2023 Plans

RCW Reds: now accommodated
by Xenos Rampant

My intentions for 2023 are so focused that I feel confident enough to call them plans. They are:

(1) To continue with To the Strongest!

I have a number of fully-painted 15mm and 10mm armies which haven't yet been tabled. I also have some individually-based 28mm forces that might be used on sabots, and to facilitate that I recently supplemented my Late Medieval Swiss/Burgundians with another modest eBay purchase.

(2) To play Xenos Rampant (my current obsession) and other Rampant games.

I have three projects which have now become Xenos Rampant projects:

• 15mm Eurasia vs Oceana Near Future Sci-Fi. Existing figures and vehicles are based and mostly undercoated but I am now adding a few more models. I also have a huge collection of domestic detritus which I had intended to turn into SF industrial scenery. I will hopefully be able to attempt a game early in the new year and am currently working on foamboard storage trays to fit RUBs so the armies can be stored and transported safely.
  
• 28mm Irish War of Independence. I actually have completed armies for this, as well as a host of additional unpainted figures which I recently rediscovered.
  
• 28mm Russian Civil War. These are based and undercoated.
  

(3) To play Blucher

I have some ideas for making very flat, light scenery to complement the unit cards. This will make it a handy game to carry about.

Any painting or modelling will be directed into these three areas.

27 years later: unpacking my 25mm Sassanid Persians

Having only ever played To the Strongest! in our two-strong, self-taught, local bubble, I thought it would be instructive to take part in a TtS! tournament at some point. While TtS! is played in various scales, tournaments are all 28mm. I therefore decided to dig out my slightly height-challenged 25mm Sassanids to see if they would stretch to a 135-point TtS! competition army.

We moved house just over 27 years ago. The figures were packed in polystyrene chippings and haven’t seen the light of day till now. Unlike my 25mm Vikings unpacked a few years ago, there were no signs of lead rot.

The figures, which I painted myself, are Lamming Miniatures which have now been brought back into production and are available from https://www.lammingminiatures.com/. The figures have a distinctive style - I would say charm - and are very robust but they don’t have the multiplicity of variations you see in modern ranges.

The spears are made from piano wire - not as fancy as the wire spears with shaped spearheads you can buy now - but correspondingly less likely to impale players. 

It looks like they would do but I would probably rebase them. Unfortunately they are lacking historical opponents which is something I like to have these days.

 

Elephants, Cataphracts and Cavalry

Horse Archers, Slingers, Bowmen, and Javelinmen

 

Spearmen

 

10mm Normans rebased

Taking advantage of a rare opportunity to do some painting etc over the last couple of weeks, I have now just finished reorganising and rebasing the 10mm Normans that I inherited. Actually finishing a project is a big achievement for me these days.

This project involved:

• Soaking the old card bases in water and removing.
• Planning the new units.
• Adding a few additional figures for fun (crossbowmen and peasants with improvised weapons).
• Repainting some mail in silver and some textiles in colour.
• Sticking the figures on my preferred MDF/steel combination bases.
• Texturing the bases with Tetrion filler and a sand/ballast mix.
• Painting the bases.
• Applying 2mm static grass.

Most readers will be familiar with all these techniques and I've covered them all before. However, I will make a few relevant remarks.

Front left: Sergeants. Back left and centre: ordinary cavalry. Right: veteran cavalry.

I like planning units and spent a lot of time doing it. The aim was to optimise use of the figures I had in order to produce two armies. In the end I went with 80mm wide bases to be used on a 100mm grid. This is for To the Strongest! Each base is a unit.

Repainting was fairly impressionistic. I hit the main areas. These are 10mm figures after all. Nobody should notice or care unless they lead very sad lives.

On the new figures, I painted faces but no hands. I might repaint some of the shields to provide more variation and I might add a dark wash to tone down the colours I used on some of the new figures, but I may never get round to it.

Left to right, front to back: Fyrd; Foot Sergeants; Flemish Spearmen, Norman Militia.

The sand was applied to the Tetrion while it was still wet. The best results are achieved by having the Tetrion very wet. But getting the filler between multibased ready-painted figures was awkward.

The bases were initially flood painted with a very dilute wash of household emulsion. The sand soaks it up. They were then dry-brushed with Zamesi Desert and Ushabti Bone.

The static grass was applied with an electric applicator. I'm not entirely convinced this made much difference but it didn't do any harm.

Left: Feudal levies. Front: Crossbows. Back: Bows.

I learnt two lessons from this project:

1. Basing the figures before painting as I did for my 10mm ACW and 6mm TYW armies is a much better approach for multibased figures. In this instance most of the figures were already painted so I wasn't working from scratch. I'm not sure, however, whether I would pre-base 15m or 28mm figures, but I would certainly think about it.
2. Dry-brushing the bases in just two colours was adequate.

The overall approach was based on expending the minimum effort and time, and to rely on the new bases for aesthetic effect. In that it was a resounding success.

10mm armies for 'To the Strongest!'

I've had to deal with some domestic redevelopment work and have also been preoccupied with  following events in Ukraine, but I did find time to fit in a few more games of To the Strongest!.

I also inherited a 10mm Norman army with enough figures  to split into two TtS! armies (Anglo-Norman and Norman) based on the Battle of Tinchebrai (1106), thus plugging another historical gap in my collection of medievals.

The basing scheme and base sizes are rather random so I've decided to rebase them all. There are also quite a few unarmoured figures which have been painted as armoured so I'll also be dabbing a little paint on them to restore the look of textiles.

Once reorganised and rebased on 60mm wide bases the armies will fit a 75mm grid and thus a very compact 3' x 2' TtS! playing area.

To the Strongest! - first game

 

I put on and umpired a game of To the Strongest! at my local wargames club. Bernard commanded the Huns and allies (left) while Ian had the Romans and allies (right).

The Allans flanked the Ostrogoths (top) and the Visigoths pushed back the Huns (bottom). In the centre the Romans and their Frankish and other Germanic opponents traded blows fairly evenly.

I had already gone through some moves in a solo game a few days before, so I had a reasonable grasp of how the game is played. I don't think we forgot anything or made any mistakes. The players were quick to pick up the flow.

Most importantly my wargaming comrades enjoyed playing and have a positive view of the game, endorsing my own optimism and paving the way to play the game in the future.

The photo above shows the situation at the end of five game turns. The figures are all 15mm from my collection. The Allans are proxies.

The game didn't reach a decision but the Huns were under pressure. 

I'll be sorting out some Feudal era armies for the next game and we'll play with slightly fewer units and just two commands a side while we're becoming more familiar with the rules.

Rebasing without tears - DBx basing, steel sabots and magnetic storage

15mm Frankish Warriors in three
ranks, on and off steel sabots.

As a grid game To the Strongest! doesn’t stipulate any particular basing requirements, and as my 15mm Ancients and Medievals are already based for DBx, it's just a question of combining them into larger units. The figures all have magnetic sheet underneath their bases so the obvious solution was to put the DBx elements onto steel sabots. 

Retaining the original bases means they will also remain usable for other rules. I had already gone down this route to some extent in order to play Impetus so I just needed to get more steel bases of various depths.

After some thought and experiment I eventually decided on one sabot per unit and I am now absolutely convinced this was the best choice. If I ever play some other game requiring different basing, I'll just get more sabots of appropriate size.

15mm Late Roman cavalry, Auxilia, Legionaries and lights.

As I usually have to transport my armies on foot, I'm very keen on secure storage, so the sabots (with the figures on them) will in turn be placed into boxes lined with magnetic sheet. I've yet to find out just how well the figures stay on the sabots, but the sabots adhere strongly to the boxes. 

In fact, the attraction is so strong that I've had to put paper ‘ribbons’ under the bases so I can pull the sabots out without scattering the figures. Maybe there’s a slicker solution but this does seem to work.

15mm Feudal Scots with strips of paper to lift them out.
These figures were actually painted by me. The figures in the other photos weren't.

As mentioned above, I used to put magnetic sheet under the bases but it's much less trouble to snip off bits of magnetic tape. The tape is just a little narrower than the DBx base depths, so 12.5 mm for 15mm, 15mm for 20mm and 25mm for 30mm.

I currently get MDF bases and steel sabots from Products for Wargamers, magnetic tape from Magnetic Displays, and magnetic sheet from TinyTinTroops.

Dum vivimus vivamus!

Current reading focus: Late Antiquity

A happy new year to one and all! I can only hope that 2022 will see an end to the epidemic of fear. We need to live, not just be alive, and Covid is just another risk we have to manage rationally. 

As regards wargaming, my new year’s resolution was to make no resolutions. I certainly won't be formulating any grandiose plans and I hesitate even to mention current interests in case of raising expectations...but that's the point of this blog so I will.

My immediate activity is to continue reorganising my 15mm Ancient and Medieval armies in anticipation of playing To the Strongest! and in learning the rules. As ever, my wargaming interests run parallel to historical reading (when I get the time) and I am currently focusing on Late Antiquity.

The combination of 80mm frontages and a 4" grid (which I have chosen for TtS!) works so well for me that it has also set me thinking about rebasing my 25mm Renaissance armies on 80mm wide bases.

I intend to continue work on the 28mm Russian Civil War armies for The Men Who Would Be Kings as these will be easier to complete than many of my other, more colour-complex, 28mm armies.

Other than that I should move myself to finish the 6mm armies for Tilly's Very Bad Day as they are not far from completion.

28mm figures on 80mm bases from the collection of
Norm (Battlefields & Warriors blog). Great dynamism
in posing the figures and a true inspiration. More
pictures here.

I should not of course be starting  anything new but there are some significant historical gaps in my collection and it is hard to resist nice figures. One such gap is the Hundred Years War and the figures which draw me are the 28mm ranges from Claymore Castings and Antediluvian Miniatures. This would be for the Anglo-Scottish Wars (e.g. Otterburn 1388) rather than the Continental theatre.

In recent years I settled on using relatively small numbers of individually based 28mm figures for Rampant skirmish games and smaller scales for multibased mass armies. This project would be multibased 28mm figures, thus breaking what has been a very sensible policy. So, to keep things under control, I am again looking at 80mm wide units for use on a compact table. Quite a few gamers have gone down this path and I am particularly inspired by the Wars of the Roses figures (pictured above) belonging to Norm of the very content-rich Battlefields & Warriors blog. This is just the look I am after.

I have to admit that if using TtS! (which seems likely even though I haven't yet played it), the armies and the game would be little different from using my 15mm Feudal English and Scots. I guess it's all in the aesthetics.

To the Strongest!

Although gaming massed battles with Ancients was once my main wargaming activity, I've done very little of that in recent years.

I enjoy DBA but my circle of players haven't moved on to Third Edition and I don't want to take a backward step. I would never go back to DBM or its derivatives - too much unnecessary detail. I like Impetus basing but didn't take so much to the rules, though I haven‘t yet tried the current edition. ADLG was judged a good game but too demanding for a club evening. I’ve also played and enjoyed Sword and Spear but for one reason or another none of them stuck.

And then, by chance, I recently noticed To the Strongest! by Simon Miller of The BigRedBatCave blog, a set of rules that has been out for some time but which I had previously managed to overlook despite being on Simon’s mailing list at one point. I’ve now bought the rules and army lists and a new gridded mat, gathered some playing aids and have begun to reorganise and even supplement my collection of 15mm Ancients/Medievals.

I haven't yet played this game so I won't go into too much detail but they look very promising. Activation is at the game’s heart, providing the friction that reminds players they are mortal, and this is achieved not with dice but playing cards. Friction is essential in game design but too frustrating for some gamers! In TtS! activation failures are ameliorated by the ability of Generals to replay an activation card once per turn and there is also an amendment introducing group moves which reduces the chance of some units being inappropriately left behind. Players can also intervene by using 'Heroes' to replay missed 'to-hit' cards.

The other big feature is that like Commands and Colors, this is an area movement game played on a 12 x 8 grid. Grids are not to everyone’s taste, but they allow players to concentrate on generalship rather than geometry, eliminate measuring disputes and speed up play. If figures and scenery are good and the grid not too obtrusive, it will look and feel like a miniatures game, not a boardgame.

As a grid game TtS! doesn't demand any particular basing but I believe it's prudent to retain, more-or-less, DBX standards, albeit with the DBX bases combined onto larger sabot bases. As my 15mm Ancients/Medievals already have magnetic bases I can put them on steel sabots which means they will be detachable and still usable for Impetus, Dux Bellorum, ADLG, DBA or anything else my wargaming comrades agree to play.

I decided on 80mm frontages and 100mm (4”) boxes which means that units will be two DBX elements wide and the 4’ x 2’8” playing area will conveniently fit my modest dining-room table.

At the moment I am learning the rules but I hope to try them out in the near future.