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... ;)