On the Painting Table (March 2017)

March has been one of the quietest months in terms of gaming, both miniatures and board gaming. Just a single game of Key to the City! The primary reason was a short holiday in Spain, but also Spring is happening, so various garden and house tasks need to be done.

I have managed to do the odd spot of painting in the evenings. I have completed 30 bases of 19^th Century figures for my Bloody Big Battles armies: Prussians, French and Austrians. All were 10mm Pendraken figures, which are nicely detailed for this scale and paint well. I use a single colour tone on black primed figures; I think this gives a nice appearance and is quick to complete. My armies have about 45 infantry bases in each, still short of the numbers required for the listed scenarios, but beginning to be suitable for some non-historic confrontations.

L to R: Prussians, French; Austrians

Hopefully April will be more productive gaming-wise, certainly I’m looking forward to attending Salute – My first show of the year!

Off the Painting Table (June 2016), part 2

One clear advantage of watching the Euro2016 football competition is that it provides plenty of time in which to finish those tedious but necessary tasks, such as the base texturing of painted figures. I have therefore completed the work on my late 19^th century armies of Austria, Prussia and France, as shown below:

French Army

Prussian Army

Austrian Army

I am pleased with the results and can now get on and play more Bloody Big Battles on the tabletop. I have also devised a method of ‘randomly’ generating forces for standalone games (I will discuss these in future AAR blog posts). My ‘lead pile’ for painting has again been cleared; inspiration for new projects awaits! I do require a few more Pendraken figures; each army could do with a bit more cavalry, and the Austrians require some rocket troops, plus some flags! I am looking forward to the ‘Attack’ show in Devizes and plan to spend some money there. I also hope to sell on the Bring and Buy stall my 6mm 19^th century armies, together with a pair of DBA 15mm samurai armies by Two Dragons that have sat on the selves unused.

Off the Painting Table (April 2016); part 2

I have had some ‘free’ time this week or so, and have pressed ahead with painting my 10mm FPW French troops. Progress has been excellent and I have completed the remaining figures: 10 bases of Line infantry, 6 bases of Chasseurs, 5 bases of cavalry, generals and 9 bases of artillery! A few photos below (the Chasseurs are out of focus, sorry). Next up are the Prussian opponents.

French Line Infantry

French Chasseurs

French Artillery

French Cuirassiers and Generals

Off the Painting Table (Apr 2016)

It has been a while since my bushes were used due to my indecision about what project to undertake next. Inspired by the Bloody Big Battles (BBB) rules I decided to buy some Pendraken 10mm armies for the Franco-Prussian War.

The first batch painted was 10 bases of French infantry. I chose a fairly bright blue for the tunic so the French army would contrast with a more blue-black colour to be used for the Prussians. The amount of detail on the castings is excellent and I am happy with the results obtained. The French look suitably bright and should stand out on the battlefield. I have not textured the bases yet because this can wait until the army is complete. The next group to be painted will be another 10 bases of French infantry, these will be followed by French chasseurs, artillery and finally cavalry. The Prussian forces will then follow, so I should have a few months of painting ahead.

On Saturday I visited the massive Salute show at Excel, London. The theme was ‘Steam Punk’ but this was not especially evident; I was expecting plenty of re-enactors and numerous demo games. The only re-enactors were the usual Star Wars Imperial troopers, and there was no preponderance of themed games, just the usual number of small scale games of Malifaux etc. There were a few zombie games but these hold little interest for me. I took no photos and others write better show reviews on various blogs, so the games that stood out for me included:

Vietnam game (25mm) by Essex Gamesters - beautiful battlefield and civilians.

ECW Siege of Bristol (28mm) by Crewe & Nantwich Club – great set up, not sure how works as a playable wargame.

Napoleonic Peninsular (28mm) by Victrix – beautiful but again not sure if playable.

SYW game (28mm) by Bill Gaskin – the most stunning game in the show in my opinion.

My Salute purchases included some trees from Last Valley, more 10mm Pendraken figures (1860’s Austrians), a copy of Bloody Big European Battles, a copy of Dropzone Commander (not sure why I bought this!). I resisted buying the new Baroque rules or the new ECW ‘The Kingdom is Ours’ rules from James Daniels. I was tempted by Horizon Wars by Osprey but these will wait until I have read a few reviews. The Chicago Way gangster rules by Great Escape Games almost got bought but I manfully resisted! I was interested to see Tomahawk Studios will be releasing a colonial set of rules, Congo, later in the year.

Whilst at Salute I bumped into my wargaming friend, Ian. We sat down to play a demo game of Peter Pig ACW riverine rules, ‘Hammering Iron’. I took the Union monitor force versus Ian with the Rebel force of Ironclads and steamers. Other players joined us, and a boy (13-14 years old) joined me and took control of the USS Monitor. What followed was an amazing game. My companion successively fired on 3 different Rebel vessels, each time doing enough damage to produce a critical hit dice roll: he rolled double 6 three times in a row, blowing up the enemy ships! The look on Ian’s face, his fellow Rebel players, and the game Umpires was a sight to remember. Ian and I later calculated the probability of 3 successive double 6’s to be 46,650:1 !!! I hope the luck has rubbed off on me!

First impressions of Bloody Big Battles!

Since the New Year my wargaming activity has declined, partly due to a busy social schedule but also because I don’t currently have any on-going projects. At the Warfare show in November there was  considerable interest in a new set of rules, Bloody Big Battles! (BBB) written by Chris Pringle (published by Skirmish Campaigns), which focussed on the European wars of the late 19^th century. The demonstration games looked impressive and the organisers (including the rules author) were happy to chat and discus the publication and related lists, website etc. I purchased a copy of the rules and hoped to use them with the small 6mm armies I already possessed for this period. I had initially played using the Principle of War (PoW) rules but I have found myself less and less enthusiastic about the rules, and as a result the figures have remained in their boxes for many years now. Maybe BBB will prove to be the answer and breathe new life into this interesting period of history.

I have now played a number of solo games using the rules and feel able to express my opinion on them. Essentially the rules are very, very similar to the well known American Civil War rules, Fire and Fury (F&F), which I really like and have discussed in a previous blog post. The turn structure and basic mechanics are the same with the major change being the replacement of the 1D10 dice roll to the use of 2D6. The replacement of the F&F linear probability with bell curve probability is something I have long considered doing myself but never got around to, so finding it in BBB interested me. There has long been a debate amongst wargame rule designers about the relative importance of ‘average’ or ‘extreme’ outcomes and the effect on game flow and historic simulation. I think the best summary of the arguments can be found in Brent Oman’s introduction to the Piquet rules, although he clearly falls into the ‘extreme’ camp. Surprisingly, I found the change to using 2D6 in BBB did not have a big effect. Yes, the dice results were generally less extreme but it is shocking how often I managed to throw snake-eyes or box-cars at the most inappropriate times! So, like F&F the BBB rules give a good game that flows well, and is simple and fast to play. But the Franco-Prussian War is not just a European version of the American Civil War, and does BBB reflect this difference? I think it does on the whole. The French units are normally designated as ‘passive’ and receive a negative modifier when activated. The French infantry are armed with the excellent Chassepot rifle which out-performs the Prussian Dreyse Needlegun in range and accuracy, and this encourages the French player to sit-back, take a passive stance and keep the enemy at bay. In contrast the Prussian player has to push to close quarters irrespective of losses and therefore act in an aggressive manner. The Prussian artillery is noticeably better than the French counterparts and can be used to good effect, in fact I would like the Prussian artillery to have been rated slightly better in the rules. My one concern with the rules is the handling of the French Mitrailleuse which can pump out a lot of firepower at close range. There is no restriction on how the French player can utilise this weapon and he can deploy such units as frontline infantry support. My understanding is that the French historically misused this ‘secret’ weapon, the Mitrailleuse, by putting it under artillery command and deploying it too far back due to fear of the technology falling into Prussian hands. Cavalry in this period always represents a problem in terms of battlefield performance, and BBB seems deal with the issue by the small size of cavalry units whereby any losses destroy the unit. I have yet to explore whether larger (4-5 base) cavalry units can be more effective.

In addition to the rules, BBB provides a series of historic scenarios covering the early Imperial period of the Franco-Prussian war, with well laid out OOB and battlefield set up. I’m ambivalent concerning historic refights but these listings will provide a useful tool for calculating force compositions for my own battles and scenarios. I believe the author has published an accompanying booklet covering other battles of the period including the Franco-Austrian War, Seven Weeks War and others.

In conclusion, I like these rules. Firstly, I played using my 6mm armies but found the scale to be too small and fiddlely, so later games were played using card mounting board bases with no figures. For this reason I have not included any photos of the games. I am now considering selling my 6mm armies and instead moving up in scale. I think 28mm is too large, 15mm would be good but I am inclined to buy Pendraken 10mm instead. I like Pendraken castings, good painting detail can be achieved and the cost is low; less than £100 will provide for two reasonably sized, balanced forces.

Finally, I believe I have found my next wargame project!