Rebels and Patriots - first play test

   I didn't take half as many photos as I should have done, but I did manage to get a quick game of Rebels and Patriots in at the club last week and what a set of rules it is.
   As the rules are from the same family as Lion Rampant, I knew I would probably like them, but they make Lion Rampant seem clunky in comparison. To start with, instead of looking through a chart to see what unit type you are trying to activate and what type of activation you are trying to do, to see what you need to roll, everything is on a 6+ (on 2d6) with modifiers shown on the unit type - so my Union Veterans needed a 5+ to do anything with a further modification of whether their officer was nearby or they have any pins (maximum of 2 as a 3rd automatically removes the unit from the board). This simplification sounds like a small deal but it drastically speeds the game up and keeps it flowing.

   This photo was taken a tad late in the proccedings as there was a prime Confederate unit sitting where the scattering of dice currently is. All I can say is, cannons are really fun.

The Union advancing on the Confederate cannon - it didn't end well.

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Back to the boys in Blue

   As I said before, I over bought when it came to the Union side of the armies. When the plastic set came with a unit of light infantry it only made sense to round it up to a full unit or 2 halves, and with 2 metal Perry cannons costing the same as 3 plastic ones, again, it only made sense to go for the bigger number. However, as it turned out I had exactly the right amount of motivation to paint 24 points of both Union and Conderate, and these last 18 figures were over that number, so as a result, they have felt like much more of a chore than the rest of the project so far.
   I've not painted them any differently from the other Union guys, so I'll let the pictures do the bulk of the talking.

And that is basically it for the ACW project at the sec, bar getting them onto the table and actually trying out the ruleset. I think this is the first time I have blogged about a project that was bigger than a single unit, over the course of a few blogs and not got distracted . . .

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ACW Cannons

   This isn't going to be my most exciting post ever, but with the last things needing* to be painted for my ACW project to get the armies onto the table being the cannons themselves, it made sense to get a wiggle on and get them done. I still have 3 limbers to go (as they come in the kit, it seems daft not to get them built and painted even if they are a pointed upgrade, that I haven’t taken, in Rebels and Patriots. The same when you look at the crew, in Rebels and Patriots a cannon has a 4 man crew** and it made no sense to leave some on the sprue that would either be needlessly thrown away or stored for no reason, so I built them as part of my project.

*Not that there isn't more coming

**Rising to 6 with a limber

  I now have a 24 point army for both sides, so once I get unit cards written up, I will hopefully aim to get this on the table asap.

   Lastly, I have another Castallax for my Sons of Horus, Cybernetica contingent. One of the consequences of being on the Mournival Podcast is that I am chatting more 30k than I ever have before, and with a couple of guys who are really into their Mechanicus, and I dare say, this is having an effect on me. I’m sure you will see more of this sort of stuff in the near future. This one is in a slightly more dynamic pose than it's sibling.

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Slightly carried away

   The weekend just gone was one of those rare beasts, a quiet weekend with no plans. I am famous (infamous?) among my friends for how quickly my weekends get booked up with jobs or days out, but with just how busy I have been recently and with the gaming weekend away the weekend before, I made sure this weekend would be 2 days of sitting in front of the tv, with a box set (Game of Thrones series 7) and a painting tray full of figures ready to go.

   I had set myself a target of 2-3 batches of confederates or union (maybe 20 figures), just to get both armies closer to the point where I could start playing even if there was an extra unit or two waiting in the wings still to be painted. Instead I managed to get something silly like 48 figures completed for this project. I need to double check but I think I need to put flags on my Confederate banner men and paint up 2 cannons and then I have my 2, 24 point armies for the first game.

   I will do finished army shots when I play that game, but in the meantime, here are the batches that I got finished over the weekend:

 

 

My Confederates are a mix of 3-4 different batches, again, with the odd home spun shirt to mix up colours. I also painted the artillerymen in the same batches as they were just as likely to be hit by shortages as the infantry.

My first unit of Union artillerymen – the last figures I needed to finish for the Union side to play. Cannon still to come.

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Painting the other side

   After going to the Warhammer 30k event last weekend, I am fairly motivated to get on with more of that project again, however, I don’t want to just forget about this one and just move on, like I have done to so many other nearly finished projects, so I have made sure I spent the week getting more infantry built and painted before I get carried away at the weekend.

   Whether it is a good idea or not, I decided to get the Confederates started. I had been doing my research on their uniforms and had some ideas I wanted to get done. Unlike the Union side of the ACW project, the Confederates are going to be painted up looking far more rag tag as they were having far more supply problems. This means instead of picking up half a unit at a time (6 figures) and painting them over the course of an evening or so, I am building and painting a more fluid number from across the units to try to avoid it looking like a uniform. I have a list of jacket and trouser combinations that I will work my way through picking a slightly different number of figures for each.

   My first big group is from 4 of these options – sticking with grey jackets early on just so the majority of my troops wear them in the end. There are grey jackets with brown trousers, with butterscotch trousers and a pair with either sky blue trousers or home spun red ones. My next couple of batches will be far more varied, so I can see how they start to look mixed in, then I can adjust the last few men to make the units look ‘right’.

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Company of Legends 2019

   As I mentioned on my last post, I spent the weekend at a Warhammer 30k event called the Company of Legends, run by the guys on the Edge of Empire Podcast. It’s a 5 game, 3000 point list event with no comp (so you’ll see primarchs etc there) and there was also a 3 game, 1000 point centurion event on the Friday night. All while staying in a Scout hut up in Durham, so you could drink all day long if you wanted and play pickup games all night.

   I wrote a quick Sons of Horus list to be submitted, set myself some gaming targets* and then went to play some games. I’m not going to go into any real details on my games, as I’ll go over them on Episode 2 of the Mournival Podcast, but I’ll do a quick over all.

*Play at least one primarch list and at least one custodes list**

**I ended up playing 2 of each in the end

The view of the gaming hall from the bedroom level.

 

 Primarch 1 - Corax of the Raven Guard.

Primarch 2 - Vulkan of the Salamanders.

   The weirdest part of the event was that I was picked in my 3rd game to be on a live stream, so you can watch my game against Will Henry using his Salamanders on the links below:

 

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMJbHY1Vais

 Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYkfIf1isSc

 Hero squad before their untimely demise - held off the custodes for 6 rounds of combat.

Some beasts - killed them all in combat.

   You'll be pleased to know I have kept my perfect 30k event record up by bringing home the Wooden Spoon again. Although, I have some seriously good ideas and experience to stop it happening again.

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Flying the Flag

   A few days later than planned but here is my last block of line infantry for my ACW Union army for Rebels and Patriots by Osprey Games. I’ve been away at a Warhammer 30k event in Durham since Friday morning, so while these were finished before I left, I hadn’t had a chance to get them on the blog beforehand.

   I have retroactively swapped a couple of figures from this unit into the first unit I painted, as of my four units, two will be run as Green, while the other two will be Veterans. So my thinking is that my two Green units will be in the standard issue forage hats, fresh from being equipped, while the two Veterans will be in mixed hats.

I will write up something about my 30k event in due course but in the meantime;

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