Some finished things

It's been a while since I posted pics of painted stuff, so let me show you what I finished in the last couple of weeks.

First is the French Légère unit pictured before, now completely done:



This is the first battalion of the 10th Légère, around 1809, using Front Rank figures. If all goes well, these figures will have their first game this Tuesday.
Something else I have been working on is this:



That's 4Ground Scenery's full option (extra detailing & insides) pre-painted Roman watchtower. Assembling it was fairly simple thanks to the very good instruction sheet provided with the kit. This tower will feature in a future scenario, which might or might not be called 'All along the watchtower'. Watch this space.

ACW: Action at the crossroads

As mentioned before on this blog, we use houserules for our ACW games. These rules have evolved over the years, and have focused on hex-gridded gaming mechanisms.

Recently, we tried to use these same rules in a setup using continuous movement and measurement. The conversion are of course quite easy to make (1 hex = 10cm), but surprisingly, some quirky effects came up: distance between units, terrain effects are now continuous rather than discretized, formations and footprint of units suddenly become more important, etc. Nothing too drastic, but still enough to turn the game into an altered experience.

Below are some (unedited) photographs of our game, based on the Command Challenge in Battlegames #32.

Wet Paint: three companies of 10th Légère

Next in the series of gratuitous post count increasing pictures, these are the carabinier and voltigeur companies and one chasseur company of the 10th Légère, 1809 edition (they were in St. Hilaire's Division of Davout's III Corps, which I am basing my French collection on):



The figures are Front Rank, with very minor conversions. I probably should not even call it conversions as all I did was snip off the plume of the chasseurs' shakos, as I have a reference (the Osprey MAA on French Light infantry) that describes them as only having pompoms (the Légère units were notorious for their many deviations from standard uniform).

Better pictured dwarfs

Here are the Crossbow Company of the Watch of the Seventh Deep, completely finished:



Currently on the painting desk are the first 12 of a unit of French Napoleonic Légère infantry, modelled after the 10th Légère in the 1809 Danube/Aspern/Wagram campaign. They should be finished in the next few days, so expect a Wet Paint post on them soon.

Wet paint: the first fantasy figures

These are the crossbowmen of the Watch of the Seventh Deep:



Figures are Mantic Games Ironwatch Dwarfs. You have the option of equipping them with crossbows, as I did, or with rifles. They are very easy to put together (only four parts: upper and lower torso, crossbow/rifle and heads) and paint up quite nicely and easily.

These people will be leading my Celtic army

One of my projects this year is the expansion of my Roman and Celtic armies to decent Hail Caesar size (about 10 units of infantry and 5 units of cavalry / chariots, plus various skirmishers per side). The Romans already have a set of commanders, and now the Celts have too:









These, yet to be named, will become wing / division / mob commanders under great leader Bartolomix himself. Any suggestions for names are welcomed in the comments.

Blast from the Past ...

A couple of years ago I described on this very blog some of my early memories of wargaming (see part5, work back from there ...).

Thanks to the excellent archiving capabilities of fellow early wargamer Eddy S., some documents were unearthed that once formed the basis of a grandiose magazine 'Wargaming' (IIRC).

Our plan for world-domination was to publish a fanzine for the wargaming enthusiast. Because this was the time before the wide availability of computer (I am talking 1981-1982), articles were typed on a classic typewriter, and fancy headers were drawn by hand. I remember that I produced at least 2 issues, but I must have lost them over time. But now, thanks to Eddy who never throws anything away, 2 articles have resurfaced.

Below are 2 photographs, only of the first page of these articles - written in Dutch. At least we were confident enough (as only 16-year old can be) that we were going to change the wargaming world!

Wet Paint: Celtic Command

Fresh on the painting table, some Celtic command bases:



These will all be commanders in Hail Caesar, under the able leadership of general Bartolomix. Figures are mostly Foundry, except for the black chariot, which is of course the Warlord Games Boudicca model. And yes, the other one is Foundry's Bouddicca—one can never have enough Boudicca's in a Celtic army :). Finally, the third figure from the left is the Ambiorix figure given away to visitors of the Crisis convention some years ago. Although we attend Crisis as a club and thus do not get the figure, I managed to get my hands on two of them through various devious means :)

This nets me 14 points (4 horses, 2 chariots and 8 figures), bringing my painting total up to 60 for January. Better pics to follow when their bases are completed, as usual.

1st Battalion of the Livgardet till Fot

Here they are based and all:



As you can see, they are still quite shiny. I managed to reduce it some by playing around with lighting (I have diffusion and neutral density filters for my lamps now, for those who care about such things), but it still shows up massively. Would you believe that they have 5 coats of matt varnish sprayed over them? Neither would I had I not done it with my own hands. I'm guessing that spraying in an attic that is now close to 0 degrees Celsius in temperature is not a good idea. I tried spraying heavy, light, from afar and from close up. No dice. In fact, when I was looking at this picture at its full resolution I noticed that the ends of the grass tufts and the static grass have shiny droplets of varnish hanging on them, so something did indeed go horribly wrong. I'll stick with brush on next time.

Anyway, I went for a bit of a campaign look with these veterans. Things I did to enhance the campaign look are:

• Figure selection. The stand on the left (when facing the unit, so on the unit's own right) has four figures wearing karpus instead of tricorn hats. The Livgardet till Fot received the survivors of several regiments that were in involved in the battle of Lesnaja—I selected the one with the most divergent uniform, the Närke–Värmlands Tremannings regiment. Not that there's that much of a difference: the Livgardet and the Tremannings regiments it received have both blue coats, yellow facings and yellow stockings. The difference is in the details, in this case the colour of the breeches and vest (barely visible on the figures) and the karpus.
• Painting. I painted a few minor uniform items (stockings, vests, breeches) in different colours than the standard uniform. I also broke one of my painting rules and mixed up various shades of blue to paint the main uniforms. The differences are very subtle, but the blues on several of the figures have differing levels of saturation to simulate fading of the uniforms. I also did the five'o'clock shadow look on most of the figures.
• Flags. The bigger the better, of course. To add to the worn campaign look, I distressed the flags to simulate battle damage.
• Conversions. Some of the figures have patches green stuffed onto elbows and various other bits (none visible in the photo). I also did some (very) slightly more involved conversions:
  
   
  
  The chap on the right had his hat cut off and replaced by a greenstuffed bandage (wounded veteran and all), while his hat has been surgically grafted on to the chap on the left. I found out a long time ago that these conversions are a lot less intimidating than they seem at first glance. While the conversions stick out like a sore (green) thumb when unpainted, they sort of blend in with the rest of the unit when painted.

That's it for these guys. Next on the painting table are some Celtic command figures, and I think the first unit of dwarves will be after that.

On the surface of Polaris VI

Attentive readers of this blog know that we are currently running a science fiction campaign, nicknamed Antares 2401.

The last mission, on Polaris VI, ended a bit dramatically. There were not enough pilots left to fly the shuttles out of the area of operations, so a number of StarMarines are trapped on the surface of Polaris VI. Without doubt, our next game will feature a rescue mission.

This gave me the idea to generate a little story about those left behind. I took inspiration from the excellent blog Campaigns of General William Augustus Pettygree, and decided I was going to try something similar. Using thr Mythic Games Master Emulator, I came up with a small storyline and took some photographs of the miniatures acting out the scenes. Here is the result.

Lt. O'Brien reporting:

After the departure of shuttle Werenfried, carrying Gamma squad and wounded StarMarines from the other squads, the following StarMarines were still present on the surface of Polaris VI: Lt O’Brien, StarMarines McGraw and Nichols from Beta squad; Sgt Moss, StarMarines Cohen and Illnitch from Delta squad; and StarMarines Hayase, Kazima and Hokaido from Epsilon squad. Since I was the highest ranked officer, I took command of this small contingent.

My first task was to check the state of shuttle Wolf, since she had been hit by heavy fire from an Icycle tank during the ambush. I examined the state of the shuttle, while the others were guarding the perimeter. She seemed to be in exceptional condition, all systems were in working order. Alas, we had no pilot available to commandeer her and fly us out of here. Because night was approaching, temperatures were also dropping rapidly.

Next, Sgt Moss from Delta squad, StarMarine Hayase from Epsilon squad and myself had a small exchange of thoughts about what to do next. There was a danger that soon numerous forces of the Icycle Kingdom would arrive at the scene, so we had to get out quickly. A decision was reached to blow up shuttle Wolf to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. I will accept the consequences if the court-martials at Curia II will regard this as a non-permissable act according to the StarMarine code of conduct.

The task for blowing up shuttle Wolf was given to StarMarine Hokaido, who had still two missile shots in his MicroMech suit. With one aimed shot shuttle Wolf was blown to smithereens. She was one fine ship, and served us well during various missions.

We then set out, away from the location of the ambush, in search for a safe area where we can await the rescue mission. StarMarine Kazima was taking the lead. All StarMarines were on close guard and sensitive to any sign of enemy activity StarMarine Hokaido was taking the rearguard in this column, ready to use his one remaining missile shot.

When arriving at a small stream, suddenly a cave bear appeared in our flank. StarMarine Cohen was in immediate danger.

Thanks to the lightning reflexes of Sgt Moss, the cave bear was taken care of rather quickly. However, the resulting noise, smoke and fire might attract some enemy troops. We doubled the pace, and once again started marching away.

We finally reached a place we determined safe enough to wait for the rescue operation. StarMarine Nichols set up a compact Centurion Tent from stashed away in his backpack, while StarMarine Cohen, as the communications specialist, managed to deploy his portable satellite dish. It is through this communications device that this report is sent to SpaceShip Wodan.

Lt. O’Brien signing off.