Another holiday with very little wargaming!
Did play a DBA game (Byzantines vs. Syrians - the Syrians won...) Didn't even play any Battle Cry! David did more gaming than I did - he had his friends over and they spent a whole day playing LOTR. He also spent some of his Christmas money on more LOTR figures as well as getting them for presents. So far he has the new (Two Towers) rule book, Riders of Rohan, Uruk Hai and a mounted Eomer. Karen bought the mounted Arwen (with Frodo). I decided after a long think to buy the Fellowship with some of my money. David and Karen have painted them.
I am constructing a Roman fort from the Usborne book kit for Cunningham Hill Junior School as a "thank you". Painted some 15mm Romans to go with it and started building the fort itself.
Finished painting the War of the Worlds Martians. Now need to try them out! Second batch of Border Reivers being painted now. Found some OO scale signal ladders which saved me buying some for the Reivers ladder party.
Showing posts with label 2002. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2002. Show all posts
Monday, 15 June 2009
Winter 2002
18th Nov 02: I sometimes wonder if this hobby of mine is really wargaming or is it collecting toy soldiers and writing rules? I don't seem to spend much time actually playing games much…. So why am I buying loads of WWII Russians? Terry Wise is slowly selling up all his stuff and I have ordered a bag of 165 Russian Infantry from him.
Over the weekend I continued trying to clear the table so that I can play a game or two(!). Eventually got around to (yeah, I found "a round tuit") finishing the two DBA tented encampments. Made 3 copies of the little round tent from one of the Usborne books (Medieval village, I think). Added to them some piles of baggage and stuff (Peter Pig, possibly) I had previously used as baggage elements for DBR. This little project has only taken well over a year..!?!
Finished painting AK47 dead figures and the first batch of Border Reivers. Some of the reivers were holding their lance across the body. Didn't like this, so cut it off and replaced with a length of unbent paper clip held upright in the figure's right hand. Much better. Of course, they all need basing now...
I plan to use HOTT for the Border Reivers, but possibly also for War of the Worlds. There may be other possibilities, we'll see. Colonial perhaps? Hmm, HOTT will always allow the "slightly fantastical" or "movie style" approach - that might be fun... Zulus with some dinosaurs (behemoths) for a sort of "Lost World" scenario?
I am making a War of the Worlds style Martian army with tripod walkers. Each walker is made from the bowls of two plastic spoons with legs cut from barbecue skewers. Their HOTT stronghold will be a crashed missile pod made from an empty loo roll. Must be the cheapest army ever!
When I get together enough cash, I want to buy the ACW game "Battle Cry". Very good reviews on the 'Net. Short games and some subtlety with the rules system. Bit pricey at £40 but I don't often buy this sort of game.
Got the bag of Russians from Terry Wise. No machine guns, oh well...
Well, saved up the money and bought "Battle Cry". Really nice game and David likes playing it too. Have written a review for the Nugget.
Over the weekend I continued trying to clear the table so that I can play a game or two(!). Eventually got around to (yeah, I found "a round tuit") finishing the two DBA tented encampments. Made 3 copies of the little round tent from one of the Usborne books (Medieval village, I think). Added to them some piles of baggage and stuff (Peter Pig, possibly) I had previously used as baggage elements for DBR. This little project has only taken well over a year..!?!
Finished painting AK47 dead figures and the first batch of Border Reivers. Some of the reivers were holding their lance across the body. Didn't like this, so cut it off and replaced with a length of unbent paper clip held upright in the figure's right hand. Much better. Of course, they all need basing now...
I plan to use HOTT for the Border Reivers, but possibly also for War of the Worlds. There may be other possibilities, we'll see. Colonial perhaps? Hmm, HOTT will always allow the "slightly fantastical" or "movie style" approach - that might be fun... Zulus with some dinosaurs (behemoths) for a sort of "Lost World" scenario?
I am making a War of the Worlds style Martian army with tripod walkers. Each walker is made from the bowls of two plastic spoons with legs cut from barbecue skewers. Their HOTT stronghold will be a crashed missile pod made from an empty loo roll. Must be the cheapest army ever!
When I get together enough cash, I want to buy the ACW game "Battle Cry". Very good reviews on the 'Net. Short games and some subtlety with the rules system. Bit pricey at £40 but I don't often buy this sort of game.
Got the bag of Russians from Terry Wise. No machine guns, oh well...
Well, saved up the money and bought "Battle Cry". Really nice game and David likes playing it too. Have written a review for the Nugget.
Autumn 2002
29th Sep: Visited Essex Warriors open day. I was a founder member when I lived in Chelmsford. The club still going strong after 25 years. Small, but friendly. Enjoyed watching a DBM version of Kadesh. It was nice to see the game fought to a proper conclusion. Bought a copy of HOTT.
29th September: Finished the last Aristia battle. Quite a dramatic finish - the Carinthian army lost, but only lost 2 elements, 1 Kn and the Kn General! This concludes the campaign season on Aristia, so all armies will now return to winter quarters.
HOTT is a nice DBA style game, but I'm not entirely sure what to do with it yet. Two possibilities are: Border Reivers and War of the Worlds. Pirates? but who do they fight (apart from each other)?
20th October: went to SELWG. Good lot of traders, but the games were not that brilliant. Apparently they will not have the lower hall next year, so they will have to move the Bring & Buy upstairs to the other hall. This will remove about 10 traders. Maybe I won't go next year… Had a chat with Jon T. who said that he definitely plans to include other genres, such as western gunfight and VSF in FMA when it is finally published. We also briefly discussed the "big vehicle / beastie" problem.
Bought some toys:
Russian infantry (2nd hand Airfix, from BB Wargames)
2 T34s (resin kits from Frontline)
2 wild west figures (Kennington figs going cheap, 50p each)
Roman infantry for the Roman fort I'm doing for Cunningham School (Essex)
Tried to get some Wespe SPGs, but no-one seems to do them now that Matchbox has gone. May have to do a conversion job on a couple of PzKpfw IIs from Frontline. Frontline are definitely the cheapest source of 20mm WWII vehicles these days.
I don't know why I am doing this, but I seem to be building more armies for Rapid Fire. Maybe I just like WWII games! Shades of my youth...
29th September: Finished the last Aristia battle. Quite a dramatic finish - the Carinthian army lost, but only lost 2 elements, 1 Kn and the Kn General! This concludes the campaign season on Aristia, so all armies will now return to winter quarters.
HOTT is a nice DBA style game, but I'm not entirely sure what to do with it yet. Two possibilities are: Border Reivers and War of the Worlds. Pirates? but who do they fight (apart from each other)?
20th October: went to SELWG. Good lot of traders, but the games were not that brilliant. Apparently they will not have the lower hall next year, so they will have to move the Bring & Buy upstairs to the other hall. This will remove about 10 traders. Maybe I won't go next year… Had a chat with Jon T. who said that he definitely plans to include other genres, such as western gunfight and VSF in FMA when it is finally published. We also briefly discussed the "big vehicle / beastie" problem.
Bought some toys:
Russian infantry (2nd hand Airfix, from BB Wargames)
2 T34s (resin kits from Frontline)
2 wild west figures (Kennington figs going cheap, 50p each)
Roman infantry for the Roman fort I'm doing for Cunningham School (Essex)
Tried to get some Wespe SPGs, but no-one seems to do them now that Matchbox has gone. May have to do a conversion job on a couple of PzKpfw IIs from Frontline. Frontline are definitely the cheapest source of 20mm WWII vehicles these days.
I don't know why I am doing this, but I seem to be building more armies for Rapid Fire. Maybe I just like WWII games! Shades of my youth...
Summer 2002
9th July 02: Finished the ECW campaign game - the Royalists (the smaller force) won!
August - played "Doubloons on the Spanish Main" with David on the floor of the Upper Room. Quite successful (David liked it) but still needs some work to tighten up the combat systems in particular.
Played a VSF FMA game to test the new (again!) firing system. Worked very well. Did a write up for the GZG test list.
Still trying to find a satisfactory way of representing "ship" terrain for FMA. Tried a 1/2in square grid on a Daler sheet with card walls blu-tacked in place. OK, but not brilliant. 40mm is high enough for the walls, but getting to the FMA counters is a bit fiddly.
Played an LOTR game with David - good game, I won!
Wrote up "The Defence of Bastogne" as an MB scenario and posted it to the Yahoo group files section.
Wrote "Pont de la Croix" from "Operation Warboard" (Bernard & Gavin Lyall) as a Rapid Fire scenario. Used Lior's Map Creator to draw the map. Its very good except that lines are only one type so this makes it difficult to print maps in black and white. [Could make some lines thicker?]
Made some small (2in. square) BUA areas for MB, using balsa for the buildings.
August - played "Doubloons on the Spanish Main" with David on the floor of the Upper Room. Quite successful (David liked it) but still needs some work to tighten up the combat systems in particular.
Played a VSF FMA game to test the new (again!) firing system. Worked very well. Did a write up for the GZG test list.
Still trying to find a satisfactory way of representing "ship" terrain for FMA. Tried a 1/2in square grid on a Daler sheet with card walls blu-tacked in place. OK, but not brilliant. 40mm is high enough for the walls, but getting to the FMA counters is a bit fiddly.
Played an LOTR game with David - good game, I won!
Wrote up "The Defence of Bastogne" as an MB scenario and posted it to the Yahoo group files section.
Wrote "Pont de la Croix" from "Operation Warboard" (Bernard & Gavin Lyall) as a Rapid Fire scenario. Used Lior's Map Creator to draw the map. Its very good except that lines are only one type so this makes it difficult to print maps in black and white. [Could make some lines thicker?]
Made some small (2in. square) BUA areas for MB, using balsa for the buildings.
April - June 2002
27th April, Salute. Good show, loads going on. (David went with Bernard, Graham, Iain and Thomas). Helped Bob and Tim run the Megablitz game. Bought the rules, also PBI2, AK47 mortar crew and dead and some extra river sections. Megablitz worked well with lots of people showing interest. Afterwards, I decided to ditch "Bastogne to Berlin" in favour of MB, so I bought a reel of magnetic tape and some steel paper (£7-50). Started rebasing 1/300 scale forces. Have standardised on 2cm * 4cm bases (except for Transport and Leg infantry).
Have decided to model units from Patton's III Army and its opponents. It looks as if I'll be able to create 2 or 3 armoured divisions and at least 2 infantry divisions for each side. Will need to buy some extra models to fill some gaps in the orbats…
June 02: David continues with LOTR. He's made a really nice hill and his painting technique is improving! Clearing up room for Terri's visit. Finished painting the Irregular village pack (people, animals, packages, cart), extra figs for 1460 campaign rules, new Essex dismounted knights, a group of monks and a few extra 15mm pirates.
Bought the 1/300 WW2 stuff to fill out the MB orbats. Painting and basing now.
Set up the next ECW campaign battle (the 14 vs. 8 element one).
Discovered a useful trick on the Internet. My bases are Avocado Green mount board. I bought a brown marker pen and coloured the edges of the bases brown - they look much better now. So much so - I'm doing ALL the bases I have (and that's a lot!).
Have decided to model units from Patton's III Army and its opponents. It looks as if I'll be able to create 2 or 3 armoured divisions and at least 2 infantry divisions for each side. Will need to buy some extra models to fill some gaps in the orbats…
June 02: David continues with LOTR. He's made a really nice hill and his painting technique is improving! Clearing up room for Terri's visit. Finished painting the Irregular village pack (people, animals, packages, cart), extra figs for 1460 campaign rules, new Essex dismounted knights, a group of monks and a few extra 15mm pirates.
Bought the 1/300 WW2 stuff to fill out the MB orbats. Painting and basing now.
Set up the next ECW campaign battle (the 14 vs. 8 element one).
Discovered a useful trick on the Internet. My bases are Avocado Green mount board. I bought a brown marker pen and coloured the edges of the bases brown - they look much better now. So much so - I'm doing ALL the bases I have (and that's a lot!).
Spring 2002
Played Rapid Fire with David, good game.
Haven't done much recently. Took David & Graham to Fantizan at Newark - good day out. They now want to go to Salute! Bought two packs of Foundry (!!) Victorian Bystanders. Nice figures and now not that much more expensive than the better 25mm figs on the market (GZG figs are now £1-00 each).
Played a VSF test game using FMA. Reasonably OK. Realised that the game system is very "tweakable". Need to write some notes on this.
Had a frustrating time over Easter. Trying to find a game that I wanted to play! Am I suffering from a surfeit of game systems? Eventually played a game using HAM2 (home grown general purpose Horse & Musket rules derived from Frontier Patrol). Made several changes. Not bad, but then found a game called Napoleonic Easyplay on the 'net by David St. Clair (no longer available?).
New version of "Horse, Foot & Guns" (Phil Barker's horse and musket rules) draft now available, with changes to make Bayonets a better throw against Minie. So now I'm playing a test game in ACW, Battle of Murfreesboro (Stone's River), first day Dec 31st 1862. It all fits on my 4ft * 2ft 6ins table - that's good for a start. Worked quite well - if anything, Bayonets are now too good vs. Minie. I think PB will tweak it a bit more.
David wanted to get some Lord Of The Rings figures, so I split it with him and we bought the whole game (£40) between us. He is very keen and is playing it with Graham and Thomas. Its quite a good set of rules and I like the flexibility of being able to handle anything from a handful of figures to quite large armies. The move sequence is interesting, too. Roll for priority, then high priority moves, opponent moves, high priority shoots, opponent shoots, high priority chooses order for close combats.
Haven't done much recently. Took David & Graham to Fantizan at Newark - good day out. They now want to go to Salute! Bought two packs of Foundry (!!) Victorian Bystanders. Nice figures and now not that much more expensive than the better 25mm figs on the market (GZG figs are now £1-00 each).
Played a VSF test game using FMA. Reasonably OK. Realised that the game system is very "tweakable". Need to write some notes on this.
Had a frustrating time over Easter. Trying to find a game that I wanted to play! Am I suffering from a surfeit of game systems? Eventually played a game using HAM2 (home grown general purpose Horse & Musket rules derived from Frontier Patrol). Made several changes. Not bad, but then found a game called Napoleonic Easyplay on the 'net by David St. Clair (no longer available?).
New version of "Horse, Foot & Guns" (Phil Barker's horse and musket rules) draft now available, with changes to make Bayonets a better throw against Minie. So now I'm playing a test game in ACW, Battle of Murfreesboro (Stone's River), first day Dec 31st 1862. It all fits on my 4ft * 2ft 6ins table - that's good for a start. Worked quite well - if anything, Bayonets are now too good vs. Minie. I think PB will tweak it a bit more.
David wanted to get some Lord Of The Rings figures, so I split it with him and we bought the whole game (£40) between us. He is very keen and is playing it with Graham and Thomas. Its quite a good set of rules and I like the flexibility of being able to handle anything from a handful of figures to quite large armies. The move sequence is interesting, too. Roll for priority, then high priority moves, opponent moves, high priority shoots, opponent shoots, high priority chooses order for close combats.
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