I have not been idle! Just not posting.

Well much like the title of this post says "I have not been idle, just haven't been posting much."  So I thought I would remedy that issue with this post.  I have been working on finishing my 10mm French Renaissance.  I am down to the last two heavy cavalry units and I have the commanders to paint.  Also since January the group has gotten together and played some spectacular games.  Unfortunately, I have been remiss in taking photos of said games. We got in couple of games around the few snow storms and those included Ancients and WWII Air.

I have also been thinking about my next project which will 10mm War of Spanish Succession. I have been reading up on the subject and starting to decide how I want to base said figures.  I have picked a few rule sets to read over and look at their basing schemes.  I'll go into those in a little bit.  For now some pictures!     

French Heavy Cavalry partially completed.  All of the figures are from Pendraken and come from their Late Medieval/Renaissance line.

An overhead view of one of the units.

The second unit. The horses are painted and their barding is done on both units.  Just have to work on the knights.

The French army eagerly awaits their friends to join them so they can smash the Spanish in Italy!

So one of the rule sets I picked up for WSS is Ga Pa along with the army list book for that period.  I have read some reviews of this and they sound interesting.  Also along the way I have picked up Beneath the Lily Banners version 2, Twilight of the Sun King, Piquet's Cartouche and Field of Battle 2 and Ridiculous Vanity and Marlburian Commander and Polemos: War of Spanish Succession. Lot of reading material and helpful on deciding what basing scheme to go with. If you have a favorite leave me a note in the comment section about which one you like.

Vows of Iron are a new set of Medieval rules I'm looking forward to trying them out.  Watched an interesting video about them on Medieval Wargaming group on Facebook.

Some new reading material on the Muslim Conquest of Spain and Christian reconquering of Spain.  It's an area I would like to put on the table top.

The group has been hard at work putting together armies for the ECW and 30yrs War.  I want to try these rules out.

We've been talking a lot about doing the bomber raids over German during WWII.  Now I just have to get some B17s, P51s and German aircraft for this one.

Two Fat Lardies have helped in publishing this rule book for the ACW.  A few guys in the group have the figures so it's just a matter of reading the rules and giving them a try.

So I have been busy and will continue to be busy this year.  Besides my ability to attend our local gaming convention Enfilade in May, I will be attending Historicon this year!!! I can't wait to go and see some friends and spend 4 days rolling dice and pushing lead!!!

New models, books, game and some hills!

It's been a while since I've posted mostly because I had lost my painting mojo for a little bit.  I've gotten it back, finally.  I guess I needed a little bit of a break.  I'm still working on my Spanish Renaissance army.  I'm nearly done with the troops them selves. I just have to paint up the artillery and men and then work on the commanders.  I'm certainly behind in where I thought I would be at this point, of course taking 4 weeks off from painting didn't help. Oy!
In the mean time I have acquired some new items I thought I would show you all.  First up is a collection of 1/285 scale WWI airplanes I picked up off of Ebay. They came from England and are nicely painted.  I sold off my 1/144 scale planes last month and decided to go with the smaller scale planes.  I will be able to put more on the table and use smaller bases and playing area for them.  Here are the little beauties.

Just have to add magnets to them for the flight stands and we should be good to go.  Just have to paint up some French and British planes now.

Next up are some items I've picked up over the last few weeks.  One is board game from Italy based on two medieval battles from the 1400s.  The rule system is excellent and provides a nice game.  Some of you may recall I did a miniatures battle based on Campladino:1289. I used the companion board game to this one for that battle.

I also picked up some new books September 11, 1777 about Washington's defeat at Brandywine which I'm running a scenario from for our local convention in 3 weeks and also a book on the War of Spanish Succession. Which I've been gathering 10mm figures for as well.  That project may start towards the end of the year.

The last items I picked up are from Battlefield Terrain Concepts.  Some lovely little hills to help make the tabletop not so flat.  I met this company at Historicon last year and they do some lovely work.  I was finally able to place an order with them.

The hills are solidly built and are nicely flocked.  Also they are a reasonable price.

Well that's about all for now. I'll hopefully get some more figures based up tonight or tomorrow and put another post about them.

Acquired some new items

Over the last couple of weeks I picked up some new items and they have arrived as of today. Which makes me excited!  Some cool new gaming things!!!

To start off with I picked up a copy of "To The Strongest" by Simon Miller.  I've read some good reviews for this set of rules and decided to take the plunge and see if they will work out with our group.  If interested in these you can order them from http://bigredbatshop.co.uk/

Along with the rules order I also picked up from Simon, three hills and 6 patches of rough ground that he uses for the above set.  I of course will use them no matter what.  Also on top of the hills and the rough terrain are my latest Spanish Knights for my Renaissance army.

This is the large oval hill.  It measures about 12.5" from end to end.

A close up of the hill and troops.

I also picked up two smaller hills. They are nicely done and the flocking on them is very interesting. Lots contrast!  I like that.  These hills are a little over 6" round.

More close ups of the Knights.  I would just like to say that I'm glad I'm done painting the knights. What a pain.  Each one had a different color set which made using a assembly line approach very difficult.

These are the rough ground patches.  I'm not 100% sure of the material used to make them but it almost feels like straw.

Now for something completely different.  About 3 weeks ago I stopped by Powells Bookstore here in Portland, OR and came across this book in the WWI section.  It's a travel guide written for people who wanted to tour the battle ground for the 2nd Battle of the Marne.  It was published in 1920.  The best part of the book are all of the great maps and each page has pictures on it taken during or after the battle.  This to me was a great find.  They had other books as well for the Western Front.

Great maps!

Impressive detail on the maps as well.

Fantastic photos on each page.  This book has been a joy to go through.  Lots of gaming ideas are popping up from this find.  :-)

Wargamers and Tactics: Everyone Charge! vs. Real World Tactics

About a month or so ago an observation became forefront in my mind and I wanted to post something about it.  After a game I ran for the group, I noticed no one bothered to follow the examples of the tactics I had provided them before the game.  It was a skirmish level WWII game.  Each side had either 3 or 4 squads each plus some support units.  One side was attacking and the other defending. I had told the attacking side that they should work together i.e. covering their approaches, mutual fire support, use SMOKE! and stuff like that.  The defenders were coached on using their machines guns to overlap their fire zones, hold back a squad or fire team to plug a hole and so on.  Neither side really paid attention.  The defenders went about their task of setting up and threw everyone on the firing line, the machine guns had poor lanes of fire mostly being blocked by obstacles.  The attackers, once they started, ran full speed into the waiting fire of the defenders only to get decimated! The one fire team that made it to the defensive line and past the defenders was able to catch an objective but it wasn't enough to win the battle. Had the defenders placed someone in reserve that fire team wouldn't have made it.  I've noticed this same behavior at conventions as well.

This made me think about how wargamers play a game vs. what the real world tactics would be for a given situation, whether that's a skirmish game or Corp level game.

I'm not a strategist and was unable to serve in the military so I am by no means an expert on tactics of any sort but through reading books and studying I've attempted to learn what tactics were used in the periods I game.  I know I've succumb to the idea of, "well I have this unit of heavy cavalry lets charge that totally unmolested guard unit of infantry!" Which usually turns out badly for me.
Is there an underlying thought that these are just little men on bases and they have no real world impact if they all die to the man?  Does it matter to Joe Gamer that he is using the same battle plan whether its ancients or modern regardless of the scenario/battle he has decided to play.
In our games don't we try to emulate the type of warfare that fascinates us? After all of our preparation, we present the scenario and then someone runs the troops right up the middle into close combat and the game becomes unwinnable for that side.  We've all witnessed this and have probably done it ourselves.  I realize that these questions are not new and are multi-layered and the answers will vary widely.

I will start with the my first question "these are just little men on bases."  This is true! They are just little men on bases and the fact that they lose 80% of their unit strength in a given day does not matter in the real world.  Unless we are playing a campaign game then there's some sort of ramification to our actions as players.  Other than that we don't care about them.

The 2nd question about Joe Gamer using the same battle plan regardless of era he/she is playing.  I find this true as well only because I've fallen victim of it.  Some years ago there was a gentleman who ran a lot of Napoleonic games here in Portland.  So I got use to lining my units up shoulder to shoulder, sort of speak, and marching across the battlefield.  Well one day I sat down with a different group of friends to play Advanced Squad Leader and I did the same thing with the counters for my troops. I lined them all up shoulder to shoulder.  My opponent looked at me and said, "Boy you have been playing a lot of Napoleonic games."  That moment brought into focus a mentality of playing that I hadn't realized. Since then I tried to understand how particular armies fought in the time periods that interested me and hopefully bring that about in my playing and my scenario design.

My 3rd thought about the amount of time and effort we devote to our hobby to make the shields, uniforms, study the history, find a descent set of rules and so on.  I know I devote a lot of time to building armies and to studying the history of that particular time period and creating scenarios to allow others to enjoy our work.  Now its game time when you explain to a player that he/she better not charge the cavalry into the  pike wall of infantry on the first move because it will not go well and that they should spend a few turns softening up the infantry with bow fire etc. On the first move they charge and then look at you completely dumbfounded that their cavalry was routed.  The defense they use usually falls on the "rules aren't historical" because of some obscure fact they once read (which is an exception to what normally happens) or that you aren't giving the correct bonuses to their units and so on.  We've all heard these arguments. So who's fault is it? The players for not paying attention to the GM about what not to do and what you should do.

In conclusion as I reread this piece I realize that it is not as comprehensive as I would like but I hope it conveys my thoughts adequately.  I am going to venture a hypothesis that most gamers are playing for the enjoyment and not so much about the realism the game provides.  I say this based on my observations and absolutely no hard evidence.  So I throw it out there to the rest of the internet, what do you think?