Adventures on the Wargames Table

Here's my latest bit of modelling - a rally point (or objective marker, etc) for my Early Imperial Romans! For War & Conquest it's a rally point, but other games systems often require similar "objectives" or it can just be a nice piece of terrain. The tent is resin, from Grand Manner. The stack of supplies came from Bad Squiddo Games, the shield from Black Tree with the excellent LBMS transfers. MDF base from Charlie Foxtrot. Painting recipe: Tent - Foundry Spearshaft shade, a wash of Agrax, then the shade / mid / highlight, ie the full triad. Supplies - The darker wood was painted Foundry Bay shade, the 'parcels' in Foundry Buff shade, the jar in Foundry Conker Brown shade, the basket in Foundry Butternut shade. Then give the whole lot a wash of Agrax. Then highlight with the original base colour followed by the rest of each triad respectively. Note - for the dark wood just give it a light dry-drush of a light cream like VMC Dark Sand to bring out t...

The recent weekend saw a number of us gather at the Bristol Big'uns club venue in Iron Acton for a weekend of War & Conquest gaming organised by Scarab supremo, Rob Broom. Now, rather than try to give you a blow by blow account of all the games, I've taken a few pics so that you can get a flavour of the fun had by all. There were several EIR forces, Dave's Carthaginians (who thrashed my EIR in a warm up game on Friday evening), plus several Successors forces. My first opponent was Barry, a relative newcomer to WaC, fielding his own EIR force. The figures were lovely old Citadel Romans. Our Roman armies close for battle That's a lot of Romans! We had a great game! Neither of us achieved our objectives but Barry edged a win. After a superb lunch (thanks to Barbara :o)) we set to again. And again I was facing more EIR, led this time by Nick. Deployed for battle Nick's Foundry Roman army My EIR decide to take the fight to Nick's men The...

Various rules require a way to track the status of units during the battle e.g. Casualties, Fatigue, Push & Shove, Shock, Momentum ... whatever! Anyway, I decided to make some dial counters to represent this for my EIR and here they are. The casualty figures are from Black Tree Miniatures; a mix of Auxiliaries and Legionaries. As they're casualties I decided to skip my usual layered painting style and instead opted for a block colour and wash effect, followed by some basic highlights. Here they are with the armour painted black and given a dry-brush of GW Leadbelcher, the rest of figure is just one colour, i.e. Foundry Flesh B, Foundry Boneyard B, GW Mephiston Red, VMC Leather Brown, etc. Now for the wash... GW Agrax Earthshade of course! I'm sure something like Army Painter wash or ink would be just as effective. After that I simply applied a few highlights of the original 'block' colours. The completed figures were matt varnished - you might like t...

Our D-Day campaign marches on! Game Four is loosely based on scenario three from the Chain of Command supplement Kampfgruppe von Luck, entitled "Attacking the Corridor of Death". The Germans have gained the upper hand after driving in the Paras forward positions during game three of our campaign. For this game Orange Dave would be starching his upper lip, waxing his moustache and commanding the Paras. The Germans would soon be heading in to the heart of Le Bas de Ranville. Here's the map from TFL's supplement. My own take on it is slightly different; mainly because it was easier to find the church than dig out other buildings! Anyway, I think it looks okay. Dave has deployed half his force on the table, although (very sensibly) you can only see the odd figure. He placed his mortar behind the church with the spotter in the stone barn. As they lost the last game, the Paras could only fortify one building rather than two, so Dave chose the old cafe. This ...

Yes, the re-basing continues. Here's a couple of officer types (Curteys Miniatures) riding through the desert. It's not all re-basing though! Here's the next batch of Legion ready for some varnish. Wanted to post these as with the holiday season fast approaching they'll have to wait a little while for their shields ;o) Cheerio!

A while back I looked at re-basing my Romans to give them a more sandy-based theme. I've now also decided to give them magnetic bases to make storage easier. So I needed to add suitable movement trays. Here's the next unit, 14 Auxiliaries. I'd like to offer a little tip about making movement trays... In the past I've bough them ready assembled and then trimmed steel 'paper' to fit inside, then added texture to the edge. However, sometimes this has resulted in a badly fitting, slightly wonky, piece of steel 'paper' (which just annoys me) or perhaps the texture has strayed within the bounds of the tray. Not a big deal to fix but here's my new approach. Buy the trays unassembled, that is (as shown below) the rim is left unglued. If you already have the trays then it's simple to slide a modelling knife between the rim and base - just take it steady! Next, cut a piece of steel 'paper' that is slightly larger than the tray base. I ...