Adventures on the Wargames Table

A change is as good as a rest - or so the saying goes... It's been all Sharp Practice here on the table recently so Orange Dave and I decided to have a big(ish) game of Bolt Action. It's 1500pts per side, so fairly busy for my little 6 x 4 table. We agreed to play the mission "Top Secret". The wrecked 251 is in the centre of the table and contains a dead senior German officer with a bundle of very interesting papers, maps, etc. Here's a couple of pics I took whilst awaiting Dave's arrival (thanks to all my FB chums for the kind words when I posted these on Saturday afternoon). Those pics weren't too bad, but I must apologise for some of the rest of the photos as they're not as good as I'd hoped. The lighting in my lounge plays havoc with my camera. For this scenario all troops begin the game as reserves but can deploy from turn 1, following a successful Commad check. My two platoons gave me a total of five Grenadier squads (4 regulars and 1...

In Sharp Practice it's vital to track the morale of your force and that of your opponent's. Thankfully Charlie Foxtrot Models make an excellent little item that's perfect for the job. It starts out as plain laser-cut MDF but I decided to give it a bit of a makeover. I sprayed it white and picked out the letters and numbers with black. I used the same recipe as the basing for my AWI models. The flag tokens are just 25mm bases on to which I've glued some printed and trimmed flags. Get yours here ! That's a £1 well spent I reckon :o) You can also see my interim deployment points. These are just slightly larger versions of the morale tokens. I'll eventually make some nice little dioramas with spare models or scenic items but they'll do for now whilst I concentrate on getting the troops painted. BTW, these were (shamelessly) copied from an ACW example I saw on the FB group by David Robotham. Thanks mate! In other news... Chum Colin got these splendid ...

I've been busily painting a couple of items for chums Colin and Paul. Both kits are from Grand Manner and whilst they needed quite a bit of trimming and cleaning, I'd still thoroughly recommend them. Colin has Bavarians and Russians for Sharp Practice so GM's Eastern European Covered Well seemed ideal. Sources of water on the table are sometimes quite handy in SP, for example troops might get fouled barrels. The dog is from Colonel Bill's Caught Short pack. The barrels are from Bad Squiddo Games . Paul has the traditional British and French for the Peninsular theatre. Regular readers (thank you!) will have already seen the church and grain store, so I thought GM's Olive Press would come in handy. I've really enjoyed painting these kits and look forward to many games with them. Thanks for the superb weekend chaps! :o)

I like my gaming tokens to match the units. Shiny pieces of plastic are all well and good but I do find that they rather spoil the look of a good table. So I made these Present!, Uncontrolled and Reload! tokens for Sharp Practice. They are simply Charlie Foxtrot mdf bases (40mm x 20mm) on to which I've glued the printed words. I've roughly torn the edges of the paper as I thought an irregular edge would look better. Next, just apply your usual basing methods. Here, it's sand and grit painted with Americana Honey Brown followed by highlights of VMC Dark Sand (847) then Foundry Boneyard light. Then out comes the box of grass and foliage, etc.

The Redcoats are marching to war! Yes, I've pulled my finger out and painted some figures for Sharp Practice. Award winners they ain't, because I've made the conscious decision to paint them up "fairly quickly". As long as they look good at three feet then that's good enough for me. One of the big stumbling blocks for me back in my "Napoleonic days" was getting to caught up with the details on each individual figure which slowed painting to a crawl. Plus it just made things hard work. Here's the painting recipe if you're interested. I started with a light-to-mid grey primer. The flesh is Foundry Flesh mid, the red is Foundry Bright Red shade, the musket is GW Scorched Brown. Next, give these areas a wash of slightly thinned Agrax Earthshade wash. When that's dry highlight the flesh with the mid and light colours from the triad. The red gets the base colour again, leaving some shaded areas. The musket is highlighted with Foundry Conk...

These Charlie Foxtrot Pantile models are, in my humble opinion, truly superb scenery kits and really evoke the feel of a Peninsular battlefield. A while back chum Paul showed me some lovely Grand Manner resin buildings suitable for the Napoleonic Peninsular era. As I love painting scenery (and Paul's not so keen) I offered to paint them for him. He was so pleased with the result that he asked me if I'd also do a couple of Colin's kits for him :-D  They're such lovely buildings, how could I say no? I thought I'd share the fun in a blog article. I hope you find it interesting. Before I get started here's a few more pics of the completed models. The Church. Astonishingly similar to the one featured in Sharpe's Rifles ... ;o) The Grain Store. I've blogged several times about building MDF kits so I'll skip that part. Here they are built and ready to go! Note the superb resin roof sections - the casting was pretty much perfect. ...