6mm Germans rebased

As part of my summer-long efforts to rebase my 6mm armies on 80mm bases. This allows me to play double-sized DBA, Basic Impetus and CCA. It also makes the 6mm guys look more like an army.

I have been slowly whittling away the pile of 2000-odd Baccus Ancient Germans that I painted up a couple of years ago. I have finished the warbands and I think these turned out pretty well.

I think they look pretty good when matched up against the more ordered Romans.

I also did a bunch of archers. Unlike the Roman archers (who looked good in formation), I thought the Germans would likely be dispersed and in rough ground.

I thought the same thing with their skirmishers, ergo a rougher terraining was used.

Currently soaking to re-activate the glue are all of the horses as well as a bunch of Heroics and Ros chariots so they can double as Celts. More problematic will be the pike blocks I've been using for Greek states. These strips are held to their bases with white glue. And the pikes are glued to the figures... with white glue. Piss. So that should be exciting!

Up next: Some more 1/72 Rohan. Horse this time. The conversion (cutting off shields and replacing them with round ones) went well; now there is just "some" painting.

1/72 Goblin Light Infantry

Just off the production line are six stands of 1/72-scale goblin light infantry as part of my army of evil force. These miniatures are from Caesar's Goblins box with a unit leader from their Orc box (or , in the case of this stand, a standard bearer from the goblin box).

These were designed to match the Eureka Miniatures warg riders I showed off a couple of weeks ago. The match is really good which is nice to see.

These were very easy to paint up over a black undercoat. The skin painted up fast enough that I could do some wet-on-wet bending to get a nice highlight. You can (hopefully) see that on the backs of these goblins.

I wasn't sure what to do about the orcs. What colour is an orc? I went kind of pig-flesh in colour. Not sure if that was the right choice, but it is clear coated now!

The Caesar figures are nice but a bit more variety would be good. Interestignly, they come as individual pieces instead of on a sprue. That speeds up production quite a lot.

I'm also going to play in Tim's Fall HoTT email campaign. As who is playing whom is a secret, I'll refrain from commenting on which country I control. But I am super pumped about the blind diplomacy.

Next up are: Likely some 6mm guys, some 1/72 Rohan cavalry with some conversion work, and some 1/72 elvish bow. Assuming I can get my fingers unstuck from one another.

Brandywine with Impetus

Bruce dropped by Wednesday afternoon for a "last day of vacation" game. I've been playing a fair bit of Basic Impetus with Bruce and Mark, adapting it for the AWI. Those rules are pretty much nailed down and ready to go off to Miniature Wargames.

When we were playing, Bruce mentioned that he thought the game lacked the sense of maneuver that characterizes lots of horse and musket games. So it does a good job of Guilford Courthouse or Camden. But not so great for Saratoga or Germantown.

After some talking, we decided to scale the rules down from the 80mm frontage to 40mm (thus halving other movement) and use blinds to disguise which troops were which to see if we could add an operational element to a great tactical system. I decided to try Brandywine (because I was familiar with it and Bruce had a good orbat). The 6x4 board looked like this:

The British entered from the left and top and the Americans deployed to the right of the river and about 12 inches in from the top. Historically, the British made an attack across Chadd's Ford (bottom left) while sending the other half of their army around to attack from the north.

We rolled for attacker (I got to be British) and then secretly made up our brigades and placed 160mmx40mm blinds on the table. You can see (below) I threatened everywhere, including Chadd's Ford and at the top. The weight of my attack was at Chadd's Ford, with one battle group at the top trying to sneak over and then down the far side of the board to cut of Bruce's retreat and bag the whole Continental Army (cheeky bastard!). Bruce covered everything with screening forces and, as it turned out, held his weight in reserve until he could discern what I was up to.

A few turns in (below) and the Dragoons have begun revealing portions of each blind in the north. In the south (top right of picture), a significant portion of the first (of three blinds) has been revealed. The first two were full to the gills with grenadiers. The third was empty.

The assault over Chadd's Ford began in earnest, with the red coats being made of kevlar (Bruce could not get a hit to stick!). But his reserve was also thrown in.

Here, casualties are beginning to tell on the British, but bayonet charges are starting to decide the day. In the north, Bruce (cagey fellow he is) delayed the hell out of my column by forcing me to deploy to deal with a single battalion of continentals. The blinds worked really well at creating fog of war.

Finally, though, things were decided at Chadd's Ford with the Americans pushed over the break point. As I wasn't able to cut off much of his army, I only won marginally (about historical).

Overall, I thought this was a fun mod to add to Impetus AWI. It created a sense of maneuver and of having flanks and competing priorities. Bruce likely could have stopped me at Chadd's Ford if he had been able to commit his remaining reserve, but my northern attack required him to keep those troops in reserve until it became apparent what I was doing. Great game!

Next up: Some 1/72 goblin light infantry.

War Room Renovations

I dropped into the War Room Tuesday night to help out with the renovations. Things are definitely coming together and I'm hopeful the EWG will be back gaming there on the third Tuesday in September. The entry hall has been painted, roofed and will be floored (wood laminate) shortly. All of the clutter will be removed to make it welcoming and open. The lighting is much improved and the stairs have been fixed and refinished.

The main room still needs trim on the posts and the remainder of the flooring installed. Here is a shot from the stairs. A fair bit of debris in the way but you can see things are looking better--more visually uniform and generally cleaner.

And below is a shot from the back of the room. The lighting is much better and much of the echo has been removed with the new ceiling. Just need to finish the flooring at the far end by the cooler. Note that the desk/store area has been removed and extra gaming space created.

The painting area will be smaller and the tables have been resurfaced.

The gaming tables also got a shot of paint and new, adjustable legs so the won't rock. They will all be placed on area rugs to prevent scratching and aid in moving. The area rugs (along with the flooring) make it much more comfortable to stand on.

Good job Nick and Reme!

DBA reinforcements

Awhile back I painted a 15mm Ancient Spanish DBA army that Mark bought. Since then, it has a record of one and one. It is mostly auxilia which makes it interesting to play and fight against.

To get all of the options for all of the lists, Mark asked me to paint up two more bases of psiloi and a base of blades. These took about an hour to paint plus a few minutes to base and flock.

I believe these are Corvus Belli figures. The psiloi turned out alright.

I wasn't too sure about the Elmer Fudd hat flaps but they looks fine. I tried to mix up the colours to cover the pose duplication.

The blades also turned out just fine.

Mark did a bit of surgery on these guys (think they were Persians originally) and a bit of paint hides the conversion nicely.

Next up: Some rebased 6mm Ancient Germans. Lord, there are a lot of them! On the painting table are some 1/72 goblin light infantry.

1/72 Rohan Heavy Infantry

Now that the drywall guy is done (and I can uncover my paint table), I have finished up some of the Rohan heavy infantry. These are a mix of Zvezda and Imex/Emhar vikings.

Again, the Zvezda poses are nicer, in my mind. But the Imex helps fill out the ranks and adds a a few more poses and some diversity in terms of height.

I ended up pinching many of the shields for use in converting some Zvezda Russian Knights so they have round shields (most have those shield-shaped shields). We'll see how that goes!

The basing is the usual. Vinyl floor tile is cut 120x60mm and the backing peeled off. Figures are stuck down, a layer of PVA is applied and sand poured on. When this is dry, I then coat the based in Future floor wax (seals the sand) and (when dry) a drybrushing of orange-brown is used to highlight the "dirt". Then static grass and some clump flocking.

Overall, the effect is pretty good (I think). It is also cheap, durable and easy to do in an assembly line manner. I also think it has the right level of granularity for 1/72 figures.

Next up: Some reinforcements for Mark's 15mm Ancient Spanish DBA army.

DBA: Normans v Anglo-Danes

I popped over to Chris' new pad last night to deliver a piece of MDF for gaming and to "teach" him DBA. Of course, he's already played a lot. And he kicked my ass quite handily. I knew I should have cheated... .

Chris pulled out his two 25mm DBA dark age armies painted up by Tim in Saskatoon. There are the Normans and the Anglo-Danes. CVT picked the Normans and I (stupidly) agreed to play the Anglo-Danes. The Normans are basically guys on horses that quick kill the Anglo-Danes.

By contrast, the Anglo-Danes are mostly spear with a few blade and a psiloi. There are a few tricks (psiloi give spear and blades a +1 against mounted, double-ranked spear get a +1 against mounted). But mostly the Anglo-Danes lack punch against a mounted army and, when they lose, it all goes very badly, very quickly.

The first game lasted about 7 minutes. Now, that isn't the shortest game of DBA I've ever played. But it was close. Chris charged in and quick killed my general. Dick.

On to game two and I hid my general but still could not withstand his cavalry charge. He also sacked my camp. Dick. What a drubbing. By this point I was ready to make up rules.

Game three was the best of the night (for me). I did a better job of placing the terrain. And then I managed to negate his flanking maneuvers. So it came down to the charge. Amazingly, I managed to last through three rounds of combat and even had a lead at one point.

Then things went badly. And my troops folded up. But I would be keen to give this a go again now that I have a sense of what worked (or doesn't...) with the Anglo Danes.

I presume Tim was trying to give us a sense of Hastings when he painted up the Anglo-Danes (who could double for Saxons). It was a bit disheartening to see the guy with the arrow through the eye right from the get-go, though... .

Coming soon: Some painted reinforcements for Marks' 15mm Ancient Spanish DBA army (like he needs more options...). Also some 1/72 fantasy and more rebased 6mm Germans.

This all supposes that the sewer does not back up again and the (unrelated) drywall repairs get done before my vacation ends.

Changes!

With a new computer comes a few changes. In addition to recreating the Edmonton Wargame Group website, I decided to switching blogging providers. This resolves some technical issues and also makes my blog a bit more distinct from the EWG.