Waterloo has arrived!

Finally, after what has seemed like ages, the final title in the first year’s release from Treefrog has arrived…

Much delayed since January/February, Waterloo, the new wargame from Martin Wallace, finally landed on my desk today.

Was it worth the wait?

I needn’t have worried – though I’ve yet to play the game, the quality of the board and the wooden playing pieces is simply fantastic. If the game plays half as good as it looks, I’ll be very pleased…and after reading the rules both online and now ‘in the flesh’, it certainly looks good.

I think this will be on the table on Wednesday…

New rules arrived

The postman was kind to me this morning and delivered 2 new sets of rules for my continued gaming delight…

The first is the 2nd Edition of Polemos Napoleonic. As you already know if you read this blog or listen to the podcast, I’m a big fan of these rules, and have been looking forward to the 2nd Edition ever since it was announced.

What are the differences over 1st Edition? Not a tremedous amount, although they have been tidied up and many clarifications made – but I’ll post my views on them in a future show.

The second set of rules I received were the Check Your 6! set of World War II aerial combat rules, along with the Over The Channel supplement from Scott Fisher of Skirmish Campaigns fame.

I’ve been eyeing these rules for some time now, and have been undecided as to whether to get them or not.

What finally made the decision for me was seeing the Pearl Harbour game at the Derby World Wargames Championships at the start of October. The game was using Tumbling Dice 1/600th scale aircraft and looked really good.

Also, since the game uses similar mechanisms to the World War I game Blue Max (which I play online from time to time) I was pretty much sold.

But of course, being a Brit, the Flying Tigers scenarios from the original rulebook hold only passing interest for me, so I just had to purchase the Battle of Britain scenario book Over The Channel to go with the original rules.

I’m really looking to playing this game – it just means that I now have to buy some more aircraft and a blue hex mat.

On the aricraft front, I’m sort of torn between 1/300th and 1/600th scale. I like the 1/600th Tumbling dice range of aircraft, but I also like the 1/300th planes because I prefer the size – it may simply come down to a matter of economics – it depends how many aircraft I will need to buy in order to play all the scenarios in the BoB book.

The hex mat could end up being more of an issue – I’ve looked around the web, and everyone seems out of stock at the moment…not good.

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.

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).

The Other Partizan 2008

Sunday 7th September saw the first ever demonstration game hosted by Meeples & Miniatures at a UK Wargames Show, as we put on a 6mm Napoleonic Game at The Other Partizan, Kelham.

Here, along with a few pictures of the game, is the write up that I did for the game:

Many people’s route into the Miniature Wargaming hobby seems to be either via skirmish gaming, due to the low cost and small number of figures required, or via the various Games Workshop products, mainly due to their High Street presence.

We wanted to show that collecting and gaming an historical ‘massed battle’ miniature wargame which looks good, plays both well and quickly, and is within the budget of most gamers is not only possible, but easily achievable.

We decided to choose the Polemos Napoleonic Rules and Baccus 6mm Miniatures for 3 reasons:

1.        The Polemos ‘Marechal de l’Empire’,rules are easy to learn, fun to game and quick to play, enabling a game to be completed in a single normal club night (2-3 hours).

2.       6mm figures give an ‘epic’ feel to a game – the game actually ‘looks’ like a battle, and not just a large skirmish, whilst still being played on a table of easily manageable size (6’ x 4’)

3.       Baccus Miniatures are both well detailed and easy to paint, whilst at the same time being competitively priced.

 

This game is a generic encounter battle between British and French Peninsular War armies, and gives a good example of what it is possible to produce for the ‘average’ wargamer.

 

The French army comprises of 7 divisions of Infantry, supported by 1 Division and 2 Brigades of Cavalry. They are facing a British Army comprising of 7 Divisions of Infantry, supported by 3 Brigades of Cavalry – a total of some 1500 figures for both sides. All figures and scenery have been painted by Dave Luff.

 Figures:

 1 British & French Napoleonic box set (Includes starter armies and rules)

1 Pack British Line Infantry,  2 Packs British Riflemen

1 Pack French Line Infantry, 1 Pack French Grenadiers, 2 Packs French Voltigeurs

All figures produced by Baccus Miniatures

 

Scenery:

 

Trees – from Timecast, 6mm Deciduous trees

Roads – from Timecast. 2 packs of straight/bends from their 6mm collection

Buildings – from Timecast South Europe Range of 6mm Buildings

Hills  - various sized flocked hills from S&A Scenics

 

Additional Material

 

Gaming Mat – this is custom made. You can purchase a 6’x4’ gaming mat from S&A Scenics

Counters – These are available from Litko Aerosystems Ltd.  www.litkoaero.com

 

A couple of additional things of note:

Firstly, I must admit to not contrbuting much to the game, in the way of figures or scenery. I did, however, paint the river:

Finally, during the day, several people asked us how the base mat was made, and also what the cornfields were made of.

Well, the base mat was made from table protector – it has a brown vinyl cover with a kind of foam underneath. This was then covered in diluted PVA glue, and static grass (Gaugemaster, Noch 7072) was then liberally throw over the area. This was repeated until the desired effect was achieved.

The corn fields are simply made using acrylic paint pads – use the cheap varieties, as the expensive ones have too dense a bristle density. Scarpe the foam off the back using a scalpel, and then work some yellow/brown paint into the bristles with your fingers – job done!

Meeples & Miniatures @ The Other Partizan this weekend

This weekend sees The Other Partizan show held at Kelham hall, nr Newark.

Something new for me this year, as for the first time, I (under the guise of Meeples & Miniatures) will be involved in putting on a demo game.

Partizan is normally known for putting on some very pretty games, but we thought we would do something slightly different. The picture above shows a mock-up of the game that we will be putting on. It’s a Napoleonic game, in 6mm, using the Poleomos Napoleonic rules, which I reviewed in Episode 31 of the podcast.

Essentially, the game is an extension of the series I have been recording about ‘Getting Started in Miniature Wargaming’ and is intended to show how easy it is to game a reasonably large battle in a club night without too much expenditure.

Special thanks must go to Dave Luff, who is providing the vast majority (if not all) of the figures and scenery for this game.

Come along if you are in the area and say ‘Hi’.

Many more pictures to follow after the event.

Meeples & Miniatures Podcast – Episode #31

After what seems like an age, but is only 4 weeks, I’ve finally managed to finish editing the latest episode of the Meeples & Miniatures podcast and it is now available for download.

This show concentrates on Napoleonic gaming, as I review the Polemos Napoleonic rules from Baccus, along with Baccus 6mm figures and 6mm terrain.

You can download the show from the Podcast blog at Libsyn: http://meeplesandminiatures.libsyn.com/

My first 6mm figures

Well, I’ve just finished painting my first few strips of 6mm French.

I must admit to being somewhat disappointed with the outcome so far, though I cannot quite put my finger on why.

Maybe it’s because I’m not used to painting the scale (still too geared towards what 28mm figures look like?), and I know that you can’t really completely judge a figure until it’s based and finished, but I do know that I’m not happy with the result at the moment.

Having had a conversation with a friend, I have decided that I needed a new set of paint brushes, and so the weekend saw me purchase a set of Windsor & Newton brushes – only the Galeria range – but this company has a very good reputation, so I am looking forward to seeing how they perform in comparison with the brushes I have been using up until now (primarily Games Workshop).

Getting under way

Well, the second painting project of the new year is under way, as I’ve finally managed to put paint to metal.

Capitalizing on my enthusiasm from Hammerhead last weekend, and the Marechal de l’Empire game on Wednesday, I decided to crack on and start painting my Baccus 6mm French army.

So, I opened the French Army bag up, grabbed all the line infantry, several lolly sticks, some PVA glue and got sticking. The lolly sticks are big enough to fit 5 strips of Infantry onto, so I decided that each battalion would occupy a stick, and my command strips would all be painted together.

Next job was to wait for the glue to dry and then out with the spray paint (on a cold and windy day – not the best prospect for spray painting: frozen fingers and paint going everywhere except where it’s supposed to!)

So, after just over an hour of cleaning up, sticking and spray painting, my first batch of French Infantry is ready for painting: 200 infantry plus 40 command figures – it still seems the start of a large mountain to climb, but I’m currently reciting the mantra from Peter Berry – “Paint the unit, not the man!”

6mm Napoleonic madness!

Having played a couple of games of Polemos Napoleonic rules from Baccus I was sufficiently impressed to look at buying an army.

Baccus produce a wide range of 6mm Napoleonic figures – so the first thing was to decide what army to play. Given that my opponent already has quite a large painted British army, I decided to go with French (at least it means I will always have someone to fight!)

I ordered a French Army from Baccus, and picked it up from the Hammerhead show at the weekend. I’m not sure if I was prepared for exactly what I received.

This army is HUGE! Admittedly, I’ve ordered some extra packs of Infantry and Cavalry to make the army viable for the Polemos army lists, but the number of figures to paint is quite daunting, even in 6mm.

• 1000+ Infantry
• 200+ Cavalry
• plus Artillery guns, teams and Officers

As an extra factor, I’ve never painted anything smaller than a 25mm figure in my life, so this should be interesting!