A Bit of Painting & Building

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Here’s everyone busy playing IABSM left right and centre, and all I can find the time for is to paint and build a little bit of terrain!

As regular visitors will know, I’m currently putting together English Civil War forces to use with For King & Parliament. I’ve already finished enough standard troops to play one side of the sample scenario in the rulebook, the Battle of Montgomery, but hadn’t had the chance to complete any command figures. Until now, that is, so here is the first command stand: Colonel-level, so two figures.

These are 15mm Essex figures. I’m using Peter Pig for the troops, Essex for the command stands, and mostly GW Contrast paints to, er, paint them with.

Nice figures, although I couldn’t quite work out what the thing the Colonel himself was wearing on his chest. I’ve painted it as a sort of yellow/gold braid effect on top of a red waistcoat, but now I note that the painted version on the Essex site has it as a sort of chainmail vest. No matter: at three foot away, what’s the difference!

I also needed some buildings to represent a village in the second scenario I want to play, so found these rather spectacular “Timber-Framed Houses” from 4ground Publishing.

These come in the usual flat-pack format, but are relatively easy to build: I did all four in a single evening. They are also very tolerant of idiots: you can’t see it, but I completely mucked up one build and, as I idiotically use Superglue when putting things like this together, trying to fix any mistakes can be…testing, shall we say. Despite my cackhandedness, I think you have to agree how good they look, and that’s straight from the packet: I’m sure that better modellers than I can customize them to look even better.

Anyway, that’s four lovely houses done and dusted. Price for all four was £47 plus postage: which I think is a fair price considering I now have all the buildings I need for a 2-4 square FK&P town.

Here’s a close-up of one of the timber-framed cottages:

IABSM AAR: Bashnya or Bust! #01: Near Osen

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Here’s an After Action Report from a game from this weekend that I was due to play in but eventually could not make because of scheduling issues!

Friends Bevan, Mark and Dave have started to play through the Bashnya or Bust! scenario pack for I Ain’t Been Shot Mum, and here’s the battle report from the first game: #01: Near Osen.

Click on the picture below to see all:

One More for the Challenge

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Tanks for the entry, David!

A big welcome back to David Scott, who sends in his first TFL Painting Challenge entry of the year. This is David’s fourth year, and he opens the batting with some rather nice 15mm Soviet armour.

This week, we also have more from Carole, Mr Luther, Joe McGinn, Chris Kay and, of course, Travis.

Scorecard is updated and more pics appear below. Can you match them to the painter? Have a go and then check out their gallery to find out if you are right.

IABSM: How to Play Videos

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Recently there have been quite a few requests across the TFL Forum and IABSM Facebook Group for “how to play” videos for I Ain’t Been Shot Mum.

Now that sort of thing is currently way beyond my capacity to provide either in terms of time or ability, but fellow Lardy Alex Sotheran, from the Storm of Steel blog, has risen to the challenge and posted the first of three such videos on YouTube, this initial offering covering an introduction to the rules, what you need to play, along with the activation cards and how Blinds work.

This is a cracking presentation and has been needed for some time, so well done Alex! Can’t way to see the follow ups.

Click below to see the first video:

IABNM AAR: Action at OML3

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Must…resist…

I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to resist all the new Team Yankee Cold War kit from Battlefront. As I’m already in the middle of building up armies for a new period (English Civil War for those of you not paying attention. Yes, I mean you, Clarke, at the back!) I just can’t handle anything else at the moment.

All this Cold War goodness, however, got me thinking about what rules to use. Regular browsers will know that I play Arab/Israeli games with an adapted form of Charlie Don’t Surf!, but the early 70’s is just about as far as they will go without more work.

More thinki, and I remembered I Ain’t Been Nuked Mum! : a proper Cold Wars adaptation of IABSM that I remembered seeing at the third Operation Market Garden games day in Evesham.

A little bit of Googling and I found the Maxim to Milan blog, featuring some excellent IABNM battle reports. Sadly, the blog hasn’t been updated since 2015 but (and I hope Nick doesn’t mind) here’s one of them recreated here on VL. Those of you who’d prefer to see the original on MtM can click here to do so.

Click on the picture below to see all:

More for the Challenge

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Another six year veteran returns for his seventh outing on the Painting Challenge: Andy Duffell. His first submission of the year is goblins, ghosties and a couple of menacing looking statues. Featured here is the Goblin Ninja, if that is a thing!

Andy’s first entry of the year is accompanied by lots of second, third and even fourth submissions from other participants. Today we feature entries from Carole, Chris Cornwall, Joe McGinn, Mark Luther, Steve Burt, Bluemoose Ken, John Emmett, Lloyd “Aztec Hat” Bowler, and Mervyn Douglas.

Something from each is featured below, but I’d recommend visiting their galleries for the full portfolio.

IABSM AAR: Blenneville or Bust! #02: Avaux

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Great little I Ain’t Been Shot Mum After Action Report from Rob Goodfellow covering a game played using the second scenario of the Blenneville or Bust! scenario pack.

After an American recon force drives off its German opposition, British armour tries a thrust through Avaux..but the Germans are waiting for them.

Click on the picture below to see all.

And Another For The Challenge

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Doug Melville is back! Another long-term veteran with entries in every one of the six years since the Challenge began.

Doug has been building jungle, enormous amounts of jungle. To be exact (in inches) 20 x 12 x 6 (in 3 full & 1 ¾ full box so 3.75 boxes)  =   5,400 cubic inches. In metres, about 8.43 cubic metres.

I have scored this as fifteen pieces of terrain, so lots of points: but worth every one as I know how much time and effort goes in to creating this stuff!

We also have new entries from Melvyn, Ralph, Travis, Mark and John, some examples of which appear below..but I’d encourage to visit the individual galleries to see everything that’s been done.

Scorecard will be updated at the weekend.

New Grudd from Onslaught

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Ages since I’ve painted any 15mm sci-fi, but a good way to start the new year is with the latest release from Onslaught Miniatures in their Grudd, or space dwarf, range.

The new releases consist of a two-man “gun trike” and a one-man bike. I’ve painted them, as with the rest of the Grudd, in metallic paints, although the different coloured “armour” didn’t turn out as different as I wanted them to be i.e. the bikes are a dark shade of metallic blue/green (Nautilus car paint from Halfords) and the riders are standard metallic blue (Tamiya).

I do, however, like the contrast between the metallic bodywork/armour and the matt tyres.

Anyway, a couple of recon squads for the Grudd, and I see that Onslaught have announced more releases are on the way.

One More for the Challenge

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Sapper makes a welcome return to this year’s Painting Challenge. This is his sixth year of participation (he missed out on year one) but with an average score of 2,129 per year, I think we can forgive him for that.

Sapper’s first offering of 2020 includes a rather smashing unit of 28mm pikemen:

Also adding to their scores today are Carole, Travis and John. By now you should be able to recognise their painting styles, but I’ll caption the photos just in case!

Incidentally, this post means that I have posted something every day in January. That may not sound like much but, given that I’ve never been able to do a whole month complete before in the six years that this website has been going, that, to me, is quite an impressive achievement.

I’m fairly sure that I can’t keep it up, but do promise to bring you as much great new content as I can manage, so keep checking back on a regular basis. I’m also very happy to receive AAR from any company-sized Lardy games (IABSM, CDS, Q13) or anything else that fits in with our general theme. Submissions to the website address on the right.

PS Actually I’ve managed to post every day since December 20th!

IABSM AAR: More Arras from the Weekend

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Yes, I know we have had two lots of Arras already (three if you count the 15mm game from a couple of weeks ago) but here is another set of photographs taken from this last weekend’s Salute-warm-up Arras game.

These are all by Phil Turner, one of the players in the game, and are lifted from the IABSM Facebook Group.

I would recommend a look at these, even if you think you’ve “seen it all before”: there are some cracking close ups well worth gander!

Click on the picture below…

Three More For The Painting Challenge

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Three more entrants for the Painting Challenge today.

First up we have Bluemoose Ken (Ken Eckhardt) returning for his third consecutive year. Ken always has a wide variety in his offerings, and today is no exception: we have some Spanish men and a donkey.

Next we have Fred Bloggs, returning for his sixth year (he skipped 2017). Fred’s entries are always an eclectic mix, but here are some pretty normal pikemen from Newline Design.

Finally in newbie-ville we have Mervyn Douglas, who is only a newbie to this year’s challenge as he has actually entered every year since we began. That makes this his seventh year and, with an average points total of 2,198, six good years under his belt so far as well.

Mervyn starts this year’s challenge with some figures for Mortal Gods:

It’s also been a busy week for two other people. Joe McGinn has sent in some more of his lovely Napoleonics; and Travis has been painting naked Celts…

Keep them coming!

IABSM AAR: Arras: Another Run Through

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Here are more great shots of Michael Curtis and Friends’ Arras Counter-Attack demo game planned for Salute this year.

This was the second run-through of the weekend, with a slight change to the British start position to see whether that would speed up the “action” part of the game.

Click on the picture below to see all.

ECW: The Battle of Montgomery

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I’ve been playing the Ancients rules To The Strongest for some months now, and really enjoying it as a fun, fast-play, grid-based game that gets plenty of figures onto the table and avoids most arguments about whether one unit is 33mm or 35mm from another etc. Looking for some army lists (free to download), I noticed that BigRedBat also do an English Civil War variant to TTS called For King and Parliament. I’ve never really played Pike & Shot before, but this sounded like a good way to start, so I bought a copy and started working out what figures I would need.

Conveniently, there’s a sample scenario with OBs in the back of the rulebook covering the Battle of Montgomery, 1644, so I used that as the basis for the start of my collection. As those of you who visit this website regularly know, the Christmas holiday provided time to paint enough troops to field the Parliamentarian side of the battle, so when John offered to bring round his collection, we were ready to give FK&P a go.

Setting up the battle is simple. Royalists are up on a ridge. They outnumber the Roundheads with two cavalry brigades and two infantry brigades. Parliamentarian infantry, one brigade, is on a hill opposite, with a cavalry brigade next to them. Off table is another brigade of cavalry which is currently out foraging.

view from the roundhead right

Parliamentarians

Cavaliers

The Battle

As I was badly outnumbered in the centre, my plan was to win on my left flank, hopefully helped by my returning foragers, and then roll up his line from the left before he could beat me in the center and on the right.

I had the first turn, and therefore concentrated my efforts on my cavalry: my infantry remaining still. One regiment of cavalry swept forward and charged one of their opposite number. Unlike TTS, multiple combat cards are regular in FK&P with, in this instance, five going down. Result: three hits, not enough saves, enemy cavalry destroyed. This was a good start, but the same thing happened to me on the Royalist go, so after one turn we were honours-even and no sign of the foragers.

Fortunately his infantry were obviously still having their hair done (Royalist fops!) so hadn’t moved towards me.

Second turn, same sort of result as the first, but disastrously my Commanding General had (somewhat foolishly) joined the cavalry charge and was killed in the melee. This cost me a serious number of victory coins as, in FK&P, losing officers is really painful, and that’s in addition to losing their command abilities. Worse, this time some of his infantry were on the move. Things were looking a bit grim.

Third turn, however, my foragers arrived and tipped the balance on the left. Now here’s the real fun of FK&P compared to TTS: if you charge on the flank you don’t get a measly one extra attack card: you get double what you’ve earned for a frontal attack!

Here’s two shots of my returning foragers hitting the right flank of his cavalry:

And here’s all the lovely attack cards I got to play!

Note that despite the huge numbers of cards played, a couple of cavalry units did survive being hit in the flank…but not when they were hit again and again.

End result: a cavalry victory…but would it be enough bearing in mind what was happening in the centre?

No more Royalist cavalry to fight!

The Infantry Battle

By now the advancing Royalist infantry had cleared away my Forlorn Hopes and had just engaged my main battle line. By this time, I was suffering from a bad loss of victory coins: one more lost unit and that was it! You can see the cavalry melee just finishing in the background, so I wasn’t getting any help from them yet, and the only high point was that the Royalist infantry (pike heavy, so at an advantage in combat) were attacking piecemeal as they hadn’t been able to co-ordinate their attack.

Royalists coming up the hill

But wait, I hear you cry, what’s that other unit in the distance, by the bridge. well that, my friends, is the Derbyshire Horse: an untried regiment that had passed its first test and already seen off a partially blown enemy cavalry regiment.

The Derbyshire’s charged forward gloriously and, just as my left hand infantry battalia was about to crumble, smashed into the open flank of the enemy infantry assaulting them.

Huzzah for the Derbyshires

The enemy infantry were smashed from the field, relieving John of the last of his victory coins: Parliament was victorious!

Aftermath

A very successful game that literally came down to the last action. Had the Derbyshire’s not done as they did, I would likely have lost that last one unit: the red-clad infantry battalia was on its last legs.

John and I both agreed that For King & Parliament gives a great game and will be fighting other battles of the English Civil War soon. For me, as well, it’s back to the painting table to add some more units to my forces, so the old credit card is about to take a hammering!

My only regret: I have a horrible feeling that I shall be missing all the attack cards next time I play TTS!

Robert Avery

More Swedish Horse for ECW

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I’ve almost got enough figures now to field the Parliamentarians at the Battle of Montgomery, 1644: the sample scenario that appears in the For King and Parliament rulebook.

Today’s contribution to the total is a couple of units of helmeted Swedish Horse accompanied by two Gallant Gentlemen on foot.

The cavalry are all Peter Pig figures, the foot are Essex. All are 15mm and mostly painted with GW Contrast Paints.

I’m very pleased with the horses. As I couldn’t find a good horse-brown straight from a Contrast pot, I decided to experiment and buy the Contrast thinner and then see what happened when I did a 50/50 mix with Contrast Cygor Brown.

My main concern was what to mix them in, but then daughter number two gave me a little pot that she bought from the art shop for doing exactly this, and the problem was neatly solved. In went half a centimetre of Cygor Brown, in went the same amount of thinner, a quick shake and the brown you see on the models above is one coat of the mixture with no highlighting over Wraithbone primer. All I did do was paint the manes, tails and lower legs in undiluted Cygor Brown. Very quick and very easy. I shall be trying this sort of thing again…once I work out the best time to nip into my daughter’s room and steal the rest of her mixing pots!

IABSM AAR: Arras (a different game!)

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Michael Curtis and friends are putting on a demo game of I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum at Salute this year. The scenario chosen is the Arras counterattack of May 1940.

Demo games need a lot of preparation, and a good few run throughs before they are ready for public consumption. Click on the pic below to see this one:

Those of you who regularly visit this site will know that we had a different Arras battle report last Tuesday. Here’s the link so that you can compare the two.

A Somewhat Bigger Model!

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I don't often post about my other hobbies: this is, after all, a site devoted to wargaming.

Yesterday, however, I fulfilled a long term ambition and added a somewhat bigger model to my collection of figures: a muk yan jong or wooden dummy.

For those of you wondering what on earth it is (or, considering the state of mind of most Lardies, where the batteries go!) it is a wooden dummy for practicing wing chun kung fu, one of the several martial arts that I study.

It , or rather two large boxes, were waiting for me when I got back from training yesterday. I should, of course, have waited until both daylight and the weekend before building it, but obviously just couldn’t. Practically killed me: as I should have added “and for someone to help” to the list of things I needed before construction began.

For a start, it’s oak, so the body bit weighs a ton. Then, of course, you have a to work out how to bolt the base and the body together given the different shapes and heights off the ground involved. Not easy, particularly when you are lining up five six-inch bolts into hard-to-see holes!

But I managed, and very fine looking it is too. All I have to do now is learn how to use it!