Picti!

Some time ago Richard Phillips acquired, and shared with me, some second hand 28mm Picts. They've been sitting in a box for some months but I recently had the urge to (re-)paint them and get them based up for Lion Rampant. Because they were already painted (albeit not brilliantly), I was able to finish them off in a very few days either side of our recent family trip to County Durham.

Mostly I've added plaid-type patterns to the cloth and I've given a few of them woad body-paint. I've also rebased them using the 1-2-3 basing style.

First up are a couple of units of warriors. One of the figures I got from Richard turned out to be unsuitable for use as a Pict (he's actually a Norman slinger) so I've replaced him with a leader on a horse. 

The mounted leader is based on a character in a historical novel I read recently. He's wearing mail and a captured Roman cavalryman's face-mask.

I've used brown grass tufts on all of the bases as I wanted to give the impression of these guys emerging from boggy ground.

Finished some time previously was this unit of skirmishers.

Again I've used a mounted figure in this ostensibly infantry unit. I suspect the Picts didn't use a set of Wargames Research Group army lists when organising their warbands!

I mentioned a Norman slinger that was among the figures. I've repainted this one completely and will probably use him in Glorantha skirmish games.

Somewhere Down the Crazy River

Richard and Ron came over today and we played a first game of Sharp Practice with my new 28mm American Civil War collection.

The introduction to the scenario was as follows:

It is May 1863 and for nearly 12 months the Union has been unable to establish complete control over the Mississippi River. While the Confederates continue to hold the fortified heights at Vicksburg, the Union plan to cut the Confederacy in half remains incomplete. 

Despite patrolling by Union gunships, vital supplies from the West continue to cross the mighty river. However, difficulties in coordinating cross-river and overland traffic mean that supplies often wait in riverside warehouses and barns while onward transport is arranged. These temporary stashes of supplies represent targets of opportunity for the Mississippi Marine Brigade.

It is believed that Confederate smugglers have been moving supplies across the river near Hackspit, Mississippi. A Marine Brigade unit under Captain Daniel R Rosebush is ordered to identify and destroy any supplies in the area. A barn full of supplies near Hackspit, Mississippi, is guarded by a small unit of Confederate infantry under the command of Sgt Salmon H Wartner.

The left edge of the table (above) is the levee. To the
right is a road along the side of a bayou.

Ron (in the guise of Sergeant Wartner) ran the Confederates, starting with just two line infantry units guarding the supplies in the barn. Richard (as Captain D R Rosebush) commanded the Marines; two groups of line infantry, two of skirmishers, and an artillery piece. One of the skirmisher groups was of dismounted cavalry armed with breech-loading carbines.

Richard's deployment was delayed by the need to get his artillery piece onto the top of the steep-sided levee. I informed him that this required him to keep one Group of non-artillery troops off the table until they had used up an activation helping the artillery into position. Given the random nature of Sharp Practice game turns, it was well into the third turn before the Union troops had completed their deployment.

Ron, meanwhile, was hoping for the return of some Confederate cavalry who had recently passed through the area and who would hopefully ride to the sound of the guns. In the end that would take a damned long time!

The dismounted Union cavalry were deployed on the left and moved into a patch of woodland. Their breech-loading carbines would prove powerful but not game-breakingly so.

They came under fire from Wartner's infantry around the barn.

Eventually Rosebush managed to get his main force deployed, artillery on the levee, infantry advancing to their right.

The Marine Brigade infantry shook themselves out into a line and started exchanging shots with their Confederate opponents. Shock and casualties started to build up on both sides.

Ron, in this early stage of the action, was desperately short of men, having only two groups of eight infantry, each led by a non-commissioned officer.

The cavalry who had passed by earlier in the day would return at an unpredictable time (though at least Ron knew which road they would arrive on - we'd diced for it at the start). The rule I used was as follows:

• As soon as shots are fired, place the blank chit in the discard pile
• When the blank chit has been drawn twice, place red leader 3 in the discard pile
• When red leader 3 is drawn, the Confederate cavalry may deploy on table treating the relevant road entrance as their Deployment Point.

This worked really well. One of Ron's units had been forced to flee and the other was hanging on by its fingernails when the cavalry arrived.

The Confederate cavalry, led by Louisiana-born Captain Pierre Napoleon Cassoulet, were 24-strong and made for a stirring sight as they galloped across the open ground towards the Union line.

I'd been keen to try out massed cavalry in Sharp Practice 2. Penny packets are often not worth having as they tend to get shot to pieces whilst unable to properly manoeuvre among the often dense terrain. 

This time the charge was effective. Ron rolling three sixes for the distance covered by his galloping cavalry helped! 

Despite losing men and picking up Shock as they advanced, the cavalry crashed into the marines' line and sent the survivors fleeing back up the steep flanks of the levee.

However, Richard had, by this time, sent his skirmishers forward on the right. They reached the barn. By now it was blazing as a result of a random event and shortly the first of three Chapter End events would see the roof collapse destroying the supplies within! 

Repeatedly forced back by the intensity of the Union fire, Ron's Force Morale was plummeting. As his cavalry milled about at the base of the levee...

... his remaining infantry were closely engaged by Richard's skirmishers.

By the end, the Confederates were down to one point of Force Morale while the Union still had seven. With virtually no command chits left in the bag, Ron decided to quit the field and a Union victory was declared.

I'm really pleased with this first foray into ACW Sharp Practice. The game was nicely balanced and we weren't sure which way it would go for a long time. I think a narrative campaign portraying the adventures of the Mississippi Marine Brigade could be great fun.

Back to Riga

As Yorkshire steams in temperatures approaching 40 degrees, I've discovered that my workshop is among the cooler rooms in the house. Having recently acquired some more wooden coffee stirrers (thanks Costa!)  I thought I'd have a go at building another part-burned barn for the suburbs of Riga.

Usual construction - PVC board base, balsa wood uprights and coffee-stirrer planks. Hot glue gun to get things started and then clear Evostick for much of the construction work. Tetrion filler then PVA and sand for the interior ground cover/ashes. Seal with Modpodge and then spray with Army Painter matt black. In this weather the spray paint dried really quickly!

I'll get on with painting it tomorrow.

While the barn was drying, I started on a building to use particular piece of PVC board that I happened to have left over. It was a narrow rectangle but it occurred to me that I could use it to make the frontage of a building that could stand on the edge of the board.

Vecriga, the old centre of the city, is known for its marvellous old dwellings and merchant guild buildings with decorative gable ends.

The Three Brothers on Maza Pils iela

Now I don't know for sure that there were buildings of this style in the suburbs but I figured something like this would add some visual impact to what will otherwise be a fairly monochrome table.

This is where I've got to today:

Clearly it's not an exact copy of any of the buildings pictured but I think it captures the overall style. I'll probably paint it in a yellow ochre shade and possibly add some smoke marks to the exterior.

Joy of Six purchases

I didn't take any pictures at Joy of Six last weekend because I was too busy running Cold War Commander participation sessions. 

I did have time to do a bit of shopping though. From Richard Phillips's Scotia stall I bought some 1/300th scale German armour as part of my plan to be able to run all of Bob Mackenzie's Great Patriotic War scenarios. 

The nice thing about 1/300th is that you can get it painted and based really quickly...

From left to right that's a pair of Tiger Is, a Jagdpanther, two Hetzers, and two SdKfz250/9 recce halftracks.

I'm quite pleased with how the Jagdpanther turned out...

Richard also had a box of assorted second-hand micro models and I picked up five M60A2 "Starships". This variant of the M60 entered service in 1979 and carried the same 152mm gun-launcher as the M551 Sheridan. This would fire low velocity 152mm rounds for anti-personnel use or Shillelagh anti-tank guided missiles.

Unfortunately the missiles were hugely expensive so crews rarely got to train with them and firing 152mm ammunition tended to damage the delicate fire control gear. As a result the M60A2s were phased out by 1982!

The ones I bought were already painted but I've repainted them to match the version of MERDC camo that I've used on my other American models.

With the exception of a pack of Heroics and Ros modern American infantry, my entire force is made up of models found cheap on bring-and-buy tables around the country.

It appears that these particular M60A2s may be 1/285 scale. They are larger than the M60A1s I already own but painted and based they don't look too bad. The model at the extreme right in the picture below is a 1/300th scale M60A1 I already owned.

I also picked up some 1/300th scale buildings by Battlescale Miniatures. More on those when I get them painted.

CWC II at The Unit

On Saturday, ten of the Cold War Commanders group gathered at Richard Phillips's new gaming location The Unit to play a bit of second edition Cold War Commander.

The unit is part of a converted barn near Stone in Staffordshire. It has room for the kind of table that the Commanders revel in, six feet wide and I'd guess about 24 feet long...

Second edition author Mark Fry is a member of the group and he was kept busy all day answering questions, discussing rules design choices and attempting to hold off my East German tank regiment with a Netherlands recce battalion.

Alan, Rodger and Mark

At one point Mark got himself sufficiently organised to call in air support in the form of a Royal Netherlands Air Force Starfighter. We didn't take the piss out of Mark too badly for accidentally using Czechoslovak Air Force roundels...

Mark tried to target my motor rifle battalion who were about to assault his troops. Mark needed to make a command roll on 2d6 requiring less than the forward observer's Command Value (about 7 I think).  

At this point I said, "I'd like to see sixes".

The resulting roll on the Command Blunder table saw the forward observer forced to fall back with his Command Value reduced by three!

Actually it turned out I'd cocked up Richard's carefully designed scenario by bringing on my whole Regiment on the first turn. Apparently I was supposed to arrive one battalion at a time!

I was able to get across the Elbe-Seitenkanal using the T-72s' deep wading gear and the BMPs' amphibious capability.

The East Germans are across the canal!

A Dutch company uses its amphibious capability to 
escape

It was really enjoyable to meet up with the guys again - including Alan and Rodger who I hadn't seen since before the Great Unpleasantness.

More pictures can be seen at Andy's blog. 

And finally, the scenery on the table was lovely (thanks Richard) but not a patch on that when I was driving home over the Peak District.

And we get to do it all again next weekend at Joy of Six!

More 6mm progress

Back in October of last year I spent a fiver at Wargames Emporium on a couple of bags of various second-hand bits.  I figured it would be fun to see what was in there and whether I could make anything useful from it.

For starters there's this lot:

From left to right, rear row first:  three 1/285th scale HMMWV ambulances, a Roman ballista unit, and three units of Republican Roman cavalry.

Next row, a 1/285th scale Valentine, two bases of Roman slingers, four bases of legionaries, three bases of Greek hoplites painted as Sun Dome Templars for Glorantha.

And in front a three-part wooden palisade.

In addition, the bags also contained some 1/300th scale aircraft. So far I've painted these:

Left to right: FW-190, Me-110, and Spitfire.

All in all, not bad for a bag of junk with more still to come.

In addition, I've also been sifting through my other piles of leftover 6mm stuff. I bought a second-hand Cold War Swedish army years ago at the Gauntlet show in North Wales. There were rather more models than I needed to put together an Armoured Brigade for Cold War Commander. The spare models sat, unused, in a drawer for years until I decided to have a go at a small force in winter camo:

I may never use them but at least they're painted!

Finally I also painted a civilian vessel that's been in the bits drawer for years. Is it from a Monopoly set? I'm not sure. Either way it'll be going to the first CWC game at The Unit in a few weeks.

6mm Jubilee Weekend

Inspired by taking part in the Cold War Commanders' game at Partizan recently, I spent the Platinum Jubilee long weekend on some 6mm modelling.

For starters I thought I'd upgrade some more of my old 1/300th scale 1980s British to my current painting and basing standard.  Using the old Tabletop Games Corps Commander army lists, I've produced some organisation sheets to help me sort out the models prior to using them.

By giving each unit a rectangle or circle the same size as its base, I'm able to lay out the models to make sure I have everything I need. 

It turned out I was short of an FV434 recovery vehicle for the mechanised battalion's REME Light Aid Detachment. It's not strictly speaking needed in CWC but I thought it would be fun to convert a spare FV432 APC into one of these.

Having sorted out the toys and picked units for my models to represent I now find myself able to deploy two thirds of a 1985 armoured brigade. I'm calling it 11th Armoured Brigade.

The Brigade HQ has a CO unit, a forward artillery observer and a forward air controller. Also attached is a Tracked Rapier unit representing elements of 16th Air Defence Regiment, Royal Artillery.

In support of the Brigade at the moment are 3rd and 47th Field Regiments Royal Artillery, each with an FAO and six Abbot self-propelled gun models.

My mechanised infantry battalion is 1st Battalion the Cheshire Regiment (selected because they were the parent unit of my school's Combined Cadet Force detachment). They have two HQ units (my personal standard for NATO battalions), two recce Scimitars, two FV432s with mortars, nine infantry and six Milan ATGW teams all riding in a total of fifteen FV432 models. 

As a final addition, working on the assumption that commanders in the field often find a way to deploy equipment not strictly included on the official TOE, 1 CHESHIRES also have a platoon (one model) of FV432 with top-mounted 120mm RCL to provide a little additional firepower.

My armoured regiment is, for no reason other than that I once painted a Scottish saltire on one of the vehicles, designated as Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. They are organised as per the official TOE with one exception. Due to lack of sufficient models, I'm assuming that the war has caught them in the process of reequipping. The regiment has three squadrons equipped with Challenger Is and one still using Chieftain Mk9s. So in total the model armoured regiment has two HQ bases, two recce Scimitars, another LAD with FV434, the heavy anti-tank platoon with a total of three FV438 models, twelve Challengers, and four Chieftains.

I'd originally organised a second mechanised infantry battalion in Warrior IFVs but these don't fit with our usual 1985 timeframe. To complete the brigade I need to add half a dozen of so more FV432s, six more Milan teams, and another FV434. However, that's a large force and I need to practice what I preach; CWC is a better game when you're not waiting ages for your opponent to finish moving hundreds of units!

I said "For starters" at the beginning of this post. There is some other 1/300th progress to report but I'll leave that for later.