Welcome to my blog. Here you will find an irregular record of my haphazard progress through an eclectic mix of projects, games and other assorted wargames-related nonsense.


You came here looking for toast and tea? Pop in a couple of slices and put a brew on. This blog is best enjoyed with hot buttered toast and a mug of strong, hot tea*.


*Warning - may contain puns.


Thursday 26 December 2019

A New Bike for Christmas

Work and 'Real Life' have conspired to keep me away from hobby activities for the past couple months. No games, no painting, no purchases. So it was a surprise to come home on Christmas Eve to find an unexpected package waiting for me.

Opening it I discovered it was a Sarissa motorbike and shed kit. My 'free' (plus P&P) reward for completing The Great Wargaming Survey 2019. Over three months later, I had forgotten about this. A nice little stocking-filler to break my wargaming fast. Just in time for Christmas. Thanks Sarissa and Karwansaray!





Sunday 20 October 2019

A Couple of Commissars

I was supposed to be painting Star Wars: Legion figures. That was the plan anyway. There are a couple of squads of Rebel Troopers assembled and primed, waiting on the painting desk.

Alongside them were these two gents, part-painted from my last brush with my Russian Civil War project. I was going to set them aside to finish another time but, well they shoot stragglers don't they?



Sunday 15 September 2019

Ragged White Russians

My Russian Civil War project has been suffering from neglect of late, so I thought I'd better put that right.

Here are the latest recruits. A bunch of Ragged White Russians from Copplestone Castings.


They have a suitably battle-worn and irregular look about them with plenty of patched and torn clothes, worn-out boots and improvised footwear.

They're not intended to represent any particular unit so I've kept them fairly generic. That goes for the flag too. It started out looking far too pristine for such a ragged unit, so I distressed it a bit until I was happy with the look.

For some unexplained reason the bases gave me a headache and I struggled to achieve the effect I was after. This should have been the easy bit, but even following my tried and tested paint recipe I couldn't get a good match with my existing units. Much cursing and several repaints later, I finally got them looking how I wanted.





Tuesday 27 August 2019

A Brush with The Masters

Brush soap. It's not the most scintillating topic is it? Hardly as exciting as the latest new and shiny must-have toys.

Then again, good brushes aren't cheap, so why wouldn't I want to keep them in good shape? Money saved on buying brushes means more for figures or rules. Actually, I've always thought that I do take pretty good care of my brushes. I try to keep paint away from the ferrule (well, mostly), don't leave them standing in the water pot, only use worn old brushes for mixing paint and dry brushing, clean them well after use... all good habits.

Then again, there's clean and there's clean. 

On a whim, I ordered a pot of Original B&J "The Masters" Brush Cleaner and Preserver. Lots of folks seem to swear by it. I was curious.


The blurb on the pot claims that it cleans "Oil Paint, Watercolor, Acrylic and Stains" and that it will shape and condition brush bristles. Sounds handy, methinks.

First off, it smells quite pleasant. Mmm...a slightly citrus fragrance I think. This is hardly of any great importance (I'm not going to be taking this into the shower), but at least it doesn't give off a repellently pungent chemical odour.


More importantly, is it any good?

Here's the subject of my test.  An old brush that has been relegated to paint mixing duties. It's looking a bit tatty now, but I think I've kept the bristles pretty clean.


After a rinse in warm water, I worked the soap into the bristles to get a good lather...


...and gave it a wipe to remove the soap.


I repeated this several times and the dirt kept coming off. This brush was dirtier than I thought!

Better still, after this treatment the bristles regained some shape. It is an old brush, so no amount of cleaning is ever going to restore full 'body', but now it does hold a point.


I've only tried cleaning brushes that have been used with acrylic paint so it remains to be seen how "The Masters" handles other media, but first impressions are good. Value-wise I have no complaints either. For the price of a decent sable brush I've just extended the life and usefulness of my existing brushes. Original B&J "The Masters" Brush Cleaner and Preserver now has a permanent home on my painting desk. Recommended.


Sunday 14 July 2019

The Day They Hanged Big Tom

Imagine it. Early morning, the crowd jostling the soldiers who cross spears to hold them back. The castle gates swing open and out march the men-at-arms, followed by a horse-drawn cart in which stand Big Tom and the Hangman. Behind walks the priest and - stern faced, his icy glare freezing the crowd into silence, rides the great Sir Richard, Lord of the Manor.

Somewhere out there among the trees is a flicker of movement; an arrow is notched, a sword loosened in its sheath. The rescuers await.


Ah yes, 'Cry Havoc' by Standard Games and Publications Ltd. I have rather a soft spot for this game. It and its companion game 'Siege' have been in my collection since the early 1980's. Over the years I've had some fun games with Cry Havoc. One of the things I really like about the game is that every combatant from the lowest peasant to the mightiest knight is a named character with individual stats printed on their counter. This gives the game a strong narrative feel and leads to some great stories unfolding as scenarios play out.

My copy has sat on the gaming shelf for rather a long time now, so when Pete made one of his all too rare visits I decided it was high time to 'Cry Havoc' one more time.

For our game I dug out my copy of Scenario Book 2, which was produced separately to support Cry Havoc, Siege and Outremer (the version of the game set in the Crusades). 


The book contains 29 scenarios of varying size and complexity from solo play to a mini-campaign, but I was looking for something we could play at a leisurely pace within the space of an afternoon. There were several choices, but in the end I picked 'The Day They Hanged Big Tom', a rescue scenario with a few 'twists'.

The introduction at the top of this post sets the scene. To help you follow the action as it unfolds, I have labelled the opposing forces  'Red' and 'Blue'.

On the 'Red' side, we have the forces of the local Lord, Sir Richard:

Sir Richard's Forces

Knights
Sir Richard (Lord of the Manor)

Sergeants
Sergeant Martin (lackey)
Sergeant Arnim (executioner)

Billmen
Rees and Tybalt

Crossbows
Giles and Gaston

Spearmen
Stori, Hayden, Bryn, Crispin, Brendan, Mordred, Gareth, Aki, Hal and Arnold (crowd control)

Priest
Leopold (who appears rather overdressed for a humble friar. Perhaps we can imagine he is more a man of earthly pleasures after the style of Chaucer's Monk)

Draft Horse
Old Ned (past his prime, a plodding old nag)

Sir Richard, Sergeants, Billmen, Crossbows and Leopold

The Spearmen

Poor Old Ned

Opposing Sir Richard, on the 'Blue' side we have the forces of The Outlaws and Peasants:

The Outlaws and Peasants

The Prisoner
Big Tom (halberdier and outlaw, now a captive of Sir Richard with his hands tied and a noose around his neck)

Archers
Bowyer, Chretien, Mathias and Fletcher

Billmen
Robin, Jean and Guy

Halberdier
Frederick

Peasants
Gam, Cedric, Baker, Giles, Wulf, Radult, Roger, Farmer, Carpenter, Gobin, Smith, David, Will'm, Matthew and Salter

The Strumpets
Edith and Audrey

Big Tom, The Outlaws and the Strumpets

The Peasants

The Map

The  scenario uses three A2 size map boards from the Cry Havoc and Siege boxed sets; The Castle, The Forest and The Crossroads.


The Scenario

Sir Richard's forces have to transport Big Tom from the Castle, through The Forest to The Hillock at The Crossroads where his confession will be heard before he is strung up from a tree and hung until dead. The Outlaws have to prevent this by rescuing Big Tom.

However, there are several complications:

Hidden forces
The Outlaws' positions are recorded secretly and are unknown to Sir Richard's forces at the start of the game.

Peasants and Crowd Control
Big Tom was always popular with the lower orders. They are opposed to the hanging, but are neither organised nor bold enough to intervene without encouragement. The Peasants will follow the Execution procession at random speed (1d6) but are kept in check by the Spearmen detailed to control the crowd. The Peasants test on a d10 each turn but may not intervene until they roll higher than the number of Spearmen controlling the crowd, after which they may act aggressively.

Bribery and Corruption
The Outlaws may influence events by bribery and corruption. For example they may induce Leopold to drag out the confession, embolden the Peasants with ale, bribe Sergeant Arnim to loosen Big Tom's bonds, employ the local witch to pronounce a 'curse', or encourage the local strumpets to publicly defame Sir Richard. The Outlaws do not have enough funds to achieve all these events, so must choose carefully how to spend their silver.


The Game

A roll of the dice determined sides, with Pete taking Sir Richard's (Red) forces and myself taking the Outlaws and Peasants (Blue) forces.

I secretly recorded the position of The Outlaws, hiding the Archers in the trees within The Forest and the Halberdier and Billmen behind the slope of The Pool at The Crossroads.

Without further ado, the game began with Execution detail trooping out of The Castle...


…while the Spearmen deployed a cordon to keep the flocking Peasants at bay.

Crowd control in action

The Execution detail proceeded towards The Forest at a suitably funereal pace, though probably not out of any respect for the condemned man. Poor old Ned the Cart Horse was incapable of going any faster (or perhaps he was - but refused to hasten out of sympathy for Big Tom). Either way, progress was slow but uninterrupted. Sir Richard's crowd control was working well and the Peasants remained docile.

As the procession strung out through The Forest, the Peasants remained resolutely passive due to less than favourable odds and some hopeless dice-rolling on my part. Something had to be done to buy more time. It was at this point that one of the Outlaws' bribes came into play.

Sir Richard and his entourage were startled by giggles coming from the undergrowth and the sudden appearance of two women, the local strumpets Edith and Audrey, skipping towards them...

A bustle in the hedgerow

…assailing Sir Richard's dignity with a battery of scurrilous and saucy accusations!


An opposed die roll was required to determine Sir Richard's response. There were a number of possible outcomes, from silencing the women with one of Sir Richard's famously icy stares, to sending the crossbowmen in pursuit (which would have emboldened the Peasants to leap to the rescue). In the event, the opposed roll was a draw, resulting in a stand-off for two turns while Sir Richard parried the women's slurs with sharp words of his own.

While Sir Richard was thus distracted, The Outlaws sprang their trap.


The Outlaw archers Chretien, Mathias and Bowyer appeared from their hiding places in the trees to send a shower of arrows speeding towards Sir Richard's soldiers. Only Mathias found his mark, wounding the billman Tybalt. The Outlaws had given up their advantage of surprise with little to show for it.

It still took a moment for Sir Richard's forces to react, giving The Outlaws just enough time to take out the hapless Billmen Tybalt and Rees, before the tables started to turn.

Down the Forest path, eagle-eyed crossbowman Giles took out Bowyer with a single well-aimed bolt, whilst Matthias suddenly found himself hunted down and trapped at spearpoint in his treetop perch.


Meanwhile, the Peasants surged forward, attracted by the sound of battle drifting across The Forest. The Outlaws had spent coin to tank up The Peasants on cheap ale, but so far they seemed more inclined to be happy drunks rather than aggressive ones.

The Spearmen had yet to suffer physical attack but had to endure a no less unpleasant assault on their senses as they struggled to contain the unwashed masses herded together and pressing against them. They were forced to give ground, but only very slowly.


With the Peasants held in check and Sir Richard no longer distracted by Edith and Audrey, the Outlaws could do little to impede the progress of the Execution detail. Resistance was swept aside as the advanced elements of Sir Richard's forces moved clear of The Forest.

The way through The Crossroads seemed clear, but The Outlaws were not finished yet. With wild yells, Frederick, Robin, Jean and Guy rose from their hiding place by The Pool and charged Sir Richard's men. The Outlaws were outnumbered, but their enemies were still stretched out in a ragged column and unable to bring their full force to bear. Caught off guard, Spearmen started to fall.

Meanwhile Chretien - the only surviving bowman, crept to the edge of The Forest and began to harry the advancing Spearmen with arrows. As ever, it was an embarrassing demonstration of inaccurate archery that failed to achieve a single hit. The Spearmen hurled insults back, not even bothering to halt their advance.


The Outlaws fought hard and opposing Spearmen continued to fall, but their situation was looking increasingly desperate. Frederick and Jean were both felled by crossbow bolts while Robin and Guy battled on.

It was at this moment that The Peasants finally revolted.


Realising that the tide of public opinion had finally turned against him, Sir Richard urged his men on to The Hillock, leaving crossbowmen Giles and Gaston to hold off the pursuing Peasants.


The Peasants surged forward, besieging Sir Richard's men at The Hillock where they had made a stand. Here, a final pitched battle played out. Sir Richard spurred his horse and rode into the Peasants, laying about him furiously and striking down men left and right. The Peasants were many, but they were no match for an armoured knight on horseback. Meanwhile, the Outlaws Robin and Guy fought hard to break through to Big Tom but the odds against them were just too great.

While the battle raged below, up on The Hillock Leopold was taking Big Tom's final confession. On and on the priest droned, but Big Tom remained unrepentant. Defiant to the last, he continued to curse his captors until the noose tightened, choking off his stream of abuse.


The sight of Big Tom's lifeless body suspended from the hanging tree above them was too much for the Outlaws and Peasants. Their resistance broke and in a moment they had dispersed. Sir Richard was triumphant. It was all over.

After the Battle

With hindsight, Pete and I agreed that success for the Outlaws relies heavily on the early intervention of The Peasants, which was something I failed to achieve. I had probably relied too much on Edith and Audrey to incite Peasant protection and support, but they had only achieved a stand-off with Sir Richard and caused a delay that I was unable to exploit. Taking out some of the Spearmen early on would also have improved the odds of a Peasant uprising, but my archery was too poor and I had chosen the wrong targets. Perhaps the hapless Outlaws would have been better spending all their silver on bribing Sergeant Arnim to loosen Big Tom's bonds. He would probably have stood a better chance of escape on his own!

All this aside, Cry Havoc once again delivered an engaging, fun and highly narrative game. Regardless of the outcome, both Pete and I found it highly entertaining.  Scenario writer Jim Webster's advice to players in his Introduction to Scenario Book 2 sums it up perfectly:

"...remember, the winners are the ones who enjoyed playing".

Further resources

If you would like to find out more about Cry Havoc, I recommend you take a look at the Cry Havoc Fan website.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

Saturday 4 May 2019

The Force is weak in this one!

Oh Dear. Another diversion.

I find your lack of willpower - disturbing.
 
It all started with an exchange of emails with my cross-channel gaming buddy Ian that began with an invite to a game of Kings of War over Skype and some how morphed into pictures of 3D printed Comms Links and crashed Snowspeeders and a discussion about the best miniatures rules to play out Star Wars tabletop games.

It turned out Ian had been impressed with the Star Wars: Legion miniatures but was less enamoured with the rules. Too many cards, tokens and boardgamey stuff. After throwing a few suggestions back and forth we never did reach a satisfactory conclusion, but that dangerous seed of curiosity was already taking root in my brain. I needed to find out about Star Wars: Legion for myself. 

A read-through of the Star Wars: Legion Learn to Play rules PDF on Fantasy Flight's website and the discovery of examples of Unit, Upgrade and Command cards on Tabletop Admiral only reinforced my impression that this was a rather unintuitive, fiddly, card and token heavy game. I was relieved! Now I could safely ignore this game and get on with my other projects without danger of distraction.

Except I couldn't.

Well come on, it's Star Wars.

I kept going  back to the rules, wanting to find something to like. In the end it was a series of  Watch It Played videos that clinched it for me. Suddenly the rules made sense. These guys are having fun. I want to play this game! (Though quite how this is going to work over Skype is anyone's guess).

So now my core box set has arrived.



Just don't ask me when I'm going to get this stuff assembled and painted.




Sunday 17 March 2019

Seven Samurai



After a bit of a hiatus, here's something a bit different from the run of WWII coastal warfare posts I've previously been churning out - The Seven Samurai. 

I picked these up goodness-knows how many years ago. I do remember it was at Partizan, back when the show was still held at Kelham Hall. They are produced by 1st Corps and I still recall having a long conversation with the guy on the stand about the Kurosawa movie.

At the time I had quite a collection of Dixon Miniatures samurai and I picked these up as they were a good match size-wise. I fell out of love with Dixon samurai long ago and sold off my collection to raise funds for other projects, but I held on to these miniatures. 

They don't really fit in with my current favourite Samurai miniatures (Kingsford). The sculpting style is quite 'chunky' and a bit cartoonish, but I think they have lots of character and I do like them for that. Plus, they were a joy to paint. I'm really happy with how they turned out.















Thanks for looking.