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Wednesday 30 March 2016

Goths, Carlists and Christinos, A Bit Of Progress.

Painting for my own collections has progressed in a stately fashion, I have just the MG company and regimental command to do for my early Great War German infantry battalion, then its a field gun and crew plus some high command figures and the project is complete,although I will add some hussars when they get around to doing the dismounted versions. The grand plan to finish off two cavalry units for the first Carlist War by the end of February failed miserably, all is not lost though I have completed a base of each.
Carlist Ontario Hussars

British Auxiliary Legion Lancers
  On the third century front, I have completed three more Goth cavalry to finish the base off and I have the last six figures in progress to complete the II Adiutrix Legion, I am also progressing well with the Grand Manner Roman Villa/Travellers rest I collected from Dave at WMMS.
So all in all not a bad start for the year.


  Has planned I popped over to GHQ for a French Revolutionary Wars game, Dave had all the figures out that he has painted so far so that Dan from WI could photograph them for a forthcoming article, so we left them as they were which meant that the French were heavily outnumbered by the coalition. In the event I managed a winning draw, which I was quite chuffed with, in fact had a couple of my bold attacks payed dividends the tables could have been turned.
No idea what game we will do here next yet.

TTFN 

Tuesday 22 March 2016

First Carlist War, The Fight For The Ford

For our first outing for the First Carlist War collection of 2016, I decided to use Neil Thomas's "One Hour Wargames Rules" with a few tweaks to suit the Carlist Wars.
The Isabelino Forces must deny the Carlists the ford, the river could be crossed all along the board but at much reduced speed, so although tempting to use the whole of the length of the river and avoid a choke point at the ford, the Isabelino commander knows that the small force of three Carlist battalions will be reinforced, can the Isabelino commander afford the time?
 The Carlists await their adversary 
The Isabelino forces attack, skirmishers to the fore, three battalions to the left of the ford, the slower moving British Auxiliary Legion cross at the ford with the Rifle battalion on their flank, for this game armed with muskets but are faster moving than their line fellows.
 The Isabelino skirmishers engage their Carlist counterparts.
 The British Auxiliary Legion begin their crossing of the ford. 
 Isabelino cavalry bring up the rear.
 An aerial view of proceedings.
 Carlist reinforcements begin to arrive.
 An example of the bad luck throughout the game by the Royal Marine rocket battery, one on target at last! but its a dud! 
 The Isabelino cavalry having failed to break the Carlist infantry are in turn engaged by their Carlist counterparts.
 Choke point
 The British Auxiliary Legion engage the Carlists.
 The Isabelino cavalry, shortly before being repulsed by the Carlists. 
 The Carlist reinforcements begin to turn the tide.
A hard fought game that lasted a little over two hours, not a hour, but due more to the table and forces being a lot bigger than in the rules. The game was set at 12 turns with a D3 deciding the number of additional turns in this case two, a winning draw for the Carlists was the declared result.
Rules wise I adjusted the movement to reflect the looser order used by the Spanish troops, I adjusted the firing for over half range and if a unit was reduced to two bases, though not for skirmishers they have a firing minus anyway. I also let columns fire requiring a 6 to cause a casualty, the rules do not have base removal, when a unit has received 15 hits it is removed, I changed this, most of my units have five bases so when three hits were received I removed a base. I also introduced a morale test, there isn't one in the rules, when a unit was reduced to two bases it rolled a D6 on a score of 4+ it carried on but would need to test when receiving any hits there after, if it failed it would retire the difference in the score in moves and require another test to advance again.
I would recommend picking a copy of the book up if only for the 30 scenarios, though I would encourage you to give the rules a try.

Next up over at GHQ a French Revolutionary War game, next game at OHQ to be decided.

TTFN  

Sunday 6 March 2016

About Time?

When we played the last Spanish Civil War game I wondered how much more I could regurgitate the same terrain pieces and remembered that I had picked up a Grand Manner Spanish outhouse from Dave at Salute in 2014 so thought it was high time I got it painted. At the same time I got a "Vandalised" statue and some wattle enclosures for the Dux Brit project, so I set to in between figure painting the last weeks and got the outbuilding and statue painted up.

Defaced Statue Of The Tyrant Pompus Maximus


A Versatile Piece That Will See Service In Several Of The Periods I Currently Play















 Don't ask why there is such a bloody big gap, another "improvement" by the nerds no doubt.
Anyway to get back, I have also the past few weeks been doing the odd bit to a Great War MkIV that I picked up from Warlord during the sale and free postage offer earlier in the year, to paint up for the Germans, needs to washed, weathered and filtered next, I have also resprayed a Fabri die-cast T34/85 picked up from The Works late last year, again needs to be finished as above.

TTFN (I will not attempt to put text after the next pics, else the post may be a yard long)