2016 in review and plans for 2017

Last day of a rather dismal wargaming year, if I can say it myself. Highlights of the year:

• Managed to paint basic forces for both US and VC locals in my Vietnam project
• Also for Vietnam project, a shedload of jungle terrain pieces was completed. This may very well the greatest ‘success’ of the year, since it was a horribly tedious task I undertook most unwillingly. Still, I pushed through, good lad there…
• For Dux Britaniarum, I’ve painted the Saxons, so I now have both sides at home.
• I’ve added a couple of units and artillery to my 6mm ACW collection.
• Over last couple of months my interest in 6mm Napolenic project woke up again. As result, I’ve made some progress with Teugen-Hausen OOB and added three infantry batalions and two cavalry regiments.
• Terrain board project proceeds at glacial speed. 21 basic boards are now ready for use. So far, four of them were used for a photo shoot, the rest is still waiting for their premiere apperance.

On the other hand, the simple fact is that I hardly played any games this year. This in itself is worrying, but what bothers me much more is the fact that I didn’t really mind that much. Seems to me that both my personal engagement in the hobby as well as that of my wargaming buddies is slowly winidng down. Over last couple of years our focus seems to be shifting in direction of boardgames such as Command&Colors (both ancient and Napoleonic), Combat Commander and most recently, Wing Leader. Common denominator for all of them (beside the fact that they’re from GMT) is that they’re quick to pick and set up, have simple rules and an average game doesn’t last longer than three hours, often much less.

It will come hardly as a surprise then when I say thatI have pretty much lost the insight into whatever developments and trends may have taken place in the hobby over the course of past year. The only major event that registered on my radar was the change of editor of Miniature Wargames magazine, which signaled a change in course for that magazine for me and prompted me to a binge purchase of PDF issues of Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy. Other than that, things have been going on without any major upheavals and disturbances in my personal wargaming bubble – no new projects started, no new rulesets, no major miniature purchases. Seems like not following the news or trends is a bit of a bliss, allowing me to consolidate on stuff I already have going on, rather than jumping from one shiny new thing to another!

Allright, so what about 2017?

• First and foremost, play a bit more. One game per month may be over-ambitious, but that’s the goal for this year.
• Which leads me to the second goal – looking into solo gaming. One sad trend I cannot overlook any longer is the simple fact that gathering together a group of three or four friends in same place at same time seems to be more and more difficult. Often even arranging a one on one game is a bit of a challenge. So solo gaming seems to be the most obvious solution to this problem.
• Regarding painting projects, I hope my current momentum will last a bit longer and allow me to paint figures necessary for Teugen-Hausen scenario. I’m about halfway there, which means about 1000 more 6mm minis that require attention.
• I would also like to expand on my Vietnam collection – helicopters and VC main force units are in the pipeline. Maybe some additional terrain, while I’m at it.
• Chain of Command from Too Fat Lardies – this ruleset has peaked my interest and I have already a shedload of 20mm minis for a one of their mini-campaigns. Need to paint some bits and pieces and make couple of meters of boccage as well as a couple of buildings.
• Ancients – strangely enough, I never had a chance to play what I consider my ‘first love’. I have a sizeable Greek hoplite army. They need an opponent, most probably early Achaemenid Persians. Two rulesets need testing – ‘Impetus’ and ‘Spear and Sword’.

OK, that’s it for now, Happy New Wargaming Year to you all. See you on the other side!

Day of hussars

Yet again Christmas is upon us and what better way to celebrate that fact than posting another entry on this somewhat neglected blog! So first of all, if you happen to read it in a couple of next days – Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. May 2017 bring you a shedload of games and miniatures, both painted and otherwise.

Anyway… a week or so ago, I finished yet another unit intended for my personal return to General de Brigade and more specifically for scenario for Teugen-Hausen from one of scenario books by Partisan Press. This particular unit – 4th Austrian Hussar regiment, 40 figures strong – was a bit of time sink hole, but it turned out quite nicely in the end.

As I prepare for the ‘photo shoot’, I recalled that earlier this year I’ve also painted a unit of 1st French Hussar regiment. And so, you get a ‘2 for 1’ deal here.

Figures from both units come from Adler Miniatures.

 

FIrst Huey–the story continues

Spent two more hours on Huey ‘pilot project’ and the results are not too shabby. Not too shabby at all! The construction itself is pretty straightforward, although the fit of individual comopnents is ‘basic’ to say the least.

Also, as I suspected, the construction of rotor sub-assembly contained a hidden trap for the unweary. Rotor blades are installed on the shaft one at the time, with the lower one being mounted through a small square-shaped frame. Well. if one is not careful. the actual removal if this component can potentially weaken the plastic square to a point where it snaps off, either during removal process or at later time. As every plastic model kit modeller will tell you, when components are cut out of their sprue, there is a tension, which often can snap ‘the weakest link’. Whic, in this case, are the sides of little frame supposed to be used when mounting the blade in place. In my case, the frame held during removal process, but snapped as soon as I touched it later on. Once again, Tamiya’s Extra Thin Cement came to the rescue and salvaged a potentially critical situation.

The rest of construction process is quite uneventful. I am still not conviced that a mixed medium (pewter, plastics and resin) approach had to be used here, but once the kit is put together, certainly it certainly looks the part!

Paint it black

Blaim it in on TV show ‘Tour of duty’ - whenever I see a Huey, I hear ‘Paint it black’.

Anyway, this post isn’t about flashbacks from my teens, but a flashback from about six or seven years ago, when Battlefront decided for some unexplainable reason to transplant their ‘Flames of War’ ruleset into Vietnam conflict. I guess things didn’t work out too well with that idea, but since Battlefront never does anything half-hearted, we’ve got a shedload of minis out of that misadventure… Perhaps the most valuable addition, if one’s to draw the conclusions of the fact how hard they’re to find these days, are helicopters that are symptomatic with Vietnam conflict – Bell UH-1 Iroquois, better known as ‘Huey’.

Since I’ve started to think about getting into Vietnam conflict, I’ve managed to acquire couple of those models. But, as so often, once acquired, they landed in a box and have been resting there ever since. That is until today, when I’ve dug them out of the stash and cracked open one of the boxes.

What I found in it was a bit of a surprise – a strange mix of resin, metal and plastic components which took aback even a moderately experienced model builder like myself. Body of the helicopter consists of three resin components, which aren’t exactly best moulds I’ve seen. They do seem however to fit together resonably well. Main rotor assembly seems fiddly and metal parts are covered in flash. I do however like the fact that both the rotor and the stand are attached to the fuselage with rare earth magnets, making them removable for storage and transport purposes. Somebody at Battlefront did use their nuggets!

So… initial impression is overall cautiously positive – with a little TLC, this could turn out to be a pretty decent ‘Huey’. Will report again, once I get started with the construction.

C4 Open 2016

And we're at this time of the year yet again - C4 Open model exhibition took place two weeks ago. A bit of mixed feelings this time around - still a lot of great models, but number of more advanced dioramas decreased yet again. Don't know what to think of it.

In any case, if you click on image below, you'll navigate to a Google album with shedload of pictures of models displayed in this year's exhibition. Direct album embedding is apparently no longer available in Blogger.

Unexpected treat

Last Sunday I had the pleasure of enjoying an unexpected treat – a huge (by our local standards) game of General de Brigade. And no tiny 6mm midgets on that occasion, my dearies!We would be running that game the way wargaming magazines and Warlord Games have learned us over the years is the propper manner – 28mm plastics as long as the eye could reach, and a lot of them too!

Having the pleasure of seeing somewhere near 1500 28mm Napoleonic miniatures may be a common thing for those of you who are lucky enough to live in the land of the Queen and huge wargaming clubs, but let me tell you – here in southern Sweden it’s a rare sight indeed. My hat is definitely off for D., whos collection provided lion share of the figures on the table – very well done indeed, mate!

The game

Allright, so what about the game then? Well… I’m actually still trying to wrap my head around it. If I understand things correctly we run one of scenarios from Caliver Books’ latest scenario book for General de Brigade, dealing with 1813. The one we picked had rather traditional format – two long lines of infantry and artillery opposing each other, the village in the middle provided the major objective. Prussians apparently had some beer in local beer house and Frenchies, for whatever reason, didn’t seem to appreciate the idea of Germans having good time and and decided to crash the party. And yes, it would be one of those ‘hammer to the teeth’ affairs where attackers would rush into defenders along entire line and hope of the best.

Over next four or so hours, we managed to play grand total of five, maybe six rounds. I must admit that being busy trying to shove in as many Frenchmen into the village in the middle, I didn’t pay much attention to what happened on my flanks. Things seemed to go rather well on my left. On my right, I did manage to observe that my fellow comrade in arms had rather dismal luck with his dice rolls and failed to make any impression on Prussian defensive line.

Yours truly tried his best to keep some sort of order among French columns marching toward the village. These columns, consisting of mainly second line troops constantly blasted by artillery batteries supporting two German Jaeger battalions parked in the village and having no intention sharing that beer, had a devil of a time. By round three I managed to reach the edge of the village, but once there, my assault pretty much stalled. By round five one of my battalion routed of the table, while the two battalions that managed to reach the objective intact were repulsed, with some losses. Prussians simply refused to be dislodged from their position. With just under an hour remaining of the playing time, I did the thing I hate being done to myself – I declared that since we wouldn’t be making any headway in remaining time, we may just as well quit for the day.

Musings after the battle

First of all, thanks again to the guys based in Lund for letting me participate in their game! Visual aspect of well-painted 28mm Napoleonic miniatures deployed en massé on a large table is something every wargamer should experience at least once.

Having said that… Damn, General de Brigade is reaaaaaly slow and ponderous game system. In our game, we had three players a side and things should have moved along at a decent speed, but the average time to complete one turn was still somewhere around 30 minutes. I honestly fail to see how, using this ruleset, one can complete a scenario of decent size in a single gaming session. This in itself doesn’t mean that BdeB is a bad ruleset, but I’m starting to wonder if I can use it for purely practical reasons. Say whatever you want about ‘Black Powder’, but that thing at least moves along at decent pace.

FOr no reason whatsoever

I think that given enough time, every wargamer jumps into a period or game system because this or that miniature range is just “so good”! I’ve been there a couple of times myself. But… how many of you have started a new project because of terrain, or to be more specific, paper buildings?!

Allright, perhaps ‘starting a new project’ is a bit of an overstatement, so far we’re talking about a single finished item and as we all know, one swallow doesn’t make a summer. But let’s start from the beginning. I am a regular visitor at Wargames Vault. I’m sure most wargamers are familiar with it and if you’re not, have a look. Just don’t blame me for the money you’ll spend there afterward! A lot of useful stuff can be found there – rulesets, magazines, counter and paper terrain. In that last department, a man with name Dave Graffam has published a whole shedload of very, very impressive buildings. The only problem is that they are intended for fantasy or middle ages. OK, if you squint, they’ll probably can be used for renaissance too. In any case, not really my cup of tea. But nonetheless, something about them caught my eye and when they were on sale couple of months ago , I could not resist the temptation. I grabbed a bunch of them ‘just because’ with no real expectation of doing anything with them in forseeable future.

Couple of weeks ago I found myself feelig quite pleased over the fact that I have finished my Saxon warband for Dux Britaniarum. At the same time, I was for the moment quite fed up with painting minis. I needed to change gears. I then remembered that bunch of PDF-s on my harddrive and decided to take a closer look at them. Well, let me tell you – Dave Graffam has gained an instant fan-boy about a minute after I opened first file. A lot of work has been put into these buildings and the components look beatiful already on the screen. But what really impressed me was the fact that many of PDF-s have so called layers – this allows you to change textures, add and remove details and decide where the door and windows are placed.

I decided to give one of the more complex buildings a try and printed out components for Willow Brook Inn – sixteen sheets of paper, two of them are for the base, four for very basic “cubes” intended to act as supporting components hidden inside the structure and adding sturdiness to the whole thing. Once all the sheets were printed, I mounted the base on 5mm foamcore sheet. Remaining sheets were mounted with help of spray glue in rattle can on 300 grams black cardboard. It’s not necessary, but for me normal 80 gram is just too flimsy for this type of projects.

Once everything was dry and set, the next step consisted of a looot of cutting and glueing. After all, it’s a paper building. The whole thing took me about nine hours to finish with no problems encountered along the way. I strongly advise anyone meaning to give these buildings a shot to follow the instructions and advice of the creator, which can be found in a manual included with this building. I am not complete newbie when it comes to paper buildnings, but some of Mr. Graffam’s advice was both new and quite useful for me while working with this project.

I couldn’t be more pleased with the end result. The first thing that strikes one once the the buildning is completed is its size – it is a substantial construction with large footprint on gaming table! And there is a lot of potential for improvements if one wishes to spend some TLC on it – beams could be replaced with balsa strips, the roof could be textured or covered with your favourite material for thatched roof, window shutters could be added, doors replaced… But even ‘straight out of the box’, this is a very beautiful terrain piece.

Paradoxically enough, the fact that I really enjoyed putting this thing together has created a bit of a problem for me. The simple fact is that I don’t have any use for it or for the remainder of this product range! That I had to use minis of gladiators for size comparison is perhaps the best proof of that fact. But I would love to build some more of them, maybe even create a complete town setting with them. And so, just like any ‘proper’ wargamer would, I’ve now started to look for rulesets and miniatures that could allow me to use it (and its ‘siblings’) in a game. If you have any helpful suggestions, let me know in the comments!

Lol… New miniature ranges have triggered this reaction with me often enough, but paper buildings? Now, that’s a first!