Hobby Update 12th April 2022

The hobby time has bounced back a little after a short fallow period - mainly due to real estate issues at home as much as anything else.  But I have a set up which is working okay at the moment.  I have managed to get a few games in - there are still a couple which I have not round to writing up for the blog. 

First on the bench have been these Games Workshop figures featuring the party of dwarves plus Bilbo and Gandalf from The Hobbit.  The film likenesses were brought out very well in these figures!  As ever, my paint jobs are strictly at the functional end of the spectrum, but the paint job doesn't stop the figures coming through, IMHO.

Alongside them, I have been doing some of Gripping Beast's Dark Age Warriors.  Quite simple to put together and paint, they are pretty nice and I daresay I will find some uses for them!  At the back are a few of the Female Soldiers from the Frostgrave Soldiers II box.  I also got some Frostgrave Barbarians and some Stargrave crew, so they will be along shortly too, I hope.

 

Also on the painting bench at the moment are the 1/300 plastic aircraft from Plastic Soldier Company's Battle of Britain set.  They are quite nice really, looking forward to finishing them off too and getting some slightly prettier air warfare battles done!

I visited the Hammerhead show last month.  I had meant to spend a full day there, but my eldest daughter asked to come along, so that meant shortening it to a visit of a few hours instead.  My bank manager will thank her, I was ready to splash lots of cash in one go, which is pretty unlikely me!  Don't worry traders, I will make it up to you by Partizan, at the very latest.

It seemed busier than usual, particularly the pavilion and there looked to be a considerable scrum around the bring-and-buy tables the whole time I was there. 

Anyway, I got shots of a few games.  First up was a SYW battle from the Like A Stonewall group.  This used 40mm semi-flat Prince August figures, which I have a considerable soft spot for, since I had several Prince August sets as a kid.  They were going for a largely 'old-school' aesthetic, which I think they achieved, broadly:

My daughter got to roll some dice for the Austrians and seemed to roll impressively high! It was a very nice-looking game, but for my personal gaming I think this is the kind of thing I love to do with Neil Thomas' rules with more figures on the table in an eighth of the space in an eighth of the time.

Next one to catch my eye was a really good Star Wars game, with most of the models 3D-printed, the lady was explaining.  I didn't see the game itself underway, but all the toys looked really nice.

Combined land/naval games always look really good at shows.  I think this was a pirate game by COGS.  It was a huge physical game, but looked like a very large skirmish I think?  Anyway, lovely, lovely toys.

I think this next one was a What a Tanker game, by the Harrogate club, maybe? My companion (my eldest daughter) thought the buildings in this one were particularly nice.

This next was a real eye-opener, 'The Last Stand of George Thomas', one of those people whose lives truly were much stranger than most fiction!  Anyway, as ever, The Boondock Sayntes put on amazing looking games and are full of period knowledge - and I believe they won a well-deserved award for it.

Loving the big Kali model in the centre!

Can never get enough of Sikhs piling forward, regardless of period or location!

Very British Civil War stuff, truly the best ever setting for getting loads of random stuff onto the table!

A nice, bijou Sudan set-up:

And of course Pony Wars! Brought out of retirement.  Had a really interesting chat with one of the game presenters who was part of Ian Beck's original team.  I was able to explain what an impact this game had had on my thinking about wargames - that for some periods like this one, and for many later, that procedural generation of the enemy and neutrals had much to recommend it, since the opposing commanders were not really engaged in a recognisable face-off in the way that a SYW battle is 'about' Montcalm and Wolfe directly pitting their wits against each other.  I genuinely think it was one of those 'ahead of its time' concepts.  As the guy put to me, it was almost like a computer game but translated perfectly to the tabletop.

Pony Wars has such a distinctive look!

I did a bit of shopping too, but perhaps not as much as I had intended - there were still plenty of pennies left in the purse at the end of the day.  Partly this was because the show was really rammed and I just couldn't get to the Bring and Buy, partly because...I know what I really want and it wasn't there.  I want early World War 2 stuff, perhaps with some 15mm Moderns.  I want a few bits and pieces for 15mm World War 2 as well, but the exact stuff I wanted I couldn't find (it wasn't rare stuff, I am on about Polish and French early war infantry platoons), but perhaps they had sold out by the time I looked.  Better look at Partizan!  But I did get some bits and pieces - a few 'rounding out' things from Baccus, and the Frostgrave stuff I mentioned before.  

Additionally, the latest scenario books from Michael Hopper over in Canada arrived.  These are full of Napoleonic scenarios: Perfidious Albion 1806-1809 and The Rise of Albion 1809-11, the former featuring, despite its name, some scenarios featuring Swedes, Sicilians, Portuguese and Spanish as well as the British - who are fighting the Spanish and Danes as much as the French. The latter on the other hand features many of the Franco-British clashes from the Early Peninsular War, as well as a smattering of Spanish-French and Portuguese-French encounters.  Looking forward to playing my way through these!

Five Leagues Campaign Fight 002 - Encounter By the Stream

For the next Five Leagues from the Borderlands trial game, following on from the initial fight, my plucky band of heroes and heroines set out once again to do battle with the forces of Evil lurking near Bree. Hearing a rumour of a band of evil cultists hidden in some wooded downs to the south, the band set out...and whilst they were scouting on a track by a stream in one of the wooded valleys, they encountered a small group of cultists coming down the same track in the opposite direction...

The Forces:

The Band: 5 x Heroes & Heroines (2 x Sword & Shield fighters 1 x archer, 1 x 2-handed fighter, 1 x dual weapon fighter), 2 x Followers (inc. 1 x archer).  One of the followers from the first game is still too wounded for action, another of the followers has found his inner hero and takes his place in the ranks of the champions).

 

Gillion (a Dunedan fighter, uses a sword and a mace)

Annungilgweld "Nuna" (a Dunedan fighter, uses a bow and a sword)

Clahanar (a Dunedan fighter, uses a two-handed axe)

Herudoina "Ruda" (a Northwoman, uses sword and shield)

Léothain (a former Northman soldier, now a hero, uses sword and shield, wears full armour)

 

Serronsel (a wily rogue Northwoman, but attached to Ruda)

Sommeryth (a hopeful young Northwoman, archer)

 

The Cultists: 3 x Cultists, led by 1 x Professional Killer (archer)

 

The Action:

The band are scouting through the woods when they spot, and are spotted by, the cultists.

Another view, showing the order of march of the band: Nuna and Sommeryth lead, with Ruda and Serronsel protecting the rear.  The boys are in the centre (Gillion, Clahanar, Léothain).

Nuna and Sommeryth start loosing arrows at the cultists.

The lead cultist charges forward; the archers on both sides exchange fire.

Note Nuna (right) has now had her line of fire blocked (right)

After an exchange of blows, the leading cultist is felled by Clahanar.

Nuna has crossed to the other side of the track to resume firing; note the cultists coming through the woods over the hill (centre-right) have avoided the missile fire to get close.

The melee is joined again on the slight hill, as two more cultists come up to do battle with Clahanar.

The cultists' leader is felled by an arrow shot by Sommeryth.

The initial exchanges are indecisive, allowing the rest of the band (Ruda, Serronsel and Léothain) to come up

All of a sudden, one of the Cultists, in a burst of furious energy, downs Serronsel and Léothain in quick succession!

Nuna and Sommeryth work along the flank to try and get a shot in if there is a break in the melee.  Gillion follows up the path, having aborted his move around the left now that all the action is on the other flank.

Ruda leads the way with some strong blows forcing the surviving cultists back.

Roused to anger by the hurt done to their comrades, Ruda and Clahanar fell the last two cultists.

After the outbreak of noise and slaughter, peace returns to the picturesque valley...

Game Notes: Not too much to say about this one, as all the mechanics seemed to work fine and are entirely intuitive. Some of the 'chrome' in the advanced rules looks fussy but because the basic mechanics are so intuitive, then it doesn't feel like the chrome adds much complexity. The heavier armour of the band was the difference maker in the fighting against the cultists in the trees, whilst the superior number of archers (i.e. 2 to 1) worked in the band's favour there, too.  There was a decent amount of luck chucked in there, mind: Sommeryth was hit twice by the Cult leader's fine shooting, but each shot only grazed her!  It could have been so different...

If I were starting again from scratch, I might prefer to do this in 15mm, or even 6mm: the movement and shooting distances work fine game-wise, but visually they would work better for me if there were more real estate implied.  But, I already have a decent number of nice 28mm figures, even if my painting hardly does them justice, so I can't see me doing it necessarily.  But, just a thought.

The figures are a mixture of (I think) Perry Miniatures, Bad Squiddo, North Star/Frostrgave and Gripping Beast.