More painting and a small amount of gaming too

It's been a pretty rough week again, not much sleep and problems with concentration have hindered pretty much everything.

I have managed to slap some more paint on lead this week though.  First up was a squad of 10 VBCW 28mm Militia from Gus' collection.  These were already undercoated and stuck to 2p's, so I just had to paint them.  They will be a welcome addition to my force, giving me enough figures now to complete the 3rd platoon of my Devonshire Royalist Company.  They don't look to bad I think, the figures themselves are lovely.  My favourite is the one I painted up as a cricketer, still in his whites.


I also painted up the US Chain of Command platoon I bought from Black Tree Design some time ago.  53 figures all told, painted in the earlier khaki/brown uniform instead of the boring green M1943 they wore later.  They also came out pretty well and will be up on eBay later as I game WW2 with 15mm figures due to space and cost.


Gaming has been restricted to a game of Blucher against Nathan.  My Prussians were handled roughly by Nathan's French with the end result being a resounding French victory.  My forces were pretty close in number of Brigades to the French, but nowhere near in terms of quality. 

My Prussians had 2 units of cavalry, 1 of infantry and a heavy artillery battery destroyed, plus a cavalry and 3 infantry reduced in strength.

The French had 8 infantry and 1 cavalry reduced in strength, but didn't lose a single unit.  At least I know where the Guard Corps and Napoleon are now.

 Off now to watch France vs England.  Don't care who wins now that the Irish have spoilt the Welsh party.  Selfish buggers!

Blucher, Painting and missed another Devon Wargames meeting

It's that time again, time for me to post a pointless report of my attempts to do anything either productive or entertaining.

Productive.  Hmm, well I have managed to paint up a 28mm WW2 Russian platoon with some support options.  These are now on eBay and will hopefully sell to fund my next purchase. They were quite nice to make and paint, their faces are a lot less "cartoony" than some of the other Warlord plastic figures.  The British espescially always make me think of Captain Hurricane out of the old Valiant comic.  

28mm Russian Platoon

All told there are 46 figures, enough to do a full platoon with several support options for Chain of Command.  HMG, mortar, AT rifle and a sniper team, enough to give a decent game.

Entertainment wise, I have managed a small amount of gaming.  Monday night was spent doing a roleplay Pirate game run by Zob.  We managed not to sink, run aground, get captured by anybody or get anyone killed, which makes a change.  I am also in the process of fighting the Blucher "Hundred Days" campaign with Nathan.

June 15th, French invade and humbug the Allies

 All we have managed so far is the map moves, done over skype and leading to several battles.

June 15th saw the French move up with 4 columns on the right and 6 on the left.  The Prussians held behind the river in the southeast, while more Prussians and the Allied forces pushed down to block the bulk of the French columns.

Things are getting crowded on June 16th

 June 16th dawned and the French pushed ahead, moving in and scouting several Prussian and Allied columns, who returned the favour to the French.  Many forces spent the night camped dangerously close to their enemies and the men could sense that a battle was in the offing.

All hell breaks loose on June 17th

June 17th and 3 battles were declared!  War has certainly broken out in Europe again.  In the southeast(K and L 16, 17 and 18) 18 French units(C, D, F and I) will face off against 23 Prussians(M, P and Q).  The center (H,I and J 11 and 12)sees 28 French(G and J) advancing on 24 Prussians(N and O) and the western battle(H and I 8, 9 and 10) has 16 French(A, B and H) facing off against 17 Prussians(K and L) and 14 Anglo-Allies(R and S), with more Allies(T) hoping to arrive before the battle ends.

We were meant to do the first battle, selected by Nathan to be the one in the center, on Saturday at the Devon Wargames meeting.  Sadly I was sick on Friday night and didn't get to sleep until 6am, so couldn't make it.  Sorry Nathan, I would rather have been playing than sleeping all morning mate.

Anyway, that's been the sum of the game related activities this week.  Hopefully things will improve now and I will get in a game of Blucher at some point.  Have fun folks.

More monsters, plans for "Blucher" and other stuff

First up, it's a sad day as Spock has died again.  Unfortunately it's for real this time.  Thank you for entertaining me for years in space and on impossible missions Mr Nimoy.

I have had a bit of a "run-about like a mad thing" week again.  My Mum has been released from hospital, but is still pretty rough so we are keeping an eye on her.  My Daughter is struggling with post-natal depression, so we are keeping an eye on her too and I am struggling with a constantly coughing wife, so I am keeping an eye on her as well.  I need 3 eyes!  

Painting has been somewhat stifled by the lack of eyes :) but I have managed a few bits.  

 I have rebased some 28mm Old Guard for a nice chap in Belgium, so they are off on their travels soon.

I have also painted 90% of the second batch of the Shadows of Brimstone figures.  3 Slashers(big red things), 6 Hellbats(winged snakes), 12 "Hungry Dead"(zombies with a few conversions using Perrys ACW bits) and 4 heroes(Lawman, Preacher, Indian and Rancher woman).  Just the huge Harbinger left and that is the lot done.  Then it's onto some dead cowboys for Dead Man's Hand.

Due to my wife's bad cough, which is always worse at night, I tend to be up until stupid o'clock in the morning.  So I have been "planning things", which is usually a bad thing as it ends up costing me money.  It also usually ends up with part finished projects, such as 15mm AWI, 15mm ACW, 28mm Dark Ages, 28mm Medieval......The list is endless.  For the first time however I am contemplating getting some Napoleonic figures for myself.  Luckily I am considering a proper size, 6mm!  The reason for this is Sam Mustafa's new set of rules.  Blucher is a fun game and plays quickly, as can be seen in my previous post.  While it is perfectly playable with cards, such as the Hundred Days expansion for it, they are just not aesthetically pleasing to a die-hard figure gamer.  So I spent several hours planning and working out what I would need to replicate the cards in 6mm figures.

Then I slapped myself for being stupid.  Why replicate something that you can already use to play a specific period or campaign?  I'm a dumbass at times, espescially at 3am.  So I started reading up on Leipzig, as it's a major battle and had elements from all the major nations.  Another slapping soon appeared though as I did some working out of bases, figures etc.  If you average the bases out as each representing 2000 men I would need 112 bases for the French Grand Armee alone!  As each base would need 2 units to replicate the brigade that makes each base about £3.50, so about £400 just for the French.  That idea went flying out of the window very rapidly.

A bit more thought and I considered doing Austerlitz, Jena, Salamanca and others, but eventually came up with the winner.  My first project for Blucher is to be Marengo.  The French had about 24000 men and the Austrians had just over 30000, so it's not too big and the forces will form a nice basis to expand for Austerlitz by adding some Russians and additional French.  

The battle itself seems to be fairly interesting, with the initial attacks by Austria pushing the French back before Napoleon counter-attacked and defeated the Austrian army.  So that's the plan now.  I have figured out that I will need 12 infantry and 2 cavalry bases for the French, against 11 infantry and 3 cavalry for the Austrians.  Nothing too major, I will be placing an order next week when some funds have cleared.  It's good to have a plan, even if it's not the plan you had last week, or expected at all.  The aim is to have something approaching this look to my bases, but probably not as good as Steve's. 

Have fun and I'll be back next week.

Improved at the end

After a bad week, I was ill, Tina was ill and then my Mum was taken into hospital, it has improved a bit now.  My Mum is on the mend, although still in hospital with bronchitis aggravated by her asthma.  Tina's on the mend, but still coughing all night long.  I am knackered by feeling ill still, running back and forward to Cornwall to see Mum and not getting much sleep as I am next to the cough monster.  But I'm still smiling....most some of the time anyway.

I have painted several things, but not many of them are finished yet.  I did get some ECW pikemen done, and 4 more Shadows of Brimstone figures too. 

 The pikemen are Renegade figures that I bought when they first released them many years ago, it's good to support a local company.  Lovely figures, but HUGE in relation to the Warlord figures that Colin has.  They will win any fights though as the plastic pikes from Warlord are no match for the lethal, sharpened metal pikes I have given these.  They have drawn blood several times, sadly it's all been mine!

The Shadows of Brimstone figures are 4 of the characters.  Gunfighter, Marshall, Bandido and Saloon Girl are now ready and willing to join the fight.

Currently on the go and just needing basing are the zombies, hellbats, slashers and 4 remaining characters.  Just the big beasty left to do and the bright red plastic figures are all finished!

Gaming has been limited but I did manage to play a first game of Blucher against Nathan yesterday afternoon.  Yes, the "Stop buying new rules" plan for 2015 lasted less than a month.

The game was a 200pt Anglo-Allied vs French, based on the Flanders map from the Scharnhorst campaign guide.  Nathan took the British and picked a fairly mixed force.

1. 4 units of British/KGL foot  -  60pts
2. 1 unit of Nassau foot  -  12pts
3. 2 units of Brunswick foot  -  24pts
4. 1 unit of Dutch-Belgian foot  -  8pts
5. 2 units of Dutch-Belgian militia  -  12pts
6. 2 units of British heavy cavalry  -  28pts
7. 2 units of British light cavalry  - 20pts
8. 1 unit of Brunswick light cavalry  -  10pts
9. 3 units of artillery(2 foot, 1 horse)  -  21pts
10. Duke of Brunswick  -  5pts

These he split into 2 columns.  Column 1(9 units) was the British foot,  British cavalry and 2 units of artillery and Column 2 was all the Allied units led by Brunswick(8 units).  He detached the 2 units of British light cavalry to scout for his army.

My French force was made up of the following

1. 8 units of French foot  -  96pts
2. 2 units of Young Guard  -  36pts
3. 2 units of Dragoons  -  20pts
4. 2 units of Light Cavalry  -  14pts
5. 1 unit of Guard Light Cavalry  -  15pts
6. 3 units of artillery(2 foot, 1 Guard foot)  -  19pts

I took 3 columns.  Column A  had the Guard infantry, cavalry and artillery plus the 2 units of Dragoons.  Columns B and C both had 4 units of infantry, 1 artillery and 1 light cavalry, with both units of light cavalry being detached to scout.

So both sides had 10 units of foot, 5 of cavalry and 3 of artillery, spooky or what!

I won the intelligence roll, my 2 light cavalry were obviously better than his so I choose a map edge and moved first.

In turn 1 each column only has 3 instead of 6 move points, so initial moves are limited.  Column B moved down and took hold of the town(B3) on the crossroads. Column 1then moved up and occupied a village(D3).  Column C then seized the city in B7 while Column 2 occupied another village in E6.  Finally Column A positioned itself in A3, ready to move to support either of the other columns.  I had seized the most victory points(1/2/3 per village/town/city) so still had the initiative.

 Turn 2 and Column B sprang into action.  6 points allowed me to move west on the road(1pt), move south to cross the stream(3pts) and then keep going south into D2 to flank Column 1(2pts).  Nathan then chose to scout Column B with Column 1, then not to move it.  This proved to be a mistake as you will shortly see.  Column C then moved south, south and west on the roads(1pt per square) into D6 to try and pin Column 2, which it also scouted.  Again Nathan scouted my column and then held position.  Admittedly it did look good for him as his columns were much bigger than mine, 8 or 9 units against 5.  Finally Column A moved south into C3 and scouted Column 1.  I still had the initiative, which would be a game winner for me.

Turn 3 and I declared a battle centered on Column A.  I then moved Column C into position on the other flank of Column 1, preventing Nathan from reinforcing with Column 2.  All he could do was move it into position behind Column 1 and hold they could hold until he could arrive on table.


Like an idiot I forgot to take any pictures, but it didn't go well for the Allies.  Nathan's British were were faced with the Young Guard in front while being squeezed by the other columns on the flanks.  His deployment area was only 10" wide and 10" deep.  It was an untenable position and, although he did his best and caused quite a bit of damage, his force was broken by turn 5 before his reinforcements could arrive.

Not too much should be made of this though, it was a learning experience for both of us and we would both do things differently next time.  The game itself was good, I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next one.  Plan is to start the 100 Days campaign soon.

Well, I am off to paint some plastic now.  Catch you all later