Bad luck comes in three's...

..and can seriously bite into your available wargaming time...   😏

Not my legs, or my wheel - same fault though..

..so this week I'm cycling to work on Monday and one of the spokes in the back wheel "pings" - when I get to work I check it out and I find that it's completely loose and has come free at the rim... 

..that's completely free at the rim of the new back wheel I only bought nine months ago....  

..the back wheel that is double skinned, because British roads are so poor (and I'm such a fat bas**rd ) that I wanted the wheel to last..  

..the back wheel I paid a premium for....  gah...! 

Bike shop said (rightly I think - they're nice people) it's a 50:50 - either manufacturing fault or I hit a pot hole...  I end up buying a new wheel, they gave me free labour on swapping over the chain block...  that takes care of Monday/Tuesday and Wednesday (bought the wrong replacement wheel, had to go back and swap it, the whole story is too tedious to recount in full)...  the good news is that the bike is now back on the road...

In the car on the way home from buying the (wrong..) wheel I notice road noise from the passenger side - "hah" I think, "I've forgotten to close the window fully" - buzz, click whirr, window disapears rapidly into door, smashing sound ensues..... double gah!!! Coldest night of the year & no passenger side window.. Car goes to garage - they've just rung me with the news..  you don't even want to know how much... 

...and I get home and the current Mrs Steve the Wargamer says "don't get upset"...  oh no I think, what else could be worse??  Only my favourite beer glass cracked in the dishwasher...  after the previous, I can take that..... 😏

...so what has this got to do with wargaming...??

Only an excuse for not having completed the Egyptian Sudan infantry currently on the painting table..

I have enough for two bases so as to complete the unit to the right.. wearing the tan campaign jumpers (as opposed to the dark blue that the Sudanese regiments wore) and a pleasing extra variable to add to the Imperial forces...

Next, I want to see if I can find some infantry to represent the various Indian regiments present in the Suakin [click here] theatre of the war, there involvement was such that it would be a great shame not to see them on the table top...

15th Bengal Native Infantry in the Sudan 1885 (courtesy of Wikipedia)

...but not before I first paint some more American Civil War infantry....

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Separately, it's greatly pleasing to see how much use is being made of the Tabletop Teasers [click here] on my project blog - there's been a veritable splurge of activity there recently...

When I first put them up 5 years ago I had no idea they would end up being as popular as they are - I liked them, I had no idea others thought the same; a true testimony to their entertainment value, and the skill of their author Charles Grant....  I should thank Charles again publicly for being willing to let me post them, so I will - thanks Charles!

Top 5 Teasers (in terms of downloads):

5.  April 1979 - No. 8 - "The Hasty Defence and Relief of a Town"...  282 downloads
4.  August 1978 - No. 4 - "Hold Up in the Badlands".. 292 downloads
3.  July 1978 - Playtest of Teaser #3 - "The Advance Guard Action"... 297 downloads
2.  April 1978 - No. 2 - "The Wagon Train"... 376 downloads

...and in the no. 1 position...

1. June 1978 - No. 3 - "The Advance Guard Action".. with 463 downloads!

First off the painting table in 2012.... Beja and Hadendowah

As promised the first painting efforts for 2012... after my desultory efforts last year I decided I needed to be a little more productive this year so here you go... on the painting table we have some Sudan period Egyptian infantry ready to get the treatment...

First though a base of Arab camelry for the same project...

Figures are from Peter Pig.. in rules terms these represent a half unit using the "A Good Dusting" set - I already had one base so these were painted to allow me to represent a full unit on the table... the challenge was matching the colours to the other base!

Next some Beja, the famed Fuzzy Wuzzy of Kipling fame - a fierce enemy as the British found on a number of occasions....

I'm trying to focus the Sudan project around the Suakin campaign where the Beja of Osman Digna featured heavily so there'll be more of these guys this year... figures again are Peter Pig - I think - not so keen on the pose of these figures, but they look good en masse...

So we're off the starting block and I make that 16 for the Beja, and 12 for the Camelry, and a grand total of 28 points...

Playing Favourites

... a cracking post at the Too Much Lead blog [click here] inspired me to take up his challenge to document my own favourites.. 😀

In summary, we all have favourite games, periods, inspirations and so on, the challenge then is to document what they are so that we can all see what drives each of us...

Wargames Period

Where it all began for Steve the Wargamer

Way back in the day I played Napoleonic's (good old Airfix!) as it was about the time they were bringing out all those gorgeous boxes of new figures - British Hussars, Royal Horse Artillery, they were works of art. I also played WWII - 20mm, Airfix again, Western Desert, with rules taken from "War Games" and modified to include those vehicles and AFV's that didn't feature..

Since then I must have played almost every period except the Russo-Japanese War (there's still time...), but if I'm forced to make a decision then my favourite period would be either the American Civil War, the War of Independence, the War of the Spanish Succession, WWII or Sudan Colonial....  and yes I know that's five - spooky that they should also turn out to be the same as my current projects though..

If I was forced to make one choice then, probably Marlburian - it has everything.... 

Scale

So difficult as to my mind certain scales fit certain periods...  easier to say what I don't like (1/300 or 6mm, as it happens - gah.....  why don't you just use cardboard counters and be done with it.. )

I have this twisted view that the lower the organisational level of the game then the bigger the figures should be... for brigade level games then 20mm or bigger is perfect - but Newline are my benchmark - if I was starting the AWI project again, then 20mm would be my scale of choice (if the range was available)...  the bigger the battle, then the smaller I go...  so 15mm is ideal for Marlborough ie. multi-brigade games just seem to need a smaller scale...  WWII however is made for 10mm - it's a range & space thing that can't be met by 6mm (see previous comment!)

If I was forced to make one choice then probably 15mm - it is so ubiquitous...

Rules

This one's easy... Will McNally's American War of Independence and Seven Years War Rules...  these two sets of rules have given me more fun games over the years than any other set I've used apart from perhaps the Don Featherstone WWII rules from War Games

An honourable mention goes to DBA... DG and I must have played it every other work day lunchtime for years at one time...

Boardgame

Chess - I love it and play every day on one of those correspondence chess web sites...  absolutely rubbish at it but I still love it...  I occasionally win, but as I never read those hideous strategy/famous chess openings books, the win is always a pleasant surprise! 

Other than that I would put my vote on Scrabble which I like to play with the family (but we don't score so we never have a winner or a loser...)

Despite having a fascination with wargame based board games (I love the maps/boards) I've never found them to be a satisfactory alternative to seeing little metal men on a wargame table...

Figure manufacturer

Some of Front Rank's finest..

No plastics feature - sorry, been there, done that, moved on.. 

So in the metal ranges...

• 15mm Dixon Marlburian Cavalry
• 20mm Newline American Civil War
• 15mm Minifigs Marlburian Infantry
• Front Rank American War of Independence range

Club

"I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members". Groucho Marx

....'nuff said...  I tend towards solitary endeavours - except when DG is down....!

Opponent

Easy...  DG - but to be fair he's my only opponent unless you also put a vote in for.... errrrr...  me.... 

Inspiration

Film

"Waterloo" was  the defining wargame related film for me - as an 11 year old I remember going to the cinema three times to see that film in the same week (DG has a cracking print of the aerial shot of the French cavalry attacking the squares on his wargames room wall)

Other than that I would put "Last of the Mohicans" for it's fine flavour of what it must have been like to have fought with black powder musket and tomahawk in the French and Indian Wars - Daniel Day-Lewis, and Wes Studi as Magua, are superb...

Book

"War Games" started it all for me - and that's a hobby that's lasted almost 40 years now so I guess that can be classed as inspiring...! From "War Games" I moved on to "Battles with Model Soldiers", "Advanced Wargames", and all Don's other titles but the book I subsequently pored over more than any of the others was "Solo Wargames" - there's not a duff page in it...

On the fiction front it's easy - Aubrey & Maturin, and Matthew Hervey have no competition - all other military fiction is mere fluff....😏

A very honourable mention however, goes to Ronald Welch - when I was a spud his series of books about the Carey family were read again and again (and again).....

Art

William Stobbs illustration..

Three artists seem to convey my view of military activity better than all the others....  in no order

• Bob Marrion does fantastic depictions of the common soldier in uniform - I particulalry liked his work in the Marborough books Charles Grant did for Partizan
• Don Troiani - just superb pictures of the American Wars and fighting men - makes you want to reach for a paint brush whenever you see them...
• William Stobbs - a little known illustrator but he provided the pictures in some of the earliest Ronald Welch books...

The Interweb

If I ignore GoogleReader (which is where I keep track of an implausibly large number of blogs) then my favourite web sites are Red Hot Pawn (that's a chess site!) and Blue Max (for playing Blue Max and Wooden Ships & Iron Men) oh, and I couldn't live wothout Google.....

Miscelania

• favourite table size: 8x6 feet (an despite mine being 6 x 4 I haven't changed my mind..)
• favourite tank: Panzer IV with the Grant as a close second
• favourite colour to paint uniforms: deep blue, perfect colour for inks..
• ..can't think of anything else....

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As Aki said in his post if you like the idea, now poach it for your own blog, it'll be interesting to see what other peoples preference are too...

Fire and Fury dice woes...

...I've just got my 2012 painting tally off the ground with a couple of units of Beja and a half unit of Dervish camelry for the Sudan project.... (trust me, no one was more surprised than me given the veritable painting drought until now)

So while I wait for the inestimable Tony at East Riding Miniatures (wholly recommended for fast service) to send me some bases so that I can finish them* off, I gave some thought to some issues that DG and I are batting back and forth at the moment....

We are now fairly comfortable with the Regimental Fire and Fury (RF&F hereafter...) rules for our ACW gaming; they are the better of the numerous sets we have used, and while over the last few months I have had moments where I seriously wanted to throw them at the wall, and then into the bin, we've put in enough time that we can start considering some "house mods"..

Number one on the list  is the matter of dice...  all RF&F random decision points are based on a single D10 - clearly this can lead to vast swings in fortune from one move to the next, and while I accept that the dice is there to introduce randomness & luck, I do have a bit of an issue with the degree of randomness... Both DG and I agree that something needs to be done so we've been passing ideas backwards and forwards with a view to making some kind of change...

1. first idea was to use the average of 2D10 but the primary concern was that this would make the extremes so unlikely that (in my eyes at least) the effect would be as unrealistic on the flow of the game as the issue we were trying to fix.
2. next option was to use 2D6 as this gives a bell curve of results that is known and quantifiable - the downside of course is that the range of results is greater, and we would have to make some changes to the outcomes list so as to mvoe ranges of results up or down....
3. DG has come up with an idea (he's far more mathematical than me) to use 2D6 where one is positive, and the other is negative...  I understand the concept but need more time to think about it...
4. The latest idea, and perhaps most simple option, would be to throw 2D10 wherever you would normally throw 1, and then just take the best result...  I think we're settled on this as an option for the next game...

The second issue is with terrain - RF&F treats buildings in a most obtuse manner for a set of rules that are theoretically regimental level - at Corps or Divisional level I can understand the way they treat them but my understanding is that any size of house at the level we are playing at are significant....whereas RF&F nly treats some of them that way - not a major beef but we'll change it for the next game...

My last issue (and this is not such a problem to DG) is the morale rules for artillery....  infantry/cavalry is basically good or disordered, for artillery they have separate descriptions (damaged/silenced etc) which I for one have problems equating wih the infantry equivalent (and that's after a year playing them!) - I'd like to change the rules so that all troop types have the same morale condition....

Be interested int he view of any Fire and Fury players out there....

* I'll post on them when they're done - I seem to have a thing about not doing work in progress shots - I must be a "completist" If you're in need of an immediate Sudan fix though, can I direct you to the brilliant One Man and His Brushes [click here] blog where he has just finished some lovely looking Dervish

That was the year that was... 2011

Happy New Year!

...and so another year disappears down the pan... 😏

It seems de rigeur among the wargaming bloggerati to put up some kind of view of how 2011 was, and what your plans are for 2012, so why on earth should I want to buck the trend...??

I've got to say it wasn't a stand out year... painting totals for the year turned out at 223 [click here], but most of that was the WWII re-basing project so the number of new units joining the ranks was low - I stand in awe of the output of some of my fellow bloggers (they know who they are) but my favourite new unit this year was the Tigers [click here]

Ninety three posts this year (c/w 81 in '10) so that was pretty good (in fact I'm a bit surprised I was so prolific - it didn't seem like it!)

Only four table top games all year (pitiful) - but two massive virtual games that DG and I have been playing all year (Rogersburg and Waynes Junction)

• Sawmill Village [click here] - Marlburian - and a massive lose to DG..
• Retreat to the Coast - Colonial - solo (so I won.. 😁)
• Action in the Plattville Valley the 1st John Corrigan Memorial game - AWI - a win to me in this one...
• Holding Position - more Marlburian & a narrow win...

Three brilliant shows though - Salute, Colours and Warfare - some fantastic books read, got to see the Mechanics again (brilliant night - Dad-dancing to the fore!), a fine holiday, and some good sailing [click here] made 2011 an overall good'un...

I don't make New Years resolutions - what I'd like to do is a little more painting, and a few more table top games than last year......  I'd be happy with that!

All the best to you and yours for 2012....!