The scatter brained wargamer

Well I find myself in a bit of a pickle. 

My efforts to stay focused on one period for an extended period of time lies in tatters on the ground. I do really envy those wargamers that "stay on target". There are guys at my local club that play Napoleonics and nothing else! Every meeting out come their hordes of Russians, French, British, Prussians and Austrians. I think they don't paint a lot as I dont really see any new stuff appearing on the gaming table but if that's what floats their boat then good for them.

Not me. I am cursed by a continuing desire to pursue something "Shiny". Lately I have got my painting mojo going and I have managed to paint around 30 odd 28mm miniatures to be used in Empire of the Dead/In her Majesties name VSF/Gothic horror gaming. I still have around another 30 odd left to complete the forces I need to satisfy that particular itch.

That dashing fellow Shaftsbury and his loyal steam Bulldog Winston!

The evil mastermind Moriarty, the cunning Fagin and a random ruffian.

Moriarty's romantic interest. No slouch with a sonic oscillating pistol either!

After that I have a whole platoon plus supports of German Afrika Corps in 28mm so I can finally play a game of Chain of Command. At least I have finished the eighth army British platoon.

Also in what has turned out to thankfully, not be such a large divergence, I have quickly churned out a platoon of Russian WW2 infantry in 15mm again for Chain of Command as fellow Crossfire player Michael Stringer (and recent victorious German CiC from the international event "Operation Crossfire") was interested in using CoC to play Barbarossa 41-42. The Russians are done but I will probably do a german platoon for myself anyway so I have a matched pair. Thankfully 15mm WWII is quick to paint.

15mm Russians on the painting table for Chain of Command. To undercoat the Russians I used a new product Vallejo's surface primer. This is very easily to apply and it forms a great base to apply paints.

Then after that I still have a few units to complete my Parliamentarian ECW army. I need another pike and shotte regiment and a commanded Shotte unit followed by about three troops of horse.

And lastly, in a real impulse move I bought the starter box for the new Mars Attacks game from Mantic.

I loved the movie and I love the whole pulpy, cheesy Sci Fi genre. The box sadly comes with a squad of modern US soldiers to oppose the Martians. (Geez Mantic! If you are going to do the genre right you have to have B movie US army guys not modern soldiers!)

I will most likely flog off the modern US soldiers to fellow gamer James who will use them as Shield troopers for his super hero games. I ended up buying a box of Wargames Factory WWII US infantry which just scream B movie US army or national guard.

Lastly I have about 20 pirates to finish off my crews for my Scratchbuilt ships.

Oh and did I mention I still have some 28mm Russian Napoleonics to finish too!

And this doesn't cover the various terrain projects I have to do including more buildings for ECW and 15mm WWII and 28mm Victorian London buildings for EOTD/IHMN.

So you see I really do have a problem. However I am determined to put in a mega painting effort to reduce this backlog as much as I can before the end of the year. Why do I need to do this? Well I have yet another period to start and its a real doozy. I have a box full of 28mm Prussians for Seven Years War as my major project for 2015.

And that's it! Hand on my heart I will not start another period until I have knocked a few of these projects off the list. I need to become a more focused gamer so that at the very least I can actually play some games of these periods. At the moment I can really only game 28mm VSF (EOTD/IHMN) and ECW and the ECW, I don't have a matching army so I can play at home.

Having said all that, I have a really big desire to start some 28mm Landsknecht for Italian wars but I think I can hold off on that madness for now!

One positive of all this for you, my devoted followers, is that I can post a fair bit of eye candy of these different projects and with the summer holidays upon us I have more time to post on my blog. So keep checking in from time to time to see whether my new "focus" prevails.

Cheers

Neil

NWA's Open Day - part four

The final post covering our club open day covering the games that didn't fit into a special category.

We had a nice looking game from the Russian Civil War. This is the first time this period has been featured at the club and club members Richard Bradley and Jon Bunce put together a great looking game. The rules used are Triumph and Tragedy.

The objective of the game was the Russian royal family had to escape the clutches of the evil red Russians while the White Russians tried to stop them.

Some lovely looking armoured cars in this game.

Our good friends from the Berwick Wargamers brought along their popular fictional 70s African game using the Chain of Command rules. The was also featured at. Little Wars but it is worth another look at an excellent game.

The Lord of the Rings gang put on a nice battle of Osgiliath game.

And so that was it for another year. I really do think we raised the bar again for Open Day displays

All the games were of a very high quality and they really do illustrate why NWA is the best wargaming club in the country (IMHO).

Bye for now.

NWA's Open Day - part three!

Hello all,

This is the second last post covering our club's open day from August. Life seemed to get in the way last month but I am back with a vengeance this month with several things to post about.

The last area to cover from the open day was the World War II section. I have already covered my own display game of the battle of Arnhem but there were three other WWII games on show including two Battle of The Bulge games. Both Bulge games used Flames of War. The first game was a historical refight of Pieper's charge. The other games was a replay of the climatic battles of the Hollywood film Battle of The Bulge complete with US Patton tanks playing the role of the German Tigers!

The film had Telly Sevalas' Chaffee with missing Turret and also featured a helicopter film crew to film all the unhistorical goodness!

So on to the pictures!

Pieper's Charge!

A Thunderbolt spies some tempting targets!

The US infantry dug in defenders

Panthers lead the way.

Panthers break through!

The Hollywood version

Massed tank battles

German "Tigers"

Henry Fonda's scout plane.

The Film Crew

The Fuel dump

The Tiger's last grasp to reach their objective!

This game was very well planned and really captured the unhistorical glory of a rather bad war film.

It justly won best display for this year's open day.

NWA's Open Day! - part two

Here is the next instalment of wargaming goodness from this month's annual Open Day.

So without further ado, on with the photos!

Horse and musket time. We had a selection of excellent games covering the usual major periods of horse and musket warfare with a Seven Years War battle between Prussians and a combined Austrian-Russian force using the Might and Reason wargame rules, a Napoleonic battle again featuring some lovely Russians versus French using a club variant on Empire called Cold Steel and lastly a 15mm ACW battle using Regimental Fire & Fury with an interesting teddy bear fur terrain mat. I think this looks quite interesting but maybe more suited to 28mm gaming because of the length of the fur. It certainly is handy for a quick set up!

Napoleonics ( I apologise for some of the lighting but the day was quite overcast and the hall lighting is problematic)

Seven Years War. Miniatures are a mix of Front Rank and Wargames Foundry

American Civil War. Miniatures are a mix of AB and Blue Moon

Stay tuned for the final post in this series.

Cheers

Neil

NWA's Open Day! - part one.

Nunawading Wargame Association's annual Open Day.

Last weekend the weeks of frenetic figure painting, terrain building, and play testing came to a head with the annual Nunawading Wargames Association's Open Day. Again it didn't disappoint with many displays of a very high standard that would not be out of place in the more famous overseas events.

My fellow NWA'er Michael Stringer and myself ran a successful display game on the Battle of Arnhem (see previous post) but the following photos and write up cover the range of games on offer during the day. World War II featured heavily in the proceedings including two games on the Battle of the Bulge (historical and movie versions!).

Enjoy!

First up Warhammer 40K. We now have a group of players that play this game regularly at club meetings and they put on a great looking table with some excellent ruined cathedral terrain previously built by club member Brendan Day.

Continuing the science fiction theme we next up have Judge Dredd, a great game with some nice mechanics. I already am working on stuff for this game which I will post in the coming days.

"I am the Law!!"

Fatties roll!

James Wright explaining how the game works.

Still technically science fiction we had Weird World War II with Secrets of the Third Reich but the mechs and weird stuff was toned down for this intro game. The mechanics themselves are good for just historical games too.

More pictures of a great day's gaming to follow shortly.