Merry Christmas

Well, we have finally got here after all the trials and tribulations of 2022. It would be nice to think that 2023 won't be as bad, although you never can tell, but here's hoping.

If you have gaming-related gifts on your wishlist, let's hope that your wishes will be realised.

A review of what I have achieved in 2022

"Why are you waving that sword, Hans?" "I'm keeping the unpainted stuff away so we can pretend it doesn't exist!"

At the end of December last year, I wrote a post about my plans for the coming 12 months. As I have pretty much stopped painting for the rest of 2022, it thought that I'd see what I actually managed to knock off my To Do list. I've crossed out the things I finished.

15mm WW2 Soviets for Chain of Command (these need to be a priority in January).

28mm Soviet Women, also for Chain of Command (from the Bad Squiddo Kickstarter)

28mm Austrians for Napoleonic Sharp Practice 

28mm Bloody Miniatures 17th century troopers28mm 

17th century Bicorne Miniatures Pikemen and Musketeers for Pikeman's Lament and maybe Donnybrook too (these will augment my existing Bloody Miniatures figures)

28mm Perry plastic Longbows and Bills for Never Mind The Billhooks, Lion Rampant etc

28mm Pulp figures for all sorts of things (I have too many of these in my leadpile)

28mm Spanish for Sharp Practice (I haven't bought anything for this yet)

Silver Bayonet

Stargrave

Building up my scenic collection in 15mm and 28mm

1/285 scale 8th Army and DAK for O Group

A couple of 15mm Sci Fi armies for Alien Squad Leader

15mm 18th century heavy cavalry for my imaginations, also some grenadiers and additional Freikorps stuff

28mm Late Roman skirmishing and armoured cavalry, and cataphracts too.

15mm Romano-British "Arthurian" army for Sword and Spear Fantasy

Regarding the rest, well what can I say?

Well, the 18th century cavalry turned into a much bigger project that resulted in a pretty large SYW 15mm army for Honours of War, so I am treating that as another win, a major one, in fact.

The Pulp figures plan turned into a Black Ops project, so I am going to claim that as a win too. I've still got more pulp guys to paint though.

The 28mm Spanish haven't even been undercoated yet, but I did buy them, so that is a start. Let's call that 25% complete!

There were other things that jumped onto the paint table ahead of the planned stuff. 

I did two British and Indian platoons in 15mm for the early Far Eastern conflict in WW2.

I added more foot men-at-arms, crossbowmen and handgunners to my 28mm Condottiere collection (these got painted in tandem with the Bills, Halberds and Bows).

I had a small fantasy diversion into Skellies, Mummies, Vampires, Wizards and Apprentices, hence the picture at the top of this post.

I finished off a Zanzibari Arab project that had been languishing in a box since 2018.

Looking at what didn't get done, I doubt that I'll do any more Alien Squad Leader armies, so that will fall off the list completely which leaves the Napoleonic Spanish, the 28mm Soviet Women, the 28mm 17th century Pikemen and Musketeers, the Stargrave and Silver Bayonet minis (neither of which have even been thought about yet), the 1/285 scale 8th Army and DAK for O Group (I did get as far as buying suitable bases for this) and the two Late Roman/Romano-British entries.

All of the above will have to get added on to my 2023 plan.

I'll have a bit of a think about what I want to achieve in 2023 and do a post about that before the end of the year, but I am pretty sure that it will include some extra 15mm WW2 odds and ends, a lot of Wild West stuff and a fair amount of Sci Fi, plus various other stuff from the metal, plastic and resin mountain range. I've also got two more sets of Bloody Miniatures figures prepped for painting in January. Oh, yes, I also want to do a US WW2 infantry project for Crossfire. I bought some 15mm PSC Americans years ago which will be perfect for this.

Overall, though, I think that I did pretty well in 2022.

 

My last 15 figures for Black Ops games

Well, the last for the moment, who knows what the future holds? 

First, here are three somewhat ambiguous "good guys";

The two on the left and in the middle have a definite Royale With Cheese look about them, but I'm not sure who the guy on the right reminds me of at all. Still, they could quite easily be detectives with an unorthodox way of investigating things or maybe unscrupulous operatives of a secret government agency. They could fit in with these two I painted back in 2020.

Next, I have police officers from some kind of authoritarian one-party state who will make suitable opponents for Special Forces or clandestine intelligence operatives. There are five with pistols and batons and four with shotguns.

They could be border guards, security police or maybe just even your average jackbooted street cops.

Here are some leaders for these police. One uniformed officer and two plainclothes ones, who might equally work for the State Security Bureau. The guy in the middle is definitely the Big Cheese.

So, that it it for the Black Ops scene for now. It has been a lot of fun painting them.

I shall be looking again at the Copplestone range of figures to see what else might be useful in the new year.

The Beast From The East (part 2) - 1813 Napoleonic Sharp Practice

Following on from my previous post, here are the rest of my photos from last weekend's Sharp Practice action;

The Beast From The East (part 1) - 1813 Napoleonic Sharp Practice

Last weekend saw two days of excellent gaming at https://www.bristolindependentgaming.co.uk/ in Bristol. The theme was the 1813 Sixth Coalition conflict between Napoleon and his allies against the might of Austria, Prussia, Russia and various others. 

Here are some pictures of the Day 1 games;

The premise of these games was a fictional campaign set towards the end of the year, with the French and their allies withdrawing in poor weather following the defeat at the Battle of Leipzig. There was snow, rain and reduced visibility and a wide variety of forces on parade.

I will post Day 2 tomorrow.

Even more Austrians; extra fusiliers and lots of Landwehr.

I've been working away on my Napoleonic Austrians over the last few weeks, and now, I have finished all the infantry.

The photo above is a final group of eight fusiliers from the 57th Regiment, this time wearing forage caps, with an NCO as part of the group, rather than a separate leader figure. I decided to make them look different in case I needed a group of sentries or a small garrison for a specific scenario.

The next three photos are all Landwehr;

The Landwehr were militia, raised by the various provinces of the Austrian empire (apart from in Hungary, where different rules applied). In Sharp Practice, militia are represented in groups of 10 figures and are generally not particularly good troops, which certainly sums up the Austrian Landwehr in the period after 1808 when they were first raised. They were poorly equipped, poorly trained and led mainly by retired officers called back to the colours. This is represented in SP by having them cheap and without any special qualities when it comes to shooting. They are also disadvantaged in fisticuffs.

However, the Landwehr was reconstituted in 1813 and made up the fourth battalion of regular infantry regiments. This meant, in theory at least, that they would get at least some military training.

You will note that the drummer and standard bearer in the first picture are on 2cm square bases. This is to allow me to field 32 Landwehr infantry in four groups of eight, representing the 1813 establishment or three groups of ten with a separate drummer and standard for the earlier period.

I pained these in a kind of generic Landwehr uniform with green facings. They don't represent any particular historical formation. I also decided that the NCOs would have white belts rather than black, to make them stand out more, and the senior NCO also has white breeches.

Once again, all these figures are Perry Plastics in 28mm.

Reveille 2022

Lincombe Barn Wargames Society is pleased to invite everyone to the 2022 edition of our annual show, Reveille;

A few more Black Ops figures

These are, once again Copplestone Future Wars figures and are described as "Sewer Scavengers". The whole lot are all very post-apocalyptic and will work well as fanatics or similar.

This first set above have a definite leaders and characters vibe about them and the remaining ones below are more rank and file .

Some of them have a kind of Army Surplus look about them and others look more like down and outs. I used a nice mixture for their bases that I bought at Colours a while ago. It is called battlefield rubble, I think and looks very much like waste ground or urban ruins.

As with the whole range, these figures were a joy to paint. The detail is crisp and there are some nice little details.