General Headquarters

Stuff about tabletop games, wargames and other hobby things.  Mostly Ancients, Wars of the Roses, American Civil War and whatever else catches the eye!

[cra1gwt-blog]

Some ACW reading to boost enthusiasm for finishing off my 28mm Perry miniatures...

[cra1gwt-blog]

Trying out a board game that's been on my shelf for a while: 'Crown of Roses' by GMT Games. It basically seems to be a curious mash-up of Columbia Games' 'Richard III', the classic boardgame 'Kingmaker', plus GMT's own card-activation system. Sounds like a chaotic mix when put like that, but does it all come together to make something playable? I shall hopefully find out soon!

[cra1gwt-blog]

Having played the rule-set “To the Strongest!” recently for an ancients game, I was curious to try it out with my larger Medieval collection.  So, I had a try earlier this week at a ‘Wars of the Roses’ game using the rules.  

Happily it went very well, with a large game taking about 2-ish hours to complete and being enjoyable throughout.  Medieval battles can sometimes be a bit ‘samey’ as they lack the unit variety of ancients, but the card-drawing system of activation kept it all moving along nicely.  Highly recommended!

End result was a tight Lancastrian win, with barely a point between each side and their defeat total.

[thewargamingmagpie]

I had a solo game of SAGA the other night in an effort to learn the rules, I had a 4pt skirmish pitting vikings against a band of anglo-danes. It was also a good chance to lay down my gaming mat and some terrain I built. The game went well, the rules are pretty simple really, and the only thing I got slightly wrong was the fatigue system but it didn’t really affect the game result, a close victory for the vikings with a toe-to-toe battle between warlords ending with the anglo-dane lord run through to win the scenario!

[cra1gwt-blog]

Looks like a great little battle system!

[cra1gwt-blog]

Some progress from the last post as my figures (Perry for mounted, and Wargames Foundry for the foot) get some base-coating on. The livery shall be plain white, representing the likes of Lancastrian die-hard Lord Clifford. (I discovered I need to expand my number of retinue bases!)

[cra1gwt-blog]

A brief diversion back to my old passion: Wars of the Roses late medieval figures! Following on from my recent ancients game of 'To the Strongest' I've decided to give the rules a try-out in a big WOTR game. I have lots of figures, but to get just the right force-balance and freshen up some half-done older figures, I've got about a dozen billmen and some cavalry to paint up.

[cra1gwt-blog]

A brief try-out game last weekend, to get my Republican Romans and Carthaginians battling it out.  I decided to use the rules ‘To the Strongest!’ as it gives a quicker game than ‘Sword and Spear’, which is my usual set of ancients rules for classical wargames.  

The end result was very good!  Despite using bare boards with a barely marked out grid system, and four decks of playing cards, the game itself was very swift and enjoyable.  Carthage won in the end, thanks to the Roman right giving way and their camp being overrun.  Motivation enough to play the rules again certainly, and also finish painting the last figures and do up the board with a coat of paint.  

[thewargamingmagpie]

The Six Drawers of Doom!

I’ve had a rearrange of my hobby room and have slotted some old bedside drawers under my main desk providing me with an ongoing projects area… Each drawer now contains a particular project in its entirety which should force me to complete at least one before adding to the project log, I’ve picked six out of my approximately twenty projects for these drawers and they are, in no particular order (figure counts are approximate); 28mm ACW Union (100 figures), 20mm USMC and Afghans (30 figures ), SAGA vikings and anglo-danish (50 figures), infinity Nomads (8 infantry and 1 TAG), frostgrave warband (8 figures), and WH40k (40 figures ) I’m hoping that this should help me focused on completing at least these six projects this year, but knowing what I’m like I’ll just squeeze another six drawers under the desk…

[cra1gwt-blog]

Now this is some impressive organising.

[cra1gwt-blog]

Holiday time is a chance to try some new stuff, and here I've decided to give the new Sam Mustafa game of 'Aurelian' an experimental try-out. Just card counters on a blank table-cloth, but the rules seem to work very well and gave a historical result. The Roman legions took a lot of damage but overcame the Persian army by defeating their Cataphracts and then routing their levy infantry.

[cra1gwt-blog]

Been having a bit of boardgame fun, courtesy of Flying Frog's game 'Fortune and Glory'. It's all 1930s style pulp adventures, and here we have daring photographer "Sharon Hunter and the Spear of the Crimson Hand", out in the Canadian wilderness!

[cra1gwt-blog]

Punic Wars battle on the table!

[cra1gwt-blog]

I'm planning on painting a frame of figures at a time, as otherwise there's a lot of discouraging work with no payoff. However, at the early stages I can be talked into doing a mass painting. Here's one example: one of the standard steps for my Perry ACW box is to paint the skin-tone onto all the hands and faces of the models - and I've managed to complete it across about a week! Never again, let me tell you - tedious doesn't even start to cover it...

[cra1gwt-blog]

Painting Confederates

In an effort to make things go as smoothly as possible on the painting front, I have organised my Confederate army painting into a tight sequence.  Each group of figures off a sprue goes through the same sequence of 15-odd paints, to try and introduce a bit of a system into being.  Lets me control progress, and also not constantly double back to re-paint bits I’ve forgotten.  My own painting sequence for ACW Confederates, for better or worse, runs as follows: 

Grey basecoat spray (the basic, which all bits shall be coloured unless otherwise over-painted.)

Skin (heads and hands)

Brown (trousers, coats, blanket-roll, hair, rifles, straps)

Green (base)

Black (rifle-metal, bayonets, shoes, hair, belts, cartridge-box)

Light Brown (trousers, coats, blanket-roll, hair, straps, flag-staff)

Dark Brown (trousers, coats, blanket-roll, hair, straps)

Light Grey (trousers, coats, blanket-roll)

Dark Grey (trousers, coats, blanket-roll)

Grey (matches the base-spray, so a good chance to clean up messy edges)

Light Blue (trousers - Union ones ‘commandeered’)

Dark Blue (canteens, blanket-roll)

Red (shirt, drum)

White (kit-bag, shirt, drumskin, straps)

Metal (rifle locks/bands/barrel, bayonet, canteens)

Gold (brass buttons, belt-buckles)

The end result seems to be a good mix of shades in brown and grey, and a pleasantly varied appearance.

[cra1gwt-blog]

This represents my personal 'in pile' of acw models. I've done two sprues of models as an experiment, so these are the eight billion remaining. A lot of work will be needed if this sorry pile of plastic is going to be turned into a ferocious confederate army, ready to sweep Ric's Yankees off the battlefield!

[thewargamingmagpie]

Had a spare couple of hours so I bashed out the basecoat on the first acw regiment. We’re going with 16-man regiments which should look very nice and maneuverable on a medium sized table!

This also marks the first time I’ve painted figures while they are on the sprue, but as these troops are 75% one piece castings there isn’t much to tidy up once cut from the sprue!

[cra1gwt-blog]

By way of explanation, my good friend and usual gaming partner is on tumblr as thewargamingmagpie, so I wanted to re-post one of his entries here.  

The full story is that the pair of us have become drawn into doing ACW in 28mm, following the Perry ‘battle in a box’ release which made getting a big pile of models suddenly become ‘economical’.  I’m doing confederates, he’s doing union, and we agreed to each buy a box and swap out the halves with each other!

[cra1gwt-blog]

Besides getting the hang of Tumblr, this week I’ve been wading through all the boxes that arrived from Mantic Games, via Kickstarter, for “Dungeon Saga”.  It’s involved waiting a year, but you can’t argue it’s a bargain when it does arrive - several nights of sorting through 100+ minis, books, boxes, cards, scenery, etc.  I’ve not managed to even try playing it yet!  Here’s a photo of the immense dragon model which comes with it, and is roughly the size of my own head.  (Roughly.)

[cra1gwt-blog]

The current item on the workbench, by way of introduction!