Partizan Game photos in the Baccus website

The latest news entry from Peter Berry of Baccus Miniatures includes some photos of the Polemos Napoleonic game that Dave and I ran at Partizan, taken by Henry Hyde of Battlegames Magazine.

The bad news is that the 2nd Edition of Polemos Napoleonic rules has been delayed by approx. a month.

Uncharted Seas – first ship of the Dwarf fleet

I’ve just finished painting the first of my Dwarf battlefleet for Uncharted Seas.

This is the Dwarf Battleship – quite a sizeable ship at something over 5 inches long.

The colour scheme is Royal Blue with a Blue/Grey drybrush for the superstructure, and Wood Brown, with a Brown Ink wash and a Mid Stone drybrush for the decking.

I think it’s finished, but it seems to be missing something – or is it me?

Scimitar Wargames Group – 24th September

Scimitar Wargames Group met this week as usual, and once again I forgot to take my camera.

Tonight saw many of us involved in a large, 7-player game of Arkham Horror. This is a co-operative board game based on the writings of HP Lovecraft – the game itself comes with a colossal amount of bits (mainly cards, chits and dice) and is great fun to play.

The idea is for the group to play a team of investigators who travel around the town of Arkham, looking for clues, trying to close dimensional gates and kill the monsters that are slipping through into our dimension.

At some point, the end game is reached as a particular large monster awakens, and all the surviving investigators have to do battle with the monster in order to save the world. As I said, a fun game.

Other games played during the evening include Field of Glory, Impetus and Bag the Hun.

Then it was off to the pub for games of Cloud 9, Midnight Party (yes, we do play the German version) and Hanna-Barbara Uno.

Hawgleg Productions…

Ironically, soon after the latest podcast episode was published, news was posted on TGN that the home of Mike Mitchell, co-founder of Hawgleg Productions who publish the Gutshot rules, was badly damaged by Hurrican Ike.

Thankfully, it appears that no-one has been hurt.

Mike & family, our thoughts & prayers are with you and your neighbours.

Meeples & Miniatures – Episode #39

Download Episode 39

This show features the usual mix of news and comment. For my featured wargames rules review, I’m travelling back to the Old West to review GutShot from Hawgleg Publishing

As an added bonus, the show also features a competition to win one of two copies of the Gutshot rules.

You can download the show here, or subscribe via iTunes

• 00:00     Intro
• 03:25     Rumblings – News from Earthquake’s world of gaming
• 21:35     Gaming News
• 38:35     Miniatures Wargame Rules – Gutshot
• 71:00     Competition
• 73:30     Closing comments

Scimitar Watgames Club – 17th September

As usual, Scimitar Wargames Club met last night – though I forgot to take my camera, so no pictures this time.

Well, it looked like the club went slightly Napoleonic crazy, as there was no less that three games of Manoeuvre being played last night.

Other games being played were a Fire & Fury ACW scenario and a 28mm Pulp WW1 Skirmish game.

I spent the evening going through the first playtest of a modern wargame that Andrew Lawrence is developing.

Then it was off to the pub for some lighter gaming, and there I played 3 excellent games – Straw, Zombie Fluxx (which went down surprisingly well considering how the original Fluxx bombed so badly), plus I introduced Cloud 9, which also proved to be a big hit.

Okko, Era of the Asagiri

Good news! Okko, Era of the Asagiri is being released this week – I’ve already pre-ordered my copy of the game from Gameslore. 

I’ve been looking forward to this game ever since it was announced earlier this year, as it packages up several of my interests quite nicely: Miniatures Skirmish Games & Medieval Japan – who could want more?

The only down point? Well, there are no longer any miniatures in the game – this reduces the cost somewhat (and suitable 28mm figures are readily available) – plus I think figures will be available as an expansion.

It’s funny that after blasting games like ‘Cowboy, way of the Gun’ so much for not having figures, I should then buy a game that does exactly the same thing.

Hopefully this will arrive at the end of the week, so I will let people know what I think of it in due course.

If you want to know more, you can visit the official website.

Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy #36 – Vietnam Special

The latest issue (#36) of Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy magazine has just been released, and it’s a nice one for Vietnam War fans as it’s main focus is on the 1968 Tet Offensive.

Part of the Dossier feature is a look at what figures are available to game Vietnam in various scales. It covers 28mm, but not in as much depth as my own Beginners Guide to Gaming Vietnam in 28mm.

However, the glaring ommission to my mind is for 20mm gamers. The author obviously majors in either 28mm, 15mm or 6mm, and essentially ignores 20mm except for mentioning plastic kits – and so completely fails to mention the excellent Vietnam range produced by Britannia Miniatures, which provides everything that you need to game the war in 20mm.

I hope this redresses the balance somewhat…

Scimitar Wargames Club – 10th September

An interesting week at Scimitar, as I met two guys who I have been playing against online for several months: Rob (Countzero – in the middle) and John (JohnnyB – on the right) – Oh, and that’s Matt on the left, looking thoughtful.

Rob very kindly bought his copy of Pandemic for us to try. We beat the game with 3 cards to spare, but we were only playing on the novice level.

Following on from that, we played Race for the Galaxy, Coloretto and Poison – which I was surprised to discover that none of the others had played before. I think, after 3 plays, I’m finally starting to get the hang of RftG – that didn’t stop me getting completely slaughtered in the game, mind you. It was nice to get Coloretto out again…I haven’t played that for ages.

Meanwhile, to our left, Dave, Pete, Gary and Phil tried to stem the pan-dimensional invasion co-ordinated by Tony…in honour of Big-Bang day, no doubt (Otherwise known as Doom) – Tony’s now fully-painted Doom fiures were on display for the first time.

…whilst to our right, Pete, Bob, Tony, Jere and Martin fought the Napoleonic Wars

All together an interesting night – and great to meet both Rob and John. Hoping for a rematch in October, with a threatened playing of Agricola.

Scimitar Wargames Group meet every Wednesday, 7pm – 10pm at the Church Hall at Christ Church, Frankpledge Road, Cheylesmore, Coventry.

Visitors and new members always welcome.

A change to my 6mm French basing

Having seen how Dave Luff has based his troops for gaming Napoleonic Polemos, I have decided to do something similar, and so I am changing the way my French troops are based.

You may remember when I first started painting my French Line Infantry, that I was torn between basing the figures two or three lines deep. I have now decided that I am going to base them 3 rows deep, and have a base in front of them with Voltigeurs – so more Infantry and Voltigeurs required!

The number of Voltigeurs to use is still in the balance – I was originally intending on using 4 for SK1 and 8 for SK2 (as recommended in the rules), but I am getting an argument that 8 figures will look too many on a base, so I might instead go for 3/SK1 and 6/SK2. I will have to see how it looks when I have made up a couple of bases.

Having said that, I have just come back from Partizan where Steve Jones was using the recommended number of Skirmishers on a base (8/4) and it didn’t look to much – especially if you group them in pairs (one is reloading whilst the other is firing).