[Norm S]

A really interesting range of opponents so far – glad to see the rules holding up.

How do chariot / elephant armies shape up in your opinion? I have never really been sure how to best handle an elephant army.

 

[Norm S]

That is very nicely modelled, you must have a lovely set-up.

I have stared at this piece for ages – really nice. What base material do you use for your river systems and how wide / long is a typical section. Did you have to deal with any warping problems? – thanks Norm.

[Norm S]

Shaun, I like the shield wall rule, easy implementation and smiled when you got concerned about something (cavalry proximity) that you had already taken care of when designing the rules.

The 30 remains an impressive commitment.

 

[Norm S]

Hi Otto – I may have got my wires crossed, is the entire table hexed or just the strategic / tactical terrain elements on an otherwise open board?

I am a huge fan of hexes and happy to overlook the things that might bother some, for the substantial administrative benefits that  come from them, especially like you say having the hex in total defined by the terrain contained. It helps with everything from movement costs to who is affected by artillery attacks etc without resorting to the template thing and worrying about millimetre precision.

I also agree with you about the time spent on the hobby. It is rather like spending money, we can only spend it once, but we each have choices how we spend our spare money …… depending how high up the hobby is in one’s list of priorities will determine how much free time people are willing to give to it.

I have decided to liberate myself from the keyboard for a period every day or evening and instead getting something productive done – it works even if it is just 30 – 45 minutes. It is too easy to fall into the trap of plonking down in front of the computer screen for a couple of hours every night and then complaining that one does not have enough time. I am also trying to get back to having a midweek game in the evening, doing a boardgame or some such that fits into a 1 – 2 hour window. The 1 Hour wargames book by Neil Thomas is an interesting concept for doing just that.

Norm.

[Norm S]

Nice idea. It also has the advantage of making players worry about what woods may hold – regardless of whether anything is there, so getting a good realistic feel without a ton of rules.

The good thing about hexes is that the grid gives a ready made reference, so gamers who like your idea, but are not happy to do the work involved could simply use the hex grid to administer hidden troops. but just keep  them off table, so pre-game would write “Saxon Fyrd are in the woods at hex D7 facing the hexes D8 and E8” …. etc.

[Norm S]

I think there are two elements. The first is your intention, this needs to have a military basis – so I want to do the right wing at waterloo, I want to have a single T-34 tank engage with the enemy, I want a platoon of tanks to engage with the enemy, I want to attack the ford and take control of the hill beyond with my Celts.

Secondly, I think you can do this however you want, figures, boardgames, computer games. I consider the millions of blokes who are up until four in the morning playing medal of honour to be wargaming …… though I doubt many of them feel the same way.

There are some areas of confusion for me, is role playing with some figures on a dungeon crawl a wargame, I tend to feel not, but then I think of a squad of space marines going down ship corridors blasting at alien forms and I feel that that is a wargame – what the real difference is between those two things are, I don’t know, perhaps none and just my prejudices coming through.

Anyway – who cares, I’m just off to to fight the opening scenes at Gettysburg on McPherson Ridge, I know that is a wargame  Yes, today is a wargame fest day – hooray.

[Norm S]

Hi Shaun, a very interesting post, I like seeing how rules evolve.

The fascinating thing about play testing is how situations pop up that seem obvious when they pop up …. but not so much when the rules are being written in the first place.

 

Could any of the One Hour wargame (Neil Thomas) scenarios be called upon to meet your needs, with say a doubling (or more) of units?

[Norm S]

Nice – I like the variety amongst each base, makes you want to stare into them.

Is the lunge mine a conversion?

 

[Norm S]

Nice replay – I have something of a yearning to do AWI, though they would be in a queue behind some 10mm French / Austrian napoleonic, if I kept to my discipline of painting before buying more.

 

 

[Norm S]

Thanks Jack – a ton of work in getting that report out – appreciated. I am sending you my dice … they only roll 3 and 4’s though!

[Norm S]

That is the most amazing 6mm paint job that I have seen.

[Norm S]

I got the impression that Pendraken will do some tweaking rather than running a straight re-print, so perhaps some ‘quirks’ may go (to be replaced by new quirks perhaps!).

I think the modern set is an important book for Pendraken because they are spending quite a bit of time on bringing out new vehicles to meet players order of battle needs.

[Norm S]

Lovely work, the pins are very effective and must have taken a lot of effort to get right. I do like those bases.

[Norm S]

I use Blogspot.

On a desktop I manage it via Blogspot itself

on an iPad i manage it via the BLOGSY App, which is excellent.

My Phone is Android and not that Smart ….. so I have never even attempted it by phone, but I presume there will be a decent App somewhere, the Blogspot App on the Apple Shop does not appear too be popular – at least when I last looked around 18 months ago.

[Norm S]

Thanks, I am told that Agrax Earthshade is the GW replacement for Devlan Mud and also that Army Painter Soft Tone ink is a very close result.

[Norm S]

Nice job, I will be doing the same. I returned to my works the other day and they only had a few models left ….. but from somewhere two T34 – 85’s had appeared, though they are fully in white – so re-painting needed in full there.

 

Did you prime first or did the body take the new paint OK.

[Norm S]

Shaun, quite an undertaking (even for short games) and a very interesting post to follow.

Fast games, small space and low figure numbers just makes wargaming more accessible for many people. Great support of the 2 x 2 format.

 

 

 

 

[Norm S]

I tend to put a thin dirty was on everything as it unifies the figure and improves my block painting. Heavily dirtied does not work for me as I have to go in and rescue highlights and that is just extra work.

[Norm S]

lovely work.

[Norm S]

I love these images here (did’t sign in or register to the gallery), nicely done. Evocative images with the falling snow. Last night I was looking at a photo in the  Battlegroup rulebook in which they use filters to get heavy rain and lightning into the shot of models, it is nice to see pictures from people who have thought a lot about the final image that they want to put out.

[Norm S]

I can only tell you how blogspot does it and I am guessing that WordPress has a similar process.

Basically after signing in, I go into the layout section. There are several partly highlighted boxes around the screen that have the word GADGET in them. This just means that it is an allocated area that is free and can be used to add a PLUG-IN.

Plug-ins give you all sorts of extra things around your screen, such as a FOLLOWERS section or a VISITOR COUNTER or a LIST OF BLOGS THAT I FOLLOW or TOP 5 VISITED POSTS FROM THIS BLOG etc.

Just select the plug-in that you want.

Hopefully WordPress is similar.

[Norm S]

Nice shooting and great skies to show off the beautiful craft.

last weekend the Vulcan flew inside the V shape formed by the Red Arrows – there should be some media shots of that – I will try and find one.

EDIT – Link mentioned 

[Norm S]

Thanks for posting, I read and enjoyed the good Kaptain’s account – but Marengo (for no particular reason that I can tell) is just one of those battles that just love reading about, so I was pleased to see this and the insight into the use of the Maurice rules.

Also nice to see the ‘big chaps’ being used on a smaller table. I know you like the larger tables, but for someone (me) trying to shoe-horn some 28mm stuff into a smaller space, it was nice to see your layout.  I might like (or rather need) to get away with units that are just 3 bases wide (I know that will make some gamers shudder).

[Norm S]

Wonderful undertaking to get all that posted. Great looking ‘little’ game 🙂

[Norm S]

I worked on a system and produced 4 scenarios that were well tested and worked for a hex table. They generally included a small town or village type representation that would be set over one to three hexes, plus surrounding farmland and woods etc – it seemed to work fine and looked right to the eye, giving a good balance between being exposed and getting cover. The gaming period was East Front 1943 – 44.

Of the 4 serious scenarios (i.e. not the introductory ones) the following number of game tiles were used, they include buildings, fields, orchards and woods etc.

A 48 hex table set up as 8 hexes wide by 6 deep. Game 1 had 16 tiles showing terrain, Game 2 had 15, game 3 had 17. In the fourth game, the table is increased to a 10 wide by 7 hex deep board  (70 hex cells) and that had 25 terrain tiles added.

I’m no good at the maths thing, but I think that gives a terrain density of somewhere around 30 to 37% coverage, so say a third of the table was cover of one sort or another.

[Norm S]

Look forward to seeing how this moves along

[Norm S]

I enjoyed seeing that as a small format game. looking forward to more. Thanks.

[Norm S]

Agree with Mike. For the purposes quoted, “LIKE Dr. Wh0” would be the better description. For private stuff and fun, I doubt anyone would get too bothered, but for commercial stuff, there is doubtless an issue.

 

[Norm S]

Interesting refight, I am considering a Saxon / Viking / Norman army and you have pushed DBAv3 to the front of my mind. I like the dense packing of troops on your bases.

[Norm S]

My major nit-pick with rules is the idea that you have to buy into several volumes, the sort of Codex idea. I don’t mind paying for a rulebook that is fully self contained.

I would also point out that a £2.50 rule book in 1980 cannot be compared directly to a £25 rulebook today, because wages and wealth and inflation bring those two costs much closer together than initially seems to be the case and then one you factor in a hard cover, bigger page, higher page count and tons of colour etc, the comparisons become harder to make.

I think a person or group who have really done a lot of work on a ruleset and they work properly (i.e. are not half baked), then those rules are deserving of good presentation and the authors are deserving of good recompense to reflect the work that has gone into the game – I am guessing that if you were working out pay by the hour, the author would be receiving nothing like a true or justified level of reward. It seems to be that figure and terrain manufacturers are allowed to put out the best product they can at a reflective price, but that rule authors cannot.

Just the production effort that goes into producing a lovely rule book must be immense.

I think the old fashioned A5, stapled cheap text only formats with a few lined drawings are probably fine for people like me, who like to mess around with amateur level rule / design, it is not a good enough format for the hobby, which has professionalised in most of the areas that it operates in.

I can see the problem that rule junkies will have, but if you are the sort of buyer that tends just to play a favourite set and stick with it, then an expensive rulebook is justified. So say those who bought Fire and Fury all those many years ago must be well pleased with that investment of a lovely rulebook, because for many people that system is still their ‘go to’ rule set.

So bottom line, I would say expensive rules are fine, but with that comes responsibility from the designer and publisher that the rules are very good and problem free and that a loyal fan base should not be forced down a Codex route or at least not to any great degree.

Obvious filler in a rule set is annoying and unnecessary.

[Norm S]

I think you may be describing a dovetail saw.

[Norm S]

Side cutters for plastic sprue is one of the best tool investments you can make.

[Norm S]

Thanks – enjoyed. I am not in the least a good painter, but when I do my German vehicles, I apply brown and / or green over the yellow by holding the end of the brush. this takes away a lot of control and makes the camo less tight and in my mind better than if I did more deliberate painting.

[Norm S]

Good find.

[Norm S]

I wonder if it is worth putting steel paper on the figure bases and then making a small magnetic square base, big enough hold four figures, It would be easier to move groups of four around the map and easy to knock off casualties.

[Norm S]

Very nice, being plastic 15mm, are they quite stable or do they need some weight adding to the base – like a very small washer?

[Norm S]

That looks a really nice game. What is the Tiffin effect? (other than an excellent chocolate / biscuit mix)

[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).

[Norm S]

Thanks for sharing this, i am tempted to start a 6mm napoleonic project.

[Norm S]

Great stuff – what a change of pace from the Cuban games. I think you are going to have a lot of people reaching for their modern collections. 6mm is the best scale to see choppers looking right on the battlefield.

[Author]

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