Is that the time?

 2022 already and the first post for a while due to my attention being diverted elsewhere for a time! So what am I planning to do in 2022 - a list seems to be what is required at this juncture:

• Finish the Battle of Britain campaign - its stalled due to my reluctance to go into a cold dark garage in the middle of a Scottish winter!
• Paint the Warlord ACW stuff - there has actually been some progress on this in my absence - 14 Confederate battalions complete, 5 awaiting final flocking and flagging and only 5 left to paint. I've also built nearly all the terrain that came with it and am in the process of building that. Some pictures soon;
• Finish the 6mm Austrian army - well on its way!
• Fight some Napoleonic battles - no excuse other than my pathetic endurance skills due to the weather described above;
• Paint up my Blood Bowl teams and have a game - there's a lot of nostalgia tied up with this game and I can feel a saccharine confessional coming up at some stage!
• Finish my BRS planes - they will be needed for the grand 15th September game!
• Finish my new Imperial Fists army for Epic - this is something the group I play with got into just before Christmas and I succumbed! (like there was ever any doubt I wouldn't)

Probably more than enough to be going on with, though I do have plans for 2023, its going to be Great Northern War shaped!

Naturally, I should now review my 2021 list and see just how successful I was in getting stuff done (it's hardly a spoiler to add not).

Happy New Year to all in blog land.

Space Marine

One of the groups I play with have been getting all nostalgic for Space Marine the 6mm game produced by GW back in 1989. A little digging around the garage turned up my copy bought on the day of release.

Original Box

Rule Books for Adeptus Titanicus (1988), Space Marine and supplement Codex Titanicus

Selection of Space Marines and Imperial Guard

Eldar Titan

Lots of Orks on Sprues

Original polystyrene Titanicus buildings and card ones from Space Marine

Warlord Titan

Of course now I'm looking at the proxies available and thinking of a proper Heresy sized showdown!

2021 and all that!

This is gong to be one of those state of the projects posts, it being a new year and all, so you may want to click away now.

2020 started with probably more gaming than I've done since my teenage obsession with rooting through imaginary dungeons to nick gold from dragons. First up was a Sunday of Gaslands Revisited a very chaotic, fun game best played under the influence. This moved on to a few evenings of 10mm Ancients using the Milites Mundi rule set - one of those which builds up to a crescendo with the outcome being determined in the last couple of turns. I also was lucky enough to have a day playing the upcoming Mad for War from the League of Augsburg which is an immense amount of fun (the release I'm looking forward to most in 2021) and resulted in the purchase of many tiny, tiny Dutch ships.

The Dutch Fleet awaits

Sadly these have yet to see action, confined to port when the pandemic struck. Like many other hobbyists this led to a near cessation of gaming (apart from a couple of fun Western shoot outs via messenger) and a concentration on clearing the plastic/resin/alloy mountain. This was quite successful and I find at the end of the year I have finished off a few planes, a 6 mm Prussian army and an inordinate amount of Warhammer pieces of both Grim and Sigmar flavours.

Karl Franz on Deathclaw

Roboute Guilliman

Towards the end of the year I felt a need to start doing some gaming and began a Blood Red Skies campaign using my under utilised garage set up. Some battle reports are forthcoming on this.

Dogfight over Kent

But its all felt a little haphazard, so this year I have decided to formulate a plan, well a list really but plan does make it sound I've put some real thought into it!

This is to try and get me to actually finish projects instead of leaving them half done or worse in their original packaging.

1. Start and finish the 6 mm Austrian army I have kicking around in various sealed boxes.
2. Use that army to fight some 1813 engagements, the scenery, scenarios, Russians, Prussians and French are all waiting for them.
3. Fight the Battle of Britain campaign to a conclusion.
4. Finish off the two Warhammer 40K armies that are three quarters done (Necrons and Imperial Fists)
5. Open my Christmas present from 2019
6. Build that Lego model.

That I think will do, the stretch goal is simply to play a game or two with people in the same room. And I already have a mad plan for 2022 involving the Great Northern War played across three League of Augsburg formats Donnybrook in 28 mm, Mad for War to get some combined arms in and finally Beneath the Lilly banners but in 6 mm (with this scale I reckon I can fight the whole of Poltava in the garage).

But that's for another time.

All the best for the New Year, stay safe. 

Review of 2019

It must be in my Presbyterian ancestry to torture myself by looking at last year's resolutions and seeing if I had actually fulfilled any.

You can find the post from January 2019 here but in summary:
1.       Finish those cuirassiers – this is the priority as there is a hard end date for these!
2.       Start planning projects – decide in advance what’s wanted and needed and to what purpose
3.       Finish projects – maybe I can break the habit of a hobby-time and finish something!
4.       Play more games.

So how did it go? Well those cuirassiers definitely got finished:

And even better used at the Great Game.

Planning hasn't really happened, still randomly pushing out stuff from Napoleonics to Ancients to both flavours of Warhammer. Naturally this plays into resolution 3 in that much remains incomplete.


But 4 has been the real surprise. Thanks to a chance meeting at Carronade in Falkirk I have played maybe 20 games this year. These have included Black Powder, Battle Group, Erehwon, Gaslands and Chain of Command. Even managed to do some retro board gaming via Escape from Colditz.


I've also done a bit of solo gaming, mainly Blackstone Fortress which has an excellent card driven AI which has thus far frustrated my attempts to discover the Fortress' secrets. Something to aspire to in 2020 (well I have to have some ambitions...)

Nostalgia - SPI's Jena Auerstadt

This was the first wargame I bought - well to be honest my Dad bought it for me - in 1980. I can remember vividly selecting from what looked like a wonderous selection of similar games in John Menzies on Princes Street, Edinburgh. Expensive game - £4.95!

Box in not too bad a condition

It turned up again when I was looking through random boxes in my parents' cavernous loft; must be thirty years since I saw it last and perhaps another five since it was played.

The major difference between SPI and Avalon Hill - SPI boards were paper and this one hasn't fared so well

I don't recall much about it other than it was incredibly difficult for the Prussians to get any better than a losing draw. Guess that would be about right!

It was one of a quartet of games known as Napoleon at War which shared base mechanics

Relatively small number of counters. That die used to be white by the way. 

October - already!

Where has the time gone? The Great Game came and went and much as I enjoyed the preparation and weekend I was looking forward to getting on with other projects and blogging about something other than cuirassiers.

There is life after cuirassiers, allegedly

But, well, life kinda gets in the way. Nothing bad just a lack of focus on my part means there has been nothing up here other than some more pictures of the Great Game and that was a couple of months ago.

I haven’t been idle; I’ve been mucking about with contrast paints, playing Blackstone Fortress as a solo game and preparing for a solo Blood Red Skies campaign which will follow an RAF Hurricane squadron through the Battle of Britain.

Proof of both Blackstone Fortress and Contrast Paints!

One of the unexpected side effects of the Great Game is I have actually been playing more games thanks to a chance meeting with a couple of former League of Augsburg Weekender veterans at the Carronade show in Falkirk. So, over the past few months I have had a go at Black Powder, Warlords of Erehwon, Battlegroup and Chain of Command. In 2019 I’ve probably played more games than I have over the past five years.

One day some of this will get played with... or at least opened!

This of course has led to more projects… but more of those in a later post.

Cuirassier Update - January and February 2019

More progress - I'll let the pictures demonstrate that.

Now have 50 completed but there is a long way to go and I'm starting to get worried about the size of the task.

Still, I have the last week of March off work and dedicated to get a major shift done so we'll see if that breaks the back of the task.

Cuirassier Update - December 2018

At last what feels like progress! The trooper horses, that’s all ninety of them are nearly done, all that remains is to put the numbers on the little….

Which is proving tricky. Doing ‘1’ for the 1^st Cuirassiers was a doddle but I’m struggling to paint a legible 4 or 7 in such a tiny space.

I have purchased some transfer paper to make my own decals using my home printer and I’m going to try these before attempting to paint 144 tiny numbers.

I know, given the sheer volume of figures on display and the quality of some of them, nobody’s going to notice if the numbers are sharp but I’ll know and that’s enough!

Still got the first one finished before the bells. 

The first completed cuirassier!

Officer from the first squadron of the 1st Regiment. Given I was using him simply to test colours etc. was surprised to find him the first to be completed.

Loads more to go.

I do have horses

Riders are next.

Believe it or not this is a tidy desk

It's a New Year - more resolutions to leave unfulfilled!

Well the best thing about 2019 as far as my hobby is concerned is that the miniatures painted/bought scorecard gets reset to 0 after a disastrous 2018. I really must complete projects before I purchase. I feel that the cuirassier project has improved my speed skills and I need to reduce the number of colours and washes I use. (at least for rank and file). I’m not convinced that the results merit the time and who is looking that closely when the troops get out on to the battlefield anyway?


More speed needed

Some planning would help too with project completion. The 6mm Napoleonics does have several monitoring tools in place. I’m using the Wargaming Company’s source books to plan purchases and ensure I have the correct forces to fight through the various battles, hopefully ending in Borodino. I also have a burgeoning solo campaign idea based round a fictional squadron in the Battle of Britain using the excellent Battle of Britain: A day to day Chronicle by Patrick Bishop as a the primary source.

But both of these have to wait until the cuirassiers are complete.

Yeah... those guys...

Finally, I really need to play more games. I’ve been accumulating stuff now for the ten years since I re-entered the hobby and most have never seen even a minor engagement. There are barbarian hordes, Wehrmacht Divisions, Napoleonic armies and who knows what else kicking around the garage and study wondering if the call to deploy will ever come. I don’t get them out to look at either. Perhaps its time to look at joining a club, at least until the twins are old enough to compete…

Much more of this required...

Resolution Summary

1.       Finish those cuirassiers – this is the priority as there is a hard end date for these!
2.       Start planning projects – decide in advance what’s wanted and needed and to what purpose
3.       Finish projects – maybe I can break the habit of a hobby-time and finish something!
4.       Play more games.

And of course, use that airbrush…

Happy New Year everybody!

2018 - Review of my Hobby Year

At the beginning of the year I blogged a set of resolutions to take into 2018. So I thought it would be interesting, though likely depressing, to review some of these given 2018 will soon pass by.

1.   I will finish one project before I start another…

Complete and utter failure! I did finish one project some French Light Infantry but then they had been sitting around waiting for years.

Something that actually got finished!

 

I nearly completed the Warlord Ancients starter set but the last six Gauls have been waiting patiently for some transfers on their shields for about six months now.

The mysterious BS Donnybrook project got some items finished but not to a point I could play a game.

The BS Project

 

6mm Napoleonics continued to pile up but not yet been finished or played with.

1812 - Russians still awaiting a French offensive

 

In the meantime I managed to find Kill Team, Blackstone Fortress, Star Wars Legion and Blood Red Skies starter sets and yet never managed to start any of them.

I would type ‘could do better’ but ‘could do something’ seems much more appropriate!

 

2.   Play more games

More failure here. Unfortunately, there were no League of Augsburg weekends this year so I didn’t get my normal fix of Huguenot hedonism and indecision making. I played one game of Star Wars Armada and there’s a half played game of WH40K in the garage I started in June…

 



Star Destroyer in all its glory

3.   Take more photos

Eh… not really… plenty of posts are sans pictures.

 

4.   Kick the WH40K habit

I tried, honest I did, but the temptation of the dark side has been strong this year… next year isn’t looking much better.

One of many moments of weakness...

 

5.   Use that airbrush

Again, a no. Despite having a shiny new one and a fume cupboard to allow indoor spraying, it remains an unloved and unused piece of kit.

So on the minus side I haven’t succeeded in any of my New Year resolutions for 2018. On the plus side I won’t have to think too hard about resolutions for 2019.

Merry Christmas to everybody in blog land.

August - December Count

I’ve been very remiss in keeping the count of finished miniatures going this year.

Of course that might be down to sheer embarrassment as since the Cuirassier crisis hit in the middle of the year I’ve not actually finished anything. All effort has gone on getting the 13^th Cavalry Division spruced up and ready for action at Waterloo in mid-June 2019.

I would like to report that the cuirassiers have stopped me from purchasing other items but well… I’m weak and they are so… shiny. All I can take solace in is that if I gave in to every whim and fashion that wargaming throws at us it could be a lot worse!

So here is the sad August count:

Bought:

·       6 Mosquitoes for Blood Red Skies – an absolute moment of weakness but it is my favourite WWII aircraft. It has also resulted in me humming the 633 Squadron theme incessantly. I’m sure somebody will put me out of my misery soon, there is a fine collection of sharp and blunt instruments in our kitchen after all.

·       6 Hurricanes for Blood Red Skies – this was for a Battle of Britain project I came up with and started before the cuirassiers trotted into view

·       4 assorted Necrons for Warhammer 40K – joining the pile of another unpainted army

·        Kill Team box set – 10 Mechanicus and 10 Genestealer cults miniatures

·       1 Ork buggy – always loved the Orks in 40K ever since the first metal box set and the new models are fantastically, shiny, spikey and orky

·       1 Ork mekanik

·       Blackstone Fortress game – this contained several WH40K mythos models that have never been available before including traitor guardsman and rogue psykers. Haven’t tried the game yet but it can be played solo so there’s a chance it will get rolled out soon. 44 miniatures in all

·         7 Star Wars Legion Rebel Fleet troopers

·         111 Cuirassiers

·         4 guns and crew (20 in all) – French horse artillery

5 monthly: -210

Yearly: -205

Well, given the point of the count is to demonstrate I’m finishing more than I buy, that’s a disaster!

At least 2019 will zero the count!

Cuirassier Update - November 2018

I tried hard to get somewhere this month, even took a week of work and dedicated it to the cause. The focus was horses. A few of which (10) got finished:

Horses from the 2nd squadron of the First Cuirassier Regiment

But there are plenty more waiting to be assigned:



Dark brown horses ready for assignment

Chestnuts ready to be finished off
 

I don't feel I'm making the progress I would want and I am struggling with some of the details - in particular painting a legible '4'.

Still six months to go yet...

National Museum of Flight

Another museum visit during my sabbatical earlier this year. This time the trip was to the National Museum of Flight at East Fortune. There was a fair mix of civil and military aircraft. The civil highlight  was undoubtedly the Concorde hanger.

East Fortune itself was a RAF station and evidence of bomb shelters and the like can be seen around the field.

Finally, here are some pictures from the hanger containing military aircraft.

ME 163

Lightning - one of my favourites!

Aero S-103 (Mig 15 built under license in Yugoslavia)

Spitfire

Vulcan

Cuirassier Update - October

Another month passes and the cuirassier deadline gets ever nearer – yes I know there are months to go yet and I have made progress but I am a worrier by nature and so will worry.

The old Douglas Adams quote of liking deadlines, especially the whooshing noise they make as they go past resonates with me through so many previous endeavours.

Still October saw some movement.

I went from this pile of boxes:

To a box of horse parts:

Then onto some built horses:

Which did get undercoated:

As did a lot of cuirassier troopers:

Then the painting started in earnest!

So all troopers and horses built, all undercoated and all horses base coated. Next month I have a week off work to myself, so hopefully I can get most of the horse flesh finished then.

If you are interested in the Great Game (and why wouldn’t you be?) then more information can be found here, including links to the associated charity.