2010 Plans

It’s still pretty early in the year.  Here’s a short listing of things I’d like to accomplish gaming-wise this year.

• Finish the AB Russians.  I have about 12 more battalions of infantry, 4-5 regiments of cavalry and a bunch o guns to do.
• Start work in earnest on some 25mm Napoleonics.   I’m going for a nominal 1:20 organization, but using the same basing scheme that others in the area are using.  I’m starting off with 1812-14 Russians and at more normal battalion sizes they’ll be 24 figs strong on average for 1:20 or at paper strength for 1:30.
• Build/buy some gaming terrain.  I have a 8×6 table… now I need to make it look purty.  There’s no point in spending lots of time painting your figs if you’re just going to push them across an ugly table.
• Learn new painting techniques. The 25’s demand some more skills with the paintbrush to make the larger expanses of solid color look good.  I’m working on trying to get a good look for white trousers currently.  I’ll put up some progress photos soon.
• Upgrade my basing techniques.  I’m going to be ordering new bases from Litko (with at least a month lead time) and getting the steel bases for the bottoms as well.  I’m tired of watching my figures slip around.   I’m also going to experiment more with static grass and the uber-trendy SilFlor tufts.
• Play more games. I have a number of new Napoleonic rules in house and I’m interested in trying a number of them.  Lasalle, Black Powder and Republic to Empire are on the short list.     I’ll also do my best to attend the Levee games that look interesting and I’ll even give HM&G another shot.

On a related note, I’ve spent the last few nights reviewing “Republic to Empire” and I’m very impressed with them.  A lot of Napoleonic detail without getting overly complex.    The emphasis is on command/control and morale, so people who aren’t used to detailed ordering systems may need to get used to them a little bit.   Long story short getting your army to do what you want it to do will be half the battle, and that’s a good thing IMO.  Friction rules on the battlefield.  I’ll post a more detailed review of them when I get back from vacation.

Republic to Empire Arrived Tonight

My late Christmas present to myself arrived in the mail this evening.  I ordered a copy of Republic to Empire, the long-awaited Napoleonic rules from the League of Augsburg.   Wasn’t cheap, but the rules look the business.  150 full-color pages along with a separate quick reference sheet.

The layout is superb, with over 100 color pictures of 18mm and 28mm figures in the 1:20 ratio.

I haven’t read through the rules themselves so I can’t comment on them at this point.  I will deliver a detailed review of them in the future.  I’ll be heading out of town in a week or so and will be packing these in the carry-on bag.

I’ve been waiting for these rules for a long time and can’t wait to tear into them.

28mm Sash & Saber Napoleonic Russian Infantry

I was farting around with our new 12 Megapixel digital camera today and took a few snaps of a sample 28mm Russian Musketeer from Sash & Saber.    I love the goose stepping pose.  It’s a shame S&S are not adding to this range of figures… or shall I say not adding very fast.  They have some great poses and they paint up nice.

I’ve been trying out different painting techniques with the 28s since there are different problems you hit when you’re painting the larger figures.  The biggest change is the large expanses of solid color that I personally find hard to deal with having spent most of my gaming history painting smaller-scale figures.

Overall I’m happy with the paint job but the white trousers are terrible.  I put several layers of white on trying to find a nice shading technique that still looked natural.  In my opinion I failed.  The trousers look uneven and messy.  This poor fellow is probably destined for a bath in Simple Green and repainting but I thought I’d share this anyway.    Consider it a taster for the 28mm Napoleonic project I hope to start in earnest some time in 2010.

There’s a few shots at my Photobucket library.

Happy New Year

2009 was a good year for me hobby-wise.  I got back on the painting horse again and played more games this year than I have in a long time.  I’m hoping 2010 will be more of the same.  I need to get painting again and start working on the few projects I’ve laid out for myself.

Happy new year to you and yours…

Happy Holidays

Hope everyone had a good Christmas holiday.  Other than the poor weather (snow followed by rain followed by snow) we had a nice time.  Christmas is mostly about the kids these days so Santa was very good to them.

I received mostly books again.  It’s always interesting to see what my relatives pick off my Amazon list.   My mother & sister picked up a few books on homebrewing (my other main hobby these days) while my mother-in-law went for a few titles that I’d listed as ‘low’ priority.   She got me two books on the German Airborne operation at Eben Emael in 1940 and a nice-looking newer book on the Thirty Years War.   These were books that had caught my eye but always seemed to slide in the acquisition queue behind the newest & shiniest Napoleonic titles.  I’ll have some interesting reading awaiting me in the new year.

I drank a lot of good wine, good beer and good scotch, so I had a merry holiday.  I hope you did as well.

Picked up a Copy of Lasalle

My lovely bride and daughter went to see Disney Princesses on Ice yesterday, so my son and I had a few hours to kill until we had to pick them up.  Naturally we went to the Source Comics & Games, our FLGS.   They were having their holiday sale (everything in the store was at least 20% off) with free food and drinks, so naturally the place was literally swarming with geeks.   There were hundreds of gamers in the place buying lots & lots of products.  It looked like Bob was doing great business, which is excellent.

While we were there I picked up a copy of Lasalle, Sam Mustafa’s new tactical Napoleonic rules set.  I spent a good chunk of last night flipping through it while the kids were playing in the living room.  First impressions are:

• Nice presentation.  The interior binding leave a little to be desired (some cracking/splitting in a brand new books sucks), but for a relatively inexpensive hardcover binding, sacrifices must be made.
• Like the generic basing and counting of distances in ‘base widths.’  That makes sense.  Most gamers are not interested in rebasing their collections again.
• Relatively generic troop ratings.  No French or British Supermen.

I haven’t dug into the combat resolution mechanisms in enough detail to comment on them right now.  Soon, hopefully.

A few things I don’t care for:

• The rules seem to be designed for tournament play.  Emphasis is on shorter games, more generic armies, etc.   This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I don’t care for the tournament scene, and I’m guessing there are some nuggets in the rules I’ll uncover that are designed to speed the game up, possibly at the expense of history.  We’ll see.
• The only real rules bugaboo I’ve seen so far is with unit interpenetration.  It’s fairly easy for one unit to move through another even if one unit is engaged (‘near the enemy’, not in contact) with no real disadvantage.   For a tactical game this seems too permissive, since ‘passage of lines’ was not easy to pull off.   I posted about this on the Honour forum and the author responded.   I understand his rationale for the rules he set up but do not agree with it.  He noted the extreme fluidity of cavalry combats, which is a good point.  At the same time I don’t think that also means that one can take a column of infantry and move it through a stationary (or moving) line in musket range of the enemy without penalty, which is possible.

I’m going to want to play a game before passing final judgement on the rules.  According to Bob at the Source, it’s one of the few sets of historical rules he’s had to re-order in recent history.  Read into that what you will.   I’ll try to post another review of the rules at a later date with more ‘meat.’

I also ran into a few of the Saint Paul Irregulars at the shop and heard about their 1:10 10mm Napoleonics project.  That sounds interesting to me so I picked up a few packs of the Old Glory 10mm “Grand Scale” figures Bob had on the wall (Russian, naturally).   Having brought them home and looked them over at close range, they are really nice figures!  I have been looking at doing a few different Napoleonic projects and can see that the 10’s are a nice compromise between the truly micro-scale 6mm figures and the larger ones.

The figures themselves are well-proportioned, and just farting around at home, in double-ranks you can get 10 figures per linear inch of frontage, which looks nice, and the figs are packed in tight on their bases for a really nice mass effect.  I’ll mix a few of these in with the 18mm Russians I’m working on as time permits.

EDIT:  Fixed bad link for the Source…

Update (Sorta)

Nothing new to report, work is very, very busy right now and the kids are always busier during the school year.  Haven’t touched a paintbrush in a few months now and my plans to host another game at my place this fall were foiled by a mandatory weekend at work.

I’m still working through Boycott-Brown’s Road to Rivoli slowly, and I have some forced vacation time coming up in December… I hope to spend at least a little of that time painting.  We’ll see how that goes.

The blog isn’t dead… it’s just a little dormant while real life intrudes more than usual.

Something New: Force on Force

I ordered a copy of  ”Force on Force” from Ambush Alley Games yesterday.   I had previously downloaded the free version of Ambush Alley and liked the ideas, so I thought I’d spring for a copy of FOF with an eye to some World War II and maybe some modern/near-future gaming.   It’s a busy week (when isn’t it?) so I haven’t had a chance to peruse the PDF versions I received, but based on the feedback I’ve seen on the web and the AA rules that they’re based on, I’m looking forward to them.

I’m going to slowly accumulate some 20mm WWII figures for running some small games.   It will be a nice diversion from Napoleonics and it may be something I can interest my son in playing a few years from now (he’s 7).    I figure when I get bored with painting too many white straps and shako cords I can switch and do some figures in camouflage to mix things up a bit.  With winter coming on we’re getting back to what I consider to be prime time painting season.  With much less outdoor work to be done, I’ll have a few more hours a month for painting.  Mixing in a few platoons of 20mm WWII figs shouldn’t be hard.

I may also pick up PDF copies of Rapid Fire 2nd Edition and some of their supplements as well for a quick & dirty larger games.

Closed circuit to Chris S.:  Answer your damn email!  ;-)

Another Legacy of Glory Playtest and Some Painting Notes

We’ve finally managed to get our act together and are running another game of Legacy of Glory (1st edition) tomorrow.  There will be somewhere between four and six gentlemen descending on the house to push some lead around.  I’ll do my best to post some pics and an AAR next week.  The basement is very dungeon-like right now, so there are no guarantees about picture quality, and the terrain will be rudimentary right now.    I’m new to the whole ‘host a game at your place’ thing so I still need to work on assembling a good terrain collection.   My new 1806/7 Russian army is still in the early stages of being painted up, so my old 1812 Russians based for NB will be used.

Speaking of painting, I’ve managed to get the first regiment done for my new army.  The Pskov Musketeers are painted and clear-coated… just have to get them based up and get flags ready.  I have yet to place an order with Litko for bases, so they won’t be fully ready to go until sometime in mid/late October.   Such is life…. I’m just happy to be making progress at this point.

While painting the 18’s I also tried my hand with a single 28mm Sash & Saber Russian to see how my painting techniques transferred to the larger scale.  Short answer: not well.   I tried to do a simple version of the Foundry/Dallimore 3-shade painting style and it will take some work.  The dark colors worked fine, but trying to build up the white trousers was a disaster.   I prefer to build up white cloth from a brown base versus black/grey, and I had major issues with things.   Getting white to look right is hard! I’ve ordered the Andrea Miniatures white paint set and hope to have that in my arsenal soon.  I’m hoping that will help things.   Getting the transitions looking good and smooth coverage will take some work.  It’s not as big a deal with the 18mm figures since you usually don’t have large blocks of single colors to work with.  Not so with the big boys.  I have some work to do on my technique.

I also decided that I don’t care for the Vallejo flesh tones.  They look too yellowy to me on larger figures.  My poor 28mm dude looks like he has jaundice.   I’ll look at ordering the Foundry or maybe Coat d’arms flesh tones instead.  Or maybe I’ll just fall back on GW/Citadel, since that’s what a number of very good painters seem to use.

Painting Update

The AB figures are a joy to paint.  This new style I’m using works very well on these figures, for the sculpting is smooth with a minimum of creases and whatnot that would break up the solid colors.

I’ve had probably five or six 60-90 minute sessions into these figures so far and they are somewhere around half done with the actual painting.  According to the progress chart I use on this site, once the figures are fully painted but not based I gauge that at around 85-90% done.   I need to order new bases from Litko, and since they seem to ship via slow boat (from Indiana no less) these figs won’t be fully done until sometime in October.   That said, I expect to be done with the actual painting sometime this weekend.  Then it will be time to clean up the next regiment.

The main difference with this new painting style is the need for precise brush control.  It’s still a work in progress for me, but I’m finding I can do very fine detail with a size ‘0′ brush as long as the point stays together.  I have yet to use anything smaller.   The main issues I’m having right now are color coverage with the brighter colors (white especially) over the dark grey base, and I’m also having fun trying to show the natural folds in the clothing.  Over time it will get better.

Once this unit is painted I’ll fiddle around with my wife’s digital SLR and try to get some nice pictures posted.  So far, I think it’s safe to say that I’m very happy with the way things are turning out.  If I can crank out around a brigade per month with this style, that will be awesome.