One hour wargame

Well, I've made a hash of this, I'll tell a story and you can guess which order the photos go! 

We had a go at one hour wargame the other evening and decided to use our medieval forces as they haven't had a run out for ages it's all been pike and shot, not bad but  we fancied a change. 

We also wanted to try a different system. With 1 hour wargame it's a 3'x3'square, 15turns,and each unit has 15 hit points. We started with scenario not which had a  crossroads and a hill and the aim was to be in control of both by the end. Now the other aspect of this system is you roll for what your army is and we both rolled up 4 units of mounted knights each, now our late medieval war of the roses forces don't have many mounted knights, they're predominantly foot.  Luckily I had plenty of gendarmes to stand in together on my side with a unit of levy  (bill ?) and missile, I used crossbow men, Des had dismounted men at arms and a unit of levy, knights are great in attack but not as resilient as dismounted maa missile fire is pretty effective and flank attacks are devastating.  The first game lasted 15 minutes, Des didn't have any units left combat is brutal but surprisingly subtle, on a number of occasions archers and levy stubbornly held up maa and knights when we both expected them to dissappear! 

The second game the aim was to be in control of two bridges at the end of turn 15. We rolled the same armies as before.  I held one with my crossbow men the other I was battling levy with my knights but Des's levy were on the bridge so a draw. 

Third game was bridge head  , blue  (Des) starts with one unit on my side of the river by the end of turn 15 there could be no blue units on my side in order for me to win , every go a unit of blues would turn up, every other go two of my units would turn up and I'd have to dice for where they were, this time I had less knights, two units of crossbow and a unit of maa, I was pretty lucky with the arrival points, Des's maa failed to perform and it ended up the last turn with some damaged knights taking out the last unit of levy to give me the game. Great fun pick up game, I'm sure we will be playing it more I've got to finish the house then I'll be able to clear the shed and double the playing area to 8'x6'before then I really need to finish off some terrain. 

 

 

Well I hope you have been able to work out which is which. Next up War of the roses Lancastrians I think. Next time I'll sort the order out before I upload it! 

Best Iain 

Napoleonic 2 french line infantry x2

Finally here are my next 2 regiments of French line infantry(both Warlord games ) the 2nd and the 45th for the danube campaign, the plan is 5 more line infantry and then 2 rgiments of hussars and chasseurs and a regiment of dragoons,they're  all built  (they're mostly plastic ) and primed for about a year now!
These 2 regiments and one of the cavalry units will all be sabot based so I can use them for skirmish, I think we're going to use Chosen Men

So I'm prepping for the Analogue painting challenge now and I was going to try and get some terrain done before the challenge but now I can do it in the challenge which is great! 

Next,  maybe some renaissance artillery or some War of the roses. 

All the best Iain 

Terrain 1

I've been a bit embarrassed about the terrain I have, most of it is semi finished, done enough to play with but much less finished than the figures also I've been concentrating on figures/armies .
Now I think I need to start addressing this. As a start I've decided to knock out some roads and rivers, the roads are about 2 1/2" wide and the rivers are more like 3 1/2"wide , they'r strips of vinyl with some sharp sand and emulsion. I think they're good enough, I will add some flock to tie them in with the board and my general basing at some point and I could do with giving the rivers a coat of gloss varnish but for a couple of evenings work they'll do.
I used the roads in a pike and shot battle last night and didn't have enough!

Next up, more terrain I think( I've been inspired by Ray on don't throw a 1 to build a walled Italian town) and maybe some french napoleonic line infantry, maybe! 

All the best Iain 

War of three kingdoms / ECW 2 5 infantry regiments

So we move on into the 17th century with five pike and shot regiments for the british civil wars or with different flags thirty years wars, especially as if anything these are correct for the early part of the civil war  (helmets on shot and full corslets on the pike )so could move over to the continent.
Next to no flags at the moment, I was going to do at least one set but I have run out of time as I have to empty out the room and sand and stain the floor so they're moving out!
They are made up of an some of an Essex army I got off ebay and some warlord plastics and a single minifigs I've had forever !
A red regiment, a yellow, green, blue and grey regiment.

So there's a start, I've got one cavalry unit undercoated and some command that needs cleaning up . Maybe I'll finish my Napoleonic french infantry next ,but I've been saying that for some time! 

All the best Iain 

Great Italian wars 15 landsknecht shot

So here we are back in the 16th century, landsknecht shot by Old glory ,really nice figures,full of character  and easy to paint.
A few Perry plastics with metal heads and a couple of Warrior figures, one of which has had a Perry metal head swap, they're more 25mm and I got them to primarily pack out my Ral Partha figures that I started this army with almost 40 years ago!

That's 36 shot done, next up is more French Napoleonic line infantry and a big push on flags for various periods. 

All the best Iain 

Competition win!

Jonathan Freitag ran a  competition celebrating five years of his blog. Rather  surprisingly I was one of the winners. Following on from my previous post about planning I chucked that out of the window and started a new period "Arthur and the Anglo saxon wars " it's probably my favourite Osprey book so I used Jonathans voucher at Newline to buy nine late Roman cavalry.
I bought Dux Bellorum by Dan Mersey when it came out and have really fancied it but not had the figures so now I've started ,plus I picked up two german warbands and three packs of late Romans from black Tree Design at colours and a pack of late roman gripping beast plastics and dark age warriors  and a box of footsore Arthur and mounted companions plus various bits and bobs I already had.
So  a new unplanned period beckons, what can I say, I'm weak and I am hoping to use them for lion rampant and maybe saga so that's alright then!

   

Look at what I won! 

Haven't finished anything recently, decorating my new kitchen has been eating free time and any I have had has been prepping, priming and building but I've had access to a printer so I should be able finish some French napoleonic line infantry soon. 

All the best Iain 

19th century Italian uniform book and project management

So here are some photos of a book I picked up in Florence about 20 years ago that I mentioned on Jonathan Freitag's blog (palouse wargaming journal) some time ago when my books were in storage. 
 Well they're out of storage although not in a proper order as we are (and have been) in the midst of building work for the last six months and my shed has been press ganged into storage.The text is in Italian but the illustrations are anotated in English so that if you already had a more general history you should be able to work it out, it's copiously illustrated in black and white with some nice colour illustrations as well.
I think it's a pretty good book for this period,especially if the Ospreys aren't cutting the mustard!

Additionally on Jonathan's blog he discussed project management in relation to this hobby, having been inspired by Prufrock (Here's no great matter) and further developed by Natholeon (Natholeon's Empires) I find other peoples approach interesting so here is mine.
 It seems a little odd to be applying such terms to a hobby but we are necessarily in the buisiness of producing armies, so my current range of projects are:

Great Italian wars, 28mm as all of my figures are, well on the way to having a playable force, over 350 painted and based infantry at least 4 stands of gendarmes, 6 artillery pieces,4 wagons, command stands and a unit of stradiots .I could do with more light cavalry and probably gendarmes,which I have, it's taken 4 years to get to this level for me which I'm happy about,2 years of primarily painting Italian wars, in the last year other periods have crept in.

Napoleonic, French and Austrian for the 1809 campaign 3 x 24 figure infantry units painted one unit painted and based, 5 x 24 figureinfantry, 5 x 12 figure cavalry units assembled and primed 3 x cannon and crew assembled ,all French. I figured I'd better start this now if I've any chance of finishing it before I die!I see yhis picking up the slack as the Italian wars wind down, well maybe!

Bolt action soviets, my nephews who I play with are both into bolt action so I'm kind of going along with them, nothing even assembled yet but units that are primarily  one colour hold some appeal!

War of three kingdoms,English civil war, I have a basically complete Covenanters army and 5 painted generic Royalist/Parliamentarians regiments awaiting basing, needing cavalry and artillery, nice to dip into and the period I play most.

War of the Roses, I have 3 basic Impetus armies painted, awaiting basing, they are individually based at the moment doing double duty for Lion Rampant.

Frostgrave, resurrected 1970's/ 1980's figures for D&D painted in enamel by teenage me needing basing.

What I tend to do is just grab any little bit of time and do something and it's surprising what gets done, previously I'd try and wait fir a decent amount of time which never really came around and I'd get fed up, so now I'm little and often, it seem's to work for me!

As there seemed to be lots of words I thought I'd chuck in 2 wargaming related pictures from the summer, Chepstow castle, a lovely castle, maintained just enough and Cropredy folk festival ,where you get to camp on a battlefield!
All the best Iain