Some items from the recycling shop

I scored a few items at the local recycling shop (""kringloopwinkel" in Dutch) this weekend. Apparantly they had a sale, and managed to get a large number of train sets. There wasn't too much that could be used for wargaming purposes (most of the sets were modern trains), but I bought a few items, shown below. Two freight cars, and a hay wagon, both in HO scale.

The Second Coming

The recent nomination of this blog as Wargame Blog of the Month in MWBG (Miniature Wargames with Battlegames) is entirely thanks to Phil, as my own last post on this blog dates from over a year ago. The reason behind this is that my wargaming hobby has been at a very low ebb the last year.

As it always does however, the pendulum is now slowly but surely swinging back in the direction of wargaming, and this post is the first small inkling of things to come. The past year, the majority of my free time has been taken up by the resurgence of an old hobby of mine, hobby electronics. I've been playing around with resistors, oscilloscopes, opamps and microcontrollers instead of toy soldiers and paint. To wit, this is a picture of my workbench area in my cellar:

As you can see, fully half of it is now taken up by various electronics paraphernalia. One sure sign of the resurgence of the miniature war-games part however, is the fact that the other half, which until half a week ago was also filled with electronics stuff, is now fully dedicated to painting again:

I've moved my paint supplies back into pride of place, down from the shelves where they were gathering dust in the gloom, and dug out some 20mm WWII paras to paint. The next game I'm planning on my home table will be a Crossfire game set during the Arnhem campaign (probably the German assault on the Westerbouwing heights in the southwest corner of the Oosterbeek perimeter), and these figures will feature in it. Also on the painting desk are some Reaper Bones fantasy figures (mushroom men) and some GNW figures: Ingermandlandski pikemen and Sodermanlands Swedes.

So, slowly but surely, the wargaming hobby is becoming active again, and I fully expect that this year's Crisis will provide the final injection of enthusiasm to finally kick it into gear again.

Oh yes - the title of this post? That's the title of one of the most well known poems of my favourite poet, W.B. Yeats. The subject of the poem is the cycles through which human society and history goes where things always repeat themselves and come back. You get the link to this post's subject.

What will we do in 2015?

Let's make some (realistic?) wargaming plans for 2015....

1. More games. 2014 has not been a game-rich year. This was partly due to the construction of my own wargaming room (although I see it was finished last february ...), but mostly because my real job was a bit tough at times. Let's hope 2015 is different.
   What type of games then? That is very hard to predict, but almost a certainty is that I would like to continue our Antares campaign, and do an ACW campaign of some sorts (using hour own houserules, and one of the CS Grant scenario books).
2. Crisis in Antwerp  is always the annual high-point of the wargaming year in these parts of the world. We have been running games there since 1997. Every year we have a chat about whether we are going to do another game the next year, and we always have a game in the end, although sometimes enthusiasm is lacking. Sometime, I would like to attend Crisis as a convention visitor, rather than a game organizer. Co-blogger Bart already mentioned he has some clever ideas for Crisis 2015, so my visiting and shopping spree will probably not happen in 2015 ;-)
3. More painting. As I have stated several times before on this blog, I am significantly reducing my mountain of unpainted lead and plastic. I have converged to a point at which I found the compromise between speed and painting quality. I know I will never be an award-winning painter, but I can be a good-enough painter producing figures to be played with.
4. Rules Design. I love writing and developing my own rules. Perhaps 2015 will be the year in which we finally start developing our ultimate fantasy ruleset? This has become a running joke in our little gaming group, since we have been talking about this for years.
   The core problem is to find a good angle at which to approach this. I do like writing rules, but I also believe one should not just make a clone of an existing ruleset. A housewritten ruleset should have some original core components. E.g. our Antares rules are focused around the die vs distance mechanic, and action points per figure mechanic.
5. Write 1 or 2 articles for one of the glossies. We have been writing quite a lot over the past 3 years or so. Let's proselytize some more!

And since every blogpost should have a picture, here's an old one from 1994. A game called the "Siege of Kierkegaarde", played in The Lonely Mountain gameshop in my hometown of Leuven.

Historical or imagistorical?

I was presented with (well, I presented myself with) an interesting dilemma the other day. While I was setting up the table and miniatures for the Battle of Windmill Hill game, I realised that I dislike some of the French Napoleonic figures in my collection. The figures in question are these:



These are plastic Victrix Napoleonic French figures, painted for me by Mabuhay Miniature Painting Service (hi Fons!). While I'm very happy with the quality of the painting, I don't like the figures themselves (note that this has nothing to do with MMPS, as I chose and bought the figures myself and just had them painted by MMPS). The reason I'm not happy with them is that I find them to be too dynamic for my tastes. When I bought them, I (thought I would) like(d) figures with a large dynamic range that could be posed in many different poses. However I have come to find that I like look of more or less single pose units more than the hodge podge of different poses that these figures offer. These days, I find that I like my units to look more like this (maybe the Classic Wargaming look is growing on me):



So I decided to replace the brigade of French Victrix figures with one which has units of figures all in the same pose (marching, advancing or charging). But then I hit a snag: the one other manufacturer of plastic Napoleonic French I (then) knew of—Perry Miniatures—does figures for the Waterloo campaign, in the post 1812 uniform, while the rest of my collection is appropriate for the 1809 Danube campaign, so in earlier uniforms. What to do?

The solution to this dilemma is one I already used for my (now already consisting of all of two bases of painted figures) Thirty Years' War collection. Instead of basing my Napoleonic collection on a single campaign and picking units from it to model in miniature, I shall cast my nets wider and just select units from the entire period. If one plays historical battles, one has to substitute the units in them for the units in one's collection anyway (unless you are rich and have *every* unit available), so the leap from fully historical to imagistorical is not so big anyway. The added flexibility in figure selection more than makes up for the (perceived) loss of historical accuracy.

So, next time someone comes to your table, leans close, squints and starts with 'I think you will find that …' you simply answer 'Well spotted, but I think you will find that these units are imagistorical' :).

As a final coda—the best laid plans of mice and men, and definitely of war gamers planning collections, often go awry. In my case, since deciding to replace the Victrix brigade I have found the Warlord Games plastics (which are appropriate for 1809 - the only appreciable difference in fact seems to be the lower edge of the vest, which is rounded pre 1812 and straight post-1812—but I might be wrong there), so that solves one problem. However, after going through my pile of lead in the attic I realised I have 5 battalions of Front Rank Wurttemberg infantry, so the Victrix French brigade will in the end be replaced by Front Rank Wurttemberg infantry. Hmm, given that my other allied infantry is Bavarian, I see a Raupenhelm ('sausage heads') theme developing :).

Sometimes the wind changes, and you have to go with it

The last couple of weeks I've been feeling the ever changing cycle of my painting ebbing down to a 'slow' period again. To wit, January saw me paint 61 points, February 39 and March 27 points of figures. You can extrapolate yourself.

Not a big deal really. I've been doing this toy soldier malarkey long enough now to recognise this as normal, so I was resigned to a period of less output and waiting for the muse to strike again. Then suddenly, more or less out of the blue, I decided to try a different tack and started putting together plans to put up a 6mm Cold War game (as an aside, 6mm is of course the One True Scale for this period :) ).

And suddenly the pace picked up again. I painted some tiny tanks and have spent the last few evenings putting together scenery for the game (tentatively—i.e. only in my mind—planned for next Wednesday). This is the table as it stands (minor details will change for the game, I'm sure), representing the fictional Semmel valley that will be the scene of the fighting:



The area between the two forks of the Semmel River (the Kleine and Grosse Semmel, of course) will become an industrial estate, which is currently in the process of being built:





And finally, here are four village bases also under construction:



All in all, a pleasant way to spend a few evenings :)

Starting the Thirty Years War project

As I mentioned in my 'state of the union' post for this year, one of the projects I might start this year is the Thirty Years War. This post is the first visible sign of the genesis of this project, and will be a bit of a rambling, brainstormy, stream of consciousness type of post on unit selection for this project.
Initially I had thought to base the units for this project on a specific battle or campaign, as I have done with my Great Northern War and Napoleonic collections (the Russian campaign 1708-1709 and the Danube campaign 1809, respectively). I quickly ran into an issue with that however. Depending on which period of the Thirty Years' War you represent (Bohemian Revolt, Palatinate phase, Danish intervention, Swedish intervention, …) the units used different formations and compositions, all of which would need to be reflected in the miniature units.
On the one hand, if I wanted to base the collection on a specific period or battle, I felt obliged to represent the units in the (more or less) correct formations for that battle (e.g. big Tercio vs Dutch style battalions for the Imperialists / Catholic League). On the other hand I also wanted the freedom to mix the cool looking tercio formations with just about any other formation that existed (and there were quite a few), both for looks and to be able to conform to possibly different rulesets and their ideas of said formations.

So I was in a bit of a pickle with regards to picking a battle and sticking to it, until I had an epiphany (which, as all epiphanies are in hindsight, is of course quite obvious): instead of going totally historical, why not mix some of the concepts of imagination gaming with historical gaming? While I will base the collection firmly in history (i.e. it would be Swedes and Germans instead of, say, Forkinglingians and Thingamabobs) I will not stick to a fixed historical OOB, nor any fixed chronology of units (i.e. the units might well be early, middle or late war all in the same army), but just pick some units or unit names that I like and model them. This is the approach taken by Charles S Grant in his Napoleonic Peninsular collection (as mentioned in his latest Wargaming in History volume), so I'll be in grand company :).
With that decision taken, I've gone through some references and have come up with a number of 'must represent' units:

• The Swedish 'Rainbow' regiments - Yellow, Green, Black and whatever other colour was around. One cannot have a Swedish TYW army without these (even if they are German :) )
• The Walloon Tercio - because they recruited where I live
• Schmidt Infantry Regiment - because they were hard as nails
• Ungefugt IR - because of the name, which appeals to my slightly (or even seriously) off beat sense of humour
• Pappenheim CR (Cavalry Regiment, a mix of Cuirassiers & Arquebusiers) - because they were some of the veterans of the early war, and because of the name
• Obentraut CR - see Ungefugt
• Alt-Lowenstein CR - because this is a nostalgic name for Schild en Vriend veterans :)
• Lamotte Arquebusiers - because there used to be a brewery in Mechelen (near where I live) with that name
• Stalhansk CR - because of the name
• Hakkapelli cavalry - see Rainbow regiments

That gives me a nice variety of units to start my collection with. This will be a long term project however, as I have just bought a house, meaning that my disposable income for the next couple of years will be quite a bit lower than it has been in the past. But expect to see the occasional Thirty Years War unit from the list above on this blog in the next few years :)

State of the Tiny Tin Man: future

Before, I talked about my wargaming in 2012. Phil then did the same and plotted out some devious plans for 2013. I shall now do the same.

Existing projects

Wargame projects are of course never completed, just put on the back burner. In my case that means that my main two projects of the last years will still get the occasional unit or two extra:

• Great Northern War: I'm currently painting a battalion of the Livgardet till Fot for the Swedes, and I expect I'll paint the occasional squadron of cavalry for both sides this year.
• Napoleonics 1809 Austria: this will get a bit more focus than the GNW. In the painting queue are French Légère battalions, and I'll probably expand the Bavarians further with (the start of) a second infantry brigade.

Both projects will also see regular gaming table time of course.

New projects

If possible, 2013 will see the emergence of two new projects and one oldie that will get more focus:

• Mass fantasy battle. I seem to have touched a nerve in our gaming group (well, Phil at least) with my Elephant Man, so I'm bumping mass fantasy battle up to project status for this year. I'll paint up Orcs and Dwarves (probably) while we work out a suitable ruleset. It's hard to put any numbers to this, but I'm aiming for about a unit every two months.
• Thirty Years War. What has been threatening for quite a while has now become reality. I've been reading up on the TYW, and with the purchase of the two excellent books by Guthrie, this has now caught my fancy in a big way. I'm still in the planning stages for this project—I want to keep it fairly small and easy. Sides will be Swedes (of course) and Imperials / Catholic League, but I don't know which period just yet. One option is the heyday of the Swedes, basing the collection on the battle of Breitenfeld and thus emulating wargaming classic Phil Olley who tracked his own Breitenfeld project on 'The Breitenfeld Blog' (now sadly deactivated). The other option is moving it all a bit later, towards the 1634-1635 period and basing the collection on the battle of Nordlingen or Wittstock or thereabouts. Output will be less than the fantasy project, so in all probability not enough to have a viable game by the end of the year without 'stand in' units.
• Ancients: Romans and Celts. This collection will receive more attention this year (as it has towards the end of 2012), with the aim of bringing them to a decent Hail Caesar playable level.

Small fry

Apart from the above big five, there are many things lying around the various storage spaces of the Command Post which might see table and/or painting time:

• Check Your Six!: I have the two campaign books on the 1943 battles around Guadalcanal and the Solomons, up to the isolation of Rabaul. I'm toying with the idea of playing these as an actual campaign.
• Blitzkrieg / Cold War commander. Both collections have seen little use last year.
• 20mm WWII. Way in the back of my head lives the idea of taking this collection 4 years back in time and building an early war Belgian and German army. Probably not this year though :)
• Naval: both fantasy (Uncharted Seas) and historical (WWI Dreadnaughts)
• Lots of stuff I'm probably forgetting :)

Writing and blogging

Last year was a very good year in this regard, and I hope to repeat this in 2013. I'll write up some more articles to try and get in to Battlegames, and will try to keep posting to Tiny Tin Men, at a better frequency than last year. Also, way back in my mind (even further than the 20mm early WWII :) ) live two ideas for longer form writing. One is 'Wargaming the GNW', which might be a book or a series of articles, the other is 'The Grassus Gambit', a narrative campaign for the Romans and Celts in the style of CS Grant's books. Who knows what will come of that :).

That's it for my wild plans for 2013. I'll leave you with a gratuitous picture of my painting desk, with the second unit of the year (the Livgardet) being painted. They're the black blobs:

State of My Hobby

The end of a year is always a good moment to reflect on things that went by during the past 12 months, and to make plans for the next. Inspired by Bart's State of the Tiny Tin Men post, I will do the same ;-)

Games played in 2012

I only keep a record of games played at my premises in my designated Moleskine wargaming notebook. As for 2012, the following games are listed:

January 2012: ACW game using our own time-tested house-rules. "Bridgehead Breakout" was based on scenario #21 from the Scenarios for Wargames book by Charles Grant. The flow of the battle of this game can be seen in the first picture of the wargaming notebook post mentioned above.
I think our gaming group is fairly happy with the rules as they are now. We keep fiddling with them now and then, mostly because of specific scenario requirements, but the framework has been unchanged for the past couple of years. I have been planning of writing them up in a decent booklet, but perfect is always the enemy of good.

February 2012: The kick-off game of our Antares 2401 campaign. The philisophy of the campaign has been outlined in a previous blogpost. This first game was a test game, with lots of killed figures, but also already set the tone for the narrative component of the campaign. Heroic deeds were already witnessed, squad's names were established, and the first mission reports were written.

April 2012: Second game of Antares 2401, action an Kalahari V. The rules were refined, but a nice development at the campaign level was that one player suggested that the captured pirate gang should serve in a penal battalion as part of SpecOps. For me, that really triggered the idea that I should go full-speed ahead with allowing players to develop the storyline.

June 2012: Bart and I played an experimental 6mm Napoleonic game. Game mechanics were based on 'Anything but a 6', a ruleset sent to me by American wargamer Otto Schmidt. Some interesting gaming mechanics, notably trying to keep the iniatitive and thereby increasing your movement distances.

October 2012: Another ACW game with our houserules. We tried some new features: playing on 3" hexes instead of the usual 4" hexes, so our battlefield became larger; and instead of using figure removal we used dials to track unit status. I like this latter option a lot, because you keep al the figures on the table (visual appeal!), and since the dials are not always checked correctly by the opposing player, a certain fog-of-war element is introduced.

November 2012: Third game in the Antares campaign, this time set on the ice planet Polaris VII. Mission was to take out an ortillery station.

December 2012: Fourth game in the Antares campaign -- the game is growing stronger.

Painting

Not so much painting done this year, I'm afraid. Several years ago, I made myself a promise not to buy any new unpainted stuff before I worked through my heap of unpainted stuff. Progress is being made, but slowly. My collection of unpainted stuff has for the most part been cleaned out: figures for unwanted projects were either sold or given away. Now it's up to me to paint the things I still want to keep. One of most notably painted set of figures this year were these medieval knights. Nice set for our upcoming fantasy games :-)


The Convention Scene

We set up a game for Crisis based on the battle of Asspern-Esling. Instead of moving troops, you were in control of the currents in the river, trying to navigate boats and debris against the French pontoon-bridges. I think the game went fairly well. Nice touch: Mozart-Kugeln (winners) and Napoleon Bonbons (losers) for all!

Writing

Because Schild&Vriend wants to participate in spreading good wargaming practices and ideas, we set ourselves to writing a number of articles for the wargaming press. Bart got 2 scenarios in Battlegames, Eddy got 2 articles as well, and I have an article in the upcoming issue (issue 33, January 2013) dealing with story-driven wargames.


Plans for 2013


Let's set some realistic goals for a change:

Further games for the Antares 2401 campaign: this will without a doubt happen. I think there's enough energy and drive on part of the players and plumpire right now that we can continue this campaign at least for a few more games. As with all campaigns. we'll see when it runs out of steam. One of the ideas I would like to try is to introduce at least 1 6mm Scifi game in the campaign (in which the player's squads are single stands, able to earn advancements), one Full Thrust game, and perhaps a BattleTech game.

ACW campaign: Our ACW games at my place have become a sort of default setup for playing various types of scenarios. This year, I would like to try a campaign based on one of the Charles Grant campaign books. We tried one last year  (Raid on St Michel, action report on another blog here), but it fizzeld out. In hindsight, we know what we should put into the mix, based on our experiences with the Antares campaign: personalization of units, and a clear progression of units from battle to battle.
My idea is to do the Raid on St Michel once more, but set in the ACW setting. Both sides would draw up their list of units beforehand, including commanders and generals, and units would get an additional ability if they survive a battle, or a disadvantgae if the are routed.
Of course, given that commanders and units would be invented, it would make it more of an alternate ACW setting, but so what? It opens the door for interesting units such as the Sour Mash Tennessee Regiment led by Col. Jack Daniels, or the Southern Comfort Regiment led by Col. Martin Wilkes. If you don;t get the references, you should drink more.

Committee Game: I would like to put up at least one committee game next year. We did a few during the past years, using various formats, but I have a few more ideas up my sleeve. The caveat is that we need at least 4-5 players for some of these, and that might be a problem ...

Fantasy:  I would like to start with developing a fantasy campaign, using our own rules. I have a lot of fantasy figures, and they need to be put to good use. The framework for the rules will probably be Black Powder. Magic Powder sounds like a good name. Perhaps hexification is a good idea, since that would deal with the footprint of units. And the focus on a unit as a basic element is a good solution for the single dragon vs. 100 goblins problem when working on a figure-based basis.

Writing: one more article for Battlegames. Perhaps something based on one of our previous CRISIS games? Attack on Fort Stanley, or An Den Schonen Blauen Donau?

Painting: more figures!

Oh yeah, a wargamey 2013 for everyone!!!

Attracting cannons

As mentioned before, I'm building a Bavarian horse battery. Actually it's finished, crew and all, but not based yet, so pictures will follow later. I'm also going to paint something else before I paint the limber I prepared for this battery just to have some change in 'painting scenery'. But that's not the reason for this post.

I'd just like to show a neat little trick, well beloved of the Warhammer 40K crowd who like to experiment with various weapons for their models while still retaining WYSIWYGedness (so actually representing said weapons on the miniature). They deal with the issue of a single model possibly needing several weapons with strong neodymium magnets, magnetising the weapons and their attachment points so they can easily be switched and are yet still firmly attached during use. I did something similar for the guns and limber:






As you can see in these pictures, the gun, its base and its limber all have magnets glued to them. The magnets are various shapes and sizes because I want them to be not so noticeable. The magnet under the gun carriage is, well, under the gun carriage so is not visible in normal use and is thus the largest. The magnet on the base is small so I can hide it in the gunk and flock that gets applied to the base, and the magnet on the limber is small and round because that fit it best :). While these magnets are small they are strong enough, particularly because they are attracting each other, to keep the gun in its place whether it is unlimbered (I'll leave it loose on the base) or attached to the limber in limbered mode. In fact, the limber magnet is strong enough to drag the gun along when the limber is moved :). This way, I can have a single cannon for both limbered and unlimbered models.

The only tricky thing with this is that these magnets have, like all magnets until the LHC finds the fabled monopoles, two poles. You have to take the polarity into account when you glue the magnets down or the things repel each other, which is not what you want. The way I do this is glue the first magnet down, in this case it was the one on the carriage, then stick the second magnet to the first (it will automatically 'snick' into the correct polarity) and put a dot on the side of the second magnet that is on the bottom (i.e. away from the first). Then unstick the second magnet and glue it dot–down to the base or limber.

I get my magnets from supermagnete.be (that's note a typo—it's a German firm, hence the supermagnete), which I highly recommend for their wide assortment and prompt delivery.

State of the Tiny Tin Man: past

Yesterday was New Year's day (i.e. we have arrived at a certain arbitrary point in the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, which is customarily taken as the beginning of a new orbit and thus of a new year—enter party hats, fireworks and falling over on the front lawn hugging a Christmas ornament). This seems as good a point as any to look back to 2012 and forward to 2013 (it being dual faced January, after all) and go over my hobby accomplishments (or lack thereof :) ). This post looks back at 2012, the next will look forward to 2013 and detail the obligatory wildly unrealistic gaming plans for that year.


Two pages of my wargaming notebook, on the contents of which I based most of this post

Painting

2012 was not that good a year for painting. I totalled 210 Olley points, but fully half of them (107) were achieved in the last two months. Here's the breakdown:

January:   16 points
February:  16 points
March:     25 points
April:     12 points
May:       a vast absence of any painting
June:      a vast absence of any painting
July:      a vast ab… no wait - 2 points
August:    18 points
September: 2 points
October:   10 points
November:  50 points
December:  57 points

As a reminder, Olley Points were introduced by wargaming luminary Phil Olley as a means of tracking and predicting painting output. Classically, you assign one point to a painted infantry man, two to cavalry and extrapolate from that. For me, I more or less equate points to time, with one point being about three quarters of an hour of work—the time it takes me to paint a single 28mm infantry figure (The One True Scale) from bare metal to finished paint job.

As you can see, there was a big gap in painting output in spring and early summer. At that time, I was involved in a transition project at work which often meant working at night at home as well. And on those nights where I did not work I was usually too knackered to be bothered to paint. Luckily, Crisis in early November stoked the painting fires again, rescueing some of the year painting wise.

Games played

For wargames played 2012 was another strong year, with 20+ games of various shapes and sizes taking place, both at my place and at Phil's. Highlights include the many games with the Great Northern War and Napoleonic collections and the smash hit Antares 2401 narrative campaign at Phil's (I play Gamma Squad, Rattkopf's Jammers). We also played the first three games of the Raid on St. Michael mini campaign by CS Grant (set in the GNW), but that did not catch on as well as the Antares campaign.

Writing and blogging

I got two articles published in Battlegames Magazine (well, the first was 2011, but it was late enough to count as 2012 :) )—the Command Challenges in issues 27 (Malatitze) and 31 (By any means river crossing) are mine. The Schild en Vriend Plan for World Domination is coming along fine :). On the other hand, this blog was dying a slow death in the first part of the year, so much so that I considered retiring it. In the end, I moved the blog to its current home at Blogger which seems to have revived my post count a bit.

Projects

I did not find a blog post detailing which projects I would tackle this year, which is probably a good thing :). In 2012 I did not start a new project but steadily built up my existing ones, with more units for the Great Northern War Swedes and Russians, as well as Bavarians and Austrians for the Napoleonic collection. That last got a big boost due to the Crisis game this year, which focused on the crossing of the Stadtler Arm of the Donau during the battle of Aspern-Essling. The preparations for that game forced me to finish the basing of the existing units and paint up some new stuff. In addition to these horse and musket periods, I also worked on quite a bit of 1:300th WWII and modern scenery. But otherwise, no new projects were started, unless you count the embryonic mass battle fantasy which was kicked off with this trunk headed fellow.

On to 2013 in the next post!

Wargaming Battle Notebook

Over the years, I've played many many wargames. Of some of these games, pictures were taken. Others are only remembered. Probably many are just forgotten by all players involved.

When I moved to a new house about 4 years ago, I decided I wanted to keep a journal, making an entry for every wargame played in the wargaming facilities. As I already was a fan of Moleskine  notebooks, I bought myself a new one, and started to make battle reports.

The reports are interspersed with photographs, briefing sheets, some memorabilia from times long gone. In essence, it is becoming a bit of a wargaming scrapbook. Just the way I like it.

Horses, carts and wheels

So I've been steadily working on some horse and musket armies, notably Great Northern War Swedes and Russians and Napoleonic Bavarians. The past few days, I've turned my attention to what might be termed their _support infrastructure_:



That's only just the start. So far, there's a Hovels Dutch wagon with two possible loads (I'll make a third out of coffee stirrers), a Foundry cart and powder cart and two Old Glory _wurstwagen_. The latter have either Foundry crew (for the one without horses) or Old Glory crew with Foundry Bavarian heads transplanted (ouch). Still to come are another cart and powder cart, some caissons (they'll be French crewed) and limbers and horse teams. Obviously, some of these will be more suitable for the Napoleonic than the GNW collection, but there will be a fair bit of overlap.

These bases can be used as baggage train, to generally doll up the battlefield or to provide some 'meat' behind a deployed artillery battery.

And another convert

Some time ago, one could admire some teddy bears painted by my daughter. It seems I have a new convert:



That's a spare Victrix French Grenadier who is in the process of becoming 'the orange hunter'. Blue, white, brown and pink ones were to follow.

State of the Republic

I was already writing up my wargaming plans for the year, when I saw Bart's post appear. So here's my list of projects for 2011, and a little reflection on 2010.

**2010:**

- Actually, I didn't make that much progress this year in terms of new figures or games. A couple of years ago I made a promise to myself not too buy any new ***unpainted *** figures (emphasis is important here) as long as I still have unpainted stuff left lying around. So, I have been slowly chipping at my unpainted collection. See the Samurai posting below to see some recent work.

- My forte has always been more in the games designing and rules writing, rather than in painting. We have experimented quite a lot with a Napoleonics Divisional rules based on the original writings of Paddy Griffith. Also, I ran an experimental matrix-style game, in which all players could control all of the forces (of both sides) all the time. Great fun.

**2011:**

- More painting of unpainted figures. I have the grandiose plan of trying to finish everything by the end of 2011. I haven't made an exact count yet, but that should several hundred figures. So far this year, I have finished quite a few: 20 20mm Vietcong; about 8 28 mm Copplestone Future Wars; and 3 flats(!) acquired through Berliner Zinnfiguren. As you can guess, my painting standards should not be too high. The Army Painter dip is a blessing from heaven!

- More 'committee' games. I would like to run some more of these, stressing cooperation between players, and often (but not always) involving a miniature component on a classic gaming table.

- Experimenting with a new 'look' for the gaming table. I've become enamored with flats, or maybe I should try out some of the more classic toy soldiers in 42 mm as produced by Shiny Toy Soldiers or Irregular.

- Organization of more games with my collection of figures: WW2, WW1, ACW, SciFi, Fantasy, ...

- The quest for the ultimate fantasy ruleset continues!

State of the union

Just when you thought you'd read the last of those '2011 plans and
resolutions' posts, here's mine. In my defense, I did one of these [last
year](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000360.html) and it's my blog anyway. So there.

First, let's recap the projects from last year and see what I did for them
this year:

* Poltava. This is that rare beast -- a project that actually was
finished. We collected and painted two armies,
built the terrain and put on the [Poltava game at Crisis](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000384.html). The armies in
question have been used several times since and will be used more.
* Bavarian Napoleonics: currently, these have two line and one light
infantry battalions (24 figures each) painted, as well as a two gun
artillery battery (bought off Ebay). I also purchased a painted 36 figure
line battalion off Ebay. In the same general area - 28mm Napoleonic
figures for the 1809 campaign - I purchased a fully painted Austrain
army on Ebay (exhausting my wargames budget for the year, had I kept one
able to put on a game with these figures (because it was a few for each
nationality instead of lots for one), I'm still calling this a success.
* Romani Plastici. Another success. While I only painted one extra unit
for them last year -- the [auxiliary cavalry](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000375.html) -- this did turn out to
build up to a playable force, as we played a game with them against my
[Celts](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000197.html) last week and it turned out that they are more than a match
for those, so I'll have to switch to painting more Celts instead of
Romans.
* Sideprojects: not much happened here I'm afraid. I did paint the
Uncharted Seas ships (evidence thereof [here](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000371.html) ) but did nothing for
the Future Wars stuff (except buy more figures :) ).

So, all in all a successful year in projects. Which brings me seemlessly
to my project list for this year:

* 28mm Napoleonic figures for the 1809 Danube Camaign. This now becomes my
main project for the year (and probably several more years,
given the all embracing nature of Napoleonic wargaming). I'm
painting the Bavarians myself, have sent off the French line to a
friend's [painting service](http://www.mmps.asia/) and have an Austrian army that only needs
to be rebased. The initial goal is to be able to refight the Abensberg
battles (featuring about a division each of Bavarians and Austrians) by
summer. By then, the French should be underway so I can move on to
Teugn-Hausen by fall.
* Romani et Celti Plastici: I'll continue building up the Romans and
Celts, mostly in anticipation of the new Ancients ruleset by Priestley
for Warlord Games.
* Side projects: still the Future Wars stuff (the land phase for the
Beryllium Wars narrative campaign), as well as refurbishing a Russian
Cold War era army I bought second hand (do you see a theme developing
here?) to face off against my Brits. Additionally, I'll paint up the
occasional extra unit for the Great Northern War armies. I'm planning on
refighting some of the Russian campaign battles and find that I'm short on
cavalry for many.

And finally, a new project:

* 28mm Fantasy wargaming. I bought the Island of Blood boxed set by Games
Workshop to have a set of figures to play games with the kids with. Not
being able to contain myself, I have since expanded both armies and bought
dwarves (Mantic) and Orcs (Foundry) to go with them :). So this year will
see me painting up some of these. Of course, this is all a subtle plot to
put pressure on Phil to develop his ultimate fantasy wargame ruleset :)

That's more or less my high level plan for toy soldiery this year. If I can
stick by it as well as I did last year, I'll be very happy. I will make one
resolution as well though: buy less figures this year :).

What's everyone else up to this year?

A 40 year old mystery, thanks to Nazaire Beeusaert

A few weeks ago I visited a special exhbition in the [Belgian Army Museum](http://www.legermuseum.be/) in Brussels. On display was part of an extensive collection of toy soldiers of collector Jacques Witmeur. Although I had some trouble in actually getting to this special exhibit (apparantly museum personnel seems to think closing off a special exhibition is in the interest of their customers, but a special thanks to the friendly man at the reception desk for summoning his minions to open it for me), it was worth it. Several thousands of toy soldiers, of all periods and manufacturers, were organized along several historic themes. A pleasure for the eye, especially the eye of someone who likes to play with toy soldiers.

In the museum shop I bought the booklet that was published together with exhibition (“Figurines Made in Belgium” by Paul Herman and Jacques Witmeur), and which lists all the Belgian manufacturers that at one time or another made and sold toy soldiers. I was particularly interested in this work, since I was hoping to identify some soldiers that have been in my collection for over 40 years. As long as I remember, I do own some soldiers that once belonged to my dad as a child. These were 'Belgian' soldiers, and as a kid, I happily mixed them with my plastic 'Cowboys and Indians' playsets. Needless to say they have taken quite some beating over the years.



Anyway, the only identification I ever found on these figures read 'NB' on the bottom of their base, which - after consulting the booklet - seems to stand for the Belgian toymaker Nazaire Beeusaert. Just the sound of this name makes it come from a different era! A quick Google-search turned up some more facts. There is a [website dedicated to Nazaire Beeusaert](http://www.vanwanzeele.com/beeusaert/), on which I could actually see some photographs of exactly the same figures as in my collection. A 40 year old mystery solved after all.

What, an update? So Soon?

So it seems it’s been a while since the last post again. Oh well, these things happen in blogging, so let’s not dwell on reasons :)

Anyway, I thought I’d give a quick round up of where I’m at project wise. First up is the GNW project, whose big showing — [Crisis 2010](http://www.tsoa.be) — is coming up with astoundingly alarming alacrity. Thanks to Alan who (re)painted (there’s a long story in those parentheses in the previous word) a boatload of Russians, the project currently stands at:

* 10 battalions of Russian infantry
* 4 squadrons of Russian cavalry
* 7 battalions of Swedish infantry, with no. 8 in the last stretches on my painting table
* 2 squadrons of Swedish infantry
* 2 guns

Apart from an increase in the cavalry and artillery, I think that I’m almost there figure wise. So, next months will see me focusing on cavalry, vignettes and terrain. Pictures of painted stuff to follow as and when.

I’m also in the delightful preparation phases for next year’s project, which I’ve decided will be the 1809 Danube campaign, and specifically the part before Aspern-Essling. This has sprung out of my painting up some [Bavarian infantry](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000364.html), and has since somehow transformed into a plan to collect / paint Bavarians, French and Austrians. The initial idea is to base my armies around the battles of Teugen-Hausen and Abensberg, which will give me choices from Davout’s III corps, most of the Bavarian army and all and sundry Austrians. I’m currently reading up on the campaign (John H. Gill’s Thunder on the Danube trilogy, which I recommend strongly) and planning the armies. Funnily enough, I already have most of the figures, both through taking advantage of various discounts at various manufacturers and through scoring Ebay for Austrians (I [hate painting white](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000333.html)), but there is still plenty to paint.

I’m planning on using big battalions - 36 figures for a French and Bavarian battalion which means 48 for an Austrian and a whopping 60 for an Austrian Hungarian recruited one (ouch - good thing I don’t plan on painting the Austrian infantry myself). Rules will have to be determined — we’re looking at home built rules (by our very own rule writer Phil), Black Powder and Lasalle. I also own a copy of Republic to Empire, but I don’t think I can ‘sell’ that to the group.

Anyway — lot’s going on, as you see :).

After painting a pink horse ...

... little girls grow up to paint SYW teddy bears:



These are two [Eureka Miniatures](http://www.eurekamin.com.au/) [SYW teddy bears](http://eurekamin.com.au/index.php?cPath=87_126_184_185&sort=3a), one of which is painted by me, one by my 6 year old daughter. For those with deep memories, she painted [a pink horse](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000253.html) quite some time ago and, although she selected the colours on these bears, only the facings turned out to be pink.

Anyway, the idea is to let her paint a few of these at her own pace and see what transpires.

Yes! Warhol was right.

Everyone gets their fifteen minutes of fame. Here's mine:



Sam Mustafa's [Lasalle rules](http://www.sammustafa.com/honour/modules-games/lasalle/) have a new Bavarian (or, as he correctly refers to them, 'sausage heads') supplement, featuring some [familiar people](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000359.html).

Schild en Vriend for world domination! :)

2010: No, this is not a new decennium :)

In this time of 'highlights of the decennium' appearing left and right in the media, I would just like to point out that the current decennium (if we define that as the first ten years of the century) ends on 31st December 2010, not 2009. So there.

With that bit of pedantry out of the way, allow me to wish all visitors and readers of this blog a prosperous, productive and shiny 2010, a year wherein all your dice will roll high (or low, depending), your armies will grow and you finally get to complete that one project.

For me, here's my very high level plan for 2010 -- the 2010 project list as you might say:

* Great Northern War -- the idea is still to put on Poltava at Crisis in autumn. For the figures, an initial goal will be a playable game by early spring, and build from there. This is my primary project
* Napoleonic 28mm Bavarians -- I plan on steadily building up my (currently [one battalion](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000359.html) large) Bavarian army. Initial goal is a playable force by summer (although the single finished battalion has already seen its first game).
* Romani Plastici -- 28mm plastic Romans. I currently have 3 legionary and 1 auxilia unit finished. The idea is to build this to a full army, with the initial goal being a 1000 to 1500 point force by spring.
* Napoleonic 28mm French -- these will be the refurbished ones from the Crisis bring & buy, plus the results of various Foundry sales over the past few months. There is no initial goal with these, just building the occasional unit here and there
* 'Gimmick' projects -- all the rest. Things like the Orc Uncharted Seas fleet, the 6mm Future Wars stuff, ... No set goal with these, so they will probably be painted in preparation for specific games.

What's everybody else's plan?