Author: Jeremey Claridge

Work in Progress Wednesday

It’s been a quiet week at the society but we have a couple of things being worked on.

Above we have some more Chaos Marauders from Eric and below an interesting start to what is apparently a Games Workshop Culexis Assassin.

Next up I’ve finally made some more progress on my Napoleonic balloon project. Managed to get the netting onto four more balloons. Only five more to go!

And finally for this week, Marcus has added some foliage for his underwater games with some aquarium plants.

That’s it for this Wednesday, see you next week.

 

Work in Progress Wednesday

Welcome to another Wednesday and a selection of what the society members have been working on.

First up above Tony has some interesting looking miniatures. They are actually Chaos Screamers from Games Workshop, but we agree with Tony that they make good alien space monsters.

Next up Mark has made a bit more progress on his cold war brits.

While Felix has been busy painting up the figure given out at the last Salute wargames show.

And he’s also been painting up some 6mm dark age picts. Nice use of colour on these.

And lastly this week, Marcus has finished some of his WWII planes. Here we have a selection of Spitfires and ME109’s.

That’s it for this week, see you next Wednesday.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Wellcome to another work in progress Wednesday. Above we start with a close up of Tony’s 1980’s Canadians, Tony said these were “in their 3-colour camo’ scheme (plain olive green for the tanks). The infantry have had a base coat of Army Green – the Canucks had plain green uniforms with US Vietnam-era helmet covers, so relatively easy to paint.”

This is swiftly followed by Mark’s progress on the opposing forces of some Cold War British forming the 7th Armoured brigade. Mark says the paint scheme is “abandoned Berlin camo scheme and have done black disruptive”.

Next up Stephen has added to his sci-fi collection with an interesting miniature he’s named “Captain Selwyn Froggit of the good ship Magic R Morris”

And last but not least this week, Marcus gives us a window into his current work desk and resident projects of planes and various vehicles and terrain for more scuba action.

See you next week for more work in progress.

Work in Progress Wednesday

We start this week with some great paint jobs from Eric. Above we have a Chaos Cultist and below a nice close up (sorry Eric, I thought it deserved it) of his finished Custodian Guard Shield Captain.

Next up Mark has made a bit more progress on his British 1970’s infantry, as well as quite a debate among members over the length of the recoilless rifle.

Mark’s son has also painted some impressive Polish from the Napoleonic era.

And speaking of Polish Andy has made some more progress on his 10mm versions.

And last but by no means least this week Stephen has painted up some mutants, he may have a plan for these but they will work nicely for Stargrave.

We will see you next week for yet more progress from club members.

Homemade Fantasy Game with a Difference

Jeremey takes us through an unusual wargaming project from many years ago (2009 to be precise!)

I like a bit of Fantasy wargaming but never really enjoyed the most popular rules Warhammer Fantasy. I tried 2nd and 3rd edition, but soon gave up. I tried a few other fantasy systems but nothing gripped me so I ended up mainly playing Science Fiction games, Space Marine, Full Thrust, Dirtside etc.

But then Warmaster was released and I like the look of the massed battles in 10mm. Rather than buy the Games Workshop Warmaster miniatures i went instead for the 10mm Fantasy miniature from Pendraken Miniatures. I bought enough miniatures to field an undead and barbarian armies.

However on reading the rules I just didn’t feel like I wanted to play a system with rigid rank and file units, needing to move around according to dozens of rules. I hadn’t encountered those kinds of rules and at the time was looking for something extremely simple.

Others would have at least given Warmaster a fair crack of the whip but my twisted approach to wargming meant I came up with my own set of rules and in a radical move decided to base the units on round bases!

Although I really liked the end result and with the round bases meaning units were more mobs and so didn’t need complicated movement rules, basing miniatures in this way was hard work. I had to poke the brush with glue for the flock between the legs. In fact after the first few bases I instead stuck a few on, flock that bit of the base, then stuck on the next group and so on until the base was completed.

But I persevered and completed two complete armies. At this scale it was easy to represent monsters, along with the usual spearmen, archers and cavalry for the barbarians i also had a couple of woolly mammoths and for the undead I converted a couple of 28mm skeletons to act as undead giants.

I took the game to one of the society meetings where a fellow member and I gave the rules a go.

Each unit had a number of hits it could take before being destroyed. To represent this I created a series of flags that were stuck on each base with a number of skulls representing hits remaining. I made lots of flags so that as the unit suffered hits you could replace the flag as appropriate.

The rules worked well enough (Sadly I’ve no idea what I’ve done with them), here the woolly mammoths are attacked by undead cavalry after charging in against the undead giant. The games worked on a fairly basic roll to hit, roll to save using D6’s.

I still have all of the forces I painted up but even if I could find the rules the idea of people rebasing their armies onto round bases was a bit of a non-starter. Practically every set of wargame rules from 15mm down to 6mm are based on rectangular bases which appears to have come from the original DBA/DBM rule sets. Still I thought it was a good idea and still think it looked cool on the table top.

I may yet dig the forces out again and see if I can recreate the rules for another game.

Work in Progress Wednesday

We start this week with a great looking truck for Gaslands from Eric. Eric has also painted another Chaos Marauder.

Next up Marcus has somehow acquired yet more fighters, although he claims this selection of 1:200 Spitfires and Me109’s are for his son.

Now we have the start of 15mm British and Canadian forces from the 1980’s.
Mark is painting up the British and Tony the Canadian’s for a future game they are calling ‘Blue on Blue’.

Next up, I’ve been busy replacing the wound/hit dice that I integrated on the bases of my Wars of the Roses units. The tiny grey dice I originally went for has proven to small for the standard wargamer size fingers. Luckily I’ve been able to replace them with a slightly larger dice.

And last for this week, we leave you with an intriguing start from John for his new scratch built radio mast for a planned Zona Alfa building.

That’s it for this week, see you at the next one.

Yorkist Rampant! – Wars of the Roses Battle Report

After a gap of 17 months (for the obvious reasons)  Jeremey and Stephen finally got to field their Wars of the Roses armies again. Here Jeremey takes us through what happened.

Both Stephen and I agreed on making this a 700 points per side battle using the Sword and Spear rules. We invited other members to take part and ended up with the Lancastrian forces commanded by Stephen and Tony, with the Yorkist side commanded by myself and Andy.

Here we have the main bulk of the Yorkist forces, with the usual number of archers and billmen. The Yorkists didn’t bother to bring any unusual units like artilery, but did have welsh spearmen and archers to swell the ranks. I took the Yorkist Left flank facing the Lancastrians commanded by Tony, which left Andy facing Stephen’s lancastrians on the right.

The Lancastrian forces had a similar make up but went for some artillery and handgunners. Both sides drew up their forces in typical formations. Tony on the Lancastrian right had command of all the Lancastrian cavalry units.

To add a bit of flavour to the game I created a number of event cards, these were sort of successful but on drawing the cards the lancastrians came off worse with both the artillery and handgunner units being forced to join the battle after a set number of turns. This was due to having event cards designed to show the chaotic nature of forces during this time getting lost on the way or being hesitant to join the battle.

The initial activation of the armies saw both sides move up to longbow range and engage in an archery duel. It was at this point that a general theme of the Lancastrians (specifically Tony) having the most appalling dice rolls ever  began.

The archery duel didn’t last long and saw the majority of the Lancastrian archers wiped out for no loses on the Yorkist side.

Faced with the archery disaster the Lancastrians under Tony started an outflanking move with their cavalry, a mixture of mounted men at arms and currours.

This caused a bit of panic in the Yorkist ranks (well me really) who quickly brought up more of their billmen and cavalry to counter the move.

Having riden within range the Yorkist horse charged against the lancastrians attempting the outflanking move, the first charge nearly destroyed the Lancastrian cavalry. They were soon dispatched in the following turn.

However this didn’t discourage the Lancastrian who then charged with their mounted men at arms straight at a unit of billmen. Again Tony’s dice rolling saw the Lancastrian cavalry completely destroyed for just a single point of damage to the billmen.

Meanwhile on the Yorkist right flank the Lancastrians commanded by Stephen managed to buck the trend and shot Andy’s welsh spearmen to pieces. This put the right flank in danger as the Yorkists had fewer archers to try and even the score.

The alarming gap in the Yorkist forces where the welsh spearmen used to be. Facing the potential of another arrow storm Andy decided drastic measures were needed.

Much to my surprise this saw Andy charge the archers with his Northern Boarder horse. It didn’t go well with the cavalry being wiped out.

Having so far suffered only two points of damage to my units I felt emboldened and charged my billmen into the remnants of Tony’s archers scoring a number of hits and pushing the Lancastrian loses towards breaking point.

With the Lancastrians on the brink of breaking I charged the final unit of Lancastrian currours with my mounted men at arms. As was typical for the game so far the Lancastrian cavalry were wipped out handing victory to the Yorkists.

It’s always nice to win a battle but this game was one of the most one sided I’ve ever played. My Yorkist forces on the left flank had managed to almost wipe out the Lancastrians for the loss of no units and only suffering two points of damage. I must say the victory felt somewhat hollow and we were all left amazed at just how badly the dice can sometime go against a player.

I promised Tony a rematch just to throw off the dice rolling curse he was clearly suffering from.

Work in Progress Wednesday

It’s Wednesday and another offering of what members are working on.

I’ll start with me for a change, above I’ve almost finished my Vikings. These are the quickest I’ve painted a group of miniatures for many a year. I need these for a game of Saga and so have put in the time to get them done.

Next up Mark has been painting an assortment of miniatures. The first being a bunch of mutants for judge Dredd.

Next we have an Elf Mage complete with fire spell effect. Apparently the spell effect comes as transparent plastic which Mark has painted with a suitable ink wash to look like fire.

Felix has also been doing a bit of painting with a Halfling Thief.

And lastly for this week Stephen has started a dungeon project. Stephen hasn’t decided what to do with the dungeon but promises there is more of this to come.

That’s it for this Wednesday, see you all next week.

Work in Progress Wednesday

It’s the first Work in Progress Wednesday of 2022 and we start the year with a bumper crop.

Eric has found his painting mojo again, above we have some Games Workshop Chaos Cultists.

Next up from Eric we have a rather snazzy looking dino warrior (apparently a Blacktooth Suppressor from Reaper Miniatures) and Theddra Skullscryer from Games Workshop.

Followed by some Games Workshop Chaos Marauders.

And lastly from Eric another Games Workshop miniature Custodian Guard Shield Captain. Never dared paint a miniature gold myself so kudos to Eric for this one.

Next up are a whole bunch of Vikings from me. These are 16 Viking archers and 16 Bondi warriors from Crusader Miniatures. I’m painting these up for SAGA.

Now we move on to Andy who has made progress on his Poles, in his own words “A little more work on the Poles, muskets, packs and greatcoats and fusilier company pom-poms done”.

Tony managed a last ditch effort to reach his target of 50 Lord of the Rings miniatures painted in a year. Here we have three more dwarves from The Hobbit (Dwalin, Dori and Gloin).

Then 3 orc berserkers, clearly in the middle of a workout down the gym.

And lastly from Tony a great looking Arathorn and a dwarf king.

Last but by no means least for this week, Stephen has added to his Sci-Fi collection with a couple of droids, another space dinosaur (must be all the rage) and a converted dog miniature as a sabre toothed pug.

See you next week …

Work in Progress Wednesday

Welcome to the last work in progress post of 2021.

We start this week with Eric’s progress on his space marines. Above we have Ahriman the Sorcerer of the Thousand Sons, Gregor Felhand of the Space Wolves, and below a whole host of Thousand Sons legionnaires.

Next up Andy has made progress on his Polish troops, the yellow is looking good.

Now we have Mark with some more Dwarves (has he got any left?).

And last but not least Phil has started making progress on a future show game for the society with some new Romans.

That’s it for 2021, we will no doubt have lots more projects for 2022, so see you then.