Scimitar Wargames Club – 25th June

Another busy night at Scimitar Wargames Group this week.

First of all, there was a flurry of activity in the Command & Colors: Ancients campaign, as we are starting to make a concerted effort to finish the campaign…

Andy & I fought our second campaign game – and I finally won a game! Battle report to follow…

Another learning game for Jere

Whilst it’s Rome vs Carthage as Martin plays Pete – unusually using the boardgame this time.

Meanwhile, Tony and Dave are playing Memoir ‘44 (again!) – this time it’s the Arnhem scenario.

And Hey, That’s My Fish! makes another appearence.

Off down the pub, with the main game being…

Ca$h ‘n’ Gun$ – an interesting game to play in a pub…you get some very strange looks.

As always, you can find out more info about Scimitar Wargames Group at the website

HOTT 15mm Samurai WIP

Well, I’ve almost finished the first few units of my HOTT Samurai army – 4 units of Ashigaru (2 Spears, 2 Shooters)

However, I must admit to having mixed feelings about these models.

It’s not the models per se, but rather the scale. It seems to me that painting 15mm has all the drawbacks of painting 28mm figures (it takes a long time to paint individual figures – especially with the small detail) but with none of the benefits of the larger figures (an nice, inpressive figure when you’ve finished) or none of the benefits of the smaller scale (nice overall effect) either.

In short, I’m really not convinced that 15mm figures give the same return for the time spent on them that 28mm figures do.

OK, I’m a slow painter, but the 4 units above have taken me several hours to (almost) complete – and I still have to base them! If I was painting a 6mm army, I’d have a couple of entire units painted by now, and they would look more impressive on the batlefield.

This HOTT army could very well be my first – and last – in 15mm.
 

Scimitar Wargames Club – Wednesday 18th June

It’s Wednesday night, and so it’s Scimitar Wargames Group night – A bumper night of games to be found on offer tonight…

First a game of Hey! That’s My Fish! whilst waiting for everyone to arrive. “Who moved that there?”

And then several games got going…

Andy & Phil (and myself) puzzle over Ice Flow – analysis paralysis crept in at the end…(I thought this was meant to be a relatively fast game…2 hours we were playing this!)

Pete teaches Jere Commands & Colors: Ancients – a little too well by all accounts…Pete lost!

Tony & Dave refight Kursk with Memoir ‘44…and change history, as I think the Germans won both games.

Whilst Bob, Gary, Martin and Tony (not in shot) fight out a Blitzkrieg Commander campaign battle in France, 1940. Martin is trying out the new tactic of moving his troops with his eyes shut.

And the Andy teaches us Jactvs – which was about as exciting as it looked unfortunately…to be fair, it probably works better with 4 players.

…and then it was off down the pub (the Open Arms, Daventry Rd) for Midnight Party (and beer)

And then Poison (and beer)

De l’Orc pour les braves (For a Few Orcs More) – which I won! (beginners luck)

and, of course, the mandatory game of Uno (and more beer)

Do you want to know more? Then why not visit the Scimitar Wargames Group website

Games we played (11th June)

It was the weekly meeting of the Scimitar Wargames Group last Wednesday evening – this is what we played:

Tigirs & Euphrates – Rob won (again!) and my head still hurts…and I came last!

Pete and Phil played DBM – it looks like Pete is losing

Doom 3 seemed to go well…although I think everyone died…

…and we got Ice Flow on the table.

Artilces now transferred from ‘old’ website

If you look in the menu above, you will see that I have now transferred some of the articles, painting guides and scenarios from my old website.

Some of the others still need more work to bring them up to date before I transfer them, but I hope these will come in useful

6mm Ancients

6mm Roman Army

I’ve been playing the ‘Basic Impetus’ and ‘Impetus’ Ancients rulesets for several weeks now with borrowed 15mm armies, but I’ve decided to bite the bullet and start collecting new ancients armies for the game.

Several months ago, I was looking at painting up a Republican Roman army for C&C:Ancients, using 20mm HaT plastic figures, and whilst these would have been perfectly adequate for using with ‘Impetus’, I wanted a more ‘epic’ look and feel.

So, after chatting with Dave Luff, my 6mm partner in crime at Scimitar Wargames Group, we decided to start collecting 6mm armies for Impetus.

It was then down to what period to start. Looking at the Impetus army lists, there was (at the time) no army list for my two favoured periods (Sengoku Japan and War of the Roses) and so I plumbed for my next favourite – Romans.

However, I didn’t want to do Punic Wars, as I wanted something different to our C&C:Ancients campaign, and I didn’t want Early Imperial Rome (As everyone does EIR), so I decided on a Marian Roman army.

Why?

Well, firstly, the Marian Roman army list covers a time of expansion in the Roman Empire, when Rome was fighting a large variety of enemies (Numidians, Gauls and Parthians to name a few) plus several civil wars, and so this seemed to give a large variety of opponents.

Secondly, I read the ‘Emperor’ series of novels by Conn Iggulden last year, which is a fictional biography of Gaius Julius Caesar, and really enjoyed them, so it seemed in keeping to put together one of Caesar’s legions.

So having decided on scale and army, it came down to placing an order. I also decided to buy an opposing army – but since Dave Luff was buying Celts, and I wanted something completely different from Romans, I ended up going with Parthians.

6mm Parthian Army

Both armies give me lots and lots of figures to paint. The Roman army has just over 800 (although that is, in fact, two 300 point Impetus armies – so I can fight some of the Roman Civil War battles) and the Parthians are much smaller, at about 350 – 400 figures (although the vast majority of Parthians are either mounted bowmen or Cataphtactii)

So, this gives me yet another ongoing painting project – along with my 6mm French, 15mm Samurai and Battlelore figures.

Will I ever get anything done?

Meeples & Miniatures – Episode #34

The latest episode of the ‘Meeples & Miniatures’ podcast has just been published.

In this episode, I look back at two recent shows in the UK – Partizan and the UK Games Expo.

I chat about the new releases at the shows, and there are several interviews with some of the game designers, including Gary Dicken, Dean Conrad, Alan Paull, Mike Reebe, Andy Cooper and Martin Wallace.

You can download the show from the Podcast Website – or you can subscribe via iTunes.