Sunday, 30 December 2018

Some 6mm terrain and more Napoleonic British

It was a long, long time ago that I last played 6mm and my terrain collection shows it's age. Pieces of painted cardboard was about the limits of my ability in those days.

With that in mind I've been building up some terrain for use with Blücher. The rules list several types of terrain and the Scharnhost maps give a good guide as to how much of each is needed. To start with I've built up some ploughed fields, rough ground and marshes. All made with filler and various static grass and clump foliage. Woodland Scenics Realistic Water for the marshes and the filler scraped with a saw to make the ploughed fields.

The river sections I used for Flames of War should do nicely for the game. Thinner pieces as minor river and thicker for major, though I will have to find some suitable bridges to use for crossings. There are a few pieces modelled with 15mm scale crossings, they will just have to be missed out. The sections are all from The Baggage Train.

Woods are in the process of being made and I have some polystyrene on order to make hills. Roads and built-up-areas will follow.




In addition I've also add a few brand new units to my British army. These are the first pieces in the new style not to be re-basing of old miniatures. I wanted to check I actually had it in me still to paint 6mm minis. Well I'm completely happy with the results. They're 4 more line infantry units and one light infantry.




When I painted the other units years ago I hand-painted the flags. This has produced good results, but I thought I would try to make them with some decals this time. I found the Warflag site that has a great range of free flag images to download. I resized the images and printed them out on inkjet decal paper. Doing this has been a lot quicker than hand-painting the flags and the detail is a lot crisper. I'll be using this process with my other 6mm armies for sure.

New decal flags

Old hand-painted flags


Friday, 28 December 2018

Kings of War Vanguard - Portal

The Kings of War Vanguard skirmish game has quite a few scenarios and most required specific terrain. The terrain pack that come with a few useful items a few that I've shown before and a few more in the photos that follow.

One that isn't included in the pack is the "Portal", a doorway to another dimension or world. We used a Wizard's Pentangle when we played the scenario last time, but since the portal counts as being height 3 and that is flat, it wasn't ideal. Mantic do include a suitable portal in another set but I thought I'd have a go at creating my own.

I've had the archway that I've used for a very long time. It's a resin model from Grendel. I've even had it painted as well. What it needed was a swirly bit to count as the actual portal itself. That I've made from a printed out graphic on inkjet transparency paper with Water Effects used to glue it in place and supply a suitable texture. It looks even better with a bit of backlighting.

I also made a pedestal for it for use with my medieval city since it's supposed to be on a small hill. I'm hoping that will also prove useful as a base for the crane I have, though I've not tried that yet.






Sunday, 23 December 2018

British 6mm Napoleonic Rebasing Complete

The re-basing of my very old British 6mm Napoleonic Army for Blucher is complete. All the usable units have been removed from their substandard fiddly little bases onto much nicer 60mmx30mm bases. These are primarily for use with the Blücher rules but since I've gone for a fairly standard base size for 6mm Napoleonics they could be used for a variety of rules.

I've also created some unit cards, essential for the "hidden" movement with Blücher and originally intended to be placed under the cards. However I think they detract from the look of the minis so will probably use the numbers I've put on each base to key to a roster for the purposes of tracking the changing statistic each base has in the rules. I could perhaps switch to counters or little dice, I'm not sure. Commander and sub-commanders have been based up and named (in the case of sub-commanders). This gives me just over 200 points, not including the sub-commanders.

I was going to be moving over to paint some French, but instead have decided to paint up a few of the unpainted minis I found: 4 more foot regiments and a regiment of light infantry. That will take me to well over 300 points. Plenty.

I've also been busy at terrain and have found a few items in my search through the loft. I will have to make a lot more!







Wednesday, 12 December 2018

6mm Napoleonics... rebasing an old, old, old army.

Many, many, many years ago I got interested in 6mm Napoleonics. I didn't get very deep into it and never really found a set of rules I liked. I've dipped in and looked at rules repeatedly since then, every few years, but never found any that looked like my sort of thing.

Anyway, I've been listening to Tolstoy's War and Peace on Audible for the last few weeks, after watching the superb BBC adaptation on Netflix, and it's got me really, really interested in Napoleonics again. So much so I've actually started in two different scales.

This blog post is about the smaller scale bigger battles that I can get with my old 6mm stuff. After looking around I spotted the Blucher ruleset, and reading it, it really grabbed my interest as having some excellent mechanics and a very modern free-flowing style.

I've been rebasing my 6mm models and have plumped for 60mm x 30mm bases, which seems to be a semi-standard size in 6mm these days. I have created some trial Blucher cards in 60mm x 40mm, that can be used face down for concealed units and then turned right way up with models on top (maybe blu-tac'ed) for revealed units.

The photos below also show how I used to have the models based. I think I have enough in this old army to get a Blucher force going without having to paint any up. A good thing as well, as my interest really is in French vs Russian, not British as these all are.

The painted models are all Heroics and Ros and I actually have a 6mm H&R Russian army still unpainted in it's bags from all those years ago. I will have to get me some French though before starting on those!

I do hope I don't stall with this again and end up leaving it for years and years...



Kings of War Vanguard - City Game and Hellequins

When I first heard about the Vanguard I was thinking of playing it in my medieval city, even though it was intended to be played in more open countryside or a small village. Anyway, on Monday we decided to try it out on the city boards.

This was my second game and we made the city a little less dense than we usually do, also using buildings without internals so as not to complicate things. The game went a lot smoother than the first despite both me and Jeff arriving late to the club.

Anyway, we got the game finished this time and both agreed that the city worked just fine in Vanguard. I'll be taking it to the Cry Havoc tournament in the new year.



I had started the Hellequins for use in the game on Monday, but it wasn't to be. I just got them finished tonight...




Wars of the Roses army for Kings of War (Fantasy Version) and Display Board

We went to the Northern Kings, Kings of War tournament "The Art of War" at the weekend. For this I'd decided to finally get around to making my "Display Board". I had planned to make this last year around this time, but instead made the dockyard for my medieval city.

Anyway, I got it finished and am very happy with how it's turned out. I'm fairly sure it helped a lot towards my 2nd Best Painted award at the tournament.



Tuesday, 4 December 2018

Vanguard - Abyssals and Terrain - plus Blaine and Priest

A few weeks ago now the Kings of War Vanguard Kickstarter landed. A lot of it has been put away for Christmas, but I managed to keep the Abyssal Warband, rules and terrain to paint this month.

I've been busy at it and have completed quite a few items. These have already been seen with the photos of the Kings of War display at the Mantic Open Day, but I thought I'd get a few close-up snaps of them on my new display board.

There's also a couple of photos at the end of the new miniatures for my Kings of War Wars of the Roses army. Those being Blaine on dinosaur and an Perry Italian priest I'll be using as a wizard.

The Despoiler

Abyssal Guard

Flamebearers

All the models I have available for my Warband right now including some from Kings of War and Dungeon Saga

Ronnie the Bard

The Beacon.
(The flames can be removed)

Standing stones and road sign.

Blaine on dinosaur

Wizard... ;)

Saturday, 10 November 2018

Kings of War Big Game Display at the Mantic Open Day

October was a month without much in the way of wargaming or modelling going on. I visited the WWI battlefields (and Waterloo), sold a lot of stuff, did some re-enacting...

Anyway on to November and it started with something big... Mantic had contacted me and asked if I could put on a large Kings of War display for their Open Day. I did a bit of thinking and accepted.

Anyway today has been that Open Day. With the massive help of the usual suspects at COGS, Andy, Jeff, Steve and of course by son Brendan, the 8ft x 6ft display was a massive success.

With it being a static display and not needing to be played on we could go to town with scenery and fill the table. We had a city on fire, 12 armies, lighting effects, a working windmill, several recent Vanguard releases and loads of trees... yes, lots of trees...
















Monday, 1 October 2018

Gaslands Battle Report from Barrage Wargames.

Aaron Kiln has just published a video battle report of our Gaslands game at Barrage Wargames earlier this year.

Here it is:


Sunday, 16 September 2018

Habour 1/1200. Napoleonic Naval, etc... Part 3

So, the plastering is complete...

I've given it a light sanding to smooth the plaster a little especially where buildings will be placed and glued sand on areas to texture it.



Wednesday, 12 September 2018

Habour 1/1200. Napoleonic Naval, etc... Part 2


The extra buildings from Brigade Models arrived on Monday and I set to putting them in place. At first I thought they were way to small in comparison with the Langtons and whilst to a degree I think that is true I have managed an arrangement where I don't think that's too bad.

In order to get the buildings to sit flat on the slopes I've glued some pieces of card into areas I cut out of the polystyrene.




Last night I applied some filler to the polystyrene to make cliffs and smooth out the hills. I've decided after that to add two higher bits to the top of the hill. These will have filler applied tomorrow night.



Lion Rampant - Little Smelling... 3 Player Battle Report

This weekend the three of us decided we'd like to play Lion Rampant. I looked around online and found this 3 player scenario: "Find the Lady 3 Player Lion Rampant Game on Graham's Wargames".

After a little bit of looking through our figure collections and we found that we had enough of the right models to play it, though we did vary the 3 retinues very slightly.

The game started with the Mounted Men-at-Arms of Sir Simon and Sir Roger fighting a multi-turn duel, which Sir Simon won, just. Meanwhile Sir William struggled to get anything to move. Eventually the retinues started to reach buildings, but every one was empty. This suited Sir William, who just set them on fire.

Eventually Sir Simon managed to steal the relic from the church (one of the 10 left ears of St Cuthbert known in Christendom) and Sir William found the Heiress in the very last building. He struggled for a while to beat the Militia, but eventually his Foot Men-at-arms routed them. In good time as well! As he retreated with the Heiress Sir Roger reached him with the remains of his Mounted Sergeants but they were beaten off easily.

In the end Sir William (me) won with the Heiress off the table (2 Glory) and 3 buildings burned (3 Glory). Sir Simon (Brendan) was second with the relic (5 Glory), but without the Heiress (-3 Glory). Sir Roger (Ed) looked on at the burned village (-1 Glory) and  looted Church (-1 Glory), and realised the mission for him had been a disaster...

We all enjoyed the scenario thoroughly. Having a real story play out made the normally enjoyable scenarios in Lion Rampant even better and we really want to try something like this again.

We had a couple of minor issues:

  1. Lion Rampant doesn't have rules for buildings. We ruled they would act as Cover and Difficult Terrain.
  2. The Bidowers didn't really do anything. That may have been down to where they were placed however.
Sir William's forces march, haltingly, towards the centre of Little Smelling

Sir Roger's Mounted Sergeants race to the centre of the town.

Sir William's Foot Sergeants manage to speed up a little on their advance. Sir Roger's Mounted Sergeants can be seen coming in from the other side of town The locals wonder if it's time to hide.

Sir Roger's and Sir Simon's Mounted Men-at-arms charge and counter-charge in a whirling melee for many turns.

Sir William's Foot Sergeants sets fire to a building.

Sir William's Mounted Sergeants set fire to another building and his Foot Sergeants find the Heiress.

Sir Simon's forces search each building carefully as they advance into the town.

Having found the Heiress Sir William's Foot Men-at-arms attempt to run only to be caught by the remnants of Sir Roger's Mounted Sergeants.

But they soon repel them and make a run for it.

Sir William's Foot Sergeants form a Schiltron to hold back Sir Simon's forces

Meanwhile Sir Simon's Foot Sergeants manage to sneak off the table with the Left Ear of St Cuthbert.... but is it the real one?