sadly the Saxons very unsportingly mobbed my Jarl and prevented him from reaching the safety of the trees.  He made a very heroic last stand but eventually fell to the Saxon hordes.

The figures were Anthony's newly-acquired 40mm Vikkngs and looked great.  Ravenfeast aren't the most sophisticated rules but are dead easy to pick up and play with.

Some hometown history

Back in Glasgow for a few days visiting my mum and catching up with friends.  I usually try and squeeze in some kind of historical facts in a post when I've been away but haven't been anywhere of much interest on this trip.  The best I can manage is a few 'interesting' facts about my hometown, Rutherglen which sits just to the south east of Glasgow.

Rutherglen lays claim to being Scotland's oldest royal burgh (granted by King David in 1126) although there are a few other claimants for that, and is fiercely independent of Glasgow, despite being pretty much a suburb.  It was an industrial town with mining, shipbuilding a chemical works and steel all being local industries but has really struggled since all of these declined over time and is now quite a deprived town.  The chemical works has left an unpleasant legacy of chromium waste and other nasties lurking under the soil, especially under the football pitches and playgrounds I used to play on as a wean.

One interesting historical titbit is the persistent local legend that a plot was hatched at a local church to betray and capture William Wallace at the end of the 13thC.  This tower, St Mary's Tower....

... is often claimed to be the venue where Sir John Mentieth and other Scottish nobles met with the English to hatch a plot to betray Wallace, or occasionally it is where he was actually captured (but it wasn't).  In fact this tower dates from the 16thC so although they may have plotted at a previous church on the site, it wasn't in this tower.  The tower originally had a square crenellated top until the 17thC when the spire was added to house a bell.

There are also rumours of a tunnel under the graveyard which led to Rutherglen Castle and which was used by Mary Queen of Scots and/or Bonnie Prince Charlie to escape.  It's fascinating how these local myths and legends grow and become 'fact'.  I imagine Nessie also made use of the tunnel to reach the nearby Clyde.  

There were actually 2  castles... one, Farme Castle dated from the 13th century and was criminally demolished in the 1960s.  The other, Rutherglen Castle, was demolished after Mary QoS's defeat at the Battle of Langside which took place a couple of miles to the west (most things in Scottish history seem to come back to MQoS)

Finally no trip to Glasgow is complete with a picture of the Duke of Wellington statue in the city centre adorned with his traditional traffic cone which has become a city icon.  A few years ago the city council made a concerted effort to stop the cone but failed... never tell Glaswegians they can't do something!  And I was pleased to see a local statue in Rutherglen was also sporting a cone...

Star Wars Miniature Starship Battles

A bit of a blast from the past last week with a game of Star Wars Miniatures Starships Battles.  These rules came out way back in 2006 (in my head that's just the other day but of course it's... gulp...17 years ago!).  I think I'd played this when it came out but not since then.

They use a pretty simple grid based system which actually gives a fun, fast moving game.  It's not the most complex game but ideal for an evenings gaming.

We both had one substantial capital ship each backed up by assorted fighters... we used a couple of suggested house rules limiting ranges to 4 squares, otherwise fighters tend to get blown away at long range, and it led to a tense game as the rebels whittled down the Imperial fighters before ganging up on the Destroyer and eventually destroying it.

Xenos Rampant

I finally managed to try out Xenos Rampant which I've had since Xmas.  The game should actually have taken place several weeks ago but a combination of work being really busy and an assortment of bugs meant it kept getting postponed.

The rules use more or less the same format as the other Dan Mersey 'Rampant' rules... units are generally 5 or 10 strong and have 10 attack dice until they drop to half strength.  Each unit has an Armour rating and casualties need to reach a multiple of that number before they take effect.  If a unit is successfully shot at (even if there are no casualties) they need to test for morale.  All very simple and dead easy to pick up.

Imperial troops

The real strength of the rules is in the huge range of special characteristics which you can give the different troop types... these really let you customise the game and give it the flavour of your favourite setting whether it's a galaxy far, far away or a grimdark future where there is only war etc.  The downside of this is that it's easy to get carried away and end up with lots of special rules and modifiers which are easy to forget in the heat of battle.  It's always really frustrating to get a long way into the game and then remember something critical which could have made areal change to the outcome 

Redemptionists

As this was our first game I only added a couple of upgrades and special rules... one unit had armour piercing weapons and one of the vehicles had indirect fire etc.  This, along with a simple encounter scenario may have made it a bit uninspiring. 

I used my old Laserburn figures, upgraded with some new ones from the excellent ranges at Alternative Armies.  Purely for the nostalgia value we went with the Imperial and Red Redemptionist forces from the original Laserburn rules 

Because I'd kept it simple and had matched the forces quite closely, this did give a bit of a bland feel to the game and I think I would definitely make more of a distinction between each side to give more flavour to the game next time.

The other mistake was having quite a lot of buildings on the table.  I should have guessed that it would quickly end up with lots of units holed up inside buildings and proving very difficult to damage. One suggestion in the rules is to simply agree that no one can enter the buildings which is a bit weird but would prevent the problem.

On the plus side the game was very easy and intuitive to pick up and we were quickly playing with minimal reference to the book which is definitely a good thing.

We'll give them another go bit with a bit more thought on my part about designing the forces more carefully and thinking about the terrain. 

As to the result, my Redemptionists were eventually whittled down... especially when I tried charging my Light infantry across the open ground to see what would happen... the result was exactly what you'd expect!!

The victorious Imperial tank which won the vehicle duel.

A weekend in Dorset

 

We've had a spell of bugs and illness over the last month, so last weekend we decided to take advantage of the long Bank Holiday weekend and take a short break away to cheer ourselves up.  We found a lovely, dog-friendly pub/small hotel near Bournemouth.  It was a lovely weekend and the perfect antidote to the Coronation.  

In amongst the cream teas in the New Forest and walking the dogs on the beach we managed to find a couple of historical things.

Mudeford Quay

One of our favourite spots has always been Mudeford.. a nice sheltered bay with short ferry trip to a huge sandbank filled with beach huts.  We've been here countless times but I'd never heard of the Battle of Mudeford.. a skirmish between 2 smugglers ships and a couple of navy cutters and a sloop.  All the details are on the plaque below but it involved a skirmish between sailors and marines trying to seize the smugglers ships before resorting to the more sensible option of using the navy ships' firepower to disperse the smugglers.  A scenario with huge gaming potential!

On the second day, after a lovely evening in the pub with 2 very well-behaved dogs (that's not always guaranteed!!) we had a wander along the beach and then stopped off in Christchurch.  This is Place Mill... a restored Anglo-Saxon mill which is now an arts centre.

And this is Christchurch Castle.  Dating back to 1107, it was attacked by supporters of King Stephen and later was seized by Parliamentary troops in the Civil War and then successfully fended off attacks by Royalists.

This is the Norman House which is a rare example of a Norman domestic building and dates from 1160... much nicer than a drafty old castle.