Wednesday 27 September 2017

What have I been up to?

Morning All

Apologies for the lack of posts recently but work commitments and to be frank a general lethargy about focussing on this blog has meant things have been relatively quiet.

However hopefully things are about to change and you will see more exciting things coming out of the shed in the next few weeks.

On the gaming front I have been particularly active. We have played a couple more Peninsular engagements using black powder and on both occasions my British forces have been soundly beaten by the Frenchies. I just cant seem to stop the attack columns. This frustration has boiled over to the point that we might be playing the rules wrong but following a post to the Warlord Games forum it does appear that the rules are correct and either the dice gods are just being unkind or those French attack columns are just too powerful. If anybody out there in blog land has some thoughts on this please do ping me a line. The plan is too host a couple more Peninsular scenarios in the coming weeks so watch this space.

Whilst we are talking about my peninsular project I decided that I needed to crack on with the terrain for this period. You may recall at the beginning of the Napoleonic project I managed to acquire this town for a very reasonable price on ebay. I have now discovered that the buildings themselves come from Warbases modular range (worth checking out here).

This was the village I bought



I have now decided to rebase these onto 30cm plywood squares and construct a proper Mediterranean town. This is going to be my next terrain project. To supplement the buildings I have already got I discovered two wonderful pieces from Charlie Foxtrot models. A Church and a tower.

These are listed in their Pantile range (here)

I have shown the pictures of these two (not my models) from the website below. These are MDF kits with resin pantile roofs. I picked up mine from Colours at Newbury a couple of weeks ago and have already started construction. They are great kits.

  


A work in progress post on this terrain build will follow shortly.

Over the last few years (pretty much since I have been running this blog) I have managed to meet a large number of gamer's in my immediate vicinity and last week I was invited to join a Dragon Rampant game at anothers 'Shed'. I say shed but I really should say Cabin. We had a great game (better that I has on the winning side) but sadly I forgot to take any pictures.

This game was however a first for me as my host had created a games mat from teddy bear fur and it looked fantastic. So much so I am going to invest in some of this stuff and see if I can replicate the affect for my own table (yet another project). A big thank you to Dave and his friends for making me feel most welcome and I look forward to our next battle.

As we move into October plans are beginning to gather pace for the Lead Adventures BLAM event. For the past three years this has been hosted in my local pub and once again this venue sees 25+ gamers head down to the Surbiton area to feast on games, beer and good food over a four day period. We have extended the event for an extra day this year because it is our tenth anniversary. For my sins I'll be running a chopped down version of my heroic defence of Rorkes drift and a Muskets & Tomahawks game. I can't wait.

Shortly after Blam I'll be hosting in the Shed an all day game (period yet to be decided) for my original gaming group. Its been the best part of 10 years since we all got together and Mark and I are looking forward to catching up with old friends.

So there is a great deal to sort out in the coming weeks.

On a final note we have been playing a number of board games as well. In particular I can strongly recommend Spartacus - this is great fun and is sure to become a firm favourite during the winter months ahead.



I also received my Kick starter copy of Massive Darkness a few weeks back. This has already seen several games and I think its fair to say the jury is still out on this. Whilst the components in particular the minis are wonderful the game play deteriorates as the players progress. There has been a number of similar comments on Board Game Geek about this. Hopefully some tweaks and house-rules will deliver a better game in the long run.

 


So thats about it for the moment - hang on there is more...

Once all the projects above are complete I will be starting on my next big 28mm venture - I'll let the following picture tell you what it is but suffice to say 6 of these boxes turned up yesterday



Come back soon...


20 comments:

  1. That village looks absolutely superb, your plans for it will make for an impressive feature. At least your recent acquisition for painting will be a ton easier than your last one (Napoleonic).

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  2. The village looks great. Must admit to giving up on Black Powder and use General D'Armee for my Napoleonic gaming.

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    1. Um - thinking about it and I bought the rules but far too many summary pages

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  3. I have four feathers ... :-)

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  4. That's not a Village, it's a town! Looking forward to seeing your finished pieces, I do enjoy your terrain posts!

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    1. Thank you...just spent the whole evening doing flagstones

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  5. Hi – if you fancy trying General d’Armee as an alternative to Black Powder we would be very happy to put on a game for you or visit the shed (!) as long as you aren’t too far away from London. David Brown (the author) is a club member so we usually have a good game! Simon at loughtonstrikeforce dot co dot uk

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. Let me get back to you sir - I assume you are in Loughton

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  6. Sudan...i should have guessed. I hope there's a gunboat on order.

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    1. No - gunboat will be scratchbuilt. Did I mention that each of the shed gamers has to paint a box of dervishes if you want to play !!

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    2. Love this period , would be happy to paint something , but I guess 6 boxes of fuzzy wuzzies may be enough already . Does this become a company ish level game like the Zulu war stuff you have ??? In 1885 the Brits fighting in the Sudan are wearing red which could be a heads up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ginnis

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  7. Sudan...i should have guessed. I hope there's a gunboat on order.

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  8. glad you had good time in my cabin ,come again soon.and thank you sir for you kind comments on my terrain.

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  9. For black powder, are you using the steady line rule for the British?
    Ps Nice terrain and grand armee is a nice set of rules well thought out

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  10. Not that i lay blackpowder much but didn't you get +1 when shooting at columns?
    concentrate dice on columns, close up, if you roll a 6 they become disordered and can't andvance, remove disorders or chage formation they'll just die.
    I seem to remember that columns didn't give any combat bonus just command with that ability.
    Plus you always have closing fire when they charge you, wait until they wet close, roll a 6 and stop them in their tracks

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  11. Seems like everyone has been hit by the "no time to blog" bug in the last couple of months (myself included) ... nice to see you are back in the saddle! :-)

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