Rich Uncle Pat takes us to sunny Spain!

 

OK, so it was Spain sometime between 1936 and 1939, 

not so great as a vacation spot right then

 

       Rich Uncle Pat has been working on a Top Secret Project since last Fall. Today we were given a peek behind the curtain and what a surprise it was! He has managed to assemble and paint both sides of the Spanish Civil War (including the Condor Legion and the Italian Volunteer Corps!) up to Divisional level including vehicle and air assets. All in 15mm, mostly Peter Pig and Minairons, truly beautiful minis all enhanced by his painstaking paint-jobs and carefully constructed terrain. 

       Housemartin and I were the lucky members to get to play with these troops the very first time. The rules were "For Whom the Dice Rolls" from Wargaming For Grownups Publications. The rules have a very interesting variation of card-driven activation which took me a turn or two to really get the hang of but, once the system had penetrated my foggy old brain, it all made sense and played quite well.

From Package to Playable in 48 hours: RAFM Colonial French Infantry or The Hazards of Nostalgia

        Over the Fourth of July weekend I got some of the Usual Suspects together for a game. Being as it was the day after Independence Day I ran a condensed version of the Battle of Monmouth. The minis involved were Trunkmonkey's British and my American Rebels, mostly products of the venerable RAFM range, the rules were our One Brain Cell Rules which play fast and smoothly. We had a jolly old time and the Americans won! 

       As I was putting the minis back into the storage bins it occurred to me that I had (somewhere) a good many more of those RAFM figures stashed in the Mountain of Shame. I went and dug around in the deeper regions of the Mountain I found a dusty box of minis, to my surprise I found that I had nearly a brigade worth of French infantry. I smiled as I remembered the days of hustling home from the Hobby Shop with my little bag of figures and then rushing through painting them so they would be ready for the next weekends game. No subtle shading or highlights, just simple block-painting and basing on a strip of balsa wood and then off into the fray! I wondered if I still could manage that speed. I took four cards of minis, one command, one of grenadiers and two of line infantry and set them on the workbench thinking that I would give a go.

       The next morning was bright and hot so I cleaned up and hot-glued the minis to their painting bases. The heat of the day meant that the primer dried in quick order and I sat myself down to start painting. To my pleasant surprise in less than six hours of painting time I had finished the unit and transferred them to their gaming bases. No fancy ground-effects or flock here, we were going Old-School, just a coat of Hauser Medium Green and they were ready for the table.  

 

I could probably have gone nuts and painted shadows and highlights,

 but to my eye, these sort of Old-School minis look best with an Old-School paintjob

 

besides, painting that last batch of Middle Ages figures had 

really worn down my desire to spend time with brush in hand

 

 

 

       Now I have to decide if I'm going to drop everything and head down the rabbit-hole of finishing up the rest of the RAFM minis, sigh.

Happy Birthday USA!!!

   249 years ago we decided to sever our ties to the past and engage in an experiment in crafting our own system of government. This experiment continues to this day. To my mind it has been tremendously successful despite many stumbles along the way and I look forward the celebrating our 250th  next year!

Have a happy Fourth of July everyone!

Marching into Midgard

        If you are one of the hardy souls that has been following my blog for any length of time you are aware of one of my biggest anathemas; rebasing. Taking figures off of bases just to attach them to new bases is, to me, a criminal waste of time. Fortunately my gaming group's new favoritestest (yes, that is a newly coined word, and I hold copyright) new rules is Midgard. This set thoughtfully allows the use of minis based for any system and only requires consistency in the basing method. It was a significant factor in the adoption of the rules as almost all of our miniatures were based in compliance with the venerable WRG 6th Edition rules. All we did was group together four bases (arranged two by two) and declare it a Midgard unit. Measuring sticks were then made to correspond with the frontage of the formation and we were off to the races. 

       There remained but one issue, I had hundreds of figures that were individually based for various skirmish games. Playing with these was problematic because they didn't keep a consistent frontage and were constantly getting knocked down. I had to confess to myself that it had probably been most if a decade since I played skirmish games and was unlikely to return to that any time soon. That moment of reflection out of the way I began cutting bases to glue the minis into proper formations.

 

first up was a group of Victrix Greeks that I had painted for some long-forgotten rules

 and which hadn't seen service since they were painted back in 2020 

 

 

next up were my Mounted Sergeants from Wargames Atlantic,

 I had to trim away the bases to get them to rank-up on the Midgard bases 

 

next up was the foot soldiers that I had just finished, they got the treatment because I have several hundred individually based Medieval from my castle siege game already 

Wargames Atlantic 28mm Mounted Sergeants from sprue to painted

 

 

the front of the box

       A new(ish) release from the prolific stable of Wargames Atlantic is this set mounted sergeants from the early medieval period. I got this set from the good folks at Michigan Toy Soldier, who also have the full Baron's War set which provided the miniatures and the set of rules at an excellent price. As is to be expected from Wargames Atlantic the miniatures are cleanly cast in medium gray plastic. They are detailed and well proportioned with natural poses. The chain mail is well rendered as are the padded gambesons. There are a host of heads wearing a delightful variety of headgear.

 

the back of the box with some nicely painted minis

We Sergeants Three..... Erm, perhaps a few more than three, 28mm Wargames Atlantic Foot Sergeants

 

 

now that I'm looking at him in a photo I see that I'm going

 to have to go back and fix the Old Man's face, that crooked mouth is killing me!

        The last part of my mass-build of the Wargames Atlantic Sergeants/Peasants sets is this group of spear-armed sergeants. My intent while building them was to get an "alike, but not the same" posing and equipment. To add some variety I used some of the unarmored peasant bodies to reflect poorer soldiers and made the rest using mailed/padded torsos. Once again the huge assortment of weapons and arms holding them made this a simple process. The color scheme is a nod to the year I spent in Cub Scouts (before I was expelled, but that is another story) with strong blues and rich yellows providing a pleasant contrast. The crisp detailing on the minis made painting less of a chore than I had thought it would be, only the sheer number of them slowed me down.

Smelly Peasant Types...more Wargames Atlantic Middle Ages 28mm

 

 

please excuse the unfinished bases, I haven't decided if I am going to make

 sabot bases so that I can use these in skirmish games or larger bases for Midgard

       At the bottom of the social and military pyramid were the serfs/peasants. Often forced by circumstances (or their feudal overlord) to take part in the squabbles of their "betters" their main objective was to survive and return to the back-breaking labor of farming. They had little in the way of funds to spend on armaments so often they were armed with modified agricultural tools. Under just the right circumstances they could be effective, but most often they were just there to do the grunt work and buff numbers. The Wargames Atlantic set provides a huge number of options for posing and arming the minis so you are spoiled for choices when building your force.

 

I should have mentioned this in the last post,

 the shields are all left blank white while I seek decals for the heraldry

 

 

 

       And this is for The Housemartin:

 

                 

So.....It's been a while but I picked up a brush: 28mm Wargames Atlantic MIddle Ages minis

        May turned out to be far busier and decidedly unpredictable than I had imagined. At the beginning of the month I had started assembling the Foot Sergeants and Peasants sets from Wargames Atlantic. This (of course) took me down the rabbit-hole of trying to make each figure an individual, much time was lost combining the two sets. On the upside I can confidently say that they cross-pollinate very well. 

       After two weeks of squeezing a bit of spare time out here and there I was confronted with almost sixty little gray soldiers and that's when it hit me; I have to paint these guys! Don't get me wrong, these are excellent figures, well detailed, naturally proportioned and cleanly cast. It is just that, as my eyes have aged and arthritis has taken a toll on my hands, painting has gone from a pleasant pastime to a brutal grind. Or maybe it is that I grew up painting Minifigs and Hinchliffe figures....probably a bit of both. All that aside I have finally finished the crossbowmen and archers. You can behold them in all their splendor below. 

 

I understand that uniforms were not yet a "thing" but I like my units to be recognizable as units

I tried to make a "shouting and pointing" guy for the crossbow unit but wasn't satisfied with the look so only the archers have a readily spotted leader

       I'm nearly finished with the spearmen so they should be appearing soon. Perhaps I will find some ancient figures from the 1980's that I can speed-paint my way through.

Sad News, John Hutcherson has passed away

        It is with great sorrow that I must inform you that one of my good friends has passed away. John Hutcherson, known to our group as "The Hutch" (or, more simply, as Hutch) rolled his last dice on the 21st of May. 

        An avid wargamer and model builder John was particularly fond of naval games and Flames of War. Like most gamers he was an enthusiastic collector of books and minis with a good many projects under way at all times. I first met John at the old Alcove Hobby Shop when it was on Eleven Mile Road. A year or so later I invited to my house for a game and he was a fixture at our weekly games for three decades. More recently he moved to South Lyon which made connecting for games much more difficult but we would still see each other at game cons where his broad smile and hearty handshake were always welcomed. 

        Rest in peace my friend, and keep rolling sixes!

       Further information can be found here Phillips Funeral Home South Lyon