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.

"No rules were broken"

Osprey's Undaunted: Normandy

I can give a categorical assurance that no wargame rules were broken during the last twelve months because very few games were attempted. I didn't fancy wargaming in a mask at my local club and I only managed two games at home (apart from computer games).

Although I could have played more games at home, my heart wasn't in it. The ennui that many wargamers reported quite early during the Lockdowns finally got to me.

The games I did play at home were of the Osprey board wargame, Undaunted: Normandy, with my good friend Ian.  The game is simple but subtle. The score was one all.

My 'meta-wargaming' was also modest:

1. I accumulated quite a lot of military books, particularly from Osprey and Helion, but didn't get much time to read them. I try to buy only slim books these days. I don't have time to read or room to store any more fat books.

2. I finished collecting, cleaned/constructed and based the 28mm Russian Civil War figures for The Men Who Would Be Kings, and clarified the minimal adaptions I would be using for extending the rules into the 20th Century.

3. I developed an interest in To the Strongest! and have started to reorganise my 15mm Ancient and Medieval armies. I’ve even bought some extra (painted) figures to fill gaps, but my main activity has been arranging figures into units on sabot bases.

4. Inspired by the simplicity but effectiveness of Undaunted: Normandy I made another attempt at writing my own WW2 fastplay rules but then lost interest in them again.

Overall this has been another depressing year. At this point I should probably say something optimistic but I can't think of anything.

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.

Warfare 2021

The Wargames Association of Reading's Warfare show took place last weekend. It's one of my favourite shows along with Cavalier and SELWG (when it was still in South London). 

This year's venue was Ascot Race Course which has an impressive building lit by natural light. What a pleasure after the awful 'aircraft hanger' experience at Excel. Saturday was an extremely cold day and the train from London had no heating. A bitterly cold wind was blowing in Ascot but the venue was a fairly short walk from the station and entry was handled efficiently. Strangely, there was no-one at the door giving out bumph.

I bought virtually nothing but I did take in the games. I don't attempt to catalogue the games at shows because others do this so well, but three caught my attention.

(Incidentally, I noticed when preparing this post that Blogger no longer 'holds' the photos you are uploading so if you are placing them one at a time you have to go through the same long process for each one. Blogger pretends to get better and better but actually just gets worse and worse.)

 

 

The heading photo and the two photos above are from a North American game of Muskets and Tomahawks presented by Combined Oppo's Wagames Group. Great work on the scenery including three grades of loose stones and gravel.

 

 Huntingdon & District Wargames Society presented this Rome versus Carthage DBA First Edition battle using HAT 52mm figures. A great choice for demo games.

Lastly, Jemima Fawr's Miniature Wargames Blog presented The Second Battle of Murfreesboro/Stones River 1862 using Fire and Fury. The superb scenery was outstandingly realistic.

My Blog List

My Blog List widget (right-hand margin) appears to be broken and is not accepting new additions or edits. I have, therefore, added a new instance of the widget and will be rebuilding the list before deleting the old one.

The old list has grown very long and does not necessarily reflect my current interests, so this will also be an opportunity to bring it up to date.

Salute 2021

This is admittedly a bit of a non-report. I'm glad for the return to normality, but I didn't get anything out of Salute myself. I was seeking inspiration and motivation, but failed to find any. 

 

Unusually, I didn't have a shopping list and don't currently have any burgeoning new interests, so it was a question of going with nothing and coming back with nothing.

I was vaguely looking for a 1/56 ready-made, ready-painted Russian building suitable for my RCW project, but didn’t see anything. The dim artificial lighting sadly remains the overwhelming feature of the venue and my ageing eyes struggle to see figures properly under these conditions. This rather removes the point of looking at trade stands and the pleasure of looking at games. Unless I have a pressing reason, this is probably the last time I will go to Salute.

Metals vs Plastics

On my workbench:  some more Copplestone
RCW cavalry, and Warlord Games
AWI infantry.

In a rare moment of opportunity and modest enthusiasm I tackled a sprue of 28mm Warlord Games American War of Independence militia that has  been knocking around for ages. I wanted some more figures in buckskin with long rifles for Rebels and Patriots and five out of the ten figures on the sprue were useable.

I can't remember why I got these instead of buying metal, but they might have been a free gift. Opinions about plastics amongst my friends are sharply divided. There are those with large plastic collections while some people just can't abide them.

I've bought painted plastic figures on eBay and IMO they mix well enough with metal on the tabletop, but I've never made any up. In fact, I can't remember doing anything like this since I made Airfix kits as a boy.

In theory assembling figures from bits provides opportunity for variation. In practice choice is limited. The detail, proportions and realism of the figures is good and  the job wasn't too challenging but there are some negatives. You have to be careful to find the right bits, e.g. matching arms. The fit wasn't perfect and requires some filler.  Above all the whole process was extremely fiddly mainly, I suppose, because plastic is very light.

Metal figures also require preparation, particularly clipping, cutting and filing. This sometimes requires a bit of strength but I've never found it fiddly. 

The finished product. They seem relatively free of plastic 
cement damage, unlike the kits I did as a boy!

The resulting poses are possibly not as convincing as one-piece metal figures but at least the long rifles are less likely to break. Once mounted on metal bases (2p coins) with added filler, the figures will seem more substantial.  Overall I'm pleased enough, or will be, but I'm not sure I'd want to do a whole army.

28mm Russian Civil War progress

After months of almost complete inactivity on the miniature painting and wargaming front, I found a little time to organise, clean, base and photograph my 28mm RCW figures for The Men Who Would Be Kings. I will be adding a few more figures, especially to the Whites, but the bulk is there.

The figures are mostly  Copplestone but there are some nice sculpts from Studio Siberia too. The White Coloured Regiment privates are Tsuba Russo-Japanese War Russians from Empress Miniatures in peakless caps. The Russian-variant Austin armoured-car is also from Empress.

The Reds: Elite Bolsheviks in Budenovka in lower left corner.
Commisar character in front of armoured-car.

The Whites: Elite Coloured Regiment unit in lower left corner.
The rest will be completed as Don Cossacks.