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Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Did you know they were that small?

 The Pendraken figures arrived. I'm so not used to tiny figures. My real glasses had to be used to see them and reveal their amazing detail. They're very nice figures most only needed a bit clipped off the the bottom of the base and a quick run over the file. Some of the cavalry had a support under the body and the tail which was quickly removed. The clean up process was easy but 450+ figures still takes some time.

The 2 Army packs less the artillery after a quick rinse.


I searched a few YouTube videos on painting 10mm figures and opted for a black prime and white dry brush. Just a dozen or so figures were done as a test. 

The first few stands.

I'm still pondering base sizes. I had thought 60mm frontage but although that would keep the figure count down doesn't give the mass. 80mm seems to give a good look. 9 Pikeman and 12 Musketeers. Any thing larger will drive the table size up to one I can't accommodate. 
80x35 in the foreground. The rear most stand is 60x35. Cavalry is on a 60x40/

A closer look at the 80x35. I think I'll go a little deeper.

So that's where I'm at so far. Still a bit on the fence with basing but I think trying it out with painted figures should give a better sense to how it will be.


Here's a couple of photos of what's been painted so far this. They've not yet been sorted to their proper homes.

Samurai, WSS, Warring States Chinese.

More Warring States Chinese.


Sunday, February 18, 2024

Counting down 54,40,28,15,10,6 mm

 So one of the first things of a new project is the figures. Lately I been buying mostly 28mm figures. There are lot's of fantastic lines available in 28mm. I have some Swashbuckler figures already and feel 28's can be used in skirmish games and with movement trays bigger battles. From a cost perspective they're expensive for metal but the Warlord plastics ease the burden a little. I've painted some Warlord and felt they were easy to paint and looked good. The thing is I want the look of masses battalions and my normal twelve figure unit won't do that so I would have to build bigger units which then incur a bigger foot print requiring a larger table. I've rules these out as a choice. Here are a few of the brands I looked at, tough not to go with them.

Captain General Games 

Bloody Miniatures

1898 Miniatures, Tercios.

Warlord Games Pike & Shotte

Avanpost Thirty Years War

I have several periods in 15mm. Although I've mostly moved to 28's I'm still painting the 15's to complete the armies I have. Using a few of these I explored basing to see how things would look. I really like the figures from Viking Forge, Romans and Carthaginians are in my DBA collection. The price is better than the 28's but the foot print seemed bigger than what I wanted. A few of the available 15mm ranges.

Viking Forge 

Miniature Figurines

FrieKorps15 (QRF)

Next down the options is 10mm. These would have been dismissed out of hand had I not played a few games with some. Wargames Illustrated offered some Warlord Games Epic figures as part of their magazine. These came in strips much like Old Glory's range. Playing around with the Epic figures I felt this scale would give the balance of affordability, footprint, and the look I wanted. Several companies make these. Old Glory and Warlord both come in strips. Pendraken and Irregular are individual. 

Old Glory

Pendraken

Irregular Miniatures

Warlord Games

As for the other scales, 54mm I didn't even look down that street. 40mm Several good ranges but for already stated reasons were ruled out but how cool would an army of those be? Sash and SaberIrregular Miniatures.6mm, having tried these several times in the past I knew better but had to check them out Irregular Miniatures of makes them and Baccus6mm makes great looking figures which come in strips of files, very tempting. Heroics and Ros also a well known company in this scale. 2mm wasn't on my radar but I recently saw this post that makes a convincing argument for them. Roundwood's World

Although I'm writing about this in February all this thinking went on during November and December of last year. In the final week of December I saw Pendraken was raising prices 12% in the New Year. I considered holding off making a purchase but decided to go ahead and commit. 

I think 10mm gives me all the things I'm looking for, Figures I can see to paint and play with, the look in the game I want and although the bases may end up being larger than I wanted it will still be acceptable. 

The Pendraken order all 438 figures.





Monday, February 12, 2024

Starting the Thirty Years War

 Yes I know I've said it before many times "no new projects" but ever since reading The Lion of the North The Thirty Years War has interested me. Never enough to seriously study in detail but enough to always want a Wargames army. I didn't want to rush into this as I usually do but give it some thought and identify what I wanted the end product to look like.



So what am I looking for?

  • Units that look like the period pictures, massed pikes, sleeves of shot, large cavalry wings.
  • Each unit is one stand.
  • Gridded gameboard
  • Gameboard with a relatively small footprint 2'x3' or 3'x4' 
  • rules that capture the period, give the players decision points, provide a fast moving tense game. 

Here's a few of the resources I've been using

That's the start of the project. 

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Plans for 2024

 It's that time again when plans are laid out for the new year. 

A meeting of the leaders to make the plan.


I've already took the first step by ordering some 10mm Thirty Years War figures from Pendraken . This will be a single stand per unit and played on a grid. Rules to be determined. 

Another aspect of the plan is picking some new rules to play and armies to get on the table.

A few years back I participated in the 6x6 challenge with Kaptain Kobald of The Stronghold Rebuilt blog. Matt suggested we try something similar this year and pick a few rules we would like to try. It will more than likely be 6x3-4 but still give us some structure to our game nights.

The Rules list

Ronin, LotR SBG, Force on Force, Donnybrook, Crossfire and One Hour Skirmish Wargames. Of course A Gentleman's War  and Beef and Beer will be played along with some variants.

A lament I often see wargamers post is that they have armies that haven't seen the table in years or never at all. The main theme of the plan is to get my armies on the table. Some of these will be coordinated with the rules being played others will be used while playing old favorites.

The Armies list,

Warring States Chinese 28mm John Jenkins figures(I'll need to paint a few more figures but that's the point.)

Great Northern War 28mm Warfare Miniatures (A Gentleman's War)

King Williams War 28mm Warfare Miniatures, (Donnybrook would be a good choice here as I have a scenario and all the figures:-))

SYW 15mm Mike's Models (Here's a good candidate for Beef and Beer not sure how much if any modification would be needed but I have a bunch and they'll fit on the gridded board I have. Hopefully Matt will put up with my early painting attempts.)

Pacific Theater WW2 15mm Command decision and Eureka. (Crossfire )

With all this I will try to paint some other figures. The Mark's Little Soldiers collection will continue to grow as will the GNW with a few more cavalry units and some additional infantry figures. WW2 should see some Russians added in winter gear to fight the Finns. These will be for use in the training games that Dick Bryant developed for Crossfire. For the past several years I have planned to get FPW Prussians to fight the French already owned but have never done, this may be the year.


The Workbench at the beginning of the year. 

On the lamentable side of the hobby my longtime wargaming partner has moved away. Howard and I have been gaming together for about seventeen years, Twenty to twenty five times a year. I was a willing Guinea Pig for his playtesting and he always stepped up to the plate when I showed up with figures but no scenario or rules.  We knew we were truly wargamers (and married to extremely understanding women.) when it occurred to us that we had gamed on February 14th two years in a row.  Howard's only moved an hour away so I'm sure we'll get together  and play again, besides I'm sure he'll need play testers for his next project.



Sunday, December 17, 2023

The 2022 Plan

I wrote this in February 2022 but never published it. 

A little late for the traditional post of plans but there’s been so many posts by others that I just now found time. Though thought had been given earlier several things occurred in January to firm up the plans. First off I spent some time cleaning my game room. This confirmed that I don’t need any new projects and although I have plenty of unpaired lead to use in projects that already exist some new lead is needed to finish existing projects.

Next I finally played One Hour Skirmish Wargames. They were lots of fun. The card activation system gives me some decisions to make and lends enough uncertainty for the other side to make an exciting game. I’ve played them on a 32”x42” board that lets the troops get into action quickly.

Lastly Mark Cordone came up with a version of the Portable Wargame called the 3x3. It was designed to be played in fifteen minutes. Played on a 3x3 grid with about six units. There’s been quite a bit of discussion on the Portable Wargame Facebook page and a few blogs. I haven’t had the chance to play yet but it seems to me that it will be a fun way to get figures out on the table without taking up a lot of space or time.

The conundrum of these two rule sets is that they allow me to rationalize buying new figures. The scenarios in OHSW use about ten to fifteen figures for each side and 3x3PW uses six units per side so all tolled about thirty to forty figures. Previously I had tried to confine my new projects to an army size that conformed to my Toy Soldier project, three to four infantry and two to three cavalry and artillery. Even this structure gave projects with one hundred and sixty figures or more doing both sides. While it sounds easy to stop at the set number of troops fifty years of Wargaming has proved that that never seems to happen.

All this rambling brings us to the setting of the plan. It’s really very simple. Paint the figures I have and if a new period is started it shall be only a skirmish sized one. Another criteria will be that new arrivals will be given priority in the painting que and brought to the table quickly. I know I will continue to buy new things but there’s something to be said for having a period that’s complete enough to be played with at some level and not just a have some painted figures with out any structure.

We’ll see how this all works out next December. 

How did it work out? I bought a bunch of the Marks Little Soldiers but still kept up with painting, I the beginning of 2023 I bought a partially painted collection of about 170 figures and spent the year on them and the MLS.  

Monday, November 6, 2023

Shiny Toy Soldier Skirmish

 Came across these photos while cleaning out my inbox. Looks to be an American force against Spaniards.





Wednesday, October 18, 2023

A rainy day

 last Saturday was raining hard all day so I headed down to the work room to give a much needed cleaning and organizing.  I started around 8:30 am to a break for lunch and finished around 6:00 pm

The painting station.





Empty RUBs waiting to be filled with figures and stuff.



My reward!