Salute 2010

Well, Salute 2010 has been and gone. Another very enjoyable day out, this year with David along too. WD were not invited to run a game this year, so I did not see much of other WD members. Caught a glimpse of Bob Cordery and John Bassett across the hall, but not close enough to say hello to.

David wanted to come this year as he has decided to get back into figure painting. We had a good time wandering round the show and looking at all the games and trading stands - the biggest concentration of wargaming in one place anywhere in the UK.

I had my shopping list prepared and made sure that I went to those stands first. First off, Kallistra for two packs of their Single Hex Brook Set. I needed two packs to get enough of the curve pieces.

Then on to QRF for a whole lot of odds and ends really. Geoff had kindly taken my pre-order even though I had missed their deadline by a day, much appreciated!

So I purchased 8 packs of Highlanders (64 figures). These will serve in a dual capacity. Firstly, as Highlanders in the ECW for battles like the Montrose campaigns, secondly as Jacobites for the Jacobite Rebellions. I blame Ian Drury for the latter! His rules "Redcoats and Rebels" got me interested in the Jacobite Rebellion, then I picked up a copy of Culloden by John Prebble, at The Lee Flower Show. Fascinating stuff! With Prebble's book giving the historical background and Ian's rules and complete scenarios for all the battles, all I needed were the Highlanders - I would press my AWI British into service as the opposing forces.

Along with the Highlanders, I bought 2 packs of 3 pdr guns (6 guns) and a pack of Coehorn Mortars. These diminutive little mortars are quite unusual as battlefield artillery, so quite nice to do. The pack contained 4 mortars so I will base them as 2 batteries of 2 each. Crews will come from the AWI British again. A single pack of Jacobite Lowland Cavalry (4 figures) completed the Jacobite force.

I also purchased from QRF 3 packs (12 figures) of ECW Heavy Cavalry. These will replace some Essex figures in the Parliamentarian army. I know it's stylised and an over simplification, but I like the idea that the Parliament horse should all have helmets and breastplates while the Royalists have big floppy hats! Also, the ones being replaced are a bit big and needed 25mm bases rather than 20mm.

Finally in the bag from QRF were a pack of AWI British Light Infantry and a pack of Queen's American Rangers. While working on my updated rules for the American Revolution, I realised that the British had "unbrigaded" their light infantry in the same way as the Grenadiers. The light infantry tended to wear caps or cut down tricornes, so I needed some specific light infantry to represent them. Secondly, the Minfigs "ready made army" that I bought years ago and that forms the bulk of my AWI Brits included some loyalist figures, Butler's Rangers. While a somewhat iconic AWI unit, I discovered that they spent pretty much the whole war fighting Indians and were never involved in any of the major battles. On the other hand, the Queen's American Rangers were. Exit one unit of Butler's Rangers to be replaced by the QAR!

I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with the figures that have been replaced. One thought is to take them to COW and see if anyone is interested in buying them...

My other purchases were some more Coat d'Arms paint from Black Hat Miniatures and a copy of "Empire", a campaign game of the Punic Wars by Philip Sabin (from the Society of Ancients).

David bought a couple of "Warmachine" models, two starter packs of Coat d'Arms paints and a paint brush.

Oh, one last thing, I bought a box of the Perry WOTR figures (along with a free mounted commander).

A good day out, a good haul (everything I planned) and before the end of the evening I had some of the QRF figures cleaned up, on the painting table, undercoated and painting started!

Catching up

Well it's been a while since my last post. What have I been doing since January? Mostly it has been a time of rationalising my wargames projects and deciding where I am going with various games.

Many years ago I bought two armies of plastic Spencer Smith Miniatures for the Seven Years War. I dug them out a while ago and played a game or two of "The Whites of Their Eyes" (my modified version of Neil Cogswell's rules from Wargamers' Newsletter in 1968 !!). It was good fun. Only problem was that I found that the paint was flaking off the plastic and in some cases the plastic had gone brittle and was beginning to disintegrate. What to do? Only one answer, really - replace the plastics with the new metal castings from the same masters now being produced by Spencer Smith. The first order was sent off and £90 worth of figures arrived a few days later. I am going to paint these in "classic style" but using acrylics rather than enamels.

Looking at my American Revolution armies, I had designed a set of rules I called "A Few Bloody Noses" that were based (to start with) on a board game called "Hold the Line". I wasn't really happy with them so I looked again at my old rules "A Small Colonial War" published several years ago by Gomi Designs. I reworked them and I now have a draft ready to play test. I'll probably also call them "A Few Bloody Noses" because I like the title (it's a quote from George III).

I wanted to be able to use my American Revolution British to do the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion as well (using Ian Drury's "Redcoats and Rebels" rules). These rules require units of 4 figures. So I have rebased both the Brits and the Americans to allow 8 figure units for AFBN and 4 figure units for R&R. In the process of doing this, I discovered I had painted the Highlanders wrong (no blue bonnets!) so that had to be sorted. I also repainted the facings on some units to match up better with the historical OOBs (for example, I didn't have a unit with red facings. The 33rd Foot, with red facings, featured in a number of battles.

Started putting together the shopping list for Salute, of which more later...

New Year, first post

As I said orginally, this blog will be infrequently updated with my wargaming activities as the mood takes me.

Since we had a houseful of offspring and associated "partners" over the holidays, I had to relinquish the wargames room for additional sleeping space. Honestly the place felt like we were running a bed and breakfast!

Be that as it may, I spent the holidays (in between tackling the extreme weather) updating the Napoleonic Peninsular War scenarios. I have yet to pick one for the "Les Petites Batailles" game at COW this year.

Just before Christmas I was playing the Battle Cry scenario of Fredericksburg. Wondering how close it was to the historical battle, I looked at "Battles and Leaders" and drew up a scenario for "High Water Mark". This had two interesting features on the map. One was the fact that Fredericksburg was really two separate battles, separated by Deep Run and I used this to allow me to compress the battlefield onto a 4ft by 2.5ft (rapidly becoming my standard) table. The map shows a line running across the table that represents Deep Run and is impassable to all troops. It also represents a gap of about 4500 yds (6 hexes).

The other feature was a railway. It looked great on the scenario map, but then I thought, how do I represent it on the Hexon II terrain? Proper model railway track would look perfect. The straights would be OK, but sectional track curves would not match the hexes and you cannot easily bend flexitrack to such a tight radius. Hmmm ...

Then I thought about using strips of mount board, with the sleepers and rails drawn on with pens (you can get pens that write silver that would do the rails nicely). How to stop it sliding about on the flocked hexes? Simple, glue grey felt underneath! I have now produced enough track to do the Fredericksburg scenario with a bit extra and a couple of points as well. The nice thing is that the curves fit the hexes. Looks good too.