Adventures on the Wargames Table

Managed to get along to the club last Sunday for a game of Bolt Action with Orange Dave. He had his early/mid war desert British and I had my Late War Germans - not quite historical I know - but good fun all the same :o) First, here's a few pics of some of Dave's most recent brushwork. This is the OQF 2lb Portee. Lovely isn't it! Another view. What I hadn't realised is that this particular model had been equipped with an experimental "temporal displacement reactor" which allowed it to zip about the battlefield with frightening speed ... definitely not Cricket!?! Or rather it was a case of both players not quite knowing what the rules are!! :o) Here are some of Dave's infantry, mainly Perry's I think. Right ... on to the game. Just 500pts per side for the Maximum Attrition scenario. I threw some of my scenery on to the table and we set to. Here's the end of turn 1 - we both put most of our forces on to the table in turn one keep...

Wargames Table chum Colin has produced yet another superb building – the Signal Box – so I’d like to show you how it all goes together and offer some suggestions for painting it. Here’s the kit, all 79 pieces of it! This is Colin’s. Lovely! In this picture I’ve labelled the ‘groups’ of pieces. Note – the rectangular piece in the bottom left of the upper floor group is actually the base for the signal levers – Doh!? Because (a) the upper floor has two layers of wall and (b) the balcony and stairs could be a bit fiddly to paint in situ, it makes sense to spray/paint some of the components before building the complete model, I'll mention this later. Tip - always dry fit any pieces before gluing and use good quality wood glue. Lower Floor This just a straight-forward box, four walls and a base, plus the comb shaped balcony supports – make sure you get them level. Now for the base colours. Grey primer spray; the supports are blocked out in black. I applied a very th...

Now... I'm supposed to be doing an article on the new Signal Box but what with one thing and another it's taking me a bit longer to complete - so in the mean time here's a little article on how to quickly get Charlie Foxtrot's Wooden Post and Rail Fencing on to the table. It comes as a pack of 12 pieces, each 6" long, including two gate sections - all for the very reasonable price of £12. Step 1: Take the raw MDF and very lightly spray with matt black - just a dusting really so that some of the wood colour shows through. Hopefully this pic shows what I mean. Step 2: Drybrush with any dark brown. I used VMC Leather Brown. Step 3: Drybrush (very lightly!) with a light cream colour. Here I've used VMC Dark Sand. That's it! All 12 sections took me less than an hour. Step 4: Glue the fences to the bases. The gate sections have subtly different bases and I like my gates to be slightly open as it makes them easier to spot at a glance. Ste...

Well that was good! Five very enjoyable games of Bolt Action . My thanks to Gary, Ian, Andrew, Steve and Jason. All of my opponents were great fun to play against, plus they were jolly helpful in terms of the rules, explaining what they were doing and why, plus offering me suggestions and options as to how I might use my forces - all good when you're very new to a set of rules. It may have been a tournament but the approach to the games was just friendly competition. Day One featured three 500pt games and each game used the Maximum Attrition scenario and was limited to 90 minutes. Day Two was two 1,000pt games and the scenarios would be announced just before the start. Anyway, on to the games themselves. Day One... Game 1: Gary Rich - Germans A good way to start - with an enemy force I know something about. This turned out to be a fairly cautious affair with both of us being quite cagey about committing to the attack. Another factor was me still being a bit vague abo...