A Little From Leofwine

Are you a 'dip in' or 'splash on' kind of guy?

2012-02-19T14:38:00.001Z

Ok, I know. Slightly smutty post title, settle down; it wasn't that bad.

As wargamer though, it is a reasonably pertinent question. As you are now aware, I do have issues with seeing certain colours and therefore the quite basic job of highlighting figures can be a real pain, particularly reds; I can never see where I have already been for one. So, I started using the Army Painter dip to provide the depth of colour and tones I needed. Yes, I did have to force my self to immerse my first figure into that jar of dark brown gloop and had a bit of a disaster when it came to the spray varnish bit afterwards but, once I got past all of that, I ended up with some great results. The trick was, I gradually learnt, to be vigorous when shaking the dip off, to turn the figure through ninety degrees and shake some more until the figure had been turned completely around. This made the dip cover far more evenly whilst still leaving enough to create shadows and depth here and there. Each figure needed to be shaken in a swift downward arc some twenty odd times in all....not the two or three the Army Painter video suggested! This does kill your arm and shoulder when you have a twenty four figure battalion to get through but the reseults were worth it....even if you do need to have a lie down until the strange purple blobs in front of your eyes have gone away and you cannot hear that whistle in your ears anymore. Oh, and another thing you learn doing this, be prepared to lose a figure or two. I have had one monted general figure snap off at the horses ankles, whiz off down the garden at a terrific rate of knotts and crash into a concrete fence support. Another slipped out of the grip of the pliers I was using to hold onto the base and rocketed into the air, only to come down into the neighbours ornamental pond with a loud splash. Luckily, she thought it was a frog jumping in! Others suddenly showed themselves to have weak ankles and ended up bent at an odd angle. All very difficult. So, given these issues, I decided to try the splash on method, liberally painting the gloop on with a brush and lifting off the excess etc. This did work although I think I preffered the dip in results for overall effect. The spray varnish is the key to the army painter dip, it leaves a brilliantly flat matt finish and makes the whole dip effect work perfectly....just be careful, not too much and to used from a good half an arms length away at least three days after the dip has dried....DO NOT BELIEVE THE VIDEO ON YOU TUBE!!!!!!!!!! I followed the instructions and the varnish blistered off the dip leaving a serious mess. I had to strip the figures back and start again. take a look at the club website gallery under 'Alan's Figures'. It made me want to cry but I did carry on to great benefit...in the end.

Anyway, the whole issue became mute as the dip is oil based and has a strong odour. Both my wife and daughter suffer with Fibromyalgia, which makes them very sensitive to smells, and so I was not allowed to use the stuff in the house or to even let the dipped figures dry there....and what with the onset of winter my painting slowed to a stop. Then I came across the new acrylic dips by Vallejo! These are, in essence, bloody big jars of wash although they do contain some carrier ingredient too. They are designed to let you dip your figures but can be equally used for splash on work. two colours are available, brown and black and so far I have had some good results but I do need to play around with them some more to get used to them. The first point is that the need to be shaken or stirred quite regularly during use if being painted on. I have found that after every five or so figures was about right. That can be a bit annoying but is not so bad once you get going. The effects were good, especially around areas like faces where the dip could add definition, although I noticed that it did not darken other areas as much as I would have liked; or was at least expecting compared to the oily stuff.

I also used it on the guns. It covered the wood areas as I expected it to but left the barrels looking dull and coated with what looked like smudges of dirty water. That was a real disapointment because they actually looked great when wet. I tried rubbing the barrels to see if I could remove the patches and discovered that a judicious rub down with and old (but clean) sock buffed them up a treat. It left them with a great colour with some good depth and shading. Given the weather I could not use the spray so was forced into a jar of humbrol matt cote, sadly it left the figures with a slight sheen as you can see. I have yet to find a good matt varnish in a jar.

The vallejo dip also worked well on the basees. I glued down some light buff grit (all I had at the time) but darkened it with a liberal coat of the dip. This left a good effect but also helped seal down the material. In all I was very pleased wit the new acrylic dip. Yes, I do need to practice with it some more but I have high hopes. I can use it indoors, it dries quickly and for 200ml it is about a third of the price of the Army painter tins.

Will I use it as a dip like I did with the oil gloop? I think I will have to, at least once. But, I cannot give up on the gloop, I have already started using it on my Marlburians and I hate changing something as major as that in mid project. The gloop for my Marlburians then and the acrylic stuff for my Greek hoplites.....lets see what happens.

Saint Valentine, me and Brixia 45mm light mortars...

2012-02-16T19:34:00.002Z

Appologies. This was to have been written and posted last night (15th) but there was some terrible things going on in Italy that were distracting me and causing severe depresion...not to mention some a$&! of a Millwall fan that kept texting me with comments about those terrible things.

Anyway.

I do not have the same kind of relationship with Saint Valentine as I do with Santa. Whereas Santa is good enough to call me, albeit whilst I was out so Maria takes his call for me and passes on messages, Saint Valentine simply ignores me. Not once have I ever been bothered by his presence, or even received one of his rather tacky and over-priced slices of rain forest corpse. This is somewhat helped by having a wife endowed with all the depth of emotional feeling of a saucer and my being, I am reliably informed, an annoying fat git with a face that looks like somebody had tried to put out a forest fire with a screwdriver. So, when by chance our club meeting was set to fall on Valentines day I was not too concerned. However, it seems that others were. One member after another got in touch to say they couldn't make it as they were doing something that night, candle lit dinners and trips to cinema or restaurants....I know! Appalling way to behave. Who would turn down wargames for a mushy, commercially driven and highly implausible day of romance? Quite a few as it turns out.

I did try pointing out that, like Christmas, Easter and any other Abrahamic based religious festival, it was all made up....at best the stolen and sanitised version of earlier pagan rites they couldn't stop people celebrating despite them being silly and ineffectual anyway. That it was no more than a commercial ploy to empty their wallets should have settled it and that once they explained all this to their partners, who would understand and see the error of their girlie ways, everyone would be happy. One wife actually emailed me to say that her husband was no longer allowed to come out and play as I was a bad influence! I dont know....you give them the vote...............waste of good racehorses.....

So, on February 14th just four of us were allowed out to play but that was fine. I had arranged an 'Operation Squad' game between my German Fallschirmjager and new Italian paras and as two members had not played before the small forces at hand would work out well. I set out an encounter battle, a fairly wooded area bisected by a road along which stood five ruined houses. The squad that controlled the most buildings at the end of play would be deemed the winner. Andy and Alex took the Fallschirmjager whilst Phil and I ran out the Italian Folgore squad, and great fun we had too! Well, me and Phil anyway.

Phil tool half the squad, those sub-machine gun armed troops, to assault through a large wood to a building at its far edge. I took a Breda light machine-gun and the Brixia 45mm mortar, along with a spotter. We kept the mortar behind a building but put the spotter and the Breda into the building to control it and the ground in front of it; a very successful deployment. Andy advance his section of the Fallschirmjager squad through a narrow wood to cover their approach opposite my building. They were spotted and the order to fire the mortar received...it then got messy. The Brixia fires two rounds a turn and the first landed in the lap of Andy's command figure killing him outright; ok, the dice were on my side this day. the other round helped sew confusion. During the game I was able to drop plenty of rounds into this small wood and given that Andy's figures were bunched quite closely chaos ensued. I managed to kill a couple of figures would another and pin yet another all for no loss.

Phil had a trickier task through the wood, Alex was going to be waiting at the other end for a start. Here the fight was more evenly matched, both took pins but slowly Phil managed to get the upper hand. Judicious use of grenades, dogged approach play and shooting wounded two of Alex's figures whilst a nippy little run and grenade lob killed another for very little in reply. All in all things were looking bad for the Fallschirmjager however, time was running out (the hall heating was broken and we were all freezing to death) and so the game was ended. Each side had control of two buildings so, despite the Italians very strong position, the game was called a draw. If it carried on for another couple of moves I am confident that the Italians would have carved out a brilliant and decisive victory. The Germans had three dead, three wounded and a pinned figure whilst the Italians had but a single wound and one pinned figure.

In all it was a great game and the Brixia 45mm mortar worked out brilliantly. Ok, it might not work again next time, dice being what they are, but this first outing showed some promise. There are still a couple of rule points I need to check out but I still remain a firm advocate of Operation Squad. We are to look into running a large WW1 game with the rules with three or more players a side, each with their own individual squads; essentially, a platoon a side. The idea so far is that the Germans will be assaulting a Belgian village. Each attacking player and squad will be given a fixed task/section of the village to deal with and paired with a Belgian defender. Each pairing, despite all pairs being on the same table, will fight their games at their own speed, which should make things interesting! I shall tell you all about it when it happens!!!!

Organising wargame shows is fun...?

2012-02-10T14:57:00.004Z

As I mentioned in a previous blog posting, the organisation of a wargame show is a complicated affair. You have to chase traders and clubs, organise venues, insurance, advertising, equipment hire...even organise the parking. Not the parking of the visitors of course, but the traders, clubs, tournament players admin staff and so on. Believe it or not, this is one of the most tricksie of all the show features; at least it is for Broadside.

Sittingbourne is not exactly a bustling and busy metropolis, rather a small provincial town with a sadly limited range of shops and attractions 95% of which are closed on a Sunday. This, you would think, would mean that car parking would be free on a Sunday. Nothing to come and see or do, beyond the leisure centre of course, so no visitors; would save you paying the patrol staff too. Except no. The car parks are all live on Sundays and, to add insult to injury, they are all run with a maximum stay order of just four hours! So, how do we then organise a large wargame show where we have some eighty to ninety vehicles to park up between 8am and 6pm?

For our first show I went to visit the council parking office and speak to the parking manager personally. I used to be a parking enforcement officer myself so understand the issues and protocols. The manager was pleasant enough and helpful to a point. To solve my problem she was willing to sell me some special parking vouchers to issue to the various traders etc. These would only cost £2.00 each and would allow the vehicles to park all day but, and there is always a but, I was only allowed to buy sixty vouchers; about two thirds of what I would actually want. The vouchers were also car park specific too so I had to divide the cars between the two halls of Broadside and the car parks. Worse still, this was at a time when we could not know how many vehicles we would actually need to park. The size of Broadside 2011 was going to be determined by the parking allocation! As it turned out, I managed to negotiate with a community centre and make use of the 28 places there too and eased the problem, we were still forced to close our doors to new traders and clubs though. Bottom line, we got by....just.

Given this experience we set out to organise Broadside 2012. I went back to the parking office only to be told that the whole car park system was being restructured, I would not be able to organise the parking until late January and nobody there was able to agree anything or even confirm that the old system would be available again! This made things very complicated, I had to take a risk and base everything on the last event. The letters and booking forms went out and we had to hope for the best. I managed to arrange some new parking at a local school and again at the community centre but the rest I just had to hope would resolve themselves. After two weeks of trying to contact the new parking manager I was finally told that we would not be issued with the vouchers and my heart sank. However, they were prepared to allow me to park everyone all day if they bought a maximum stay ticket from the machine...no matter how many I had to park up....a complete turn around from the previous year! Each space would cost £3.00 rather than the £2.00 of the old vouchers but I could cope with that! Interestingly, nobody apart from me, had seen the issues this raised for the enforcement officers. This system meant that nobody with a maximum stay ticket could be booked at all and this time the parking managers face dropped! I suggested that I would issue all official vehicle with a special badge to identify them and suddenly he was happy again. Its not exactly rocket science is it?

So now we are settled. Broadside vehicles will be issued with the special badge and will have to buy their own tickets from the machine...all will be well. We will not be restricted to numbers or locations and can actually not worry about posting parking marshals again. Happy days!

Hands up all those that can see it all going wrong when the manager forgets to inform all the enforcement officers of these arrangements...or they change their minds....or, or, or...?

Next time you go to a wargame show, spare a thought for the poor bugger that had to organise the damned thing. No doubt he will be the white haired nervous wreck with a twitch and a box of dried frog pills at the ready.....come and say hi, I will be very pleased to meet you.

Stupid Colours

2012-01-16T16:29:00.000Z

One aspect of wargaming that always frustrates me is the painting of figures. Painting has to be done of course, no matter how many figures are waiting in various drawers, cupboards, boxes.....and it is not as if I am particularly bad at it. I have turned out some very nice looking units in my time, things that I am very proud of, its just that I do not get a major kick out of the act of painting. It is so time consuming but it is the only way I am ever going to get figures done, I certainly cannot afford to buy in such services. So, I bite the bullet and just get on with it and, on the whole, make quite a good job of it.

However, part of my problem, possibly the lions share in fact, is my colour blindness. Before you ask, no, I can see colours. I do not live in a grey scale world by any means, its just that many colours look the same to me whilst others are completely indescribable. For example, purple, mauve and other such colours are just words to me and I couldn't begin to describe or even identify them in a line up. Reds, greens and browns can get very confused and I have to be careful not to mix them up. Given the number of shades of colour available in paint pots these days, dozens of every possible colour, I can rarely ever tell them all apart. I can see a bright red and not mistake it for a bright green but when the shades starting approaching the middle ground and the dark end of the spectrum I am lost. This is one of the reasons I often buy paints where the lable tells me what the colour is for rather than what it is; Snakebite Leather, for example. I have often had to ask a sales assistant or a person with me at the time, to describe a colour for me, tell me how much lighter/darker is it compared to something I can see. Sadly, this is when you realise how much of a vocabulary there is with colours, a personal almost coloquial bias that can make the task of vocalising a shade an interesting excercise.

This can sometimes be worked around of course, once I have settled on a colour for a particular job I can hang on to it, a certain red for a specific uniform etc., and buy a couple of pots at a time. The trouble really starts when I try and cross over to a different project but keep the same paints, who can afford to have a different set for each wargame project? 'Which shade of green will be needed here', is a well used phrase with me and every time I will spend hours working it out, trying to remember what I have used that particular pot for in the past or does the colour name offer a clue? This assumes, of course, that I can actually see and identify the colour I am trying to imitate in the first place! A picture of painted figures, photograph of an old uniform, anything like this can be less than useless as I often can't see what the colours are anyway. And, if I ask someone to describe them I usually get a very unhelpful,'.....well, its a sort of reddy, greeny brown...' or some other baffleing concoction of words.

Lets not go into the joys that can be highlighting....a sad, sad tale of ending up with figures that are less highlighted than re painted in a brighter shade! Can't see where I have been you see? I know, very sad...and costs a fortune in paint!!!

This all came to a head this weekend. I decided to have a go at my 28mm ww2 Italian paratroopers. Despite the lack of painting guides (thanks to those of you that offered me resources, very much appreciated and helpful) I had a chat with a few people and felt quite comfortable about how to progress. At least I thought I was. In the end I could not even decide upon the colour to use for the base of the camo pattern! Usual problem, couldn't identify it and couldn't match it with what I had. After several attempts I consulted with my good mate Mark and we came up with a plan for me to try....it didn't work of course, I just couldn't see it, I even tried swaping the order of the colours to see if that helped...it made it worse! I just could not get the colours right nor even the patterning in the end. One figure was launched across the room and I was ordered by the wife to pack it in or else! And then, if things were not bad enough, Arsenal gave away a penalty and it was all down hill there too!

All in all, it was a crap day and nothing worked. I had spent hours and got nowhere fast. A complete waste of a day. But, now, I have reached a conclusion. There is no point me trying to paint camoflaged figures, none what so ever. Bah. So, next time you are getting annoyed at a paint job that is going wrong, spare a thought for us colour blind wargamers!

self publicity!!

2012-01-08T19:06:00.001Z

A shameless plug for this post. I have just self published a kindle ebook called; 'The Three Tiddly Pigs....and other happy tales for children you don't like much'. Its really a bedtime story book as described below.

Fed up with boring, fluffy and cute Bed Time stories with boring, fluffy, cute animals doing boring, fluffy, cute things? Try some truly horrible Bed Time stories to entertain truly horrible children…and their truly horrible Dads.

Caution – These stories contain fluffy cute things and some extreme violence!

It is now available from amazon kindle store for just 77p. My wife hates it....so it must be worth a look!

You can find it here,

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Tiddly-other-children-ebook/dp/B006V1KRM8/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1326047298&sr=1-1

Broadside flyer

2012-01-06T17:52:00.001Z

Given the last post content I thought it a good idea to show you all a copy of the Broadside 2012 flyer.

Stupid January

2012-01-06T15:37:00.000Z

Welcome to my newest follower, Colin Hagreen!

As the title of this post suggests, I do not like January. Its not just the near endless list of expensive birthdays I have to fight my way through just after Christmas, it just seems to be like starting all over again....like painting that Scotish bridge. Its all so depressing.

Still, on to more important things! The 2012 Broadside wargames show can now be seen on the horizon, and not as far away as it seems. Sunday 10th June is set to be a great day of course but there is so much to do before then. The MHWC is only a small club too, some eleven members, and so the workload is a little thick in places. Club member Simon is organising our game for the event, club Secretary Mark draws up the hall plans and fits everything together like some large version of Tetris, club step-member Clint is contacting the clubs and organising the games, club step-member John is organising the DBA tournament and everyone gets together the day before to help set out the hall. I pick up the remainder, particularly contacting the traders; not a task for the faint hearted.

The traders are, arguably, the most important aspect of a wargames show. Get this part of the event correct and you are nearly there but, it is no easy task. It is a bit like herding cats with ADHD! I have lost track of the number of emails I have sent out, the larger percentage of recipiants never reply at all. These initial emails have to be repeated every month and backed up with phone calls. Many traders are so busy they simply forget that they have asked for information or simply do not get around to sending back their forms. Having run a small wargame business many years ago I do understand their problems and try my best to work with them. Slowly, the forms and cheques arrive and the show begins to take shape. We had some thirty four traders last year, most of whom only confirmed their attendance three or so months before the event...one was just three days before! All of which makes it very hard to order the extra tables you need at the very least. So far we have eighteen traders with a few more promising cheques and forms. This week I have contacted another thirty plus traders to remind them of the event and encourage them to take part. Experience shows that things will work out in time and with enough of these politely phrased emails and phone calls but you always worry.....Add to all of this the dozen or so clubs all needing extra tables.....dont even ask about the parking arrangements in a town that thought it important to suddenly charge for parking on a Sunday!

And then there is the magazine advertising, insurance, signage, flyers, catering, visitor parking, club and trader parking (I know I mentioned this above but it is such a problem it needs mentioning twice), tax...yes tax! Running such an event opens you up to all sorts of fun things such as paying tax...which of course means that the everyday club acounts become very interesting indeed. Believe it or not, every club should at least be registered for taxation purposes whether it runs a show or not. Take a look at the HMRC website, heady stuff indeed.

Then you need to find bodies to help out and make up the member numbers, we are fortunate that wives and friends are willing to help out and man (or Wife as the case actually is) the entrance areas, we have two given the nature of the venue. Others help set up or act as marshalls, others even help as tournament umpires and the like. Given our low numbers we all have a hard day starting at 7am and ending at 7pm....then I spend a few more fun hours working out the cash and stuff! Oh, and make sure you have enough cash for a float and have drawn up a rota so all of your limited personel resources know where they need to be and when. The MHWC guys were brilliant last year and all worked their socks off, everyone was surprised when they realised how few of us there were.

But, and here is the bottom line, we all enjoy it. Yes it is hard work for very little profit, breaking even is about normal, but we actually get to go to a show and meet people; traders, clubs, other wargamers. Our little club gains a reputation and we attract new blood....well, one new member from the last show but that is a start. My hope for this year is that we attract more members of the general public, for there lies the true source of new wargamers.

Oh well, back to the emails! I hope to see all of you at Broadside....hint hint

Santa, Me and Brixia 45mm light mortars...

2011-12-22T10:42:00.000Z

Hi The Teston Rifleman. You are my tenth follower! Many thanks and welcome to my blog.

I popped out for a haircut yesterday and upon my return my wife told me of a phone call I had missed. Seemingly, Santa had called me to discuss my position in the whole 'good boy / bad boy' stakes. Due to many passed instances of naughty, my account remains in defict despite my recent efforts, and, therefore, I would once again not be receiving any gifts this year; just the annual carrier bag of reindeer poo strewn over the car.

The news was not all bad though, Maria was good enough to fill out the required yearly report form and it seems I could be back into the good book within a few years; of course I was happy to pay santa the required £25.00 form fee. I didn't want to appear ungrateful and Maria was good enough to pass it on for me. I have to say Maria has been very helpful on this issue and I will buy her something special as a thank you for looking out for me.

Given this news I decided I should buy myself a little something. A browse through ebay found a Warlord Games 28mm Italian Para Brixia mortar to add to my Operation Squad unit. I won the auction and got the still packaged unit for less than a fiver including postage, a good saving on the £7.00 list price. The figure quality is good, I do like the Bolt Action metal ranges, but the mortar itself is going to be a pig to build.

The pic above shows a replica weapon, you can imagine the fun I will have sorting out the support structure! The pieces are tiny and I can see me using language during the build that may well keep me in Santa's bad books for a while longer.

The Brixia is an odd weapon, quite ahead of its time in concept but complicated to manufacture, prone to breakdowns and used faily under-powered shells. That said, it was very portable and could lay down an impressive amount of fire. The firing mechanism used a magazine of charges (the rectangular box sticking out of the top of the barrel) to launch the shells, meaning that the team could very quickly saturate a target area and then move away, advance etc.

In the Operation Squad list for the Italian Para unit (these, and others, can be found on the Operation Squad website and forum) the two man mortar team costs 100 points but increases the breakpoint by one. The weapon gets two shots per fire but with a grenade sized template for the area of effect, unlike the mortars of most other nations that get one shot but a double sized effect area. I have a feeling that that the two shots may be more adventageous in game terms but only time, and my dodgy dice rolling, will tell.

I shall post progress updates for my Italians as I can. I am having issues with the camo patterns due to my colour blindness issues (stupid WW2) but my good friend Mark is helping identify the right paints. Looking forward to this project, just got to fit the damn thing in amongst all the others!!!!

Infamy at Christmas!

2011-12-15T16:01:00.001Z

Welcome new followers Geordie and Norman!

What follows is a tale of infamy so appalling in its appallingness it will leave you all aghast and shaking your heads in disbelief....and just before Christmas too!

The club Christmas game was set to be a jolly affair, a few survivors desperately searching for car keys in an underground car-park full of zombies. The first player to find a set of keys, locate the car they fit and that could then drive that car out of the car-park would be the winner; and get a tin of 'Heroes' sweeties to boot! Who knew that such a bounty (different tin entirely) would cause friends to lose themselves and turn to the dark side of wargaming....stitching up your mates, leaving them stunned and imobile whilst surrounded by nasty zombies????

Well......all of us would obviously, we are gamers after all and a little odd at the best of times.....

Me - light coloured base with yellow stunned marker, surrounded by nasties and only narrowly missed by a swerving car!

My plan was to make my way towards the car-park exit, search the few not-yet-zombie bodies for keys, search for the right car at that end and thus need a shorter drive through less bodies to escape. Simple. My character was a 'Heavy', which I am told was pure chance and in no way meant to be a reference to my size, a character that was reasonably good at stunning zombies and quite hardy. My plan was good, I made my way a good way up the car-park whilst others floundered about and generally got in each others way. I found keys quickly and was making my way towards a few cars, minding my own business, when I was brutally...and with malice aforethought...attacked by a fellow character after my car keys!! I know! Alex had found a fire extinguisher and used it to keep me from escaping...then viciously attcked me leaving me stunned...both physically and emotionally...It was only the arrival of several zombies looking to take advantage of my static state that drove him off. Stunned as my character was, he was defenceless and before you could say 'Look out! there are several Zombies behind you...doesn't the one on the left look a little bit like Barry Washboard from when we were at school? I wonder what he is doing these days, I had a crush on his sister you know, even though she had that odd squint and only one ear.........', I was feasted upon!!

Me, with hat made by Alex...the smile masks my tears!

This caused no small amount of merriment as you could imagine, I was even made a hat with 'I'm a Zombie' written on it but, I would have the last laugh! I would be resurrected as a mega zombie and could have my revenge, once I had shaken off the stunned marker, obviously. All I needed to do was roll a 6 on one of two d6.....five bloody turns and not a single six! The best part of ninety minutes spent stuck in one place and letting everyone else come close to getting free and winning the game (like Millwall). By now, four players had found cars and were driving like maniacs for the exits, crashing through zombies, losing control and missing the exit ramp. At one point my mega zombie was in great danger of being run down by one of three cars all heading in my direction! I was only saved by one car crashing and Alex...YES ALEX...jumping into a car and casually reversing his way onto the exit ramp and heading for the win. The final insult was that I was asked to draw the tokens to see who went first in the last round...given my lack of movement and luck, and guess what? It was I that drew Alex's token first and allowed him to win with no impediment. Bugger.

This was, despite my understandable angst, a great game that everyone really enjoyed. It was fun and engaging, allowing everyone to get involved as a club. I must thank my good friend Clint for organising the game for us. He built the car-park, using a paste board table (brilliant), painted all of the figures and created the scenario all with a few weeks. I did have a lot of fun as I am sure you can all tell; Alex was a worthy winner in the finest traditions of the club.

For a less biased account of the game, take a look at Clint's own blog
http://clint-anythingbutaone.blogspot.com/

WW2....what on earth am I doing????

2011-12-08T20:33:00.000Z

Three more followers! Welcome, welcome Ray, Mark and Brummie!!

Dear follower, you may have read an earlier post here regarding Operation Squad. WW2 has never really been a wargame interest for me but of late I have found myself buying figures, albeit a few at a time as my ebay account allows. This is almost entirely due to the Operation Squad rule set, I like the mechnics, the scale of game, the interactions between the players.....and I appear to like them enough to have ended up with several forces. Each squad consists of up to a dozen figures and operates as a true squad, no tanks or planes or other out of scale complications; this is a true skirmish game.

My metal Fallschirmjager squad is now complete with four extra anti tank figures I got for my birthday still to do. I am not entirely happy with the painting, sort of got the camo pattern wrong...a bit anyway...but they work. I recently found some undercoated German infantry figures on ebay and picked them up for a song. The seller seems to have sold off the extra figures he had left over from a project, most being the plastic Bolt Action ones, so no fiddly figure making first! I am not in love with them though, they fit in with my metal figures size and heft wise but the weapons are very skinny. A quick look through the Operation Squad squad lists soon highlighted the issue of weapons, my new figures were mainly armed with KAR98's and not enough of the MP40's and stuff. But that is OK, Warlord games sell a sprue of extra weapons that I can use to outfit a squad to the required level for just £4.00, I shall order one straight away, I paid so little for the germans that even with this cost I am still well ahead.

........except......with Warlord Games an order has to be a minimum of £10.00! RUDE WORD.

A look at my ebay account showed me that I had just a few extra pounds left available, I could buy something else and build up the order. Long story short...I ended with ordering a squad of Italian paratroops as well.......I know, I know.........lets not even get into the number of figures I already have to paint, Ancient Greeks, Marlburians, Pirates, secret project figures.......

But the worst of it? I have absolutely no idea how to paint Italian Paratroops! I have trawled the internet and found a few examples but nothing helpful. The Warlord Games site has a picture of ready painted figures but none close up enough to really be much help....add to that my colour blindness issues. Again, I know, I know.

Has anyone got and ideas for me, all help greatfully received!

Blood, Bilge and Iron Balls

2011-11-30T08:57:00.001Z

Welcome to my newest follwers, Ash and Oliver. I hope you find something of interest here.

I am advised that my wargame rules, Blood, Bilge and Iron Balls, has been printed and copies are now at the Pen and Sword warehouse! This means that they will soon be available for sale through the Pen and Sword website ( http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Blood-Bilge-and-Iron-Balls/p/3130/ ) , Amazon and so on. I doubt you will find a copy at Waterstones or anything...not that I wanted to stroll into such a store, pick up a copy and say in my outside voice, 'Oh my! Here is a copy of the book that I have written, wow it does look nice and shiny....' etc etc etc. Nope, not the sort of thing that I would do at all.

Here is a picture of it too, just so you know what you are looking or when you finally realise how desperately you want a copy. Perhaps you could forward this on to Santa, just so he knows you dont want socks or bath salts or an eighteenth copy of 101 things to do with a dead cat. It might be worth you printing a copy or seven of this blog off, you know....leave them lying about the place in strategic locations so anyone wondering what to buy you can be left in little doubt. And, given that it is generally available for under £15.00......no? Fair enough.

The Pen and Sword site has a space for people to leave reviews, there are none for these rules yet of course but I wonder what will end up there? One other set of rules on that site has four reviews but the very first one is anything but positive, what will people make of my efforts????? A little worrying but my editor tells me I have nothing to worry about. He has a lot of confidence in my rules so I will just have to trust his judgment. Any proceeds of this book will help support the MHWC and its efforts to bring wargaming to new audiences.

I wrote the very first version of these rules way back in 1991 and the very first person to ever play them in anger was also the very first person to join my Blog, Robert (Bob) Cordery! He liked them back then, I wonder what he will make of them now? Given that Bob was also my head of year in 1977/78 and my teacher for many years he probably has an axe or three to grind.....oh my......

Stupid Super Glue!!

2011-11-27T18:54:00.001Z

The title says it all. This is not my usual story of me firmly fixing myself to the table or a base of four 28mm English Civil war pikemen (hospital visits twice within three weeks with figures from the same unit in 1990).

BTW - welcome to my second follower! Hi Clint!!

I get through a lot of super glue, not the posh stuff, the 'twelve tubes for a quid' gloop you can get from Poundland. Its not perfect of course but what is for a quid? I only use the stuff for sticking figures to coins for painting and bases. Works well on coins, holds the figure down well enough and breaks away nicely when strategically tapped with a pair of pliers when you want to remove the figure for basing elsewhere. All went well until I glued the figures down onto their game bases, 40mm x 40mm mounting board. several of the figures didnt want to stay on the bases so I had to be a little more liberal with the glue than normal. I have done this hundreds of times with dozens of different makes of super glue so this held few fears for me...although my wife voiced her usual concerns for the coffee table after last years...unpleasantness?

The figures took ages to stick but I was patient and left them for a good while; experienced you see. This time however, the glue oxidised onto the figures! Each one was pure white from the soles of their boots to the hem of their tunics!! I have had some very minor occurences of this previously, an odd spot or two, but nothing like this. Even the tops of the figures had been dulled, a slight dusting that would have been bad enough on its own but this looked an awful lot like disaster. The cure? More patients and a couple of dozen cotton buds dipped in water, each carefully used in a gentle circular motion to rub off the white stuff. It took hours of careful, painstaking effort to clean the legs of each figure. Even then they were far from perfect but at least they had black boots, white gaiters and red breeches again; all a little more dull than I would have liked.........

Be warned, look out for the yellow Extra Strong Super Glue tubs sold at '99p Stores'. At least be careful how you use them and how much you use.
Stupid super glue.

Bad Vibes in the A Shau, November, 1969 (or....I kill you long time!)

2011-11-23T20:18:00.000Z

Club member Steve, he of the curious need to ram everything on a wargames table, put on his very first game for the club last night. He had worked out some rules based upon Rapid Fire for a Vietnam game, a period he is particularly attached to, organised the scenario, bought and painted a box-full of figures and liaised with some of the other members for extra figures and some terrain. Not bad for a first try at something like this; he made a good job of it too.

He had organised the six players with commands, I ended up with some very enthusiastic peasants armed with a variety of weapons useful for close quarter fire-fights. Phil and Alex had better quality Vietnamese forces. Clive, Andy and Mark took on the roles of imperialist pigs; bit of typecasting there methinks. The game was based around the Americans attempt to rescue the crew of a downed helicopter, we nasties had the job of stopping them. This was a major rescue attempt, never seen so many Americans all moving in the same direction....not in this part of the jungle anyway! I had the joy of just reaching the river clearing, where the downed aircraft was, when a 'Loach' appeared over the trees....apparently, this is not a fish but a small scout type helicopter. Don't tend to see many of them during my eighteenth century games or ww1 skirmishes! I shot it down! Me! Me of the unfortunate dice! My guys missed the crew of the first downed helicopter, now being ushered away by a rescue team but that was OK, I had created my own downed crew.

I was then on the receiving end of bad news when two gun ships turned up to support the evacuation and made a bit of a mess but...long story short (too late) I managed to shoot one of those down too! It was the luckiest of lucky shots of course, poor Clive was more than a little disappointed to say the least. So far my guys, the sorriest bunch ever to hold an AK47, were having a great time.

My fellow non-Americans were holding their own too. Phil manged to hold off the worst of a Grunt ground assault (see? I am even getting the hang of the lingo!) with a few casualties....up until a swarm of helicopters turned up with reinforcements quickly followed by a plane (don't ask me what it was). The plane made the previous mess even worse with a bombing run and more casualties for us but, we held our own. Alex was now getting involved as his posh troops turned up to help off-set the American advance although we were still out-numbered. That said, the Americans had left more aircrew behind than they had originally come to rescue! Steve declared that the Glorious Forces of the Peoples Vietnam had gained a partial victory. I was just happy that Steve's game and hard work had paid off....and that I had been the cause of casualties rather than a net importer as usually happens.

The rules and scenario were not perfect (only minor tweaks needed) but everyone had a good evening and the game was well thought out, all very enjoyable; the definition of a good game. Hopefully, Steve will build on this and has already offered to run a follow on game next year. I for one look forward to it, although I think I used up all my Vietnam luck during this game!

For me, this is an important aspect of any club, giving people the chance, confidence and support to run games of their own. We do get a good mix of games at the MHWC and when the least experienced members can feel comfortable enough to get so involved it can only bode well for us as a club.

Nice one Steve, well done.

WW2 at the weekend....

2011-11-20T09:59:00.000Z

Wow, I have my first (and only) member! Thanks Bob, I really appreciate your support.

This weekend club secretary, Mark, and I had arranged to meet up and try out the ww2 rules 'Operation Squad'. Mark stoped by the hall to picked up some terrain pieces and arrived at my house with the obligatory biscuits; sorted.

Operation Squad only uses ten or so figures a side and can be played on quite small tables, my large coffee table was perfect if not a little narrow, so we were able to have a decent game in relative comfort...with biscuits don't forget! I used my new Fallschrimjager and mark his fantastically painted 'Screaming Eagles', and with even some basic terrain the game looked great. We decided to only use basic weapons whilst we both got the hang of the rules, although we forgot that Mark's figures had M1's! These get two shots and were quite powerful against my KAR98 rifles, not that I am bitter or anything. We had a very nice afternoon, even if I did lose. In fairness it doesn't matter what you are armed with when you roll a three with two six sidded dice, the outcome will never be good. I lost three of my Fallschirmjager in quick succession, each rolling that same damned number! The writting was on the wall then and it was just a matter of time.

Win or lose I had a good time in good company. We had to debate certain rules of course but both agreed that Operation Squad was a success, a very worthy afternoon filler that will work well at the club within a multi game framework. Each player could take a squad from within the same platoon and so some very interesting scenarios could be played out. We even think that we could work the rules with our larger collections of WW1 figures. In fact, I am sure with a few tweeks these could be made to work for many periods and the efforts would be very well spent because the rules are actually very good and deceptively simple.

I played a second, solo game, after Mark went home for his tea. My Fallschirmjager lost again!! How is that fair?? This time to a unit of British Para's that were dug in behind a wall. Bloody Bren guns. I used far less terrain, a few bomb craters for the approach and a static Brit defence and still got a highly enjoyable game with another realistic result.

On top of all this, Arsenal won away too!

Now....how does this thing work?

2011-11-18T12:07:00.000Z

This is my first attempt at blogging...it probably shows.

I thought this might be a useful thing, a good way of communicating with members of the MHWC, our friends and supporters, the clubs and traders that work with us to make Broadside such a success and, possibly, other wargmers out there that may find this of interest. Sometimes the blog will highlight club happenings, other times it might just be a platform for me to ramble or excorcise wargame frustrations. We all get them, I will try and keep them relevant of course.

My inspiration to set up this blog stems from my old school teacher and now good friend, Bob Cordery, and his blog, Wargaming Miscellany. I have picked up a few good ideas from that blog and thought, given how dynamic the Milton Hundred Wargames Club can be, that others may find something of use. That said, I will have to spend sometime working out how this damn thing actually works, so allow me a little latitude until I get my bearings. Feel free to comment on any post too, it will be great to hear from you.

My plan is to add a post every couple of days or so, especially as we are now working hard on organising Broadside 2012. I have been searching for and emailing old and new companies, raising our profile and sending invites. The success of Broadside 2011 has attracted interest and some big names are coming our way, Warlord Games have already booked their space and I am confident others will soon follow. The list of confirmed traders and clubs can be found on the Broadside 2012 pages of the club website.

As an aside, the postie has just delivered my copy of the Hail Ceasar army list book! This is the first of several to be published by Warlord Games and covers the biblical and classical periods. I shall have a read through and post a review here soon.