Couple of bargains from the corner shop

Having been checking out the price of a few toy cars to use a scenery etc. on eBay, I was somewhat dismayed to see once a couple of quid was added for postage there weren't really any great bargains.

Then I walked into my local newsagent to pick up a pint of milk and I saw these two beauties marked down to I think a fiver each from memory. They're from a 007 range and scale beautifully with 28mm figures (I've put one each in shot). I've got lots of 28mm Call of Cthulthu figures which is what attracted me to the vintage black Citroen, but thought it would be good for anything from 1920s through to 1950s. I was so pleased with this I went back for the red one, which I thought would be good for an 'Underworld' based Vampires versus Werewolves game that I have some unpainted figures around somewhere for.

First outing for the Lord of the Rings army - Mirrormere

So having been distracted from getting our Lord of the Rings toys on the table for over a year, I dropped the suggestion to Ben, and me, Steve and Ben, partly through the medium of this blog assessed our forces. Using the clubs blog Ben suggested we go for a Dwarves versus Goblin scenario to get Steve's Balrog on the table.  We attempted to co-ordinate efforts for the scenario on the forum too, but mercifully Ben stepped in on the night with a fully thought out idea for the game.

He wanted to do a 'Mirrormere' type game, when Balin met his death. He was actually shot by an arrow, but we thought we'd throw a Balrog into the mix.

Dwarves had to get back to the gates of Moria (foreground). Goblin ambushers swoop in from three directions

I'll leave the telling of the tale to Steve and Ben who wrote up proceedings on the club forum:

So after much toing and froing on the forum and by text the lord of the rings game staggered into life . Using a combination of mine , petes and bens and with scenery by the above and simon the game looked good ( loved the dwarves ! ) and played very well too . Ben took the dwarves and to get balin lord of moria out of an ambush . Both sides started with some troops on the table and recieved reinforcements as the game progressed . Thanks to ben for his early dice rolling which meant dwarves and goblins were causing equal casualties . He then began to stage a bit of a come back to make it really interesting but still had the decency to feed balin to the balrog at the end . Seems there are lots of figures owned by club members for this games system and look forward to trying out other scenarios and armies

Balin, himself (sorry all attempts to rotate this pic have failed)

If think the decision to feed the Balrog was rather taken out of my hands after you had eaten the rest of his body guard  It was the best game of LOTR I have played though  . I think between us all there must be a good 600 - 700 figures. :  

Oh and the final kill count was: 
42 Goblins 
1 Troll 
1 Embarrassed although uninjured Balrog. 

to 30 Dwarves and Balin

Balrog 'Durin's Bane', rises out of the depths of Moria

Dwarves thinned out Balin's bodyguard with some accurate archery and managed to swamp these  unfortunate stragglers

Balin himself did a better job of holding the Goblins at bay

The Balrog makes a bee-line for Balin

Despite making a break for it with half his bodyguard Balin is encircled

Alerted to the cries of help a force of dwarves emerges from the gates of Moria to try to rescue the ambushed king

Dwarf bowmen take down a troll, while Balin's bodyguard valiantly hurl themselves one at a time at the Balrog to stop the creature reaching their king

My goblin archers turn to try and slow down the relief force pouring out of Moria

Finally the Balrog is free from blocking kamikaze dwarf bodyguards...

...and wins the initiative so can turn on Balin

...

Balin gets lucky on the first combat roll...

....nevertheless, Simon thought he'd get Balin's tomb ready!

Over of the far side of the table Dwarf rangers have done a good job holding off  a mob of goblins commanded by Simon, but finally he gets some good rolls and they start going down like nine-pins...

...With the remenants of Balin's bodyguard each swamped by hordes of goblins, the Balrog moves in for the kill as  no less than 3 other goblins hem Balin in...

The Moria relief force starts to turn the battle against the blocking force of Goblins

The goblins rush some more archers to block the relief force

More Goblins go done the relief force has nearly broken through

Unbelieveable! The Balrog rolls a one and Balin wins the combat driving back his assailants!

But this time the Balrog quickly takes back the initiative and Balin, with the creature to his back, is swamped on all sides by half a dozen goblins...

...Finally Balin falls to the fiery Balrog!

Although slaughtered goblins lie everywhere they have done enough to hold off the Moria relief force

The dwarf rangers are also overwhelmed

Balin put to rest in his tomb

First game of Saga (and other games on at the club)

I'v been itching for a while to have a go at 'Saga' the Dark Age 'skirmish' rules (or as I prefer to call them 'small group action rules' - which all 'skirmish' rules seem to be these days as opposed to distinguish the man-to-man skirmishes I remember from my youth as in Donald Featherstone's 'Skirmish Wargaming' , the spriit of which is only preserved in the 'Desperado' game we play). These rules are not about the set piece battles but the Viking raids, and also the 'blood feuds' which so dominated much of Dark Age history, when the fate of a Kingdom as much hung on a bunch of blood thirsty King or Lord's men committing murder and atrocity, as massed armies meeting on the battlefield.

Ginge kindly offered to teach me the rules. He had a band of Vikings. I took along some choice figures from my Anglo-Saxon armies. I could have fielded 'Anglo-Saxons' or 'Anglo-Danish', but chose the latter. We kept it small to learn the rules - just 4 points (ie. 4 units) a side.

I choose two Huscarles units (Hearthguard), some Ceorls (Warriors) and some Geburs (levies). Ginge a Hird unit (Hearthguard), small Beserkers (Hearthguard) and two Bondi (Warrior) units. I realised straight away we set up that choosing the Gebur (Levies) could be a major liability straight away. Levies don't get one of the all important 'Saga' Dice, and with just 4 units each my Levies would have to do their darnest to take out a Viking unit pretty sharpish before it came to close combat.

The Vikings didn't mess about and on the first turn rushed their Beresekers and Hirdmen two moves forward taking a 'Fatigue' point to do so.

I moved my Coerls up as a 'blocking force', with one unit of Huscarles and my 'Big Guy' (an Earldorman I think) behind, another Huscarle unit on their flank and the Geburs spending a fatigue point to rush into cover on my right flank.

On my right flank I was desperate to get as many shots in with my Geburs before a rampaging band of Bondi hit me, but Ginge used one of his Saga dice to cancel out a whole fllight of arrows. Damn! With just the odd man taken out by arrows his Bond were at my Gebur archers across the wall.

In the centre his 'Big Man' led the Berserkers in against my Coerls. Beserkers are really nasty. Hearthguard get two hits per figure, but Berserkers get DOUBLE that. Ouch!! With his Big Man attacking too my 8 Coerls were completely wiped out!

...But there was more than a silver lining as it turned out. Berserkers may dish it out but don't have the armour protection of normal 'Hearthguard', so in striking back I scored lots of hits on his Berserkers and slaughtered all four of the screaming lunatics!

Crimean game on one of the other tables - see our clubs website for some sumptious close-ups

Another one of the Crimean game

The Coerl;s wiping out the Berserkers was even better this meant that his 'Big Man' who had led the charging Berserkers in was standing there on his own, knackered out from a charge and combat (two fatigue counters). My Huscarles were momentarily disturbed my seeing the Coerl unit slaughtered (one fatigue counter) but shook it off easily with one of my Saga dice and refreshed (presumably from a quick quaff of ale before the fight) both my Huscarles and the Ealdormen strolled in on the exhausted Viking leader and laid about him with axes!

While this was going on my other Huscarl (Hearthguard) unit charged into a unit of Bondi (Warriors) before they could get at my Gebur Levy Archers.

My Warlord and Huscarles made short work of the Viking warlord, which left me thinking the game was virtually in the bag, but then disaster - 7 Viking Bondi warriors stuck at my 4 Huscarles and all scored hits, my defensive dice could not save them-they were brutally wiped cut down....

....from there things went from bad to worse. With the Geburs not getting a Saga Die, I was finding it difficult to do much two units down and with just a Huscarl unit and my warlord generating Saga dice. The rest of the Viking force attacked my huscarles and the Bondi rampaged on into my archers. I fortunately didn't take any pictures of the sorry end to this saga..

Nevertheless I found Saga an interesting and engaging game. The key is clearly in mastering how to use your 'Battleboard' to make the most of your army, and I could see particularly using some 'combination punches' with different Saga abilities was the key to getting an edge,

Here's a few more pics of other games at the clubs...

Another of the games being played that night ...Uncharted Seas...a Fantasy Naval  Game

Close up of one of the Uncharted Seas Ships...very tempting!

A final shot of the Crimean game

I've

WW1 - some additions to the German forces

Just a quick and belated entry for a model bought last year, one for Christmas and one for my birthday.

At the top is an AV7, a WW1 tank or the Germans with a real 'steampunk' look about. Could be straight out of the (dreadful) 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' as the sort of diabolical machine the dastardly German top secret intelligence were designing to fight the (then) next war. I understand this was deployed long before blitzkrieg tactics were considered (an idea developed by British military thinkers anyway and the idea picked up by the Germans and put into practice before the British did). Only 7 were produced. It was introduced in 1918 and were only deployed singularly, so one model is enough.

The other two were much more famous, the 'Red Baron's' Focker triplane and a Fokker DVII. Obviously itching to get more of these, but as I'm getting them to complement land battles will do for a bit of trench strafing.

Compared to the kit you need for a WW2 army, even a few more planes will be a low cost outlay.

Three new toys!

French Eagles for 20mm Napoleonics

 Having used the flags from the 'Warflags' site for my ACW army and been very pleased with the results, I decided I really had to replace the flags on my Napoleonic armies before they could see action. I had tried using them before, but made the mistake of scaling them down to fit the flag poles with the 'diddy' little flags moulded on to the figures, rather than replacing the lot. With my ACW armies I found that using the flags as available on the site, which are strictly speaking over-scaled for 20mm figures being for 25mm figures, actually looked much, much better. The tricky thing for the French was that they came with 'Eagles' on the top, which I had to cut off and try not to lose while replacing the plastic flag with a wire flag pole and paper flag, and using tweezers to carefully reposition again with a blob of PVA.

I've done about fifteen flag bearers for my French army, some British and Allied, and stuck on the flagpoles but not printed flags (and in most cases not painted the figures) for my Russians and the Prussians Landwher (not attempted Prussian regulars or Austrians yet). These are the French, above is just the flagbearer with an officer figure, below what they look like with a 36 figure unit. Personally, I think they massively improve the look of a unit. Will now have to find time to sit down and finish painting the shako plumes etc., varnish and base the 300 odd French infantry I have to finish to complete this army, and similar with the 600 odd British sitting nearly finished, and paint the generals, standard-bearers and some more cavalry for the Russian (Prussians still fair bit further off and Austrian's still lacking heavy cavalry and artillery). Still only started this lot in 1997, so not too badly behind schedule!!!

'Plain Terrain' Features: Work in progress

So as discussed in my previous blog post '"Plain Terrain" Features: The Concept', the idea behind a 'Plain Terrain' feature is to be a 'half-way house' between just using a plain cloth and a full set of terrain boards to game on, hopefully getting at least some of the visual appeal that comes with using terrain boards, but at only a fraction of the requirement for storage space. Even if they don't work out I should at least have some nice boards to photo my figures on for this blog.

First up I've marked up my board, some 3mm MDF from Wickes. I've gone for one large rectangular field with rounded off corners, one smaller field (initially started marking up two, but changed my mind), and several irregular areas. I wanted to make sure they would all go in a large storage box, so used the lid to make sure none would be too big.

I popped on a unit of 28mm figures to check size/scale. I could have made them a bit bigger, but then I couldn't get them in a storage box, so not a bad compromise.

Changed my mind on some of the smaller sizes, when I saw this. Some I'll have to go with because they are the result of what's left, but I'll consolidate those two they are sitting on into one.

This is a 36 figure 20mm Napoleonic unit for scale. Looks the sort of size I wanted...

...10 minutes later and I've whipped my jigsaw out and cut them up. Some of the smaller scraps I'll use for actual terrain features - eg. jungle stands or for bases to mount 'rock piles' on...

...incidently this is the sand I use for basing and would recommend it. In fact, it took me a little bit of scouting out to find the 'right' sand. It's actually called 'builders ballast' and has lots of small stones in it. Its cheap (about a quid a bag) and I've been using this bag to base my figures and make terrain for about four years - it fact it's being carted through 3 house moves! The big advantage is that you get 'rough' sand. If you want finer sand you can sieve it, or just use the stuff at the bottom. Fine sand bought in DIY shops doesn't look as good on bases and is often a funny colour (eg. bright orange) so you have to paint it. You can paint this stuff, but it is an 'earthy' colour so you don't have to. It is generally 'wet' in the bag, so you have to dry batches out to use. I just do this by spreading out on a tray to dry in the sun on a warm sunny day. This is a large batch I dried out a couple of weeks ago:

You can see all the small stones in it. Some are a bit big but you just push them to one side.

Next on with the trusty PVC glue. The funny thing about PVA is the more you buy the cheaper it gets in a dramatic way. DIY shops and stationers like WH Smith charge ridiculous amounts of money for tiny amounts of this stuff, eg. £3.50 for 150ml (ie. close to £30 a litre). If you buy a 1 litre tub it could cost you £7-8. This 2 litre tub cost a tenner (ie. £5 a litre), but you can also get 4 litre plastic containers for only £14 (ie. about £2.50 a litre). As far as I can tell its all the same stuff!   Madness! Just running out of this one. Next time, I think I'll go for the 4 litre size as I might be making some more terrain.

Once well plastered, I pour handfuls of sand over it. If I wanted a 'desert board' this would probably be all I had to do. I've got some different Gale Force 9 flocks and static grasses, so I might test out one of the more exotic ones on this one, such as 'Moorland' after maybe painting it a darker brown.

These are a sample of different ones I've knocked up so far. The small rectangular field at the back I've gone over and used a stick to put some 'plough-marks' on it. I'll see what it looks like when its dried. If it looks good I'll leave it, or maybe just paint it. If they end up looking a bit indistinct, I'll maybe sprinkle some lines of scatter on it to look like growing crops and make it more obvious. The big irregular board I'm going to try turning into 'rough pasture'. One of the things you find basing minitures is that with static grass in terms of effect, 'less is more', with small patches of scatter put on tiny blobs of glue looking much better than dense areas glued and covered. So I'll be testing out if that look will make a good-looking piece of 'plain terrain' on a larger scale. I also want to try out some as meadows, but I'm not sure that static grass is worthwhile, and might use try some green paint with a light green dry brushed over, leaving some patches of bare sand here and there.

The small scraps have been turned into 'rock stands', which use up the larger stones in the builders ballast. You can, of course, just scatter rocks on the table, but they are a pain to pick up at the end, so I find 'rock stands' more effective. I've done some on card, but they can look scruffy if the card curls, so I'm trying these on the more solid MDF. As well as 'dressing' a table, the rock stands can be useful terrain features in skirmish games, eg. Wild West or Colonial eg. North West Frontier, and also can be useful in marking 'crests' on hills, and improving the look of 'flat' hills, while like model trees being easy to move around if they get 'in the way' of moving a unit.

Unfortunately started to run out of PVA before I finished, but I'll see how the five boards I've done so far turn out, before buying some more and doing the rest.

The PVA can take up to a couple of days to really dry out, so I've put them in my workshop attic to dry before applying static. You can do this at the same time as sticking on the sand, but I've generally got better results applying it after, as it's easy to spill some and it is too much and looks messy, compared to the nice small 'clumps' you can get with tiny amounts of glue if you're patient.

I had thought that one board would give me enough pieces, but realise I might want to get a few different 'looks' for different games. I wiill get some of this by changing cloths - the boards like 'field' or the 'rough pasture' should have quite a different on a 'green' cloth to putting them on my 'desert' cloth. But also I think I'll probably want some more fields, maybe some 'desert' sand boards, a bit more meadow, maybe some 'moorland', maybe some paddy fields for Far Eastern games, and maybe something a bit more exotic ('Martian orange' or 'Lunar concrete grey'?) for Sci-Fi games. As long as they are fairly flat, I should get quite a few packed away in one large storage box.

UPDATE:

Today proved quite a good 'drying' day so was able to move to applying 'static grass' faster than expected. Here are the results, including a shot of the 'rough pasture' with (20mm) Napoleonic Skirmishers and (28mm) LotR Gondor Knights. The piece should look like a 'dry' piece of terrain on a green cloth, and a 'fertile' piece of ground on a sand desert cloth. Perfect for a bit of urban 'waste ground', 'worn' or 'over-grazed' clearing or Spanish hillside or Western chaparral. I think I might change my mind on experimenting with different effects on the other irregular boards. Three or four of these boards to throw down on a plain cloth should make the whole table look really goooodddd!!! If nothing else I should be able to take nicer looking pics of my figures with it!