Commanded Shot

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Here is the first of the two Commanded Shot battalia that I have planned for my ECW collection.

These are 15mm figures from Peter Pig, painted with my now usual Contrast Paints from GW.

One more battalia of these to go, and then I’ve broken the back of the infantry that I need. I’ll probably paint up another couple of standard battalia to allow for the odd bigger game, but the main hurdle still to come is the Dutch Horse: 4-5 units of nineteen cavalry each. Other than that, it’s the fun stuff that gives you quick gratification as it doesn’t take long to finish a piece: artillery, officers, attachments and the like.

I need Dragoons as well, but can’t decide whether to paint up the entire mounted-horseholder-foot mixture required for a full representation, as I read that in the ECW, Dragoons only ever fought mounted once. I shall have to see how keen I am on painting up even more ECW when I get to that point.

IABSM AAR: Campaign for Greece #13: Glider Assault

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Another amazing-looking 6mm game of I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum from Mark Luther: his second, played-remotely, lockdown special.

This time he has used scenario #13 from the Campaign for Greece scenario pack, entitled Glider Assault.

Click on the picture below to see all:

A Bit of Bank Holiday Painting

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I managed to get a bit more painting done over the bank holiday weekend: just a few bits and pieces rather than anything major.

First up, a unit of Cretan Archers for my Greek and Macedonian armies:

These are from Museum Miniatures’ excellent Z Range of CAD figures. Really nice and highly recommended.

Then there are a couple of officer stands for For King & Parliament: a General and a Colonel.

These are the always-dependable Essex figures in 15mm. I think I went bit over the top with the costume on the Colonel’s flag-bearer, but have compensated by making the General’s costume quite muted.

AAR: Smash of the Titans!

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So #1 Daughter’s boyfriend had been roped into cooking the Easter Roast, which left me no-one to play with except for #2 Daughter.

She felt that she could manage another battle, but only if it had “monsters and aliens and stuff” in it.

Not a problem my dearest fruit of my loins: time to make To The Strongest literally fantastic by breaking out my Legendary Greek figures.

I would play the Sumerians, #2 Daughter would take the part of Poseidon leading a contingent of Hoplite Greeks spiced up with few “monsters…” etc.

In effect, this meant that she fielded (nearest to furthest in the picture above) a unit of Pegasus horse that could ignore terrain penalties; two units of Centaur cavalry (one horse archers, one cavalry); a unit of Minotaurs counting as axemen; and two units of monsters: the Hydra, the Erymanthian Boar, the Chimera, and the Medusa (treated as elephants).

The Sumerians remained unphased by this display of divine horrors:

The Battle Begins

The game began with one of those weird series of multiple Aces appearing on each side, with the result that although the lines crept slightly closer together, the only interesting event was the Hydra and Chimera bounding forward to attach the Sumerian left flank.

Very sensibly, the slingers ran for it…and here #2 Daughter made a mistake. Instead of crashing through the poor terrain, or lurking in its lee, the Hydra and Chimera decided to go round it. Not being very manoeuverable, however, they got stuck with their rear ends sticking out!

This would prove to be a very inviting target for the, er, pink Sumerian spearblock, and they would eventually charge the two monsters in the rear and do enough damage to send them straight off the table, therefore negating the regenerative abilities that I had assigned to both (automatically regenerate from disordered when activated).

The two battlelines then got on with the business of smashing into each other, each advancing forward as fast as they could.

As Sumerian commander, I sent in my battlecars first: determined to soften the Legendary Greeks up a bit before committing my infantry.

This was all going nicely, with the Centaur horse archers eradicated when they failed to evade, but I had forgotten about the terrain-ignoring Pegasus cavalry: which snuck around my flank and threatened to roll up my entire line!

Fortunately, great Zeus was obviously determined to make sure that his somewhat soggy brother was humiliated, and the flank charge only managed to KO one unit of battlecars before a spear block managed to get forward fast enough to force the flying horses to evade beyond the trees.

Unfortunately, the other two units of battlecars believed in a different divine panoply, and were destroyed by the Hoplite unit backed by Poseidon himself and, a bit unexpectedly, the Centaur cavalry. Things were looking a bit dicey on my right flank, but I had the infantry brigade behind ready to stabilise the situation.

The action now swung to the other side of the field, where the Minotaurs had been easily dismissed: obviously their tales of martial prowess were complete bull! I had, however, lost my Axemen, so the situation looked like this:

Zeus intervened again, and somehow I managed to dispose of the Medusa and the Boar, and get my spearmen back across the field and into the rear of what had been the Minotaur-led Hoplites.

Their loss proved too much for the Legendary Greeks to take, and the field of glory was mine.

Aftermath

A most enjoyable game which, I must confess, that I won by sheer luck of the cards. #2 Daughter, who is not yet old enough to drive, made only one tactical error, at the beginning, and otherwise came close to annihilating an entire flank which would, I think have given her victory. As it was, I was only one coin behind her in terms of defeat.

I think I might actually make a serious attempt to define some characteristics for the Legendary Greeks, if only because it’s nice to get some unusual figures on the tabletop.

Right, off to the Temple of Zeus to give thanks…

First of the Dutch Horse

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Regular visitors will know that I am currently building a collection of 15mm ECW figures with which to play For King & Parliament.

In FK&P, cavalry generally comes in one of two formations: the more modern, single-line Swedish style; or the more archaic, double-line Dutch style. So far I have painted up quite a few units of Swedish horse, but no Dutch.

All my ECW troops are based in big elements: bases that are roughly 12cms wide and 6cms deep, with a foot battalia being 24 figures (plus command). A Swedish style unit of horse is 9 figures (plus command) strong, a Dutch style unit therefore 16 figures (plus command) strong.

Big bases!

I was worried that differentiating between Dutch and Swedish styles needed more than just figures on a base, so wanted to try a different manufacturer as well. I also needed a break from painting Peter Pig figures (the vast majority of the army so far): not because I don’t like them any more, quite the opposite, but just to get a bit of variety in the brushwork.

The first manufacturer I tried was Blue Moon: lovely figures, so I ordered some cavalry, but when they came, they were distinctly larger than the Peter Pig cavalry that I already had. I mean grossly larger: they just would not do. I’m all for mixing and matching (people are different sizes after all) but this was ridiculous.

Off to the Internet, and I discovered this excellent blog post from the charmingly-named Madaxeman in which he posts pictures of all the different types of pike and shot infantry figures available. This was very useful, so I carefully scrolled down to where the Peter Pig figures started to appear and checked out which other manufacturer matched them for size.

There were some real horrors on the sizing and quality of figures front, but the two potential matches were with the Naismith line and/or the Hallmark line from Magister Militum. I couldn’t work out whether the Naismith line was still available to buy, which left MM’s Hallmark line as the range of choice.

And the winners are…Peter Pig on the left, Hallmark on the right.

An order and some nice prompt delivery later, and I had the figures for a unit of Dutch horse to paint up. The figures looked quite ornate to me, so I decided to make this first unit very much a unit of gentleman cavalry:

I’m very happy with these, so another order has gone off to Magister Militum (I can remember the first show they were ever at, just after they opened) for more horse and, this time, some infantry as well.

Looking at the MM website, you can ignore a lot of the detail and paint the cavalry in plainer colours, so that’s what I’m going to with this next unit.

And how do they compare with the Swedish horse. Here’s how:

Very good: exactly the effect I was after. I’m now off to wait for the postman…

New Daily Deals from Battlefront and a Grave Situation!

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I lied: I did look. All the above for £259: 31% off and free shipping.

In between painting up newly bought figures, I am trying to take advantage of the lockdown (and resultant lack of time spent commuting) by eating into the lead mountain.

Getting through it completely is, of course, a ridiculous idea: particularly with the current Battlefront Daily Deals promotion.

Every day Battlefront are putting a selection of different units at 40% off and free shipping for a 24 hour period only. Yesterday was Day One, and I picked up a company of T-62 tanks for £36; nothing I fancied today, however, but I can foresee a lot of expenditure over the coming weeks!

They are also discounting a lot of their pre-painted Battlefield in a Box buildings, but I haven’t dared look at the offers there yet!

Anyhow, more tanks and buildings aside, one thing that has been sitting on the painting table for ages is a 15mm walled graveyard that I built out of things from the bits box and a gravestone set.

I’m actually rather pleased with it, even if the walls and gates have little gaps in between each section!

Everything is painted with GW Contrast paints: a dark grey for the walls and main cenotaph, a lighter grey for most of the gravestones themselves, Snakebite Leather for the newly-turned piles of earth, and a darker brown for the shed and gates. Here’s a shot with, randomly, some archers standing inside.

Big Painting Challenge Update

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Well it seems as if many of you are getting into your lockdown painting stride, with loads of entries into the Painting Challenge.

In today’s batch we have the following:

There are many more photos to see in the individual galleries, so make sure you take a peak there as well.

Right: off to the painting table myself now!

IABSM AAR: War of the Rats

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Over a few days earlier this month, fellow-Lardy Alex Sotheran played a solo game of IABSM set in Stalingrad, where the 6th Army are attempting to batter their way to the Volga but the Soviet defence line is proving tenacious.

Alex has posted both a YouTube video of the game and some absolutely cracking pictures.

To watch on YouTube, click the video link below. It’s 2.5 hours long, but well worth a watch.

To see the pictorial report, click on the picture below:

A Second Lockdown Game of To The Strongest

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We’re still in coronavirus lockdown in the UK: banned from leaving the house except for essential trips. For most people, that means no gaming or, at best, some kind of online get together. I, however, am lucky enough to have daughter number one’s boyfriend staying with us for the duration: lucky because (1) he likes to cook and (2) he has discovered that he enjoys wargaming.

Our second game was To The Strongest again: it’s grid-based tabletop and simple-yet-subtle mechanics make it ideal for a new gamer to pick up quickly.

This time, I would take a Gallic army consisting of large amounts of hairy-arsed Celtic warriors and face off against an Athenian Greek Hoplite army consisting of large amounts of, well, hoplites.

Gauls

Greeks

The Greeks set up first: heavily weighting their right flank. At this point I realised that perhaps I should have mentioned to my novice opponent that hoplites can’t move diagonally to the left, but decided to just ignore that rule for the moment.

My Gauls were fairly evenly spaced out, but my noble cavalry were on the left i.e. facing two unit of hoplites with very sharp pointy spears! This was no good, so I decided to try a switcheroo gambit and move my cavalry right over to the other side of the field, leaving behind the warband that accompanied them.

The Switcheroo Begins

This would hopefully isolate his two units of hoplites on the far side of the table.

Meanwhile, both battle lines lurched towards each other, the Greeks behind a protective screen of light infantry.

The game then developed into three different battles.

On my left flank, the single warband faced off against the two hoplite units who had actually managed to advance forward much faster than I had expected. Although my warband did achieve one flank attack, this was largely unsuccessful, and I was soon under a lot of pressure as the Greeks got themselves sorted out and threatened to overwhelm me with the two-on-one advantage that they had.

In the centre, meanwhile, the main bodies of the two armies came together in a series of thumping clashes: deep unit versus deep unit. The Greeks took full advantage of their light infantry: using them either to soften the Celts up before contact, or to retreat behind if they suffered a disorder. The advantage would swing backwards and forwards between the two sides throughout the rest of the battle.

On my right flank, my light infantry had managed to see off his horse archers, but a warband was having real difficulty dispatching the rubbish Greek cavalry. Fortunately, my cavalry arrived after their pell-mell gallop across the back of the battlefield, and prepared to sweep all before them as they rounded the corner of some rocks and lined up on the Greek battle line’s flanks.

All that stood between them and certain victory was the lone unit of Greek peltasts that, so far, had hung back and stayed out of trouble.

Cavalry, bottom right, lined up to roll up the Greek line. Only the peltasts are in the way.

Could I get through the peltasts? Not in a month of Sundays! My grand plan blocked by a unit of men who only thought they weren’t light infantry!

Anyhow, that meant that although I had won the right flank, I was losing the left flank, and honours were just about even in the centre. A Greek hoplite unit finally broke through my line and captured my camp, one of my warbands threatened to do the same to the Athenian camp. Units were breaking on either side until we both had just two coins left: the next unit to break would decide the game.

It was the Greeks who had the initiative. I was in real trouble on my left flank, with a couple of double-disordered warbands who would go with one more hit. My opponent reached for his pack of cards: all he needed to do was to send his men in diagonally to hit me: 2+ to activate becomes 3+ for a difficult move becomes 4+ because your hoplite units are deep.

So that was the end of the Greek offensive and, on my subsequent turn, I managed to finally kill the peltasts and win the game!

Aftermath

Another great game of TTS, with the daughter’s boyfriend coming within Ames Ace of beating me.

Here’s a complete gallery of the game:

Robert Avery

More ECW Foot Figures

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My ECW collection is coming along nicely: today’s addition is a third battalia of pike-heavy foot.

As usual, these are 15mm Peter Pig figures painted with GW Contrast Paints and mounted as one element on a Warbases’ Vehicle Base. The flowers are from Boontown.

I’m intending to use these for For King & Parliament, the ECW version of To The Strongest, hence why they will work well as a single base of figures.

What I need to do now is to swap my efforts onto the units of Dutch-style horse that my collection requires.

The main difficulty is that I would like to make the Dutch horse even more distinctively different to the Swedish-style horse I already have, so have been looking around for a different manufacturer to try.

I did try Blue Moon, who have some very nice figures, but they are distinctly bigger than the Peter Pig ones, especially the horses, so don’t really fit. I’m usually pretty tolerant about different figures sizes (after all, you do get a variety of sizes in real life), but these are really very much bigger. So if anyone wants a few packs of unpainted, untouched Blue Moon ECW horse, I’m happy to look at swapping them for something. E-mail me at the usual address (right hand column gives it).

Off to the Internet to see what I can find…

IABSM AAR: Fallschirmjaegers on the Neva

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Mark Luther set himself a real challenge when he decided to run a COVID-19 lockdown game of I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum remotely.

This game was played over two days using photographs of the table and texts: a great effort from all concerned. It’s a cracking battle report as well, so click on the picture below to see all…

Ed.’s Note: I expect you all to read this as it took me absolutely ages to load and caption all the pictures in the right order. Amazing set up, but the terrain does make everything blur into one when viewed in thumbnail size!

Brunt Herd Mercenaries for Q13

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Not commuting does seem to have freed up extra time for painting, although this is countered by all the extra work I’m having to do to cope with keeping the business I work for going during the crisis.

Up to now, however, I haven’t really dug into the lead mountain: I’ve just cleared some of the scree from the lower slopes!

Yesterday, however, I finally finished a unit that has been sitting on my painting table for literally a couple of years. Put it this way, before I could start work on them, I had to get all the dust off the models first!

Khurasan Miniatures are a firm that produce a huge range of 15mm sci-fi and historical figures. Usually the sci-fi ranges are grouped into races or empires, each with a background and a story that gives a bit of life to the lead. On top of these collective ranges, however, Khurasan sometimes produce a stand alone individual unit, and one of these were the Brunt Herd Mercenaries.

(R to L) Big Men, a Nutter with a staff, and a spare heavy weapon

If I recall correctly, these are based on a prehistoric rhino-type with a soft, bifurcated snout. They are large, designed to stand well above your average 15mm human, with the models ending up 20-25mm tall.

As you'd expect from Khurasan, the Brunt are full of life, with some really nice poses that provide a fair amount of variety. I will use these to augment a lesser force, or just to provide some bad guys for the good guys to fight!

1st Squad (to give an idea of scale, the figures are mounted on UK 2p pieces)

All the figures that I had previously painted (or started) are undercoated in white, then painted with a two-step shade-then-light method. For example, the tool belts are a base dark brown and then a light leather colour on top.

The figures that I painted now from scratch - effectively just the three command figures - are painted with GW Contrast Paints: so much easier to use than the method above.

2nd Squad

I’m not generally a fan of outsize 15mm figures, hence the reason it took so long for me to finish the unit, but the Brunt aren’t too bad. They are, however and as far as I know, so old - and didn’t take off as Khurasan hoped - that they are OOP…so apologies to anyone who got excited by the above and wanted to buy some of their own!

3rd Squad

A Right Result!

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So here we all are stuck under lockdown and unable to go out. No wargaming clubs are open, no wargaming friends can come round: what on earth is one to do.

Well I have had a right result.

Daughter number one came back from university just before lockdown and brought her boyfriend with him as a house guest for a couple of months (he lives abroad normally, but can’t get home at the moment). This is not a bad thing: we have plenty of room and he, unlike me, likes cooking. Even better, the kids were so desperate for entertainment yesterday that they agreed to have a battle: daughter number one and boyfriend on one side; daughter number two and I on the other.

I chose the To The Strongest rules for Ancients as it’s probably the easiest introduction to wargaming for beginners: no measuring, no dice, simple grid-based movement and combat rules etc. D2 and I took the Neo-Sumerians, D1 and BF took the Assyrians.

Neo-Sumerian Battle Line

This was an interesting clash: lots of slow-moving, poor quality Sumerians versus small numbers of deadly, fast-moving Assyrians.

Each side chose to put their heavy chariots on the right flank, so we rapidly got to a situation where the centre was a tie and each side’s right flank was winning and left flank was losing.

The advantage then swung back and forth with both sides ending up with only two coins each i.e. one more unit lost would mean an overall loss. As it happens, one of the Sumerian heavy onager units managed to knock out an Assyrian cavalry unit and the game was ours!

And the right result?

Not the win, funnily enough, but the fact that D1’s boyfriend really enjoyed himself and declared an interest in playing more battles. Well, if we’re stuck together for another ten weeks, his wishes are going to be more than fulfilled! A convert!

Here are some more pictures of the game:

Painting Challenge: A Lockdown Update

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Good to see that the entries are still coming n for this year’s Painting Challenge despite the problems of lockdown: hard to replenish your painting supplies when you’re not allowed out!

Here’s a selection of today’s entries: make sure you visit everyone’s galleries as there’s a lot to see:

Top Marks to Zvezda

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I’m a great fan of the Zvezda 15mm plastic vehicle kits. Not only are they very nicely made and very easy to put together, but they produce some quite rare vehicles at very cheap prices.

My latest purchase was a platoon of three Wurfrahmen 40 “Stuka zu Fuss” rocket launchers built onto SdKfz 251 half-tracks.

I say my latest purchase, but i actually bought these before Christmas and have only just now got around to building and painting them.

These, as I said, are 15mm and plastic: the kits snap together without really any need for glue…although I tend to glue some of the major parts just in case. The half-tracks go together in about 90 seconds, but the individual rocket-launchers (six per vehicle!) are a bit fiddly, especially with clumsy hands like mine. Not difficult: just fitting three small parts together when you have to line up pegs and holes. I’m sure there’s an easy way of doing it involving tweezers or small children or something, but I couldn’t find it.

Obviously a completely impractical kit for I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum! as any such weapons would have been way behind the front lines: in wargaming terms, in the next room or even next house away! They do, however, allow me to field a rather nice objective and (let’s face it, the real reason) complete my collection so that I can now field the alternative third platoon structure of a company of engineers.

Recommended.

IABSM AAR: Operation Express

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All this spare time at home has given Mark Luther a chance to write up an AAR that has previously just been a collection of pictures.

So here’s the Operation Express battle report again, but this time with the pictures correctly labelled and ordered.

Click on the picture below to see all. This is a magnificent report of a great looking game, so recommended!

Cuirassiers!

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I think that Cuirassiers in the full plate sense might have been dying out by the time of the English Civil War, but the book assures me that I might need a smallish unit for some scenarios, so it was off to the Internet to buy some figures and then to paint them.

These are 15mm Peter Pig figures painted using GW Contrast Paints. The horses are Cygor Brown thinned down 50/50 with the Contrast Thinner. The armour is Templar Black very lightly dry-brushed with Leadbelcher, except for the commander at the far end, who has a light dry brush of a dark gold colour.

The unit is shown as a Dutch- rather than the more modern Swedish-style formation i.e. two ranks deep relying on brute force rather than one rank deep relying on firepower. It’s still a smallish unit: being only four figures wide rather than the usual nine (which is going to make the larger Dutch-style units very heavy indeed at 18 cavalry figures to a base!).

The bases are Warbases vehicle bases flocked all over. The flowers are from Boontown, and are absolutely excellent.

IABSM AAR: Blenneville or Bust! #5L: Diot

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Fantastic battle report from Tim Whitworth on a game of I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum played just before we all went into lockdown.

Tim and his friends have been playing through a Blenneville or Bust! campaign taken from the scenario pack of the same name. This was the final game in the series, and a chance for the Germans to achieve maximum victory points.

Find out what happened by clicking on the link below. Highly recommended: this is a serious after action report!

Painting Challenge Update

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Hello All

Yes, I am still alive!

It’s just that the coronavirus situation now has me working from home and, this week at any rate, I have been busier than ever with no time to post anything.

That, however, is if there was anything to post. The fairly regular flow of AARs has now dried up: presumably either because of the closure of most of the places where people meet to play, or people avoiding playing in case they get a case of CORVIDs across the tabletop.

So a huge annoyance really: no commute, so technically plenty of extra time…but that extra time taken up with extra work to get the business done remotely…so no painting done…and no gaming either because of social contact restrictions.

But let us not despair: there’s still the Painting Challenge to enter.

Here’s a sample of the latest batch to hit my inbox, and a very impressive latest batch it is too. Check out the individual galleries too.