As It Turns Out…

Despite my messed up finger…


(Ow, huh?)

…I still managed to finish off a dozen Cuirassier I started ages ago while watching episodes 6-8 of Rome last night:


These are figures made by my friend John. They’re pretty easy to paint and so weren’t too troublesome. There wasn't much left, and I did watch three episodes - so I took my time and worked through it. I’m painting these up for John in trade for all the Romans I’ve been painting… Three more units to go! (or was it four…). He’ll be doing the basing – though I will be trying to convince him to base them on a 60mm frontage so they’ll jive with my own DBA armies…

Now to finish off that first Roman army, then forge ahead with some Anglo-Danes…!

Well... maybe I'll work on some simpler tasks over the next couple days - like priming - that don't require so much in the way of fine motor skills... (lots of Anglo-Danes to prime!)

Is My Face Red....!?

well...

I had a little accident last night while cutting some MDF for some 3-D dungeon terrain tiles I was building with Jackson. I was cutting some on the table saw when it kicked back at me and tore a chunk of flesh off my right index finger.

Owwww....

Oh nothing that would require surgery to re-attach or anything... But being right handed this has made doing anything requiring fine motor skill somewhat challenging and/or painful.... So I'm probably not going to get much painting done over the next week or so.

On the plus side I might get some reading done... or not... I didi just pick up the next three discs of the HBO Rome series from the local library.... After watching that I'm not sure what will be more "painful" - painting more Romans or NOT painting more Romans!

More Romans and a Heffalump

A week or so ago I took out the first couple of the HBO Rome Miniseries from the local library. Amanda and I have been quite enjoying it, though we now have to wait a bit until we can get the next disc(s) – as they are quite popular!

While watching that I painted up a few more stands of Romans for my Early Imperial Roman DBA Army. I just have three more stands of Blades and a stand of Artillery to finish up.

I also cranked out an Alexandrian Successor Elephant....

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)


This will be my Blade General Stand (I also have the option of fielding a Cavalry General). As with the others, these are old 80’s Citadel miniatures that were produced by Ral Partha in North America.


Some Bow…


…and a stand of Cavalry. I think I could also add another stand of Cavalry or Light Horse – as alternates to the Psiloi/Bow. WE shall see.



This is the first of my Macedonian Successor armies – an Armoured War Elepahant! This model is from RAFM. He looks kind of lonely there on that stand all my hisself. I doubt I could have fit another elephant on (and damn that would get expensive!), but I’m wondering if maybe I should put a couple of skirmishers on the ground beside the elephants on Future stands (I have four more Armoured Successor Elephants to do, and further three Indian elephants – one being a General!). Assembly didn’t take too long – I did it in bits, here and there, over a few days. Then I painted the whole thing in an evening – while watching a movie. I think for the rest I might set up a bit of a production line… though I’ll want to be painting each a bit differently as they are all for separate armies… Hmmm…


This is just an old figure that I stripped a while back and started repainting… and just finished up to get him off the workbench. I have no idea who the manufacturer is. I think I bought it around 1984-5? I used him for years as a D&D character figure.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

I’ll probably finish up the Romans in the next week or so along with the first batch of John’s Cavalry (might even get to the other John’s latest Descent minis…!?). After that I’m on to a pretty tight – though not undoable – schedule to complete all of the armies required for the campaigns I have planned for the next year…

August – Anglo-Danish – this is an army for CVT I already have some Anglo-Danes, though there is a few extra stand I need to finish up for myself. Also, a second unit of Cavalry for John.

September – Normans and Picts – Both are partly complete so I figure I can finish both off this month… A third unit of Cavalry for John.

October – Welsh – and a fouth unit of Cavalry for John. (Back of Beyond Campaign this month…)

November – Irish

December – Scotts – This will finish up all the armies I need for the CAmapgin in February

January – Successor #1

February - Successor #2 (and the 1066 Camapaign…)

March - Successor #3

April - Successor #4

May - Successor #5

Yeah… so I kind of went overboard with the RAFM ancients sale on this month and picked up enough stuff to finish off FIVE successor armies (at $4.50CAD for 6 infantry or 3 mounted how can you go wrong!?)… and while I was at it I picked up enough for a Skythian army… and a Thracian army… and a Classic Indian army…. Oh, and a German Army…. Umm… and I picked up a few other things for Amanda’s HOTT army… and some stuff for some other HOTT armies… and some Irish and Elephants from the Sentry Box…. And a couple Ospreys from Amazon… Which blew my toy budget for the next YEAR!

So I’m putting a moratorium on further figure purchases for one year.

No, seriously…

Anyway, somewhere in there I’ll also have to make a few Ancient/Successor camps (I do have some pack Camels….) and I may need to paint up a few stands of this and that for the Back of Beyond Campaign…

Of course, like my plan for the HOTT armies earlier this year, I probably won’t rigidly stick to this schedule as it’s laid out. I may paint a mix of Anlgo-danes and welsh over the next two months… then do the Normans and Picts in October…. The general idea is that I’m going to do one DBA army per month for the next year. Actually I’m pretty sure I WON’T finish the Anglo-Danes in August as August will be pretty busy and it’s the biggest army I need to do – most figures to paint that is, as they are all spear and blade which I do 6/base. A lot of the other armies have some mounted (which are only 2-3 per base) and a lot have Auxilia or Warbands which I will do with 4-5 per base…

We have a week off over Xmas where I’ll probably be able to do some catch-up if I’ve fallen behind on any of the Dark Ages stuff…

More Campaign Planning

Well, I have more or less settled on a few things…

I am going to run three in-person, weekend campaigns over the next year. The next one will be in October of this year, and then February and June of next year. If it all works out I’d like to continue running them every four months or so… (so, probably October of next year as well… but I’m not thinking quite that far ahead just yet….)

The Campaign for this October will be the “Back of Beyond” Campaign mentioned in the previous post. This is mostly because I pretty much HAVE everything I need to run it. I could run it tomorrow if I had to. I’m not going to. I’m going to run it in October. That will give me some time to add a few new elements to a few of the armies and work on the rules a bit more. I should have enough forces for up to SEVEN players!? Now I just have to figure out a date and start recruiting!

In February – probably around the end of the month so we can make it another Wargaming Birthday Bash Weekend – I’m going to run a 1066 Campaign. Again this is mostly due to the fact that I have a few of the armies already done and the rest are underway. I could easily have seven players again for this one (Vikings, Normans, Anglo-Danish, Scotts, Welsh, West Franks, Irish…), and could potentially add a couple others (additional Vikings and Anglo-Saxons…?).

Finally next June I’m thinking I’d like to run a Macedonian Successors campaign. Taking stock I realized I have enough for two complete successor armies and the beginnings of three (or four) more… It just so happens that Rafm is having another sale on their ancients this month… I haven’t a single figure painted for this one, so I’ve got my work cut our for me…

The other campaigns… well… we’ll get to them eventually.

In addition to the weekend campaigns I’m still planning on running a HOTT email campaign in the fall. I might run others as email campaigns or weekly turn, extended campaigns for the local lads… we shall see.

Bolsheviks Invade China!

Last week John and Rick and I got together to play some more Great War DBA. WE tried out some further tweaks to the the DBA1500-1900 Extension (by Tony Barr) that we have recently been adapting to the era.

China, 1920’s

SITUATION

Bolsheviks invade Sinkiang province in North East China!

SCENARIO

The Bolshevik force is attacking a city in Sinkiang province. The local Chinese forces have had some time to prepare wire, etc.

Being a set-piece attack only the Chinese will have a "camp"/Built Up Area to defend

FORCES

Chinese

General (Spear) - Regular
6x Rifles - Conscript
1x MG - Regular
1x Trench mortar - Regular
2x Cavalry - Regular

3x 250 pace sections of Trench
5x 250 pace sections of Wire


Bolsheviks

General – Regular
12x Rifles - Conscript
3x Cavalry - Regular
2x MG - Regular

THE GAME

I don’t’ remember much, but here’s a few pics….

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)


The Chinese defences before the city.


The Bolsheviks advance.


The attack goes in!


The Bolsheviks storm across the broken ground between the trenches and the wire in battalion assault columns!


The Bolsheviks cleared away the Chinese before them, but at a terrible cost!

At this point we realized that Rick had lost over 30% of his troops and so I was about to call it a Bolshevik victory when John pointed out that he had long since last 30% of his troops… whoops… ah well, fun was had by all…

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

This week’s looking pretty busy, I doubt I’ll get a game in.

Painting production has slowed a bit as well partly due to being busy doing other things, but also because I’ve been doing a bit of stock-taking and organizing and prepping and planning for future projects. More on that in a bit…

Campaign Plans

As I mentioned earlier I’d definitely like to try and run some more campaigns. To start with I’m going to run a play by email Hordes of the Things Fantasy Campaign in the fall. I’ll have a number of players out of town playing the various heads of state of the nations involved – they will be playing a game of diplomacy via email and the movements of their armies will create a scenario generator for tabletop battles played with however happens to be available to play locally…

I got to thinking, however, that I’d really like to run more one-day “in-person” campaigns, perhaps as many as two or three each year. I could possibly run one as early as this fall. If I ran three a year, distributing them evenly throughout the year, and used this past Campaign as the starting point that would put one in October and the next one in February. Both seem like they might be decent times. February is perfect for having a Wargaming Birthday Bash Campaign day! I’m not expecting that all the folks that came to the last one would be able to make it out to ALL of them, rather I’m hoping more regular campaigns might give some of the other folks who missed the last one an opportunity to get in on the action.

If I did host another campaign in October it would likely have to be another Hordes of the Things Fantasy campaign as I don’t think I’d have enough armies to do any others just yet – except maybe the “Back of Beyond” campaign. I have been thinking a lot about some possibilities for future campaigns. Here are a few of them…

HOTT – “Generic” Fantasy
Obviously I could easily throw together a HOTT Fantasy campaign any old time now that I have the armies I prepared for this first campaign. As I continue to add to these armies there will be more options for players and/or larger armies and the potential for more participants.

I have Elves, Orcs and Dwarves and Amanda’s “HOTT Chick” army. Of course any of the DBA historical forces I have can also be fielded as HOTT armies with (or without) the addition of a few extra fantastical elements. With the stuff I have (plus a couple extra things) I could easily put together a second Elf army (wood elves, maybe) and a second and third Orc and Dwarf Army!? (This doesn’t even include my Lord of the Rings armies…)

HOTT – Lord of the Rings
I think it would be fun to have a campaign set in Middle Earth around the time of the “War of the Ring” and I happen to have a number of suitable armies in the works. I have an Army of Isengard more or less completed and have enough stuff that I could put together armies for Rohan, Mordor, and Moria. I’d need to put together an army for Gondor and possibly some (more!?) Dwarves and some of the “Fallen Realms” – Harad, Easterlings, etc. That’ll probably be a ways off… But it’s fun to think about…

DBA – 1066+
This has sort of been a dream for a while, but I now have, in addition to more or less complete Anglo-Danish and Viking armies, enough figures to do Norman, Welsh, Irish, and Scotts armies! This is closer to happening than the Campaign for Middle Earth!

DBA-Roman Civil War
Okay I don’t actually know much about the history of Rome (which is sad, considering I did take a Roman Classics class at one point…), But it seems to me they did have some civil wars, and I do happen to have almost enough for three or four DBA Early Imperial Roman armies… Of course I could just run an campaign centered on Rome where there happens to be three or four Roman players and they can work together to crush the other players and expand their empires… or have a civil war to see who is Master of all Rome – while the others pick away at their empire… Could be fun! I guess I’d have to get some additional armies for this one.

DBA- Alexanders Successors
I have enough of the old Rafm Armies of the Hellenistic Period to do at least a couple Successor armies… I really don’t know anything about the period, though I imagine after the death of Alexander there was much squabbling and in-fighting amongst his successors… It would certainly be colouful! If anyone can recommend a good (short!) readable book on what happened to Alexanders Empire after his demise…

18thc - Ticorne, Horse and Musket – Imaginations
I thought it might be fun to put together forces for a half dozen or so “Imagi-Nations” for a campaign nominally set somewhere between the War of the Spanish Succession and the Seven Years war. I’d use the DBA 1500-1900 extension and twelve stand armies of very generic home-cast tricorne figures. This might be fun to get others in on the painting and designing of the armies of their various duchies, nations, etc.– if I could get them to agree to a common system of basing!?

Great War Era – Back of Beyond
The Far East during the Russian Civil War seems a suitably chaotic setting for a DBA-ish campaign. I could offer a number of different factions that could make temporary agreements and turn around and then stab each other in the back when it was beneficial to do so… If I could hammer out some rules that I like, this could very easily be done as I have Warlord Chinese, Tsarists, and Bolsheviks. If we were using armies of about 12 stands like DBA I could probably put together TWO of EACH right now! To this I could add some “Canadian Interventionists” using the Great War Canadians I also already have… It might be fun to make a few more armies – the Army of British India, “Basmachi” Rebels, etc.

Great War Era – Balkan Fantasy 1910
Similar to the Horse and Musket “Imagi-Nation” idea above I thought it might be fun to come up with some fictional Balkan countries (Bertzegovnia, Zergia, Syldavia, Borduria, etc) and make up a number of small forces for each and have a little Balkan war nominally set in the early years of the 20th Century.

Diplomacy/Europe 1880 -1900
Possibly using the map from the board game Diplomacy – we could have a fictional world war (or at least a European war) set in the latter years of the 19th Century using the DBA 1500-1900 extension we’ve been toying with. Historical armies would be used - Germans, Russians, Austro-Hungarians, Ottomans, Italians, French, British… (plus Belgians? Dutch? Balkan nations?)

So, who’d be up for a campaign in October!? Or February…? It looks like the “Back of Beyond” or another “Generic” Fantasy campaign would be the most realistic possibilities for October. Which of the others would you be interested in?

Yons 1914 – Great War DBA

This week I thought we’d try a couple different things. First I thought we’d switch to the 1914 Western Front, second I thought we’d try using a different variant as our guideline – the DBA1500-1900 Extension by Tony Barr – though obviously we extended it a bit beyond 1900…

The main differences between this and the Last Game was, beyond using DBA instead of HOTT, was that Rifles could move 300 paces/turn, were +4vs foot/+5 vs Mounted and NOT quick-killed by all mounted! The cavalry we were using this week were Uhlans – which I classed as Light Horse and were only +2 vs everything and WERE quick-killed by rifles they’d just moved into contact with! Quick –firing Artillery we extended the range to 1800 paces, MGs we had at 500 and the same factors as rifles, and we allowed them to move through bad going, but would require an extra PIP to do so!

Yons, 1914

SITUATION

The French to the British right have crumbled and the British Corps, in danger of being flanked and enveloped, is falling back to establish a new line. A holding force has been left behind to cover the Corps retreat and stall the German advance long enough for the British forces to establish their new line of defence.

SCENARIO

The table was 3000 x 3000 paces (~4’x4’) The defending British could set up anywhere within 2250 paces of their (South) table edge. The Germans could then set up anywhere north of the river (approximately 300 paces from the North table edge. The Germans had 16 turns to move half their force off the south table edge, and could be broken by losing 1/3 of their original number (6 stands). The British would ignore the regular loss rules. But would instead keep on fighting until they had caused the Germans to fail in their mission (either by casualties caused or keeping them away from the south table edge for 16 turns) or (I decided later in the game) if they lost their general and had lost more then the Germans that would lose the game for the British)


FORCES

BRITISH FORCES (All veteran – 4 recoils!)
General (Spear) Brigadier Jackson
8x Rifles (2 Battalions of 4 stands)
2x MG (1per battalion)

GERMAN FORCES (All veteran – 4 recoils)
General (Cavalry) Oberst Lowell
2x Light Horse (Uhlans – from Divisional Reconnaissance regt.)
12x Rifles (1 Regiment of 3 battalions of 4 stands each)
1x MG
1x Quick-Firing Artillery

THE GAME

I figured this was going to be a tough one for both players. The British had a large front to defend with a small force which they would likely have to disperse across the entire front otherwise the Germans would simply march through whatever gap they left open. The Germans had a pretty tight timeline to get half their force across the table – in good going it would have taken 10-12 turns to get across – depending on whether they took the bridge or tried to cross the river.

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)


The British Deployment


Oberst Lowell setting up the Gemran forces.


Brigadier Jackson desperately trying to redeploy his forces to meet the German force. For the first couple of turns Jackson was blessed with a number of high PIP rolls which really helped out with the re-deployment of this troops…


The Germans were not so blessed and took some time getting across the river.


The Germans slowly making their way across the river and trying to deploy into something like a line.


Shots are finally exchanged and the British (and Scottish!) seem to be taking the worst of it!


The gemrans surge forward and the British line is broken up in a mad battle!


Because his attention was focused on the desperate situation directly to his front two companies of the British were left well out of the battle for some time… It wasn’t until turn nine or ten or so they finished their “brew up” and started to march…


The British attempt to reform their line and stem the tide of Huns sweeping down on them!


The steady British hold but are slowly pushed back by the sheer weight of the force opposing them.


With the resistance all but wiped out the Germans surge forward again!


With nothing in their way but the British headquarters, Oberst Lowell desperately tries to get his troops formed up into a column to march down the road and make their way to the British second line before it can be established!


Though the small group of reinforcements was on the way the British headquarters is overrun.

We liked this a lot better than the HOTT variant we were using previously. We need to make a few further tweak. I think the MGs range will be increased to at least 600paces… maybe more.

I need to finish up some more British!

(...and maybe get some more germans and some French off of John to re-base!)

More Auxilia

I finished up the Auxillia for Roman Army #1. Having a closer look at the Wad 0’Romans I have of everything but the Legionaries to do four or five armies, but it looks like I only have enough Legionaires to do three… (and a half, maybe…? If I repaired a few broken Pilia)

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)


Again, these are old 80’s Citadel miniatures that were produced by Ral Partha in North America.


I also finished up the three stands worth of Psiloi I had partially painted a while back. Won’t need these for a while… but they were quick and easy…

I think they three armies I’m going to do are going to be Green, Red, and Blue, respectively. It might not be entirely historical to have an army all in one colour… but it will make them easy to differentiate when sorting them into their storage and figuring who’s on who’s side during those nasty civil war Roman on Roman games…

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Okay… not I really AM going to take a break from the Romans and set some stuff done for the Johns…