Renedra fencing

Still doing scenics. Now it is Renedra 28mm scale fencing. First two lengths of ordinary wooden fencing;

I think that this is pretty nice fencing, but I think the wattle fencing below with the gate sections is even nicer;

OK, fencing isn't the most exciting thing ever, but it is very useful on a gaming table.

I'm pretty happy with how they have turned out and I think I'll probably get more of the first set at some point, because I'd like to have some shorter lengths and maybe some corners too.

The Battlezone scatter stuff....

 .... and this really is the last of it!

Below is a big piece of Battlezone pipework, which will fit in anywhere, seeing as one end rises from below ground and the other end has a couple of closures. The piece at the back is a length of 2cm plastic plumbing pipe stuck on a couple of little legs capped shut at one end and with a connecting piece at the other. It is designed to come out of the side of a building. Why might that be? Who cares, but it'll look good.

Here are a couple of large generators with attached pipework. These will fit in anywhere, ideally with a building at the end of the pipes.

There is also a platform made up from a few odds and ends and a pallet of some kind of cargo.

Finally, I've made a few barricades/roadblocks from a few odds and ends of doors and wall sections, held up with braces. These are bound to be useful. Everyone and everything needs to hide or shelter from getting shot at. In all of these pieces, I've chosen a grimdark colour palette, especially for the generators. Maybe how they work is an obscure and arcane secret, but so long as the initiates/operators chant the correct prayers the things will keep on generating whatever they generate?

Once again, my Bad Squiddo Ghost of Gaia is here to provide a sense of scale.

So, that's it for the Battlezone stuff.

I've been working on lots of scenic stuff

I needed to get lots more trees and hedges for 15mm wargaming and I've been working on them for weeks now. The word for this is BORING! but it had to be done.  Here are all the things I've done. Apologies for the picture quality. I was in a rush and used a camera that isn't really designed for close-up flash work.

First, here is an orchard. The trees are quite large for 15mm.

The trees are on bases and can be removed for ease of access to troops etc under the trees.

Next, a couple of small coppices. Again, the trees can be removed. These are a mix of large and small trees.

Twelve more small trees here, again on separate bases;

These will work well as trees lining fields or around the edge of a village, I think.

Next I have lots and lots of hedges of various kinds;

And to finish, some large free-standing trees and poplars to line roads;

I reused some old rough roads made from cork tiles as the bases for some of these items and used tongue depressors for other pieces.  

The flock and ballast stuff comes off very easily, but a blast with Hycote matt spray varnish seems to have stuck everything in place pretty well. 

The trees were all bought ready-made and came unbased, so I had plenty of flexibility as to how I used them. I bought them from K&M Trees. Nice stuff and quick and efficient service.

More resin scenic stuff

I am always looking for more 15mm scenic items, especially for IABSM and Chain of Command WW2, and I've bought some nice pieces from Ironclad Miniatures before. So, at the club's latest Reveille show, back in November last year, I bought a few more odds and ends which will fit in with the overall collection. 

First, a couple of burnt down wooden buildings, with just their brick chimneys still standing. Perfect for the Eastern Front, but also with possibilities for games set elsewhere;

Next, another ruined house and a fallen tall chimney which will be perfect with the bombed factory I bought the year previously.

As with all the resin pieces I've bought from Ironclad, the models are really crisp and cast using high quality resin. They are a joy to paint and look excellent on the table.

The 15mm range is quite large and there are a few nice buildings that are designed for games set in Normandy, which I really should buy sometime.

In addition to these buildings, I also got round to painting up a few resin buildings from The Square, who still don't seem to have a website, but they do have a Facebook page. The Square seem to have a presence at most wargames shows, and I always have a browse of their stuff because there is generally something I see and think would be useful. The latest things from that that I've pained are some wooden thatched houses and sheds, which I think will be perfect for the Eastern Front in WW2.

I could see these popping up in earlier periods too, most likely in my 18th century Imagi-nations Sharp Practice games 

15mm resin scenic stuff

I am always on the lookout for 15mm scenic items, especially things for WW2 that I can use in games of CoC.

Therefore I was really pleased to pick up these nice resin ruined buildings from Ironclad Miniatures at the club's recent Reveille show. First, there is a really nice ruined factory. I very much like the two storage tanks at one end of the building.

The other one is a ruined building that could either be a house or part of a larger factory complex.

Both of these paint up really well. The models are clean and have no flash. I hope that more buildings of this type will appear in the future. Well done, Ironclad!

To complement these two, I have also painted up some pieces from Baueda, again purchased at Reveille, from the Magister Militum stall. I am a big fan of Baueda resin stuff. It is always a joy to paint and the WW2 stuff has lots of nice details. This small building was made from two pieces glued together on an MDF base to  make another ruined building for the factory complex. I added more debris using Javis crumbled cork boulders and sand and stone mix. I really like the way this turned out once it was painted up.

Finally, here are two other Baueda pieces, plus a resin fuel dump I picked up from the The Square stand at Colours.

Clearly, the two Baueda pieces will work as part of the factory complex. The fuel dump is always going to be useful. It will work nicely with the one I painted earlier in the year. I reckon that if you want a fuel dump, you want at least two stacks of oildrums.

I have a game of CoC planned for a couple of weeks' time, so I think that my Germans might be defending a bombed out factory against the evil Bolshevik hordes.

I've got quite a few other resin things that still need work. So, it is either get those done first, or go back to my 28mm FIW Régiment de Guyenne troops, which I need for the end of January. Decisions, decisions!

I've been away for a week, but now I'm back

I was away on a short break to Italy, Bologna and Ravenna to be precise, but now I'm back and I've got to restart my painting mojo. Before I went away, I completed some plastic 28mm scenic pieces that the club bought as part of a Kickstarter, Mantic's TerrainCrate one, unfortunately. Anyway, the pieces are all on a dungeon and fantasy theme, so great for a lot of different games, Frostgrave, Ghost Archipelago etc. There are a couple of us painting things up, and this is how I approached my share (note that the figure is mine, and shown for scale purposes only). First, we have some piles of treasure, the kind of thing that no self-respecting dungeon, cavern system or ancient ruined city can afford to be without;

Next, some distinctly martial pieces, including a sword in a stone for aspiring Once And Future Kings to have a go at;

Various scatter pieces, including a treasure map for a lost treasure island, and a crown on a cushion on the bedside table. Surely we've all got one of those at home?

Finally, more scatter, useful for hiding behind when the sound of "Fee Fi Fo Fum" starts echoing around the place.

These were all pretty straightforward to paint. A case of spray undercoat, touch up with paint where necessary, paint in the metallic bits, dry-brush and ink to bring out the textures. Quite nice pieces, and very useful. 

By the by, when I was in Ravenna, somewhere I totally recommend visiting, I had a look around the Domus dei Tappeti di Pietra, the House of Stone Carpets. The stone carpets are, of course mosaic floors. These date from between the 1st and 6th centuries CE, and for the purposes of this comment, I want to show you these two. The upper one is the Dance of The Seasons and the lower one a representation of the Good Shepherd, a pagan image which was adopted by early Christians to represent Christ. The thing I want to point out is the tunic decoration. In both mosaics, you can see decorations (e.g. disc-shaped patches and shoulder markings) on the tunics which are often claimed to be "military" in wargaming and re-enactment circles, but which were actually commonly used by everyone across the empire of Late Antiquity and the Early Mediaeval period. It is more likely that soldiers adopted what was a common style rather than the reverse, but perhaps we shall never know definitively. It does seem unlikely, though, that a representation of Christ as Good Shepherd would be shown wearing an item of military appearance.

Some resin scenic pieces

I've had a lot of various resin scenic items sitting in a box for ages, both 15mm and 28mm scale, waiting for me to get round to doing something with them. I wish I could remember who made these particular ones, but I'm afraid that I cannot be sure at all. I am pretty sure that a few are from The Square, but their website seems to be lacking in pictures. Anyway, I bought them all at various shows over the last couple of years. The ones shown here are all for 15mm gaming.

While working on finishing off my Peter Pig CoC stuff, I decided to paint a few 15mm items up as well. These were simple to get finished. All I did was spray undercoat them, add patches of earth tones and dry-brush them (using my favourite dry-brushing colour, Vallejo Iraqi Sand) to bring up the detail, and then some final flocking on a few around the edges. Finally, finish off with matt spray varnish. As you can see, I've given a couple of the craters a darker brown bottom, the idea being that this represents a pool of muddy water.

The first picture shows a number of different-sized bomb craters, plus four rustic-looking haystacks. 

The haystacks were even quicker; spray undercoat, glue to MDF round bases, heavy dry-brushing with Iraqi Sand and some grass flock on the bases before spraying with matt varnish.

The craters are clearly going to see most use in WW2 games, indeed they could even be used as Jump-Off Points for Chain of Command, and the haystacks will be useful for pretty much anything historical in 15mm. I can see these being used in my SYW imagi-nations games.

The second picture is a fuel dump, with camouflage netting made by me from butter muslin added for effect. This is going to get used in my forthcoming game of CoC as an objective.

The figure is for scale only. I dyed the muslin with dilute Tan Earth paint and glued it in place with diluted PVA glue, before sprinkling flock over the top.

A nice 15mm resin church

I bought this 15mm resin church model a while ago from a bring and buy table at the club's HOTT tournament. It only cost £4 and was originally produced by an American company called Scenic Effects, about whom I know nothing.

Anyway, as it has a sort of vaguely Mediterranean/Spanish look to it, I thought that it would be ideal for my Syldavian and Bordurian SYW imagi-nations games. I see it as a Syldavian church, maybe one from the coastal regions where outside influences could easily have included those from Spanish-controlled southern Italy in the 16th century.

The figure is from Peter Pig, actually from their Pirate range, and is the Holy Man for my Syldavian troops. He is a somewhat martial Catholic priest, armed with a sword.

I really rather like this building. It was a fairly quick paint-job and is going to be useful for other games too, hopefully. I think it is quite characterful and I might have to get some other buildings that will fit in with it on the table. The Hovels Spanish 15mm buildings look like a decent set.

I haven't written much about Syldavia and Borduria for quite some time, but they are never far from my thoughts. I've been thinking on and off about some Ottoman opponents for both countries, seeing as they both have southern borders with the Ottoman Balkans, and that particular mini-project might happen later this year. I also want to paint up some Syldavian militia, who will probably be based on Essex SYW Austrian Hungarian musketeers.

A new Hyborian stronghold for HOTT

When I first created my Hyborian Barbarian army for HOTT, I scratch-built a stronghold that was the maximum 600 paces square. Now, I really like the finished article, but it has to be admitted that it takes up a lot of room on a 15mm HOTT battlefield. So, I've built a new, smaller one that will hopefully be easier to defend.

You will see that I've kept the detachable Cthulhu statue, because I think that it is a terrific model, and I've used a similar construction method, i.e. blue insulating foam, cut to shape, undercoated, with ballast glued on, painted and then drybrushed and flocked. The two rocky outcrops that act as a primitive gate are two pieces of resin rock scenery that I bought at Colours last Autumn from, I think The Square.This smaller stronghold is roughly 300 x 450 paces. 

It has a secondary purpose too, because I am going to use my Hyborian Barbarians as the basis for a 15mm Sword and Spear Fantasy army, and this will be the army's Baggage Camp. Of course, I will need to buy more figures to give me a suitably-sized army, but when did a wargamer ever have enough toys? At least it will give me a reason to buy some of the wonderful Copplestone Yetis and Wolves (to be Large Beasts and Beasts), as well as more warriors to bulk out my rank and file units.

Securing the redoubts (Take Two) - A Sharp Practice ACW AAR

A while ago, I umpired a game of Sharp Practice for Andy and Nick at the club. The scenario was one where the Union side had to try and capture some reboubts that had been abandoned by the Confederates, while the Rebels were attempting to regain control of the same defences.

The scenario was fundamentally sound, but the Union side was pretty much handicapped by having too much open ground to cross before being able to engage with the enemy. I wanted to replay this, but decided that what was needed was a more cluttered table, so that there was more cover for the attacking Union troops, led by me. I also gave them a unit of cavalry, who were defined as Dragoons with breech-loading carbines. The Confederates, with Nick once again commanding, gained an extra unit of musket-armed militia.

Here is the battlefield, with more tree cover and fences than previously. The hill on the Union side creates the effect of a valley between the two sides.

From this end of the table. we can see the Union deployment point, marked by the tents. The Confederates will deploy from the middle hill on the right of the table.

The Union troops began to deploy quickly, with the carbine-armed cavalry aiming to secure the hill on the Confederate left.

The Rebels also began to deploy, with their cannon making an early appearance.

Quickly getting the cannon into the central redoubt, and a unit of skirmishers in the paddock below the hill, the Confederates had stolen a march on the Union troops

While the main body of Union infantry took up a firing position along the fences on the Union right flank, both units of skirmishers and a second group of infantry took up position on the hill and in the wooded ground in the valley. From here, the idea was for the skirmishers to advance and pick off the gun crew.

On the Union right, the cavalry advanced, dismounted and began to deploy in cover behind the hill on the Rebel left. 

The main Confederate infantry line waited in support of the cannon position, with the militia being pushed forward to try and neutralise the Union  skirmishers, whose accurate fire had already caused casualties and shock on the cannon crew, actually hitting the gun commander and knocking him out. He would stay down for much of the battle, limiting the effectiveness of the cannon.

The Confederate infantry were soon in action against the dismounted Union troopers, to good effect. The Union skirmishers were also taking casualties but succeeded in driving off the Confederate sharpshooters who had been screening the gun.

The dismounted cavalry were forced back with heavy losses but were replaced by the main Union infantry line, who split into two parts and advanced to occupy the hill.

The central redoubt was captured by Union skirmishers, who succeeded in killing the gun crew, but were themselves then pushed back. This fight would to-and-fro for a while while the Union troops were able to force the Confederate militia to flee the field.

Although the troops on the Confederate right had been mainly stuck with the task of holding the redoubt there,  they did eventually send one group of men to reinforce the centre, making it difficult for the weakened Union centre to hold on to the redoubt. With one redoubt in Union hands and two controlled by the Rebels, the issue became one of attrition. Which side was strong enough to seize the advantage?

As things turned out, the Union forces would prove to be too weak to press their advantage so, with time running out, the game was guaranteed to be a draw. Perhaps the Union side had a slight advantage in numbers, but not enough to capture the central redoubt.

Once again, this scenario was an entertaining one. In typical Civil War style, the fighting was inconclusive, with both sides taking a lot of casualties. With hindsight. it would probably have made more sense to send the cavalry on a long flanking  manoeuvre on the Union left and use the skirmishers on the right instead, sending the bulk of infantry through the centre.

Lincombe Barn Wargames Society Alien Squad Leader Tournament

A couple of Sundays ago, the club held its annual ASQL tournament. This was the first one that I'd taken part in, so it was something that I was looking forward to a lot.

There were eight of us taking part and the format meant that we would all play three games using 150pt armies, each one on one of five different tables against a different opponent. The terrain was pre-defined and the encounter would be a simple Pitched Battle, with points for the number of stands destroyed, plus the number of hits caused to the rest of your opponent's army. The result would them be translated into a share of 50 points, 25 each for a draw, and a sliding scale of points depending on the size of a win.

I'm not going to go into each battle in any great detail, because I was obviously not watching the other games too closely.  There was a variety of different armies on display. There were two Outlaw Gangs and one each of Human Cultists, Alien Imperials, Human Imperial Strike Force, Hive Mind, Cyborg Enslavers and Victorian Imperial (full descriptions are in the ASQL rulebook).

Here are the five tables;

None of these would give any particular advantage to any single army but in some cases the terrain would prove to be a major factor in deciding the outcome of the battles fought.

I took quite a few pictures, and I'll try and let them tell the story where possible.

These Cyborg Enslavers look remarkably familiar. Good thing there won't be many staris to climb!

Victorial Imperials, resplendent in the uniforms of a long-lost Golden Age of Empire.

The first of the Outlaw gangs, all equipped with various sorts of vehicles.

The Human Cultists, a.k.a. House Slytherine.

Alien Imperials. These were mine, a blend of high tech and scary monsters (no super creeps, though)

These are the Human Imperial Strike Force, a small but tough army.

Part of the other Outlaw Gang, vehicles with heavy weapons and lots of gangers.

The rather worrying bugs of the Hive Mind.

A special mention for this terrific scratch-built Outlaw Gang heavy weapons truck.

Now a fairly random selection of battle shots.

Victorians vs Hive Mind

Cyborg Enslavers on the "march".

 Victorians vs Hive Mind

Alien Imperials vs Outlaws

Alien Imperials vs the other Outlaws

Alien Imperials vs Hive Mind

Human Strike Force (not sure who they are fighting)

Extermination guaranteed.

Outlaws striking a pose.

Victorians line up against those damned unsporting Outlaws.

 Hive Bugs skittering into the attack.

Outlaws again.

And finally, my Alien Imperials in action against the Hive Mind. I actually won this game by a large margin, mainly by staying in the built-up areas, to neutralise the Hive Flyers, and blasted anything in sight. My Trained Beasts also did good work in hand-to-hand combat.

So, how did it all play out? Well, I fought both Outlaw gangs, drawing in an inconclusive opener against Alex S and losing badly against Clive. He knew that he had to stay out of range. I decided to stay in a built-up area, nothing happened, so I tried to tempt him out into the open. He  shot up my Primitives and stayed out of range of my Heavy Droids. I decided to go for broke, attacked and took a lot of hits, suffering a heavy defeat. However, a good win against Owen's Bugs ensured mid-table anonymity for my army.

The big surprise was how well the two lots of Outlaws actually did. Clearly tougher on the table  than they appear on the page.

The final standings were;