2026 Plans

My re-labelled mahjong blocks

My plans for 2026 are centred on three sets of rules:

1. Maurice.
2. Bloody Big Battles! (B3)
3. For King & Parliament!

For Maurice I have the WoFun 18mm War of Spanish Succession armies, though I also remain interested in gettng WoFun '45 Jacobite Rebellion ones.

For B3 I've started to collect WoFun 18mm Peninsular War forces. A B3 Peninsular War campaign book is due out this year. In the meantime there are already some scenarios available on the B3 group at Groups.io. These armies might also be used with General d'Armee 2 if I get round to something more tactical.

For later 19thC B3 battles I have the Kriegspiel-style blocks, though I'd be very happy to use 18mm WoFun Peter Dennis standees if they were to appear. WoFun have mentioned doing Franco-Prussian War in 10mm but these would be on 40mm bases, too wide for B3. 40mm bases could be counted as doubles, but I would still need singles, especially for skirmishers. If using lead figures I could create singles, but cutting WoFun figure groups in half is not an option! An alternative would be to go with 40mm bases and increase typical table size to 8’ x 5’ but that runs contrary to my general preference for more compact and manageable games.

My For King & Parliament! Forces are all ready to go. I just need to arrange some games.

If I exhaust these three areas, a return to the various Rampant rule sets is next on my to-do list.

2025 review

A furious cavalry melee. From a Maurice 
War of Spanish Succession game with 
18mm Wofun standees.

My main areas of focus this year have been Eisenhower, Maurice and collecting Wofun standees.

I've had to ration computer use because of migraines so posting blog articles has suffered, but I did manage some gaming, collecting and even some modelling/painting.

Eisenhower gave me the incentive to base and paint some of my 3mm 1940 French and German armies originally bought for Rommel.

Maurice has been a welcome return to another set of Sam Mustafa rules. I do have 10mm SYW armies for this but never got round to painting them. I now have 18mm Wofun War of Spanish Succession armies as indicated in the photo here.

I also accumulated Wofun 18mm English Civil War armies, but haven't yet used them, and have now started to collect Wofun 18mm Peninsular War forces.

I also relabelled my ceramic blocks for playing later 19thC Bloody Big Battles! again though I would prefer to use Wofun Peter Dennis 18mm Franco-Prussian War standees if they ever appear. 

I'll post separately about my plans for next year...

Hannut for Eisenhower

The Germans have taken one Objective
but they are Worn and time is running out.

Ian and I are working on the Hannut scenario I converted from Rommel to Eisenhower.

Having only two Formations a side worked perfectly well. Fellow players will note that the forces were spread thinly in comparison to other Eisenhower scenarios, but that's the way it was.

The German advantage in Ops, Stockpiles and starting with the Momentum was augmented by banning the French defenders from starting Prepared. That was to reflect the historical Belgian failure to build the expected defences, but as the two forces are more-or-less identical, this is a tough job for the attackers who usually enjoy more points. 

If the Germans fail to take one or more Objectives early, it becomes impossible for them to win the game.

Of course, a scenario doesn't have to be balanced. For competitive purposes you can swop sides, play a second game and add the scores together, but we are working on ways of giving the attackers more of an advantage, including Barrage cards and forcing some of the French to arrive as Reinforcements.

Once it's more developed, I'll post the map, OOBs and further details.

DRP 3mm 1940 forces for Eisenhower - completed

Four complete divisions in
a shallow A4 Tuff box.

I completed my 3mm armies for Eisenhower. Painting is now getting quite difficult for an old chap like me, so this is probably my first and last 3mm project. I had two main precepts: to make the vehicles and figures 'pop' and to avoid oversize base texturing.

Whereas the aim in real life would be to camouflage men and vehicles and to blend into the background, that would be totally counter-productive for such tiny models. The colour scheme needed to be lighter, contrasting and simpler than in real life. I also wanted to avoid using sand or static grass in a way that would be out of scale with the models.

The bases were intended to be dioramic, so my first step was to arrange and stick the models down. Here I made a mistake. I should have put slivers of card under the vehicles so they were of a height with the infantry and I could then have applied filler between the models to hide the base edges and level everything up. By putting filler only around the infantry, I ended up with a lumpy effect.

I attempted to disguise this problem by adding irregular areas of sand to represent scrub. This was a partial success, but the end result looks more like bramble patches on Wimbledon Common than Belgian fields.

With the models, filler and sand added, I gave everything an overall wet brush of dark brown. I then dry-brushed the vehicles using light versions of the historical base coats with no attempt to add secondary camouflage colours. I block-painted the infantry in 2 or 3 colours, but one would probably have done. This approach was essentially the same as I've used for larger scales that I've based before painting.

On the plus side, I think my decisions to restrict the colours and make the models 'pop', and to avoid out of scale texturing, were correct.

On the minus side, I should have pre-based the vehicles to match the infantry as explained, and then I wouldn't have had to add the scrub. I should also have chosen a less vivid green for the grass and dry-brushed it.

My WoFun plans

WoFun Bavarian Foot

It will take time to sell off the armies I've decided to let go, and completing what remains of the lead mountain is even more uncertain, but as readers and fellow compulsive collectors will appreciate, I can't let that stand in the way of my accumulation of new WoFun armies! 

I've now got enough English Civil War standees for the Montgomery scenario in For King And Parliament, and can move on to collecting something else, at least for now. 

 

The areas that interest me most are the War of Spanish Succession, the '45 Rebellion and the Peninsular War, all in 18mm. Since posting my first impressions of WoFun I have settled on the 18mm ranges which I now think are the best balance between aesthetics and versatility. I have also been in contact with Vali Dumitru at WoFun and they are happy to supply half-sprues, removing the duplication problem with 18mm. I also asked about their plans for metal standees, but these aren't for now. WoFun are great communicators and couldn't be more helpful. 

 

Renewal of interest in the WoSS was originally inspired by Simon Miller's forthcoming Lust for Glory rules, but I can also use Maurice, and, at grand-tactical level, Bloody Big Battles, games I play already. 

 

The '45 has been a very long-standing interest. I've planned to do it several times, but never committed, partly due to the prospect of the mass painting of tartans! WoFun changes all that. 

 

I already play Blucher with unit cards at grand-tactical level, but Napoleonics at tactical level is another thing. There's a huge choice of rules for this, but I'm leaning towards General d'Armee 2 despite its complexity, and looking at the Peninsular War because it's a rich area and, for me, a fresh subject to study. The same armies could once again be used with Bloody Big Battles at grand tactical level. With 30mm wide bases, the 18mm WoFun standees are close enough to the 25mm BBB standard. 

 

The story doesn't end there as there are lots of other ranges that may become available such as the Monmouth Rebellion. The armies for that are on the small side but might work with FK&P.

Too much stuff

I've got too much stuff, a lot of it completely unpainted or unfinished. I've made a list. So far the inventory covers just the land forces, and it's by no means fully detailed. As I intend to keep this list of shame updated, I've added it as a page (Periods & Scales) to the top menu.

I intend to sell off the stuff I least want and, if I can, work on the unfinished stuff I most want to keep, theoretically meeting somewhere in the middle. 

eBay used to be the obvious place to go to sell off wargames figures, but I've seen very negative reviews recently. Selling stuff at shows is possibly better, but will take a lot longer.

The only figures I'm going to buy in future will be WoFun standees, painted 3D figures (if the temptation arises) or maybe unpainted 2mm/3mm models that could be finished relatively quickly.

Consolidating my figure collection follows on from the great purge of my library, an ongoing process I started over six years ago. The book purge has made life more manageable, and there's nothing I regret getting rid of.

The immediate problem with the figures is that many of these are stacked two-layers deep so I can't immediately see everything I've got at a glance. So the first step is to send more books to charity shops so I can spread the figure boxes out. As I said, I've got too much stuff.

WoFun: storage logic 3

The final format for storing my WoFun standees, using 5mm EVA sheet stuck with a hot glue-gun. Perhaps I've lived a sheltered life but I've never used a glue-gun before. It was great fun until I accidentally glued a strip of foam to my fingers. That's when you find out just how hot the glue is and how well it sticks.

WoFun: storage logic 2

Thank you, Simon Jones, for putting me on to self-adhesive foam insulation tape. Attached to board, it's ideal for my WoFun storage trays. Arranging the foam with slots between was just the right approach, but my extravagant use of the tape makes this disproportionately expensive. 

If I get some sheets of hobby foam and cut and stick them myself, I may be able to achieve an adequate result more economically.

WoFun: storage logic

My WoFun collection(s) will ultimately fit into robust, stackable and conveniently sized plastic boxes, ie 4L or 9L RUBs according to the fundamental principle of wargame figure storage.

In the absence of magnetic sheeting, there has to be another way to stop the stands from rattling around or ending up in a  heap when being transported to the wargames club.

18mm shot, horse and pike stands are all different heights, but share two common dimensions: they are all about 30mm wide and about 20mm deep, front to back. 

Logic dictates that the most flexible and efficient way to store them (and to identify and deploy them) is to lie them down in trays. 

My prototype solutions featured homemade card trays, but I will probably switch to sponge with slots to catch the bases. The ultimate solution may look very different, but I think I've found the right form factor.