Monday, 31 August 2009

Painting log: modern British 1:285 vehicles

26 vehicles and 1 helicopter done:

photo

Excuse the suboptimal photo - it's taken on my cellphone in bad light. The Romans behind are the ones I finished earlier, I just sanded their bases today.

In painting points, as these have only a very basic wargames paint job, I'm only counting half a point per vehicle (rounded up :) ). That brings this month's total up to 84 points.

Sunday, 30 August 2009

Various Work In Progress figures

Most of this month's painting output has been featured in [a few](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000318.html) [earlier](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000306.html) [posts](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000312.html) and even [several](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000309.html) [battle](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000314.html) [reports](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000319.html), but just to show that I wasn't lying about my painting output this and last month, here's a shot of what's in my painting desk awaiting basing:

Various completed units waiting for basing

Additionally, currently being painted (and on track to be finished by the end of this month, otherwise known as tomorrow) are a load of vehicles for my [modern British army](http://www.flickr.com/photos/robartes/2214651765/). They just need camo painted and a final weathering drybrush and they're done (unless I decide to do some extra detailing). The two finished ones are there for color reference while painting.

British modern 1:285

There's 4 Challenger II tanks, 3 AS90 Braveheart SP artillery, a radar mortar range finder (counter battery radar), a communications vehicle I'm going to be using as battery FO, 4 medium trucks, 5 early Warriors and 8 improved Warrior IFV's. Oh yeah, and a Lynx helicopter with TOW missiles as well.

Huh?

I might be missing something here, but -- huh?

[Firepower and Flaming Lights](http://www.warlordgames.co.uk/?p=2635)

OK, I can see a modicum of use in demonstration games or Christmas Trees, but I repeat: huh? This might be taking 'Visual Appeal is Everything' just a bit too far :)

r

Wednesday, 26 August 2009

Damn, I cracked

As the title says, I cracked. I bought myself a [Foundry Napoleonic Bavarian Army](http://www.wargamesfoundry.com/collections/BIGBATBAV/1/index.asp). The straw that broke the camel's back (and not, I hope, the bank) was the 20% off of all web sales promotion they have running currently. I had looked at the army before, but for 410€, I could pretty much construct the same army cheaper from [Front Rank Miniatures](http://www.frontrank.com), postage included (the Foundry army is post free). However, with 20% off, that is no longer the case.

So, I cracked. The specific enthusiasm for 28mm Napoleonics has been brought up by the Foundry's [Napoleon rules](http://www.wargamesfoundry.com/books/MATTNAP.asp). While I did not really like them on first reading, I am now rereading them (with the eye of doing a review on them) and find that many (though not, by far, all) of the negative points they had seem to be somewhat mollified by the second reading. I'm not entirely convinced yet that the set of rules is playable as is from the book, and there is one horrendous _faux pas_ in them (to do with the pictures of painted units in there), but as said, that's for the review. However, there's more than one way of skinning a cat, and that goes specifically for Napoleonic wargame rules, of which there are legion, so the figures will probably see _some_ use (the lack of opposition is a ticklish point. Although, for Bavarians under my generalship, that might just mean they can actually win a game).

As an aside, although the army deal has 4 36-man battalions, they all (from the photos at least) contain double command figures (officer, drummer, ensign), so I'm thinking of splitting them into 6 24-man battalions. With some judicious use of knife and green stuff for the flank companies' plumes, that should be doable. The 36-man units in the army are funny, BTW, as the Napoleon rules have the Bavarians as 24-man units (6 companies, with one stand of 4 figures representing a company).

This project will play second fiddle to the Great Northern Wars project, of course. Current status there is still as before: three battalions painted up, with two more on order from [Musketeer](http://www.musketeer-miniatures.com/) (who, as always, seem to take their time to process the order -- the order was sent out over a month ago and has not been despatched yet). The idea is to have a playable force (around 5 infantry battalions, 2 guns and 3 cavalry squadrons) by January and the full monty Poltava by late next year.

Which brings me to painting - I completed 16 Roman legionaries yesterday, bringing the Roman armylet up to 3 16-man legionary units. Auxilia have been pre-ordered and should be on their way next month. That also brings my painting points this month to 70. That seems to be a number I can comfortably do each month, so as of now that's my monthly target. Next up in the painting queue is some more modern British 1:285 stuff. Why no Swedes, the main project focus? See the paragraph above. As long as the newly ordered Swedes don't arrive, it's smorgasbörd painting for me.

Book Review: The Elfish Gene

I just finished reading 'The Elfish Gene', by Mark Barrowcliffe. The byline of the book is 'Dungeons, Dragons, and growing up strange', and that's exactly what the book covers.

It describes the author growing up as an adolescent boy in Coventry, becoming totally addicted to Dungeons & Dragons. Many of the episodes he describes are very recognizable for those of us who also grow up during the 70s and 80s, the golden age of pen-and-paper roleplaying games. Although of course the setting is a bit different, I could relate very well to the anxieties and obsession of teenage boys with games. I even admit that at one point I thought the ultimate career in life would be to run a gaming shop (to have free access to all the stuff), or at least be a game designer in one of the game companies.

Although I still play games, that same level of intensity one had as a boy is gone. But non-gaming friends tell me I still look like a game fanatic to them, so I guess it must have been really weird 20 years ago ;-)

Full reviews:
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13220.phtml
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2008/11/the-elfish-gene/


Tuesday, 25 August 2009

French take revenge on Spanish fleet

Exactly one week ago, Koen came over to my place for a game of Trafalgar. This time, we played the 'Harbour Raid' scenario, a followup to the [last game](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000314.html) that saw the Spanish treasure fleet escaping a French ambush to safety. Or so they thought.

As it turns out, superior intelligence work by the French enabled them to find the location of the treasure fleet while still at anchor in its port of call. They quickly despatched a squadron with the mission of raiding the Spanish fleet in port.

In this game, I played the French with 9 3rd rate ships, while Koen took the Spanish with the _Santissima Trinidad_, the _Santa Ana_ (both 1st rate ships) and 4 3rd raters. As last time, the rest of this report is my view of the battle.

Start of the game

My victory condition was to get half of my ships (5 of them, rounded up as half a ship does not float :) ) between the two islands at the other end of the table. The wind blew from the south (right in this and following images). My plan was fairly simple - I wanted to sail SE, close to the wind, in line abreast with the intent of forming line towards the NE once past the central island and sailing in between the two Spanish squadrons (one of 2 third raters on the left, the two 1st and another 2 third raters on the right).

However, no plan survives contact with the enemy, or in this case even just the first turn, as I immediately changed the plan at the start of the game. For some reason, once movement was underway, I did not like my chances going in between the two Spanish squadrons and decided to make a dash for it and try and contest the wind gage (i.e. race to the south to make the southernmost ship a French one, giving me some advantages). This would enable me to concentrate all of my ships (in two lines, one to windward and one to leeward of the Spanish) on the big Spanish squadron, hoping to finish it off before the other two Spanis ships arrived. Of course, that would also mean my deployment was wrong, as that was meant to swing into line off of the leftmost ship, while now that would be the last of the line...

French modify their plan

The red lines are what I thought Koen would do, but he quickly got wind of my plan and raced his ships towards the south as well, so the first part of the game was a race to the edge of the world by our respective windward squadrons:

Race for the wind gage

Meanwhile, I decided to see if I could cause the other two Spanish ships to stay away from the main fight by sending my second column through the island chain in the middle of the table (still intending to swing that column south towards the main fight). It took me a while to maneuver the ships into something resembling a battle line (finely maneuvring these things is harder than it looks in this game), but I got there after a turn or two:

The French leeward column

However, all this work quickly turned to nought when the wind turned to the NE at exactly that point (when the two pictures above were taken). This meant that the leeward column now could no longer get through the islands (the wind being now ahead of them for such a maneuver) and that my windward line was suddenly sailing into the wind and was thus taken aback. Some fancy maneuvring (read: good dice) was called for...

And then the _instant de gloire_ came for the French fleet. What initially looked like a disaster quickly turned into a game winner. The wind turning made my decision for me on where to deploy the windward column (left or right of the Spanish). Right was no longer an option as I would then tack right of the table, so left it was. This meant that five of my ships (not to mention the leeward column having a bit of a scrape with the islands) would need to tack in succession to the left, or five command rolls would need to succeed. The result:

The French windward column tacks perfectly

Perfect maneuver! Suddenly, I had five ships crossing the T of the Spanish fleet, or 5 close to medium range broadsides bow raking the Spanish fleet. Vive la France (et les dés)! This pretty much decided the game:

The end of the game

My concentrated broadsides decrewed the Santissima Trinidad (not that there was very much left to crew after two raging fires) and knocked out the rudder of another ship (the one sailing blithely on on the right). The remaining two Spanish ships did manage to set fire to one of my ships on their turn to cross our T (with even more devastating stern rakes) however.

After this turn, we declared the game for the French, as my windward column was now past the Spanish main line and would, with the help of the leeward column that was now past the islands (though on the other side as intended - damn wind :) ), easily be able to deal with the two remaining Spanish ships between us and the port. Revenge!

Good game again -- I really like these rules.

Friday, 21 August 2009

Skavenby Literary Convention IV

Here's the pictures of the newly painted Skaven team. I photographed them with sunlight only, and they turned out too dark, so I did not follow [my own advice](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000035.html), but so be it.

Skaven Bloodbowl team

There's 6 linerats, 2 Storm Vermin, 1 Thrower and 5 Gutter Runners (though I just reread the rules and it seems you can only have 4 of them on the roster -- oh well).

Just for giggles, I photographed a few of them with their counterparts of fourteen years ago, to compare painting styles. Way back then, I was only just starting, and used the classic base coat / wash / drybrush technique. These days, I layer - here's the comparison:

Skaven Storm Vermin

Skaven Gutter Runner

*Update*: I've replaced the main picture with one where I lightened things a bit (delete the background to transparency so the dynamic range of the image is determined by the figures and not skewed towards the light background, then autoadjust levels and add a new background).

Wednesday, 19 August 2009

Der Spiegel & Wargaming

For those of you who want to freshen up their German, here's a nice article about wargaming in Der Spiegel (dated July 2009).

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/spielzeug/0,1518,634213,00.html

Tuesday, 18 August 2009

Skaven Blood Bowl team

Next up on the finished units is a 're-imagining' of my old Skaven Bloodbowl team, the Skavenby Literary Convention (I, II and III). I painted these models way back when I started playing with toy soldiers, even before I met Phil and got into historical miniature wargaming. This must have been 1996 or so, almost fifteen years ago.

The last bits have been painted yesterday and they're in the varnishing pipeline at the moment (gloss first, then matt), so pictures will have to wait. This post is just to tally the painting points - I'm giving myself 2 points per figure on these, as I've gone full hog in three layer painting on them (though not competition quality, there's too many uncorrected mistakes for that) and there's a whole lot of fiddly detail on the figures (lots of straps, buttons, pointy bits and sometimes even pointy bits on the other pointy bits).

So at 14 figures -- 6 linerats, 2 storm vermin, 1 thrower and 5 gutter runners (yes, that's a lot of gutter runners, and should tell you something about my playing style with them), that's 28 points.

Total for the month is 52. Next up is probably another unit of Romans, as the new Swedes from Musketeer have not arrived yet (have, in fact not even been shipped yet).

Thursday, 13 August 2009

How do you organize your paints?

My paint bottles are usually kept in boxes. I try to organize them by color (all the reds go together, all the blues, etc.), but I still have trouble finding a specific colour when I need it.

So, I was pleasantly surprised to find this product:
http://www.miniaturicum.de/index.php?infoBox=3&cPath=723

A must-have paint organizer rack for the discerning wargamer!!!