1066 And All That

Before I get onto the stuff relating to the title of this post, just a quickie about what I've been doing with my two days off.

Yesterday started with chores, mainly related to shifting furniture around in my living room and then assembling the last of my bookshelf units. This one was a bit more fiddly as there were two drawers to assemble as well. With that in place I was able to transfer most of my wargames rules, Ospreys and magazines to them.

Today I spent a bit of time prepping figures - they've now been washed and are drying off on kitchen towel now. I also decided to do a test paint on one of the latex river sections. The paint went on very nicely, but I did make a bit of a booboo - I added static grass before applying a coat of Klear so some stray fibres got trapped in that. Tomorrow evening (back at work unfortunately) I might have a go at stripping the paint and flock off. Anyway here are a couple of pics, including the "flex test":

Loose flex

Tight flex

I'm not sure about the colour - I did a base coat of Paynes Grey then wet blended some dark green in. I think it looks a bit too blue, so maybe doing the two colours the other way round and perhaps wet blending in some streak of a lighter green would look better.


So, 1066 And All That. Last night saw the second of two big multi-player games of ADLG organised by Gordon. I missed Stamford Bridge last week as I wasn't feeling brilliant, but did make it to the club for yesterday's refight of the Battle of Hastings. I was given command of the Breton contingent.

The Normans and allies started off table and in the first turn would deploy into a box representing the base of Senlac Hill, roughly opposite the centre of the English line and then carry out their first moves. The Normans were given 4 minutes per turn to complete any moves; the English only got 3 minutes. Naturally this added quite a bit to the friction, particularly for our first turn where we also had to transfer troops from one table to another. Especially as I found that the Fleming & French contingent who only had three pips were blocking my Bretons from actually moving out of the deployment zone!

Normans at end of turn 1 - still some troops on the other table

My goal was to try to get around the right flank of the English, using my light and medium foot to go through the difficult terrain there. My cavalry (no knights for the Bretons) were meant to act as a threat and to exploit any gaps. Given that my contingent had the furthest to travel, it would have been better if the Flemings had deployed behind us, but our CinC decided otherwise...

Things got rather chaotic so I didn't get many pics, but here are the ones I did take:

Yay! Finally moving!

and from a different angle

Table at the end of the game - 6 out of 8 of my medium cavalry dead...

Fighting uphill meant that at best the Normans would be on evens at impact and usually down in melee. Almost all the English facing me were armoured, which meant I'd need fluky dice to do any damage to them. It didn't help that I'd forgotten that light troop shooting benefits from bases behind as well as to the side.

As the game wore on, and given how badly the Normans and Flemings were getting mauled (being down at least one factor and then having crap dice) we decided to throw everything we had into the battle line, so I charged in with my medium foot and medium cavalry. Against (mostly) undamaged, armoured heavy foot. You can probably guess how that went.

To my right, the Flemings had managed to lose both of their commanders to "Jeavon the General Killer". Billy B'tard threw himself into the fray to try to help out. On his second try, Jeavon managed to "Kill Bill" making three generals from four attempts:

It was a good game overall, despite the reversal of history. It probably didn't help matter that the English players mostly had plenty of experience with ADLG whereas the Normans (especially the CinC) generally had very little.

It may have been better for the Normans to be allowed to deploy anywhere along the baseline rather than being restricted to the central deployment zone. Another thing that might have made the battle a bit more even would have been for either the Normans to have slightly more points than they did or for some of the English to have started with reduced cohesion to represent fatigue from the long, fast march South.

Just for the record, all the figures were 25/28mm from Gordon's collection.

Challenge Day 70 - 28mm WotR Retinue Archers

Following my recent trend, I only had one entry submitted to the Challenge last week. Also following my recent trend, it was a big entry - sixty 28mm foot figures, adding 300 points to my total. thereby busting through my original target by quite a margin with nearly 6 weeks remaining. I've therefore increased my target from 1500 to 2500 points. It will be a bit of a stretch to get there, especially as I plan to take things a little easier for now, but is still within the realms of possibility.

But on with the entry and the pics.

For quite a while I'd wanted to do a 28mm army for FoG:AM but had been put off by the cost and none of the plastic ranges available really appealed. Then I came across the Parry's plastics for the Wars of the Roses and just knew that I had to do it. So, several purchases were made. I'd already picked up a pack of the European mercenaries and added to that 2 packs of WotR infantry, 2 packs of mounted men at arms (half will be done as knights/men at arms and the other half as currours) and a pack of foot knights. These will be enough for me to do up a starter army - later on I'll probably buy a couple more packs of infantry and another of mercenaries to add some of the optional units (northern border foot, militia foot, mercenaries); it will also allow me to bring all three retinues up to eight bases of archers.

Since then I've also bought a copy of Lion Rampant. Although it is intended for singly based figures, it can be used with multi-based figures as well but you need a way of recording casualties.

But you want pictures. I've painted up the sixty figures as retinues of three different fictional lords.


Edward Kneale, Earl Anderida

Charles Kneale, Baron Broadstone

Piers Rose, Earl Chelwood

I'm quite pleased with how the "murrey" came out on the liveries for this retinue.


Although my leanings are to the House of Lancaster (my mum was a Lancashire lass), I do want to be able to use these as supporters of either house for gaming. To that end, I have made use of white flowers and red blossom tufts - half the bases have the flowers in front and blossoms in rear; the other half have them reversed. As this wasn't particularly clear in the photos above, I've taken a couple more to show this:

I might do another post later to show progress on the 6mm ACW cavalry, but will probably schedule it to post tomorrow morning.

Challenge Day 58 - What The Little Red Card Brought

This morning I made it to the sorting office to collect the parcel:

Some people have suggested that the Salutesville Police Department's approach to taking on the city's criminal gangs is a bit heavy handed. Others have suggested that they might want more than a heavy machine gun to take on Postie's mob. These reinforcements could be proof of the former or ease the mind of those in the latter camp.

Just so you know, Salutesville's finest are taking delivery of a Lanchester 6 x 4 armoured car and a Vickers Mark II medium tank.


Update on the NSL Panzer Grenadiers

Just after midday I gave the bases a coat of PVA with brown ink to seal the sand/grit. I then set them aside for a few hours to allow the PVA to dry. I've just finished the second step of dry-brushing, leaving one more dry-brushing step and the flocking. They will go in tonight.

No pics of them today as they are very nearly finished.



Starting my Wars of the Roses Project

While the PVA/ink coat was drying on the NSL, I set about assembling my first batch of WotR figures. I've stuck them three to a 60x40 base for painting. Later on tonight they will get primed and I'll start painting them tomorrow.

Mongol Light Foot

Last night I decided to be brave and open the bathroom window to do the spraying which the rain on Sunday had prevented. Did I say brave? What I meant was foolhardy. It took several hours for the temperature in my flat to be restored, not helped by my boiler sulking (it's in a cupboard off the bathroom) for a few hours.

Anyway, all the spraying got done which meant I could do the final steps - flocking the Mongols, gluing flight peg toppers to the ships and using brush-on satin or gloss varnish on certain parts.

This evening I've taken some pics of the Mongol light foot. I would have taken pics of the spaceships as well, but my camera battery had run low. I'll do them tomorrow.

I was going to place an order with GZG this week for a few bits (their Christmas deal is running at the moment), but I've decided to hold off until after the weekend. There is a very good reason for that - Clint and I will have a side-challenge going on during the Challenge around painting spaceships. We'll be sorting out the details on Saturday when I head down to Postie's for a game with the Rejects.

For those of you who don't know about GZG's Christmas deal, head on over to their website and you'll find details on the front page. Freebies with every order and a discount voucher to use in the New Year. What's not to like? However, to make the most of the offer, I'll need to order a bit more than I'd originally planned. And then some more in the New Year to make use of the discount voucher. Mr Tuffley is an evil, evil man! *grin*

Oh Dear, What's She Planning Now?

So, two weeks since my last post - they're getting closer together! I still haven't painted anything. My fatigue is improving, but I've done something to my right shoulder and need to rest it until it stops being sore. I'm hoping that this weekend will see me back in painting mode, finishing off the warehouse and corner store at long last.

For a while I've had a silly idea about doing a 28mm army for FoG, but wasn't sure what era I wanted to do, let alone what army. Then this weekend my brain suddenly had a moment of inspiration. I still haven't been able to identify the source, but I have a crack team one the case.

Whoops, my mistake. It appears I have a case team on crack. I guess I'll never find out.

This evening after work I did a little shopping trip to obtain some research materials. The advantage of working in central London - lots of useful shops. Here are the fruits of my shopping trip.

Well, that's it for today's post. I'm sure my next one won't take two weeks.

What's that? You want to know what is in the bags? Oh, since you asked so demandingly.

Yup, I'm going to do a Wars of the Roses army. Thanks to those great guys the Perry twins, I should be able to do the army relatively cheaply thanks to their plastics. I will need to complete the army with a few metals, but not many (just the commanders and artillery). Another factor that will keep the costs down is that FoG in 28mm uses smaller armies (500-650 points) and the troops for this army are relatively expensive points-wise.

Foyles didn't have the MAA145 book in stock, so I ordered it on Amazon when I got home.

Part of my research involves discovering what the sprues contain, so it was necessary to buy one each of the packs - WR1 Infantry, WR40 Mounted Men at Arms and WR50 Foot Knights.

Infantry:

The pack contains 3 infantry sprues of 12 figures, 2 command sprues of 2 figures, a sprue of plastic bases and an information leaflet which has some examples of livery and some banners and standards.

Mounted Men at Arms:

This pack contains 3 sprues of men at arms of 4 figures, 4 horse sprues to make up 3 horses each, a sprue of plastic bases and an information leaflet which has some examples of livery and some banners and standards.

Foot Knights:

This pack contains 6 sprues of 6 foot knights, 1 command sprue of 2 figures, a sprue of plastic bases and an information leaflet which has some examples of livery and some banners and standards.

Given my family background, my army will be Lancastrian - apologies to any White Roses following my blog. However, all the retinues will be of fictional knights and lords so that I can do them in whatever livery colours I want (within reason!). Deciding on the liveries should keep me out of trouble for a few days until my shoulder heals.

Challenge Day 20 - On The Workbench & Koreans

As today was going to be fairly quiet at work (most of the lab staff won't be back until next week), I decided to take the coureurs into work with me to try to finish them off. I'd left them just needing highlights and detailing. Unfortunately, given the number of different base colours I'd used, this meant I also had to take a lot of paints in with me. Surprisingly, in between the work I actually had to do, I managed to finish them (I hope - I've sent pics to Loki to check if they are up to scratch for the BfC project). So, no pics of these tonight as I'll be submitting them later tonight or tomorrow.

This left me with a clear workbench this evening, so I've made a start on 2 small projects in 15mm. First up are a set of 10 regimental guns for my 30 Years War army. I should finish painting them tonight. The other group are the skeleton pirates from Rebel Minis. I've given them a wash of Warm Grey ink to bring out the detail and provide a bit of shading. I'm tempted to paint these with ink washes to give a faded look to their clothing. Belts, boots, weapons and the bones will then be painted.

Here's a pic of the current projects:

The regimental guns should get based tomorrow. If the basing gunk dries quickly enough, I might get them finished and submitted tomorrow. I think I'll get a decent way through doing the skeleton pirates over the course of the weekend.


Challenge Entry #4 - 15mm Choson Korean Arquebusiers and Crossbowmen

This was a nice, large entry scoring me 196 points. This batch consists of 80 arquebusier (8 as light foot, 72 as medium foot) and 18 crossbowmen (all medium foot). The arquebusiers and 16 of the crossbowmen are Grumpys (from East Riding Miniatures), the other 2 crossbowmen are from Old Glory 15s and were leftovers from previous units.