Adventures on the Wargames Table

No, not exploding broccoli ... it's one of Orange Dave's new blast markers! Having seen mine, Dave asked if I could make some for him. These will initially be featuring in games of Great War action. Three smoke "blasts". A couple of sprays of grey primer, followed by a couple of pure white. Three explosion "blasts". A couple of sprays of black primer, followed by a light spray of grey. One poison gas "blast". Spray as smoke the hightlight with some green. This pic might show the green-ish hue of the smoke a bit better. Simply a quick drybrush with Foundry Phlegm Green light. These are the armatures on to which I stick the Woodland Scenics foam, using smelly all purpose glue from (UK) Bostik or Uhu. MDF bases with holes drilled for kebab or cocktail sticks. A trick to help make them slight more durable is to prime the foam with very thin PVA before spraying. Make sure you allow plenty of drying time tho. Thanks for looking!

I hope to be running some intro games for potential new recruits to Sharp Practice soon and I thought these would help avoid any confusion as to which card represents which leader. Designed and manufactured by top chum Colin of Charlie Foxtrot Models.   All of my Leaders are based on 2p coins, so the 4mm magnet will hold them quite firmly. After my usual basing recipe (Americana Honey Brown, VMC Tan Yellow, VMC Dark Sand and Foundry Boneyard light) I picked out the numbers in thinned black just to help make them clearer.

To complement the set I made for my Union forces (and as a rest from all the Mediterranean goings on) here are some casualty/shock markers for the Confederates. All metal Perry figures.

Game four of our exciting "Kampfgruppe von Crete" Campaign sees some of the Australians of  2/1st Battalion diverting from the main attack on Pervolia to tackle a German force holed up in an Olive Oil factory. I got a hefty 13 points of support for this battle and was very tempted to bring along either the Matilda or the MkVI again, but as this action was initially considered to be a sideshow to the main performance, I felt that the scarce armoured resources should be unavailable, at least to begin with. This seemed to fit the narrative best. So my choices were: Additional section of regulars with JL,Vickers MMG & emplacement, Universal Carrier with Bren Team & JL and Crafty Cretans - Stavros the elderly sniper. Dave chose an LG40 recoiless gun & JL. We kept our choices secret as that seems more fun. Morale: I rolled a measly 8 whereas Dave edged ahead with 9. Clearly my Aussies were disappointed to be missing out on the advance to Pervolia! Here's the si...

“In a land of myth, and a time of magic…” Yes, good chum Orange Dave has lured me in to trying out Age of Magic. I’ve played a lot of Saga (first edition) over the years mainly with Saxons, Vikings and Normans, so I’m familiar with the basic game mechanics although second edition is obviously going to be a bit different. My plan for this gaming year is to get a few projects finished, so this “new” project might seem at odds with that aim. However, I’ve had most of these figures for ages, only the big fellow was a recent purchase. These are some of my favourite Foundry figures and I’m really looking forward to painting them. Here’s my force primed and ready for painting. A unit of 8 elite warriors (Hearthguard, 2 points) Two units of 12 warriors (3 points) A unit of 12 archers & slingers (Levy, 1 point) The Wicker Man... or 'Alan' is I like to call him. (Monster, Titan, 1 point) He’s from Crooked Dice games ( here ) and is beautifully cast in good quality resi...

As readers will know I occasionally blog about Orange Dave’s modelling exploits, mainly because he’s too busy dealing with groupies, fans and signature-seekers, etc. Here's some of his recent work. It's a faction specific terrain feature for use with Undead in Saga Age of Magic. I think the basic idea is that units within a certain range of this feature get to re-animate fallen warriors? Or perhaps magic is more effective? I'm not really sure, lol! Anyway, I thought Dave was joking when he sent me this picture. But there is a base under those stones. Ah, now with added skellies. Here's a couple more pics. Thanks for looking 😎

After some post-game-two refreshments we got right on with game three, "Probe among the Olive Groves" (we also threw in a nice little vineyard for good measure). Here's the original map from the KgvL PSC. For our game, the FJs deploy along the North Eastern edge whilst the Australians advance along the road from the South West. Some of the hedges were replaced with low stone walls but we agreed the same level of cover. The field at the 'top' was replaced with a vineyard. Dave had also made a splendid sunken lane stone wall feature so that helped remind us to treat the lane from the fork to the edge of the buildings as having restricted visibility and improved cover. Dave kindly reset the scenery and I have to say we were quite pleased with how our combined scenic efforts looked. As I mentioned before, my pics were not really good enough to use, but here’s a couple of pics of the ‘prototype’ battlefield that Dave and I used to figure out what extras we might need. ...