Tuesday, 4 January 2011

Command and Colors Napoleonics


I played my first game of Command and Colors Napoleonics, tonight.   Now, I don't even particularly LIKE Napoleonics as a period, but I was very impressed with this game.  If you've played Command and Colors (Ancients), you can pick up the rules inside 15 minutes; yet, at the same time, the game play is different  enough  to give variety (my initial feeling is that the system is even better than the Ancients version).   Also the cards and the blocks are beautiful, which helps to make it a pleasure to play.  My impressions may be slightly coloured by the fact that I won, and drank half a bottle of a very fine French wine in the process!

Two things that I preferred about Napoleonics, compared to Command and Colors (Ancients), are that the impact of generals seems to be rather reduced (I've always thought them too effective in the latter), and that units become less effective as they suffer casualties.  I would have imagined that this latter feature would slow the game down, but it doesn't.  Artillery adds an interesting extra element to the game, and can combine with infantry and cavalry to deliver powerful attacks.  Richard Borg has given different nationalities of troops,different characteristics, which adds a nice flavour.

You can order it from here or your FLGS.  RTB, if you are reading this, you now have no excuse for getting your minis on a gaming table!  ;-)

Monday, 3 January 2011

Furor Teutonicus!

These Foundry and Black Tree Ancient German figures were painted for me by Nick Speller, who certainly did a fine job!  He paints irregulars far better than I can.  I based them.  All the pictures are clickable.
 

Of course, they'll only be seen from behind, when advancing!

Here are their leaders, Silo and Italicus.

This old man, shaking his fist, is my favourite figure...

 ...but I also really like the big guy, front and centre here.

Thanks Nick!

Sunday, 2 January 2011

New Year's Honours

I just heard that this blog won the Figureblogotheque English Language Best Blog of the Year award for 2010, and would like to thank all those who voted for it!  Merci beaucoup!  I'm delighted to have won it.  

If you don't know FiggyBloggy (my affectionate nickname for it) it is a blog roll of wargaming blogs, which is run by my good friend Greg Privat, in France.   I visit it, from time to time, to see what new wargaming blogs are out there; it is particularly good for foreign language blogs.  A good portion of the traffic to this blog comes frome there, and if you have a blog it is a pretty good idea to list it there.

What a nice start to the New Year!

Confessions of a Basing Nazi Part 5

Here's the (almost) finished base from my previous post.  One can see the line of the crack between the two halves, but it is pretty well disguised and looks natural.  I was going to post the picture of the unit, but have decided, on reflection, to put a bit more Silflor on the bases, tonight.

Friday, 31 December 2010

Confessions of a Basing Nazi Part 4

This is a reprise of my (very very occasional) series on basing 28mm miniatures, and this post is about a trick I've come up with to speed up basing double-depth elements.

I find that double depth elements are very time consuming to base, because it is very hard to get the brush or palette knife into the space between the two ranks of figures.  Moreover, sometimes paint or gunk gets onto the finished figures which then need retouching.  Yet as the number of miniatures I own increases, I find that I want to base more and more miniatures this way, because they are quicker to deploy and move on the table.

Above are some of the splendid Foundry/Black Tree German figures that Nick has painted for me.  I've done very little too them aside from painting the bases to match the eventual colour of the earth that will surround them, and to varnish them.  I've arranged them on six 60x30 magnetic bases of my own manufacture.

In the above closeup, you can see that I like to position some of the bases so that the figures straddle both bases; this looks natural, and has practical value at a later stage.   I also like to use irregular numbers of miniatures, when possible.  The miniatures are stuck in place with wood glue, which dries relatively slowly and gives one time to move them around to get the most attractive arrangement.

Next, place the two bases next to each other on a magnetic surface, and cover each with your basing compound; I use a mix I've made up, that I call BigRedBatGunk (n.b. there is a square of tinplate under the bases in the photo).  Then  add a little extra gunk along the top of the seam  to disguise it.  It will then appear something like the above; the magnets hold the bases in place whilst the gunk dries like concrete.

And, once the gunk has dried, the two bases can be snapped apart, as above, leaving an irregular line along the break.   I then paint the two half-elements, separately. Once fully painted, the  two bases can be stuck back together along the edge with superglue, and this rough join is very much harder to see than a straight line would be; in fact virtually invisible.  Any figures straddling the join (as above) help to make it stronger.  I'll show the finished bases in a later post.

Tuesday, 28 December 2010

On the Painting Table for Q1 2011

I’ve been planning what to do in the first quarter of the year, up to Salute.   After Salute, I hope to collaborate on a very big project for Salute 2012, which will take up much of my time.

Mini Marian Legion: I bought 30-odd painted minis on eBay, and Nick is going to paint up another 40-50, which will give me the 80 minis I need for another 80-man mini legion of 10 x 8 man cohorts.  This is the representative scale we used for the game with Simon MacDowell, and if I can get 7 or 8 such legions finished (and hopefully get friends like Nick and Dr Simon to muster  a couple more), then I could run a tidy little campaign using Simon’s rules to fight the battles.

Wagon Laager: This was a project that I started in January 2009, and which has been “resting” since then.  I need to finish prepping the 50-odd figures that will “man” the laager and send them off to Nick, who is superb at painting Celts and Germans.   I’ll then paint the wagons and base the minis into them.  I’ve not seen a big wagon laager in 28mm so this will hopefully be fairly unique. 

Indo China: I’m very keen to finish the above weapons company, which will give me a complete Viet Minh battalion, together with another company or two of French, and the rules I’m trying to write.  After this I’ve loads of tanks, trucks, guns and half tracks to do...  I like the 20mm stuff as one can fit a little bit of modelling into the odd spare half-hour.

Odds and Ends: I need to varnish and base the Germans on my painting table, and the EIR cavalry. Frustratingly, I realised last night that I’ve only painted 9 EIR cavalry, and need to paint 3 more command figures.  Still the 9 are coming on nicely.  They are actually really nice minis... some of the BTD stuff is really OK.

So that's me sorted for Q1 2011!  Plenty to do... I wonder whether I’ll be able to stick with my plan? 

Saturday, 25 December 2010

Merry Xmas!

We wish you a Merry Christmas,
We wish you a Merry Christmas,
We wish you a Merry Christmas,
And a Happy New Year!

I hope that you, and your family enjoy a fabulous Christmas and that everyone has received lots of lovely new toys!

Oddly, the advent of Christmas has started me obsessing about  painting some more Early Imperial Romans.   Must be something to do with all the Nativity stories.  ;-)

Cheers, Simon