Battles in the Age of Weymouth

In late July a merry band of wargamers met in a church hall in Weymouth to recreate battles from the Sengoku period.

For once I wasn't the furthest travelled. That went to Kevan Gunn seen here in the yellow.

This is a picture of my attack on Chris Cunninghams Daimyo sitting pretty in his Maku. Chris cleverly put his large mounted Hatomoto unit in front of me which was akin to a brick wall.

Not sure whose playing here but it looks like a good game!

An overview of the hall.

A nice picture of a game in progress on Peter Pigs lovely scenary board. This gives you a good idea of how a game looks.

Stewart in the red 'Levellers' shirt organised the day. For the second year running, he won. It's all down to the Ikko Ikki. Stewart is trying to look humble. Martin is still in shock from my diabolical tactics when he partnered me in the last game.

The Band of Brothers

A great days gaming which Lisa and myself turned into a weekend staying in a picturesque village of Piddletrenthide.

Stewart organised a great day with no hitches and lots of smiles and laughs. Looking forward to the next one.

New Year

First post of 2010.

Hope you all had a great time over the holiday period. Personally it was very busy with work followed by catching up with family and friends, so not much time for wargaming or blogging. However my 2010 painting points are under way with a few Samurai Generals and a unit of AWI Yankees in Hunting shirts.

Wargaming plans for the new year are manifold. Possibly most looking forward to C.O.W. in July, but also the Towton game I will be putting on at the WMMMS show in Wolverhampton in March. AWI will feature heavily come April with Peter Pig releasing their Washingtons Arny rules and figure range. I have made a start with a couple of American units done and a British battalion on the stocks.

With 2155 painting points for the year, I have to say it has been the most productive year ever for me. That includes a lenghty hiatus over the summer during which I scratchbuilt an Imperial City for the clubs 40K players. I have doubts that I will hit that points total again, purely because I completed two large projects that had been sitting around for a while. Both the Wars of the Roses and the Samurai collections were figure intensive, and though I plan to add to them they are both at a point where I can play most of the scenarios in the Bloody Barons and Battles in the Age of War rule books.

ECW, AK47 and Sudan collections will be getting some attention with additions here and there.I didnt play as many games I would have liked but I hope to improve on that this year with more games at home and hopefully at the club too. I do hope to get at least one game in for each of the periods I play. Not too ambitious I think.

As well as the AWI, I will look to complete one other new project, either WW1 for which I have most of the figures (both early and late war) or else Wild West. Cowboys would only be a small project so I may be able to do both but wont punish myself if I dont!

Show wise I intend to get to the usual suspects. York in February, WMMMS in March, Triples in April, Partizan in May and September and Phalanx in June. COWS fills the gap in July. I most likely will miss Salute this year and may replace it with Fisticuffs in Weymouth. I also would like to get to a couple of Stuart Meechams RFCM days and Miles Miltons PBI. I need to be careful with my planning and hope some of these days fall on rest days otherwise I will be using a lot of annual leave up!

The big change for the blog will hopefully be more photographic content. I hope to photograph most of my collection over the year.

More soon!

Thoughts

I have been painting more Wars of the Roses this afternoon. I have now painted over 1,500 15mm Peter Pig figures this year. Not sure I'll ever paint so much again as I did have a large back log. I have now virtually completed two projects, with them both stretching their neck for finishing line. The Samurai have the generals, 2 maku and some casualties left to do (all basecoated). The WotR have three units of retinue and 1 unit of horse to do, of which I have still to buy the last two retinue units. These are part of Norfolks command on the Yorkist right at Towton. In the scenario from Bloody Barons Norfolk comes on as reinforcements and in fact is not guaranteed to come on at all. I just now the first time I run the scenario Norfolk will be no where to be seen but it wont do to NOT have the figures just in case.

My painting was accompanied by the 'View from the Veranda' podcast which is part of Meeples and Miniatures. With the host Neil Schuck and Battlegames editor Henry Hyde discussing a hobby centric topic, I can highly recommend it to pass the time between coats of paint. This afternoon it was episode 2 discussing the morality of wargaming. Not something I have ever struggled with personally but an interesting debate all the same. There is a link in the sidebar to Neils podcasts which are informative and an excellent break from Radio 5 Live, particularly if Victoria Derbyshire is on!

So, Zombies. It seems you cant move on the Miniature Page for a new company releasing a range of Zombies. Now, I have played my fair share of Warhammer fantasy, owned a large Vampire Counts army and played Zombies!! which IS a great game. But, similar to the Cowboy fad, the Darkest Africa fad and the Pirate fad, zombies seem to be big at the minute, mixed in with the Pulp genre and Wierd War 2 type games. Never say never. Wargames Factory have some very nice zombies but they are not in my scale. I imagine in 15mm any civilian type figure could be painted as a zombie. a 'Shaun of the Dead' style game would be fun, maybe with old AK47 style mechanics or using some of Matthew Hartleys 'Riot' rules. With a wait between now and Peter Pig releasing their AWI rules and figures, maybe I could make my first foray into rules writing. Others seem to enjoy it, but most of them seem to be

a) More intelligent than me

and

b) More knowledgable on militairy matters than me

However, who can say they know more about fighting zombies than I do? mmmmmm........

New Peter Pig Samurai

Three pictures of my first unit of Levy Ashigaru. Painted by Jason Hurst, they are rather good!

This is the start of a 12 month project for me. Jase will be painting most of the figures with me chipping in here and there.

On another note I listed my Warhammer Orcs and Goblins on Ebay today. Every time I paint an army and sell it, I regret it a week later. Well, I regretted it when I pressed submit listing. So a new record! Oh well.