OK, so I didn't post anything in August.......

..... and now it is September. I've not posted anything, because I still haven't managed to paint anything because of the damned arthritis. However, I did go to the Lardy Workshop at Britcon in Nottingham back in early August, and here are some pictures from the event.

I think I've all the games, but if I've missed anything out it'll be my mistake rather than anything else. 

As you can see the quality of the tables and the figures used is superb. Lardy Days like this certainly bring out the very best examples of what can be done in wargaming.

The games covered everything from Middle Earth and the dusty plain outside Troy via medieval Japan, the 18th century Caribbean, Normandy in 1944 and Germany in 1945 right up to Vietnam in the 1960s, plus various other locations.

The rules on offer were Chain of Command, Sharp Practice, What A Cowboy, General d'Armée, Kiss Me Hardy, the soon-to-be published Midgard and the unpublished (but excellent) Until The Last Sword Is Drawn.

It was great to meet up with gaming friends old and new and my thanks go out to Don Avis whose ability to herd cats (i.e. wargamers) and organise the whole thing is pretty awesome.

Lots of 15mm scenic stuff

I've not posted anything for a few weeks, but I have been busy, mostly making and painting a lot of scenic stuff for 15mm games. Here are the results. Firstly a bridge and river sections to create a crossing point.

The bridge is resin. I bought it ages ago, at Colours, I think from The Square. It has sat around in a box under my desk for a few years but I decided that it was high time I painted it so it can become useful. The river sections are made from corrugated cardboard with taped edges and just textured and painted. There are more sections to make up a decent length of river;

On these final two sections, you can definitely tell what they are made from! Still, they will do the job on the table.

In total I have roughly 1.5m of river. It isn't perfect, but it was cheap to make and is a lot wider than most wargaming river sections you can buy.

I've also been working on terrain that is going to give me some marshy ground. There is a decidedly wet and dodgy piece and some straggly trees growing on boggy ground.

The trees are railway accessories that I picked up cheap at the club's Tabletop Sale last year and I have loads more left. The bases are once again card, tape and texturing. I'm pretty pleased with these.

Finally, I made a load of road sections, representing rural dirt tracks. I made loads of these about seven or eight years ago, but they appear to have vanished, so I've had to make more. They are cork floor tiles cut into 5cm wide strips and coated with PVA glue and railway modelling ballast. In total there is over 3.5 m of roads. If I ever find the ones I made before, that would give me another 2.4 m of roads/tracks.

All of this stuff is going to be great for Sharp Practice and Chain of Command in 15mm, but only time will tell how robust the cardboard-based stuff is!

I doubt that the bridge would be able to take the weight of armour, but it'll work fine for infantry and light vehicles.

These three groups complete my Spanish Guerrilla force

 Here are the remaining 18 figures, in three groups of six;

They are a mixture of Front Rank and North Star (from their Muskets and Tomahawks Napoleonic range). They look considerably less "military" that the first two groups, so they can represent civilians who have taken up arms and become guerrilleros rather than regulars who have joined the Little War against Napoleon.

So, I have now five skirmishing groups and four leaders to form a core force for Sharp Practice, but I intend to add in two groups of skirmishing 95th Rifles to create a bigger force of around 85pts. I'm thinking of it as being a deliberately "literary" force, based on the kind of units found in Bernard Cornwell's classic Peninsular War Sharpe books.

First two groups of Spanish Guerrillas

These two groups of six are all 28mm Perry Miniatures;

They are a mixture of two different Perry sets. One is scruffy-looking infantry in a mix of uniforms and civilian clothes and the other is infantry with British-supplied equipment and Spanish uniforms. I deliberately avoided any real uniformity in uniform colours, because I wanted them to look like stragglers or deserters from a variety of regiments. I'll admit to being pretty happy with how they have turned out.

I have three more groups of six to varnish and I'll photograph them tomorrow and post them up.

Keeping the Spanish theme going...........

Here is the start of my next Sharp Practice project; Napoleonic Spanish Guerrillas.

I have started with four leaders. From left to right they are from Bad Squiddo, North Star, Front Rank and Perry Miniatures. What I like here is the huge variety of different styles of the figures, giving me an opportunity to paint them all differently. The Perry figure on the right is an actual Spanish infantry officer, but the guerrilla bands included members from all over the place, including from the Spanish armies.

I now have to think of suitable names for each of them.

I am currently working on 30 guerrilla figures, which will give me five groups of six to fit in with Sharp Practice rules. The first two groups are nearly finished and they are also Perry Spanish fusilier figures, all wearing a mixture of uniforms and civilian clothing. The others three groups will be a mixture of North Star and Front Rank and have a far more non-military appearance. 

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.