Wargaming Projects

WoTR Ready to Paint

2012-01-03T14:42:00.002Z

I have now assembled, based and undercoated all 120 figures for the first part of the project. I have organised them into units as show in the photograph.

I know that there are only 118 figures in the picture, I had two casualties as I set up.

I have painted a few of the fully armoured nobles already as they need no livery colours.

I have been researching the livery colours and badges that I am going to get started with. They are as follows:

Yorkists:

Edward IV – Blue and Murrey, Sun inSplendour

George, Duke of Clarence – Blue andMurrey, Bull (Black)

Richard, Duke of Gloucester – Blueand Murrey, Boar (Blck) or White Rose

William, Lord Hastings – Murrey andBlue, Lion in Yellow

Richard Woodville, Earl Rivers –Green, Trefoil in Yellow

Sir John Howard, Duke of Norfolk –Red, Lion Rampant in white

Sir William Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele– Orange and Red – based on shield ! Or White ? Unicorn Head badge ?

Sir William Blount – Blue, Sun Burstsin Yellow ?

John Bouchier, Lord Berners – Yellowand Green, Bouchier knot in white

Sir Humphrey Bouchier, Lord Cromwell –Black and Green, Badge ?

Lancastrians:

Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick –Red, Ragged Staff in White

Sir Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter –White and Bloody, Wheat Ear in Yellow

Sir John DeVere, Earl of Oxford –Orange, Boar (Black)

Sir John Neville, Lord Montague – Redand Black, Griffen in Yellow

William, Viscount Beaumont – White,Broom Cods in Green

Sir Richard Tunstall – Black andWhite, Cockerel in ?

All of these nobles appear to have been at the battle of Barnet on 14th April 1471. The information is mainly from "Standards, Badges and Livery Colours of the Wars of the Roses" by Pat McGill and Jonathan Jones.

The first retinue on the painting table will be King Edward's, attired in Blue and Murrey (purplish-red). I will probably use Lord Berners for the other Yorkist retinue here as they do otherwise seem to have a lot of Blue and Murrey.

For the first Lancastrian retinue I will go with Warwick's, followed by Exeter.

The mercenaries are a problem. They were supplied by Burgundy but were probably Flemish. I could put them in cool Burgundian Blue and White with a red cross. But, my guess is that they would have had Edward's livery to make it clear to all who they belonged to on the battlefield. So I will paint them up in Edward's colours.

Next time I should have some figures painted.

Wargaming the War's of The Roses

2012-01-03T14:41:00.001Z

It is all the fault of those Perry twins! I keep on seeing blog posts, forum entries and magazine articles about their plastic Wars of the Roses figures and I want them.

So before buying any I thought that I had better start to understand these "wars".

Books

So, what books do I have. Well I hoard books so I already had some. But of course why read those when I could buy new books. So I bought two books on the military history of the wars. First John Sadler's "The Red Rose and the White". Then Philip Haigh's "The Military Campaigns of the Wars of The Roses". Read them in double time. Both very good, Haigh has the edge in writing style and detail but Sadler tries to bring in more of the first hand experiences of the politics and the fighting.

Then I pulled out the Terry Wise men at arms book, the WRG Armies of-the middle ages book, the army lists (WRG, FOG, Impetus). More army and troop type information.

So I have enough knowledge to be dangerous, now I need to start building an army.

What Side and When?

These are a complex series of wars. People change sides, change alliegency, they even change their titles as the wars go on. I first leant towards the Yorkists, after all Edward IV was never defeated in battle and they wear cool colours (more on that later). But, I don't have an opponent in mind yet, so best to collect both sides.

Now the side changing and treachery comes in to help. Warwick, the arch Yorkist, changed sides in 1469 and was suddenly a Lancastrian (actually I think he was always on his own side and changed his allies). So collect both sides for 1469-71 and you have a larger Yorkist army for the 1455-64 war. Genius!

Another plus for this particular phase of the wars is the presence of Burgundian supplied mercenaries on the Yorkist side. That gives me an excuse to use the Perry Mercenaries box to add in pikes, crossbows and handguns.

Figures

As is usual for me, this has been opportunistic. I went to Colours 2011 at Newbury and found Dave Thomas selling the Perry Plastics at 15 quid a box. So I bought two of the WotR infantry boxes and a mercenary box to get me started.

Once home I started to assemble them. I actually enjoy assembling plastic figures and these go together like a dream. The parts in the two boxes are interchangeable, so you get great variety.

After assembling a few figures I sat back and thought about actually organizing the little chaps. Many troops were raised as retinues for the various nobles so I decided to work on a number of these. How many figures? For no real reason I settled on large retinues (for kings and the main magnates like Warwick) of 24 figures, standard retinues of 16 and small ones of 8 or 12.

I cannot find a definitive view of the relative proportions of bows, bills and men-at-arms in the books or online so am going for 50% bows and a 3:1 ratio of bills to men-at-arms.

Basing

It is going to take me a while to get these painted and it would be good to get some gaming done early on. That means that I need to be able to use the figures for skirmish games. So they need to be on individual bases. Whilst thinking about this I came across Warbases. They have movement trays that will take figures mounted on UK 1 penny coins. So I collected all of the 1p coins in the house and started sticking the figures onto these. I have covered the coins and bases with PVA and bird cage sand before painting. Once I am ready to move to big battle systems (I am open minded about rules as long as I can base things my way) I can pop the figures into suitably decorated movement trays.

Next ...

For the next post I will share my thoughts the retinues that I plan to build, the colour schemes involved and get started on painting. Pictures will be posted of my progress.

Paper Banners for Normans

2011-04-27T17:34:00.003+01:00

I have been playing about with hand painted banners for my Normans.

All of my shields are hand painted as are the cast on banners for my cavalry.

I made these as outlines on the PC (using open Office), printed them and then painted with Vallejo paints. I have cut them out, tidied up with paint and attached them to figures. I will take some pictures of the figures once the varnish has dried and I have them based up.

Norman army is looking pretty good now. I bought 80 Crusader infantry at salute and these are just about painted. I will have 40 cavalry, 72 Foot and 24 skirmishers pretty soon, should be enough for Hail Caesar, WAB, Clash of Empires or whatever rule set I end up with. Hail Caesar looks pretty good.

Thoughts on Modelling 1809 Austrians for Black Powder

2011-03-15T22:41:00.005Z

I am now fully committed to a lengthy relationship with the 1809 Franco-Austrian war. Figures are being painted and books avidly read.

One thing that I want to get right is the modelling of the Austrian army of 1809 for Black Powder (the chosen rule set). So here is some of my thinking.

Command
Austrian commanders seem to have a major trait of avoidance of risk. They will obey their orders, even when the orders are daft. This is because obeying orders, and failing exposed them to less personal risk then disobeying and succeeding.

Austrian commanders were unused to handling large bodies of troops. The corps system was totally new and there had been effectively no peacetime manoeuvres with formations of Divisional or Corps size prior to the Austrian invasion of Bavaria on April 10th. So bodies of troops moved slowly and commanders could not coordinate attacks by formations larger than regiments. Whilst the Austrians threw in individual cavalry regiments the French were handling them in coordinated divisions.

For Black Powder most Austrian commanders will rate as 6 or 7. Some (Hohenzollern, Lichtenstein, Nordmann) will get an 8, Karl and Radetzky get 9's. I am working on a comprehensive list of generals with Black Powder ratings.

But low ratings wont simulate the strict adherence to orders or the lack of ability in coordinating larger formations. To cover this I will use the Low Decisiveness and Low Independence rules from Page 95 of the rule book. These rules will apply to any 6 or 7 rated Austrian commanders. I will assume that the 8's and 9's are above this sort of behaviour.

Low Decisiveness means that the commander has to re-roll any triple moves (unlikely with a 6/7 but will happen) and abide by the re-roll. I am using this to reflect poor handling of large bodies of troops. I thought of applying a -1 dice penalty for brigade orders to more than two units, but felt that this might be too harsh. The Low decisiveness option should effectively eliminate triple moves for these commanders, which I hope will have the desired effect.

Low Independence means that if the commander issues his orders before the C-in-C he will suffer a minus one dice penalty. If he blunders he will take two blunder tests and choose which to take. If the C-in-C has this rating he drops one command level. I like the effect of this rule in modelling a strict adherence to hierarchy and orders. It will also have a nice side-effect. If the C-in-C is Karl and he blunders and the orders phase ends prior to subordinates giving orders, then it will simulate Karl having an epileptic fit.

Troops
Austrian Line infantry units appear to be fairly ordinary. They are brave, they try hard and they are a bit out of date. So I am rating them as bog-standard. They have the form square rule (probably Battalion Mass really). They cannot form up as skirmishers; I don't believe that they formed whole line battalions into skirmish formation. I am not allowing them to form "mixed" formation. If I allow French line and leger units to do this it will differentiate them in combat.

Some Austrian line units will be large. This will depend upon the unit and the order of battle. As I develop scenarios I will include large units as appropriate.

Austrian Grenadiers were Elite troops. I am going to give them "Elite" with the ability to negate disorder on a 4+, and "Reliable" which gives them a +1 when they are given an order.

Austrian Jagers were pretty good although I think rather poorly trained. I am making them Skirmishers (they will only fight as skirmishers). I am giving them "Sharpshooter" (re-roll one shooting dice) to reflect the rifles with which a proportion were armed. I am not, however, going to give them the range benefit of rifles.

Grenz were not what they had been in the Seven Years War. I may need to experiment with them a little. They need to be headstrong and a little fragile. The "Freshly-Raised" rule may reflect this. This rule requires the unit to test the first time it shoots or engages in hand-to-hand combat, with unpredictable results. Initially I will use this rule. I will allow the Grenz to form as skirmishers. I am going to make them Marauders (no negative effects for being distant from a commander) to reflect their independent nature.

The various volunteer units seem to be a mixed bunch. Freshly raised seems like a good option. Some will be treated as skirmish only units.

Landwehr: Most of them ran away before the battles, so not too many about. I am planning to be harsh with them. They will get "Unreliable" (No move on equal command roll) and "Wavering" (break test on taking a casualty). I could have used "Untested" instead but that works on randomising their Stamina (ability to absorb casualties) which could create a really good unit, and we don't want that to happen.

The Cavalry were pretty good when handled as squadrons and regiments. The problems came when they tried to operate in larger formations. I am going to treat all of the Austrian cavalry as standard Napoleonic troops as laid out on page 127 of the rule book. Light cavalry regiments could be large, so I will field them as such when required.

Cuirassiers only wore breastplates, not back-plates. Some accounts say that this was a disadvantage when facing French Cuirassiers. I am going to ignore this for now.

Position and field batteries are fairly standard. I will allocate a proportion of lighter guns to reflect the use of 3 pounders.

The cavalry artillery is a problem. They are sort of half way between foot artillery and horse artillery. I plan to give them horse artillery movement without the ability to limber, move and unlimber with a single order.

This covers commanders and the common troop types. I am starting to work on some scenarios and the best ways to play the battles as solo games. I will post what I come up with here.

Black Powder in 6mm

2011-02-14T09:43:00.011Z

I now have a quorum of 6mm Austrians and Franco-Bavarians. I have been through all of my Adler figures and painted everything in sight.

This came about because I played a couple of games with some lovely 18mm AB figures. Really inspired by this but daunted by the lead time and expense of doing 18mm. Then I remembered the mass of painted and unpainted Adlers that I have. Quite a few French, some Austrians and lots of unpainted; French cavalry, Austrians of all sorts and a Bavarian "brigade".

So they are now painted and I am on my third solo game with Black Powder and have just ordered some more figures from Adler.

My next post will cover my thoughts on using Black powder for solo games.

Attached are some pictures. I am using two stands for standard size units at the moment. This works fine, I will go up to three stands when I get more painted. Three stands on a 40mm per stand frontage is about the same as 6x28mm stands of the same frontage at the scale I play. I play 6mm Black powder in CM instead of Inches.

Thanks for looking.

Some Austrian Grenadiers have just gone haring off towards the nearest French after a blunder.

Loving Black Powder

2010-12-07T10:50:00.003Z

I dug out some 6mm Napoleonics last night and took them to the club for a Black Powder game.They are based for "Warmaster" on 40x20mm stands. We used them in 3 stand units (about 30-36 Infantry, 9-12 cavalry, single gun) with 4 stands for large Austrian units and 2 stands for small units (rifles and Austrian grenadiers). We converted distances to centimetres and played with 4-5 brigades/side (20-25 units) on a 6x4 foot table.

All worked perfectly and I am planning to paint and base the mass of 6mm Adler figures that I have had in a box for years so that we can play bigger games.

I am really getting into these rules now. I must say that as written they work very well for Napoleonics and the measurements were the only thing that we changed in last night's game. It looked right, played as I would expect a napoleonic battle to play out and was fast enough to for a club night.

We are even bringing around a couple of sceptics who initially didn't like the order system.

Having played two games with smaller figures (15mm on an 8X6 and the one described above) this week, both using centimetre measurements, I am liking the rules more than I have done when trying to cram 28mm figures onto a 6X4 and using half distances.

Conquest Normans - Pictures

2010-11-22T13:17:00.003Z

I have finished two boxes of these. Here are some pictures.

These have spurred (pun intended) me on to get some Norman foot (Gripping Beast) and turn this lot into an army. I think that about 40-50 cavalry, 50 or so close order infantry and a couple of 12-16 figure missile/skirmish units should be OK for WAB or the forthcoming "Hail Caesar" from Warlord (or one of the other new sets planned for 2011).

Conquest Games Normans

2010-11-17T10:22:00.002Z

I am currently painting up three boxes of Conquest Games Plastic Norman Knights.

They are brilliant. The Horses look better than any 28mm horses I have painted before. Well proportioned, nice poses.

The riders fit perfectly and have a good range of options.

The horses need something to eliminate the seam between the head and body. My usual glue for plastics is Revell Contacta with a paint brush. This is accurate and fast, but it doesn't fill gaps. After a few attempts with fillers I went back to the way I used to construct airfix kits 35 years ago. I bought some old-fashioned polystyrene cement in a tube. I used this to cover the surface on the body where the head is attached and then squashed the head on, letting the glue ooze out of the gap. I then left this to try for 24 hours. I then chipped off the excess glue with a modelling blade. The gap no longer existed.

I have painted the figures using a mix of techniques. All were sprayed with black primer.

The "brown" horses have been base coated with Cote-d'arms Horse Tones, then washed with Citadel washes (Devlan Mun or Gryphon Sepia), then highlighted with the base colour.

White horses have been painted with a triad of Valejo Sky Grey, Silver Grey and Off-White.

Black Horses with Valejo Black-Gray highlight over the black primer.

The knights were dry-brushed with Valejo natural steel, then washed with GW Badab-Black. Then I gave them a lighter drybrush with the natural steel.

Flesh (not much to actually paint here) was base-coated with Valejo cavalry-brown, then painted with Valejo flesh-base. I then gave it a wash of GW Ogryn-flesh and highlighted with the flesh-base.

For the small areas of cloth I used a two-colour (diad?) technique of a base coat and highlight. The exception to this was red. I do my reds by base coating with VJ Cavalry-brown, then VJ Red and finally VJ Scarlet.

Leather was done with VJ Flat-Brown, GW Devlan Mud wash and then high-light with the Flat-Brown.

I varied the leather by doing some areas in VJ German Camouflage Orange Ochre (my favourite Valejo light brown) or VJ Buff with GW washes and a highlight in the base colour.

For the sheilds I went for hand-painting. This is for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there are no transfers in the Conquest boxes. Secondly, I couldn't be bothered to try and find transfres that would fit, Third, I love the look of the painted crusaders on the Perry web-site, with hand painted sheilds. Finally, I like the idea of the shields looking like the ones on the Bayeux Tapestry (styalised and simple). I assume that real shield designs were more sophisticated than those rendered on the tapestry, but as my painting skills are on a par with the art on the tapestry (on a good day) this level would suite.

So I used triads to paint the shields. My triad painting is usually rather subtle and doesn't stand out much. For these shields I went rather more extreme than my usual style (greater variation between shades and larger areas of shade). It seems to have worked.

Basing was a challenge. I have not decided on rules for these yet (or even if they will become an army). The box includes a set of Renadra cavalry bases. These or 25mmx50mm and 50mmx50mm. I based all of the figures individually on 25x50's. I have found that these bases will glue together using Contacta so I can make them into 50x50 or 75x50 later.

The basing will work for Warhammer Ancient Battles and the Crusader rules. I think it will be OK for the planned Warlord Games Ancient Rules. With a movement tray I can get four figures onto an Impetus base (120x80). I don't expect to use these figures for DBA/M/MM.

Conclusion: Great figures, will mix with Perry Crusades. Good value. I am really enjoying painting them.

Pictures: Just realised my camera isn't available. I will try and do some soon.

Rank and File C2 Playtest

2010-09-09T20:47:00.001+01:00

We tried out some command and control rules with Rank and File last Monday evening.

The scenario had 9 regiments of Rebs attacking 6 of federals in a hasty defensive position.

The nature of the game meant that units did not need to make many order changes. When they did the system worked as we expected it to. The range of order types got a good response from the players.

In our game a very strong rebel left slammed into the federal line in successive wave attacks. These drove the defenders back and this flank belonged to johnny reb. In the centre the attacking waves were held by the union troops. On the rebel right it was a different story. Some great shooting from the federal artillery had removed two rebel batteries and a charge by two union regiments drove off a unit of confederate cavalry and was about to slam into the flank of the rebel right centre regiments when we had to call time.

The game was finely balanced when we had to stop. It looked likely that the Rebs would have been able to exit 3 units from the union table edge if they had time for two moreover. This would have fulfilled the victory conditions of the scenario. But by that time Billy yank might have rolled up their centre!

Next week I will put together a more challenging scenario with plenty of opportunity to make order changes.

I am posting this from my iPod as an experiment. When I get back to my pc I will post the latest version of the C2 rules and the scenario that we played this week.

Rank and File Command and Control Ideas

2010-08-22T10:52:00.002+01:00

I have written up some ideas for Command and Control in Rank and File. Primarily for ACW.

Here is a link to a document on Google Docs. Download here.

The ideas are borrwoed from the Forlorn Hope ECW rules, with some adaptations of my own.

I would welcome comments

ACW Rules Comparison

2010-08-10T13:21:00.004+01:00

Our group played the Battle of Kernstown" Scenario (posted on this blog ) with Black Powder and with Rank and File. Here are our findings.

The scenario pits a small, veteran Confederate force against a larger, but inexperienced, Union force. The Confederates have better leaders and more artillery, although some of the artillery is very light.

Our first game was with Black Powder. Both sides deployed on-table as per the scenario map. Black Powder has an I-go-U-go turn sequence. Each brigade dices to see how much (if any) movement they get. Throughout the game the Union army found it difficult to move. Their best chance for success was to assault the weaker Confederate centre. Unfortunately their green and unreliable troops would not get moving and could not make contact with the Confederates.

Union forces did manage to destroy a tiny Confederate brigade on their extreme right but this proved costly and they were unable to follow up their success. Eventually the Confederates silenced the Union artillery and carried the main objective (a hill in the centre-left of the field).

Black powder has a couple of mechanisms that we found interesting. First is the Blunder. If a leader rolls double-six when ordering troops they have to take a "blunder test". In one case a unit of poorly armed, green Union cavalry were forced to charge towards the Confederate cavalry in march column, they were of course destroyed.

The second interesting mechanic is that units do not visually degrade, there is no removal of figure stands to show attrition. Eventually units are destroyed and removed as a whole.

Conclusions: Black Powder is very fast. We played with two players per side. About 20 units per side and we finished the game in two hours. The system modelled the differences between troops very well. Small Confederate units far outclassed the larger, green Union troops. The small Confederate units however did not have great staying power once they started to suffer.

The only real negative in our game was that the command and control system really punished the Union side and made it very hard for their centre to close in on the Confederates. This is probably realistic but something to look out for in scenario design. In my next scenario I will probably try to keep the abilities of the Brigade and Divisional commanders fairly uniform.

Our second game was with Rank and File, with it's ACW supplement. We used the same terrain and deployment but adjusted unit sizes slightly.

Rank and File uses a "blended" turn sequence. Both sides declare charges, both attempt rallies, then movement is handled as IGoUGo based on an initiative roll. Firing, Charges and Morale are then handled simultaneously. This system means that all players are engaged at all times. We managed to play moves where the two sides of the table worked at different speeds.

There is no real command and control in this system. There are suggestions in the ACW book but we did not use them. This meant that troops initially do what players want them to do. So in this game the Union centre did press the Confederates and part of the Stonewall brigade had to be sent to help.

However, once troops become engaged they start to get "shaken" morale results from shooting and melee. This causes them to retreat. Repeated shaken results on green troops broke up the Union attack very quickly. The morale rules are very harsh on Green troops who always need to roll six to pass tests. This totally crippled the Union army. Once they started taking casualties they really stopped moving forward. On the Union right they again destroyed the tiny (2 regiments and a gun) Confederate brigade. They were then confronted by the "Stonewall" brigade, behind a stone-wall. The Union player held back and used artillery on this position to little effect. Confederate skirmishers did menace the union batteries in the centre and they were dispersed by a charge of the awful Union cavalry. These were immediately annihilated by every Confederate gun in range.

In conclusion the rules worked and gave an enjoyable game in under three hours. The small Confederate units were effective but lacked staying power. The larger, poor quality, Union units could not pass morale tests after taking casualties.

I took pictures of both games. You can look at these if you click on the sample picture.

So what did we think of the two sets of rules ?

Overall both gave an very enjoyable game within our time-limit for evening club games (about 2-3 hours). Both modelled the period reasonably well considering the level of abstraction they work at.

I think that players preferred the combat mechanisms in Rank and File over those in Black Powder. The Rank and File morale system is very harsh on Green troops, this was seen as a negative. Having units failing to move in Black Powder had a mixed reaction among the group. I liked the fog of war realism that it adds.

I have tried to work out the criteria that are important to our group and come up with something slightly objective as a comparison. (Marks out of 10)

1. The rules must support substantial multi-player games in under three-hours.
BP:9 R&F:8 - BP was faster in our test.

2. Players must be involved as much as possible. No hanging around or missed "goes" (this is why we have rejected card systems like TCHAE).
BP:7 R&F:9 - The R&F turn sequence means no waiting around and supports running different parts of the battle-field at different rates within a turn

3. Engaging Command and Control System
BP:9 R&F:3 - R&F lacks a real CandC system. The optional set in the ACW book looks a little unwieldy, maybe we should try them

4.Combat Mechanisms
BP:7 R&F:8 - Not much to choose here as they are fairly similar. R&F removes stands which I find visually more appealing. But, the BP system does keep all of the pretty toys on the table for as long as possible.

5.Morale system
BP:7 R&F:5 - R&F is harsh, we are looking at some house rules to address this.

6.Visual Appeal - does it look right
BP:10 R&F:10 - Both games looked great, looked how we felt an ACW game should look.

7.Period Feel
BP:8 R&F:8 - R&F has an ACW supplement that covers all of the weapons and correct tactics like wave attacks and use of skirmishers. We applied special rules to BP (the system encourages this) that also gave a good period flavour. They did not score as high as a period specific set might have but very good as they are both generic horse and musket sets.

8.Playability - OK this one is subjective, so I am judging it on how well the games play from the QRS, marking them down for "lookups" in the book.
BP:9 R&F:8 - We have played more R&F than BP. But we looked in the R&F book more during the game. The R&F book is well organised but some things are hidden. Melee results are under the heading "Leader bonus in melee".

Overall BP gets 66 out of 80, R&F gets 59 out of 80.

So which will we play ? I think that the jury is still out. Next test will probably be R&F with some house rules for morale (yet to be worked out) and some sort of command and control. More on that when we get a chance to try it.

ACW Rules

2010-08-05T19:15:00.004+01:00

My wargame buddies and me have been looking for a set of horse and musket rules with which to play regimental level ACW games. Ideally we would like to use the same system for Napoleonics later on.

We have amassed reasonable forces (around 200-240 infantry per side) with cavalry and guns in 28mm. Now we need a great set of rules. The rules need to be fast and inclusive as we play with 3-4 players per side. Any rules that leave a player sitting idle for 20 minutes are unacceptable. We want a commercial set with minimal house rules.

The rules that we have looked at are; Black Powder (BP), Rank and File ACW (R&F), Regimental Fire and Fury (RFF), and They Couldn't Hit an Elephant (TCHAE).

For now we have put TCHAE to one side. There are members of our group who don't really get on with card driven systems and not having a go during a turn. In TCHAE units are activated by cards, the "Coffee" card terminates the current move.

So that leaves us with BP, R&F and the new arrival, RFF.

We have played a few games of Rank and File with it's ACW supplement. This set gives a nice free flowing game and its integrated move sequence means that players are busy most of the time. The ACW supplement is a little difficult to use, so I have created an ACW specific quick reference sheet for the rules. You can download this from the Crusader Publishing forum (ACW QRS V1.pdf).

The R&F system uses a neat turn sequence that has the two sides doing some things sequentially (moving) and most things simultaneously (shooting, melee, morale etc). My main issue with the rules is that the basic rules do not include a command and control mechanism. The role of leaders in the system is to bolster troops. The ACW set does include a system of orders and order changes but I have not found them to be playable in a group game. Now, some members of our group like not having a C&C mechanism because they believe that that is their job. Personally I like some fog of war. That leads nicely into our next choice; Black Powder.

I will lay my cards on the table; I like Black Powder. The mechanisms are simple, the C&C system handles fog of war brilliantly, they are very nicely written. I was hooked after my first (and so far only) game. The issue when playing with this set as a group has been that the turn sequence and the fog of war mechanisms leave some players idle for a little too long. The very simple (but not simplistic) movement rules and very abrupt death of units also left some players less than happy.

Now for the newcomer - Regimental Fire and Fury. I have had my copy for about 36 hours at the time of writing. It is a lovely book and the rules derive their mechanisms from the original Fire and Fury rules. I have had a copy of the original for years but have never actually played them. They are well known by a number of our group and we should pick up the regimental version pretty quickly. The system looks straight forward and of the four sets I have discussed here they are the most thorough looking set. lots of examples, lots of explanations and very little ambiguity. I really want to try this set out. One thing about RFF is that it is very specifically for ACW, BP and R&F cover the whole Horse and Musket era and so will cover our requirement for a standard set for the whole "period".

So, this weekend we are going to try two back to back games, using two sets of rules for the same scenario. I have taken a scenario for 1st Kernstown from the June 2008 edition of Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy magazine as my starting point and added some detail from the scenario for the same battle in the TCHAE book. I have worked out OOB's for each of Black Powder, Rank and File, and Regimental Fire and Fury. You can get a copy of my scenario from Google Documents (Kernstown.pdf)

Hopefully I will be able to post a report and some conclusions from our experiment.

As a bonus, I have produced some ACW casualty markers to help with some of these rule sets. You can copy them if you want to. I print them out and stick them onto self-adhesive floor tiles prior to cutting them out. They work very well. (ACW Casualties.pdf)

The ACW Project

2009-09-17T12:38:00.001+01:00

A couple of years ago I bought two boxes of Perry ACW Infantry. They sat in my lead/plastic pile for a long time. After starting to paint some Victrix and Perry Napoleonics I became a bit daunted and so took out the ACW's.

I have now managed to paint four boxes of the plastic infantry figures, half as federals and half as rebs. I like to have paired armies, then I can play games at home with no need for anybody to bring along figures.

Here are a few pictures of my first brigade of confederates:

I am planning to use "They can't Hit an Elephant..." from Too Fat Lardies.

I have painted some brigadiers and will post pictures soon. Next on the list are some Perry artillery for both sides, then some confederate cavalry and lots more infantry.

The plan is to have about 40 stands (4 figs each) of infantry, two brigadiers, 1 divisional commander, 2 or 3 guns and a 6 stand cavalry regiment (of 2 figures each with separate dismounted stands) for both sides. Hopefully I can get this done by the end of 2009.

Painting Valiant US Infantry

2009-05-22T16:46:00.001+01:00

Last month's Wargames illustrated came with a sprue of Valiant GI's. I have already painted up a box of these lovely figures and some more were very welcome. The sprue has 16 figures. I assembled them and decided to try and paint them to a good wargame standard as quickly as possible. I took pictures as I went along.

First off I spray painted them with Humbrol Dark Brown (29). The aim here was to start from a shade that was in keeping with the uniform as a whole.

Next I painted the jacket and gaiters in GW Foundation Deneb Stone, followed by GW Foundation Talarn Flesh.

Next the helmet was painted with Revell Olive Green (35) and the trousers with Revell Olive Brown (86)

The metal parts of the M1 rifle were painted with GW Foundation Charandon Granite whilst the shoes, scabbard and wooden M1 parts were painted GW Foundation Calthan brown.

The whole figure was washed with GW Washes Devlan Mud

16 Figures took under 2 hours, I would say about 10 an hour. Standard - will not win any prizes but look good in a game. Finished results shown here.

Thanks for looking.

Uncharted Seas and Salute

2009-04-02T15:41:00.009+01:00

Last Saturday we went to Salute. After a horrible journey involving 10 changes of public transport (from one side of London to the other, should only have been 4) arrive 2.5 hours late. Show seemed smaller than usual (or in a bigger space?).

Shopping involved some Victrix French, 1st Corps Roman and Celtic generals, Valiant Germans in Normandy and some Celt cavalry from Magister Militum. Final purchase of the day was a copy of Uncharted Seas and two starter fleets.

I managed to play a full game of Lost Battles. This is an ancient battle simulation system that I have been looking at for some tims, I have had the book for over a year now. This was my first chance to play. The game was Zama, I played the Romans (with alot of help). The Romans won after moving Masinissa's Numidians around the Carthaginian right flank and passing three rally tests. I enjoyed the game alot and I will try to use the system more.

The big hit for me and Charlie has been Uncharted Seas. I started painting the 20 ships of our Dwarf and Orc fleets on Sunday, I finished them on Tuesday night. This is a record for me. We had our first game last night, we got a great chunk of the rules wrong but had a lot of fun. I got completely stuffed. Charlie played Orcs and bludgeoned his way through my fleet. I think the Dwarfs need a bit more finesse !

Here are a few pictures of the painted ships. I hope to play a couple more games this week.

Wargames Factory Celts

2009-04-02T15:29:00.004+01:00

Here are a few shots of my first stand of Wargames Factory Celts for Impetus. This particular group are intended as Roman Auxiliaries so they have Roman sheilds and have all turned up fully dressed. In Impetus they do not have any of the ferocity of their "wild" brethren so I tried to reflect this in their appearance.

Painting is a simple block and GW wash. I experimented with a mid-brown undercoat on these guys and on some of them I applied the wash directly. I am still trying to make up my mind if I like the way it looks.

It's been a while

2009-02-19T21:59:00.003Z

I have been feeling a bit guilty about not blogging for a while so here are a few items :-)

I am well into painting my second box of Wargames Factory Romans. When done I will have 8 units of legionarii for Impetus. Hopefully the Wargames Factory Celts will ship in the next week or two. I have two boxes on order. As these look to be less dynamic than my Warlord Games Celts I plan to use some of them to make Ligurian Auxilia for my Romans. The idea is that these guys will look more sober and ordered than the wild Celts from further north.

Charlie (13) and I have constructed a home made "Space Hulk" set from bits found on the Internet and some Plastic 40K models. This has been great fun. Rumour is that GW are re-releasing the game this year so may get that one. In the same vein I downloaded the Incursion beta rules tonight. Similar idea to Space Hulk in an underground WWWII setting. Looks interesting.

Finally for now. Just played a "refight" of Issus with the lad. We used the Neil Thomas Ancient and Medieval rules. This was the first game that we have had with these were things really made sense. They seem to work if you think big, so eight blocks of figures is 60-100,000 real men. The game was fast and fun and looked good. We got the historical outcome but it was pretty hard fought with Persian levy types passing morale rolls very well (they need 5,6 to do this in the rules and my 2 units only failed one test). The Levy held up the Companions longer than they should have (all through good dice, no issues with the rules) which kept the rest of the Persians fighting for longer than they should have.

My painting has paused for three weeks as I have been away on business but hopefully next week will see me getting Romans painted so that they are out of the way when the Celts arrive. The schedule will all go to pot after Salute (if I get there) because I will not be able to resist the new Warlord ECW plastics.

Enough for now. I will update on the painting next week and hopefully post a few pictures.

WW II Skirmish

2009-01-03T21:34:00.007Z

We played a small WW II skirmish game this afternoon. Used a set of rules called "Achtung, Achtung" that I picked up at Salute in 2004. They fit onto 6 sides of A4.

The rules use a card activation system that removes the usual IGOUGO sequence. Each unit (Squad/vehicle) has two cards, each side has a "wild card" and a joker is added to the pack. Units are activated as cards are exposed, the joker causes a reshuffle of the deck.

The game was US vs German - 1944. Started off with 2 US armoured infantry squads in M3 half tracks tasked to check out a ruined house. The house contained an MG42 and a nearby wood held a german infantry squad. As the half tracks moved towards the house a tank appeared. I placed a Tiger model on the table. At its first activation my son rolled a dice to determine what actual tank type it was (all German tanks are Tigers !). He actually got a Panther. It rolled forward and promptly broke down (dice roll per move for Tigeras and Panthers, break down on a 1 - house rule). The closest half track went rapidly in reverse and then a Stug III appeared. The crew of the half track jumped out only to be sprayed by the MG42 in the house and suppressed. The Americans were reinforced by an M5 Stuart, a Sherman and an M10. The M10 took out the Stug only to be blown apart by the Panther. A Panzershrek and the Panther took pot shots at the Sherman, eventually disabling it and cuasing the crew to bale out. The first US infantry squad was wiped out and the second squad piled out of their half track and into another ruined house.

The panzershrek was killed by the Stuart and the MG's on the half tracks suppressed the MG42 in the ruin. With their infantry support failing - the squad in the wood rashly charged the Stuart and got machine gunned - the Panther crew bailed out and headed for home. An American victory but a costly one.

The game was immense fun, mainly because the card activation mechanism gives a narrative feel to the game which is hard to achieve with turn based systems. We have tried a more complex card based system before (Operation Overlord) but that led to a very slow game. This system is very quick, our game lasted about 90 minutes.

I think that I will use these rules as the basis for a home grown set. We will also try the same unit activation method for Warhammer 40K (5th ed) as I find the fixed turn sequence in those rules tends to rather predictable games.

I took a few pictures of this game. The figures are Valiant plastics, the Stug, Sherman and M10 are HAT, the Panther is Dragon Armor (lovely model).

Numidians, Slingers and Cavalry ... Oh My !

2008-12-12T16:52:00.005Z

So I have managed to get a unit each of Balearic Slingers, Numidian Cavalry and Roman Cavalry painted up for the Caesarians. Here are a few pictures.

I am not sure that I have the correct skin tone on the Numidians. I am still thinking about what to put on the shields for these guys.

Warfare Show

2008-11-29T13:17:00.003Z

Went to the Warfare show in Reading (UK) last Sunday with my Son. I was aiming to buy the new Valiant Plastic German Panzer Grenadiers but all of the traders sold out on Saturday :-(

I did buy some Numidian & Roman Cavalry and some Balearic slingers, so I now have the figures to build out my Caeserian Basic Impetus Army. I got the figures from Magister Militum. These guys have good deals on nice workmanlike 28mm figures. In fact if you look at their larger packs they are similar in price to the Warlord plastics ! I am seriously considering ordering some of their Gallic Cavalry instead of the Warlord ones.

I have managed to paint the Balearic slingers and they look great, I will post a picture when I get the base finished.

I also picked up Niel Thomas's "Wargaming, an Introduction". This book has basic rules for Ancients, Pike and Shot, Napoleonics, ACW, Colonial skirmish and WW2. At first glance the rules look very basic but I have played the Ancient rules a few times and they do give a good fast game. I plan to try the Napoleonic rules (I have 6mm Adler figures) and the WW2 (lots of 20mm models and figures) as soon as I get a chance and I will post a litle review.

Other purchases were some paint and a 2 foot terrain square with a hill (I try to buy one of these at each show I go to).

The paint is from Coats d'Arms. I am going to try their new washes in comparison with the Citadel ones. I will post a review when I have tried them out. I also bought their "Suntanned Flesh", this is exactly the same colour as the "Army Painter" flesh spray. I primed the Balearics with the flesh spray, washed them with Citadel Orgryn Flesh and then highlighted with the Suntanned Flesh - perfect.

Around the show I saw some good demo games. There was a massive table with 28mm Russians vs Japanese (1939) with masses of green sprayed fake fur steppe. The demo grabbed your attention because there was a Russian fighter with two rockets streaking from it above the table.

I had a go at two participation games (to keep my boy happy). First was an Orc racing game. You had to race against other players whilst Trolls rained objects down on you. If you survived to the end of the course you gained points. If the Troll hit a target on your turn (you had tokens to activate Trolls) you gained points for each casualty. I actually won ! My Son played this two more times. I think this game was put on by the Dunstable club.

The other game that I tried was a post WW2 skirmish - Secret Agents vs Zombies and Monsters in a Berlin bunker. The objective was to stop a V2 with an atomic warhead from launching. Four players against a games-master. One of the players turned out to be a traitor. I was the Russian agent and not the Traitor. A Zombie killed me. My Son played 3 games of this one too. The game was put on by the Wessex Wargamers from Winchester.

I did spend a long time nattering with Nigel Betts. Nigel was putting on an American War of Independence game with the GLC club. This was a lovely looking 28mm game representing the Battle of the Clouds (which didn't actually happen as "rain stooped play").

All in all a very good day out at a great little show.

Side by Side Comparisons

2008-11-14T16:19:00.005Z

Here are some pictures of Warlord Celts alongside Wargames factory Romans. Picture not great as used flash but gives you the idea.

I think the Romans look a bit squatter and thicker set but they match well enough to be on opposing sides. I mean, how ofetn do you have a game where the two sides come from the smae manufacturer ?

Celts and Romans

2008-11-14T11:48:00.000Z

I bought some hard plastic Warlord Celts at Colours (Wargames show in Newbury UK) with a view to building an army for Basic Impetus (and maybe Impetus in the future). I have since supplemented these with some metal "fanatics" (the naked guys) also from Warlord.

I like these figures, some of the poses look odd when viewed alone but the look fine when based up. Impetus uses large bases (in this case 120mm X 60mm) and the dynamic poses on these figures really suit this sort of base size.

Now the out of focus guys facing off the Celts are Wargames Factory Romans. I have painted up a few of these and I am really pleased with them. Here are a couple of shots of them.

Some comments on the figures.

Warlord Celts

As already mentioned, some of the poses are rather dynamic, this can look odd but when based up in large groups they look great.

There have been some comments about the ratio of figures to shields in the box. This could be an issue, I have added a few of Warlord's resin shields, instruments, standards, trophy heads and double weapons and the result looks right I think.

The shield transfers are sticky backed, they are fiddly to cut out and apply, with patience they turn out fine. I painted the shields first. The backs brown and the ribs and face in one of the transfer coulours with the boss in metal. Then applied the transfers. I glued the shields to the figures after painting.

Fit on the figures is good, flash and mould lines almost non-existent.

I painted them with a block and wash method over black undercoat. The naked guys were undercoated with Army Painter flesh spray - they painted up fast :-)

Wargames Factory Romans

These are getting a bit of a mixed press out there ! They do look rather shiny and "fuzzy" on the sprue. I made a few up to see how they assembled. Again little or no flash or mould lines to worry about. Fit on the arms is not brilliant and they needed some cutting. The ball and socket heads worked out OK.

Once I sprayed the figures black the detail started to come out. I painted them with a block and wash system and I am happy with the results. They come out as good "wargames standard" figures. I can paint them fairly quickly (managed another 12 in about 3 hours last night) and I feel that I actually stand a chance of getting a gameable army onto the table within a couple of months.

The shield transfers are rub-down, this was odd and I trashed a couple to start with. My advice if you are using these is to paint the shield first. I painted the back brown and gave it a wash with Citadel wash, then the whole of the front is a deep red with a metal boss. Then I put on the transfers. I tried some off the sprue and some on the sprue, on the sprue made it easier to match up the transfer to the shield shape. I attached the shields after painting the figures. I noticed when I posted the photos that I didn't touch up the points where the shields were detatched, I will fix that.

The figures cost me £17 (GBP) for 48 (with a free box of colonial Brits and free postage) and included shield transfers. Foundry Romans are more detailed but they would have disadvantages for me. Firstly cost, £11 GBP + p&p for 8 figures with no transfers. Then there is the detail, they look great, this is a problem for me. If the figure has great detail I can't block and wash it, the three tone shading technique comes out. That is four hours for a 28mm figure. OK I will produce a figure that I can be very proud of but that is a week of painting time on one figure.

So cheaper figures with good enough details means I am more likely to get an army to play games with, rather than a mountain of undercoated lead and plastic.

Here is a parting shot of the figures facing off.