Merry Xmas!

Merry xmas to everyone who's popped by here over the last year and a bit.  I hope you've had/are having a great one and that Santa brought you all the toys you were hoping for!

Sedition Wars...I think I've done my back in!

I finally got round to unpacking the Sedition Wars boxed set which I'd been given by a very generous club member who couldn't face the prospect of painting all the figures!

 

 

 

 

 

The game seems to be a Space Hulk style game of Sci Fi Horror with Humans vs Techno-Alien horrors [looking quite like GW Tyranids]

The game comes with  human and alien squads and a host of tokens and counters [not all of which I've worked out yet].  The figures are multi part and require some assemble... mostly this seems fairly straightforward but a couple are more complicated... a human in exo-skeleton armour and the larger squidgy monster style aliens.

There are a host of jiffy bags to unpack with figures, tokens etc and a set of heavy card boards which form the outpost battlefield...

 

 

 

Loads of jiffy bags full of stuff!

 

 

The set also contains specialist dice, unit cards, a painting DVD [haven't got round to this yet], yet more counters and bizarrely a cloth badge... I'm not sure what I'm meant to do with this but my sewing skills are rubbish so I suspect it'll stay in the box!

 

 

The strange cloth patch

 

 

I'd thought the box was very full but then discovered that it contained an extra set of the terrain boards as apparently these have a tendency to warp, and a second rule book.

 

The New Year beckons so this could make a good project... relatively self-contained and not too taxing in terms of the amount of figures... mind you the aliens look a bit daunting to paint!

 



Chain of Command Germans

I finally got round to finishing off my Early War Germans. The plan is to use these with Chain of Command etc and they've been languishing due to a lot of external distractions... work [booo!]., dog walking [ok when it isn't raining and the café in the park is open] and World of Tanks.

If you haven't come across this yet I can only advise you to stay away... like some kind of wargaming-crack it will sap your willpower and absorb hours of your life that you used to spend painting! [...must have one more game... I need the experience to upgrade my Hetzer!]

Anyway... back to the infantry...

These were a bit of an experiment...I used the PSC spray undercoat to try and minimise the painting time and then dipped them in a tin of the Army Painter Shade stuff.

The verdict is a bit mixed: the undercoat spray is very good... the colour looks right to an occasional WW2 gamer like me and it did save a lot of time.  The dip was more of a mixed batch.... it's a good, quick way to shade figures [unless they fall in the tin as happened to one poor infantryman... covered in sludgey brown stuff!].

 

My main concern is the shineyness of the figures. Normally I'd wash them with some of my dwindling supply of GW brown ink [the good one... before they changed all their washes.  I picked up several bottles cheap at the model shop in Dorking a couple of years ago]  The ink leaves the figures well shaded but without too much glare.

 

The Army Painter Shade however seems to leave a very shiney surface over everything... the shading is fine but they are a bit too toy soldiery for me.  I think a matt varnish may help but my GW varnish is satin.  If anyone can suggest a decent Matt varnish I'd be grateful!

Sharp Practice

This week I had the chance to dust off Sharp Practice, the rather excellent Too Fat Lardies Napoleonic rules.

Now I've never been  great Napoleonic fan... I really struggle to get to grips with the history, the changing state of the nations and, of course, the uniforms.  Apart from the huge variety and the unique wargamey fear of getting the facings wrong on the Queens Own 42nd Camelry.  Everybody seems to be an expert in this era which adds to the danger of getting  detail wrong.

Despite this I was tempted by SP as it doesn't take itself too seriously and allows you to recreate Sharpe style engagements... the fact that units are often only 10 men strong is a close reflection of the TV series too!

Andrew and I have been trying to get this game played for some time and finally managed it last night.  The scenario pitched a British landing party of the 42nd Foot and some Rifles [of course!], supported by a Naval party, making their way to  village to rescue a spy who needs to be evacuated.  Of course the village just happens to be garrisoned by some French troops who have to drive off the invaders.

The village... the pigsty at the top briefly became the equivalent of Hougomont as the Voltigeurs defended it

In theory the village was located somewhere in Spain... the buildings look suspiciously like a mix of Dark age and Fantasy buildings.  Similarly the villagers milling about in the fields bear a strange similarity to ECW villagers... needs must I'm afraid!

Andrew's forces made a bold march straight towards the village with a strong core of Highlanders leading the charge. 

The Black Watch vs French Infantry duel...

His Riflemen skulked about in the woods [as Riflemen are wont to do I suppose] before emerging to pick off the remains of the first French unit to be bold enough to try and take on the enemy.

The Rifles emerge from the wood....

In the centre the French took a bit of time sorting themselves out and trying to get  units combined into a larger formation... it took a bit of time but eventually was worth it as they were able to concentrate fire on the Highlanders

The French faff about in the centre for a while before getting themselves organised.

Eventually the weight of fire in the centre began to tell and the Highlanders fell back.  By this point the French Light infantry who had been guarding the pigsty on their Right flank had decided to advance and were also harassing the British from their flank.

The spy made herself known and ran to the relative safety of the British lines but we ran out of time to determine if they made their way back to their boats.

The rules work very well for this level of game... the card system makes activation very unpredictable.  In our game the British were constantly being teased with the prospect of the gaining some bonus 'Grasp the Nettle' cards which would have been a great help by giving them extra actions, only to have them tantalisingly disappear as the Tiffin card was turned [...because of course everything stops for Tiffin...].  They don't take themselves at all seriously but do give a 'proper' game.

 I hadn't played these for some time and I'd forgotten that I had painted up quite as many figures as I actually had.  I think this may be because I'd tried to blank out the hours of painting Black Watch tartan kilts!!  Maybe I'll try and get them out a bit more often...now perhaps I should add some cavalry....

Reviewing the masterplan

So just over a year ago I tried rather vainly to map out a bit of a plan about projects I'd been working on.  Hmmm... I wonder if I met any of my goals [anyone who knows me will know how naïve that last statement is!]

 These were the plans which were top of the pile

• Samurai ... 6mm Baccus figures...erm...nope...nothing!!  On the other hand I did get completely waylaid by Ronin which is also Samurai [albeit a bit bigger]... can I count that as a success??
• Franco-Prussian/Risorgimento/Franco-Austrian... 6mm ... yay!  I did actually play a few games with these.
• 6mm Zulus/British.... nope...untouched all year, but the new Black Powder supplement may well inspire me.
•         SAGA ...nope
• Musket and Tomahawk... had a couple of games of this... why haven't I played these more??
• Force on Force – Afghanistan... now here's something I have actually played a lot...either Modern or Vietnam.  We also tried out the playtest rules of their new WW2 variant.
• Ottomans/Hungarians... no... languished unpainted and unplayed. I did however get a set of Hail Caesar which I'm thinking of using with my Swiss and Italians
• WW2...we'd had a plan to use the small collection of 28m figures with Kampfgruppe Normandy or Normandy Firefight.  Neither of these have happened but in the meantime Chain of Command have come along and really impressed me.  Since I already had some 28mm and 6mm WW2 figures, the logical thing to do was ignore these completely and go for 15mm!!!  I'm currently painting up some Early War Germans and Belgians for CoC.
• Spanish Civil War... haven't done anything but CoC looks like it would work really well for this too.
• AK47... again untouched but... you guessed it... we're going to try CoC for this period too.
• Russian Civil War/Back of Beyond... I did actually dig these out and had a really good game of Triumph and Tragedy but haven't played this since... must have another game.

 Apart from Ronin, the other big distraction has been In Her Majesty's Name which took up quite a chunk of time with painting and building scenery, so not entirely unproductive but clearly making plans and sticking to them isn't my strong point

I'm going to avoid making too much of a plan this time but it looks like Chain of Command is the next big thing for a number of periods along with a strong showing from Force on Force.

Mind you the next game I have lined up is Sharp Practice...so much for project management.....

You better not pout...

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting nervous...

My xmas shopping list this year is very light on wargaming fare... mainly because I have too much stuff that lies unpainted, including a lot of 6mm Samurai which I started a couple of xmases ago and after a good start haven't made any progress on for months.

Almost a year ago I'd gone through a plan of what I'd hoped to work on and what had been neglected and I'll give that a dust off tomorrow [although I suspect I know what I'll find!] and the Samurai certainly featured then.

On the list [which I'll have to casually leave lying around the house with big arrows pointing at it] are....

Fiends, Villains and Heroes... the new IHMN supplement which promises a whole new heap of suggestions for factions and groups.  I recently found a boxload of African explorers and Askaris who may well be drafted in as  Victorian adventurers so I'm hoping Africa is included in the book.

I've also just heard that Warlord Games are releasing a Zulu supplement for Black Powder.... my 6mm Zulus haven't had an outing for ages so this could be just what I need!

In other non-festive news, a friend very kindly passed on the box set from the recent Sedition Wars kickstarter.  This is a SF, horror 2 player skirmish type game which comes in a very hefty box.  I need to go through the box as apparently there were reports of parts being missing but so far it looks as though the components are all there.  These include a range of board tiles and factions including some very complicated looking multipart figures... I've stocked up on Superglue!!!



More nostalgia...

I posted recently about my growing RPG collection, recapturing my sad youth.

After I posted it I realised that I've also been doing exactly the same thing with boardgames!

I was never a massive boardgame fan... back in the 80s [which was my RPG-ing heyday] a lot of 'serious' boardgames seemed huge... hundreds of counters, a map the size of a double duvet and a game designed to run for longer than whatever war it was recreating.  At the Uni club we'd occasionally play a boardgame instead but we tended to steer clear of the heavyweight games, opting for the light relief of games like Dune, Kings and Things, Cosmic Encounter and of Illuminati.

In the same way I've gradually acquired role-playing games that I played in the past, I've done the same with boardgames.  Here are the best additions....

Kingmaker

A classic game which absorbed many. many hours at uni [I really should have gone to some of the lectures!].  My son is a bit of a wiz at this and game easily wipe the floor with me.  My wife [who professes not to know how to play games] will also innocently shuffle some nobles around and then announce..." so, if I move this stack of nobles here and capture the king... is that a good thing??"  I think I'm being conned.

War of the Ring

Not a game I played in the past, but one I always wanted.  I always loved the idea of a grand tactical view of the Lord of the Rings with Orc armies sweeping over the West and crushing the Shire [Bwah, hah, hah!!!] .  I saw a copy a few years ago in a charity shop and had no cash on me... came back the next day and it had gone... gutted!  Luckily Ebay is now an easy source of games.

Gunslinger

This is a great Wild West game from Avalon Hill which would be easily adaptable to a tabletop game.  I had a copy which I got on a family holiday to the US which I've since lost so, again, Mr Ebay was my friend.

Firepower

Another Avalon Hill game which covers the cold war and most modern [up to the 80s is still modern
to me!] wars.

Star Fleet Battles

Another game that absorbed a lot of time at Uni... mainly Saturday afternoons and evenings at my friend Martins, aided by fish suppers and beer.  At the time the idea of juggling power allocation and complex ship diagrams was fascinating and absorbing.  I bought a copy a year or so ago and it was so complex and heavy going that I haven't been able to pick it up since!  Destined for Ebay I think!

I have heard [via Mike at Black Hat Miniatures] good things however about Federation Commander which is apparently a much more playable SFB style game.