Adventures on the Wargames Table

Oooh look what I got for my recent birthday! But what particular period of the black powder era will I consider gaming? The rules includes lists for French-Indian War American War of Independence Peninsular War (perhaps an obvious choice given that I already have some suitable figures?) American Civil War Indian Mutiny (oh the lure of gaming Carry on Up the Khyber !) Plus the TFL forum has lots of extra lists, e.g. Napoleonic Russians. Now, at least one of my chums will know the answer, so no spoilers (yet)! More news as it happens. By the way, if you play these rules then perhaps you'd like to comment on what era you play. Id be interested to hear from you.

Sunday night is club night for the Bristol Big Uns and we really couldn't ask for a better venue than the superb Iron Acton village hall. We've recently splashed out on some of the new mouse pad style gaming mats and very good they are too. My visit on Sunday last was only a flying visit but it was still great to catch up with everyone and have a little natter. I couldn't resist taking a few pics to share. First we have a game of Lion Rampant between Mike and Simon. The figures are all Mike's (20mm Zvezda I think), I reckon they look splendid! The beauty of this game is that you don't need masses of figures and you can fit a couple of games in to an evening. This has rather caught my imagination :o) French vs English Both sides getting stuck in! What beautiful knights! Archers and billmen Next is a very characterful game of Kings of War between Dave S and Dave G. It's Forces of Nature trying to thwart the advance of the shambling Undead. ...

Yes, I've been at it again with the brushes! Just a few figures this time to bring one of my 18 man cohorts up to a more durable 24 figures. The recipe is as follows Undercoat GW Black Spray Tidy up any 'gaps' with a little GW black, slightly thinned helps. Armour Base of GW Leadbelcher Apply black wash e.g. GW Nuln Oil 1st highlight GW Leadbelcher 2nd highlight GW Mithril (now Runefang Steel) for the edges of the armour Then GW Gehenna’s Gold for the brass fittings. If you have it then a dark brass/copper colour like GW Tin Bitz makes a good base coat for the gold. Tunic (and scarf) GW Khorne Red 1st highlight GW Mephiston Red 2nd highlight Foundry Bright Red Shade My Legion have a range of reds for their tunics, some have the Foundry Madder triad for example, other Foundry British Redcoat. Try making some of the scarves a dirty off-white with any light brown and the Foundry Boneyard. Flesh Foundry Flesh triad. Sandals Base of GW Mournfang Brown Apply Agrax Earths...

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 ...