28mm Roman Hastati and Carthaginian Medium Hoplites

This post combines the last two units that I've painted up but were waiting on my workbench for about a month to be based up. The first unit is two elements of Roman hastati. These are legionary stands in Marathon to Marius and will be added to the previously painted triarii and velites for my white legion.

All of the figures are Old Glory figures. I currently have a membership in their discount club and just cannot believe the value of being able to purchase already reasonable figures at a 40% discount. I highly recommend their discount club to anyone who's planning on painting any significant volume of their figures. It pays for itself on your first order.

The last stand is a unit of Carthaginian medium hoplites. I originally purchased this bag of figures in hopes that I could paint them in a manner that would allow them to make up the fourth stand in my Carthaginian citizen hoplite phalanx. Unfortunately these figures, with their linen curiass, just don't match up well enough to make it all work that well. My new thinking is that I'll need to paint up a second unit of these to act as a smaller separate phalanx.

These figures look very Macedonian to me. I will probably save a few of the left over figures to mix into my Macedonian units.

28mm French Napoleonic Dragoons

My friend Ed offered me a gift of these beautifully painted 28mm Perry Dragoons. He's recently upgraded his personal collection to some even NICER ones. I was blown away by the offer and told him it was too generous to offer me such an expensive gift. We agreed on a price that was still a very generous gift by Ed to myself. Thanks Ed.

I'm not sure where Ed got these. Ed's such an accomplished painter that it's possible that he painted them himself. It's also possible he purchased them painted. Either way they're gorgeous, and since Ed and I use the same basing convention, they didn't even need to be re-based!

There was one musician that was missing an arm. Since each Perry box set comes with plenty of extra arms, I was able to scrounge one from my uncle's spare parts bin. Glued on and painted, it's a pretty decent match for the original. At least I can't tell it was ever missing. Close enough for government work! The photo to the left shows the repaired figure.





Some of you may have noticed a significant lull in wargaming posts in my blog earlier this month. As I showed in an earlier post, we had a particularly damaging winter this past year. I've been spending most of my spring doing yard work, including removing several damaged trees. Here you can see the 'after' photo of the tree that was photographed in my earlier post. In the background, half a dozen four foot logs still waiting to be cut and split into firewood. At least I can mow the yard again....if it ever starts growing.

Northern Conspiracy May 2015 Game Night

Last Friday was our club's May game night. I played in Ralph's Bolt Action WWII game. This was a scenario suggested by Ed on our club mailing list. This actual battle for Itter Castle was perfectly sized for a Bolt Action game. The scenario features American and already surrendered Whermarcht infantry fighting together, trying to rescue some French diplomats. The diplomats were trapped in a castle guarded by fanatical German SS who refused to surrender. You can read an article describing the battle here: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32622651

I played on the American side commanding an group of two infantry squads and a 30 caliber machine gun. You can see below my command backed up by Charlie's idenitical command. Our plan, with a long table to cross and time at a premium was to delay on the flanks and "hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle".  Like most battle plans, it didn't survive contact with the enemy... Our Sherman suppressed some of the SS in the village with a very effective shot from it's 75mm main gun and Charlie and I rushed out to hold the left flank to make room for the middle press. Then the plan went to hell in a hand basket. The SS in the village blew up the Sherman with a Panzershreck, and the SS rushed forward to meet Charlie and I and mowed us down with their assault rifles. Moving fire from the SS assault rifle squads each with two MG-34/42 LMGs was 22 dice per squad. With little cover available, Charlie and I were stopped on the left. Without the Sherman in support the village held out long enough. In the middle we had some success, but only until the assault rifle squads were done mowing down our troops on the left. Our attack stifled we settled into the village, the only hard cover available. Victory for the SS (boo! Nazis, I HATE these guys.)

It was a fun game, interesting scenario and as usual, Ralph brings a very beautiful traveling table. Particularly satisfying for me was to see the village, which Ralph made up of my laser cut buildings with his own scratch built walls and other details. 

There were two other great games played. Below are Photos of Earl's 28mm ACW skirmish game and Phil's ACW naval game.

Freeman's Farm at Huzzah! 2015

During the Saturday afternoon session at Huzzah! I ran my second 'public' game of my Electronic Brigadier rules. I had a full table including friends I see only at conventions, Chris, Scott and Adam (from the Fencing Frog blog). Also at the table was Dick Bryant founder of The Courier Magazine. This was the same scenario that I used for most of my early play testing and for my game at Carnage 2014.

This game was a tale of the underdogs. On the west flank, Learned's brigade stood firm to the cream of the British army and turned away the British light infantry regiment and the 24th regiment of line routing each with combined infantry volley fire and support from their 6lb gun section. On the east side of the battlefield the German mercenaries held strong in the face of Poor's brigade of continentals - a force that outweighed them in number of regiments and quality. In the end two of Poor's continental regiments were driven from the line, one routing. Balancing off the other British unit was a unit of Connecticut militia that withered in the face of Dick's British brigade and fled the battle in rout.

At the conclusion of our time the casualties were slightly in favor of the Americans and the army cohesion was also in favor of the Americans by a small but not insignificant amount. Considering the equal size of the armies and the overall quality advantage of the British army I concluded the battle to be a minor victory for the Americans. Both armies sustained close to the historical number of casualties leaving plenty of room for a good re-fight of Bemis Heights if this were a campaign game.

I'd like to thank all of the players for their patience with my tablets difficulty with the hotel WiFi. I would also like to give a shout out to Adam both for pulling his Kindle out to rescue me as well as lending me some electrons with a USB battery boost when one of my tablets got low on charge.

Feedback from all of the players was very positive and motivating. I will soon be moving on to other historical periods as I believe AWI is very close to finished and working well in my rules now....if only I could acquire some additional GOOD tablets.

Update: Adam from the Fencing Frog Blog has a post about the game on his blog here: http://fencingfrog.blogspot.com/2015/05/huzzah-saturday-part-2-electronic.html

Huzzah! 2015

This past weekend I traveled up to the Huzzah! convention in Portland, Maine with my uncle.  I heard it a couple of times from different people, that this is quickly becoming the premiere historical miniatures convention in New England. I agree with those opinions. The games are high quality. There are plenty of good vendors and the venue has acceptable space for games and rooms available.

This is my first of two posts on Huzzah! and will feature everything except my own game which will be in a following post. These first two photos are of Northern Conspirator Ed's Armies at Lutzen area control game. Followers of this blog may remember my previous post about the play test of this scenario.

 Here are photos of conspirators Earl (left), Gordon (right) and Pete and Ralph (below) enjoying the convention.

These are photos of a game that used the 4Ground Pegasus bridge terrain which is re-sold by Warlord games. I've seen photos of this in the past and it's even more stunning in person. Beautiful laser work.

 This WWII game caught my attention for the nicely painted Tiger tank as well as the very tenuous position the red devil British Airborne jeeps are in a the moment. If the 88 doesn't get them the coaxial MG will!

 I was able to meet up and chat with my friend Mike who ran his epic southeast Asia skirmish game that features over 12' of table literally cram-packed with beautiful hand made terrain.

Mike runs a mailing list for fellow wargamers called the 'Barbarian Army' and also posts his exploits on Facebook. You can see his photos from Huzzah! on his Facbook page here. Feel free to follow him on Facebook while you're there.

There are a couple of rooms dedicated to board gaming both historical and 'Euro' games. Here is a photo of a hybrid - Axis and Allies.

Electronic Brigadier - Freeman's Farm Play Test for Huzzah!

Friday my friends George and Ed and my uncle Ralph came over to help me run a final play test of the most recent version of Electronic Brigadier before my public game at the Huzzah! convention next weekend. 

While the troops in the battle were from my Huzzah! scenario, I altered the terrain. I did this because all of the players have played my Freeman's Farm scenario several times during play testing of the rules. I wanted a proven scenario for the convention, but altered the terrain for the play test to reduce the monotony for Ralph, Ed and George.

The play test went well with both armies pushing hard on their respective right flanks. Both being successful with this a battle line was established roughly diagonally along the fenced road that I put on the battlefield. When we called the game due to time the computer had the casualties and army cohesion numbers approximately equal. The scenario gives a tie to the American army as they have lower quality troops. They also had the next turn coming up and would probably have advanced their position significantly during that turn.

All in all a successful play test and I look forward to a good game at Huzzah! Look me up there if you'd like to see the rules in action. My thanks to George, Ed and Ralph for their help testing the rules and scenario again.

Romans vs. Samnites - First Punic War Campaign

A couple of weeks ago we got together to fight another battle in our ongoing First Punic War campaign. This one was a Samnite attack on the Roman city of Capua. The campaign is coming down to the final turns and Rome is in a dominant position. Each of the other players in turn have been trying to drop Rome down a notch or two on the victory point ladder to extend the campaign. This was Don's attempt with his Samnites.

The battle was 9 points worth of Romans vs. 8 points of Samnites. I played with Phil and Don as Samnites. We did our best, but with a better quality army and an extra point worth of troops the battle was a slaughter and Rome won easily. Still a game getting slaughtered on the tabletop with friends is still a good way to spend an evening.