Adventures on the Wargames Table

... a peaceful village gets back to work after being visited by a patrol of Rangers and Warriors. What's this!? Middle Earth when the Western Front seemed top of my list? Well, dear reader, yes and no. I have been largely focussed on WW1 but then on Friday my youngest discovered a box of LotR Elves and asked if we could paint them and play some games! ... Certainly, was my reply. So, on Saturday I quickly painted up an Elf warrior so as to show what they might look like when painted. On Sunday morning Katie started painting her own Elf archer. Whilst painting she asked if we could play a game and use her figure. Crumbs but it's been ages since I last ventured in to Middle Earth on the tabletop but how could I possibly refuse? I asked her what sort of game what she'd like to play. "Don't worry" she said, "I'll explain as we go along" and she set to thinking up a scenario and back ground. Here's the small village she arranged. Her id...

Orange Dave kindly arranged a splendid evening's Great War gaming, so with the help of Rob, Steve, Mike, Alan and another Steve, we went Over The Top! The battles took place on two tables, the smaller table was the French sector (possibly the Verdun area) and featured a network of bunkers. The larger table was The Somme where the Canadians and British were seeking to breakthrough the German front line and capture their objectives, a ruined village and a shelled wood. Hopefully Dave will post his scenario notes on the Scarab forum . We begin with the BEF and CEF deployment, the CEF (me) are on the left flank and include a Mk I tank. The RFC Reconnaissance aircraft passes along the Allied lines giving a better view of the German trench line. Now a closer look at the Germans as the RFC buzz over the trenches. Watch out sir! Fritz has a machine gun trained upon us. Bank right and dive! The first British objective; an area of shelled woodland affording an excellen...

Or more accurately; what I bought at Colours! Ahem ... due to what are best termed “camera issues” I’m afraid I haven’t got any pics from the show itself, even of our demo game of War & Conquest :o( However, I have linked to some pics from other blogs plus I thought you might be interested to hear a little bit about the show. As you probably know it’s a two day show, but we only attended for the Saturday, which from experience is the day the majority of people seem to attend. Fellow Scarab chum and I staged a demo game of War & Conquest (Saxons vs Vikings at The Battle of Ashingdon ) whilst Rob manned the Scarab stand. This year we were in the Annexe which is a separate building about 25m from the main grandstand. The only real issue seemed to be a lack of clear signage in the main show area letting attendees know that there was more to see in the Annexe. Anyway, in between slaughtering each other in what proved to be a splendid Dark Ages battle, I had a very quick dash around ...

At long last I have started painting my Great War German army for the Western Front! As with any new gaming project I like to paint a couple of test figures first, just to make sure I've got the colours right, etc. Here's a soldier and a junior officer. From behind. The figures are Great War Miniatures. Painting scheme was 1. Black undercoat 2. Uniform, Foundry Granite Shade, then Foundry Granite mid. 3. Skin, Foundry Flesh, shade, mid, light 4. Blanket, Foundry Rawhide shade, then mid. 5. Leather, various colours but Foundry Bay Brown shade, followed by a mix of Bay mid and Foundry Scarlet gave a good rich leather finish. Also used Foundry Deep Brown Leather, and Vallejo Leather Brown. 6. Boots & belts, quick highlight with Foundry Slate Grey shade. 7. Pistol & Rifle, very light highlight with GW Boltgun metal. All comments welcome! Do you think the "field grey" uniform is about right? Thanks to Ray Earle for the tip about the Foundry c...

Last Sunday Rob kindly invited me to join him and Phil at Scarab Towers for a game of Great War. Not knowing exactly what we'd be playing I simply packed most of my terrain and all my Western Front British and set forth. When I arrived I was delighted to find that Rob and Phil had set up a splendid looking table and two armies were deployed ready to begin. It didn't take me long to realise that this was no conventional Western Front battle... Instead, we were fighting along the banks of the Piave as the plucky Italians (with the last moment addition of a few Brits) had a crack at the Austro-Hungarian (A/H) trenches. Here are the A/H Trenches packed with troops. Gulp! If you're wondering why they bear more than a passing resemblance to Germans troops then that's because Germany supplied much of the materiel for the A/H army. EDIT: Rob @ Scarab has some super photos HERE . Should have linked them first time around!? The Italian/British left flank. Mainly Itali...