2022 Roundup

One of many additions to my
library of books I have no
time to read...

2022 has been almost exclusively a year of playing To the Strongest! and I happily achieved more than I expected. I reorganised and supplemented my old 15mm Ancients and Medievals and played quite a few games with my friend, Ian, in 6mm, 15mm and 28mm, but we weren't able to lure in any other club members. (It's a small club, DBA 2.0 is well established and people like playing Lion Rampant, as do I.)

I also dug out my old 25mm Sassanids for future TtS! consideration and accumulated some 10mm Normans which were supplemented and rebased. That project was spread over a couple of weeks and constituted my sole annual painting/modelling effort. I had planned to go to the Warfare show so I could see other people playing TtS! outside of our self-taught bubble, but that expedition fell through.

Towards the end of the year I was kindly introduced to Blucher and received my copy of Xenos Rampant. With TtS! these are areas I will be exploring next year. More details in my first post of 2023.

It's been another year in which I haven't had much time to do any reading, but my ability to buy books has never diminished. Sadly they seem to come with ever thinner and more shoddy covers.

Like the rest of my wargaming activities, my blogging is not doing much more than ticking over and this has not had a good effect on readership or interactivity.

May I wish my remaining readers a happy New Year!

Xenos Rampant unit profiles for Near Future Sci-Fi forces

Some Brigade Models reinforcements with
Heavy Weapons for the Elite Infantry.

I've been working on Xenos Rampant unit profiles for my 15mm Near Future Sci-Fi Detachments. These are mostly collected and even undercoated but I am waiting on a few new additions.

One of these forces has a neo-Soviet flavour and was originally inspired by the early Russian insurgency in Ukraine. The other was conceived as a sort of US/NATO force. The current frightfulness has made me uncomfortable with that so I am rebranding them as the forces of Eurasia and Oceana.

The profiles basically follow what seems credible for the look of the models. The Oceana force is a little more hi-tech. I'm aware that the points costs are high which might mean some dumbing down and almost certainly having Detachments of more than the standard 24 points. We found the same thing with Dragon Rampant as opposed to Lion Rampant.

Eurasia

Spider Drone Swarm
Elite Infantry 6
Armour-Piercing 1, Heavy Weapons 2, Mechanoid 0
9

Infantry Squad
Light Infantry 1
Armour-Piercing 1, Heavy Weapons 2, Brutal Leader 1
5

HMG Squad
Support Infantry 5
Armour-Piercing 1, Heavy Weapons 2
8

AT Squad (RPGs)
Support Infantry 5
Anti-Tank 2
7

Tank
Fighting Vehicle 6
SMU, Armour-Piercing 1
7

IFV
Transport Vehicle 4
SMU
4

Walker
Fighting Vehicle 6
SMU, Armour-Piercing 1,Walker 2
9

Aerial Gunship
Fighting Vehicle 6
SMU, Area Effect 2, Armour-Piercing 1, Light Armoured Vehicle -2, Flying 2
9

Oceana

Powered-Armour Squad
Elite Infantry 6
Armour-Piercing 1, Heavy Weapons 2, Mobile 1
10

Bike Squad
Light Infantry 1
Armour-Piercing 1, Mobile 1, Skimmer 1
4

Jetpack Infantry Squad
Light Infantry 1
Armour-Piercing 1, Heavy Weapons 2, Mobile 1 Skimmer 1
6

Infantry Squad
Light Infantry 1
Armour-Piercing 1, Heavy Weapons 2
4

Aerial Drones
Recon Infantry 2
Flying 2, Mechanoid 0
4

HMG Squad
Support Infantry 5
Armour-Piercing 1, Heavy Weapons 2, Indirect Fire 1
9

AT Squad (Mini-Missiles)
Support Infantry 5
Anti-tank 2
7

Mortar Squad
Support Infantry 5
Engulfing 1, Indirect Fire 1
7

Tank
Fighting Vehicle 6
SMU Armour-Piercing 1, Skimmer 1
8

IFV
Transport Vehicle 4
SMU Skimmer 1
5

MRLS
Fighting Vehicle 6
SMU Area Effect 2, Artillery 2, Indirect Fire 1, Light Armoured Vehicle -2
9

High Mobility Wheeled Vehicle
Soft-skin Vehicle 2
SMU, Transport (5) 1
3

Aerial Gunship
Fighting Vehicle 6
SMU, Armour-Piercing 1, Light Armoured Vehicle -2, Flying 2
7

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20th Century Rampant?

Irish War of Independence

I wrote here about adapting the Rampant Colonial Rules, The Men Who Would Be Kings, for the early Twentieth Century, particularly for the Russian Civil War, Irish War of Independence and Mexican Revolution.

I had quite a few original (and stolen) ideas about how to do this but never got round to trying them out. The publication of the Sci-Fi Xenos Rampant set, replete with vehicle rules, now seems to provide not only a more suitable starting point but may suffice without adaption.

Have Daniel Mersey and Richard Cowan developed the killer app of skirmish wargame rules? I see indications that XR is absorbing games that were previously played with other rules...Games Workshop beware!

Anyway, here are some examples of my very provisional take on some relevant unit definitions. Some are straight from the suggested army lists.

IWI Auxiliaries
Heavy Infantry
Increased Squad Size
Heavy Weapons (Lewes Gun) 

IWI Regular British Infantry
Light Infanty
Increased Squad Size
Heavy Weapons (Lewes Gun)

IWI RIC/Volunteers
Light Infantry
Increased Squad Size
Undisciplined

IWI Shotgun squad
Light Infantry
Close Quarters Doctrine
Undisciplined

HMG
Support Infantry

IWI Lancia armoured truck
Transport Vehicle
SMU
Transport (10)

IWI Crossley Tender
Soft-skin Vehicle
SMU
Civilian
Transport (10)

RCW Cavalry
Berserk Infantry
Increased Squad Size
Mobile

RCW Heavy Tank
Fighting Vehicle
SMU
Anti-Personnel Specialism (Female)/Armour-Piercing (Male)
Slow
Unstable

RCW Light Tank
Fighting Vehicle
SMU
Anti-Personnel Specialism

Armoured Car
Fighting Vehicle
SMU
Anti-Personnel Specialism
Light Armoured Vehicle

RCW Tschanka
Soft-skin Vehicle
SMU
Civilian
Technical

Xenos Rampant

I collected some 15mm Sci-Fi/Near Future forces to play Gruntz 15mm but never got round to completing the project. The publication of Xenos Rampant by Daniel Mersey and Richard Cowan has renewed my interest in the genre. My friend Ian implied that my armies are “not true Sci-Fi” but I’m old school and find a grimey near future or post-Apocalyptic concept more credible than, say, the more exotic Fantasy-tinged Sci-Fi world of Games Workshop. Each to their own.

Happily XR is a remarkably rich and flexible set of rules which will seemingly accommodate any flavour of Sci-Fi. It’s clever, imaginative and colourful and also betrays an appealingly dry sense of humour. Although Gruntz 15mm also looked very good, I‘m swayed by the ease of adopting another Rampant system game which is also likely to go down well in the local club.

On the downside my SF collection includes a lot of vehicles which is not a good match for XR's infantry bias, and I spent a few days looking at 28mm figures as an alternative. I particularly liked the CP Models and Pig Iron figures and may get some next year, but I also decided to keep the 15s as the model ranges are more extensive and the on-table weapons ranges more convincing.

My existing figures are Ground Zero Games (UNSC faction), Armies Army Russian insurgents (now available from The Scene), and some figures in power armour from Brigade Models. Even though I am not short of vehicles, I've ordered a couple of new ones in the light of current military developments as well as some additional infantry support models.

Blucher - Making a late start

Blucher campaign extensions and army packs.

Seven years after buying the rules I finally got round to an introductory game of Blucher, Sam Mustafa's grand-tactical Napoleonic game.

Many thanks to fellow club member, Simon, who organised and umpired the game. My opponent, Dave, commanded a Spanish force in defensive positions while I attacked with the French. I eventually managed to take a village in the centre of the Spanish position, but did not achieve the breakthrough I was hoping for. Simon pointed out that I should have made more use of my troops' superior skirmishing ability before rushing in.

Napoleonics are a foundational wargaming period. I've flirted with them over many years, but I'm no expert. While the tactics of column, line and square are for many the very essence of period flavour, I'm more pulled by grand-tactical games that allow one to fight whole historical battles, at least potentially.

Blucher is widely played and reviewed so it's rather late to go into detail about the rules. What I do want to write about is the use of the pre-printed unit cards and some thoughts on modelling terrain.

While the game we played employed conventional 6mm scale scenery, the armies consisted of the commercially available preprinted unit cards and I have to say that I was so engrossed in the game that I never missed or even thought about the absence of lead (or plastic) figures.

I now have all the extension sets and army packs, and these give me far more wargaming flexibility than a collection of model figures rooted in one time and place. Although I have 6mm Napoleonic armies that I was going to use, I'll now stick with the cards.

Two of the great advantages of card, tablet or block armies are their modest storage requirements and the ease with which they can be transported, and I'm thinking about scenery which meets the same criteria.

While I could create purely 2D scenery using felt, I'm currently considering slightly more realistic scenery which is nevertheless in ultra-low relief. Done properly I think it could look quite good and rather like an aerial perspective.

I already have a good collection of game mats, relatively shallow hills and roads and rivers, so that leaves urban and forest areas. For villages I'm thinking of using a template with low grey rectangles to represent houses, although I do have some Monopoly houses and hotels that could be put to use. I also have some 2mm lead buildings, but part of the aim here is to reduce weight and maintain a symbolic style. The houses would be of uniform height (no church steeples) so that unit cards could sit level on the top when villages are garrisoned. Forests would be templates covered in clump foliage, again of uniform height.

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.

Blog List Update

I deleted the old blog roll gadget but still couldn't get new instances to display properly. After several reinstalls and some trial and error, I discovered the new problem hinged specifically on how each individual blog was added.

The blog roll is OK now, but I'll cover the issue in some detail for the benefit of any fellow bloggers who still have the same problem. One of the most frustrating aspects of this saga was the lack of information or help.

For each blog I found that I needed to enter the URL and the title freshly, either by typing or pasting. You will then get the following dialogue box, and I choose the first option: 

 

If, however, you allow Blogger to autocomplete the entry, the blog will be added but it will display like this and appear at the bottom:

 

Presumably there's no feed. I haven't exhaustively experimented with every permutation. This works for me so I'm sticking with it. Done properly, the blog in question appears like this and in the correct order:

Blog rolls are important. They promote other blogs with shared interests, they provide the most convenient basis for interactivity, and they draw readers. I know of one person at least for whom my blog roll is his starting point for wargame surfing.

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.