Hobby Update 14 Jul 26...and a game!

The push to get through the lead mountain continues. Next up were a bunch of Fireforge Templars, plus some unknown - maybe GW? - late medieval style cavalry? The former are new, the latter second-hand and in need of some restoration...

There area still a few bits to touch up (and a missing arm!) on the cavalry, but they are looking a bit better than they were.

(a Viking that had been missing from the previous batch also sneaked in)

I based the Templars for the desert. Not sure if that was the best choice, we shall see!

And on Sunday, I actually got around to playing a game. I ACTUALLY GOT AROUND TO PLAYING A GAME! I was sitting in the garden doing some reading, then I was doing a few things with original D&D (playing out a few example combats to remind myself of the mechanics) and then the urge really struck me to just play a game, so I set up an old favourite: Scenario 1 from the One Hour Wargames book, with my Baccus WSS figures and the Polemos: Ruse de Guerre rules.

 

 

The Set-Up: 

The 'Anglo-Dutch' at the bottom, facing the 'French' at the top.

I rolled for forces from the book (slightly modified to allow for 9 units instead of 6) and generated the following armies:

 

The Anglo-Dutch Army:

Duc de Aunis

1st Brigade: 3 bases of Infantry (Murray, Colyear, Portmore)

2nd Brigade: 3 bases of Infantry (Ferguson's, Lord North's, Leven's)

3rd Brigade: 2 bases of Dragoons (Lord John Hays', Ross'), 1 base of 6pdr Foot Artillery  

 

The French Army:

Lord Lancaster 

1st Brigade: 3 bases of Infantry (Berwick, Galmoy, Dorrington)

2nd Brigade: 3 bases of Infantry (Dauphine, Sault, du Roi), 1 base of 6pdr Foot Artillery

3rd Brigade: 2 bases of Horse (FitzJames, Sheldon)*

Slightly on the exaggerated side, but all real units - all Scots in the Anglo-Dutch army, apart from Ross' Dragoons (Irish) and the artillery; whilst the Horse and the 1st Brigade in the French Army are all Irish.

(*okay purists, I know that these are really the same regiment at different times...)

The Dutch Scottish Brigade (1st) on the Anglo-Dutch Left.

The Dragoon Brigade and artillery in the centre.

And the 2nd Brigade (Scots' Brigade) on the right.

The Irish Brigade on the French Left.

The 2nd Brigade in the French Centre.

And the Cavalry on the French Right.

The Battle:

The French Army takes the initiative in a shallow echelon, leading by its left (top-right), with its right slightly refused; the Anglo-Dutch have slightly advanced and pivoted their left-hand brigade (Dutch Scots' Brigade) to counter this.

Things get serious. The Dutch-Scots' Brigade has advanced to check the advance; the French 2nd Brigade has pivoted to engage them, although this has slightly disordered the advance; note that some of the British Dragoons have fallen back to avoid French artillery fire. The Franco-Jacobite cavalry has trotted forwards (top-left), threatening to charge

A wider shot

The Irish infantry move forward to engage their Scots' counterparts...

The Dutch-Scots' traded a volley with the French and then charged forward. The Franco-Jacobite cavalry then charged the left-hand battalion of the Dutch-Scots' (Murray's Regiment)

The result: Murray's Regiment (left) ingloriously collapsed and ran; most of the French infantry was pushed back (Dauphine and Sault, centre)

But Dauphine's Regiment subsequently broke when the Dutch-Scots' resumed their firing! (top)

The action then switched to the Anglo-Dutch Right: the Irish and Scots regiments traded close-range musketry volleys...with the most devastating results! Fergusson's Regiment was routed (bottom-right), but all three of the Irish regiments were broken!!

After a few more moments, the French position becomes untenable - the two remaining regiments of Dutch-Scots' (Colyear & Portmore) stop any further French cavalry attack, and also break another French regiment (Sault) by fire. The remaining unbroken French infantry and artillery are unable to do too much to stem the rout.

The position at the end, when the French Army gives way.

Game Notes:

A very crushing Anglo-Dutch victory - but the real victory was getting an actual game on the table; or in this case, the garden grass. It was great fun, although it was over a little quickly (not perhaps as quickly as the photos imply, the game was slightly more involved in that, I skipped over some bits). The rules were fine, remembered them all straight off, except whether units which support to a flank recoil when the base they are supporting does (they definitely do so when supporting from the rear). The musketry looks highly decisive, but this is deceptive - the firefight between the Dutch-Scots and the French was pretty ineffective and it needed a further combination of bayonet and a second firefight to produce a decisive result. On the other hand, the musketry exchange between the Scots and the Irish witnessed 4 '10's being rolled out of 6 dice, which accounts for the sudden destruction of the French left. The Franco-Jacobites did have their share of luck - the successful cavalry charge on the Dutch Left was a low-odds (but high pay-off) tactic. It was just that the Anglo-Dutch (ok, Scots) were luckier all in one go...

 The scenario is the first one (Pitched Battle One) from the OHW book - based on Ceresole, apparently. 

 Game on a 2'x2' board, using Baccus 6mm figures, with the Polemos Ruse de Guerre ruleset. 

07 Jul 26 - Hobby Update

Still not much to report on the gaming front, but I have been continuing to chip away at the lead mountain...

The next batch was a group of (refurbished) old 40K Orks and a group of much newer Warhammer Beastmen.

The Beastmen are very nice figures! They can go into my 28mm fantasy box.

The Orks are definitely from a simpler - and smaller! - time, and they weren't in a great state (I cannot remember for the life of me where I picked them up) but they seem to have repaired and repainted ok. Good enough for the bairn to have fun with in any case.

After that, I tackled some plastic Vikings (Vixtrix possibly?). I thought these painted up quite well, I was pleased.

 I have a bunch of Dark Age warriors already (from Gripping Beast), which these will work fine with. 

24th December 2023 - Christmas Hobby Things

 A few photos to show what my hobby is looking like over Christmas.

First - Heroquest, always fun, and now introducing my youngest to it.

The Trial - possibly one of the most played single scenarios ever?

Painting: a few Perry British Napoleonic foot artillerymen, and a few infantry needed some basing repairs...

And, which is more the focus, painting up some Perry Agincourt-era Foot Knights for my youngest too...

And the set-up for tonight's game...more in a later post I am sure 😊

Some kind of early C19 infantry to the left, with a cannon, and some young girls/women; and some quite fierce looking ratmen to the right, on a board with Christmas trees and presents...

And a very Merry Christmas to everyone!

Hobby Update 08 Aug 21

My gaming seems to have come back to life a little recently, just from having a bit of time and space to get stuck in - which has made a nice change! So, what have I been up to in addition to the battle reports and suchlike I have posted?

I do actually have a fair number of 28mm figures, mainly Warhammer-type (if not necessarily from GW itself) but what I have lacked is much 28mm-suitable terrain, excepting some trees.  So over the last six months or so I have worked on making a few bits and pieces to widen the gaming possibilities I have with this size of figure.

As a first step, I dug out my old bible for making simple terrain, Games Workshop's How to Make Wargames Terrain.  It features a very wide variety of terrain.

 

Some of the SF stuff I covered in a previous update, and the stone circle featured in a recent Five Leagues... fight.  I have been working recently on some more fantasy stuff, so I did a few burial mounds:
 

...and a couple of ruined temples...

 

I quite liked how the burial mounds turned out.  The ruined temples were okay, although I have thought of some ideas for additional detailing to make them a little more visually compelling.  The book's instructions were great, really clear.

On the painting side, I now have a few Baccus 6mm Napoleonic British Congreve rockets:

A few more Grumbler Miniatures 6mm Napoleonic Prussian Fusiliers and Musketeers...

...and some bases of Baccus 6mm Thirty Years' War Commanded Shot for use in Twilight of Divine Right games

I am really hoping to get this back onto the table soon, but I am slightly fretting about the 'look'.  I am just not going to buy separately more 6mm forces to do TYW as well as WotTK, so the forces have to be used for both.  So two choices: a - I proxy, and the Swedes/French/Danes/Protestant Union will become Parliament and Bavaria/Austria/Catholics become the King's forces (with Saxony being the Covenanters?!?) or somesuch; or b - I detach the flagbearers and some of the command staff to be used as detail pieces and markers, but make the individual bases 'neutral'.  What do you think?

Anyway, a group shot to finish off with.  On the painting table now are some 6mm WW2 British paratroopers, and I am basing up some 15mm Afrika Korps infantry.  After that it is all looking fairly clear at the moment...I will be delving into the bits-and-pieces box.   Might be a good time to buy those city walls I have been talking myself into buying...

Hobby Update 27 Mar 21

It has been a very quiet period for me in the hobby recently.  I won't lie, it has been a difficult time.  Since I am mainly a solo gamer, this hasn't been directly because of COVID and lockdown, but some of the secondary impacts have been big: less time and space around the house.  Added to that my partner returning to work, more pressure on my house as my children have gotten older, plus my own busy job, then it has been a struggle.  So, like many a gamer before me, my hobby has become more "thinking about gaming" rather than "gaming".  However, hope springs eternal and I am looking forward to that changing soon.

Unlike the first lockdown period, which was very productive for me hobby-wise, this latter period has been very slow for me.  What I have managed to achieve is:

Painting a SAGA Shieldmaiden Warband:

 

Picked these up a few months back on a real whim.  There are some really nice figures in there, which my painting definitely does not justice to, but here they are at the c.90% completed stage.

28mm Terrain Items:

Long-term readers of this blog may remember my aspirations to get my 28mm figures out more for a few more skirmish games, whether that be in Fantasy, Medievals, Napoleonics or Sci-Fi.  The main obstacle to this has been my lack of suitable terrain items beyond a few hills, trees and watercourses.  With that in mind, using some of the packaging from the bairns' Christmas presents and a very old copy of the Games Workshop Wargames Terrain book, I set about hacking together some very rough but serviceable terrain items.  I have concentrated on the SF stuff first, as you can see above.  The empty plastic bottle is used since I have vague aspirations of filling it for some games with some actual industrial-looking ooze! We shall see if that comes off...

6mm Prussians:

I noticed that there is a new 6mm figures manufactures, Grumbler Miniatures, who do Napoleonics.  I picked up some of their Prussians, and very nice they are too.  They are on the painting tray at the moment, so pictures as soon as they are finished. 

Test Games:

I have played the odd test game of this and that (this one is a WRG variant using a scenario from Just Jack's blog).  One of the takeaways from this is I must sort out some more ruined 6mm buildings, and some terrain for making better all round 'urban' environments (gardens, streets, graveyards, that kind of thing).  It wasn't really suitable for writing up into a blog post though, even by my standards!

Apart from that, tabletop gaming has been very spares, limited to a couple of Fighting Wings' air warfare games and some role-playing games - write-ups soon, insha'allah!

Going forward, I am hoping to get some more Gallic War campaign games completed in the next few days, perhaps even completing that campaign.  Then the plan would be to get some 28mm skirmishes done, and some WW2 games.  But, as ever, we shall see...