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@dantay_xv: Cheers.

@Gitsplitta: Thanks mate!

@Solar Lion: Thanks, much appreciated.

Just an odd little piece between proper updates:


Currently working on some more Raven Guard Marines (after I sent in the article and finished painting guide marine I was ordered to base the rest of the army in a same style as the originally get-by base for the guy. ) and Freebooter's Fate test minis. Wargames Factory also wrote me again, asking if I was willing to review their latest releases so that's should be on its way as well.

NIce squirrel, needs a moustache though

Also looking forward to the WGF reviews too

Looking forward to the Freebooter's Fate minis, I've got some of those they are really nice sculpts.

Hmm mine are still in their box's though, must do something about that

@dantay_xv: True!

@GiraffeX: Oh yes, Werner Klocke certainly is one of those sculptors who have a style to them. Of course goddamn digital sculpting is killing the last bits of that off but as long as Klocke, Kev White, Kev Adams and such are around there is a certain amount of "w00tburgers, this is cool, characterful stuff" around. To be honest, I've never been a huge fan of his sculpts for gaming pieces so I never really collected them but now that I've got them in hand I have to say that those are really cool figures. The heads are something to get used to but they're pretty enough and that's character and style. Have you seen the amazons? Those are some seriously cool minis full of movement and great poses.

Well, tonight I was out gaming again. We proceeded with our Chain of Command campaign, set in WW2, in Northern Africa in mid-1941. The haps so far: Operation Sonnenblume - The German Afrika Korps lands in Northern Africa. Initially planned to be a small force to keep the British Western Desert Force from driving back the Italian army in Africa even further, brash commander Erwin Rommel presses his troops on East tirelessly to throw the disorganized British back to Alexandria. With the Western Desert Force is young 2nd Lieutenant Deaglan Fitzpatrick who deserted the Irish army to join the British forces in the Good Fight. In his first battle Fitzpatrick and his men met sinister Leutnant Lechner's Grenadier platoon and stopped them from scouting no man's land, forcing them to retreat.

The lines were drawn. Lechner was repelled for now but swore revenge. Tonight his platoon returned and decided to break through British lines right at Fitzpatrick's section of the front line.



Tonight we started with working out some campaign administration stuff. Looking how many of last game's casualties would return to service immediately, how many would spend this game in the field hospital and for how many the war was over. Then we rolled for changes in how their superiors regarded Lt.Lechner and 2nd Lt.Fitzpatrick (Lechner's superior wasn't happy about his platoon having to retreat, Fitzpatricks superiors were moderately pleased with the outcome). The opinion of the men of both platoons for their officers didn't change.

The mission was The Probe, Germans being on the attack (as per our campaign), getting quite a lot of support plus an extra bonus because last game we messed up a little and the British had gotten a little too much in terms of support. Force Morale was formidable on both sides but with limited support at hand (because bloody Battlefront, who I get my minis from, don't stock certain things like British anti tank guns) I wasn't too happy. The Germans ended up with seven levels of support which is a LOT whereas I got four which isn't bad at all but alas - no models for anti-tank guns and no tanks small enough to fit that bill so I went with the now almost usual forward observer with a mortar battery on hold. Lechner, after the small setback, was burdened with Batalion sending another sernior officer with him to help him command his troops (an affrond but he would have to wait for his revenge). On the plus side 15th Panzer Regiment sent him a Panzer III G for support.

My platoon came with a Boys anti-tank rifle team but the ageing gun would have a hard time scratching the German state of the art behemoth.



So my plan was to basically keep my head down and hope for a good moment to pop up and swarm a juicy, isolated target. As the only aim of my opponent was to get anything to my table edge I had to keep reserves to show up where ever they would try to break through.

The Germans put pretty much everything they had on the table fast. first two sections, going in Overwatch, then one more section (led by their newly shipped in NCO after their former one was killed in the last engagement) and the Panzer III. Lechner himself as well as the Batalion staff officer kept things together and the whole platoon showed an annoyingly efficient display of Wehrmacht tactics mixed with experience collected during the Poland and France campaigns.

The only thing I deployed was the platoon's 2" mortar to lay down some smoke to cover possible pop-up opportunities for my boys (half the german platoon was on overwatch constantly, scanning the hills). I made the mistake to be bold about using my Forward Observer, popping him up to give the off-table mortar battery coordinates to strike. Before that though the Observer fell victim to the combined effort's of the Panzer III's hull and co-axial MGs. I proceeded to pop some more smoke via light mortar but quickly realized that it made no sense engaging the enemy at this point and my three models (mortar team and Platoon Sergeant Graham) retired back to the platoon.

Well, this certainly is a thing that can happen. Stayed out of sight, trying to accumulate Chain of Command Dice (for certain activation rolls you get points you collect. For every six points you get a Chain of Command Die which you can use to do all kinds of snazzy things) or an activation roll just at the right time that would let me skip my opponent's next phase (nothing too rare. The German player had that result twice during our game). The fact of the Germans looking through my plan and taking their time and advancing tactically and as a full unit rather than going for quick and rash advances didn't help either. Plus, there was that tank which I had only very slim chances of taking down. In hindsight I'm very happy that I didn't get any situations that would have tempted me to go "all in". If the mortar battery would have had the chance to strike I could have effectively taken about half the enemy platoon out of the game for a few phases but my opponent got his chain of command points faster than me as well so he could have stopped the barrage rather early on anyway. It just wasn't a day to fight. Heavy support on the German side plus no real opportunities due to activation dice...


German troops advancing largely unopposed.

We rolled up the consequences of the battle. Superiors' opinions on Lechner rose (after they've seen the splendid display of discipline in front of the staff officer), the early enthusiasm for Fitzpatrick veined (we're both back to zero now). The men's opinion on the platoon officers didn't change much either. One win on each side so far.

This may sound highly unspectacular but it's a thing that can happen and it's one of the reasons why I really enjoy Chain of Command. It's a realistic decision. Granted, if this wouldn't have been a campaign game I would have acted differently but this again shows the strength of campaigns. It forces you to think beyond the gaming table, manage your resources and recognize a situation as it is. Had a really good time though and it was never uninteresting in the slightest. I also got a blister of oh so pretty 2pdr anti-tank guns and 40mm Bofors anti air guns so next time Herr Hitler sends his tanks they're in for a nasty surprise (granted, a kind of an outdated, small calibre for which staff for what reason ever never gives us HE grenades to fight infantry BUT a potentially nasty surprise!).

Very nice :-)

 Sigur wrote:


@GiraffeX: Oh yes, Werner Klocke certainly is one of those sculptors who have a style to them. Of course goddamn digital sculpting is killing the last bits of that off but as long as Klocke, Kev White, Kev Adams and such are around there is a certain amount of "w00tburgers, this is cool, characterful stuff" around. To be honest, I've never been a huge fan of his sculpts for gaming pieces so I never really collected them but now that I've got them in hand I have to say that those are really cool figures. The heads are something to get used to but they're pretty enough and that's character and style. Have you seen the amazons? Those are some seriously cool minis full of movement and great poses.

I've only picked up a few of the limited edition versions, just waiting for the right time to pick up a few starter boxes and the rules.

The heads are a bit different as you say its one of the things that sets them apart from a lot of other ranges.

I've only seen the Amazons online but they do look really nice, I just doubt my skills at painting skin tones at the moment to do them justice. I'm getting better though so one day soon

As you're quite in to your military games have you come across By Fire and Sword? It looks interestingly different enough for me and its 15mm, the rule book looks really amazing from pictures I've found online.

@Blade Runner: Thanks!

@GiraffeX: Yeah, The guy certainly has a style to his minis and I really appreciate that. I indeed read about By Fire and Sword, even held the rulebook in my hands a few months ago. Of course I wouldn't play it in 15mm but 10mm scale because that's what I already have for 17th century stuffs. I have yet to read a proper review of the game but of course it looks tempting. The cost of the rulebook put me off a little though. If I remember correctly it's something like €50,00? I mean it's a huge book, hardcover, probably full colour - to be honest, I never really asked for rulebooks to be 400 pages, have all kinds of wargaming porn in them and cost that much. But that's just me. Sounds like a cool thing though. So far I'm happy with Pike&Shotte and I'm afraid I should give Father Tilly a shot which I've had lying around for a year now without doing anything with it before I get yet another 17th century/Thirty Years War rules set. If you should get it let me know what you think of the rules though!

Well, it's been a while, hasn't it. Let's see what happened in the mean time, starting with probably the least exciting and over the course of the posting work our way up to a crescendo of light, colour, sound and sensual delights the likes we never experienced before! Or something like that.

Starting out with military games of my own:


Three weeks ago me and my regular gaming nemesis went on a little trip to meet The Third Guy (as well as his lovely family, his wine cellar and his beer and barbecue stuffs reserves :p ), Constable, for a weekend of jolly good times with toy soldiers.

On Friday, we had a 2on1 game of Ronin. Mr.Nemesis held a village which Constable and I had to storm.

The table:

http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/table2_0.jpg


http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/table6.jpg

Highly pretty, isn't it? It's a group effort too. I supplied the large house as well as the bamboo, Mr.Nemesis supplied the cherry trees, the rest of course is Constable's. I know, this forum will cut off any picture I post ,which is such an annoying shame. As usual, I have to put a link to the full picture underneath each of the pix.

This is the village which was to be defended:

http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/table4.jpg

constable's warband:

http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/constablebushi.jpg


http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/constablebushi2.jpg

He went for unarmoured Samurai as an experiment but his leader in light blue was a tip top skilled Samurai.

Mr.Nemesis' troops took position:

http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/fortified.jpg


http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/fortified2.jpg

See his clan's mon? "The Broccoli" as we named it. THIS is why I'm happy I went with Takeda and their comparatively simple mon.

And finally my own warband, who were going to attack from the hills:



http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/bushi.jpg

The game started, constable's guys advanced under the fire from the well-fortified archers in the village. His guys shot back, but due to distance and cover, bows, arrows and arquebuses proved to be mostly ineffective until the village defenders managed to get a few lucky hits in via concentrated fire on constable's poor Teppo Guy.

In the meantime I advanced down the slope.

http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/precombat3.jpg
"We demand entrance into this village of yours to honourably claim it from your master!" - "nuh-uh"


http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/precombat.jpg

"So it must come to battle!"

http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/combat.jpg


http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/combat2.jpg

And quite the combat ensued. After a first round in which, as I have to admit, rolled really, really well and prolonged combat thereafter, The Good Guys prevailed:


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8HnhJF-079E/U6aMhiX1RyI/AAAAAAAACgY/ueTOG09Fats/s1600/DSC_0074.JPG
(image courtesy of constable)

In the meantime, constable's unarmoured Samurai, supported by two slightly wounded Ashigaru, launched an attack against the other part of Nemesis' warband which happened to include his leader.


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V4fiRwPiCZM/U6aMh2fIkpI/AAAAAAAACgc/sUNm5WGVWHM/s1600/DSC_0075.JPG
(image courtesy of constable)

The unarmoured Samurai didn't fare too well but held their own for a while, the leader, deadly wounded, still managed to gravely wound a hapless Ashigaru with his last move (that's a cute little Ability, I think it's called Tough. After a model is killed he/she may carry out one more full attack. Very Samurai.). By this time my warband had broken through and rushed through the village to help their comrades but it was too late. One Ashigaru still kept up the fight but the Samurai had fallen.


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-10Az-3o1bqs/U6aMiyM30vI/AAAAAAAACgs/irfOVDmB8Tc/s1600/DSC_0077.JPG
(image courtesy of constable)

After a salvo at close range from my guys' teppo and two archers my Samurai and Ashigaru (some wounded) charged the enemy and managed to cut them down quickly. The game was over and the village was won.

Hugely entertaining game. Everyone involved enjoyed it and the terrain of course played a large part in the pleasantness of the whole affair. We all were rather impressed with the Ronin rules. Very quick and rather fun with that little poker element of allocating tokens and such.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
After the first night we had scheduled to play some Samurai skirmish-y stuff, the next day was dedicated to playing ACW things. We actually got two games in. First my rebels and I were up against constable's Unionist troops, then Mr.Nemesis had a go at comandeering the rebels against constable's Union troops. The advantage of doing this was that this way we always had an umpire to look up things for the players because it was the first game for all three of us with the Longstreet rules. That being said, after turn three or so we pretty much knew what we were doing.


http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/northandsouth.jpg

This is less of a complete AAR of both the games, rather than that I'll just post some impressions.

Union lines:

http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/unionlines.jpg


http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/unionlines3.jpg


http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/zouavescharge.jpg


http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/unionlines_0.jpg


http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/unionlines2.jpg

Confederates:

http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/confederatelines.jpg

Column move:

http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/column.jpg

Some battle impressions:

http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/acw4.jpg


{url]http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/acw.jpg[/url]


http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/acw3.jpg


http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/cavcharge2.jpg


http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/acw2.jpg
Look at that cavalry charge. This is why we do what we do, right?


http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/acw_0.jpg


http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/combat_0.jpg

Well, so much for the pictures. The first game was won by the Union, the second one by the rebels. The second game especially was interesting as the rebel general on his first move had most of his army face left and march off behind a hill in column. It worked really fiendishly well too, forcing the Union left flank to spend most of the game running after the rebel army. The second game, without being a very one-sided affair, i must add, took something like 100 minutes for the guys to play. It's amazing. And it was a full ACW battle. All of us were highly impressed with the Longstreet rules. Much more so than with Bull Run to Gettysburg. Next on the list to try out: That General de Brigade ACW game and of course Black Powder (but with a few Pike&Shotte games under our belts we know that this one will be a good one anyway). Hope you like the pictures!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
After the Final Edition of Two Hour Wargames' Nuts! was released a few weeks ago I thought I'd celebrate by finally doing a solo test game of 2nd edition Nuts! which I bought about one and a half years ago.



Picture evidence:




Overall the game went as such: Eastern front, 1943, German platoon (one section of eleven, with MG34, one section of seven with MG34 and another one of seven.) on a recon mission into enemy territory, got the job of checking if there were any enemy forces hiding in the woods on that hill (= scout three sections of the opposing table edge). Three PEFs (Possible Enemy Forces, i.e. "blinds" indicating that there might be enemy movement in the area but you don't know what exactly it is or indeed if there actually are any enemy forces at all or if it was just a breeze or a fox) lurking the area. With one section with MG covering the advance from a hill, the Germans proceeded, got LOS to the first two PEFs which proved to be nothing. The third one was an enemy patrol section of ten. This looked like an easy job. Right until the Russians got another large squad as reinforcements. Germans took positions, kicked the Russians out of the central forest, advanced and the Russians got another squad as a reinforcement. Seeing as how they suddenly were outnumbered and Soviet scouts started trying to encircle them the German platoon retreated.

I was a little delusional in my approach to the game I have to admit by thinking this would work for me as a platoon level game. So I misread some rules and applied them to groups whereas they should have been applied to single models. I'll make sure to give it another try some time soon, with fewer models, just a squad per side and then try to write up a proper review.

Does anyone of you have experiences with Nuts? Any suggestions for scenarios to play?



Right, so much for gaming. July 4th came and went (Happy USA day, US'ers ) and as you may have noticed, Wargames Factory is blasting out a ton of boxes of multi-part plastic miniatures for the American War of Independence (at the same time Warlord Games announced an AWI supplement for Black Powder and of course Osprey are doing a set of wargaming rules for the period as well because Osprey throw out wargaming rules every two weeks nowadays.), the first of their releases being AWI British Infantry and they were so kind to throw one of those boxes my way to have me take a closer look at them. So I did. What I also did was decide to paint up a whole box worth of these figures to better illustrate the ratio of Grenadiers-Light Infantry-Line Infantry you can make from this box. (yes, there's all three in there!).

Anyway, without much further ado, here are a few pictures and a link to my in-depth review (which views-wise is turning out way more popular than I had imagined):



You can find the review here: http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2014/06/review-wargames-factory-awi-british.html


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Right, so much for that. I also finally got started on the Freebooter's Fate Empire warband:







The Assault-y guys with the cloaks are the same as in the second pictures, but finished this time. The marines in the left are obviously WIP, the miner is finished as well. The lady with the pistols is done as well and the guy with the cloak and the breastplate is basically finished by now but I think he still needs a little work on a few bits. Hope you like them so far.

Hey Siggy! Freebooters (and everything else) look great! Like the little drummer boy and the rest of the finished retinue.

Nice work Sig'.
The table does look nice and so do the figures.

Loads of excellent things going on in your update Sigur.

Ronin looks quite interesting and that table is amazing. I had a look on ebay and the prices don't seem that bad although I'm not sure if I prefer the look of Bushido over it as it has a few more fantasy elements.

The ACW battles look great its so nice seeing armies painted up to that level on a great table.

The AWI British Infantry look really nice they seem to have something special about the models that catches the eye, I'm going for the paint job

The Freebooter minis are looking really good so far, your golds on the clothes are amazingly nice and complement the red nicely.

All in all really enjoyed looking through all the pics sounded like an excellent weekend.

@Moltar: Thanks!

@Dr H: Cheers, I'll pass the compliments about the table on.

@GiraffeX: I heard somebody complain about how Ronin ripped off Bushido's combat rules so based on that you'll be fine with Bushido. There are some rules for supernatural things for Ronin on the Osprey website. Thanks for the compliments.

The warband is about halfway done!

Here are the first 13 models, two of them need a little more work.



Some of my Apocalpyse Survivors I painted for the review last year might show up in an issue of Wargames Illustrated in the near future.

Some nice work there, Siggy, and the games look interesting, too - that board for the Ronin game was gorgeous.

Speaking of which, two of your pictures from that report are suffering from Malformed Tag Syndrome, so if you get a couple of minutes you may want to go back and fix them.

@Dysartes: Cheers, I'll pass it on to the guy. He runs demo games of various stuffs on that table. Thanks for the heads up, I think I fixed the pictures.


Update!



First Mate, Capitan Leon and - by special request - Torpe

Hope you like them so far, even though there isn't much to see yet.



edit: I realized that I hadn't posted a picture of the finished powdered guy yet. Here he is, amongst is red army friends. :p



...so after commission painting I spent the past two nights finishing these six fellas for my Russian platoon. They look a bit sub-pretty because I can't spend all that much time on painting them sadly. But better battle-ready than unpainted, especially with the Lieutenant.



I'm aiming to get all my Soviet WW2 figures painted soon which, after these six are done, is six more (five riflemen and one guy with SMG and some MG ammo), a Maxim Machine gun team and maybe I'll also do those two really fun guys. One of them is sitting, playing the accordion, the other one's kneeling whilst roasting something in a little frying pan. I really, really like those Black Tree Design Russians. A fair bit better than the plastics by Warlord Games. Anyway, once these guys I'm currently working on are done I have a full platoon plus about 10 more guys and a Maxim gun. Not bad. Here's the thing though - there is no need what so ever for me to have these guys. Actually my whole 28mm WW2 collection is somewhat of an inane project. I mean I like the little lads and they work well for showcase (if I acutally painted them properly) or for test games of lowlowlow-level WW2 games. But full platoons of them hardly make sense because I can't really hope to play on anything larger than a 6'by 4' table at best (usually I'll play with them solo at home so morel like 3.5' by 5' at the most). Oh well. I've got more than a platoon of russians, almost two platoons of Germans and a bunch of British Commandos. :p (to steal a friend's catchphrase) I'm Sigur, and I'm a wargamer.

WOW those battle report photos where beautiful! The terrain looked fantastic the models where amazing, just WOW

@Rogue Wolves: Thanks very much.


Here are a bunch of pictures of the finished Raven Guard:


















Here we got some old, some new, in various stages of being almost finished to completely finished.


Hope you like the minis!

Latest additions are top notch !

Love the company shoulder pads on the Ravens, it makes them stand out from the *few* RG we see around...

Captain's face is terrific, and the fantasy warband... Colorful !

@Yggdrasil: Thanks muchly. Yeah, I thought I'd go for a cooler colour on the company. The Freebooter's Fate minis REALLY pop in front of the white background and the good lighting. I presented them to the client last week in a more "realistically" lighted enviroment and they looked just right I think.


Last Friday we had another ACW game. This time it was at Greymouse's. It was planned to be a 2on2 game, me of course playing on the rebels' side, the other Confederate commander was to turn up later but when he did he was too tired after a busy work week and taking the kids to the baths in the afternoon that he stuck to watching.

The rules played are Guns at Gettysburg which of course are from the General de Brigade family of rules. I had participated in two games of Die Kriegskunst (7 years war version of General de Brigade) and a GdB Napoleonics game before but never quite grasped the command and control aspect of the game.



None of us had played them before but we had an umpire to guide us through the game with a firm hand.

Here's the table setup and a nondescript number of my fingers:


You can see the border of my "deployment zone" by the units I deployed. The year is 1862, the Union army is on the attack and my two brigades were left behind with the job to keep the unionist troops who were advancing along the road from doing so for as long as possible. The Union's mission naturally was to break through.

The Union's division consisted of 3 infantry brigades, each with two bases of cannon, troops are of mixed quality (Green, Regulars, Veterans). They also brought a rather large cavalry brigade along. My boys were made up of two infantry brigades (four regiments of infantry and two bases of cannon each), also of mixed quality, and a small elite cavalry detachment. I Might have had more veteran troops than the Unionists but I'm not sure. In general the equipment was in reverse proportion to the quality of the troops - green and regular troops mostly had rifled muskets, veterans came with their older smooth-bores.

Here's another picture of my deployment (the Union was to move onto the table). The centre and left:


Two units I had set up in and around the far left barn to secure the flank in case the enemy would make use of their superior numbers and attack on two sides.

The right, with veteran Louisiana Tiger Rifles at the front, the world's smallest cavalry brigade to support them and a smaller regiment having set up in the farm (probably searching the place for edibles or valuables):


My brigades were basically set up in two lines, the first line being the first brigade made up mostly of my Louisiana boys, supported by their pals from the South Carolina regiment. The second line was the less experienced second brigade. The cannons were concentrated in the middle with a slightly narrow but nice look down the road the enemy was approaching on.

The orders of both my infantry brigades were to hold their positions, the cavalry brigade's order was to support the right flank. Guns at Gettysburg uses a command and control system based on set orders given out to each brigade at the beginning of the game. Sometimes written down on little markers or just told to the umpire if one is present. The orders - Hold [terrain feature, position, etc.], engage [enemy unit, any enemy by terrain feature X, etc.], Retire, Assault [enemy unit, any enemy by terrain feature X, etc.], Move [terrain feature], Support [friendly brigade, flank, etc.] - only allow for specific behavior for a unit. If say a brigade has the order to hold a position they may not charge out of it to engage an enemy or advance to another position (or even leave their position voluntarily) unless the brigade order is changed at the beginning of the turn. Either the overall commander may change one order per turn (having to roll for it) or one brigadier per turn may attempt to change his brigade's orders. If the rolls are failed the order can not be changed. If the brigadier attempting to change the order himself and rolls badly though the men lose confidence in his plans and their order changes "one level down" in aggressiveness. So a "Hold" order is changed to "Retire", Attack is changed to Engage (I think) and so on. Good old double one will mean that the brigadier decides that all is lost and retreats, with devastating effects to his brigade. I'm not 100% sure on any of this but that's how I picked it up during the game.

So the command and control aspect is pretty important (which I'm all for) and you get a feel for how maybe it's not that easy to make a division of dudes in a life or death situation do exactly what you tell them.



The cannons weren't my models but from other collections. Which of course must be the reason why on turn 2 and 4 respectively I rolled two ones for their shooting which meant that they were low on ammo and would only fire to half effect for the next four and five turns each. A highly unwelcome turn of events. The low ammo rule actually is rather fun. Each time you roll two 1s on your firing dice (almost everything is done via rolling 2d6, add/substract some modifiers and then look the results up on a table) your unit is low on ammo and will only fire to half effect. Each game you can have new ammo delivered to up to three units (according to the rules you then deploy an ammunition cart on the table which moves towards the unit and throws new ammo at them but we house-ruled that we roll 1d6 and that's the number of turns it takes for the ammo cart to arrive and do their job), after that the ammo will be low for your whole army or something for the rest of the game or the unit can't fire any more at all. Something bad at least.

On came the hordes in blue:


As was to be expected, the first Union brigade attempting to break through got badly pummelled but my opponents (in their devious ways) mostly sent their green troops into the meat grinder to soften the Confederate defences whilst the second brigade snuck up in the far right behind a hill. At this point my second brigade got the order to leave their positions on the left and all march over to support the right flank, including their cannons which were low on ammo anyway so wouldn't so much for the next few turns anyway.



At this point the Union's second brigade had reached the fences. My elite cavalry which I had placed to support the Tigers in their attempt to hold back the overwhelming force of northern aggression had gotten decimated badly and retired. Another horrible display of my tendency to burn elite units without any tactical merit.

To be fair though, the second Union brigade did scary things. They marched up as one nasty old block, unloaded a horrifying salvo the first time they fired by rolling double 6s. Which not only means a lot of casulties on the receiving end but also forces the unit that got hit to do a morale check AND (as any roll of double 6s) it allows the lucky player to roll on a special table for "special events" which rarely are bad but often will result in a "token" which the brigadier can use later during the game to enhance his brigades abilities for a turn. Which is also a neat little touch. Actually, I could see this being used in 40k or WHFB on double 1s on Leadership checks and such.



In this case it didn't amount to much but the next turn the brigade's commander changed the order, rolled ANOTHER double 6, resulting in a token he could use on one salvo his brigade fires in the future to enhance the result.



The Tigers at this point had taken quite a beating, mostly lying down whilst being fired upon by one to two units and two bases of cannon firing canister in their faces for several turns. But reinforcements were on the way to patch the hole in the Confederate lines.



Above you can see an overview of the game when we decided to call it a night. 2nd brigade had arrived at the right flank, cannon deployed, the Union soldiers were still chewing away at the Tigers and their pals from 2nd brigade, ready to cross the fence.

It was clear that the Union troops were about to break through on the right and they even deployed their cavalry to cross the river and start to get in my left flank. That said, the lines held at this point, a second line of defence was built up in the right so I'm sure my boys could have held the farm for a fair amount of time longer. Of course the numbers on the union side would have crushed my guys in the end but that was basically the mission.

Good game though. I like Guns at Gettysburg's order system (and I'm glad that I finally played a full game of a rules set of the GdB family and finally somewhat 'got it'). The point that it's fitting for the SYW and Napoleonics but may too restrictive for the ACW was raised and it can be a little frustrating to see one of your units being in an excellent position to charge an enemy but not being able to because they got different orders but that's the game and it offers some very interesting challenges. The whole firing procedure may look a bit daunting at first but really is rather fast once you get the hang of it.



Once again I think we could call it a Union victory. After the game we did some more testing about how well enfilades work and such. Good times were had, thanks to the umpire and my opponents.

Oh well, it's off to working on commission stuff now! Hope you like the report!

Okay, enough chit-chat, get's get down to BUSINESS!

Today I'm pulling a quadruple whammy with one Fantasy Update:
These are the first three minis for another Freebooter's Fate. Up, it's the Brotherhood again:


Hope you like them so far. The two in the left and middle are finished, guy in the right needs some more work.


...a Sci-Fi Update:
These are two Orks, obviously. In the left we got a Kromlech Juggernaut, in the right an Ork boy with a bunch of "upgrade" bitz made by Kromlech. I was sent a little test pack from them for an exclusive review on Tale of Painters which shoudl pop up some time soon I hope. At the moment the minis still are WIP but getting there.



...a WW2 update:



These guys are a commission project for Operation: Squad. The models will also be featured on the Operation:Squad demo table at VIVAT2014 (October 18th IIRC) so if you want to see them and me in the flesh, go there. :p

Anyway, they're supposed to depict late war Germans somewhere in France. A mix of veterans from the Eastern front, a few French garrison guys and so on. All in all, a mixed bag, also shown by the equipment and uniforms worn. Hope you like them!

...AND a Thirty Years War (-ish) update!



These buildings I got last October at Vienna Model Expo. N-Scale toy train houses from Vollmer. Amazing kits. The church is the most complex plastic kit I built in a long time.
I bought them a little overpriced and actually i'm afraid they won't fit the minis. I mean they are the correct scale to my minis. The thing of course is though that one mini in my armies depicts between 10 and 20 men (due to varying sizes in units at that time) at least and if a unit of minis walks by a house in the correct scale...well, it's like 60 dudes running around a house instead of a thousand dudes. The scale is correct but the size is wrong if you know what I mean. Which is problematic. I'll have to give it a try, maybe it looks alright on the table. Honestly, I doubt it but oh well. We shall see. Hope you like the look of the little "village" though. No cross on the church tower as of yet because I wasn't sure wether to put it on there or make it removable because storing and transporting a plastic church with a thin plastic cross on top isn't something I like the sound of.


Hope you like any of the variation of stuff. C&C welcome!

Photobucket is givin us the business. Can only see the commission for Operation: Squad. They look really good, but want to see the other pics too.

The are all looking really great Sigur especially the Freebooters Fate minis.

@Moltar: Yeah, I swear they reduced the monthly bandwidth over the course of the years. The instant I put stuff up these days It's "look who's popular". .

@GiraffeX: Thanks a lot and just wait until you can see the pictures!

Alright, I re-upped the prettier of the pictures (the Orky WPs really aren't all that impressive anyway). So here's the N-scale terrain:



...aaaaaaaaaand the first three Freebooter's Fate Brotherhood models (guy in the right wasn't finished then):

lol I saw the pics, I was logged in a lot earlier just didn't have time to comment.

Did you undercoat them black or white? I'm not sure how to approach mine yet.

N-Scale stuff looks great, Siggy! And the Fate Brotherhood dudes (and dudette) look really good too.

@GiraffeX: Ah, sneaky.

@Moltar: Cheers.



Alright peeps, here's something new which I've been putting off (or rather had no time to work on this one) for a while now but the past weekend I got some time to work on them: Later Achemenid Persians for DBA. My regular gaming nemesis and I originally planned to run a little DBA campaign with an "Alexander versus Persians" theme.



I chose to go Persian because they're a very colourful force for several reasons and they usually get some massively bad PR. So yeah, I went into my LGS where for at least 10 years they had an army box of Xyston Later Achaemenid Persians standing around, hidden away on the toppest of top shelves, under a layer of dust. I'd seen the box several times over the years, but never had a real reason to pick them up. Well, now the day had come. I really should have negotiated the price a little. If it hadn't been for me the box still would be there and would be there for te next 10 years to come, guaranteed. Anyway, I picked the minis up for a only slightly too high amount of moneez (supporting local traders and all), ordered some weirdly expensive spears from North Star, ordered some decals from LBM. Decals still are on their way but I did get to starting to throw some paint onto the infantry. It will be a bit late for a summer campaign I'm afraid but I want to get these minis done. Not only for DBA but also for Impetus and this new little set of rules called Spear and Sword.

Light infantry (those will get some nice crescent-shaped shields):


A bunch of skirmishers:


Heavy infantry (spearmen). The kardaka in red will get hoplite style shields whilst the egyptian marines in the right will get huge shields:


So what is there to come? Two elements of light cavalry, two more elements of cavalry, one element of command cavalry (general and two guards), one general in chariot, one scythed chariot. So lots of fun stuff to do in the future. Of course I also have to do a camp. Might just shamelessly nick some internet person's idea and model King Cyrus the Great's mausoleum. Let's see. Hope you like the guys so far. I went for a kind of traditional colour scheme really. I know, maybe they should be a little more subdued because the idea of overly colourful persian outfits on regular warriors isn't very popular with historians these days because it was overdone by their elders. Well, you never know. But you know how I usually go for aiming to out-"pretty" the enemy armies. And as we all know it takes some effort to out-pretty a Greek boy wonder. Winning the game is just the cherry on top. :p


As for more interesting things (maybe?), here are some more pictures of the finished Germans. The client got them today and is very, very pleased.

MG gunner, assistant gunner and sniper:





Infantryman with StG44, wounded infantryman with Kar98k, mortar team:



The mortar crew is converted. The client got a box of Perry Afrika Korps just for the light mortar, but asked me to have the crew kneeling instead of lying flat on the ground, because that's way easier to handle in skirmish squad level games in terms of LOS and such. So I had to do some repositioning on the gunner's hands, cut the original gunner's arm off the light mortar (Granatwerfer 36), built two mortar grenades from green stuff and plasticard, repositioned the hands on the loader, gave him a mortar grenades ammo box on the base and put a Kar98 on his back (the strap is made of Green Stuff). His left hand is repositioned to have the arm look better resting on the knee. The bandage on the wounded soldier's head is just painted on, has some blood seeping through, running over his face.




Infantryman with Kar98k, throwing hand grenade (mind the little user manual printed onto the grenade's main body), infantryman wiht G43, a soldier with medical training (with painted on arm band and a scratchbuilt medic's pouch), infantryman with StG44 and camouflaged helmet, Gefreiter with MP40:





Infantryman with G43, Obergefreiter with binoculars and MP40, iron cross and a custom made camouflage field blouse, infantryman with G43, infantryman with StG44, infantryman with Kar98k:





...and that's that. As I said, they'll be featured on a demo table at VIVAT 2014 at Zinnfigurenwelt Katzelsdorf. Hope you like them!

Zinnfigurenwelt Katzelsdorf?

Now I think you're just making these things up


The look great Siggy!

Great work, Sig' on both sets of mini's. Conversions look "meant to be".

How do you paint so friggen fast and at that level? I actually have moved away frm historical gaming, but you sure make it tempting.

@Moltar: Oi! It's a real place, the carrot fairy told me so! Nah, it's actually a really cool location and perfect for a wargaming event. What's better a surrounding than a museum full of a staggering amount of toy soldiers?

@Dr H: Cheers, I think I get what you're saying about the conversions.

@Solar_lion: Moving AWAY from historical wargaming? What does one go to beyond that? Just kidding. Actually the guy I usually play wargames with also developed this weird notion of redoing his Fantasy minis (the good stuff though, a collection for Warhammer Quest) and even bought some new Space Marines (gasp!). I enjoy historical wargaming immensely recently. I think also because 90% of my commission work is other people's Fantasy/Sci-Fi stuff, so 'hard' sci-fi/historicals is what I tend to enjoy more as a past time just as a little change from what I do most of the time. That aside, I actually got all the Fantasy/Sci-Fi minis I need really. There are plans to play Hail Caesar and/or Impetus Fantasy with our fantasy armies which should be cool.


Update on the Freebooter's Fate Brotherhood warband:



The little lanky fella in the front right with the dagger risen to throw is WIP. Hope you like them so far.

 Sigur wrote:
@Dr H: Cheers, I think I get what you're saying about the conversions.

It's a good thing.
When a conversion looks like it isn't a conversion, it's a good job.

And nice work on the warband.

The Warband is looking excellent Sigur, I like the way the red dress goes from red to black.