Healthy Competition

Hello again.

This was going to be a post about my receipt of something I have been looking forward to for a while, but then sort of mutated in my head into a quandary I have yet to resolve.

Being a fan f the SAGA series of games and supplements, I was keen to get my hands on the proposed Arthurian version when it finally arrived. Well, now it is indeed here.

The new SAGA rulebook, with the Romans/ British dice set.

In all its hardbacked glory, it arrived here Chez G on Monday morning. It looks gorgeous, is full of eye candy and will get plenty of outings, I suspect. I had already checked out a couple of reviews (Type SAGA Aetius Arthur into your search engine and you will find many, but I would recommend the run through Wargames Illustrated gives it). The main criticism seems to be that there are numerous references to other titles in the SAGA series, which is problematic if you do not own them. I do own them, having bought into the series in a big way, but I can fully understand that a reference to the effect that "see page x in supplement y" is less than helpful to those who do not have that access. However, what you get is not only good to look at and will probably play well, but is also another six forces to use as well as notes for using other, previously detailed forces too. Of special note to me is the ability to use my Irish as Scotti, which means I only need to paint up one other force to start some games, unless I use the "counts as" line of thought and backdate my Vikings as Saxons or whatever. I would recommend this book heartily, warts and all.

HOWEVER...



Other, more big battle orientated sets I also like the look of.

 



I had in mind some other sets for the period and that is where the quandary arose from.

SAGA is a game for singly-based figures, unlike the two below (though you can do so with Age of Arthur if you want to spend all day setting up and moving).
I have based all my SAGA forces on 25mm round bases (50x25mm for cavalry).
I have a horde of figures for the period, and want to use them all where possible, so mixed basing styles possibly would not suit.
I can use sabot bases, but don't tend to like the look of them and in a WAB game, anything that has a wider frontage per figure tends to lose out.
Dux Bellorum uses whole unit bases, so sabots may work here as with WAB, but there is still the aesthetics to overcome.

I will of course sort these little issues out one way or other.

The main thing is that I now have even more reason to paint all the Saxons and Arthurians I have stashed away. And I even have a box of Huns stowed away somewhere for something slightly different! I may even buy myself a box of Gripping Beasts Late Roman plastics, though, if I stay with SAGA for this period and indeed forego other sets, I no doubt have enough to do a large Late Roman and a British force already.

In the current absence of any defined project for 2018 for a show game or whatever, I hope to get started on this very soon, once reinforcements for my FIW forces have been completed.

Now, how exactly does a wargames magpie solve such conundrums as which project to do next and how to stop buying more stuff???

G






Santa's been!!!

Hello again.

As 2016 wends its way towards conclusion, I thought it time to recap on what this month of gifts and goodies has brought me, starting with my purchases at "Wargamer" back on 4th and working my way through to the destruction of various sheets of coloured paper as I eagerly unveiled my presents on 25th!

For a small show, I managed to spend WAAAAAYYYY too much at "Wargamer". I bought myself a copy of "Escape from Colditz", now published by Osprey, and backed that up on the gaming front with a Fantasy Flight Games offering called "Age of War", which is a dice game and a sort of cross between Yahtzee, Risk and Happy Families. It is set in the classic age of the samurai and the object is to win control of various cards, representing castles, by rolling appropriate combinations of dice, each of which has various icons which may or may not be of use. The castles can form a set, which grants more points to their holder and the person with the most points wins. That person has so far mainly been daughter Eleanor...

I bought some stuff from Ainsty, who are carrying the SAGA ranges from Gripping Beast nowadays, so my fledgling Anglo-Saxons/ Anglo-Danes acquired Harold, Gyrth and Leofwine Godwinson, some huscarls, Hereward the Wake, some "Sons of Death" to add to my Irish excursion and William the (insert your epithet of choice) to add to my Normans, who are eagerly awaiting their turn on the painting table, along with Saracen and Military Orders forces for "The Crescent and The Cross". I also bought some Highlander reinforcements and a starter set of Compagnies Franches de la Marine for my "Sharp Practice 2/ Muskets & Tomahawks" foray into the French and Indian Wars.

Dave Lanchester furnished me with a copy of Neil Thomas' "Wargaming 19th Century Europe, 1815 to 1878", which I have read with gusto, and, last but not least, Tiger Miniatures very kindly sold me some of their Renaissance figures, including artillery, some arquebusiers and some cavalry, who have joined the ranks of my proposed French Wars of Religion project. Daughter Eleanor conned me into buying her her own set of dice (soft touch that I am) and I think that is about it.

Just before Christmas, I took delivery of some basing sheets from the ever-helpful Coritani/ Magnetic Displays (fantastic service as usual and highly recommended to all who would buy from them - Trevor even sent me a nice Christmas good wishes message, which only goes to show how good their service is!). To that I added a package from Pendraken consisting of some reinforcements/ alternatives for both my proposed 10mm American Civil War project and my "Warband" fantasy project that I spent most of last spring working on. They too deserve a lot of credit for their service quality, as I missed the posting deadline for Christmas quoted on the website but still got my order well before Christmas. Many thanks!

Christmas itself saw the opening of a parcel from Caliver Books containing a copy of "The Italian Campaign of 1859", edited by Dr. Stephen Summerfield, which I have again eagerly devoured. I also got a turntable, so I can play my old, vinyl records, many of which I do not have on CD, which has nothing to do with wargaming or the blog as a whole but just shows how much my lady wife loves me!!! I still wait with anticipation for the latest "Wargaming in History" offering on Koniggraetz, but Dave Ryan has my order and warned me it was unlikely to arrive pre-Christmas as it has not been published yet!

After all that, it is again time to decide on where my focus lies for 2017.

1. I still have a passion for anything involving the Austrians, so 1859 and 1866 feature a lot in my thoughts.
2. I want to get some ACW actions going to take advantage of all those readily-available battle reports and orbats, in my chosen 10mm scale.
3. I want to fill out my Dark Ages pretensions and have now built an entire Anglo-Saxon/ Anglo-Danish force for SAGA which I need to paint.
4. I want to add the extras to my 10mm "Warband" fantasy forces.
5. I want to thresh out my FIW stuff and get some games of "Sharp Practice 2" and "Muskets & Tomahawks" in.
6. I eagerly await Nephew Nick's commitment to the Marlburian Wars so I can kick-start my 1690 project and take him on! It will be just the excuse I need to add some more French and Irish units to my existing stock...
7. I am torn between Germans vs Hottentots in what is now Namibia, Maori Wars or Sudan Wars for "The Men Who Would Be Kings", but seriously want to get something up and running soon for that era and rules set.

And then there is the large scale WW2 skirmish figures I bought last year, the Arthurians that have been lying around for ages, a large Macedonian army I have had for upwards of ten years that I still have stowed away, the Peninsular War stuff I bought back in July for "SP2", 15mm WW2 Ostfront c. Kursk, Bolsheviks to take on my WW1 Russians/ "Whites" and, of course, the French Wars of Religion project I want to get off the ground, ideally for 2019 and the 450th anniversary of the likes of Moncontour and Jarnac. I suppose I could stretch out that last option to 2022 and the 450th anniversary of the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre, but I prefer battles to massacres...

The good news is that my interest in this massively absorbing hobby has not waned one iota and I do not have a project to focus on specifically for 2017, as 2018's show game is decided upon already and I have the armies already too! (I could always rustle up an extra unit or two though, or perhaps a terrain piece or feature piece or...)

I love this hobby of ours!

G

Back again!

The Prodigal Blogger returns!!!

Through reasons not entirely of my own making, it has been ages since my last post:

1. The World Cup was on and, even with the (less than) mighty English doing rather less well than at least 16 other teams, it was still compulsive viewing.
2. Workload has been manic at, erm, work...
3. Family members will insist on me taking them to football practice/ matches/ tournaments, hockey training/ matches, swimming, Guides/ Brownies/ Beavers, shopping, etc.
4. Equipment failure of the PC (as in personal computer) kind.

Yet, at the risk of sounding like Yoda, "Idle I have not been."

Which leads me nicely to the X-Wing tournament I entered on 12th July at Stafford Games. I only played my first ever game a week or so earlier, but took my TIE swarm along to test my Dark Side out against all comers. Four enjoyable games, two wins and two losses (to the two guys who eventually finished first and second), and not finishing last was a bonus! Both my defeats were against a four X-Wing set up, with named characters and a few additional skills thrown in. My TIE swarm was 5 Academy TIE fighters (read "crap") and two Avenger Squadron TIE Interceptors (read "rather better than crap, but hardly elite"). Do I intend to stay with the Dark side after being bested by X-Wings??? Well, my two wins were against other Rebel ships and I have not even used my TIE Advanced (Darth Vader's ship at the end of Episode 4) or my TIE Bomber...

We also took "Kirkburn Bridge, c1314" to Phalanx back in June for a third outing. The (less than) mighty English took the wrong football boots to this event too, however, and disappeared faster than an ice cube in the Sahara, but we did at least manage to wound Robert The Bruce! It did not help when Nephew Paul rolled 10d6, needing 5+ saves, and made 8 of them.........Occasional Wargamer Brother Kev was most gracious as Gloucester's knights raced back home via Berwick, northern jeers ringing round their great helms. OWBK even agreed to give Nephew Paul a lift home after my vociferous threast of violence and abandonment drew further mirth from the other side of the table. OWBK is known to be rather more mellow than I...

And what have I smuggled past my lady wife these past two months? Well, apart from Star Wars space ships, my main single purchase was some 1st Corps/ Curtey's Arthurians, actually Saxons, with a view to resurrecting that ideal, using Dux Bellorum, when I have finished.......

the Turks.

The "Malta" project has continued apace, and I will post photos soon, with around 180 done so far. I have also purchased another 180 varied Turks/ Moslems and Christians to finish this off, along with some plastic Arabs who will be converted (as models, not in any religious sense) to bear ladders, etc., for the storming of the town walls in our proposed game. Yet, I have shelved this project temporarily to concentrate for the rest of this month on....

Turks.

15mm ones to be precise, so I can enter another Stafford Games tournament on 6th and 7th September using the "By Fire & Sword" rules. Only 30 more cavalry to finish as I type and I have only played once, using Poles against Cossacks, so a few practice games through August would not go amiss.

So, reasons good and bad aside, I am still here, I am still painting, I am still buying and I am now posting again!!!

See you soon.

G

Arthurian Samples

Greetings once more,

I sometimes paint a few test figures for a project or some special that grabs my attention and these fit that bill nicely. As I have posted before, I have a "complete" Romano-British army, but have yet to get into it other than these samples. Good Englishman that I am, when it does finally arrive on a gaming table near you, it will be more Ambrosius fighting the Germans than Vortigern employing them! It features a veritable mix of West Wind and Gripping Beast figures and I want to do something a bit different with the command figures but not quite sure how to pull it off. For example, I see the Pictish shaman as a bit of an animist, so bought some Vendel deer and hounds to accompany him on a scenic base as a mini-vignette. I don't want to paint duplicate figures, so I just need to work out a way of using the vignette as the single figure he represents without him getting unduly targetted and surrounded by hordes of savages all claiming base contact. I have similar ideas for each of the figures below, using monks to accompany the priest, standard bearers for the warriors, etc.

Ideas and suggestions very welcome!

G



Three shots of a well-armoured  Briton - West Wind figure I think. Let's call him Uriens.




Two shots of another well-armoured Briton, whom we shall call "Galahad" due to his evident youth. This figure also shows why I do not usually paint eyes - they are an irrelevance unless a) you hold the figure really close and b) your camera skills are up to close photography, unlike mine! And that is only if you can avoid the undead stare seen on so many figures with painted in eyes......





Two shots of Bishop Germanus, come to con a few Sarmatians out of their hard-earned citizenship (yes, I watched "King Arthur", and not even for Keira Knightly)





Sandy from Emmerdale (yes, I should get out more!) masquerading as a Pictish Shaman.





Badcath the Druid, otherwise known as "Man O'Magic"





"Free" sample of one of them "German" fellas obtained with the "Shieldwall" WAB supplement I think. I also think he is an Artizan figure, but do not know for sure. All I do know is that he eats sausage, drinks beer out of a mug with a lid and wears leather shorts at weekends..........before anyone complains, I am only joking. He is not even Bavarian!