Magpies strike again

I went to Hay on Wye the other day. For those who don't know this is a town on the Welsh Borders which is famous for it's second hand and classical bookshops. While I was there I had an impulse buy of a book called Battles of Tolkein. This was a collection of all the big battles from all of his works. It is nicely illustrated and full of ideas for scenarios.
Before I realised I had bought several units of classic GW elves. Now I already have a few units, but this will pad out my forces. I may be able to do some of the big elves vs Orcs battles using the 3rd edition WHFB rules.
This has mucked up my painting plans so I might not get as much done before the Fat man comes as I had hoped.

Colours

Huw and I went to Colours in September. It was a long old drive from Wales to Newbury but I bumped into a few old contacts such as Steve Thompson and Dave Brown.
Huw and I had great game of "Kill the Tiger", playing 2 of 4 T-34s chasing down a Tiger. It only took 10 minutes but was great fun.
Didn't spend much. I got  some Selucid Phalangites to go with the plastic one from Warlord games sale, and some 20mm Blitzkrieg germans for Huw's evolving CoC army.
The only other thing I got was one of the giants in miniature from WI, the Balin of Ibalin figure. It's based on Mr Bloom in a non IP infringing way, but he will be a hero for my Norman army.

Real life gets in the way again.

The attempt to reduce theead mountain has resumed. I have finished all my 28mm plastic Normans, which I have painted in a yellow and red colour scheme. This represents the County of Glamorgan and so this can be the Norman troops of the Fitzwilliam family.
I've also painter most of the 20mm Imaginations figures and want to get them all out on the table before I do anymore. I have around 200 American militia to paint. All the regular troops have been 12 on a 100x40 base, but I might base these 6 -8 on the same sized base to represent the looser formation one would expect from militia. The big choice is whether to make them a militia for one of my two existing armies or to create a third   nation. I am tending towards the latter, and using some Napoleonic troops say Spanish or Dutch Belgian to represent the few Regular battalions, whilst the bulk of the army is made up of militia, similar to most USA armies before WW1.

I bought some Bretonnians on ebay, a really good deal for 100 archers for less than £30. They will go with some foot knights and perry plastics to make up a couple of WOTR retinues for Dragon Rampant.

Black Powder 6 Weeks war

This weekend I managed to convince my son to try a game of Black Powder. We used my 6mm APW figures. These are based on 60x45 bases with a mixture of formed infantry with a skirmisher screen. We counted each base as a "standard" unit with each Prussian brigade having 4 bases of line with a jaeger and artillery base attached. The cavalry was in a seperate brigade.
On the Austrian side, each brigade was of 4 bases with attached artillery. There was also a seperate artillery reserve as well as a large cavalry brigade. The scenario was of the prussians advancing to try and command a road junction with the Austrians rushing to prevent it.
I wasn't sure that BP would deal with the age of rifles, but it worked really well. The nature of the rules allows for tinkering so I made the prussian rifles have an extra dice when firing at less than half range to represent the breech loading rifles. The Austrians got an extra dice for every 4 cannon they fire at the same target to represent their preference for massed artillery.
The game flew along and we were able to play 8 brigades a side to a conclusion in 3 hours. The Austrians managed to break 3 prussian brigades through a combination of massed cannon and a well timed cavalry charge.
A really good game.

General update

It seems that it happens every year. I go off to the Featherstone weekend and come back full of enthusiasm for the period we've just played. Couple that with a small amount of cash for my birthday the next week and you get magpie central.

Long time readers (if any) may remember that I had all my stuff in storage but now it has been moved into my new shed/man cave. This has allowed me to really look at what I have and what I need to get useful armies for each scale/era.

It has also allowed me to group projects together so that as the unpainted figures change into actual units the impact on the lead/plastic mountain is more pronounced.

I have mainly been working on 3 projects. Firstly my 28mm ACW. I have decided that since I commanded Rhodes' division at Chancellorsville at the Featherstone weekend, it would make sense to replicate this in my Confederate forces, whilst their Union opposition would be generic. A quick google search showed 30 regiments plus a battery of artillery. Keeping with 20 man units that means 150 bases of 40mmx40mm. I have already done 12 units from boxes I had to hand but there are Zouave units since one of the boxes was the Perry ACW battle box. I might just have to paint some more units and keep the zoaves as a reserve elite regiment.

By sticking with 40x40 bases I can use either Black Powder or Pickett's charge, or even Guns At Gettysburg.

At the same time I am increasing my 10mm Acw units. I have completed the 4 blisters I had for Xmas so have added another 24 stands to each side for F&F, although they could be used for BBB, or on a sabot for Altar of Freedom which I have just got and like the look of. Of course I do have some 2mm Acw which would do for the latter....

The last project is my imaginations SYW. The not-French side has seen the addition of several regiments including the Grenadiers du Roi and Musketeers du Roi, as well as the Grenadiers du Concorde. These are all 20mm soft plastic SYW or AWI figures which I buy from eBay whenever there's a job lot for sale. Each regiment is 8 bases of 12 figure on a 100x40 base which gives a really impressive 800mm frontage for a regiment.

I have 120 28mm Union troops on the painting table and aftet that I might need to change eras for a bit but if I just do one more zoave unit and another CSA I will have painted all my existing 28mm acw figures and then can plan my next purchases.......

The Featherstone Weekend

My annual trip to Basingstoke has come and gone. This year the battle was Chancellorsville from the ACW. I was Jackson so had command of most of the Ocnfederate 2nd Corps. The scenario was sneaky, a holding force attracts the bluebellies attention then a flanking force bursts from the wood. Or rather didn't. There were simply too many troops to deploy sensibly.
Most of 2nd Corps started off in woods, so was limited to small moves unless in column of march. This meant quicker movement but made the troops very fragile if fired upon. There was also a large log jam at the edge of the woods as the columns chaged to line formation. This doubled their frontage, so made advancing difficult. Regiments had to wait for the ones in front to be shattered before taking their place.
The Union managed to place a unit in a building that held up the whole right flank for nearly the duration of the battle. So this and the delay in the woods gave the union commanders lots of time to reorganise to the flank threat, meaning that the Confederate troops had an almost WW1 experience advancing into entrenched (behind stone walls and picket fences) troops with lots of Artillery.
A union battery of 5 guns managed to get into a flanking position. The enfilading fire on lines of troops was devistating, and many units were broken without firing a shot themselves.
The rules we used were Black Powder with the ACW supplement. I think we saw the best and the worst of the rules during the weekend. If you are lucky then your troops can make a sweeping advance of up to 36", but then can't fire. So the furthest you can move and still shoot is 12", which makes moving over 6' of table a long process. The ability to recover wounds means that units hang around for ever unless you direct the fire of a whole front on them, and then they vaporise with little chance of mitigation. Artillery fire is devastating or ineffective, and has no real effect on morale.
The worst rule in my opinion is the behaviour of "broken" or "whipped" units. One of my brigades had been badly shot up and so became broken. They retired over 12" to the edge of the woods where they reformed line. This line was of 3 regimenta and 2 cannon facing down the road out of the wood, so a fairly strong defensive position, which even a weak unit could have held, even by being a potential threat.
Under Black Powder, broken units must maintain 12" seperation from all enemy units. So my opponant used this rule to force my units back, just by moving closer to them. This exposed the flank of my Corps to his massed cannon and carnage ensued.
I understand the need to denote demoralised and defeated troops, as well as the concept of moving the game along to a conclusion. I think it would have been better to devise some house rule that allowed the broken units to trickle back to the front, as this is what happened historically. Perhaps coming back at half strength after so many turns out of firing range and without additional casualties.
The weekend was fun, but that was due to the company and the beautiful figures I had access to. The game itself won't be logged as one of my better ones. By lunch time on the Sunday my only purpose was to roll dice to see how many casualties I took, with no way of countering them. It was probably a result of my generalship and lack of intimate knowledge of the rules, but when huge numbers of my troops broke, with no real warning, then the only one having fun was the opposing general who looked to maximise my discomfort at every step.

Still, it was great to catch up with the gang. Even though we tend to see each other only once a year, the friendship is still there. Traditions such as the sheep and penguin jokes continue, and this years best dressed was Henry Hyde with his art deco bovver boots. Steve Dix was the most sporting General, and was awarded a model of Longstreet.

Next year is Colonials with Fancy Dress and Pith Helmets. Can't wait!