28mm Vikings

In an effort to try to get some of my collection painted and playable, I have resorted to outsourcing some of my painting. I have a friend who has had a lot of free time who had asked if I had any figures he could paint. I gladly sent off some of my 28mm Vikings. The initial offering was a collection of Plastic Wargames Factory Saxons and Crusader Viking command in metal. This was capped off by a dwarfed skald, sculpted by me. The Saxons had  been "Vikingized" by the generous application of some Green Stuff to give them proper hair and beards.

I think my biddy did a good job of painting them all to tabletop standard. I intentionally had him avoid any shield markings beyond colored sections. I can add transfers to the shields later.

I've sent off a batch of 28mm cowboys and US Cav to see how he does with a different subject matter.

-Eli

Mother Load Find!

Holy crap!

I haven't seen this stuff in over ten years.

I was on a quest for bits to use in my recent spat of terrain building and noticed a bin hiding in a corner of my garage shelves. On the outside it looked like just another bin full of bits and this and that. then, I noticed a miniature down in the depth of the collected containers, leftover sprue, plastic packaging. It was a wood elf archer.

Why would a wood elf archer be doing in the bottom of a terrain bits box?

Unearthing the bin from the shelf, I started to dig and found more and more interesting things not seen since my bachelor days with the gaming roommates. Miniature after miniatures was sifted from the junk, some of them in their original packaging. I had to dig more.

In all, the following things were excavated. No final tally yet, but it looks like -

8 x 28mm Harlequin Wood Elf Archers

30 x 28mm Old Glory Imperial Roman Legionaries

16 x 28mm Old Glory Late Roman Cavalry in scale male.

1 x Narn Dreadnought

1 x pack of GZG NSL fighters
1 x pack of GZG NAC heavy fighters

1 x old blue card Citadel fantasy early slot based fighters (2)

4 x partial (maybe complete) old resin and metal Grenadier Future Warriors vehicle kits.

1 x near complete plastic Warhammer Fantasy orc chariot.

Insane that I had all this laying in a bin. I must have swept a shelf when I moved out of the old house with the room mates and just forgotten about them. After that they likely got shifted from box to box and eventually ended up in this bin.

A good day. Now, to go clean up my garage.

-Eli

Operation Barbarossa Halted by 4 year old Girls

[Note: This is a repost from my blog, The Scattergun Gamer.]

   I know, it doesn't make sense. Just listen to the story.

   Today was my monthly games day in our local club. We refuse to give it a name, as it falls apart if you name it. Anyway, we play at a local university (UHCL). We arrived to find our usual room already occupied. Shouldn't have been, but rather than force a class to relocate to the room they were supposed to be in, we contact the school and get an alternate room. It's now about 1000 hours, we have the room until 1800.

   We get to the new room, get all set up, and start playing. I was trying a new set of rules (new to me, that is) called Spearhead. 6mm World War 2, stands as platoons. Eastern Front, Operation Barbarossa. I'm the Germans. Victory conditions are destroy two battalions. By the time the Soviet players (also new to the rules) and I are ready to go, it's 1200. Skip lunch, let's play.

   Turn 1 is a lot of maneuvering. Turn 2 sees two forward recon units run into each other (literally). I call in fire from the 150s and wipe a platoon of Stalin's untermenschen bikers from the face of the recently expanded Vaterland. Turn 3 and the Soviet tank hordes are getting close enough to my pitifully small armored contingent to make me sweaty, but I have a flank march getting ready to come in behind his infantry.

   About 1400 hours, just as we are finishing Turn 3, They arrive. "They" being 50 little girls (maybe 4 to 6 years old) and their mommas. With Head Momma coming in and demanding to know what we are doing in their room that they "paid for and have been using for the last three days." Seems the scheduling people forgot when they gave us this room. We had noticed when we came in that the room was trashed, but just picked up the worst of it and got started playing.

   Five minutes later, we're picking up. Ten minutes after that, we're gone - really quick for us, especially considering that They didn't wait for us to clear out before they started pouring in. Money talks, and you-know-what walks. Ah well. The game was pretty good to that point, fairly intuitive in how things operated. I'll try it agian one of these days. Maybe next time, the Fascist invaders will crush the godless hordes of the murderous Stalin!

   Oh, and if that weren't enough, when we first arrived my son and I saw an armadillo digging up the flower beds out in front of the building. You know you're in Texas when the armadillos tear up the college landscaping.

Reinforcements Arrived

The miniatures hobby is not dead at ISLP. In fact I continue to support ongoing projects as well as new ones. Among some of the more recent arrivals are the above three boxes of AT-43 TacArms that will be joining forces with my other TacArms miniatures after being converted to 15mm combat walkers. You may recall these walkers from a post done ages ago  where I talked about these conversions, but I've included a quick reference pic just the same.

I have also received several plastic Wargames Factory Saxons which I am converting for use as Vikings. These are receiving some green stuff hair and beard enhancements to make them look a little more Scandinavian and less Anglo-Saxon. I would have ordered actual Viking figs, but they were horribly back-ordered. To help with their conversion, I also picked up a lot of 40 round shields on EBay.

Fun stuff to work on.

-Eli

Brytenwalda - New Free Dark Ages Skirmish Game

So, I got scooped on this by Chad over at Maximum Rock & Role-Play but I figured it was worth commenting on just the same. Brytenwalda, written by Victor Gondra, came up as my buddy Chuck and I were searching for free rules sets to use while scratching an itch for some 28mm Dark Ages wargaming (more on that when I have something to report). Downloaded, printed, and skimmed through the system looks pretty cool. The basic rules (17 pages of actual rules) are written with the Age of Arthur in mind, operating on a warband scale. This is not army on army but more like armed bands duking it out over parcels of land and the like.

Presented here is a brief, at-a-a-glance review of the rules. I feel obligated to say that I have yet to play these rules and so this is solely based on reading through the rules. 

Unit Statistics

Stats are kept simple and abstracted - Movement, Combat, Defence, Quality, Talents, and Solidus. The first four (M,C, D, C) are all qualitative scores expressing the relative combat ability of the troop type. It should be noted that there are only two stat lines in the game conscript or veteran with all units having one or the other. These are given more character through the use of talents.

Talents are where some of the less mathematical qualities of the troops come into play. These abilities are expressions of abilities and equipment of the troop type such as shields brutality, ferocity, etc. Each of these talents is either a prerequisite for some sort of rule, a modifier to a rule, or a rule in itself. As an example, only troops and characters with the shields talent can form shield walls.

The last is Solidus (S) which is less a game stat and more a points cost. It's name comes from a form of currency used during the age and adds a nice bit of character to building a warband as you now get the idea of the financial cost outlay your warlord is looking at.

Warband Structure

Warbands are built up from four neat and tidy army lists (they cover two pages) offering Romano-British, Saxon, Scots-Irish, and Picts. These provide the ratios and the talents associated with particular units.

Units in Brytenwalda take the form of one of four types depending on their size - team (3), group (6), band (9), and horde (12). Units are made up of one of either conscripts or veterans. Further classifications as infantry, archers, or cavalry, heroes and chieftains are also used.

System

Brytenwalda has the usual sorts of rules for hand to hand and shooting. The initiative system is not "I go/You go" but rather a reciprocal sort of affair. The player who wins initiative that turn gets to move a unit, then his opponent, rinse and repeat.

There are some fun bits of character to the system such as linked shooting and the ability to add pressure to a defeated unit to help push it into retreat, but the most interesting thing in the system for me is the command rules that require units to receive orders to do things in the game.

The order rules are pretty cool, requiring you to issue commands to units. But it is not a given that a unit will respond properly to these commands and as such a comprehension check is required otherwise the unit continues acting on its last orders. This adds a cool fog of war element.

Scenarios

Brytenwalda is a scenario-driven game and come equipped with six canned scenarios. The following scenarios are included, each with their own sets of special rules and victory conditions -

1. Pitched Battle - A straight up fight
2. Loot and Plunder - Attacker must sack an objective location.
3. Bridgehead - A king of the hill scenario.
4. Relic Raiders - A loot race scenario.
5. Ambush - Nuff said!
6. Kidnapping - Like Loot and Plunder with the objective being a person in the building.

Scenario play is complimented by a simple campaign system that provides methods for linking scenarios, determining the fate of fallen unit and heroes as well as the spoils of war, replacing lost warriors and improving your warband . There is also a system for "Glory and Renown" which allows units to get special campaign-related abilities.

Creating New Units and Warbands

Even this small set of rules includes an appendix which provides points and guidelines for creating new troop types for use in the published warbands or for creating new types of warbands. The nice thing about this points system, unlike some systems allow for build your own units, is it is also the the system used for the published units. This is all done in the spirit of allowing you expand Brytenwalda to include units and warbands not covered in the rules or even in the Arthurian Age at all.

Conclusion

I really like the look of these rules. They are a good set for just throwing some miniatures down without being cold and academic. They allow for character on the table, though not so much that play should be bogged down. Also the inclusion of sample scenarios, campaign system, and unit construction rules is a HUGE plus for me.

Take care all,

-Eli

New Stuff From Gaming Models

Gaming Models seems to be on the ball. Since my initially finding the place and a few emails back and forth with Craig, there have already been a few new releases. Now, I had nothing to do with these releases, but they do show the sorts of things that Gaming Models offers. In this case it is a host of captured French vehicles in use by the Germans during WW2 as well as the anti-tank version of the RSO.

Mosto f these models have German rockets attached in one fashion or another and look very lovingly rendered.

Good stuff!

-Eli

P.S. Sorry for not including a link to Gaming Models' site in the last post. That has been corrected and a link included in this and all future post for the company.

Gaming Models - 15mm Tanks and Vehicles At Budget Prices (Link Added)

Hey all,

I have to say that I am shocked, amazed, and disappointed that I have never heard of Gaming Models until recently. While practicing the Interwar Tank kata of my Google-Fu I stumbled upon some pictures of a couple of pretty cool BT-7 tanks. This lead me to a review of several producers of said tank among which were those that had been featured in the picture I found. Following the links in the review I came upon Gaming Models.

Gaming Models is a small operation independent miniature vehicle producer that works specifically in 15mm and they have this to say about themselves on their home page -

"Gaming Models original sculptings are 15mm or 1/108th scale. These miniatures are made with the gamer in mind and are not intended to be fine scale models."

What does this mean? It means that they make nice-looking models at price that allows the gamer to buy more than a few without breaking the bank. Now, they are not likely to have as much detail as some of those others out there, but they aren't lacking much. I sincerely believe that their vehicles are more than adequate for the gaming table.

I will be honest, I do not own any of their miniatures yet, but I did look around online and asked around a bit and it seems they do a good job. You can read a good product over view review of their models at http://jeremy.nandgate.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=68&Itemid=65 as well as reviews and comparisons of their models against other manufacturers in severla other posts at the same blog. They have a ton of pictures and will get you up to speed well before I could get enough product to do a fair job of it myself.

I guess what stands out for me about Gaming Models is the value. You will get a good model that may need a bit of cleanup but it will only cost you $4 in most cases even for the biggest tank (T-35, Char 2C, Elephant, etc). They have sets of 16 15mm bunkers for $30. The line is also living and the artist communicated in an email to me that he was now more able to do new models which means expansions to the line soon. Heck, he's even open to wish lists, suggestions and requests.

One last note I can make is that the pictures in the galleries, though extensive do not show every vehicle in their inventory. I found that they had two versions of both the T-28 and T-35 in their catalog even though the pics only show one version.

I feel a shopping list coming on! Alcovia needs tanks!

-Eli

(Pictures from Game Models website. Used without permission for the purposes of spotlighting their product in this post.)

Who are the Airplanes in Your Neighborhood?

Crew of the Me-262 Project with their handiwork.

[Picture by Jim Larson off of the project website. Use without permission]

While I sat about enjoying the first chance I've had to sleep in in months, I started to hear some interesting sounds overheard. The apartments I live in are pretty much right across the street from Paine Field in Everett, WA. Paine Field is known for having a major Boeing production facility as well as being a recieving point for commercial freight lines. It also features, like most major airports, a host of surrounding aeronautical industry. What does this have to do with the sounds I heard? Well, what it turns out I was hearing were a vintage B-25d named "Grumpy" and what I think is the local Me-109.

Paine Field is home to some seriously cool restoration, museum and private collection resources. Not only is it home to severla vintage planes but it is also the residence to several accurate reporductions all put together by the talented craftsman and machinists found in and around the airfield. Currently the replica productions group there is working on 5 air-worthy me-262s. I've seen these WW2 jets flying and it is impressive. They have a distinct sound to them that you cannot confuse for any other airplane. Heck, I even driven right under one while it was landing as the end of one of the runways is right next to the highway coming home.

I feel like a doofis. I have lived across the street from all this coolness for six years and never knew it until today just as I am packing to move. Fortunately, I am not moving that far away and will make sure to come back for some of this.

If you would like to learn more about Paine Field and other local air attractions check here -
http://www.painefield.com/.

Have a good day,

-Eli

Welcome to...

Jenn, my wife, has asked me if she and I can do some miniatures gaming. When we first got together she used to play Mordheim with me and the guys and has always been a gamer of sorts, but hadn't shown much interest in miniatures gaming for a while. Obviously, I was happy to hear this and so began a discussion of what we might like to play. I had been considering taking a foray into the realm of Old/Wild West miniatures gaming and as Jenn is fond of skirmish level games, I thought these two interests might meet nicely in the middle. I pitched the idea to her and she liked the sound of it. Jenn enjoys terrain building and she also expressed an interest in trying to build some terrain for this setting.

On the recommendation of my buddy and fellow blogger J over at Victoria's Boys in Red, I ordered up a copy of Hawgleg Publishing's Gutshot!. Jenn actually placed the order for me and got herself some zombie gunfighters and cowgirls because she's cool like that. The really cool thing is that I ended up getting my copy of Gutshot! signed by Mike from Hawgleg because I "know somebody" (thanks J). My package showed up with everything I ordered and a few extras. It's all good stuff.

So, what's with the odd name at the top of the post?

I asked Jenn to name the town for our proposed game and this is what she came up with. I like it. It has a nice Old West feel to it without resorting to some morbid or Dante-esque name or utilizing some sort of topographical feature (gulch, valley, hollow, etc) in the name. As I had already expressed an interest in placing our town in the southwest, it fit nicely. So, Dustwallow it is!

What is Dustswallow?

When I considered a setting for our Gutshot! games I envisioned a place where I could maximize my western drama potential. I wanted it all - indians, banditos, cattle men, railroad, farmers, miners, and I evne had a strange idea for throwing in a rogue Mexican warlord. I settled on New Mxico after getting some feedback from some buddies who arem uch more familiar with that region of the USA.

Dustswallow is a town at the foot of a mountain valley where farmers and ranchers in the hgihland valleys mingle with the miners in the hills and mountains around. The town is on a rail line and benefits from the influx of people and goods from parts east and west as well as having a route to export their own goods (ore, cattle, etc). There are local outlaws and bandits and there would be in any setting where wealth gathers and moves. It's just a basic framework for now and will grow as we start actually building and playing.

Look for more tales of Dustswallow in the coming months.

Take care,

-Eli

Digging Out Old Terrain

When my wife and I first got together we had only the one kid and we used to have a little more time to sit down and do terrain prjects together. I was just getting her into Wahammer Fantasy Battles at the time, having already built up a couple of 15mm armies for it. Jenn, decided that we needed some terrain and she, having worked with model trains as a kid, she decided to build these amazing Celtic huts.

We really went cheap and dirty on these with not a single piece of actual specialty modelling materials used in their construction. Each hut is made out of toilet paper roll, Coke 12-pack box card, BBQ skewers. The bases for them, as you can see were simple corrugated cardboard. The Coke box card was made into cones over which spackle was slathered and then scrapped to look like straw..

As you can see they were not meant to be overly snazzy, but more to get terrain on the board to make battles more interesting. I wish I could find the woven fence that she wove herself out of thin plastic rod, but it is nowhere to be found. If I find it, I'll be sure to post it. The shrubs in the foreground were quickly done by gluing cotton swabs to card, covering it in glue and then giving it a roll in the flocking bin. Even though, I have moved on to sponge flocking for most of my shrubbery, I think I can refine the cotton method. It's cheap and easy and we all know how much I love that.

Take care,

-Eli

Add Some Flavor To Your Gaming

I have mentioned in other posts that I like to use food in my games as a way to establish a sense of place and setting but I just uncovered another lost gem in my book collection that I had completely forgotten about. The book was originally picked up for use by my mother in catering my wedding and is entitled, "The Bors Hede Boke of Cookery: Food and Cooking in 14th & 15th Century England", written by Roger Shell and Sally Charles.

This quaint book is full of real, usable recipes as well as interesting history and facts that date from back to the days of old. The book is broken down into a number of very informative sections -

Foodes - the sorts of foods of the age.

Feelds & Gardeyns - a brief overview of the sorts of gardens found at the time and how they were used.

Kichenes - a look at the sorts of kitchens in use at the time.

Tooles & Artes - a section covering techniques and the tools used in them. Includes some nice illustrations.

Meals - a look at the meals eaten by people of the time.

Recipes - divided into several sections from drinks to soups and more involved goodness.

Even the recipes present the reader with little tidbits of anecdotal history. Each one is begun with a piece of instructive text from the period, followed by a translation into English. This is followed by the traditional list of ingredients and a more conventional recipe instruction. I can say that some of these seem very foreign and odd to my modern American pallet but as I mentioned before, the catering for my wedding came from this volume and I enjoyed every bit of what we ate that day (doesn't hurt that my own mother cooked it!).

The last section of the book is incredibly useful for those trying to weave this very functional book into their gaming as it is a full-on glossary of terms used in the period and throughout the text of the book itself. This is not a small collection of terms either and covers a full 82 pages of the book, itself. The book also includes a full index of general topics as well as an index of recipes.

USING IT FOR GAMING

If you wanted to try to add a bit of authenticity to your game world and offer your players with a listing of inn fair that they may never have heard of to make your world seem all the more exotic and believable. I don't know about you but it seems every inn in a lot of games features the same goods. Imagine your player's smiles when the inn now offers them egurdouce with daryols for dessert (that's actually sweet & sour lamb or rabbit followed by custard pie).

The terms included in the glossary can be used to spice up dungeon and map details by offering you period terms for various fixtures, devices and tools. You can give a more vivid description of village life be describing the rustic using pipkins, pottels and trefet vessels. Sure they are little details but it is things like this that can make an adventure seem more real.

I do hope you all enjoyed this little review.

Take care,

-Eli

Another Great Blog Find - Lonely Gamers

Hello everyone!

As I bounce about the internet, researching miniatures lines for use with some of my own homebrew minis projects, I am stumbling on many great blogs out there. The most recent find is "Lonely Gamers". Why this gent is lonely, I dunno? His stuff is wonderfully painted and anyone else would be lucky to have his minis on their tables.

Anyhow!

Check out his blog as it is a lovely presentation of historical wargaming with a touch of this and that. The author is also very good at posting on events from his area. Most of the stuff there is 28mm but there is the occasional offering in another scale.

Lovely, lovely pics.

Take care,

-Eli

Iron Mitten

In a trip through the various strands of the intrawebs, I came upon a beautiful historical miniatures bog titled Iron Mitten.

I have yet to read through the entirety of this blog because there is just so much to take in. From what I can tell the blog covers the hobby of one dedicated historical wargamer with a serious passion for the age of Rome. This blog is full of amazingly painted 28mm figures, but it's more than painting.

There are terrain projects, conversions and commentary on all the work that this gent and some of his gaming buddies have put into their figures. Add to that some lovely illustrations, battle reports and even some quite funny comic strips and Iron Mitten is a must read, even if you are not into the genre specifically. The vibe you get off of this guy and his gaming group is the same sort of vibe I aspire to in mine.

Thanks and check it out,

-Eli

Back From Game Storm

It would appear that I have survived my first trip to Game Storm in Portland, OR. It was fun, educational and all around a blast.

I played boardgames I had never had a chance to before as well as some of my favorites. I played a monster game of Wings of War with sixteen players in which the Central Powers trounced us (I was stuck in the only Spad in a flight of Camels, argh!). My three-turn stand as El Presidente in a game of Junta ended with the other players making sure they had an assassin waiting at every possible location on the board. It was a horrible end, especially when I had made them fat and rich.

One of the highlights was a game that our gaming group hosted. We played a full eight-player game of Twilight Imperium with the new expansion. For six hours we plotted, fought, escalated and battled one another until finally one player one by a single victory point. I found myself in a sparce region of space and spent most of the game warring over what viable systems there were with my neighbor until both he and I had exausted our economies so much that we were pretty much unable to fight anything more than a holding action. The biggest battle of the game involved two fleets each with several dreadnoughts and TWO war suns (think death star) per side. It was marvelous to behold.

Now, on to stuff. As any good miniatures gamer should, I bought stuff. "What kind of stuff," you might ask. Well, the offerings for miniatures gamers were a bit slim as the con is primarily a board gaming convention, but I was able to find a few things.

What I consider the prize of the trip was one of Arrow Miniatures Iriquois long houses and some of the nice log pallisades.

Here is a close-up of the longhouse

And here again wth my daughter for scale.

Thanks for reading and I'll have more gems from the con up as soon as I can get them into a presentable format.

6mm Trojan Allies

In assembling models for the the 6mm Trojan War project, I have given much consideration of how to interpret some of the more vague elements, but none has given me more to think about than the allies of Troy. Other than the Lucca and Anatolians there are the Amazons, Thracians and Ethiopians, all of which are psuedo-historical allies. The sketchy history of these allies allows much in the way of interpretation.

First of all, and easiest are the Thracians. The Thracians are described as savage warriors fighting with sword and spear led by a commander in a grand chariot. From what I have managed to leanr and pick up from various sources, there Thracians of this time would have been little different than their later brethren.

They would not likely have developed the Falx yet but would very likely have dressed in the same or a similar manner as they do in later centuries. In 6mm this is particularly easy to pull off and I think that I can pretty much use Baccuss or Irregular's Thracians directly. For their leader I was thinking that I could get by with maybe a Hitite leader on a chariot with a few clever minor modifications and paint.

Then there are the Amazons. For these ladies I was planning on using Scythians. At 6mm scale it's going ot be nearly impossible to tell male from female so it shouldn't matter much and their mode of dress and weapon mix would work well. I did consider throwing in some of Baccus' elven heroes from their fantasy line for some variety.

Ethiopians will be made from a combination of Kushite and Egyptian figures. Though it seems unlikely that the Ethiopians would have travelled so far, there were ties between some of the earlier Egyptian kingdoms and the region where Troy supposedly exsisted, so these soldiers make sense. They would have been chariot warriors, supported by troops armed with javelin and spear and an array of hand weapons.

The Lucca and Anatolians are already supported by miniatures appropriate for these peopless, so no adaptation or searching really needs to be done.

6mm Trojan War

The concept for my Trojan War project was a simple one - find a happy medium between the legendary and historical aspects of the conflict. Having decided this I had to decide which aspects I wanted to include. This too, was a simple choice as Homer's accounting provides a nice cross section of old and new making his accounting a nice "wargame-able" setting. The variety of Homer's "Iliad" is enhanced by the inclusion of elements from other stories such as the Amazon, African and Thracian ally contingents that comes to the aid of Troy.

So, I had figured out what I wanted to include -

1. Variety of tactics - old and new style units combining loose order spear and javelin warriors with long spear and tower shields.
2. Trojan allies.

A pretty simple list, but then again it was a pretty simple decission. The next thing to do was to figure out where to get all this stuff.

This was a challenge because Mycenaean Greece is notoriously under supported in the hobby. There are countless ranges for other Biblical era armies but you are lucky to find more than a hand full of Greek ranges for this era. Add to this the obscurity of 6mm and guess what...you've got like one line Irregular Miniatures.

Irregular is an oldy but a goody. Despite some issues with the way they base up their 6mm figs, they are nicely thought out and a HUGE range. There is also Baccus and, if you can find them, Heroics and Ross, but neither does anything dedicated to Mycenaean Greece. This does however lead me into the next step of the plan...