A bit of wet work

A couple of weeks ago Mexican Dave dropped into the conversation "I quite fancy doing some historical Naval gaming." and as usual I jumped in with both feet.

The historical reference was probably due to all the Dystopian Wars we were playing on the run up to Xmas, but here's this months buy ins.

Blue felt for the 6 x 4 table ~ £8.50
Rulebook ~ £22
German Fleet from Skytrex ~ £35
British Fleet from MY Navies ~ £18.50

So all in all around the £80 mark for pretty much everything I need to play WW1 naval games, its not too bad at all. I think I overdid it on the Britsh destroyers though, I ordered 30 of the little buggers, so the last dozen will probably go back into the bag and go into the "when I've nothing else to paint drawer".

Nostalgia's not what it used to be

Inspired by last months visit to my gaming roots (see my earlier post on Battletech), and inspired by the fact that Sue Barker has released this as a free PDF from the WRG site.

I just had to stumble across the 15mm.co.uk website and notice that they had some spiffing deals on HoTT armies, the net result of which is :

and

Yeah, yeah, yeah I know the Orcy chariot isnt painted yet (see my last post on the perils of puppies) but its getting there. :)

Not much painting getting done

well, not much of anything really, and here's the reason why

and here's his nibbs enjoying quality time with his big sister

Yeah I know, looks terrifying, but apparently its the way retrievers play, they seem to enjoy it, but a seven week old pup is a whole shedload of work.

WoW its February already

Yup a whole month without a post, I must have been doing something more interesting than wittering on about my hobby. For some strange reason I found myself thinking that its been 25 years or more that I've been wasting my time on wargaming, and bam!!! There on e-bay was the 25th Anniversary edition of Battletech, I've always been an impulse buyer and since it was at a knockdown price of £35 instead of the reccomended £50 I bought it. Well, to say the least the 24 Mechs that it comes with are bloody awful, better than the carboard standups that I remember when I first bought it way back when, but only marginally. Strike one against them is the flash on them if everywhere, strike two is that theyre made of some sort of polythene so getting rid of the flash is a nightmare, strike three is that there are deep holes in them from what I presume to be ejector pins and finally the hex bases theyre cast on dont match the hexes on the map boards. So all in all a whole load of work to be done on the mechs.

The rest of the box contents however have improved a lot in the last 25 years, the maps to start with are a joy compared to the flimsy paper sheets, now on really heavy duty cardstock, the rules are better laid out and nicely illustrated. The 2 "premium" mechs in the package are a delight as well, now this is how the other 24 should have been, to be honest I'd have rather have had even just 4 of this quality than the 24 pieces of garbage, but hey-ho, they'll still end up with a quick paint job and being used.

Ooops, how did that happen?

Well one minute I'm sitting wondering what to paint next and then this..........

my Dystopian Wars painting backlog. Yeah, yeah, but I can at least claim to be only partly responsible, Xmas from the missus came early. The GW Space Marine is in there for scale, and there are another 8 ships sitting in my shopping cart waiting for payday, I think that lot might take me a little longer than January to paint.

the next of the big 'uns

This one arrived today, a lot earlier than I'd thought it would

I must say that this one isnt big, its a freakin MONSTER, just over 6 inches from stem to stern, but happily it should prove the easiest build of all the carriers so far as it comes in only 2 pieces, main hull and top deck. When you compare that with the British Sky Fortress that came in 19 pieces thats pretty damn good. Oh yeah for anyone not into Dystopian its an American Aircraft Carrier.

Some BIG 'uns

These additions to the French and British fleets arrived today,

and these buggers are BIG, so big that getting them painted is quite daunting, well for me anyway. But I suppose that its going to have to be done and done quickly as there are another 3 on their way, this time American and Japanese. Why American and Japanese, well because I happened to come across an e-mail from Spartan to my missus confirming the order of those two starter fleets, that'll teach her to delete e-mails that she doesnt want me to see.

Say hello to the Ark Royal

Here's the latest addition to the British fleet.

This thing is a honking great monster of a model, well it would be as its based on two battleship hulls, assembly and painting was a bit of a nightmare as it really demanded to be painted without the flight deck in place. Getting the deck supports glued in so that the deck could be added later was a fiddly operation but it finally all came good, and I think it looks the canines cojones anyway.

and OOOPS!!!!!!!!!!

Well last night Mexican Dave and me had our first game of Dystopian Wars and it proved to be a blast literally (sorry no pictures).

The game started with us rolling for our Fleet orders, Dave got "Capture the Enemy Flagship", I got the more usual kill 70% of the enemy fleet.

I took Brits as theyre the newest painted and Dave took the French as seems pretty normal with these rules there wasnt much in the way of firing in the first turn with both of us being newbs we just sorta ambled forward sorting out which ships could fire in which directions. We pretty much worked out that Brits are better broadside on and the French can shoot out the front of their ships better.

Turn 2 saw a lot of firing with pretty much everything that Dave shot at me being nullified by a combination of Shield and Guardian generators, and my shooting sinking a few of his Frigates and putting some hurt on one Heavy Interceptor and a Cruiser.

Turn 3 very early on saw what prompted the title of this post, I realsied that I'd royally screwed up my fleet, I had a basically nose to tail line of cruisers blocking my battleship from the front with a line of Frigates about to collide with its stern. I'd have to be careful about the order of activating these guys (or so I thought). Dave being Dave decided "what the hell, I'm gonna see what this Heat Lance thingy does" activated his battleship, got a line of sight onto mine and fired it, Dave cant roll dice for toffee normally, but he picked up his 12 dice and because of the exploding 6s managed to roll no less than 20 hits. We (later confirmed by some of the veteran players) decided that as the heat lance is and energy weapon that the Shield Generators on the battleship would have no effect on these so it was a double crit on the poor old Thunderchild. That 4 HP right away I thought, 1st Crit was systems offline (there go my shields) and it just had to be, the way he was rolling double 1s, magazine explosion. Boom!!!!!!!!!! Dave was a victim of his own success, remember he was supposed to Capture it, I was later heard to remark in my best Michael Caine impersonation "You were only supposed to blow the bleeding doors off!"

We called it then as time was wearing on, had a quick squint at the other games going on and headed home, Dave was muttering about losing because of getting for once in his life decent dice rolls, but really I'd call that one a draw. Ok he couldnt bring off a win but I'd really struggle to get 70% of his boats killed as most of my firepower and defences had just blown up, both fleets should have disengaged at that point and headed back to port.

Good game, yes, my traffic jam brought out the need for a bit more forward planning, also when fighting Brits do NOT target stuff with shield generators on them, go for the stuff that you can get an easy kill on. Yes this one will get several more outings, especially when Dave gets round to painting up his Prussians.

The British are coming!!!

Here we see HMS Thunderchild leading her battle group past the French costal islands to sneer in the general direction of the garlic eating surrender monkeys.

But seriously, these do look a lot more "steampunkish" than the French fleet in my last posts, the paintjob is what I imagine  RN ironclads would be painted in Victorian times, probably way off base, but what the hell its steampunk scifi, how can I actually be wrong?

I had thought that the Froggies were gonna be my main fleet for this game but I've fallen in love with these so any future expansion will probably be done to this lot. Who can resist a carrier thats actually two battleship hulls welded together and a deck mounted over that, ok its only got 4 turrets instead of 8 but it fires a hellascious amount of torpedoes and you can refuel and rearm your tiny fliers, whats not to love?

Another view of the Fleet

First up I'm going to hold my hand up and say that these as yet have seen no action but I did want to see what they looked like when they were set out ready for combat. Surprisingly for a "starter" set they actually do cover the table densely enough, normally I'd expect any starter forces to look pretty sparse when set out, in Dystopian Wars anything up to a full scale battle is on a 4ft x 4ft table. Starter boxes are around the 650 point mark and a full scale battle is 1250 points, which is where it jumps to a 6ft x 4ft table.

That's them set out on a 4ft frontage, ok there's room to squeeze another squadron or 2 into that line, but it does look like the starter sets will be sufficient for the first few games, so being pretty weak willed I've just ordered the Kingdom of Britainia starter set from evil-bay. Looks like a lot of naval gaming upcoming.

My latest distraction

Well I found myself at my club's show just over a week ago with money in my wallet and to be honest nothing really to spend it on. That's my excuse for being a bit weak, Mexican Dave has been trying to entice me into Spartan Games Dystopian Wars, so long story short, there was a trader selling the stuff, so I thought for a minute it's 1870, Dave has been buying odds and ends of a Prussian fleet, Franco-Prussian war and all that, so I should be pretty safe buying a French fleet. Besides who can resist cruisers that are flying, so thats what I bought and the rulebook of course.

Thats them done apart from one cruiser still on the painting table, I was a happy bunny as I got 10 frigates instead of 9, then the happiness evaporated somewhat when I sat down and read the "fluff" the Prussians are actually allies of the French, bugger!!!!

My latest army

Well after a successfull snipe on Ebay, I have aquired yet another 6mm SciFi army for Future War Commander and couldnt resist posting the fruits of my bidding here.

In FWC terms that represents a 12,000 point army, and I still have shedloads (about 25) APCs left, which was what I was really after when I bid on this lot. Sensibly I dont believe that I'll ever get the chance to field them as a whole as even FWC has its limits for speed of play, but it is an impressive load of kit. Even more impressive when you consider that it cost me £10.50, I couldnt even get the Thunderhawk dropship for that as at current GW prices pretty much anything Epic costs £12.30. The OOP plastic titans are going for about £19 on Ebay at the moment, and lets not mention the Baneblade or Shadowsword Heavy Tanks. So all in all, am I pleased with my purchase? You betcha!!!!!

Finally finished these

Just stuck the last unit to their bases and just had to post a couple of piccies

The en-masse shot

and a little closer in. On the whole I'm quite pleased with these, just need to work out what to do with the 300+ that I have left over.

Dux Brit painting update

Its now been a week since I've been waving my paintbrush in the general direction of these guys and progress has been a little better than expected, but not much. Here whats been done so far.

The Romano_British, from left to right, 4 skirmishers, 2 units of Levy and the 4 Nobles

Meet the Fockers, I mean Saxons, again from left to right, 4 skirmishers, a unit of Hearthguard and the 4 Nobles.

Thats 34 done with another 48 to go.

My master plan you see is that come the end of the month, pay day, is to order another 70 foot and 20 cavalry for this lot, looks like I may just get these painted before the end of the month. Its only 24 a week needed, then I can finish of the Napoleonics. The new load are not just to provide the bulk of the reinforcements needed for a Dux Brit campaign but to provide a bunch of units for a game of the other Dux, Dux Bellorum, which is just a fancy version of DBA, using the movement trays as units, so 6 figs per unit and about 10 units per army.

Last weeks Napoleonics game

Last weekend me and Mexican Dave had a trial run at Ganesha Game Drums and Shakos, Large Battles. it been a week now and I'd like to post my thoughts on this ruleset. As I wasnt entirely sure that we didnt get things a bit wrong, I tried them out solo during the week and taking my time. Well unsurprisingly, we got quite a bit wrong, Brigadiers have to be activated, just like any other unit, we were just skipping this, and yes, it does make a difference. Once activated (as usual, you can choose to go for 1,2 or 3 activations) the ONLY things that these activations can be used for are, either move the Brigadier OR do a group order. The group orders are for units within his command range, you MUST then roll 3 dice using the Brigadier's Quality and the resulting successes is the number of activations available to ALL the units commanded. Providing that he hasnt rolled a turn-over with either of these rolls THEN he can go on to ordering single units outwith his command range using the units quality.

The other major thing we were getting wrong was the combat dice, on tied rolls we were replacing tied dice with unused dice, they arent replaced, the unused dice is ADDED to the tied roll, subtle difference but in the solo play through it made a massive difference.

So apart from the foulups noted above, the rules gave a VERY fluid game, it looked right, a battalion in line does look like a thin line. Battered units were able to withdraw for a chance to reform and recover, something I've never seen before, a big plus.

A couple of minus points did come up though, Dave complained that there didnt seem much point in the French being in Attack Column, and he's right in a way, once you get in close, they would be better off in line. The second minus for me is that Infantry arent forced to go into square when enemy cavalry are about. Both these could be addressed with house rules, but I'd like to play it a few more times before resorting to that.

In short, these will now be my go-to set of rules for this period, it gave a fast moving game with twenty units a side, it looked right, and all on a 6ft x 4ft table, highly recommended.

My Dux have landed

Well I was doing so well with my Napoleonic painting too, out of the 23 Infantry Battalions, 11 Cavalry Regiments and 12 Guns, I still have to paint 1 Infantry Battalion, 1 Cavalry Regiment and 2 Guns. Then it all went pear-shaped, the postie brought this lot.

Thats not bad, considering one lot (the movement trays) were from a company in Fife, the next county over, and the figures were from a company in the USA. They were ordered at the same time, go figure that one out.

Next came the wargamers excitement moment, tipping the figures out of the bags and drooling over them. Then it hit me, a real OH CRAPPITUS!!!!!!!! moment, seperate shields, oh no, I detest seperate shields, even on 28mm figures never mind 15mm.

So it looks like my Napoleonic project is on hold for a week or 3 while I stick this lot together and paint them.

1st attempt at a Dux B table

Well I followed the random terrain generation and here's what I came up with

I dont know about you but as a died in the wool 10mm gamer, my selection of 24 inch x 12 inch terrain items was exactly, well Nil. So I found some spare brown felt and chopped that into 5 24x12s, these can be hills (good luck finding 24x12 hills), swamps or woods. The only one of those I do have enought stuff for was woods so thats what they became. Next came the 4 6 x 6inch terrain items these could be lots of interesting things 2 became rocky outcrops (because I had them) and 2 became a farm/hamlet (because I'd just built them).

The interesting thing about this process is that when plonking all this stuff down, a) you dont know what scenario youre playing and b) you also dont know which table edge (or whereabouts on that edge) you'll be coming on/exiting from.

A closer piccy of the 3 dark age buildings I made

The longest bit of building these was waiting for the thatch to dry (3 times each building) but since they cost me exactly nothing I think that theyre ace.

Oh Crappitus!!!!!!!!!!

Well the magic of the interwebz has seduced me yet again into yet another new project, this time its....,.

go here and have a butchers http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/ it looks like a barrowload of fun.

1st de Ligne completed

I may have mentioned it earlier but I recently purchased Ganesha Games new Napoleonic rules, "Drums and Shakos, Large Battles". Havent played them yet as I dont have any Napoleonic figures done, but from a good read through these rules look like they tick all the boxes that I like, 6x4 table, smallish units (but lots of them) etc.

So fired up and enthused I fired off an order to Pendraken for a 10mm French Division and here's the 1st infantry unit to come off the production line.

Yes I will be adding a flag later on! So dont ask.

So now to get cracking with the other 23 infantry units, the 9 cavalry units and the 12 guns. Depressing thought really!