So What's On the Table?

[War Panda]

Paint brushes or dice, foam board or columns of advancing troops?

As you’ve all noticed I’ve been away for a while (what the %$^ do you mean you haven’t noticed but you did think the place was a lot more pleasant of late) I’ve had an excellent summer, mostly camping and pretending to be a Indiana Jones outdoorsy type with my family…not much time for gaming or blogging and to be honest I think sometimes its kind of nice to take a little break. I’m back with quite a bit of enthusiasm for starting some winter type projects.

I’ve been playing LotR’s with the kids recently so I want to work on painting and modelling some terrain for that and I’ve just started playing Saga wit h Irish vs Vikings and I’ve ordered an ass load of Dark Ages types from Gripping Beast in the last few days with intentions of making some appropriate terrain to keep the forces happy (I thought some beautiful crannogs for the Irish Celts and some dirty caves for the Scots.) I really believe its going to be a game I play lots of in the future.

As some of you probably know I spend a lot less time gaming than actually modelling (terrain, surprisingly I don’t spend much time on the catwalk recently either)

I’ve never really broken down the actual time spent on modelling compared to playing but it would be heavily over the 80% mark on the side of modelling.

Is this normal? Am I not really a gamer at all?

So what’s on your table right now…planning projects for the near future or do you spend the majority of your time actually playing?

 

 

“The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”

[kyoteblue]

WW1 tanks, cold war APC’s Tanks and SPA. Modern insurgent’s WW1 Germans. and many other odds and ends all in 15mm, On my game tables 6×4 has Team Rebel Cold War goes Hot , my 4×4 table has FOW Great War Brits and Scots V unpainted Germans for 1916-18. Terrained and ready to fight, it I ever get a chance….real life has gotten in the way of my gaming….so I get my gaming fix from Just Jacks reports !!!

[Norm S]

Southern Flank (hypothetical Soviet Invasion of Turkey and attack on Istanbul in early eighties) is a boardgame that is just coming off the table and Rommel at Gazala (boardgame) by Lock ‘n Load is just going onto the table.

28mm Wars of Roses are on the painting table (as are a host of other scales and my lack of focus is driving me mad).

For figures, I am planning a 12mm McPhersons ridge (ACW) scenario and just need to paint up 8 more cavalry to get that onto the table.

Tonight I played Conflict of Heroes (WWII tactical boardgame) at a friends house, we had a great game and pulled a draw out of it).

[Paul]

Painting table has 40 Ion Age Prydian knights, and all the bad guys from Dreadfleet waiting patiently.

Next in the queue are a handful of Wargame Foundry Darkest Africa figs that I have had kicking around for a few years, and some Black Hat Tales of the Dragon Kings Chinese.

Those are brave men knocking at our door. Let's go kill them!

[Mike]

A conversion from about a year ago of a Pathfinder APC, several built but unpainted terrain pieces.
About 80 hours worth I reckon.

[Rod Robertson]

Well hello War Panda and welcome back from the wilds of the great province of Alberta!

On the table right now are 15mm Ultra-moderns, 15mm Early War WWII, 15mm Assyrian Hordes and some Skythian light cavalry. There is also a platoon of Late War WWII Soviets, a platoon of Late War Canadians and a platoon of Early War Germans nearly completed sitting beside the work station. These were moved to make room for the Ultra-moderns.

25/28mm Dark Age Saga is a project for the fall and winter but truth be told, I spent too much money on unexpected house repairs and replacing some appliances which died so the Saga project may be pushed back to a winter and spring labour of love to give my poor bank account and credit card a chance to recuperate. Both of my airbrush compressors bought the farm within a little over a week from one another; one was 32 years old and the other was 41 years old. I am manically painting 15 mm Ultra-moderns and WWII Early War kit because I also fell behind on painting this summer; too damned hot!

I am running a Games and Miniatures course (not a club, a course with grades and credits) at the high school where I teach! I may be able to get the school to underwrite the cost of four Saga armies and some 25/28 mm D&D figures. If that gets approved then Saga could be back on track for a fall/winter completion. To date the students have played Diplomacy, DBA Ancients and Wings of Glory (which was a huge hit with six otherwise disinterested and mute Chinese students who cursed and threatened each other in shrill Mandarin throughout their whole dogfight!). It was hilarious and I near pissed myself with laughter. Next up will be Resistance/Avalon/Werewolf and then WWII Bolt Action! The BA game will be Barbarossa Germans with Pz. Grens. in SdKfz 251B’s and Pz 38(t)E’s vs. Russian Infantry hordes supported by T-28 medium tanks, fighting will occur in the Ukraine southeast of Kiev! Boo-Yah! I’m having more fun then the kids! Oh, by the way, they are also learning arithmetic skills, ratios, percentages, probability, simple statistics and basic game theory, plus history and geography, so there is an academic dimension to this course too! We even have lectures, assignments and homework!

I will be reffing D&D 5th Ed. starting Monday in the gaming club (not the course but a lunchtime and after school club) and that will be a bit annoying because D&D is not an RPG system I like to run/play. However, I have never played or reffed a 5th Ed. game so maybe things have improved since 1979 when I last reffed D&D. Perhaps I can beguile and drag the little darlings to the dark side and get them interested in a RuneQuest II/III/IV Bronze Age campaign set in Greg Stafford’s world of Glorantha. That’ll scare the sh@t out of them!
So gaming this year may reach a level that I haven’t enjoyed since high school and college days! Life certainly takes odd turns at times, doesn’t it?

Cheers and good gaming.
Rod Robertson.

 

[Mr. Average]

On my table? Tanks, Mr. Rico. Zillions of ’em!

Full 3mm scale forces for Paneurope and the Combine, for Ogre Miniatures; 3mm scale Space Marines (Ultramarines almost complete, Traitors on deck), 6mm forces for skirmishing in South America’s not-so-distant future, and the beginnings of two armies of Quar to duke it out on the plains of Maer Braech.

[Lagartija Mike]

My worktable is a neolithic mess right now, with TAG Aztecs and Steve Saleh’s superb Huaxtecas being modded into a Mesoamerican army of the mind for my Gondwana campaign. Looking on forlornly in the corner are some Sumerian donkey death carts, a few ranks of dagnasty French Revolutionaires and SYW Reichsarmee and an untidy but colorful sprawl of hypothetical Buddho-Bonpo-Manichaean flags for my Central Asian stuff.

[Northern Monkey]

Mine’s full of 6mm stuff as ever, mainly a load of Microworld wood elves, a 74 gun 3rd rate ship with crew and canons, and a few Steel Crown and Old Crow sci fi infantry/aliens, oh and a rather large castle/city walls from Leven.

My attempt at a Blog: http://ablogofwar.blogspot.co.uk/

[Alvin Molethrottler]

6mm sci fi, desert planet themed. I got tanks, infantry, aircraft, a sandworm and I just finished a coriolis storm. Next up (again in 6mm) will be a 1980s Moroccan armoured brigade for a Cold War Imaginations campaign a friend is going to run.

[Shaun Travers]

Hello and welcome back War Panda.  Yes, you being missing in action was noticed by me at least!  As to spending 80% of your time of terrain, I would like to say it doesn’t make you a gamer, but so longat you put in the effort and play the occasional game, I will call you a fellow wargamer, at least until you only build dioramas 🙂

On the table, or more correctly in the map drawer I have the following setup, either playing, deployed to play or just played but not written up:

• 15mm ancients with Sentinum to test some published rules
• 15mm ancients with a Successor battle (Gabiene) to test out my rules
• 15mm SF skirmish (for FiveCore)
• 1/600 cogs for medieval naval warfare
• 6mm Cold War (Soviets Vs British) using tank Wreck
• 6mm WW2 (Brits Vs Germans) to test some I have written

I am also 2 battles down in a 5 battle mini-campaign with Starfire using miniatures (but need the dining table for that).

And after nearly 3 years i hIve started again on the Solo Traveller  campaign and have just re-done the spreadsheet I used to track it, and also just written a small bit of the next bit in it.  So I expect my blog on it may see the first post since January 2013 soon.

I have too many projects on the go 🙁

Painting wise I have some 20mm German 250’s I want to paint up so for a game that might be happening in a few weeks.

Terrain: nothing.

[Spurious]

After many weeks of managing to not do anything wargaming related except cleaning up some models, I finally re-supplied both required materials and enthusiasm with a trip to Colours yesterday.

Following that I am now looking at finishing up a whole bunch of 15mm near-future terrain and miniatures, painting up a load of old Beakies, I should probably do some more detail work on my urban board and modern Russians too. And my English Civil War models could do with a repair job since I’ve been hoping to get in a game with them. There’s probably more I am forgetting.

Certainly not suffering from a lack of things I need to get done at least.

Shaun Travers wrote:

I have too many projects on the go

Is there ever a point where a wargamer doesn’t have too many? It’s like the unpainted miniatures thing, where if you’re ever in the situation where you don’t have something that needs painting still, you should be worried because clearly something is seriously wrong!

 

[Abwehrschlacht]

On my painting table at the moment are some 6mm Baccus British Napoleonic infantry, waiting for my next Blucher base to be made, rebased 15mm Star Wars Rebels, unpainted but based 15mm Star Wars Stormtroopers and one PSC 15mm British Vickers Machine Gun which I keep forgetting to paint…

I try to keep projects to a minimum whilst I am working on each.

Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/stormofsteelwargaming

Blog: http://www.stormofsteelwargaming.com

[craig cartmell]

Let’s see:

• A huge parcel from 4Ground, including several Samurai and Dark Ages buildings I have to complete and bristle thatch (I hate teddy fur) for rules demos at shows over the coming year.
• IHMN Prince of Wales Extraordinary Co. figures from Northstar, being painted in the colours of the Royal Marines circa 1895.
• A metric tonne of Wargames Foundry Vikings, being prepared for the shows as above to demo our new game Blood Eagle.
• Forty-odd old fantasy figures being repainted for use in Dragon Rampant when  it is released in September (?).
• A half-finished draft of Blood Eagle skirmish rules.

So not a lot really 🙂

[willz]

About a hundred plastic Spencer Smith 18th century infantry, 80 RSM 18th century infantry, 60 18th century cavalry.  Several die-cast repaints in the to do soonest box.

[War Panda]

“Blood Eagle skirmish rules.”,

Hi Craig, I realize they’re not finished yet but can you give a brief description on these? I’m into Dark Ages skirmish right now so I’d be very interested in future options

“The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”

[War Panda]

Hi Shaun! Good to hear you’re still beavering away with a multitude of projects…any chance of seeing a Trojan Mark II 😉

 

 

“The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”

[Rhoderic]

Too many terrain projects. Jungle plants, alien desert plants, realistic non-alien desert plants, a desert board, desert cliffs, Necromunda-style industrial structures, Gigeresque structures, Frostgrave-style medieval stone structures and some experiments with new terrain materials I haven’t used before (having particular difficulty trying to make Woodland Scenics Polyfiber look like the vegetation it’s supposed to be and not the synthetic wool it is).

Also some Kobalt-1 Palansi and a few abortive projects/experiments I really need to clear away. One was a naive attempt at bodging together some Genestealer Cultists out of various old GW plastics I can’t find any other use for. The other was an even more naive attempt at a new painting style on some Artizan Andalusians that would entirely do away with metallic paints in favour of non-metallic metals all the while sticking to only one layer of highlights. That one was doomed to fail from the start, but I wanted to give it a shot anyway.

[Paul]

Rhoderic, any pics and tips to share of your Gigeresque terrain? I have been pondering how to convincingly do this myself.

Those are brave men knocking at our door. Let's go kill them!

[Blackhat]

I’ve got a bunch of 54mm on the painting table (some are paint masters from my new Toy Soldier company Imperial Miniatures) and a bunch of DUST Tactics SSU troops which are nearly finished.

Managed to play 2 Neil Thomas Napoleonics on hexes games recently and Spy or Die Trying using the figures that I finally managed to paint…

Mike

[Shaun Travers]

War Panda – unlikely to see any Trojans until 2016 🙁  Realistically it is the next time I can see the continuation of the campaign.  I may be getting out the 20mm WW2  stuff to play a game with friends soon-ish, but with no animals on the table 😉

[craig cartmell]

War Panda wrote:

“Blood Eagle skirmish rules.”, Hi Craig, I realize they’re not finished yet but can you give a brief description on these? I’m into Dark Ages skirmish right now so I’d be very interested in future options

They are built on the same, successful core rules as In Her Majesty’s Name and Daisho. So 5-15 figure warbands.

It is based in the 8th-9th century and shall cover warbands from all of Northern Europe, Scandinavia and the British Isles. So not just Vikings, but Saxons, Franks, Russ, Irish, Scots and even the Jomsvikings. We’re still debating whether to include Vinland and the Skraelings.

Like Daisho there shall be three levels of play: Historical (Ragnar Lodbrok et al.), Heroic (Egil Skallagrimmson) and Legendary (bring on the Frost Giants and Grendel!). With all the arms, armour, equipment, beasts, monsters, skills, heroic skills and mystical powers you need to support these.

We shall be including special rules for fighting on ships.

Is that enough to whet your pallete?

[War Panda]

My simple answer to that is:

Where can I get a 28mm Grendel!!!

“The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”

[War Panda]

Well Shaun, I took a look at your ancients again. (I do so occasionally when I’m on a miniatures downer.) I’m afraid I have that feeling again. That feeling one gets when one is about to launch one self into a mad frenzy of spending money that one does not have 😉

“The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”

[Rod Robertson]

The War Panda wrote:

“Where can I get a 28mm Grendel!!!”. Stop trolling War Panda! You know it’s not good form!

And you are going to be responsible for my next frenzied spurt of money for minis so stop your whining to Shaun!

Shaun, where are these ancient Trojans of which you speak? I have an unfinished 15mm Mycenaean army and an unfinished bronze-age proto-Thracian army but I would love to find some Trojan figures. They would go well with my complete Hittite, Hurrian and New Kingdom Egyptian armies and my incomplete Sea People Hordes. I am always looking for more armies to populate the Late Bronze Age with!

Cheers and good gaming.

Rod Robertson.

[kyoteblue]

Hey War Panda !!!! Any word on those rivers ???

[War Panda]

Rod you need to get some Scots painted up so we can hold a few challenging matches against my Irish. If you can’t find any Scots a few dozen Grendel’s should proxy well

Blue I’m afraid that river has run; my kids wanted them for playing with their toys. Once they flashed those big round eyes I couldn’t give them away

“The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”

[Just Jack]

Panda,
When are you going to get off your butt and check out my foray into Cold War gaming?

I think LOTR would be really cool, though I’m not sure I could manage the numbers (I’m thinking massive numbers of human, dwarves, elves, and orcs).  Saga Dark Ages, eh?  Well, you saw the pics of when I tried to get into that period, it just didn’t seem to work for me.  Those minis have been banished to a box in the garage unfortunately…

Glad to hear you had a great summer, now back to work!

V/R,
Jack

[Shaun Travers]

Wat Panda,

I understand the ancients itch – I have definitely got mine again after mostly two years away.  I am about to embark (when I say about I mean hopefully This year!)  on a foolish 30 games in 30 days using my own fast play rules.  I also have noted that you seem interested in L’Art de la Guerre (I saw your comments on related youtube videos about a month ago).  i have not played them but have been waiting 5 years for them to be translated into English.  i have them, but I think I am nervous to play them as they will be even better than i expect and I will begin to play them to the exclusion of anything else!

Rod – Panda is referring to an oversized pig I use in ww2 skirmish to represent unknown enemy forces.

[kyoteblue]

Oh well rivers come rivers flow…..I have tons of painted Irish and Scots for dark ages but they are all 15mm.

[Sparker]

Wow! I am not alone in my febrile switching from painting WW2 to ancients to Cold War to Mediaeval to WW2! I feel much more ‘normal’ now, thanks! (Of course ‘normal’ is a relative term amongst the ranks of grown men who play with toy soldiers!)

Currently on the work bench? – 28mm Gauls, 1:100th Jagdpanthers, and late last night packed away some still wet 1:100th T-55s for this evenings 1967 Six Day War game…

http://sparkerswargames.blogspot.com.au/
'Blessed are the peacekeepers, for they shall need to be well 'ard'
Matthew 5:9

[Northern Monkey]

Sparker wrote:

Wow! I am not alone in my febrile switching from painting WW2 to ancients to Cold War to Mediaeval to WW2!

 

Definitely not alone, I find that the only way I can get things painted is if I change subject fairly regularly or I succumb to ennui.

My attempt at a Blog: http://ablogofwar.blogspot.co.uk/

[kyoteblue]

Oh and I have WW1  WW2 and Cold War  on my  painting desk….

[War Panda]

When are you going to get off your butt and check out my foray into Cold War gaming?

Are you off the isle of Cuba then? I’ll check it out right away.

Most of the LotR’s I’ve been playing is Skirmish; it was nice to have something fun to play with the little ones and it has some nice features. I mainly wanted to use the minis for large battles (using the War of the Ring rules) and I’ve probably amassed enough to do this.  My passion right now is firmly set on Ancient Greece and Troy,  sorry that should read the Vikings in Britain and Ireland in the Dark Ages , well by Dark Ages I mean of course the Crusades. I’ve already ordered some more Dark Age and I’m about to order some Crusading Knights and some Saracens…I am a man without hope 🙂

If you have never played Saga, I’d impress upon you to order it and route out those 15mm and have a blast…they’re so amazingly enjoyable…

Good to hear from you

 

 

 

“The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”

[kyoteblue]

Don’t want to re-base my 15mm….and Saga has hit it’s peak and is hardly played locally….

[Shaun Travers]

Blue,

Don’t rebase! If I ever do play Saga with my own figures, it will be 15mm based for the WRG rules (e.g. DBA).  I saw a blog last year where they played Saga with DBA-ish bases.  I had not thought of doing that – it looked fine!

This isn’t the one I was thinking of but it is the similar:

http://tasmancave.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/sagain-15mm.html

 

 

 

[Greg M]

On the table – Shén for Tékumel, Old Glory orcs, some Eureka Aztecs, and Huaxtecs from Lucid Eye (Saleh).

And a link to illustrate:    Pic of my table

I’m getting the urge to do Romans & Britons, and have the backing of the missus, but lack funding so just starting to plan that project…

[Rod Robertson]

Shaun:

Ah, the infamous Trojan Pig! I had forgotten about that! Thanks for the reminder.

Cheers and good gaming.

Rod Robertson.

[Rod Robertson]

Greg M:

Empire of the Petal Throne wargaming? Be still my beating heart! That must look great on a table! If I was to do fantasy gaming it would be a close race between MAR Barker’s Tekumel or Greg Stafford’s Glorantha as an ideal setting. Hum, it’s off to research some figures now!

Cheers and good gaming.

Rod Robertson.

 

[Lagartija Mike]

Greg, how well does Eureka’s Aztecs scale with Saleh’s Huaxteca?

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