The 15mm Bug

    As I've said before, my available hobby time is a bit more sporadic at the moment and I've ended up with periods of time where Edward is fussing and I'm left with time to think instead of getting on with painting. One of the outcomes of this and the ACW project from my last few posts is that I am really intrigued by 15mm.

   When Games Workshop released 9th edition 40k one of their posts on the community page (which was repeated on their podcast) was that they have noticed that most players don't have access to a 6 by 4 foot table. I want to say they claimed 60% of players had access to one, but only 30 odd % owned one*, so the majority of games were actually being played on smaller boards. 

*My stats are probably wrong as I'm going off memory

but I think they prove where I'm going with this.

   This got me thinking about my gaming. I've not been to Wayland Games for very nearly a year now as they haven't yet reopened their gaming centre after the first lockdown, so the only 6 by 4 board I have access to is at my mate Neil's house. Then with Ed being around, it makes more sense to do as much gaming at home as I can, even when Waylands is open again, so that I don't just leave my wife with the kid every time I want a game. So, does 15mm make more sense?

   I bought into the first Forged In Battle 15mm kickstarter as it was being talked about a lot on the Meeples and Miniatures podcast about the same time they were waxing lyrical about Sword & Spear - it was also the reason I failed my paint more than I buy target for 2015 with a late purchase of a couple of hundred figures** - but every time I get a pack out to have a look, I decide it's probably beyond me and put them away. With all my thinking, I thought this was the perfect time to try to paint a unit and see how it goes, then one thing led to another and I had two finished units before I knew it.

**Literally the last thing I bought in 2015 was 216 15mm figures. . .

   So, here is the first units of Middle Imperial Romans from Forged In Battle Miniatures, based on an 80 by 40mm bases.

One of the things I'm really enjoying about element bases of 15mm troops is not having straight lines of troops, my second base shows it a bit better than this base does.

As ever, my photography of 15mm is terrible, but they will look much better as army shots later on.

Thanks for reading

Working on the periphery

    It's about this point where I've really started to worry that my hobby plan for 2021 has already gone out of the window. I had planned to spend the first few months of hobby getting my War of the Roses projects moving well ahead of the May deadline, however, it seems that my head is stuck in a 15mm (ish) space. More on that in another post.

   This post is about the extra bits that I decided I needed to add to make the two sprues of 'Epic' scale figures from Warlord Games into a full game that could be played when games are allowed to resume. I felt it was obvious that I needed limbers for the cannons that came on the sprue, a unit or two of cavalry for each side and I wanted some scenery.

   Going in the order listed above, here are the limbers. I went with Kallistra for all my extra figures as other reviews seemed to suggest that they scaled well and I have to say, I am convinced they are the same scale - if you ignore the single horseman who comes on the sprue and is a bit bigger than the Kallistra horsemen. I mounted the limbers on bases that matched the cannon's base from the warlord sprue and I put the cannons that came with the limbers on their own bases, so they can be replaced with a set up cannon.

Kallistra Confederate Limber with Warlord plastic cannon

View from behind the Union Limber

   Next up are some cavalry. One of my main problems with historical gaming is the issue of basing. Normally I solve this by mounted 28mm figures on separate bases and having a variety of movement trays to fit either different rulesets or different opponents, however, with 12mm figures this is a tad harder. I toyed with making a unit two smaller bases of 4 horse as it looked really good, but in the end, I went with 6 horse on a base the same size that the warlord infantry are mounted on. The more I thought about it, the more having a more standard base size for my games made sense. 

Union Cavalry

Confederate Cavalry

   Last up I have some scenery.  Looking online the best option, for what I was after, seemed to be Hovels, so I ordered the farmstead set and some tents.

   The tents I just based up as simply as I could as it is supposed to look like the edge of an encampment. The farmstead, however, I spent a bit more time building. Each gap between buildings is big enough for a stand of figures and the end result is that you can have 4 units defending the farm with the command unit in the centre. The haystacks came with the farmstead and aren't glued down, while the wagon was a test order from Irregular Miniatures which seems a bit large but without the oxen and crew I don't have a problem with it.

   As ever, my painting at 15mm doesn't survive the close shots from my camera, but I am really pleased with how this stuff looks on the table. I've got enough for a decent 2 player game as I had planned for my small table, but now I think the theory is sound, I still have more coming in the post to try and make it a bigger battle game for when we can meet up with the club again.

Thanks for reading

Doing the other side

    I wasn't planning on getting another post out quite so quickly, but a day where my mum was able to help babysit our son gave me a chunk of free time to relax that I put into painting. I used the time to carry on with my plan of getting two 15mm armies ready for a game the moment there is some relaxation of the mixing rules and we can start gaming at home.

   I'd already made sure that my confederates were tidied up and sprayed, ready to go. As they would be a bit less uniform than my Union, I knew they would take a bit longer, but (other than the straps) they were still good fun to paint. I gave them all a grey uniform based on the uniform palette I used on the 28mm version and, again, like the Union troops I gave them the same banners that their 28mm counterparts have.

   Now I have two sides sorted and the project is done, it makes sense to own up to the full truth. I've been placing a few little orders elsewhere to fill this project out a bit. I've got some cavalry and limbers coming for both sides from Kalistra as they seem to be the best size match out there - more on that when they arrive - and I picked up some scenery from Hovels just to stop it being a green board with some trees. If this works out as I hope it will, I should have a good looking game I can play at home, and if I can convince a few other guys to paint their sprues, we'll have a decent sized game to play at the club.

   There is also a voice in my head telling me to pick up at least another couple of sprues to bulk both sides out, but I think its best we ignore him at the moment.

Thanks for reading

Same Army, Different Scale

   As you can probably imagine, painting time is at an all time low at the moment and with no real end in sight for this lockdown, my painting motivation isn't that high either. This time last year I was trying to work through my cavalry backlog which is always the bit of the army that I enjoy painting the least*, however, this year my plan is just to paint what I can, when I can. So, expect to see a lot of jumping about.

*if anything that backlog has gotten a lot worse

   When Warlord Games announced they were doing ACW in plastic on a smaller scale, I got a bit excited. When I saw the first sprue was coming free on the front of Wargames Illustrated it got me thinking. Then when I realised that the sprue was the equivalent of the first army I painted for Rebels & Patriots, the ideas started flowing.

   I've been looking at dabbling in smaller scales for a while now but haven't really committed to any single project hard enough that I could play a game of it tomorrow, but as we are in lockdown at the moment and I suspect we'll have a repeat of last late spring/early summer where the gaming centres weren't open but we could gradually mix in each other's homes, I have been looking at smaller scales even harder as my best gaming table at home is at best a 3 foot by 4 foot board and while gang sized games are fun and I plan to play a few, it would be good to play an army sized game early on.

   I've got a few plans for this new Warlord stuff - short term I'd like to basically downside Rebels and Patriots for my smaller table, long term I'd like to see how big a game can be played with this stuff, but that's a story for another day.** 

**I'm going to keep half an eye open for cheap extras of this sprue.

   For now, I've only managed to get the Union done, using the same recipe as my 28mm army except I've gone for a slightly lighter brown on the guns as I figured the guns and skin are the two focal points that stop them being blocks of blue. My painting on them doesn't stand up to close inspection, but as they are blocks of 20 men at 15mm (ish) they aren't really expected to be looked too closely. Flags are from Wargames Designs - thanks to the suggestion on twitter from Mike Hobbs - and are from their 10mm range rather than 15mm.

Thanks for reading

That End Of Year Post - 2020 Edition

   I don't think any of 2020's end of year reviews are going to start with anything but, what a year we had. This year has a lot to answer for.

   This year I have read much much more than ever before (173 books!) and gamed a lot less, I've been to battlefields and Roman forts, all of which has inspired new armies and new projects. I've had a year of trying to buy up models I might want in the next year or so when I am pretty sure I am going to be skint, all the while being distracted by an idea I've had from the last novel I've read or last place I have visited. We've played D&D on Roll20, recorded podcasts on Skype and had a son.

   The stat that threw me the most was blog posts - this is my 2rnd highest year in a year that I didn't think I was keeping up with posts.

Here are the aims I set for myself at the end of 2019 - oh sweet summer child:

1. Play 52 games - of with 26 must be 30k - As I am on a 30k podcast I really need to know what I am talking about and make sure I don't have a dry spell like 2019 - 54 games played but only 9 games of 30k (and 6 of those were two day events in January and February and a bulk of the games played this year have been quick games that you can play 3 or 4 games of in an evening with only 26 of the 54 games being wargames (actually still better than I expected). Not going to beat myself up about this after the year we've all had. 

2. Paint more than I buy - Especially after failing in 2019 and going to add that my bought figures must never go higher than painted numbers - Failed but I sort of failed on purpose. . .

3. Really must not buy into too many more projects - Ultimately this will tie into aim 2 as this is another backlog aim - I started more projects than I planned to but I don't think it was as bad as it could have been. Mostly the problem has been the size of some of the projects.

4. Look to finish some older projects properly - Baggage, non-coms, appropriate scenery etc all make a battle feel more realistic - just painting 24 points of a Lion Rampant army doesn't quite cut it - I think this is something I've gotten better at. More armies are hitting 30 points as a basic instead of 24 and there is more gumpf appearing with them, but next year will be better.

5. Replay (mini versions of) famous battles - 2019 saw us play a mini (and it really was mini) version of Hastings, and this is something I'd like to do with other periods. Get a feel for what each side had and what the conditions were, then replay it, so looking at Agincourt, Nasby, Towton, maybe even Bosworth? - Sadly this was as affected by a lack of games as anything else. We replayed a small version of Agincourt as one of the first games this year, but it went south pretty quickly after that. Even without the weird year we've had, I suspect I was always going to fail this one, going into a aim of playing 4 battles when you only own the figures for 1 is going to make it hard to achieve.

There are a few other interesting stats that I want to share:

• I only played 3 armies more than once this year - Ultramarines x6, Sons of Horus x3 and Napoleonic British x3. While, my new D&D character was joint first with my Ultras but doesn't have a figure yet.
• My Top 3 most played games were; 30k x9, D&D x6 with a joint 3rd place of Hey That's My Fish x5 and Ultimate Werewolf x5, with only one other wargame coming in my top 10 (Rebels and Patriots)
• I painted the most models in a single year than I have before - 1178!
• 8 of the armies I played with this year were on the table for the first time.

After playing a lot of ACW last year using Rebels and Patriots it became obvious that the rules would work for Napoleonics too, so we played a few games of that this year.

I got my WW2 armies out for the first time in a couple of years. I had planned to play a few games of Bolt Action this year, but that was in Feb . . .

Also, it feels weird looking at a photo of a game played at Wayland Games - not been in the place for almost 9 months at this point.

I got to my first doubles tournament this year and it was as fun as I was told they would be.

Also winning my first physical trophy was a definite bonus.

I got my Ultramarines to their first Tournament and almost got them to a second (with the tournament being postponed twice in one year).

The Dutch Navy saw their first action this year - one of the benefits of the first lockdown was getting time to do those projects that had been put by.

The first planned game of 100 Years War was loosely based on Agincourt, following games fell by the wayside but I aim to pick it back up with the extra figures I've since painted. This project still needs more knights . . .

Getting some ECW on the table was another big highlight of the year - I'd been meaning to play that for a few years now.

My Lancers getting their first charge in was one of my gaming highlights of the year - sorry Neil. . . Hot knife through butter comes to mind.

   The other thing I thought I would do in this round up, simply due to how many books I have read this year, is have a quick bit about what books or series of books I have discovered this year and really enjoyed:

1. Mercy Thompson - Twilight in concept but actually good

2. Honor Harrington - just properly good sci-fi

3. Alan Lewrie - an easy going naval series

4. Shogan - wow, just wow

5. Anything by Ben Kane - good Roman novels

6. Anything by Sam Willis - naval history at its best

   Before this becomes a book blog, my aims for 2021 are going to be somewhat different - for obvious reasons I hope;

1. Play 25 games - I want to keep this low as I would like to spend a bit more time at home early this year. I'd rather set an easy target that I smash than spend the last half of the year chasing numbers when I should be at home.

2. Paint more than I buy - again, for obvious reasons money will be a lot tighter this year, so I'm not really aiming to buy any more than the odd top up for a unit or army if I find I am really missing something. I purposely built up my backlog to make life next year easier.

3. Play a big game - I want my gaming in 2021 to be about quality rather than quantity (he said saying he wants to play a big game). I'd like to go out once in a while and play a really good game and chat with real mates than be rushing out at every opportunity and losing a once in a lifetime chance to watch someone grow up.

4. After saying all that, I would also quite like to see if I can get a non-30k army to the top of my most played this year, but not going to purposely break the spirit of Targets 1 and 3 to achieve it.

5. Add much more gubbins to my projects - I want every project to have at least something in the way of wagons, civilians, camp followers and scenery. I'm getting much better at this but I'm still lacking in a lot of places.

I might as well use this opportunity to get some confessions in too. I've been putting some projects aside (as mentioned earlier) so that I don't need to spend money that I potentially don't have and while I don't want to dedicate myself to getting them finished without knowing what my free time looks like I expect the following to appear on this blog at some point:

• Scots Covenantors for ECW 
• Some Royalist Highland Scots (not a whole army - yet)
• War of the Roses - both sides (big-ish armies) - you've seen the first batch
• Late Imperial Romans (lots) with Goth allies
• Early Republic Romans
• New Kingdom Egyptians
• Haradrim
• Thousand Sons for 30k
• Lizardman Blood Bowl team
• All the cavalry for my Moorish army
• Plus extra units for projects including Napoleonics, ECW and others
• A fair few non-combatant units for older armies inc wagons and scenery - I'll be honest, I got carried away buying stuff for this bullet point
• And I'm sort of tempted by a little foray into AWI or the Seven Years War

Thanks for reading

The Land Of The Rising Sun

   I'm still not doing much in the way of hobby but I thought I'd go back over some projects that never made it onto the blog for whatever reason.

    One of the books I was encouraged to read during Lockdown 1 was Shogun by James Clavell and this led to an undesirable outcome, a new project in a bit of the world that has never held much fascination for me beyond liking Pokemon.

   I decided to do it as cheaply as I could but still make it worth doing, so I bought a starter warband for Test Of Honour from Footsore Miniatures, an extra pack of figures from Steel Fist Miniatures and a few bits of scenery from Blotz and got going. I've not actually bought the rulebook yet, so that might need to be the next thing I look at. 

   I try not to be negative on this blog as its not the tone I want to go for, but there is something I'd like to get out of the way before I bring the tone back up. I'm really not a fan of the tiny wrist joints on metal models that the newer multipart Footsore Models have started to put out - I think its the bits not sculpted by Bill - so the stuff for Gangs of Rome, Mortal Gods and Test of Honour, it just makes some of the models* a nightmare to build and I doubt they will survive much in the way of gaming, even with pinning. The banner poles particularly worry me but I'm not sure what Footsore could have done about those.

*Not every model but a handful

   The figures in this post are a single Samurai away from a minimum warband - which is just my laziness on show, but I have all the Footsore Ashigaru finished (with just some Wargames Factory ones that came free with Wargames Illustrated to add to my painting list). This is one of those projects where I'm not 100% if it will ever make it onto the table, but as a hobby project it's earnt it's money back, so who really cares.

Thanks for reading

Welcome To The World

    I try to keep this blog pretty hobby-centric but every now and again I've got a good reason to break that rule and this is one of those posts.

   About a week ago my wife gave birth to our first child, a boy we have called Edward. As you can imagine he is taking up nearly all of our time at the moment so my hobby is definitely suffering, but its been totally worth it so far.

   I've got big plans for my hobby next year and have been buying up armies since we found out (giving fair warning that I have failed at least one of my hobby targets for 2020) but I suspect posts will dry up a bit in the immediate future.

Thanks for reading